The Frankie Shots hit was initially given to Joey Gallo who turned it down, which sent a message to Profaci that Profaci didn’t like. Joey said he couldn’t do it. He was bloodbrothers with Frankie’s kid Anthony.
So Profaci went to Carmine who said, sure, he’d do it.
On November 4, 1959, eight P.M., Carmine was one of two shooters in the hit on Frankie Shots. Twin gunmen plugged holes in Shots as he exited his cousin’s saloon, Cardiello’s Tavern at Carroll Street and Fourth Avenue. His cousin was Anthony Cardiello, who was tending bar. The shooters—in topcoats, fedoras, and masks—coolly followed the wounded Frankie as he retreated back inside, and filled him with lead on the saloon floor. The shooters ran out, one of them dropping a .32 caliber revolver on the sidewalk, climbed into a car, and sped away. Anthony and the tavern’s only other customer dove behind the bar when the shooting started, and stayed there until they were sure the shooters were gone.
When cops arrived they found Frankie Shots prone in the sawdust, the barroom door splintered apart by gunfire. The medical examiner counted the holes. Frankie Shots was shot eight times, all striking him either in the face or the stomach.
Since Frankie’s rep with law enforcement was as a man of chance, the first thing the NYPD did was round up all professional gamblers in Red Hook, guys who might’ve wanted to erase a debt or otherwise had a beef with Frankie. Had to be a local thing, a neighborhood thing, investigators figured. Frankie was a neighborhood guy.
Looking back, maybe police were trying too hard to make it look like they were doing something/anything, when in reality the killers had nothing to worry about. Six down-and-out, sleeping-on-the-sidewalk men were arrested in connection with the murder and eventually were charged only with vagrancy. Joseph and Anthony Cardiello were brought in and held for a while as material witnesses. But they remained silent.
Frankie Shots was buried in Holy Cross Cemetery in Brooklyn. His grave read, “Blessed are the dead who die in the Lord.” The site features a statue reminiscent of Michelangelo’s Pieta depicting Mary holding Jesus’s post-crucifixion body.
* * *
Whenever management becomes wealthy while labor suffers, there’s bound to be trouble. Profaci lived in luxury, an empyrean mansion in Florida, another in Holmdel, New Jersey. The Gallos were hanging out in the downstairs club of a President Street tenement. It wasn’t the cut of the rackets that got under the Gallo crew’s skin so much as the personal tithe they were all supposed to come up with. It cost $25 a week to be in the Profaci family no matter how low you were in the pecking order, no matter what struggles for survival your family might be enduring.
Profaci wasn’t a lovable father figure the way some bosses were. He was more like Ebeneezer Scrooge sneering “Bah! Humbug!” to the folks of Red Hook.
After Frankie Shots’ death, the Gallo crew naturally figured they would get a chunk of the old man’s rackets—but that didn’t happen, widening the chasm between the factions. Control of Frankie’s numbers game went to Profaci’s relatives, and the Gallo crew was out of work. The poor neighborhood got poorer, while Profaci got to build an extension on his Florida mansion.
CHAPTER SEVEN
Snake Eyes
August 1961, Profaci ordered the killings of Larry, Joey, and the rest of the Gallo crew. And it was then that the President Street Boys realized that they had been betrayed by one of their own. There was a turncoat among them.
WE DON’T KNOW THE DATE, but the story goes that Frank Costello took one look at Carmine Persico and saw the future. The kid was going places. Costello called Carmine in.
Carmine was fairly certain that he was going to be scolded about something. He didn’t know what he’d done to piss off Costello, but whatever it was, it couldn’t be fatal, right?
Persico knew enough about Costello to know he had some serious balls. This was the guy who from 1950 to 1952 testified several times on TV before a Special Committee of the U.S. Senate investigating organized crime in interstate commerce. This was back in the early days of television when the screens were round and everything was black and white. Costello was the only don to testify, all the others took the Fifth, and he came out of the hearings with a national reputation as America’s number-one gangster. His testimony earned an element of mystery when cameras were ordered to show only Costello’s hands and not his face. They asked him a lot of questions about his finances, how he lived such an extravagant lifestyle when he was making beans in the legit world. Costello danced as much as spoke, eventually becoming so evasive that he served eleven months in prison for Contempt of Congress. Now, Costello had a vision and it concerned Carmine, and Carmine liked the way it sounded a lot.
