Chin

by Larry McShane

  “That’s what I’m telling you,” Dellacroce said flatly. “That’s what we want to hear. You see, that’s why I says to you before—you, you don’t understand La Cosa Nostra.”

  “Angelo, what does ‘Cosa Nostra’ mean?” Gotti demanded of Ruggiero. Dellacroce interrupted before the other mobster could speak: “Cosa Nostra means that the boss is your boss.”

  When Dellacroce died on December 2, 1985, Castellano couldn’t be bothered to pay his respects at the wake.

  Strike three.

  Two weeks later, on December 16, the Gambino boss came into Manhattan from his Staten Island estate, known to the rank and file as “the White House,” for a mix of business and pleasure. Castellano, chauffeured in a black Lincoln Town Car by loyal driver/capo Tommy Bilotti, stopped by the Manhattan law offices of lawyer LaRossa. The two men said their farewells, and Bilotti drove his boss toward a dinner date with five other mobsters at Sparks Steak House on East Forty-Sixth Street.

  Castellano’s favorite cut of beef awaited: prime rib. But Big Paul had already eaten his last meal.

  The pair drove through the brightly lit city, festooned with holiday decorations, hanging a right turn just a few blocks south of the Rockefeller Center Christmas tree. Mingling amidst the tourists and holiday shoppers were four men in matching winter wear: black Russian fur hats, pale trench coats.

  In lieu of gifts, they carried loaded handguns as they waited for the Lincoln to arrive. Half a block away, Gotti and Gravano sat anxiously in a parked car. As Castellano’s Lincoln drove past, Gravano switched on a walkie-talkie to alert the shooters that their target was headed their way.

  The day shift surrendered to nighttime in newsrooms around the city as twilight descended on Manhattan. A large contingent of law enforcers gathered at New York University for a lecture by the godfather of the RICO Act, Notre Dame professor G. Robert Blakey.

  The quartet in their pseudo-Siberian getups watched as the Town Car ignored a NO PARKING sign and nestled against the curb outside the restaurant at 5:30 P.M. The hawk-nosed Castellano, wearing a business suit, was unarmed and carrying $3,000 cash. Red meat and old friends awaited.

  One of those friends, Gotti loyalist Frankie DeCicco, emerged as the Judas with a taste for T-bone—Brutus to Castellano’s Julius Caesar.

  Bilotti stepped out of the driver’s-side door as his boss exited the backseat. The street suddenly echoed with the deafening rat-a-tat-tat of gunfire as the four shooters opened fire with lethal accuracy. When the gunshots stopped, beepers began chirping at NYU and fax machines whirred in newsrooms around the city: two white males, shot to death in Midtown Manhattan.

  Confirmation came quickly: Paul Castellano was dead. Police sirens howled and radios crackled as authorities rushed to the crime scene, where twin red rivers of blood now flowed from the Mob boss and his slain bodyguard.

  The killers shot Big Paul first, watching as the mortally injured Mob boss collapsed. Bilotti, staring in disbelief, was gunned down as he peered through the car’s windows. One of the killers walked casually toward the bleeding Castellano and fired a final shot, point-blank, into the boss’s head.

  DeCicco, alerted by the gunfire, abandoned his table and exited the restaurant as the killers walked casually past the bodies. They walked, followed rapidly by DeCicco, toward a prearranged getaway on Second Avenue.

  Before the cops arrived, in a car driven by Gravano, Gotti cruised past the chaotic scene to admire the handiwork of his hit team. Shooter Eddie Lino later described the perfectly executed execution to Gotti in great detail, right down to the one shooter’s gun jamming.

  When the Chin awoke nine days before Christmas, 1985, he was greeted by an early and unwanted present: John Gotti, the self-appointed new boss of the Gambino crime family, who landed in his lap like a frothing pit bull and lingered like a chronic disease.

  CHAPTER 13

  MASTERS OF WAR

  IF THE CHIN WAS NOT TOO WELL VERSED ABOUT THE OUTER BOR-ough thug who had just whacked his pal Castellano, Gotti was fully in the know about his Genovese family counterpart.

  John and his brother Gene Gotti told a confidential informant in 1984 that Gigante was used by the commission during the 1970s to execute Mafiosi caught violating the ban on dealing heroin.

  An FBI agent summed up the Gottis’ beliefs this way: Those apprehended and/or convicted . . . normally met with individuals associated with Gigante, and these meetings were usually their last.

