The other reason was that Harry never showed anybody any respect and that he didn’t follow the rules. My uncle used to say, “The way he behaves, he’s not Cosa Nostra.”
Now Pete Casella, who Phil Testa picked as his underboss, he, too, was a drug dealer. He had just gotten out of jail for selling drugs. My uncle was the one who had Mickey Coco killed for selling drugs to Frank Monte’s kid. He always said, “Drugs and our thing,” meaning La Cosa Nostra, “don’t mix.”
Scarfo’s blind allegiance to La Cosa Nostra’s strict edict against getting involved in the distribution of drugs may have been admirable to some mob traditionalists, but rules were meant to be broken, and, in fact, Harry Riccobene and Pete Casella weren’t the only mobsters who moonlighted as drug dealers.
Lucky Luciano, the architect of the national La Cosa Nostra syndicate and the first boss of bosses, was heavily involved with the distribution of drugs, as were his underboss, Vito Genovese, and Genovese’s protégé, Vincent “The Chin” Gigante, who shared a cell with the powerful Mafia don inside the massive fortress-like federal penitentiary USP Atlanta following a 1959 conviction for heroin trafficking.
Following the murder of Angelo Bruno and the shift in power on the Commission, Vincent “The Chin” Gigante, the boss of the Genovese family, was now the boss of all bosses, the supreme leader of the Commission.
Scarfo knew that Gigante, whom he considered a personal friend, would nominate him over Casella and Riccobene.
When Ange got killed, the Chin wanted my uncle to become the next boss, but my uncle declined and told them that Phil Testa deserved it more. The Chin, through Bobby Manna, then ordered Phil Testa to make my uncle the underboss or consigliere, and my uncle became the consigliere.
Testa’s choice of Pete Casella as his underboss would ultimately cost him his life.
Now in the days leading up to Phil Testa’s wake, we were in South Philadelphia every day—me, my uncle, Chuckie, and Lawrence. We were using a bar at Ninth and Moyamesing called the 9M Bar, which was named after the streets it was on.
From the time I knew Chuckie, if he wasn’t at his clubhouse on Shunk and Sartian, you could find him at the 9M Bar. My uncle felt safe there.
Now at the time, the captains in the family were Freddie Iezzi, Santo Idone, Joe Scafidi, Frank Monte, Johnny Cappello, and Chickie Narducci.
My uncle’s captain before he became consigliere was Freddie Iezzi, so we knew that he was with us. My uncle went way back with Santo Idone and Joe Scafidi—back to the Reds Caruso murder—so we knew that they were with us, and Frank Monte was very close with my uncle and Phil Testa.
Remember, my uncle had Mickey Coco killed for selling drugs to Frank Monte’s kid, so he was with us. We had everyone but Johnny Cappello and Chickie Narducci; they were with Pete Casella. None of the captains were backing Harry Riccobene.
My uncle had the support of four out of the six captains and he knew he had New York’s support. But you gotta remember, not all these guys played by the rules. That’s why Ange and Phil Testa were dead.
So we go to the wake and everybody’s there, the whole organization. Members, associates, you name it. Everyone connected to La Cosa Nostra was there.
While we were there, Chickie Narducci comes up to my uncle and says, “Nick, Pete Casella wants to see you after the wake to sort some things out. We want you to come to John Cappello’s house.”
Now John Cappello, who was a captain, is Pete Casella’s brother-in-law. His house is the house where I got made. These guys knew my uncle was making moves with the other captains and my uncle was now almost certain that Pete Casella was in on the plot against Phil Testa with Chickie Narducci. So this is it, this is the other side wanting to sit down with my uncle.
My uncle tells Chickie, “I’ll be there. Me and Chuckie will come.” And Chickie says, “Good, we’ll straighten things out.”
Now I’m standing there and I’m hearing all of this and I look Chickie Narducci dead in his eye and I say, “I want Johnny Cappello with me and Lawrence at the 9M Bar as insurance. He leaves when my uncle and Chuckie come back from the meeting. If anyone else but my uncle or Chuckie walk through that door, John Cappello will be dead before they get their guns out. Do you understand me?”