Costello said that he was speaking as a true friend of Joe Profaci, and he was aware of the bullshit that was going on over on President Street. This Joey Gallo was nuts and would start a war, and when he did the Gallo crew was going to lose. When that happened, Carmine wanted to be certain to be on Profaci’s side, as his future was a bright one, and being true to Profaci was the most direct and certainly the healthiest path to take.
Carmine no doubt didn’t need to have any of this spelled out for him. He was adept at the chess game of life as well, and capable of thinking several moves ahead.
According to legend, Costello went on to say that, if he really wanted to serve Profaci in the most efficient way, he would not make the move off of President Street just yet, that he should work as an intelligence agent, letting Profaci know what moves the Gallos were planning.
Carmine said he understood.
* * *
Sick of paying Joe Profaci, Joey Gallo came up in February 1961 with a bold plan. Frankie Shots’ problem with the boss was that he hadn’t been dealing from a position of strength and it cost him his life. Joey and his crew would kidnap the top Profaci guys: Joe and Frank Profaci, Joe Colombo, John Scimone, Joseph Magliocco, and Sally “The Sheik” Musacchio. The Gallos would negotiate new and more favorable terms for themselves in return for the safe release of the detained mobsters. The plan, as it turned out, was overly complicated and had way too many moving parts. Not surprisingly, things didn’t go well.
On February 27, 1961, Joey and Carmine sent out a crew in a phalanx of limousines to make the pick-ups. This part went pretty smoothly. They kidnapped everyone on the list except for Joe Profaci. A little bird told him what was up, and Profaci fled to Florida.
Joseph Magliocco pissed his pants while in captivity, a humiliation that left him with a lifelong hatred for the Gallos.
After a few weeks of his captains being held hostage, Profaci made a peace agreement just to get them back. What Profaci didn’t know was that Joey and Larry were at odds over what to do with the hostages, so much so that they came to blows. Joey didn’t trust Profaci and wanted to kill the captives one by one, starting with Magliocco. Larry talked him out of it.
Joey had been right not to be trustful. Joe Profaci had no intention of keeping his word. It took Profaci a few months to get around to it, but he eventually reneged on every promise he made to get his men released.
In retrospect, the kidnapping scheme had been a devastating failure. All the Gallos had managed was a few false promises, and some strong enemies. My dad Rick DiMatteo always said that he loved Larry Gallo like a brother, and Joey Gallo was a maniac, but in this case Joey had been right. Larry was naïve. As it turned out, money wins over morality every time.
And not just in organized crime. It was true in life in general. Larry’s decision to be fair backfired. Profaci’s capos returned to a crime family that felt humiliated, pissed off beyond belief.
“I want every one of them President Street fuckers dead,” Profaci said. That cheered the boys up.
* * *
Like Carmine, the Gallos were fearless. On Sunday, August 20, 1961, Carmine Persico invited Larry Gallo to the Sahara Lounge, a bar on Utica Avenue in East Flatbush. Larry believed he was to discuss strategy regarding the upcoming struggles against Profaci. Larry had bac
kup outside, but he wasn’t expecting trouble and, disregarding advice to the contrary, went into the bar alone.
In the dim tavern Larry found Carmine Persico and two others—Sally D’Ambrosio, and forty-nine-year-old John Scimone—there to meet with him. No one else was around. Not even a bartender.
Larry didn’t know Carmine was going to be there, but discovering him there wasn’t cause for alarm. He and Carmine were cool. While Larry was sitting at the bar talking to Carmine and Scimone, Sally came from behind, produced a two-foot piece of rope with knots on either end, and wrapped it swiftly and savagely around Larry’s neck.
Larry turned purple and his eyes bugged. The audience made noises of encouragement and Larry himself thrashed with taut muscles and emitted all his crunched vocal cords could muster—a high-pitch wheeze of distress. He looked to be a goner, until two cops, Sergeant Edward Meagher and Patrolman Melvin Blei in a police cruiser, happened by.
