June 24, 2024 • 35 mins
Gary reaches out to his dad, but is left with more questions. While trying to figure out his next steps, Gary talks with former employees of his father’s payphone company and gains insight into how, like everything else, this business was another one of Manny’s scams.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Previously on Number one Dad.
Speaker 2 (00:08):
After dozens of buyers claimed they were cheated, the State
Attorney General's Office filed suit yesterday against Meter Sales, Inc.
Speaker 3 (00:14):
I'm wondering does he live in our house still?
Speaker 2 (00:19):
I'm not sure where he is now, but I can
say that he had a house when I last spoke
with him.
Speaker 3 (00:25):
Do you have his phone number?
Speaker 2 (00:27):
I deleted his cell phone number, but the old house
phone was working when we last spoke.
Speaker 1 (00:39):
It is March ninth, twenty twenty two, and I am
going to call my house phone.
Speaker 4 (01:03):
Hello, we are not available now.
Speaker 5 (01:05):
Please leave your name and phone number. After the beat,
we will return your club.
Speaker 3 (01:11):
My dad, It's Gary.
Speaker 1 (01:13):
I am. I know it's been a long time, but
I am calling you because I been thinking a lot about.
Speaker 6 (01:24):
Memory full.
Speaker 1 (01:26):
Okay, oh boy, I don't know what that means. Apparently
the message I was just about to leave my dad,
I guess it's full. So well, I have no idea
what is going on. I got to figure something out here.
(01:47):
This is Number one Dad.
Speaker 7 (02:00):
I just called my dad. What Yeah, did you talk
to him?
Speaker 4 (02:04):
No?
Speaker 1 (02:04):
I was leaving a message and it got fed off.
I'm like halfway through the message and then it just.
Speaker 3 (02:11):
Like just drop the call.
Speaker 1 (02:12):
So I have no idea if if he got it
at all, I don't know what are you gonna do.
Speaker 3 (02:18):
I don't know. I feel like that's not good.
Speaker 1 (02:22):
I know, I feel like I do I call back.
Speaker 7 (02:25):
I don't know because I don't fall back.
Speaker 8 (02:27):
I mean, I think you just have to like wait
at this point, I don't know, wait and see. Maybe
he'll pull you back.
Speaker 7 (02:33):
I don't know. Well, I don't even know. I don't
even know if it went it went through.
Speaker 1 (02:37):
It was just like, oh, well I picked up was
an automated message, Hey buddy, Yeah, I don't know. Well,
waiting to see if my dad calls me back. I
did some more digging on the concert pulled over the years.
As I said in a previous episode Core Record Show,
he was a defendant or plane if in twenty three
court cases since nineteen eighty four.
Speaker 3 (02:58):
But the biggest case he.
Speaker 1 (02:59):
Was ever were involved in was when my father was
sued by AT and T.
Speaker 5 (03:09):
You have reached the United States District Court for the
Eastern District of New York for the Clerk's office Press one,
thank you for calling the Eastern District.
Speaker 4 (03:21):
Hi.
Speaker 1 (03:22):
I was wondering if I could get case files for
something that happened back in like the nineties. I've never
done this before, but it's a public case, and I
was wondering how I could go about finding this information
before I.
Speaker 5 (03:34):
Transchew over and you said, this is dating back nineties.
Speaker 1 (03:37):
Correct, correct, nineteen ninety four through like nineteen ninety.
Speaker 4 (03:42):
Five, Brooklyn Courthouse.
Speaker 1 (03:46):
So my father was involved in a case in the
early nineties, and I'm just trying to get information on
that case that he was involved in.
Speaker 5 (03:55):
Good morning to court.
Speaker 1 (03:56):
Hi, I'm looking to pick up docs for a court case.
Cent transcription for a case that was back in the nineties,
and I was told to contact your number.
Speaker 5 (04:05):
What is the title of the matter?
Speaker 1 (04:07):
The title Veda versus at and t okay.
Speaker 5 (04:11):
Very good. These are all documents that preceded electronic filing,
so I would doubt very much that we would have
them here in the court. All right, you should address
a letter to our office, okay, and you can request
that the court ordered the documents and have them sent
back to the courthouse.
Speaker 3 (04:30):
Do you know how long this process takes?
Speaker 5 (04:32):
As soon as we receive the letter, will get the
information to you. Is it's just a matter of looking
it up in our files that we maintained here, so
we could chenet around in a day and then the
court can make copies for you. It would be fifty
cents per page. You would come to the US Federal
Courthouse in Centralized lovel We're just off of the EXS
forty three A of the Southern State Parkway.
Speaker 1 (04:55):
In the early nineties, my father owned and operated a
small private pay phone come and he called Payphone Plus.
He'd install payphones in various businesses across Long Island, New
York City, and New Jersey. But being my father, he
was less than truthful with how he represented himself. From
what I know, he'd tell people he was an employee
for AT and T, which was the biggest payphone provider
(05:18):
back then. Well, AT and T got wind of what
he was doing and went after him in court to
shut him down. Before I headed out to Long Island
to pick up the court files, I decided to connect
with a few people who work with my father back
then to find out what exactly happened.
Speaker 9 (05:34):
Your dad's an interesting person, and there are times I
certainly missed that we're not in touch.
Speaker 1 (05:39):
My cousin Mason grew up in Queens New York, only
a few subway stops away from my father. They would
see each other all the time as kids and as adults.
My father's the one who got him involved in the
payphone business.
Speaker 7 (05:51):
He was a great cousin growing up.
Speaker 9 (05:53):
He had personality, He was funny, he would get things done.
He was considerate at times, but there frequently seemed to
be a motive behind it. Actually got into the business
because your dad. Okay, this is a good example of
where your dad was looking out for me. Well, there
were some enterprising people decided they wanted to be independent
(06:15):
payphone providers. Payphone being something for more ancient history, a
publicly used terminal on the streets where you would walk
up and I remember my earliest days it was ten
cents and then became a quarter and you would make
your call from there. So it was primarily a way
to stay in touch for business people on the road,
(06:36):
and it was pre cell phone days for the most part.
So he had gotten into the payphone business and told
me about it. Your dad was operating his company up
in New York and I was operating my company in
the DC metro area.
Speaker 1 (06:50):
I remember him having payphones, I mean his coverage was substantial.
He had most toys, r usses, he had pizza parlors.
Speaker 3 (06:57):
He had Bagel Boss.
Speaker 1 (06:59):
Which is which is a huge bagel chain on Long Island.
You'd have payphones and bars, you'd have them, strip clubs, gyms,
I mean, you know, anywhere, any anything that was public
that at a high volume of people.
Speaker 9 (07:11):
I'm surprised he didn't want put up phones in yours
and your sister's rooms growing up.
Speaker 7 (07:15):
Because there's a chance.
Speaker 9 (07:16):
To make something per call, right, So payphones became an
attractive business for those willing to learn a bit of technology,
a little bit of construction electrical software, and create a
service team to go out maintain phones and collect the money,
count it and deposit it in a bank.
Speaker 1 (07:36):
How do you get approval to put a payphone in
a restaurant, a bar, or you know, just a public area.
Speaker 9 (07:43):
Okay, this is the early days of the payphones. I say, look,
I can provide you quicker service, better service for your customers.
Plus I'll give you a percentage of my revenue and
you let me own and operate my phones and your premises.
So that would have been the pitch that he or
I or almost anybody would have made what were some.
Speaker 3 (08:03):
Of the ways you wouldcall How he ran his business.
Speaker 9 (08:05):
So he learned the technology first, and he used phones, equipment,
and boards that were manufactured by AT and T. AT
and T was the brand name in communication. I mean,
even to this day, AT and T still has one
of the largest networks of cell phone coverage.
Speaker 6 (08:24):
Every day, over thirty million AT and T calls go
through on the first try, thanks to a remarkably intelligent
network that forecast traffic, anticipates tie ups, and determines that
put its way around all in less time than it
takes to dial AT and T the right choice.
Speaker 9 (08:44):
He liked having the brand on there, and I remember
one seeing a business card of his that had AT
and T on it, and I don't remember, honestly if
it had Payphone Plus or not.
Speaker 7 (08:57):
So I think at some level there.
Speaker 9 (09:00):
Might have been the thought on the part of people
who were working with him that he was the phone company.
Speaker 1 (09:06):
Do you ever say anything to him about that, the
fact that he has a business card for a company
that he clearly doesn't work for.
Speaker 9 (09:11):
Having never been on a sales call with him, I
can't say that he ever told a client or a
prospective customer, hey, I am AT and T. But I
do remember saying to him, when I call your number,
that chime comes up as if it's AT and T.
Speaker 7 (09:28):
Are you working for AT and T now? And he
would laugh it off.
Speaker 9 (09:32):
So I was under the impression that being confused with
the big brand in terms of providing that phone service
to customers was of interest to him. I said, sooner
or later, aren't they going to come after you? This
is a property of theirs, that brand, that logo.
