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10 / Vicious Circles. dollars of salad oil for future delivery, and the oil was guaranteed by American Express. According to some accounts, rumors that he had the Matia behind him aetually lured many legitimate investors into giving Tino their money. They figured he would always have the resources io pay them back. They didn't stop to think, though, that the way the Mafia got rich was by skipping Out on its debis. This was the situation in 1963 when Tino began talking business with Nat Lokietz, who was running a Fourteenth Street-area meat concern known as Eagie Brand Products.!At this point, Merkel was still owned by Williams- McWilliams. The Mob' evidently respected Lokietz, who had developed a -= reputation over the years for being able to sell hot dogs, baloneys, and hams with an improbably high water content. That he bribed his government inspec. tors was assumed. Now, Tino, a big public success, was trying to persuade Lokietz to expand. At this point only Tino, a few top employees and possibly some Mafia associates knew the big secret: those storage tank$-in Bayonne, the ones the financiers were counting on, contained water and air. There was only enough salad oil to give.visitors an occasional peek. It was one of:the biggest swindles in Anerican history. But'Lokietz, like the financiers, didn't know this when Tino began trying to interest him in buying El Dorado, a meat company Tino owned. Nicholson and Montello were listening not far away when Lokietz re- counted the whole story to a friend over the telephone a year later: "I know Tino very well, and I'll say it on a stack of Bibles, he's one of the nicest guys on earth. He calls me up and says, 'I want you.' "'You want me for what?' "He says, I want you.to take over the El Dorado plant., He says, 'We'll take Eagle [Lokietz's company] and throw it into El Dorado.' "I says, *But, Tino, I can't do that, because I owe a quarter:of a million dollars. I can't just-fold up Eagle and throw it into El Dorado.' "He said, What are you worried about? I'll take care of it. "I says, 'You'll takecare of what? "I'll take care of the. quarter milion dollars' Lokietz's lawyer scorched the deal, however, when he found out El Dorado was $7 million in debt, a figure that Tino had vastly understated. "So we Ieft," Lokietz recounted, "and he calls me up a month later. He says, 'How would you like to own Merkel?' "I said, 'I'd love it.' : "He says, 'You got it.' He was already dickering for Merkel and he was. going to give it to us." : In the year between the time Tino made this offer and the day in early December 1964, when Lokietz-was recounting it, the world had learned Tino's Secret. His Allied Crude Vegetable Oil Company was bankrupted, and so was al least one large Wali Street commodities firm and the American Express