Back then bars weren’t allowed to open until Sunday evening because of blue laws, so seeing the bar’s front door ajar prompted them to investigate. Blei stayed in the car and Meagher went to check and see what was up. As he approached the slightly opened door he could hear the commotion inside, and when he walked in, he couldn’t tell right away what was going on because his eyes were slow to adjust to the dimly lit bar.
“What’s going on here?” Sgt. Meagher said. “You open or not?”
Larry moaned and slumped to the floor semi-conscious. Carmine and everyone else—except Larry, who was down for the count—ran for the door with heads down, so all the cop could see was their fedoras.
Patrolman Blei, watching from the police car, jumped out and chased the three running men to a nearby parking lot where they climbed into a Cadillac. As Blei approached on the run, a gun emerged from an open window and shot Blei in the face. I heard the shot was fired by Sally. Published sources have attributed it to Carmine Persico. The Caddy roared off.
At that moment, Sgt. Meagher emerged from the darkened interior into the harsh mid-afternoon sunlight, saw his partner down, and fired two shots at the Cadillac as it sped away.
The car hauled ass for two blocks before the driver slammed on the brakes and Scimone either jumped out or was thrown out. The Caddy then drove away to freedom and Scimone, one eye swelling from the fall, was promptly scooped up by the law.
Larry lived, but he had to go to the hospital for treatment, the rope having burned the skin off. There was a mark around his neck for the rest of his life.
Police asked Larry who attacked him and he said, “What attack?”
“What happened to your neck?”
“Cut myself shaving,” Larry said, his voice sounding like he’d gargled with rocks.
Back at the Sahara Lounge police found the two-foot piece of rope with the knots on either end that had been around Larry’s neck. In better light it showed evidence of the ordeal, speckled with pieces of Larry’s skin and stained by his blood.
Blei was rushed to Kings County Hospital and listed in critical condition. Because of the cop shooting, the incident even made the out-of-town papers, and in Philadelphia Larry was referred to as “jukebox kingpin” Lawrence Gallo, while Patrolman Blei, who recovered from his wounds, was said to have looked at a stack of photos and identified “underworld figure” Anthony Abbatemarco, thirty-nine years old—Abby of the President Street Boys—as the guy who shot him. (This was a clear clue that the cops didn’t know who was on who’s side. Not to mention an indication that Blei hadn’t actually seen the shooter’s face clearly.) The same article said that the Gallos had “fallen out of favor with the underworld” and were “marked for elimination.” That part they got right.
Apparently, the cop really did I.D. Abby as his shooter. Abby and Scimone were held.
That slightly ventilated getaway car was abandoned and found to be registered to “underworld figure” Sonny Pepitone’s twenty-something girlfriend Lila “Lips” LaPietra, who—with a cute shrug—said that she had no idea where the bullet holes came from.
Police arrested everyone they could get their mitts on and held them as material witnesses in the shooting of the cop. That meant that Larry was being held on $100,000 bail for the attack on himself. Also held was Sahara-owner Charles Clemenza. No one talked.
Obviously, among those who got away and whose names were never publicly associated with the attack on Larry was Carmine Persico. Say that name out loud and you were dead. But Larry remembered who was there, and when he finally returned to President Street, out of earshot of the law, he said Carmine Persico was a dead man. Frank “Punchy” Illiano called Carmine “the snake” that day, the first time anyone called him that, and the name stuck.
* * *
Judge Samuel S. Leibowitz, who had presided over the Prospect Park murder case, was as merciless as ever and in charge of the arraignment of the material witnesses in the cop shooting. He made the connection right away between this case and Prospect Park.
The judge however didn’t mention names when he commented that the juvenile delinquents who had given the cops such a bad time at the beginning of the decade had grown up. “Now they’re trying to murder policemen,” Judge Leibowitz said solemnly.
On the last day of October, police arrested thirty-four-year-old Aurelius Cirallo and, claiming he was the getaway driver, held him as a material witness as well.
By November, it appeared, cops thought they had the incident sorted out a little bit better. They still didn’t have Carmine’s name in connection with the garroting of Larry, but they realized Blei’s I.D. of Abby was off the mark and Sally not Abby was indicted for the officer’s shooting.