Speaker 1 (09:51):
My sister Jamie and I would often take along with
my father while he serviced his payphones.
Speaker 8 (09:56):
Some of the locations he would take me to and
you know, and bring my daughter to work, and he'd
have me wearing like this shirt that said AT and
T and it had the logo on it, not knowing
that you can't do that. You can't just use a
company's logo.
Speaker 3 (10:11):
Well you didn't know that.
Speaker 1 (10:12):
He knew that, now, Yeah, he definitely knew that he
couldn't do that. And these places weren't small time places
like he had payphones in Costco, yes, which was a
huge account, but they believed that they were working with
AT and T.
Speaker 8 (10:25):
That's right, he's scamming these big companies that are like
signing off on these contracts, and now the contracts misrepresent
him as if they're working with AT and T, and
they were never working with AT and T.
Speaker 1 (10:36):
When my sister and I would be on the job
with my dad, it wasn't your normal experience of going
to work with your parent.
Speaker 8 (10:42):
He'd give me gum, so you know, here you're a kid.
You're getting gum like awesome. Then he stops the car
and he says, oh, you see that payphone over there,
the gum I just gave you. I want you to
take that gum and stick in the coin set. This
wasn't his payphone. He would go to the nearest payphones
surrounding his payphone and jam them up, or have me
(11:03):
jam them up.
Speaker 3 (11:04):
Right, I did the same thing. I did the exact
same thing with them.
Speaker 4 (11:07):
Get the wire.
Speaker 8 (11:08):
He'd like have flyers and he'd cut the wire with Yeah,
you always wonder if people always wonder, you know, back
in the day when paypons existed and you go to
get grab a payphone, the wire's cut.
Speaker 3 (11:18):
That was probably many exactly.
Speaker 1 (11:21):
He would say that his payphones were getting screwed up,
so that's why he was doing that.
Speaker 3 (11:24):
They were doing it to his which I do not believe.
Speaker 1 (11:27):
Yes, but he had that those coins that were called slugs.
Speaker 3 (11:30):
I think he named them that.
Speaker 1 (11:32):
It looked like it was a quarter, but it was
more like rigid and would get stuck in a coin slot.
So I think that he like kind of shaped these
slugs and then so that was another way to jam
it up outside of.
Speaker 3 (11:42):
Gum as well.
Speaker 1 (11:44):
I remember he was breaking the headsets too with a
hammer and then we would just drive off.
Speaker 8 (11:49):
Yeah, he would stop it. Nothing to jam up this competition.
Speaker 3 (11:52):
Literally, yeah, yeah, exactly.
Speaker 1 (11:54):
I asked Mason if he was aware of any malicious
or even illegal stuff that went on in the payphone business.
Speaker 9 (12:01):
I mentioned that we would interact, we communicate with the
phone because it was a computer, and that meant there
was a board inside of our phone boxes. Well, those
boards were frequently worth more than the money that was
accumulating in the box, and there were people who devised
ways to break through the box quickly. If they could
(12:23):
take the money, fine, but they were really after the
board because they could sell those boards on a secondary
market for a fraction of their original price, which was
about eight hundred two one thousand dollars. So that was
big time money. Then you could then resell that board
to another payphone provider who is very happy to buy
this used board that fell off of the truck.
Speaker 1 (12:43):
That was the thing my dad. He wouldn't even go
just for the computer. He would take the entire phone.
He'd grab a drill and take it right off the wall.
While I'd be in the car. I was essentially a
lookout and he would tell me to honk if I
saw anyone coming.
Speaker 9 (12:59):
That does not surprised me, but I can't say that
he's done that.
Speaker 7 (13:03):
I don't know that.
Speaker 3 (13:04):
What caused you to end the relationship with my father.
Speaker 9 (13:07):
It was a sad decision. I mentioned that it was
over some business.
Speaker 1 (13:11):
I wanted to know more, but Mason said he preferred
not to get into the details of their falling out.
I've always been curious about what my father was thinking,
what he'd rip people off. Did he weigh the pros
and cons of every scheme? Mason shared his thoughts on
how my father operated.
Speaker 9 (13:27):
Your dad always intrigued me because it always seemed to
me that every one of us, when we make a decision.
Speaker 7 (13:34):
We weigh the rewards and the risk. We don't want
to fail.
Speaker 9 (13:39):
We don't want to be embarrassed, we don't want to
be punished, and we certainly don't want anything that could
potentially lead to legal action. Your dad, however, stretched boundaries,
and I think he got a great emotional payback when.
Speaker 7 (13:54):
He succeeded doing these things.
Speaker 9 (13:56):
I mean, he should have gone into politics, frankly, with
that type of mindset would have been ideal for.
Speaker 3 (14:03):
I am about to.
Speaker 1 (14:06):
Get off the exit here on the Long Island Expressway.
I am heading to the Federal Courthouse to get the
AT and T documents.
Speaker 3 (14:18):
I'm hoping that there's.
Speaker 1 (14:21):
A good amount of information in there shed some light
on what actually happened. But it's been five days since
I called my dad and.
Speaker 3 (14:36):
I still have not heard that from him.
Speaker 1 (14:38):
So he maybe didn't get the message. Maybe he did
get it and doesn't want to talk to me. Or
that's not even his number, and that's he doesn't live
at the house anymore. So these are the things that
are going through my head right now.
Speaker 3 (14:57):
And I am here.
Speaker 1 (15:19):
How are you uh to the clerk's office?
Speaker 7 (15:22):
Okay, do you.
Speaker 4 (15:28):
Have a god?
Speaker 3 (15:30):
Yeah?
Speaker 1 (15:39):
I I am now leaving the Federal Court House. I
wasn't able to record anything. They took all my recording
equipment I had. I didn't think that they would do that,
but yeah, they took it. Uh, but I got I
got the documents, so I am uh yeah, I gotta
I gotta go through all this stuff. Hey, babe, Hey,
(16:04):
I just picked up the court documents.
Speaker 7 (16:07):
Oh my god, Wow, did you read anything yet?
Speaker 1 (16:10):
No, it's like a ton of stuff. So it's gonna
take me a long time to go through it.
Speaker 6 (16:15):
Are you on you a home?
Speaker 10 (16:16):
Yeah?
Speaker 3 (16:17):
Well, I'll be home in like two hours.
Speaker 1 (16:20):
I'm gonna stop by my house, my home, You're gonna
go now?
Speaker 3 (16:27):
Yeah, I know, he said the way.
Speaker 5 (16:28):
I just feel like I have to like be getting
some sort of sign.
Speaker 3 (16:31):
If he's there.
Speaker 5 (16:32):
And oh my god.
Speaker 7 (16:34):
Well, I mean just keep like keep me posted as
best you can.
Speaker 5 (16:38):
I will be careful, baby, but I love you. Bye.
Speaker 11 (16:51):
There's no doubt in my mind that Manny could have
been anything you wanted.
Speaker 1 (16:54):
Mark palm Mary is a professor at Mercy College, but
for two years in the mid nineties he works for
my father.
Speaker 11 (17:00):
He probably just didn't have the patience to go through
the front door. Could he have been a detective, absolutely,
Could he have been a professional photographer, absolutely? Could he
been a lawyer. Yeah, And I use those examples because
I actually saw him play those roles.
Speaker 1 (17:14):
Mark men my father when he was going into a
senior year of college at wake Forest, where he was
the pitcher for their baseball team. Soon after my father
hired him to give me pitching lessons.
Speaker 3 (17:23):
I never thought I'd ever talk to you again.
Speaker 11 (17:25):
Well, it was amazing to hear from you, obviously, And
one of the interesting things I realized that I often
do think of Manny and speak of him and tell
some of those stories from those days. So we met.
Right after my fourth year of college, which was my
last year playing baseball. I started a little bit of
a small business, really trying to become a private pitching
(17:49):
coach for high school kids, little league kids, whatever. You know,
it's kind of a common thing. And your dad contacted
me and we would meet at a park somewhere in
Suffolk County and I would give you basic throwing and
pitching lessons. And you were really you were really young.
You were like eight years old or something. And that
(18:09):
was our relationship over the over that summer, and then
so that fall, I needed to make money to put
down for an apartment and I mentioned that that was
the situation to your dad, and your dad said, well,
you can work for me. And that's when I joined
the rank and file of Payphones Plus, which is what
(18:30):
we're going to talk about.
Speaker 1 (18:31):
What started becoming like your task with the payphone company.
Speaker 11 (18:34):
So my job was to get to the phones, replace
the full coin box with an empty coin box, put
the heavy box full of quarters and nickels and dimes
in the car, and drive to the next phone. And
he would prepare like a list with the addresses, and
we'd come up with a kind of strategy in terms
(18:56):
of the order of the phone that made sense. You
know where they were in. They were on Long Island,
they were Queen's, they were in Westchester, and they were
in the city, you know, Manhattan. They were all over
the place.