Now Chickie is taken aback and he has this stunned look on his face, and my uncle has a half a smile on his face, like he’s proud I spoke up, and says, “That’s what it is. John Cappello waits with my nephew until me and Chuckie get back.”
Chickie kind of stammers a bit and says, “Okay, Nick, we just want to talk, that’s it,” and my uncle says, “Fine, we’ll be there.”
When Chickie was walking away I caught him giving me a look, I guess he felt that because he was a caporegime I shouldn’t have talked to him like that because I was just a solider, and he was right. But if these guys weren’t playing by the rules, why should I? I mean, Jesus Christ, they just whacked our boss out without approval from the Commission, and he’s gonna give me the malocchio because he didn’t like the way I spoke to him? My uncle sees what I’m seeing and he says, “Your whole life, what have I told you about these siggys? They are no fuckin’ good. Greed and treason, that’s all that’s on their brain.”
Now my uncle moves right into action. He grabs Blackie Napoli, who is at the wake, and tells him to leave the wake and drive up to New York and set up a meeting with Bobby Manna for the next day—the day of the funeral—to discuss being named boss of the family.
He told Blackie, “After you see Bobby, you turn around and drive back to the 9M and tell me what he said. You also tell him about this meeting at John Cappello’s house, I want him to know everything. We’re not going back to Atlantic City until you come back, I don’t care what time it is.”
Blackie says, “Got it,” and he’s out the door.
My uncle tells Chuckie, “Get two guns—one for Philip and one for Lawrence. I want a couple of guys with them at the 9M in case there’s any trouble. I want everyone in that bar ready to go,” meaning he wants everyone armed.
Chuckie says, “Okay, Nick,” and he’s out the door.
My uncle looks at me and Lawrence, and says, “This is it. You guys know what to do if there’s any trouble,” and we both nod.
We left the wake and went straight to the 9M and when we got there Chuckie was there with a few of his guys.
We walk in and Chuckie hands me and Lawrence pistols, and we sit at the bar and we’re waiting for Johnny Cappello.
About a half hour later here he comes, and when he comes in, Chuckie frisked him for weapons. As Chuckie is checking him, he raises his hands and looks at my uncle and says, “Come on, Nick, is this necessary?” and Chuckie says, “He’s clean.”
My uncle says, “It’s just a precaution, John, that’s all,” and him and Chuckie leave for the meeting.
While we’re sitting there, John Cappello is trying to break the ice. He starts telling me and Lawrence the story about the Irish being behind Phil Testa’s death. Me and Lawrence don’t say nothing, and he’s just talking and I’m staring him dead in the eye as he’s talking.
I tell him, “You know if something happens to my uncle or Chuckie, you won’t leave this bar alive. You know that, right?”And he looks at me and nods, and I say, “Let’s have some drinks and see what happens,” and after that I don’t think he said two words the rest of the night.
Now, like I did with Chickie Narducci, I shouldn’t be talking to John Cappello like that. But I’m thinking he’s with the guys who killed Phil Testa. In my mind, I was thinking that those guys would have killed me, my uncle, Chuckie, Lawrence, Salvie, all of us, so in reality, I didn’t give a fuck about none of them. On this day, the day of Phil Testa’s wake, that was the first time in my life that I ever balked at the rules of La Cosa Nostra.
So we’re sitting there and it seems like an eternity. A couple of guys were playing cards in one of the booths; a few more were watching TV. Two guys were sitting on stools by the front door and we had two guys
outside the bar. Everybody had a pistol on them.
Me and Lawrence were sitting at the bar with John Cappello, and he started drinking. He knows his night’s gonna end one of two ways: Door No. 1, he’s going home; Door No. 2, I’m putting two bullets in the back of his head. There ain’t no Door No. 3.
Me and Lawrence were milking our drinks because we had to stay alert in case there was trouble. It was very, very tense. The waiting became very monotonous and this John Cappello just keeps drinking as the hours pass by.
All the sudden, around midnight, the two guys by the front door are off of their stools and they are walking towards the door. The guys playing cards are on their feet. Lawrence starts walking towards the door. I got my gun in John Cappello’s ribs and the door opens and in walks my uncle with Chuckie behind him.