  The Gotti brothers specifically referred to Carmine Consalvo, tossed from the roof of a twenty-four-story building in Fort Lee, New Jersey, while facing a heroin trial in 1975. His brother Frank suffered the same deadly fate three months later after a shorter fall: five stories from a building in Little Italy.

  Among law enforcers, the two murders were dubbed “The Case of the Flying Consalvos.”

  Gotti’s renegade crew not only feared the Chin—they respected him. Charlie Carneglia, one of Gotti’s most trusted contract killers, was caught on another bug calling Gigante “smart” for his ongoing mental-health routine. (Proof of Chin’s high-quality act: Carneglia was convicted in 2009 after prosecutors said he unsuccessfully pulled the same stunt.)

  To Bill Bonanno, former Bonanno family boss and son of Mafia founder Joseph Bonanno, Gotti and his ilk were hardly men of honor.

  “They’re a product of ‘the opera generation—me, me, me,’” scoffed Bill Bonanno. “It is a different Mob.”

  The Chin was a padrone, taking care of local problems in a low-key fashion reminiscent of “Godfather” Don Corleone on the day of his daughter’s wedding. Gotti, however, in a typically showy move, hosted a massive Fourth of July party in Howard Beach—complete with illegal pyrotechnics.

  The annual event was held despite Gotti’s unknown past as a draft dodger; “the Dapper Don” avoided wearing olive drab by blowing off his draft board on the very day that President Kennedy was assassinated in Dallas.

  Gotti, a guy from Queens, was hardly part of the Mob’s upper echelon; his base of operations was in far-flung Ozone Park at the Bergin Hunt and Fish Club, where the rods came equipped with silencers. Hijackings at Kennedy International Airport were their bread and butter. Gotti was hardly a subtle guy; when the threat of violence wasn’t enough, he simply turned to violence.

  To a made man with Chin’s pedigree, Gotti was an outsider and unworthy of respect—even after the Castellano hit. Gigante was unappeased by Gotti’s public denials of the murder or his immediate “election” by Gambino captains as the family’s new leader.

  Gotti’s disregard for both Mob management and his late boss was captured on a particularly bilious recording made in an apartment above the Ravenite Social Club after the Castellano assassination.

  “Hate, really hate Paul,” Gotti ranted. “He sold the borgata out for a construction company. He was a piece of shit. Rat, rat cocksucker. Yellow dog!”

  His feelings toward Gigante, while not as colorful, were equally dismissive. Gotti sneered at the Chin’s bread and butter, the crazy act: “I would rather be doing life than be like him,” the mobster once told his son John “Junior” Gotti.

  The Dapper Don and the Oddfather did share some similarities. Both men were first-generation Italian Americans. Both would prove, in Mob parlance, to be stand-up guys: they did their time and kept their mouths shut.

  Gotti, like Gigante, made his bones with a Mob hit after a none-too-bright Irishman named James McBratney “masterminded” the kidnapping of boss Carlo Gambino’s nephew, Emanuel “Manny” Gambino.

  Gambino paid a $100,000 ransom, but Manny was already dead. So was McBratney, although he didn’t know it yet.

  On May 23, 1973, Gotti and two pals found McBratney drinking in a Staten Island bar. He was shot three times and left to die on the barroom floor. A generous plea deal cut by Mario Gigante’s future benefactor, attorney Cohn, left Gotti to serve less than two years for the killing.

  Gotti was a guy who nursed a grudge, like the one he held toward
Castellano, and he cared—a lot—about making money. Gigante took a more benevolent approach to the cash generated by his illegal operations and his loyal staff.

  “Chin was very well-liked by his crew because he didn’t ask for a lot of money from his capos, his soldiers,” said former federal prosecutor Greg O’Connell.

  Gambino underboss Gravano agreed: “He ain’t that interested in the money. He already had a ton of money. His biggest problem was where to hide it. He didn’t take money from most of his captains.”

  Gravano saw that move as evidence of Gigante’s well-honed instincts toward proper Mob rule and self-preservation. “I guess he didn’t want some captain to flip and say, ‘I been giving him money,’ ” the Gambino underboss explained.

  Gotti, on the other hand, appeared jealous of right-hand man Gravano’s assorted moneymaking operations—and at one point said as much on secretly recorded FBI tapes that convinced the Bull to seek out the FBI.

