by Ron Felber
“So now they get to the Ravenite, and the place is crawling with Gotti guys. Maybe twenty or twenty-five of them standing outside, first, because it’s a beautiful spring day, and, second, a guy, probably one of Gigante’s, took a shot at John two days earlier, but missed. He was tracked down in about twenty minutes, shot in the head four times, then dumped inside the Chin’s favorite candy store, to deliver a message. In other words, everybody at the Ravenite is ready for war when this stupid bastard comes passing by like he’s driving through Beverly Hills with a ‘Home of the Stars’ map on his lap, this redhead beside him looking like his Aunt Emily from fucking Des Moines!
‘So the guys, who know Giuliani and his gray sedan on sight, stand up and take notice as he slows down. ‘Who are those men?’ the broad asks like the awe-struck underworld tourist that she is. ‘These guys,’ Giuliani tells her in his best lispy-wispy prosecutor’s voice, ‘are what we call made men, professional criminals and part of the Mafia. I know. I can look at them and tell. I can just feel it.’ ‘Aren’t you afraid?’ the author squeals. ‘No, no, it’s just part of the job, you know.’
“Only just as he says that, the pack of guys move to the side and there, sitting in a chair outside, puffing on a cigar, in a brand new Palm Beach suit, tanning himself, is Johnny Gotti. Well, Rudy’s face turns white and bloodless and he’s about to shit in his pants when their eyes meet. Then, Gotti’s mouth curls up in that contemptuous grin of his, he raises his hand, cocks his finger like a gun, then pulls the trigger just staring at Giuliani and his lady friend, mouthing the words, ‘fuck you!’”
Having observed both men, to Elliot it was obvious that a dangerous chemistry existed between Gotti and Giuliani so that as much as the ambitious prosecutor had Gotti’s number so, too, the Mafia chieftain had Giuliani’s. In his mind that spring afternoon, Gotti might have been thinking about the real Rudy whose father he knew had been more involved with the New York families than his own, who’d spent the better part of his life burnishing stories about Harold’s “straight-laced” and “moralistic” father-son talks with him. Sheehy’s article later appeared with a boldface, twenty-eight-pica header reading, RUDY GUILIANI DOES NOT CHEAT ON HIS OWN INNER CODE. Gotti must have been nauseated! More, just as Rudy had made it his business to analyze and study Gotti and Paul Castellano, John Gotti, who’d read The Prince and The Art of War at Carlo Gambino’s suggestion while in Lewisburg prison, had made it his business to study the mob’s implacable adversary, Rudy Giuliani.
Forever playing the high road, Gotti understood that Giuliani was a prosecutorial zealot that would stop at nothing to achieve his childhood goal of being the first Italian-American, Catholic president.
So much for Rudy’s “inner code.” But even the “tough guy” ginzaloon image that he swaggered around with in those days had been concocted as men like Gotti, who knew the real Giuliani, could attest. Gotti considered Rudy Giuliani a coward for dodging the draft. In June 1969 Rudy declared himself a conscientious objector. When that failed to keep him out of the military and he was reentered into the draft, he went running to Judge MacMahon, the by-the-book, law-and-order judge. McMahon used his clout with the local draft board to help Giuliani connive his way out of his 1A draft eligible classification.
Giuliani made himself out to be this great moralist, “Could he be a latter-day Savonarola, using temporal power to purge a sin-sodden city?” Gail Sheehy asked, in her article. Here was this big patriot and hero, but where was he when it came to the war and draft? “At least I had an excuse,” Gotti had once told Cohn when the subject of Giuliani came up. “I was in prison!”
20
TOUGH GUYS DON’T DANCE
“So go ahead, I’m a tough guy. Do what you need to do. Take my pants off. Give me a blow job if it makes the burning in my stomach go ’way.”
John Gotti was no saint when it came to the ladies. While Giuliani was making a splash with his new flame and working nonstop on assembling “enterprise evidence,” John, as capo of the Bergin crew, was raking in hundreds of thousands of dollars from JFK hijackings, loansharking, construction-contract rigging, and a subject few talked about, heroin deals arranged through Angelo Ruggiero’s younger brother, Salvatore.
