SEACAUCUS, New Jersey. The numbers are stark, and saddening: the suicide rate among Americans, which has been rising steadily over the past two decades, has reached its highest point since 1941, a rate of 14.3 per 100,000 people according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. “Suicide isn’t technically a disease,” says Oliver Orthwein, who studies what he terms “bureaucratic mission creep” by federal agencies. “But it doesn’t belong in the Defense or Transportation Departments, so they had to put it somewhere.”
But what most would consider a grim and depressing statistic is viewed as an opportunity by an unlikely private-sector business: organized crime, which has seen its revenue decline with the coming of legalized gambling and marijuana.
“We always have an eye out for the next big thing,” says Gaetano “Joey Pockets” Galvano, a “caporegime” in the Cascatelli crime family headquartered in Seacaucus, New Jersey. “Suicide hot lines are indoor work with no heavy lifting, and plenty of innocent-looking dead bodies to choose from.”
Law enforcement officials view the move as driven less by an interest in social service and more by the opportunities to launder both money and victims. “Hot-lines pay operators a good wage with no social diseases, unlike prostitution,” says former prosecutor Mike Amalief. “That money goes straight to the consigliere at the top of a crime family’s pyramid-like org chart. As a side benefit, if the boys have rubbed out a few victims they can claim they killed themselves instead of dumping them in a river with a pair of cement slippers on their feet.”
Suicide hot-lines are typically busy on Friday nights as desperate men and women face a weekend alone, and Gaetano graciously allows this reporter to sit with him while he mans one of the 20 land lines at “You Are Not Alone,” a non-profit dedicated to turning the tide of self-slaughter that has engulfed America during the COVID-19 panic, when the nation was forced to remain indoors with relatives and spouses and turned to self-murder as the only way out.
“Good evening and welcome to You Are Not Alone,” Galvano says as he answers his first call of the night. “This is Gaetano speaking, how may I help youse?”
The caller is Alfred Botchkowitz, an accountant who was left at the altar when he developed a sebaceous cyst on his balding pate, leading his fiancee to recoil in disgust and leave him for an actuary.
“I don’t have anything left to live for,” the 28-year-old man says.
“Oh, now I’m sure that’s not true,” Galvano says as he winks at this reporter. “Yesterday was Opening Day for baseball.”
“I hate sports,” Botchkowitz says.
“Okay, well it’s spring, don’t that help your outlook on life?”
“I walk through the park and see nothing but happy couples, their whole lives ahead of them.”
Galvano screws the corner of his mouth up into a thoughtful expression. “Okay, let’s see what else we got here,” he says as he looks down at a laminated “cheat sheet” of “Things to Live For” provided to You Are Not Alone employees when they work the phones. “Politics, nope. Current streaming TV shows?”
“Not interested.”
“Coming Apple Watch upgrades?”
“I wear an L.L. Bean model that cost $50.”
“So that’s no good, huh. How about pets–would a new puppy or kitten make you happy?”
“I hate walking dogs and I don’t want to clean out a stinking cat litter box.”
“Well, that’s the best I can do for you, so I’m out of options. We’re having a special this weekend on carbon monoxide poisoning–clean, neat, and we donate your car to a charity for underprivileged boys.”
There is silence at the other end of the line. “How much does that cost?”
“That’s the beauty part,” Galvano says with enthusiasm. “Thanks to a grant by the Hemlock Foundation and generous contributions from our supporters, it’s totally free.”
“Sounds good–sign me up. When can we do this?”
“Are you busy tomorrow around eleven?”
“Actually, can we make it a little later, I have a water aerobics class then.”
“Okay, I understand. It’s like James Dean said.”
“What’s that?”
“Live fast, die young, leave a good-looking corpse.”