Speaker 1 (19:04):
He had tons of accounts and he was NonStop collecting.
Speaker 11 (19:07):
It was NonStop, and we bring all the boxes into
the basement of your home and he would empty had
this machine that would just count quarters, you know, you
would just dump these thousands of quarters into this huge funnel.
And that was a normal day. And I could be
just on my own for that, or sometimes I would
(19:29):
ride with Manny and we would be doing that together.
So that was like the job description kind of way
of describing my role. Of course, my role evolved and
became more complicated and adventurous over time.
Speaker 1 (19:44):
Payphone plus became just one of the reasons my father
employed Mark.
Speaker 11 (19:47):
The job got more interesting in that it wasn't always
directly related to the payphones. It would be like, oh,
I need you to sit in the car outside the courthouse.
He had a business, I guess in the eighties, so
something to do with furniture or Veta sales, and my
job for it was at least three hours. It was
just to sit in the car which was illegally parked,
(20:09):
you know, so that it like right in front of
the court, Like he can't park right in front of
the courthouse.
Speaker 4 (20:13):
But that was manny.
Speaker 11 (20:14):
It was another time he parked right in front of
a fire hydrant and I alerted him to this. It
was a you know, massive ticket on the windshield, and
he took out his camera and said, so the garbage
bag zero in front of the restaurant. Let's put those
all around the fire hydrant. And so he buried the
fire hydrant in garbage bags and then took a series
of photographs to prove that the garbage, you know, obscured
(20:38):
the fire hydrant, and he had no idea there was
one there and that was you know. So he had
all these rate ways. He like, he was very confident.
He was never going to pay a parking ticket. That
was just his approach. He'll deal with it after it happens,
and he'll come up with some kind of a creative
way to fight it, fight the system.
Speaker 1 (20:53):
In the first episode of this podcast, I mentioned that
my father used to drive a blue Chevy Caprice because
it looked just like a cop car. Well Mark actually
got to go along and purchase his car with my father.
Speaker 11 (21:05):
And one day I always said, we're going to New
Jersey today, we're getting a new car. So I had
brought my car and I drove us to this like
junkyard in Carney, New Jersey, and he had this relative
who was a former like Israeli Defense Forces Air Force pilot,
some tough, mean looking and just amazing figure. And this
(21:26):
man was just standing on this heat smoking a cigarette
and he's like, that's my cousin. I wish I remember
his name.
Speaker 4 (21:31):
He had.
Speaker 11 (21:32):
It was an Israeli name. Wow, yeah, amazing slomoh yes,
so he walks us to this what looks like it's
a refurbished cop car, this blue repainted. It was so
obvious that it was once a cop car somehow, even
though there was nothing to read on it or whatever.
But you know, one of the telltale signs was the
big flashlight thing on the driver side near her. And
(21:54):
so I remember, Manny, game cash. The guys kept saying, Manny,
this car is clean, Manny, very clean as fast. You know.
I'm like this sort of delicate suburban kid. And I
felt like I'm somewhere, I'm somewhere different right now. I
don't know what's going on here, but this is like
a cop car, no license plate, and I don't know
if this is stolen. Somehow he talked me into I
(22:16):
would drive the car back and he would drive my car.
And I remember I was so scared because the car
had no license plates. For all I know, this was
a stolen like I had no idea what I was driving,
but I had to drive it over the bridge back
into New York and back to Long Island, where he
then fixed plates that he had onto this car. There
(22:36):
was the kind of car if you pulled up or
you were behind you look in the mirror and this
things behind you, You're sure that it's an undercover cop.
So he loved that. And this was our new company car,
and that ended up in important detail because there were
moments where Manny would assume the role of undercover police officer.
Speaker 1 (22:53):
I mean that that was his mentality. He would just
give off this false perception of who he is.
Speaker 11 (23:00):
So at this point, now my friend Rich also was
working for him. Rich was just like me, same kind
of situation. He had this summer off. He was just
trying to work. And so when I couldn't work, Manny said,
you have anyone else that wants to work? Introduced Rich
and man I'm still, you know, in contact with him,
and we've always always told Manny stories together, you know,
And so it's kept Manny alive, you know, for us,
(23:23):
because that was just a profound summer.
Speaker 4 (23:25):
We had just graduated college. None of us had real
jobs yet.
Speaker 1 (23:29):
Rich Patrick is an er doctor and one of Mark's
good friends. He also worked for my dad for a
couple of years in the mid nineties.
Speaker 4 (23:36):
He always paid us well. It was always trying to
help us out.
Speaker 10 (23:39):
I mean, I think he always meant well, but we
all knew that he was doing something that was.
Speaker 4 (23:43):
Off, so Manny would like send us out. And your
dad was always good to us. He would take us
to lunch or he'd be like, hey, we're going to
this place today.
Speaker 10 (23:50):
And he would know the owner and then he would
introduce us, you know, like we're with the owner of
the restaurant.
Speaker 4 (23:56):
Whoa you know.
Speaker 10 (23:57):
That was a big deal, you know, right, And we
would have lunch at these places.
Speaker 4 (24:02):
He was always working some angle, working.
Speaker 10 (24:03):
Some deal, but we were there just to like help
out do something if needed.
Speaker 4 (24:08):
I mean there was there was one time he took
us along and he's like, hey, come with Mark, and
you can bring Martinez. We have a third friend that
used to come along.
Speaker 10 (24:14):
But I think your dad used this to like tacitly
intimidate somebody.
Speaker 4 (24:19):
Really, there was some diner, some.
Speaker 10 (24:21):
Some diner like deep in Queens places that we would
never go off the beaten path.
Speaker 4 (24:26):
It looked like the Diner and Goodfellas or something, you know,
it was like classic diner.
Speaker 10 (24:31):
He was like, guys, sit in this booth and don't
fuck around, and we're laughing because we're like we always
fuck he out.
Speaker 4 (24:36):
What do you mean don't fuck around? That was like
all we did all day long, you know what I mean. Yeah,
And so we're.
Speaker 10 (24:41):
Just sitting there strategically angled towards the where the guy stood,
and this is a serious meeting and so we had
to like keep straight faces. The owner wanted him to
take the payphone out, and he didn't want to take
the payphone out.
Speaker 4 (24:54):
We asked Manny about it later. We were like, hey, what,
like what what happened there?
Speaker 1 (24:57):
Like?
Speaker 10 (24:57):
And he was like, oh, well, he wanted to take
the payphone out and I told him he shouldn't do
that right now.
Speaker 4 (25:01):
But I'm like, oh, you're just doing that.
Speaker 10 (25:03):
It's like, oh, we were here to just to like
intimidate this guy.
Speaker 4 (25:05):
A little bit.
Speaker 11 (25:06):
I mean, that's some of the pageantry that would go on,
you know. One the wrong way to look at a
lot of these experiences would be to assume that everyone
that Manny was working with was on the up and up,
and you had some tough characters. So wouldn't be crazy
to want to show up, not alone to these places.
Speaker 1 (25:24):
Mark recalled a story about one of the sketchier places
my father did business.
Speaker 11 (25:28):
I have a day, afternoon, and night with Manny, said
we're going to head towards the city. We're going to
go to Queens. So we got to go to this
place in Rego Park and he said, I just want
to let you know it's a strip club. We're putting
a phone in the back. So we get there this
place in Rego Park, and you know, we walked in
and it was just like four or five guys, you know,
who were by the bar or the dance floor or whatever.
(25:50):
And so we're in the back and I'm standing there
and holding up the phone where Manny's screwing it into
the wall, and he starts kind of telling me the
story about who's like who those guys are, and you know,
and I get the picture pretty quick. These are Italian
mafia guys opening this place up. And they greeted him
like he was a maid man and they loved him.
Speaker 4 (26:11):
One of the.
Speaker 11 (26:12):
Guys just total textbook suit, slick back hair, built, scary
comes back and he's like you come here. He's talking
to me. He's like, come here, come to the bar. Manny,
can I borrow him?
Speaker 4 (26:23):
Yeah? Yeah, I go.
Speaker 11 (26:25):
The guy brings me back into the main part of
the of the joint and I see there's a woman
topless woman up on the bar like move in dancing.
No one's watching, it's just this and she's got like
a bikini bottom on and the guy says, sit down.
I sat down, and my first thought was like, I
don't have singles. I don't have like, I don't have money.
(26:46):
I got to like all I have are quarters like
pouring out of my pants. And he takes out a beer.
He pops it over and he's like, I want you
to watch her. And we're having auditions and there's like
another girl waiting, sitting with a trench coat on, and
he's like, let me know what you think. And then
he calls out to the to the girl to start dancing.
