Chasing Phil by David Howard

Author:David Howard
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Crown/Archetype
Published: 2017-10-10T04:00:00+00:00

16

The Rhinestone Cowboys

MAY 18, 1977

Phil Kitzer sat at the bar in the Shaker House Motor Hotel, chatting, drinking, and smoking. He’d been in Cleveland for several days, chewing over schemes with Armand Mucci, Bob Bendis, and Andrew D’Amato, who had cleared up his situation with the mob and was no longer shadowed by Mark Iuteri. Mucci was a good host. To keep the hotel on the threshold of bankruptcy, he allowed the promoters to stay for free. The food and liquor were also gratis.

D’Amato walked into the bar looking distraught. He explained that he owed $17,000 on his home in Connecticut and the bank was making noises about foreclosure. He was worried about his wife and three daughters.

Later that evening, Phil ran into Mucci. “Armand, is this true about Andy’s mortgage?” he asked.

Mucci nodded, adding that he, too, was in a bind: When he’d paid off the balance of Phil’s fee for Seven Oak paper back in February, he’d taken the $4,000 out of a client’s trust account. Now the client was pressuring him about the money. Kitzer had an idea to help both of them: He would introduce D’Amato’s Euro-Afro-Asiatic Trust to Fred Pro.

Phil had mentioned the Eurotrust back in New York, and Pro was intrigued. Once Pro took clients’ money, they naturally expected him to produce. Since he had no intention of ever actually facilitating a loan, he instead began “bridging” his customers—essentially, stalling. This involved “a lot of phony papers and fancy paperwork.”

These tactics were central to Trident’s success. Pro took pride in his lavish, multipart excuses, the language he would unleash in his baroquely worded missives—he called them “intellectual masturbation letter[s].” That year happened to be the twenty-fifth anniversary of Elizabeth II’s accession to England’s throne, and he used the queen’s Silver Jubilee to great effect, explaining that he couldn’t access funds in the United Kingdom because banks were shut down for the festivities. Pro might also attribute delays to drops in the dollar’s value, or increases in gold prices, or a Mexican holiday, or Europeans’ tendency to take holiday for all of August.

He also placated clients by arranging for other promoters to send bank telexes indicating that the promised financing was imminent. But the vehicles he tapped for such documents occasionally burned out. As a result, he said, “I always look for a fresh artificial lending source.”

And that, naturally, often involved Kitzer. “I would call Phil,” he said, “and Phil would supply a fresh one for me or use one of his own, because Phil always had a bagful.”

Kitzer thought Pro might pay $30,000 to have the Eurotrust stall some particularly impatient customers. “I’ll make a phone call and set up a deal in New York,” he told Mucci. “If I set it up using EAAT, the trust, can you get Andy to do the deal?”

“Phil, if you set up any kind of a deal to get us $30,000 using that trust,” Mucci replied, “I’ll make Andy sign if I have to kill him to do it.

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