...And Never Let HerGo

heard rumors of Aiello’s unlawful side income and they were watching him closely, but they needed evidence to trap him in a corruption scandal. Tom stepped in to handle the delicate negotiations between the U.S. Justice Department and his brother. It was Tom who played the pivotal role in extricating Louie from the threat of charges against him. The FBI needed someone who could set Aiello up in a sting operation so he could actually be witnessed taking a bribe. Once they had him, they could move in to seize physical evidence that would link him to dirty money.
    On Tom’s advice, Louie agreed to cooperate with the sting and set it up in his own office. The FBI special agents witnessed Ron Aiello accepting $25,000 in marked bills from Louie Capano. That was enough.
    Louie was never charged with any crimes in connection with the situation. “I think he [Tom] straightened out Louis, who was in kind of a jam,” former Wilmington mayor Thomas Maloney remarked. “Tom worked carefully with the Justice Department to solve a problem and alleviate a situation.”
    Everyone but the man arrested seemed content with the outcomeof something that could have been really sticky. Louie moved easily back into doing what he did best, but Tom was chafing at Capano & Sons, waiting eagerly for the year he’d promised his mother to pass. “It wasn’t the work,” he explained later. “I had a different way of looking at things than my brothers. [They] had been in business together for a long time. . . . They had both started working when they were in college, and it was tough—even though I was the older brother—to impose the order that needed to be imposed.”
    In plain terms, neither Louie nor Joey would take orders from Tom, not about the business. The last months of Tom’s year of servitude to his mother were tense.
    Louie Capano’s reputation was scarcely tarnished by the unpleasantness of 1989; he was a dashing figure, far more than his soft-spoken brother. Over the next decade, the family interests burgeoned exponentially. With Louie at the helm, the Capanos would soon own hundreds of prime acres around Wilmington and several more shopping centers. They continued to build high-end housing developments. “I don’t think we’ve seen half of what he’s going to do,” the banker who funded Louie’s father said. “It’s almost as though he was born for it.”
    Many builders faced ruin when the real estate market took another dive in the early nineties, but the Capanos flourished. Other developers were poleaxed by Louie’s cliff-hanger deals. Harry Levin, whose chain of Happy Harry’s Drug Stores was ubiquitous on the Eastern seaboard, marveled at Louie. “Louie does so many things wrong,” he laughed in the 1980s, “and they all turn out right.”
    Louie was by far the richest of Lou’s sons. He and his first wife, Deborah, who had borne him a son, divorced amid rumors of Louie’s roving eye. Deborah Capano went on with her life and became a state senator. All four Capano brothers had an appreciation for beautiful women, and they were not known for their faithfulness to their marriage vows—although even his own brothers didn’t know about Tom’s affair with Debby MacIntyre.
    Louie’s second wife was a nationally known athlete. Lauri Merton was a leading contender in the Ladies’ Professional Golfing Association, winner of the national trophy in the early nineties, and a pretty blonde with light blue eyes and a deep tan. Louie got a big kick out of being Lauri’s caddy in championship rounds; he was probably the wealthiest caddy ever to shoulder a golf bag, but he was more than self-confident enough to follow Lauri around the links. He enjoyed the pictures in the papers of himself and Lauri.
    Louie and Lauri moved into a huge mansion in the Greenvillesection that had once belonged to one of the du Ponts. Greenville was
the
address to have in the Wilmington area, and the gray-stone house with its garden paths, swimming pool, and parklike grounds was an estate any millionaire could be proud of.
    I N January 1990, Tom heaved a sigh of relief as he finished out the 365th day of his servitude at Capano & Sons. It had taken a toll on him, but he had kept his promise to his mother, and he was more than ready to go back into government service. And what heady service it would be. Delaware governor Michael Castle had made Tom an offer that rather surprised him because he was a lifelong Democrat and Castle was a