And it's just for me. And I'm supposed to give
(27:07):
feedback to this guy, and in the spirit of Manny Vetter,
I just said, you know what, I'm just gonna actually
do it. And so, like I start telling the guy,
I'm like, she's good, she's good. Oh I like that,
she's good. Yeah, she's hot, man, she's hot. Sip in
the beer. Finish it. Guy gets me another one. Next
girl gets up. That went on for like at least
forty five minutes. I think I saw like three or
(27:29):
four girls that night. I decided I was just gonna
I'm gonna be this, I'm gonna be I'm gonna be
a mob guy in a strip joint tonight.
Speaker 1 (27:36):
The interesting thing about my father, if someone close to
him was in a jam, he would use his talents
to mislead and deceive people to help them get out
of it. Like the time he pretended to be a lawyer, he.
Speaker 10 (27:47):
Actually represented me in quotations represented me.
Speaker 4 (27:53):
This is exactly what he did all the time.
Speaker 10 (27:56):
It's like a benign move where he's completely fraudulent.
Speaker 4 (27:59):
He's as my attorney in a court with a judge.
Speaker 10 (28:03):
So I go out to a bar in Huntington and
as I'm leaving the bar, like this melee that has
nothing to do with us breaks out huge fight. The
cop says, hey, start walking, and I'm like, I'm waiting
for somebody's like start walking. He like hits me, He
like pokes me with his baton and I'm like whoa.
I'm like oh, and I just turned around and put
my hands up.
Speaker 4 (28:19):
He's like, what are you a wise guy? And he
just he blows me up. The guy blows me up.
Speaker 10 (28:24):
He puts me in like a half Nelson.
Speaker 4 (28:26):
He puts me up against the car.
Speaker 10 (28:27):
They start giving me the business, like flash lights and
batons on the side of the face and the ribs,
you know, jeez. So I get arrested it I'm like,
what the fuck. It was like misdemeanor, felony, melee, some
all some crazy stuff.
Speaker 1 (28:40):
You know.
Speaker 10 (28:41):
It was like a crazy amount of stuff that they
were trying to pile on me. And I'm like, look,
I'm trying to go to med school here.
Speaker 4 (28:46):
Yeah, and I didn't have money.
Speaker 10 (28:47):
To pay an attorney, and your dad was like, I'll
represent you. And so we show up in court and
he's dressed all up.
Speaker 4 (28:55):
I'm dressed up.
Speaker 10 (28:56):
He's got like a briefcase with folders in there, the
random folder.
Speaker 4 (29:00):
Judge reads out the thing.
Speaker 10 (29:01):
It's like just a stenographer all this stuff, and he says,
I represent Richard Patrick. And he goes up to the
front and he has a comfort with the DA. He's
talking to the district attorney, you know, and I'm like,
oh my god, and.
Speaker 4 (29:17):
He's like presenting evidence.
Speaker 10 (29:19):
So then they both break and then the DA goes
to judge and then the judge says, Richard Patrick, would
you please step forward?
Speaker 4 (29:26):
So I went up there and.
Speaker 10 (29:27):
Then the guy dropped the case, and so I felt
like I owed him after that, and I told him that,
and you know, he was like, oh, you could just
take me on to a state dinner.
Speaker 4 (29:34):
And I never got to give him the state dinner.
Speaker 11 (29:35):
He loved access. Many that was, ultimately, I think like
what drove him in these exchanges and this ultimately he
had nothing to gain, but the sense that he had access,
and maybe that played into the way he parked and
felt like, I should just park here while I'm being deposed,
you know, for whatever reason, whoever's suing him from the eighties,
the s furniture, he should park like you know where
(29:56):
the judge parks.
Speaker 4 (29:57):
Why not?
Speaker 11 (29:58):
And why not? Why shouldn't he get the respect of
an undercover cop, you know, why not? Why shouldn't he
have courtside tickets to the NIXT game with his son
there and take great pictures with movie stars. Yeah, it
might mean, might mean he got a fib a little bit,
but who cares, you know, who's it hurting?
Speaker 4 (30:14):
Nobody?
Speaker 11 (30:15):
And he loved that and when it was over, he
had a big kick out of it. We would be
laughing about it, you know. It wasn't like he was
like a psychopath or something and actually believed he was
these things.
Speaker 4 (30:25):
He didn't.
Speaker 11 (30:25):
He was enjoying the you know, the pageantry and the game.
Speaker 1 (30:30):
All right. I just pulled into my neighborhood. I'm about
two hundred feet from my child at home. I just
hoping I could get some sort of sign that my
father lives here, because right now, I mean, I haven't
(30:51):
heard from her. I definitely am getting a little nervous
because I mean, if he doesn't live here, I don't.
Speaker 3 (30:57):
I'm not really sure what my.
Speaker 1 (30:58):
Next move is, so I I gotta figure that out. Alright,
I'm gonna drive past the house, alright. There are no
cars on the driveway. There's two giant shipping containers though
on it.
Speaker 4 (31:17):
Alright.
Speaker 1 (31:18):
I could see in the backyard a little bit. I
see a that there's a a kid's bicycle in the
back that's weird, and one of those like little kid
radio flyer.
Speaker 3 (31:35):
Like wagons.
Speaker 1 (31:36):
I am hold on, I am gonna gonna check the mailbox. Shit,
(32:05):
nothing's in the mailbox. I have no idea this is
his house right now. All signs are pointing.
Speaker 4 (32:18):
To know.
Speaker 1 (32:22):
What do you know about payphone plus? And how is
presented not only to you initially, but to people that
my father would do business with.
Speaker 11 (32:30):
If someone straight out ass and I was there a
few times for that, are you AT and T? And
he would answer with the right choice, which was the
slogan at the time of AT and T. You know,
AT and T the right choice. And so that was
like the first time I caught on, like, oh, you know,
he's dodging that question. And I saw that the card,
the business card had his name number, it said payphone plus,
(32:54):
but it had like the AT and T insignia on it.
So his act was that while he's not AT and
T he never said he was, but he's using AT
and T made stuff. Uh, and so therefore that's why
that's on there. You know, I see these little maneuvers.
They're funny, they're successful, and I'm thinking, like, this is
this is how it's done.
Speaker 10 (33:15):
Watching him maneuver, that was where I thought the sort
of mentoring came in, even.
Speaker 4 (33:21):
Though it's not exactly how I would go about things.
Speaker 10 (33:23):
But he had all these accounts where he, you know,
went in there represented himself.
Speaker 4 (33:26):
As AT and T people. You know, he would.
Speaker 10 (33:29):
Convince them that, oh, you need a payphone here. That
to me was the learning aspect of that job.
Speaker 4 (33:34):
Is like I learned that you.
Speaker 10 (33:34):
Could just sort of go into a place fearlessly and
get people to buy into what you're doing.
Speaker 1 (33:41):
Even though he's five seven, he walked in like he
was six feet tall.
Speaker 4 (33:44):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. He owned the place.
Speaker 3 (33:46):
Yeah, exactly, like even the.
Speaker 4 (33:47):
Manager, he belonged there. And that's that's really the key
to life. Like in court, he belonged in court representing me.
Speaker 1 (33:54):
My father was unstoppable until all the AT and T
stuff came crashing down.
Speaker 9 (33:59):
I got call from him one day saying, this has
been a bad week. He had been getting notices I
believe from AT and T which will basically stop and
desist orders.
Speaker 7 (34:09):
Don't use our trademark.
Speaker 9 (34:10):
Take our logo off of your business card, off of
your stationary, get rid of the ringtone.
Speaker 7 (34:14):
You are not AT and T.
Speaker 9 (34:16):
This is proprietary, this is our intellectual property, this is
our brand.
Speaker 7 (34:22):
It's legally protected.
Speaker 1 (34:24):
Then on October seventeenth, nineteen ninety four, I woke up
at six in the morning to someone pounding on our
front door. The next thing I knew our house was
being rated by the US Marshals on the next episode
of Number One Dad.
Speaker 7 (34:43):
So what's the latest Gary? In tracking down your father?
Speaker 1 (34:46):
Well, I saw my child at home and I'm not
exactly sure if he lives there.
Speaker 11 (34:52):
So both Rich and I eventually had to give testimony.
Speaker 7 (34:55):
Manny was smart.
Speaker 9 (34:57):
He never went to law school, but he learns the
swords system.
Speaker 10 (35:02):
Good Morning Calling mckas of AT and T Corp versus
Manny vied.
Speaker 1 (35:10):
Number One Dad is a production of Radio Point, Big
Money Players Network and iHeart Podcasts, created and hosted by
Gary Veter. Executive producers are Gary Veter, Adam Lowett, Alex Bach,
Daniel Powell, Huston Snyder, Kenneth Slotnik, and Brian Stern. Written
by Gary Veeter and Adam Lowitt, Produced by Bernie Kaminsky.
(35:31):
Co producer is Taylor Kowalski, Edited and mixed by Ian
Sorrentino at Little Bear Audio Recording engineer is kat Iosa.
Original music by Andrew Gross Special thanks to Charlotte DeAnda.
Jonathan carsh Is creative consultant. Executive producers for Big Money
Players Network and iHeart Podcasts are Will Farrell, Hans Sonni
(35:52):
and Olivia Aguilar. Sound services were provided by Great City Posts.
