See No Evil

by Ron Felber

  From Jewish Hospital to Mount Sinai in New York and even Jersey hospitals like the General Hospital Center at Passaic, he couldn’t recruit fast enough. Aside from the pent-up demand for sanitary locations, confidential transactions, and professionally able practitioners, the Gambinos had it all figured out, converting the backrooms of the storefront locations already established for numbers and gambling operations into outpatient surgical centers. They had the geographies covered and, as today’s marketing gurus recommend, had strategically focused “points of distribution” aligned for their services. For each of the procedures performed by physicians Elliot recruited, 5 percent of their earnings went to him. Now, it wasn’t like he was about to send Deloitté and Touche in for a full accounting of income, but from $100 a month, his income grew to $5,000 a month in a matter of six months. Not bad for a poor kid from the Bronx!

  While Elliot was making money hand over fist, the two men who were destined to change his life, Rudolph Giuliani and John Gotti, were also developing as young men into what they were earmarked to become in the future.

  During the early 1960s, Rudy Giuliani idolized Jack Kennedy and skipped classes along with fellow classmates to shake hands with the president, who was speaking at a garment district rally. While there is no way of knowing how much Rudy knew about his father’s past, knowledge of Harold Giuliani’s mob associations may have influenced him even then because after JFK’s assassination, Rudy became obsessed with Attorney General Robert Kennedy while attending Manhattan College. The reason, he confided to girlfriend Kathy Livermore, was the “moral conviction” RFK showed in prosecuting the mob-infested Teamsters Union.

  As a student at New York University law school, while most classmates were being mesmerized by the music of Bob Dylan and the Rolling Stones, Rudy Giuliani was infatuated by idols of another kind: the careers of former federal prosecutor and New York governor, Thomas Dewey, and Robert Kennedy. In both cases, it would take something less than a penetrating study to pull either man from their pedestals, at least in terms of their careers as district attorney and attorney general. Both men, burning to the core with political ambition, had achieved their greatest prosecutorial victories undermining the very systems they were sworn to uphold.

  To those who understood the inner workings of the conviction then-District Attorney Thomas Dewey gained over mobster Charles “Lucky” Luciano, the headlines had a hollow ring. Charged with sixty-two counts of compulsory prostitution entailing a network of some 200 brothels that employed 1,000 prostitutes and grossed more than $12 million annually, by the time Luciano’s appeal was denied, even some prosecutors came to believe he was framed.

  One witness, a career criminal named Joe Bendix, claimed he’d personally been offered a job by Lucky with the ring and had heard him boast how he controlled it. More damaging was the testimony of Cokey “Flo” Brown, a prostitute, who declared that she’d been sleeping with Luciano at his Waldorf-Astoria suite and heard him bragging that he had “organized cathouses around the city to operate more efficiently than A & P.” Upon cross-examination, it was discovered that Bendix had never met Luciano and that Cokey “Flo” Brown didn’t know where the Waldorf was located.

  Nevertheless, using his own fiery brand of self-righteous rhetoric that asked jurors to convict Lucky not of “vice,” but of “racketeering” for which he was never charged, Lucky Luciano was convicted and sentenced to thirty to fifty years in state prison, the longest sentence ever handed down for prostitution.

  In the case of RFK, the prosecution of mob-connected Teamster Union leader Jimmy Hoffa seemed more a personal vendetta than a triumph of justice where illegal wiretaps, witness tampering, and bribes were used to gain a conviction. This was not the first time the Kennedys had transgressed against the fathers, nor would it be the last.

  As early as 1959, Joseph Kennedy made contact with Joseph Bonanno, then chairman of the Commission, through intermediate Lawrence O’Brien. JFK was going on a fundraising tour looking to bolster his campaign for the Democratic nomination for president, O’Brien told Bonanno, and he wanted the Commission’s backing in order to gain labor union support. “There’ll be resistance,” Bonanno said. “Bobby has already proven his political ambition as a prosecutor during the McClellan hearings and embarrassed many of our friends.” Still, Bonanno, understanding that Joseph Kennedy, himself a former bootlegger with ties to Frank Costello, could be an important resource if his son was elected, promised to see what he could do.