The problem was Gotti was spending it just as fast with gambling losses of more than $200,000 in just the final two months of the 1982 football season and a relatively new vice, painting the town red with Shannon Grillo, Neil Dellacroce’s beautiful blonde daughter, and a host of other female fans including Lisa Gastineau, ex-wife of the former New York Jets’ defensive end.
Gotti’s tacit participation in his best friend’s international heroin operation weighed heavy on everyone involved including John’s brother, Gene, Angelo Ruggiero, and even Dellacroce, underboss to Castellano, all of whom understood that the penalty for active interest in the babania trade was death. Hearing rumblings about drug problems within his family, Castellano summoned Gotti and Dellacroce to his White House in April 1982 where he told them that two family members had sworn to him that Pete Tambone, a crew member of the Dellacroce Family, was trading heroin. More to the point, he was going to the Commission to obtain approval to kill the sixty-two-year-old grandfather because getting rid of Tambone would be “a lesson to everyone else in the family.” If you deal drugs, you pay for it with your life.
Castellano, both an astute businessman and godfather, was a man who possessed one quality above all others that was respected in mob circles, and that was fuberia, a bold slyness that allows people to understand that when you speak, you are saying more than the words that come from your mouth. For Gotti and Dellacroce, who knew that Ruggiero was distributing large quantities of high-grade Sicilian heroin into the midwestern United States and Canada that was netting nearly $1 million per month, this was the most serious kind of warning. While the words talked about “Little Petey” Tambone, the message was that he knew about Ruggiero’s operation, perhaps, even their own involvement.
As it turned out, Castellano’s petition for the execution of Tambone was stalled when in a Commission vote with only four voting families present, a deadlock ensued. The New York Mafia’s governing body agreed then to opt for a less severe punishment, and Pete Tambone was banned from the organization for life, a penalty Ruggiero later told Frank Silvio was “the same as getting whacked.” The pass on Tambone’s execution did little to relieve the anxiety that permeated Dellacroce and Gotti’s Bergin crew, however, and on May 6, 1982, just one month later, Salvatore Ruggiero, and his wife, Stephanie, were the only two passengers aboard a Lear jet flying from New York to Orlando that mysteriously crashed nose first into the Atlantic Ocean. Their unrecovered bodies were believed to have been torn apart on impact.
Soon after, with Angelo “Quack-Quack” Ruggiero singing and being recorded like an opera star for the New York FBI and Source BQ 11766-OC, Willie Boy Johnson, a federal indictment was handed down against Ruggiero, Gene Gotti, and eleven others. The charge was, not surprisingly, narcotics trafficking, but the proof to support the charges was a shocker: FBI tapes derived from bugs placed in the basement, den, kitchen, and dining room of Ruggiero’s Cedarhurst, Long Island, home.
The existence of those tapes had a chilling effect on Gotti and his Bergin crew and threw Big Paul Castellano into a rage. Since Ruggiero was a trusted member of Gotti’s crew, Dellacroce’s faction of the family, and by process of elimination, the godfather himself, there was no telling what damaging evidence had been collected regarding their entire enterprise in addition to Angelo’s drug ring. Castellano knew that as a defendant in a federal case, the law required that Ruggiero be given transcripts of his taped conversations, and fearing that he was mentioned in them, demanded that Angelo turn them over to his attorneys, James LaRossa and Roy Cohn, for evaluation. Coming at this from the other side of the street, Ruggiero knew that not only would those tapes incriminate him beyond salvation, but Gotti and Dellacroce along with him, and so he refused.
The dilemma was real for all co
ncerned. Not only had Dellacroce, Gotti, and Ruggiero been pushed by federal agents into a life-threatening conundrum, but Castellano, as boss, was left with a lot to think about. It was Dellacroce’s arm of the family that provided the muscle for the Gambino Family. Guys like DeMeo and, more recently, Gotti’s new pal, Sammy “the Bull” Gravano, would push a button on most anyone, as much for the fact that they were good soldiers as that they just didn’t mind killing people. Dellacroce had always been loyal and as underboss, had coattails that some of his best moneymakers had clung to for years. Add to that the fact that Ruggiero and Gotti had been together since the days of the Fulton-Rockaway Boys and you had the makings of an interfamily war that would see dozens die, millions of dollars lost, and media exposure at the worst possible juncture.
