Dropping in on a victory party

You could convict me for a lot of things, but never for failing to look at both sides of a story.

Last year I asked attorney Bobby Simone for an interview with reputed mob boss Nicky Scarfo. Among other things, I wanted to see if Nicky had any idea why a bunch of guys he knew were shot in the head.

Simone didn't produce. And so, with only my imagination and what seemed like 40,000 indictments to go on, maybe my columns about Nicky's trials and tribulations were a shade to one side, I don't know. Some people seemed to think so.

So on Tuesday, after Nicky and eight associates were found not guilty of the Salvie Testa hit, I dropped by the victory party.

The defendants themselves had to celebrate privately, as they are still locked up for other business ventures. But a gang of sympathizers swept out of court and over to the Four Seasons Hotel to pay tribute to the jury system in America.

It probably was the first party at the hotel in which a man in a bathrobe threatened to swim buck naked in the fountain and $100-a-cork hootch was sprinkled on the appointments.

Hotel staff, perhaps concerned that a party celebrating acquittal in a gangland slaying might scare the pants off hotel guests, ran the revelers into the Washington Room, next to the Audio Visual Script Design convention room.

And that's where I found myself by late afternoon, peeking through the door, two thoughts in mind. Either I shouldn't have called this the most inept branch of the American mob. Or I shouldn't be here.

I looked back at the fountain, and in my imagination it became a larger body of water. A river maybe, possibly an ocean. No lifeguards on duty.

But sometimes you have to just swim. And so I took a deep breath, threw open the doors and waded in.

It felt good. But I knew I couldn't hide forever in the Audio Visual Script Design room.

So I eased into the Washington Room, where I saw a happy crowd of men, women and children. I went up to Oscar Goodman, who represented Crazy Phil Leonetti. As an ice-breaker, I asked Goodman if he was still planning to get naked.

He said no, and asked me to sit. I did so, hoping to be put at ease by the man known for brilliant defense of heavies. In a kind voice, he said:

"You remind me of a journalist in Las Vegas who did similar work. He passed away."

I saw the river, the ocean.

"These guys don't like you."

I guess I can understand that.

"They dislike you very much."

Come on, Nicky doesn't read this stuff. Does he?

"They read it. Of course they read it. They hate you. Lee Beloff hates you. Diane Beloff hates you."

But I love all of them.

"I respect you, but if you're going to write negative stories, you should write the other side as well."

That's why I'm here.

"This is a great day. The message is that you can't build a prosecution on the paid-for testimony of two sleazeballs like (ex-mobsters) Tommy DelGiorno and Nicky Caramandi."

A woman named Joy sat at the table. She was at the hotel on business and got swept up in the party.

"They're friendly people," said Joy, who was deep enough into a bottle of champagne to make Sasquatch look friendly. "The world is made up of so many wonderful cultures, and that's what this is. This is a culture."

As she spoke, one of the cultured made a discovery.

"Lopez?" he said.

Yes sir.

"Steve Lopez?"

Pleasure to meet you.

"Get the (hockey puck) out."

A few others joined in.

"I want to talk to you," said one.

Politics? The budget deficit?

"You're a mother-."

Yet another said:

"You killed Frank Rizzo."

Hey, I love the Bambino.

"You killed Rizzo for mayor. Get the (hockey puck) out. Get out!"

One man held the doors open while a posse rode shotgun. As I left, Joy was saying, "It's a culture, that's what it is."

Attorney David Chesnoff apologized. The important thing, he said, is that it was a great day for Americans because the verdict upheld the rights of all citizens against contrived and sleazy prosecution.

And that, folks, is the other side of the story. I say Salvie Testa committed suicide. The second shot in the head was his idea of insurance.

As I left the hotel, I noticed the lifelike sculpture of two men. I'd seen it before, but it never struck me that the men appear to be in concrete body casts. When nobody was looking, I walked up and said:

One of you guys from Vegas?