  The result was the Commission’s financial and political backing at critical moments in JFK’s campaign: a win in the all-important West Virginia primary and in Illinois during the general election where 80 percent of Illinois’ largest county, Cook, went for Kennedy in a state won by just 8,000 votes. Almost immediately after the election, once he was named attorney general, Bobby declared an all-out war against “organized crime” beginning a relentless prosecution of Hoffa, Chicago’s Sam Giancana, and New Orleans’ boss Carlos Marcello in what was viewed as a calculated strategy to ride the Mafia hobbyhorse to headlines and higher office. The double-cross would not be forgotten.

  Soon afterward, while Rudy Giuliani was clerking for U.S. District Judge Lloyd F. McMahon and Elliot’s career was burgeoning having been named “Outstanding Surgical Resident” at the Jewish Hospital and Medical Center, the third cog in destiny’s wheel, John Gotti, was also making a name for himself.

  By the early 1960s, Gotti, his brother, Gene, and Ruggiero were seen as up-and-comers by the Fatico brothers, Carmine and Daniel, operating out of a Brooklyn storefront called the Club. Active in hijacking, loansharking, and murder for hire, the Faticos were interested in Gotti’s fearlessness and put it to the test as he, Gene, and Ruggiero became full-time hijackers stealing virtually anything that moved from Long Island’s Kennedy Airport. A string of arrests followed for petty crimes like unlawful entry, possession of bookmaking records, and petit larceny. In 1967, with Albert Anastasia having been assassinated in a “whack job” choreographed by Vito Genovese and Carlo Gambino, Gotti became a family associate working for Carmine Fatico and the man he reported to as caporégime, Aniello “Neil” Dellacroce.

  Gotti became enamored of Dellacroce, a “man’s man,” who was Carlo Gambino’s second in command. Dellacroce was a tough customer even by Mafia standards. He spoke in expletives and threats that few doubted he would carry out. A cold-blooded murderer who’d once posed as a Catholic priest to gain entrance into the room of the man he would assassinate, Dellacroce and Gotti took an immediate liking to one another akin to father and son.

  If it was a sense of style that Gotti gleaned from Dellacroce, it was Al Capone, also from Naples, whom he idolized and was probably closest to in bearing. While stories of Capone’s generosity are not uncommon, tales of his ferocity are more easy to come by because, unlike his mentor, Johnny Torrio, he believed in excessive force to gain his ends. A man of gargantuan appetites for food, liquor, gambling, and women, Capone was exactly the loud, brash, and stereotypical Neapolitan that Sicilian traditionalists like Maranzano and Bonanno sought to keep out of powerful positions within La Cosa Nostra. Capone’s bets on horses, dice, roulette, and other games of chance were rarely less than $1,000 each and often as much as $100,000. He drove around Chicago in a bulletproof, armor-plated car custom made for him by General Motors. He tipped newsboys $10, hatcheck girls $20, and waiters $100 from a huge roll of bills he carried in his pocket.

  Displays of his fury, both private and public, were of such magnitude that they became instantaneous headlines and the stuff of folklore. In May 1928, Capone held a banquet at the Hawthorne Inn in Cicero, Illinois, inviting a group of suspected conspirators. Once they’d eaten and drunk to satiation, his aides suddenly surrounded his guests and tied them to their chairs. Then, Capone picked up a baseball bat and with slow and cool deliberation, beat each one of them to death. Even men like Bugs Moran seemed shocked when on Valentine’s Day, nine months later, four men dressed in police uniforms, lined si
x of Moran’s soldiers and an innocent bystander against the wall of the S-M-C Cartage Company warehouse, riddled them with machine-gun bullets, then fired a shotgun at close range into the faces of those who were still moving. “There’s only one man who kills like that,” Bugs Moran later told police. “‘The Beast,’ Al Capone.”

