Last Dance, Last Chance

Sedita and Anthony Pignataro’s grandfather—for whom Anthony was named—were contemporaries. Anthony’s grandfather owned a restaurant/bar, Scottie’s, where the menu featured clams and pasta. It was a very popular hangout for the “guys,” where they could smoke and drink undisturbed, and the first Frank A. Sedita and the first Anthony Pignataro knew each other well. A similar establishment, across the street, was where organized crime gang members met, and neither the mayor nor Anthony’s grandfather patronized that spot.
    Of course, Anthony’s father, Dr. Ralph, had a fine reputation in the community and was welcome at any hospital. The Pignataros were well thought of. Though perhaps not quite as solid as the Seditas, they were an integral part of Buffalo history.
     
    At first, Anthony thought that the old-time family connections were a good omen for him and that the prosecutor Frank Sedita would look upon him more kindly because of that. It was a flawed assumption.
    “I never met him,” Sedita recalled. “I had a vague memory of reading his ads in the Buffalo Sunday newspaper. I kind of chuckled at the hair implant and breast implant ads.”
    Although he looks as Italian as his name, with dark hair and eyes, the “third FAS” explains that he is half Italian and half Scots—which he is. His dog is a West Highland Terrier, and his son is named Mac. His thick brush of a moustache and his suspenders sometimes give him the appearance of a Buffalonian of a much earlier generation.
    Frank Sedita met his wife, Leslie, at a party, where they explored their mutual Scottish roots. His ability as a chef, however, comes from a cousin on his Italian side with whom Sedita lived while he was going to law school. Sedita’s biggest triumph in the kitchen is probably his chicken marsala. Frank Sedita knows the words and the orchestration of every song Frank Sinatra ever sang; they are both “Frank Albert” (although Sinatra’s given name is Francis). Sedita has a deadpan sense of humor that can be off-putting until you get to know him and realize that he’s teasing.
    In the courtroom, Frank Sedita, III, is a tenacious opponent. Leslie Sedita attributes that to his intense preparation and the fact that he approaches his cases backward.
    “He starts where he knows he wants to end up, and then works back to what he wants in a jury.” Like most attorneys involved in major trials, Sedita is consumed with preparations for the weeks in court and during the time the case is being heard. So, at home, there’s the “trial Frank” and the “regular Frank,” according to his wife.
    Leslie’s career may not be as high profile as her husband’s, but it is just as vital to the citizens of Buffalo; she runs the Buffalo Sewer authority’s Industrial Waste section.
    Together, the Seditas are restoring their century-old house, bringing it back to the way it was in its glory days. Some of the original wood is magnificent, even though it was referred to as “scrap wood” left over from the Pan-American Exposition of 1901.
    All up and down their block and the blocks around them, homeowners are doing the same. These were the streets where Frank Lloyd Wright chose to build the Martin House Complex when he was only thirty-six years old, a very avant-garde weaving of brick and beam structures with square clean angles commissioned by Darwin and Isabelle Martin. Most people connect the country’s most famous architect with the Southwest, but the young Wright chose Buffalo to build this outstanding example of his Prairie House era in the early years of the twentieth century.
    By 2003 standards, the North End streets are narrow, but they are ablaze with Christmas lights in December, and they bloom with flowers when the frigid Buffalo winters finally give way to spring and summer.
    Almost everything about Anthony Pignataro’s bizarre saga is interwoven with the Seditas. The threads of lives are braided together so that the characters almost seem to change sides as a new “game” begins. Initially, Debbie Pignataro would view Frank Sedita as her enemy and a threat to the family she had struggled for two decades to keep intact. She could never imagine that a time might come when she would welcome Frank Sedita into her home.
    As for Anthony, as the nineties moved toward the millennium, Frank Sedita III, became the most dogged enemy he had ever faced. He despised Sedita just as he hated anyone who criticized his