Sunday Lunch with Bob Cooley
Robert Cooley thought he was going to be a hero.
And, while he says he wasn't in it for the glory, exactly, he did have certain ideas about redeeming himself, most of which have not really worked out.
I've called his cell phone multiple times to arrange our lunch meeting. Each time, he's called me back from a different land line. Most of them have had different area codes. He says he's "between homes" right now, mostly staying with friends around the country, living off a Social Security check he collects under a different name.
Two days before we're supposed to meet, he tells me what time.
One day before we're supposed to meet, he tells me the place will be "on the South Side."
A few hours before we're supposed to meet, he picks the restaurant: Fox's Pizza in Orland Park.
Maintains secret identity
Meeting Cooley, the former mob lawyer whose testimony in the "Operation Gambat" federal corruption probe of the 1990s resulted in more than 30 convictions, has something of a Spy-vs-Spy feeling to it. Though Cooley has declined to participate in the formal federal witness protection program, he does receive some assistance from the government in maintaining a new -- theoretically secret -- identity.
So I settle into a booth near the bar and try to look casual as I wait for him to arrive. I've seen 10-year-old photos of him and have a general idea of what he looks like, and somehow I've convinced myself that I'll be able to spot him when he arrives. When the first slightly edgy-looking middle-age Irish-looking guy settles in alone at the bar, I realize this is a complete delusion.
By the time the third similar-looking guy arrives, I realize that I've been staring at them all so intently that I must appear to have a real thing for pale-faced goodfellas. And it dawns on me that Cooley is only partly committed to lying low. Real anonymity is just not in his nature.
Cooley, of course, shows up at exactly this moment. Keeping his baseball cap and sunglasses on indoors, he is immediately the most conspicuous person in the room. If there is, as has been claimed, a million-dollar bounty on his head, sharing a pizza with him in these circumstances is not the brightest thing I've ever done.
Nor, indeed, does Cooley seem to be particularly adept at flying under the radar. As he sits down, he's talking a mile a minute about the lawsuit that is currently hindering his ability to sell the TV and movie rights to his true crime memoir, When Corruption Was King (Carroll & Graf Publishers, 384 pages, $26.)
A former associate who Cooley says in his 2004 book raped a young woman and then paid her hush money is suing for libel.
'I'm not making this up'
I'm interested in what makes a guy like Cooley tick, how the son of a hardworking and resolutely honest Irish-Catholic South Side cop grows up to be a "fixer" for the Chicago Outfit, handing out bribes to keep wise guys out of jail. And I want to know what made him give it all up. And if it has been worth it.
But Cooley has other ideas. He wants to talk about Ed Vrdolyak and Donald Stephens and how he told the feds about the Hired Truck Program years ago but couldn't get anyone to do anything about it. He wants to explain the links he sees between the modern Hispanic Democratic Organization and the 1st Ward Machine of the old days.
"I'm not making this up," he insists repeatedly, as I take it all in, knowing that it is largely unprovable and, therefore, unprintable.
Things are different now than they were in those pre-Greylord, pre-Silver Shovel days, he says, but not entirely.
"When I first came in," he says, describing the moment he walked into the offices of the Organized Crime Strike Force and offered to become a cooperating witness, "my only goal was to clean up the court system. In New York, they had a few corrupt cops, a few corrupt judges. But in Chicago, it was the whole system. In Chicago, we owned it."
Now, he says, the Outfit has been effectively neutralized -- "They don't kill people. They don't collect a street tax." -- and the court system is far cleaner.
These are the great accomplishments of Cooley's life. In achieving them, he has lost his livelihood -- his license to practice law was taken away as a result of the numerous shady dealings he confessed to in his testimony -- and his identity and many of his friends.
Once a womanizer with a luxe lifestyle, he has become something of a loner, counting on a few close friends for financial support and a spare bed.
I ask him if it was worth it. He says yes, then seems to change his mind.
I ask him if he'd do it again. He says no.
Bob Cooley thought he'd be a hero -- the guy who brought down the mob. But instead, he came to be seen as a rat, the kind of minor player worth maybe a single episode on "The Sopranos."
Even the U.S. attorneys and federal agents involved in Gambat (an abbreviated reference to attorney Cooley's gambling habits) seemed to find him distasteful, going out of their way to distance themselves from his role in securing the Gambat convictions. His father, James Cooley, was lost to Alzheimer's before he could ever know that his wild and rebellious son had finally done the right thing and gone straight.
'They won't kill me'
No one thanked him. He has largely been forgotten.
And this is probably the thing that gets at him most.
"People confuse my convictions," he says, referring to the cases that turned on his testimony against former clients and associates, "with [the Operation] Greylord" corruption investigation.
He tells me he's thinking of coming back. Living here in the Chicago area and just seeing what happens.
"They won't kill me," he says, with a certain amount of bravado. "What would be the point?"