Previously on Number one Dad.
Speaker 2 (00:08):
After dozens of buyers claimed they were cheated, the State
Attorney General's Office filed suit yesterday against Meter Sales, Inc.
Speaker 3 (00:14):
I'm wondering does he live in our house still?
Speaker 2 (00:19):
I'm not sure where he is now, but I can
say that he had a house when I last spoke
with him.
Speaker 3 (00:25):
Do you have his phone number?
Speaker 2 (00:27):
I deleted his cell phone number, but the old house
phone was working when we last spoke.
Speaker 1 (00:39):
It is March ninth, twenty twenty two, and I am
going to call my house phone.
Speaker 4 (01:03):
Hello, we are not available now.
Speaker 5 (01:05):
Please leave your name and phone number. After the beat,
we will return your club.
Speaker 3 (01:11):
My dad, It's Gary.
Speaker 1 (01:13):
I am. I know it's been a long time, but
I am calling you because I been thinking a lot about.
Speaker 6 (01:24):
Memory full.
Speaker 1 (01:26):
Okay, oh boy, I don't know what that means. Apparently
the message I was just about to leave my dad,
I guess it's full. So well, I have no idea
what is going on. I got to figure something out here.
(01:47):
This is Number one Dad.
Speaker 7 (02:00):
I just called my dad. What Yeah, did you talk
to him?
Speaker 4 (02:04):
No?
Speaker 1 (02:04):
I was leaving a message and it got fed off.
I'm like halfway through the message and then it just.
Speaker 3 (02:11):
Like just drop the call.
Speaker 1 (02:12):
So I have no idea if if he got it
at all, I don't know what are you gonna do.
Speaker 3 (02:18):
I don't know. I feel like that's not good.
Speaker 1 (02:22):
I know, I feel like I do I call back.
Speaker 7 (02:25):
I don't know because I don't fall back.
Speaker 8 (02:27):
I mean, I think you just have to like wait
at this point, I don't know, wait and see. Maybe
he'll pull you back.
Speaker 7 (02:33):
I don't know. Well, I don't even know. I don't
even know if it went it went through.
Speaker 1 (02:37):
It was just like, oh, well I picked up was
an automated message, Hey buddy, Yeah, I don't know. Well,
waiting to see if my dad calls me back. I
did some more digging on the concert pulled over the years.
As I said in a previous episode Core Record Show,
he was a defendant or plane if in twenty three
court cases since nineteen eighty four.
Speaker 3 (02:58):
But the biggest case he.
Speaker 1 (02:59):
Was ever were involved in was when my father was
sued by AT and T.
Speaker 5 (03:09):
You have reached the United States District Court for the
Eastern District of New York for the Clerk's office Press one,
thank you for calling the Eastern District.
Speaker 4 (03:21):
Hi.
Speaker 1 (03:22):
I was wondering if I could get case files for
something that happened back in like the nineties. I've never
done this before, but it's a public case, and I
was wondering how I could go about finding this information
before I.
Speaker 5 (03:34):
Transchew over and you said, this is dating back nineties.
Speaker 1 (03:37):
Correct, correct, nineteen ninety four through like nineteen ninety.
Speaker 4 (03:42):
Five, Brooklyn Courthouse.
Speaker 1 (03:46):
So my father was involved in a case in the
early nineties, and I'm just trying to get information on
that case that he was involved in.
Speaker 5 (03:55):
Good morning to court.
Speaker 1 (03:56):
Hi, I'm looking to pick up docs for a court case.
Cent transcription for a case that was back in the nineties,
and I was told to contact your number.
Speaker 5 (04:05):
What is the title of the matter?
Speaker 1 (04:07):
The title Veda versus at and t okay.
Speaker 5 (04:11):
Very good. These are all documents that preceded electronic filing,
so I would doubt very much that we would have
them here in the court. All right, you should address
a letter to our office, okay, and you can request
that the court ordered the documents and have them sent
back to the courthouse.
Speaker 3 (04:30):
Do you know how long this process takes?
Speaker 5 (04:32):
As soon as we receive the letter, will get the
information to you. Is it's just a matter of looking
it up in our files that we maintained here, so
we could chenet around in a day and then the
court can make copies for you. It would be fifty
cents per page. You would come to the US Federal
Courthouse in Centralized lovel We're just off of the EXS
forty three A of the Southern State Parkway.
Speaker 1 (04:55):
In the early nineties, my father owned and operated a
small private pay phone come and he called Payphone Plus.
He'd install payphones in various businesses across Long Island, New
York City, and New Jersey. But being my father, he
was less than truthful with how he represented himself. From
what I know, he'd tell people he was an employee
for AT and T, which was the biggest payphone provider
(05:18):
back then. Well, AT and T got wind of what
he was doing and went after him in court to
shut him down. Before I headed out to Long Island
to pick up the court files, I decided to connect
with a few people who work with my father back
then to find out what exactly happened.
Speaker 9 (05:34):
Your dad's an interesting person, and there are times I
certainly missed that we're not in touch.
Speaker 1 (05:39):
My cousin Mason grew up in Queens New York, only
a few subway stops away from my father. They would
see each other all the time as kids and as adults.
My father's the one who got him involved in the
payphone business.
Speaker 7 (05:51):
He was a great cousin growing up.
Speaker 9 (05:53):
He had personality, He was funny, he would get things done.
He was considerate at times, but there frequently seemed to
be a motive behind it. Actually got into the business
because your dad. Okay, this is a good example of
where your dad was looking out for me. Well, there
were some enterprising people decided they wanted to be independent
(06:15):
payphone providers. Payphone being something for more ancient history, a
publicly used terminal on the streets where you would walk
up and I remember my earliest days it was ten
cents and then became a quarter and you would make
your call from there. So it was primarily a way
to stay in touch for business people on the road,
(06:36):
and it was pre cell phone days for the most part.
So he had gotten into the payphone business and told
me about it. Your dad was operating his company up
in New York and I was operating my company in
the DC metro area.
Speaker 1 (06:50):
I remember him having payphones, I mean his coverage was substantial.
He had most toys, r usses, he had pizza parlors.
Speaker 3 (06:57):
He had Bagel Boss.
Speaker 1 (06:59):
Which is which is a huge bagel chain on Long Island.
You'd have payphones and bars, you'd have them, strip clubs, gyms,
I mean, you know, anywhere, any anything that was public
that at a high volume of people.
Speaker 9 (07:11):
I'm surprised he didn't want put up phones in yours
and your sister's rooms growing up.
Speaker 7 (07:15):
Because there's a chance.
Speaker 9 (07:16):
To make something per call, right, So payphones became an
attractive business for those willing to learn a bit of technology,
a little bit of construction electrical software, and create a
service team to go out maintain phones and collect the money,
count it and deposit it in a bank.
Speaker 1 (07:36):
How do you get approval to put a payphone in
a restaurant, a bar, or you know, just a public area.
Speaker 9 (07:43):
Okay, this is the early days of the payphones. I say, look,
I can provide you quicker service, better service for your customers.
Plus I'll give you a percentage of my revenue and
you let me own and operate my phones and your premises.
So that would have been the pitch that he or
I or almost anybody would have made what were some.
Speaker 3 (08:03):
Of the ways you wouldcall How he ran his business.
Speaker 9 (08:05):
So he learned the technology first, and he used phones, equipment,
and boards that were manufactured by AT and T. AT
and T was the brand name in communication. I mean,
even to this day, AT and T still has one
of the largest networks of cell phone coverage.
Speaker 6 (08:24):
Every day, over thirty million AT and T calls go
through on the first try, thanks to a remarkably intelligent
network that forecast traffic, anticipates tie ups, and determines that
put its way around all in less time than it
takes to dial AT and T the right choice.
Speaker 9 (08:44):
He liked having the brand on there, and I remember
one seeing a business card of his that had AT
and T on it, and I don't remember, honestly if
it had Payphone Plus or not.
Speaker 7 (08:57):
So I think at some level there.
Speaker 9 (09:00):
Might have been the thought on the part of people
who were working with him that he was the phone company.
Speaker 1 (09:06):
Do you ever say anything to him about that, the
fact that he has a business card for a company
that he clearly doesn't work for.
Speaker 9 (09:11):
Having never been on a sales call with him, I
can't say that he ever told a client or a
prospective customer, hey, I am AT and T. But I
do remember saying to him, when I call your number,
that chime comes up as if it's AT and T.
Speaker 7 (09:28):
Are you working for AT and T now? And he
would laugh it off.
Speaker 9 (09:32):
So I was under the impression that being confused with
the big brand in terms of providing that phone service
to customers was of interest to him. I said, sooner
or later, aren't they going to come after you? This
is a property of theirs, that brand, that logo.
Speaker 1 (09:51):
My sister Jamie and I would often take along with
my father while he serviced his payphones.