  Three different law enforcement sources said the murderous Gambino boss was petrified of the ruthless Chin.

  “John Gotti was terrified of Gigante,” said FBI agent Bruce Mouw, once the head of the agency’s Gambino Squad. “He knew that the Genoveses were the most powerful family, very tough, a vicious family.”

  “I’m sure he was,” agreed O’Connell, noting the Chin was apparently afraid of nothing.

  Former Bonanno capo Michael Franzese echoed the law enforcement assessment. “I believe everybody feared Chin, even when Fat Tony was the [supposed] boss,” said the born-again gangster. “It was pretty much common knowledge that Chin was no fan of Gotti’s.”

  * * *

  Gotti led the lifestyle of a celebrity, flaunting his sudden wealth. He wore $1,800 Brioni suits, hand-painted ties and monogrammed socks. As Gigante stumbled through the Village and angled to stay off government tapes, Gotti was profiled in People magazine and appeared on the cover of Time magazine—in a portrait done by Andy Warhol.

  Gigante surreptitiously assumed control of the family in his secret bedside takedown of the hospitalized Salerno, and remained happy to let Fat Tony endure as a figurehead. Gotti’s bloody ascension was followed by his reckless embrace of the limelight, which virtually ensured his rapid downfall. He almost dared federal officials to take him down, taunting his FBI pursuers.

  “I give you three-to-one odds I beat this case,” he told reporters after his indictment for ordering the shooting of a union boss. He was right: Gotti walked after fixing the jury.

  The rumpled Chin remained content to wear rags despite his riches, crossing Sullivan Street to hold court in the Triangle. The ever-preening Gotti, typically dressed to the nines, would arrive at his Little Italy headquarters in a chauffeur-driven luxury car that picked him up outside the door of his Howard Beach home. He lacked the Chin’s nose for sniffing out federal surveillance—or maybe he was just too arrogant to care.

  FBI agents staking out the Ravenite Social Club in the days after the Castellano hit watched intently as a steady stream of Gambino members arrived for the annual family Christmas party to pay fealty to their new leader. Each hugged and kissed Gotti as the agents along Mulberry Street watched in amazement.

  “Gigante believed that organized crime should be a secret society,” said Mouw. “Nobody should know who the boss was, and he shouldn’t be on the front page of the Daily News. John had his own feelings.”

  While the Chin’s gambling was now limited to fixed card games with his Triangle cohorts, Gotti was a wild bettor who couldn’t get out of his own way. Secretly recorded tapes found the Dapper Don bemoaning his leaden touch while betting football, including a $53,000 beating in a single weekend.

  “I bet the Buffalo Bills for six dimes ($6,000), they’re getting killed, ten to nothing,” he griped on a wiretapped November 11, 1981, conversation. “I bet New England for six dimes, I’m getting killed with New England. I bet six dimes on Chicago, they’re losing. I bet three dimes on KC, they’re winning. Maybe they’ll lose, those motherfuckers.”

  Despite the decades of federal pursuit, the Chin was never heard discussing his multimillion-dollar business or any other matters of organized crime. Long after he was caught yapping on the Ruggiero tapes, Gotti talked his way into a life sentence after the Castellano hit.

  Yet, when the feds secretly planted a bug in an apartment upstairs from the Ravenite, they captured nary a bad word from Gotti about Gigante.

  “All the conversations in the Ravenite, John Gotti bad-mouthed everybody—the Colombos, the Luccheses,” said Mouw, who listened to hours and hours of tapes. “And every time it got around to Chin, he almost lowered his voice like the old E.F. Hutton commercial—‘Well, the Chin says . . .’”

  Even when alone with his most trusted Gambino associates, Gotti would never admit to any complicity in the Castellano killing. He seemed haunted by the thought that somehow, someway, word of his treachery would reach Gigante.

  “Whoever done it, probably the cops done it to this guy,” Gotti said during one conversation recorded by the feds. “Whoever killed this cocksucker, probably the cops killed this Paul. But whoever killed him, he deserved it.”

  In another chat in an apartment above the Ravenite, Gotti offered his grudging endorsement of the Chin’s inspired lunacy. He recounted a conversation where another mobster began speculating about Gigante’s mental health.

  “You don’t like the idea a guy wears a bathrobe,” the Dapper Don said dismissively to the flunky.

