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