I take the gun and put it back in my pants and my uncle walks right over to John Cappello and says, “Okay John, you can go now,” and this guy is out the door like Flash Gordon.
Chuckie tells the guys in his crew to stand outside and that the only guy allowed in the bar is Blackie Napoli, who should be on his way back from New York with a message from Bobby Manna.
Lawrence makes drinks for all of us and we all toast, salud, and my uncle tells us about the meeting.
“When we got there, it was Pete Casella, his brother Anthony, that backstabbing cocksucker Chickie Narducci, John Grande and his son, and this kid, Rocco Marinucci. They checked us for weapons right when we got there.
“Rocco Marinucci was looking out one of the windows and listening to a police scanner and the rug in the room where we were meeting was rolled up. I think they were planning on blasting us, but they knew that you guys would have killed John Cappello.”
Chuckie says, “If you guys didn’t have him here with guns on him, we wouldn’t be sitting here talking right now.”
Lawrence chimed in and said, “Motherfuckers,” and my uncle looks at me and says, “You caught Chickie off guard by asking for Pete’s brother-in-law as insurance. If they had said no, then there wouldn’t have been no meeting. They weren’t gonna kill us and let him die as a result, so they tried Plan B, which was to try and trick us. These fuckin’ guys think I started doing this yesterday. These cocksuckers, we’ll show them.”
My uncle says, “Pete Casella tells us that someone in New York told him that the Irish had killed Phil Testa and that he wanted me to retaliate.” My uncle said Pete Casella was acting as if he was already the boss.
My uncle says, “I told him, Pete, that’s not what I heard and I have a meeting set up for tomorrow in New York with Bobby Manna to tell him what I think is going on.”
Chuckie says, “You shoulda seen their faces when Nicky said he had a meeting tomorrow with New York. The whole room got quiet and that was the end of the meeting.”
So we’re sitting there waiting on Blackie and all the sudden around 2:00 a.m. here he comes.
My uncle greets him with a hug and a kiss on the cheek when he comes in and says, “Well, how did it go?”
Blackie says, “He wants you up there tomorrow for a sit-down,” and my uncle tells him, “Me and you are gonna go. We’re gonna have to miss the funeral, but this can’t wait.”
Blackie says, “Okay, Nick, I’ll see you tomorrow and he leaves.” This poor guy had driven two hours down for the wake, two hours up to New York to see Bobby Manna, two hours back to deliver the message, and now another two hours to get home. But that’s how it was in this life. This wasn’t a 9-to-5 job.
Chuckie and his guys walk me, my uncle, and Lawrence to our car just in case the other side decides to take a shot, but they didn’t, and we drove back down to Atlantic City.
When we get home it’s like four in the morning and my uncle says, “Go upstairs and wake up [Dutch]. Tell him I need a car around the corner first thing in the morning.”
Dutch—as I will call him—was a guy that lived in our building and ran errands for us. We let him stay there for free and gave him $200 a week. He did odd jobs for Scarf, Inc. and Nat Nat, and he always helped out my mother or grandmother. He was a good guy and we didn’t involve him in anything illegal.
So I go bang on his door and tell him what we needed and he gets right up and gets a car and parks it a few blocks away on Florida Avenue so my uncle can leave the back way through the alleys early the next morning without being detected.
While guys like Chickie Narducci and Pete Casella were playing checkers, Nicky Scarfo and Philip Leonetti were playing chess. Each move was calculated and measured, and in March 1981, Little Nicky and Crazy Phil were one step away from running the entire Philadelphia–Atlantic City mob.
Scarfo had just turned 52, and in a matter of days Leonetti would be 28.
Scarfo’s meeting scheduled the next day with his old pal from Yardville, Bobby Manna, was at this point merely a formality.
The New King Is Crowned
The morning of the funeral, me and Lawrence get up early and we’re getting ready to go to Philadelphia. My uncle’s up and he’s getting ready to head up to New York for his meeting with Blackie Napoli and Bobby Manna.