  When Gambino associate Joseph (Joe Glitz) questioned the Chin’s sanity on another occasion, Gotti quickly told him to keep his mouth shut.

  “He says, ‘John, isn’t he a fucking nut?’ ” Gotti said in yet another taped conversation from January 4, 1990. “He says, ‘Why should I be subject to follow a nut?’ And then he said, ‘If he ain’t a nut, he’s faking it. He’ll do this to stay out of jail. He’ll do anything, you know?’

  “So I told him, ‘Listen, Joey, you said it and you got it off your chest, okay? That’s that. Don’t say it no more.’ ”

  Gigante was “the anti-Gotti, to the extent that Gotti brought law enforcement attention, couldn’t avoid electronic surveillance, promoted people he shouldn’t and created internecine warfare,” said Ronald Goldstock, the former head of the New York State Organized Crime Task Force.

  “Gigante was exactly the opposite. No matter how we tried, there was no electronic surveillance,” continued Goldstock. “People in the family respected him. He resolved problems, rather than fomenting them. The people surrounding him were tried and true.”

  Mouw said Gotti yearned for the kind of reputation and respect accorded the Chin.

  “I’m sure he was envious,” said Mouw. “The one thing John respected was power . . . power and money.”

  Atlantic City mobster Leonetti, in a conversation with Gambino underboss Gravano, got the lowdown on the feud between the nation’s two top mobsters.

  “Sammy told me that John hated the Chin,” Leonetti recalled. “But I think it was because John knew that he would never have the power that Chin had. I mean, the newspapers and the media made him the Dapper Don. But to guys on the street, guys in the Mob, they knew it was the Chin who was the real power in New York. And I think that irked Gotti, that as regal as he was, he couldn’t trump this guy in a bathrobe.”

  When Gotti ascended as the new Gambino boss, Chin never regarded him an equal, a partner or a friend. Gigante viewed the interloper as a rule-breaking cop magnet and general pain in the ass.

  The Chin treated the so-called Teflon Don with a certain faux deference, sitting with him at commission meetings and even once tipping him to the coming testimony of Genovese turncoat Cafaro in an upcoming Gotti trial.

  But if the two appeared friendly on the face of things, their contrasting approaches to leadership became obvious at a sit-down held just months after Gotti took the seat atop the Gambinos. The freshly minted boss proposed violating another long-standing Mob protocol: killing someone in law enforcemen
t.

  And not just anyone: Gotti targeted federal prosecutor Giuliani, the Mob-buster who went on to become mayor of New York and a GOP presidential hopeful. Gotti was backed by Colombo boss Carmine Persico, who was one of the defendants in the case when the commission met in the fall of 1986.

  Cooler heads prevailed, with Chin casting the deciding vote to spare Giuliani. In November, Persico and three other bosses, along with five of their top aides, were all convicted and sentenced in Giuliani’s Southern District.

  The bosses of the Lucchese, Bonanno and Genovese families rejected the idea despite strong efforts to convince them otherwise, read a memo on the meeting from FBI agent Lindsey DeVecchio.

  Things were different behind the scenes. As he did when Philly boss Bruno was whacked in an unsanctioned hit, Vincent Gigante wasted no time in plotting his payback on the plotters. A murder contract was placed on John Gotti’s head after the Chin—accompanied by his brother Ralph—ventured to the wilds of Staten Island for a sit-down with Lucchese boss Tony Ducks Corallo.

  The men, sitting in the home of Christie Tick Funari, agreed that Gotti had to go.

  * * *

  The new Gambino boss, apparently unaware he was now the target of Chin’s wrath, blithely went about his business as if he was the new king of New York City. In reality, the first interfamily bloodletting since the Castellammarese War was festering in the Big Apple. Gigante was poised to strike the first deathblow.

  Gotti wasn’t alone in his cluelessness: Gigante had also ordered hits on the treacherous Frankie DeCicco, who was now the Gambino underboss, the capo and co-conspirator Sammy Gravano, Bartholomew “Bobby” Borriello, who was Gotti’s driver/ bodyguard, and shooter Eddie Lino.

  Longtime Lucchese soldier Alphonse “Little Al” D’Arco recalled the Chin’s initial plan was to deliberately not whack Gotti in a quick strike, the way Castellano was taken down. The fuming Gigante wanted to eradicate Gotti’s friends and fellow plotters, leaving the Gambino boss with the feeling of a noose tightening around his disrespectful throat.