  Stories not unlike these would circulate among Elliot’s associates about John Gotti as he worked his way up the Mafia ladder, earning his “bones” through murders equally brutal. But that would be later. The problem Johnny Boy faced in the fall of 1969 was a thirty-month stay in Lewisburg Penitentiary for December 1967 and February 1968 hijacking convictions, followed by an interstate theft and kidnapping conviction just two months later. Soon after his release from prison in 1972, however, the irrepressible Teflon Don would strategize a way into the heart of Don Carlo Gambino and position himself for all the fame his hero, Capone, had achieved while living up to the worst fears of all the godfathers before him.

  By 1972, as Gotti and Giuliani were making names for themselves at opposite poles of American society, Elliot saw his reputation among Manhattan’s medical elite growing exponentially with honors like the Medical Center of Brooklyn’s Research Committee Award and the Boehinger-Ingelhein Scholar Award given by the American College of Chest Physicians. Though meetings with goodfellas from the old neighborhood became infrequent, his childhood reputation of being a man who could be trusted was enhanced by his successful dealings with Dellacroce so that he was now considered a full-fledged “associate” of the Gambino Family.

  During that early period of his double life, Elliot’s involvement with the mob remained limited to three key areas: one, treating Gambino Family members because they knew he was a top-flight physician; two, recruiting young interns for their thriving illegal abortion trade; three, disposing of evidence and sensitive medical records. Evidence could be a spent bullet recovered from a gunshot victim, which might prove embarrassing if reported to the police. Sensitive information could be a drug overdose, the physical presence of illegal drugs on a patient’s person, or the very fact that a particular man, someone fleeing the police, for example, had ever come into the emergency room for treatment.

  As they say, there was no “heavy lifting” until a hot summer night in June when a knock sounded at the door of Elliot’s two-bedroom apartment sometime around midnight. Even with money coming in from other interests, he spent twelve to fifteen hours a day at the hospital, so he’d already fallen into a sound sleep.

  Groggy, Elliot looked through the peephole in his apartment door and was startled to see three intimidating men. The biggest, pounding with his closed fist, was in his midforties, square faced and broad of frame. He wore a dark suit and looked like a bodybuilder. The other two were younger, maybe in their late twenties, with long slicked-back black hair, black slacks with shirts opened down to the fifth button, gold crucifixes dangling.

  “Dr. Litner? Dr. Litner!”

  “Yes …”

  “Neil said you would help us. We need you to see someone. It’s important.”

  Reluctantly, Elliot opened the door, “Jesus, it must be midnight …”

  “We know that,” the large man answered stepping in through the door as the others who didn’t seem to understand much of what was being said stood in the hallway, “but we need to go now. Like I said, we’re friends of Neil, Sal, too. There’s a sick man who needs to see you.”

  “Can’t your friend go to the hospital?”

  The large man just stared. “Uh-uh,” he finally answered.

  Elliot nodded, electing against his better judgment, to go, but understanding at the same time that deep inside him there was a tiny flame that ratcheted up a notch. Who could they be talking about? What could have happened to cause them to wake him in the middle of the night and start throwing the names around that they had? Whatever it was had to be something important, and as he threw on a pair of Levis, a pullover shirt, and Adidas, he couldn’t help but feel a rush of exhilaration. “Where was the phone booth?” he wondered because just then he was beginning to feel a lot like Clark Kent changing into Superman or at least someone far different from skinny, brainy Elliot Litner, and in the end, if only secretly, he knew that was just fine with him.

  Elliot left his apartment. Parked directly in front of the building was a black Lincoln Town Car, engine running, waiting for him.

  “I’ll sit in the front,” the large man muttered. “You get in the back with them.”

  Elliot didn’t ask his name or anyone else’s. That was part of the game, but the man who’d done the talking volunteered his was Lou “Cos” Coscarelli. Silently Elliot walked to the back of the car as one of the two greasers opened the door and the other got in from the street side sandwiching him between them.

  The car doors had barely slammed shut when the guy to his right took something that looked like a black scarf out of his pocket and turned to him.

  “Hey! Wha-wha-what is this about?” Elliot asked, looking and sounding a lot more like Woody Allen than either Clark Kent or the man of steel.

  “It’s a hood you got to wear,” Lou explained half turning to him. “You got to have that on for your own protection.”