Speaker 8 (09:56):
Some of the locations he would take me to and
you know, and bring my daughter to work, and he'd
have me wearing like this shirt that said AT and
T and it had the logo on it, not knowing
that you can't do that. You can't just use a
company's logo.
Speaker 3 (10:11):
Well you didn't know that.
Speaker 1 (10:12):
He knew that, now, Yeah, he definitely knew that he
couldn't do that. And these places weren't small time places
like he had payphones in Costco, yes, which was a
huge account, but they believed that they were working with
AT and T.
Speaker 8 (10:25):
That's right, he's scamming these big companies that are like
signing off on these contracts, and now the contracts misrepresent
him as if they're working with AT and T, and
they were never working with AT and T.
Speaker 1 (10:36):
When my sister and I would be on the job
with my dad, it wasn't your normal experience of going
to work with your parent.
Speaker 8 (10:42):
He'd give me gum, so you know, here you're a kid.
You're getting gum like awesome. Then he stops the car
and he says, oh, you see that payphone over there,
the gum I just gave you. I want you to
take that gum and stick in the coin set. This
wasn't his payphone. He would go to the nearest payphones
surrounding his payphone and jam them up, or have me
(11:03):
jam them up.
Speaker 3 (11:04):
Right, I did the same thing. I did the exact
same thing with them.
Speaker 4 (11:07):
Get the wire.
Speaker 8 (11:08):
He'd like have flyers and he'd cut the wire with Yeah,
you always wonder if people always wonder, you know, back
in the day when paypons existed and you go to
get grab a payphone, the wire's cut.
Speaker 3 (11:18):
That was probably many exactly.
Speaker 1 (11:21):
He would say that his payphones were getting screwed up,
so that's why he was doing that.
Speaker 3 (11:24):
They were doing it to his which I do not believe.
Speaker 1 (11:27):
Yes, but he had that those coins that were called slugs.
Speaker 3 (11:30):
I think he named them that.
Speaker 1 (11:32):
It looked like it was a quarter, but it was
more like rigid and would get stuck in a coin slot.
So I think that he like kind of shaped these
slugs and then so that was another way to jam
it up outside of.
Speaker 3 (11:42):
Gum as well.
Speaker 1 (11:44):
I remember he was breaking the headsets too with a
hammer and then we would just drive off.
Speaker 8 (11:49):
Yeah, he would stop it. Nothing to jam up this competition.
Speaker 3 (11:52):
Literally, yeah, yeah, exactly.
Speaker 1 (11:54):
I asked Mason if he was aware of any malicious
or even illegal stuff that went on in the payphone business.
Speaker 9 (12:01):
I mentioned that we would interact, we communicate with the
phone because it was a computer, and that meant there
was a board inside of our phone boxes. Well, those
boards were frequently worth more than the money that was
accumulating in the box, and there were people who devised
ways to break through the box quickly. If they could
(12:23):
take the money, fine, but they were really after the
board because they could sell those boards on a secondary
market for a fraction of their original price, which was
about eight hundred two one thousand dollars. So that was
big time money. Then you could then resell that board
to another payphone provider who is very happy to buy
this used board that fell off of the truck.
Speaker 1 (12:43):
That was the thing my dad. He wouldn't even go
just for the computer. He would take the entire phone.
He'd grab a drill and take it right off the wall.
While I'd be in the car. I was essentially a
lookout and he would tell me to honk if I
saw anyone coming.
Speaker 9 (12:59):
That does not surprised me, but I can't say that
he's done that.
Speaker 7 (13:03):
I don't know that.
Speaker 3 (13:04):
What caused you to end the relationship with my father.
Speaker 9 (13:07):
It was a sad decision. I mentioned that it was
over some business.
Speaker 1 (13:11):
I wanted to know more, but Mason said he preferred
not to get into the details of their falling out.
I've always been curious about what my father was thinking,
what he'd rip people off. Did he weigh the pros
and cons of every scheme? Mason shared his thoughts on
how my father operated.
Speaker 9 (13:27):
Your dad always intrigued me because it always seemed to
me that every one of us, when we make a decision.
Speaker 7 (13:34):
We weigh the rewards and the risk. We don't want
to fail.
Speaker 9 (13:39):
We don't want to be embarrassed, we don't want to
be punished, and we certainly don't want anything that could
potentially lead to legal action. Your dad, however, stretched boundaries,
and I think he got a great emotional payback when.
Speaker 7 (13:54):
He succeeded doing these things.
Speaker 9 (13:56):
I mean, he should have gone into politics, frankly, with
that type of mindset would have been ideal for.
Speaker 3 (14:03):
I am about to.
Speaker 1 (14:06):
Get off the exit here on the Long Island Expressway.
I am heading to the Federal Courthouse to get the
AT and T documents.
Speaker 3 (14:18):
I'm hoping that there's.
Speaker 1 (14:21):
A good amount of information in there shed some light
on what actually happened. But it's been five days since
I called my dad and.
Speaker 3 (14:36):
I still have not heard that from him.
Speaker 1 (14:38):
So he maybe didn't get the message. Maybe he did
get it and doesn't want to talk to me. Or
that's not even his number, and that's he doesn't live
at the house anymore. So these are the things that
are going through my head right now.
Speaker 3 (14:57):
And I am here.
Speaker 1 (15:19):
How are you uh to the clerk's office?
Speaker 7 (15:22):
Okay, do you.
Speaker 4 (15:28):
Have a god?
Speaker 3 (15:30):
Yeah?
Speaker 1 (15:39):
I I am now leaving the Federal Court House. I
wasn't able to record anything. They took all my recording
equipment I had. I didn't think that they would do that,
but yeah, they took it. Uh, but I got I
got the documents, so I am uh yeah, I gotta
I gotta go through all this stuff. Hey, babe, Hey,
(16:04):
I just picked up the court documents.
Speaker 7 (16:07):
Oh my god, Wow, did you read anything yet?
Speaker 1 (16:10):
No, it's like a ton of stuff. So it's gonna
take me a long time to go through it.
Speaker 6 (16:15):
Are you on you a home?
Speaker 10 (16:16):
Yeah?
Speaker 3 (16:17):
Well, I'll be home in like two hours.
Speaker 1 (16:20):
I'm gonna stop by my house, my home, You're gonna
go now?
Speaker 3 (16:27):
Yeah, I know, he said the way.
Speaker 5 (16:28):
I just feel like I have to like be getting
some sort of sign.
Speaker 3 (16:31):
If he's there.
Speaker 5 (16:32):
And oh my god.
Speaker 7 (16:34):
Well, I mean just keep like keep me posted as
best you can.
Speaker 5 (16:38):
I will be careful, baby, but I love you. Bye.
Speaker 11 (16:51):
There's no doubt in my mind that Manny could have
been anything you wanted.
Speaker 1 (16:54):
Mark palm Mary is a professor at Mercy College, but
for two years in the mid nineties he works for
my father.
Speaker 11 (17:00):
He probably just didn't have the patience to go through
the front door. Could he have been a detective, absolutely,
Could he have been a professional photographer, absolutely? Could he
been a lawyer. Yeah, And I use those examples because
I actually saw him play those roles.
Speaker 1 (17:14):
Mark men my father when he was going into a
senior year of college at wake Forest, where he was
the pitcher for their baseball team. Soon after my father
hired him to give me pitching lessons.
Speaker 3 (17:23):
I never thought I'd ever talk to you again.
Speaker 11 (17:25):
Well, it was amazing to hear from you, obviously, And
one of the interesting things I realized that I often
do think of Manny and speak of him and tell
some of those stories from those days. So we met.
Right after my fourth year of college, which was my
last year playing baseball. I started a little bit of
a small business, really trying to become a private pitching
(17:49):
coach for high school kids, little league kids, whatever. You know,
it's kind of a common thing. And your dad contacted
me and we would meet at a park somewhere in
Suffolk County and I would give you basic throwing and
pitching lessons. And you were really you were really young.
You were like eight years old or something. And that
(18:09):
was our relationship over the over that summer, and then
so that fall, I needed to make money to put
down for an apartment and I mentioned that that was
the situation to your dad, and your dad said, well,
you can work for me. And that's when I joined
the rank and file of Payphones Plus, which is what
(18:30):
we're going to talk about.
Speaker 1 (18:31):
What started becoming like your task with the payphone company.
Speaker 11 (18:34):
So my job was to get to the phones, replace
the full coin box with an empty coin box, put
the heavy box full of quarters and nickels and dimes
in the car, and drive to the next phone. And
he would prepare like a list with the addresses, and
we'd come up with a kind of strategy in terms
(18:56):
of the order of the phone that made sense. You
know where they were in. They were on Long Island,
they were Queen's, they were in Westchester, and they were
in the city, you know, Manhattan. They were all over
the place.
Speaker 1 (19:04):
He had tons of accounts and he was NonStop collecting.