* * *
During the twenty-four hours after the attempt on Larry Gallo’s life, someone took a shot at Joey Gallo’s car (Joey wasn’t in it), and the finger of Joey’s top enforcer, Joseph “Joe Jelly” Gioelli, was delivered to Jackie’s Charcolette, a restaurant run by the Gallo brothers’ parents.
Carmine had a new crew, and one of his boys was Freddie No Nose, an ex-boxer who’d taken one too many to the kisser, and had no remaining cartilage in what used to be his nose. According to Sal Polisi, No Nose—with Sally D’Ambrosio and Carmine Persico—was in on the Joe Jelly hit.
Sally had a boat he kept at the man-made bulkhead harbor at Sheepshead Bay. He asked Joe Jelly if he wanted to go fishing in the ocean for blues. Jelly said sure, and left his girlfriend’s house that morning in a relaxed mood. Jelly liked to fish, he’d gone fishing with Sally before, so he had no reason to think anything was up. He didn’t even get it when he learned Carmine Persico and No Nose were going out on the boat also.
They came back with fish but without Joe Jelly—well, all but his ring finger. They turned it into a messy business, removed Joe’s clothes, dismembered him, put the pieces in a fifty-gallon drum and dropped the drum overboard into the Atlantic.
(Sally and No Nose disappeared in December 1969 and were never seen again. Legend has it they were garroted in a bar, with no sun-blind cop to come to their rescue.)
With the finger, they delivered the fish. Joe Jelly sleeps with the fishes. It was war with style, a riff copped by The Godfather. The Profaci family declared war on the Gallos, and the boys on President Street hit the mattresses.
* * *
Carmine Persico was now officially “Snake” with the Gallos. Warring with the Profacis was courageous. The President Street Boys had balls of titanium, no doubt about it, but Carmine and Profaci badly outgunned them.
The Gallo crew slowly realized that Carmine Persico had betrayed them long before the attempt on Larry’s life. He was a dirty double-crosser from way back. A spy. And probably the reason Profaci fled so he couldn’t be kidnapped. The boys thought of the many times that Carmine had been there, an accepted and trusted friend, while everybody drank, and tactics and strategy were loudly discussed. And all the time the Snake was a human wire transmitting intelligence directly to Profaci.
How far back did it go? Was Carmine ever re
ally their friend, or was he always a spy? There were many long-and-loud discussions on this subject in the social clubs of President Street, where chicken wire covered the windows so no one could toss through a bomb or Molatov cocktail.
Evidence showed that Profaci wanted Carmine on his side very badly. He paid Carmine well to spy on the President Street Boys while Profaci planned his war. Besides the obvious advantages of being on the side that would win, Profaci guaranteed Carmine several lucrative rackets.
Looking back at Carmine’s behavior with the benefit of hindsight, it’s easier to see that Carmine’s allegiance was, as always, to Carmine. Sticking with Profaci was an excellent business move.
* * *
The Gallo-Profaci war was raging, a war in which Carmine Persico was active but, gauging by the public record, something next to invisible. It was a vicious business, gangland combat, but imperfect.
During the summer of 1961, Carmine found a bomb under his car that never detonated. He had his car customized in case a second bombing attempt produced a working bomb, which it did.
Near summer’s end, a couple of guys tried to kidnap loanshark Ruby Stein, an associate of Nicholas “Jiggs” Forlano, but failed when Stein put up a noisy and attention-grabbing fuss.
On September 21, 1961, members of the Gallo crew beat the shit out of Aniello Dellacroce, who was a capo with the Gambinos at the time, while he ate at Luna, a tablecloth ristorante in Little Italy.
The next victim was Joseph Magnasco, a South Brooklyn product, and Carmine’s hijacking co-defendant. He was a solid player for the Gallos with hands of steel and a “no holds barred” type of attitude. Mags developed a deep hatred for Profaci early on, and had joined the Gallos just as hostilities commenced. He bought it on a chilly evening in the autumn of 1961, only days before New York Yankees outfielder Roger Maris hit home run number sixty-one for the season, breaking the Babe’s record, and the Yanks cruised to the American League pennant. The Dodgers had already been in California for four seasons, although New York was getting a new National League team, the Metropolitans, the following spring.
Carmine the Snake Page 8