  “You’re joking?”

  “No, I ain’t joking. But don’t worry, Doc. We like you, or we wouldn’t be here. Now put on the hood!”

  He nodded to the greaser who handed the black hood to Elliot so he could put it on himself.

  The ride was quiet, though occasionally Lou would speak Sicilian to the two men in the back who sat in stoic silence. It was then that Elliot realized they spoke no English at all and had probably been taken right off the boat.

  Finally the Lincoln pulled into what seemed to be a driveway. “Okay, we’re here,” Lou confirmed, and with car doors opening and slamming shut, Elliot was led up a short walkway. “You keep that on, Doc,” Lou said, referring to the hood, “until I say you can take it off, got it?”

  Elliot nodded, inhaling the salty early-morning mist of what could only be Sheepshead Bay. They were on Ocean Avenue in one of those row houses that lined the street directly opposite the Bay, he was thinking. The front door was opened by an elderly Italian woman, then closed behind them, the sound of her concerned voice speaking whispered Sicilian filling his ears.

  “You can take that off now,” said Lou, helping him remove the hood, and though Elliot thought most any light now would be blinding, it surprised him that his eyes barely had to adjust so dimly lit was this home.

  “Follow me, please,” the woman, who looked both kind and maternal, said in a soft voice, leading the entourage into a small, cluttered living room.

  The walls were covered with paintings done in dark oils. The room itself was crammed with heavy, antiquated furniture. A brick fireplace was lined with photographs on the mantel of the same man at various stages of his life and career: a family portrait with his wife, the woman who’d accompanied them, two sons, a daughter, and him, a thin, sly-looking man with a large hawk nose and keen, crafty brown eyes. Others pictured him in the company of what seemed to be powerful men dressed in old-fashioned, double-breasted suits with wide lapels, some wearing hats with black bands tilted forward, and camel-hair topcoats, probably taken in the late 1930s or early 1940s.

  Elliot’s eyes fell upon the man pictured in these photos, now in his seventies, lying on a couch holding his abdomen in obvious misery. His wife stood over him shaking her head with worry. As Elliot approached, he waved her off, and she left the room entirely. This was Carlo Gambino, capo di tutti capi, the boss of Mafia bosses and most powerful criminal in America.

  If Elliot was stunned for the moment, his healing instincts took over almost immediately. “It’s your abdomen, isn’t it? Your stomach?”

  The old man nodded.

  “Let me see,” he said moving Gambino’s hand aside and loosening his pajama bottoms.

  The moment he touched the Mafia boss, Elliot could feel the air in the room electrify as a floo
d of urgent-sounding Sicilian cascaded back and forth between those in the room who were watching.

  “Hey!” he said turning. “I’ve got to examine him, don’t I?”

  “All right, all right,” Lou mitigated, “do what you need to, but let me know along the way, capesci?”

  Elliot didn’t answer, but instead explored the old man’s abdominal region. His stomach was swollen. His aorta was pulsating, and there was tenderness in the mid to lower abdomen. He could feel his bladder. All in all, Elliot realized this man was in serious trouble, and maybe so was he. He reached into his medical bag and pulled out a pair of latex gloves. “I’ve got to do a rectal,” he told the men behind him.

  Lou looked at him suspiciously. “What are you talkin’ about, a rectal?”

  Elliot gestured with his index finger moving it into his closed palm. “I have to … feel inside his rectum.”

  Lou’s eyes bulged. He turned to his cohorts, spoke in staccato Sicilian, and that’s when the floodgates opened, as each man reacted, one making an angry move toward Elliot, restrained by Lou, his English-speaking interpreter.

  “Now let me get this straight, Doc. You want to stick your finger up the boss’ ass, is that it? ’Cause if that’s it, there ain’t no fucking way I’m gonna let you do that!”

  “Look, Lou, I think your boss has what’s called an abdominal aortic aneurysm that may burst. If he does, he’s got to go to the hospital right now. I’ve got to catheterize him to take the urine out to relieve his pain and discomfort. If I don’t do those things very soon, he will die.”