Speaker 11 (19:07):
It was NonStop, and we bring all the boxes into
the basement of your home and he would empty had
this machine that would just count quarters, you know, you
would just dump these thousands of quarters into this huge funnel.
And that was a normal day. And I could be
just on my own for that, or sometimes I would
(19:29):
ride with Manny and we would be doing that together.
So that was like the job description kind of way
of describing my role. Of course, my role evolved and
became more complicated and adventurous over time.
Speaker 1 (19:44):
Payphone plus became just one of the reasons my father
employed Mark.
Speaker 11 (19:47):
The job got more interesting in that it wasn't always
directly related to the payphones. It would be like, oh,
I need you to sit in the car outside the courthouse.
He had a business, I guess in the eighties, so
something to do with furniture or Veta sales, and my
job for it was at least three hours. It was
just to sit in the car which was illegally parked,
(20:09):
you know, so that it like right in front of
the court, Like he can't park right in front of
the courthouse.
Speaker 4 (20:13):
But that was manny.
Speaker 11 (20:14):
It was another time he parked right in front of
a fire hydrant and I alerted him to this. It
was a you know, massive ticket on the windshield, and
he took out his camera and said, so the garbage
bag zero in front of the restaurant. Let's put those
all around the fire hydrant. And so he buried the
fire hydrant in garbage bags and then took a series
of photographs to prove that the garbage, you know, obscured
(20:38):
the fire hydrant, and he had no idea there was
one there and that was you know. So he had
all these rate ways. He like, he was very confident.
He was never going to pay a parking ticket. That
was just his approach. He'll deal with it after it happens,
and he'll come up with some kind of a creative
way to fight it, fight the system.
Speaker 1 (20:53):
In the first episode of this podcast, I mentioned that
my father used to drive a blue Chevy Caprice because
it looked just like a cop car. Well Mark actually
got to go along and purchase his car with my father.
Speaker 11 (21:05):
And one day I always said, we're going to New
Jersey today, we're getting a new car. So I had
brought my car and I drove us to this like
junkyard in Carney, New Jersey, and he had this relative
who was a former like Israeli Defense Forces Air Force pilot,
some tough, mean looking and just amazing figure. And this
(21:26):
man was just standing on this heat smoking a cigarette
and he's like, that's my cousin. I wish I remember
his name.
Speaker 4 (21:31):
He had.
Speaker 11 (21:32):
It was an Israeli name. Wow, yeah, amazing slomoh yes,
so he walks us to this what looks like it's
a refurbished cop car, this blue repainted. It was so
obvious that it was once a cop car somehow, even
though there was nothing to read on it or whatever.
But you know, one of the telltale signs was the
big flashlight thing on the driver side near her. And
(21:54):
so I remember, Manny, game cash. The guys kept saying, Manny,
this car is clean, Manny, very clean as fast. You know.
I'm like this sort of delicate suburban kid. And I
felt like I'm somewhere, I'm somewhere different right now. I
don't know what's going on here, but this is like
a cop car, no license plate, and I don't know
if this is stolen. Somehow he talked me into I
(22:16):
would drive the car back and he would drive my car.
And I remember I was so scared because the car
had no license plates. For all I know, this was
a stolen like I had no idea what I was driving,
but I had to drive it over the bridge back
into New York and back to Long Island, where he
then fixed plates that he had onto this car. There
(22:36):
was the kind of car if you pulled up or
you were behind you look in the mirror and this
things behind you, You're sure that it's an undercover cop.
So he loved that. And this was our new company car,
and that ended up in important detail because there were
moments where Manny would assume the role of undercover police officer.
Speaker 1 (22:53):
I mean that that was his mentality. He would just
give off this false perception of who he is.
Speaker 11 (23:00):
So at this point, now my friend Rich also was
working for him. Rich was just like me, same kind
of situation. He had this summer off. He was just
trying to work. And so when I couldn't work, Manny said,
you have anyone else that wants to work? Introduced Rich
and man I'm still, you know, in contact with him,
and we've always always told Manny stories together, you know,
And so it's kept Manny alive, you know, for us,
(23:23):
because that was just a profound summer.
Speaker 4 (23:25):
We had just graduated college. None of us had real
jobs yet.
Speaker 1 (23:29):
Rich Patrick is an er doctor and one of Mark's
good friends. He also worked for my dad for a
couple of years in the mid nineties.
Speaker 4 (23:36):
He always paid us well. It was always trying to
help us out.
Speaker 10 (23:39):
I mean, I think he always meant well, but we
all knew that he was doing something that was.
Speaker 4 (23:43):
Off, so Manny would like send us out. And your
dad was always good to us. He would take us
to lunch or he'd be like, hey, we're going to
this place today.
Speaker 10 (23:50):
And he would know the owner and then he would
introduce us, you know, like we're with the owner of
the restaurant.
Speaker 4 (23:56):
Whoa you know.
Speaker 10 (23:57):
That was a big deal, you know, right, And we
would have lunch at these places.
Speaker 4 (24:02):
He was always working some angle, working.
Speaker 10 (24:03):
Some deal, but we were there just to like help
out do something if needed.
Speaker 4 (24:08):
I mean there was there was one time he took
us along and he's like, hey, come with Mark, and
you can bring Martinez. We have a third friend that
used to come along.
Speaker 10 (24:14):
But I think your dad used this to like tacitly
intimidate somebody.
Speaker 4 (24:19):
Really, there was some diner, some.
Speaker 10 (24:21):
Some diner like deep in Queens places that we would
never go off the beaten path.
Speaker 4 (24:26):
It looked like the Diner and Goodfellas or something, you know,
it was like classic diner.
Speaker 10 (24:31):
He was like, guys, sit in this booth and don't
fuck around, and we're laughing because we're like we always
fuck he out.
Speaker 4 (24:36):
What do you mean don't fuck around? That was like
all we did all day long, you know what I mean. Yeah,
And so we're.
Speaker 10 (24:41):
Just sitting there strategically angled towards the where the guy stood,
and this is a serious meeting and so we had
to like keep straight faces. The owner wanted him to
take the payphone out, and he didn't want to take
the payphone out.
Speaker 4 (24:54):
We asked Manny about it later. We were like, hey, what,
like what what happened there?
Speaker 1 (24:57):
Like?
Speaker 10 (24:57):
And he was like, oh, well, he wanted to take
the payphone out and I told him he shouldn't do
that right now.
Speaker 4 (25:01):
But I'm like, oh, you're just doing that.
Speaker 10 (25:03):
It's like, oh, we were here to just to like
intimidate this guy.
Speaker 4 (25:05):
A little bit.
Speaker 11 (25:06):
I mean, that's some of the pageantry that would go on,
you know. One the wrong way to look at a
lot of these experiences would be to assume that everyone
that Manny was working with was on the up and up,
and you had some tough characters. So wouldn't be crazy
to want to show up, not alone to these places.
Speaker 1 (25:24):
Mark recalled a story about one of the sketchier places
my father did business.
Speaker 11 (25:28):
I have a day, afternoon, and night with Manny, said
we're going to head towards the city. We're going to
go to Queens. So we got to go to this
place in Rego Park and he said, I just want
to let you know it's a strip club. We're putting
a phone in the back. So we get there this
place in Rego Park, and you know, we walked in
and it was just like four or five guys, you know,
who were by the bar or the dance floor or whatever.
(25:50):
And so we're in the back and I'm standing there
and holding up the phone where Manny's screwing it into
the wall, and he starts kind of telling me the
story about who's like who those guys are, and you know,
and I get the picture pretty quick. These are Italian
mafia guys opening this place up. And they greeted him
like he was a maid man and they loved him.
Speaker 4 (26:11):
One of the.
Speaker 11 (26:12):
Guys just total textbook suit, slick back hair, built, scary
comes back and he's like you come here. He's talking
to me. He's like, come here, come to the bar. Manny,
can I borrow him?
Speaker 4 (26:23):
Yeah? Yeah, I go.
Speaker 11 (26:25):
The guy brings me back into the main part of
the of the joint and I see there's a woman
topless woman up on the bar like move in dancing.
No one's watching, it's just this and she's got like
a bikini bottom on and the guy says, sit down.
I sat down, and my first thought was like, I
don't have singles. I don't have like, I don't have money.
(26:46):
I got to like all I have are quarters like
pouring out of my pants. And he takes out a beer.
He pops it over and he's like, I want you
to watch her. And we're having auditions and there's like
another girl waiting, sitting with a trench coat on, and
he's like, let me know what you think. And then
he calls out to the to the girl to start dancing.
And it's just for me. And I'm supposed to give
(27:07):
feedback to this guy, and in the spirit of Manny Vetter,
I just said, you know what, I'm just gonna actually
do it. And so, like I start telling the guy,
I'm like, she's good, she's good. Oh I like that,
she's good. Yeah, she's hot, man, she's hot. Sip in
the beer. Finish it. Guy gets me another one. Next
girl gets up. That went on for like at least
forty five minutes. I think I saw like three or
(27:29):
four girls that night. I decided I was just gonna
I'm gonna be this, I'm gonna be I'm gonna be
a mob guy in a strip joint tonight.