He’s gonna go through the back alleys and get in the car Dutch had left for him so he doesn’t pick up a tail. We were always careful, but going to New York you had to be extra careful. Guys like Bobby Manna and the Chin did everything top secret.
So my uncle says, “Tonight when I get back we will meet up for dinner. When you guys are up there today, keep your antennas up. I want to know who’s saying what and who’s gathering with who.”
As Philip Leonetti and Lawrence Merlino were on their way to Philadelphia for Phil Testa’s funeral, Nicky Scarfo was on his way to North Jersey to meet with Blackie Napoli and Bobby Manna in the back room of an Italian restaurant in Hoboken to discuss the future of the Bruno crime family and, more specifically, Little Nicky’s future as its boss.
Ten years prior, the trio of Scarfo, Napoli, and Manna walked the track together at Yardville State Prison and discussed their future plans as mob leaders.
My uncle was very tight with those guys, ever since they were in Yardville together.
Scarfo told Manna everything he had learned about Phil Testa’s death: the beef with Chickie Narducci, the rumors about the Irish, and his less-than-friendly meeting with Pete Casella the night of the wake.
Scarfo told Manna that he believed Casella, Narducci, and others not yet known to him were behind Testa’s murder. Manna told Scarfo that whoever had killed Philip Testa did not have the permission of the Commission and, as such, the hit was unsanctioned.
As it had done with the unsanctioned murder of Testa’s predecessor Angelo Bruno, the Commission would launch an immediate investigation to identify those responsible and make arrangements to mete out the appropriate punishment: death.
Sitting at the head of the Commission was Manna’s boss and Scarfo’s friend and ally, Vincent “The Chin” Gigante. Manna told Scarfo that he would schedule a meeting in a week and that both Scarfo and Casella would present their case to the Genovese hierarchy, which consisted of Gigante, Manna, and Anthony “Fat Tony” Salerno—the same individuals who presided over the investigation of Angelo Bruno’s murder one year prior and who had ordered the gruesome torture killings of those involved.
This time around the Genovese would be without their minister of manipulation, Frank “Funzi” Tieri, who was on his deathbed in a prison hospital after being convicted of racketeering and sentenced to 10 years in prison.
With or without Tieri, the deck was heavily stacked in Scarfo’s favor and Little Nicky knew it. In one week he would likely become the undisputed boss of the Philadelphia–Atlantic City mob.
That night, after his meeting with Blackie and Bobby Manna, me and my uncle went out to dinner at Caesars. I told him about the funeral and he told me about the meeting. He said, “For the next week, until I go to New York, we gotta watch our p’s and q’s. We’re gonna stay close to home. This treachery, it may not be over.”
&nb
sp; For the next week, Scarfo and Leonetti stayed in Atlantic City and kept a low profile, shunning hastily called mob meetings in South Philadelphia and doing their best to avoid their usual haunts.
Back when Ange was boss and him and my uncle started having problems over the unions, we had heard that Ange had sent this big Irish guy from Northeast Philly down to Atlantic City and that this guy may have been looking to kill my uncle. We found out that he had a big tattoo on his arm and a couple people in the neighborhood described him to us and said they had seen him around Georgia Avenue, and he was asking people questions about us.
When my uncle found out about it, he went crazy. He knew someone who knew the guy and he told them, “You tell that Irish motherfucker if he ever steps foot in Atlantic City again, for any reason, I’m gonna chop him up and send him back to Philadelphia in six trash bags, one for each of his arms, one for each of his legs, one for his torso, and one for that big stupid fuckin’ Irish head of his.”
We never heard nothing about the guy from that point on. From that point on, everyone who came to Atlantic City checked in with us to let us know why they were in town.
This is back when Ange was the boss. My uncle even told Ange, he said, “I’m gonna cut your friend’s arm off, the one with the tattoo, and I’m gonna send it you.”
I remember Ange was steaming, but so was my uncle. This was towards the end, before Ange got clipped. Him and my uncle were beefin’ over the unions.
Now several years later, with Scarfo on the cusp of assuming the throne, Atlantic City was crawling with wise guys looking to curry favor with Little Nicky.
Mafia Prince: Inside America's Most Violent Crime Family Page 14