Speaker 1 (27:36):
The interesting thing about my father, if someone close to
him was in a jam, he would use his talents
to mislead and deceive people to help them get out
of it. Like the time he pretended to be a lawyer, he.
Speaker 10 (27:47):
Actually represented me in quotations represented me.
Speaker 4 (27:53):
This is exactly what he did all the time.
Speaker 10 (27:56):
It's like a benign move where he's completely fraudulent.
Speaker 4 (27:59):
He's as my attorney in a court with a judge.
Speaker 10 (28:03):
So I go out to a bar in Huntington and
as I'm leaving the bar, like this melee that has
nothing to do with us breaks out huge fight. The
cop says, hey, start walking, and I'm like, I'm waiting
for somebody's like start walking. He like hits me, He
like pokes me with his baton and I'm like whoa.
I'm like oh, and I just turned around and put
my hands up.
Speaker 4 (28:19):
He's like, what are you a wise guy? And he
just he blows me up. The guy blows me up.
Speaker 10 (28:24):
He puts me in like a half Nelson.
Speaker 4 (28:26):
He puts me up against the car.
Speaker 10 (28:27):
They start giving me the business, like flash lights and
batons on the side of the face and the ribs,
you know, jeez. So I get arrested it I'm like,
what the fuck. It was like misdemeanor, felony, melee, some
all some crazy stuff.
Speaker 1 (28:40):
You know.
Speaker 10 (28:41):
It was like a crazy amount of stuff that they
were trying to pile on me. And I'm like, look,
I'm trying to go to med school here.
Speaker 4 (28:46):
Yeah, and I didn't have money.
Speaker 10 (28:47):
To pay an attorney, and your dad was like, I'll
represent you. And so we show up in court and
he's dressed all up.
Speaker 4 (28:55):
I'm dressed up.
Speaker 10 (28:56):
He's got like a briefcase with folders in there, the
random folder.
Speaker 4 (29:00):
Judge reads out the thing.
Speaker 10 (29:01):
It's like just a stenographer all this stuff, and he says,
I represent Richard Patrick. And he goes up to the
front and he has a comfort with the DA. He's
talking to the district attorney, you know, and I'm like,
oh my god, and.
Speaker 4 (29:17):
He's like presenting evidence.
Speaker 10 (29:19):
So then they both break and then the DA goes
to judge and then the judge says, Richard Patrick, would
you please step forward?
Speaker 4 (29:26):
So I went up there and.
Speaker 10 (29:27):
Then the guy dropped the case, and so I felt
like I owed him after that, and I told him that,
and you know, he was like, oh, you could just
take me on to a state dinner.
Speaker 4 (29:34):
And I never got to give him the state dinner.
Speaker 11 (29:35):
He loved access. Many that was, ultimately, I think like
what drove him in these exchanges and this ultimately he
had nothing to gain, but the sense that he had access,
and maybe that played into the way he parked and
felt like, I should just park here while I'm being deposed,
you know, for whatever reason, whoever's suing him from the eighties,
the s furniture, he should park like you know where
(29:56):
the judge parks.
Speaker 4 (29:57):
Why not?
Speaker 11 (29:58):
And why not? Why shouldn't he get the respect of
an undercover cop, you know, why not? Why shouldn't he
have courtside tickets to the NIXT game with his son
there and take great pictures with movie stars. Yeah, it
might mean, might mean he got a fib a little bit,
but who cares, you know, who's it hurting?
Speaker 4 (30:14):
Nobody?
Speaker 11 (30:15):
And he loved that and when it was over, he
had a big kick out of it. We would be
laughing about it, you know. It wasn't like he was
like a psychopath or something and actually believed he was
these things.
Speaker 4 (30:25):
He didn't.
Speaker 11 (30:25):
He was enjoying the you know, the pageantry and the game.
Speaker 1 (30:30):
All right. I just pulled into my neighborhood. I'm about
two hundred feet from my child at home. I just
hoping I could get some sort of sign that my
father lives here, because right now, I mean, I haven't
(30:51):
heard from her. I definitely am getting a little nervous
because I mean, if he doesn't live here, I don't.
Speaker 3 (30:57):
I'm not really sure what my.
Speaker 1 (30:58):
Next move is, so I I gotta figure that out. Alright,
I'm gonna drive past the house, alright. There are no
cars on the driveway. There's two giant shipping containers though
on it.
Speaker 4 (31:17):
Alright.
Speaker 1 (31:18):
I could see in the backyard a little bit. I
see a that there's a a kid's bicycle in the
back that's weird, and one of those like little kid
radio flyer.
Speaker 3 (31:35):
Like wagons.
Speaker 1 (31:36):
I am hold on, I am gonna gonna check the mailbox. Shit,
(32:05):
nothing's in the mailbox. I have no idea this is
his house right now. All signs are pointing.
Speaker 4 (32:18):
To know.
Speaker 1 (32:22):
What do you know about payphone plus? And how is
presented not only to you initially, but to people that
my father would do business with.
Speaker 11 (32:30):
If someone straight out ass and I was there a
few times for that, are you AT and T? And
he would answer with the right choice, which was the
slogan at the time of AT and T. You know,
AT and T the right choice. And so that was
like the first time I caught on, like, oh, you know,
he's dodging that question. And I saw that the card,
the business card had his name number, it said payphone plus,
(32:54):
but it had like the AT and T insignia on it.
So his act was that while he's not AT and
T he never said he was, but he's using AT
and T made stuff. Uh, and so therefore that's why
that's on there. You know, I see these little maneuvers.
They're funny, they're successful, and I'm thinking, like, this is
this is how it's done.
Speaker 10 (33:15):
Watching him maneuver, that was where I thought the sort
of mentoring came in, even.
Speaker 4 (33:21):
Though it's not exactly how I would go about things.
Speaker 10 (33:23):
But he had all these accounts where he, you know,
went in there represented himself.
Speaker 4 (33:26):
As AT and T people. You know, he would.
Speaker 10 (33:29):
Convince them that, oh, you need a payphone here. That
to me was the learning aspect of that job.
Speaker 4 (33:34):
Is like I learned that you.
Speaker 10 (33:34):
Could just sort of go into a place fearlessly and
get people to buy into what you're doing.
Speaker 1 (33:41):
Even though he's five seven, he walked in like he
was six feet tall.
Speaker 4 (33:44):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. He owned the place.
Speaker 3 (33:46):
Yeah, exactly, like even the.
Speaker 4 (33:47):
Manager, he belonged there. And that's that's really the key
to life. Like in court, he belonged in court representing me.
Speaker 1 (33:54):
My father was unstoppable until all the AT and T
stuff came crashing down.
Speaker 9 (33:59):
I got call from him one day saying, this has
been a bad week. He had been getting notices I
believe from AT and T which will basically stop and
desist orders.
Speaker 7 (34:09):
Don't use our trademark.
Speaker 9 (34:10):
Take our logo off of your business card, off of
your stationary, get rid of the ringtone.
Speaker 7 (34:14):
You are not AT and T.
Speaker 9 (34:16):
This is proprietary, this is our intellectual property, this is
our brand.
Speaker 7 (34:22):
It's legally protected.
Speaker 1 (34:24):
Then on October seventeenth, nineteen ninety four, I woke up
at six in the morning to someone pounding on our
front door. The next thing I knew our house was
being rated by the US Marshals on the next episode
of Number One Dad.
Speaker 7 (34:43):
So what's the latest Gary? In tracking down your father?
Speaker 1 (34:46):
Well, I saw my child at home and I'm not
exactly sure if he lives there.
Speaker 11 (34:52):
So both Rich and I eventually had to give testimony.
Speaker 7 (34:55):
Manny was smart.
Speaker 9 (34:57):
He never went to law school, but he learns the
swords system.
Speaker 10 (35:02):
Good Morning Calling mckas of AT and T Corp versus
Manny vied.
Speaker 1 (35:10):
Number One Dad is a production of Radio Point, Big
Money Players Network and iHeart Podcasts, created and hosted by
Gary Veter. Executive producers are Gary Veter, Adam Lowett, Alex Bach,
Daniel Powell, Huston Snyder, Kenneth Slotnik, and Brian Stern. Written
by Gary Veeter and Adam Lowitt, Produced by Bernie Kaminsky.
(35:31):
Co producer is Taylor Kowalski, Edited and mixed by Ian
Sorrentino at Little Bear Audio Recording engineer is kat Iosa.
Original music by Andrew Gross Special thanks to Charlotte DeAnda.
Jonathan carsh Is creative consultant. Executive producers for Big Money
Players Network and iHeart Podcasts are Will Farrell, Hans Sonni
(35:52):
and Olivia Aguilar. Sound services were provided by Great City Posts.
Host
Gary Vider
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