It was at around this time, with the fires of suspicion blazing between the family within the family and Giuliani’s RICO case fortified by new information gained from a bug placed in the Jaguar of Lucchese Family boss Anthony “Tony Ducks” Corallo, that Elliot received a call on his emergency pager to come to the Barbizon Plaza Hotel in Manhattan. It was two o’clock in the morning, but he was awake, hanging out with Silvio at Regine’s. He hopped a cab, then made his way into the hotel lobby.
The Barbizon Plaza’s security men faded into the woodwork, and one of John Gotti’s bodyguard/chauffeurs, Joe Corrozzo, walked up to him. Dressed in a suit and a dark gray overcoat, he extended his hand, seeming to know Elliot, though Elliot didn’t remember ever having met him. “Dr. Litner?” the bodyguard asked as he accepted the handshake. “Mr. Gotti’s upstairs. He’d like to see you.”
Elliot didn’t bother to respond. What did it matter? If John Gotti wanted to see him, he would go to Gotti’s room with no questions asked. Though Gotti, at the time, was not yet the household name that he would become after Time featured him on its cover, he was already treated with deference by family members who made it no secret that he was being groomed to become Dellacroce or even Castellano’s replacement. More, Gotti’s personality had evolved so that unlike the Gambinos, Gigantes, and Castellanos of the world, he had a penchant for the spotlight, hanging out with celebrities like actor Mickey Rourke and baseball star Rusty Staub at Club A, Elaine’s, Da Noi, and other midtown spots rather than his old-time haunts in Little Italy.
That much Elliot knew from Silvio. There was a definite aura that one felt when the name “John Gotti” was mentioned. What he didn’t know and could never have discerned until he physically examined him, was the Gordian knot Gotti’s recent life had become, the complications coming perhaps from Ruggiero’s foolishness, Dellacroce’s loyalty to him, and Castellano’s notions about what a boss could and could not accept.
Corrozzo brought Elliot to the mobster’s suite. Another of Gotti’s men opened the door. On seeing Corrozzo, he allowed them to enter.
“Mr. Gotti’s not feeling too well,” Corrozzo explained when they were inside, sounding as if he was the one in pain. “He’s in the back. Let me tell him you’re here.”
Elliot nodded, his eyes scanning the suite’s anteroom, plush and modern. There were the makings of martinis on the bar and two bottles of Dom Perignon Champagne already opened. Was this the aftermath of a party, Elliot wondered, or the last gasps of an all-night romp through Manhattan that had led here for a final nightcap?
“Mr. Gotti says you should go into the bedroom.”
Elliot followed the bodyguard, walking with him through the anteroom, into a living room, flanked by a long oak dining table with chairs for eight settings. When they came to the door of the master bedroom. Corrozzo motioned him to open it. Elliot was surprised to find an exhausted-looking John Gotti, his normally meticulously coiffed silver hair uncombed, sitting on a sofa watching a boxing match on television, his girlfriend, Shannon “Sandy” Grillo, sitting on his lap.
Gotti, dressed in the remnants of a tailor-made gray suit, with jacket and tie off, and white shirt unbuttoned down to his sternum, barely looked up from the TV screen where two middleweights were going at it. “Do I know you?”
“Y-yes, we’ve met before, but I don’t think you know me.”
“What the fuck is that supposed to mean?” Gotti asked, laughing at the inanity of Elliot’s remark, then grimacing.
“It means, that I’m an easy guy to forget,” Elliot answered, concerned, as he drifted toward the sofa. “Does it hurt you to laugh?”
“It hurts me to breathe!” Gotti moaned, holding his stomach as his gorgeous girlfriend gave Elliot the once-over.
“So who’s this, Johnny?” she asked as curious as she was suspicious. “He looks more like a kid who should be dissecting frogs than a doctor. Is it okay for him to be here? With us?”
“My name is Dr. Litner,” Elliot answered, already beginning his examination, at least visually. Gotti’s stomach, even beneath the shirt, looked distended. “Do you mind if I unbutton your shirt?”
Gotti nodded his assent. “My guy’s in Beijing. Fucking doctor thinks he’s Richard Nixon! Tommy Bilotti recommended you. You’re the guy treated Big Paulie, am I right? The kid Neil calls Il Dottore with the clinics and all that shit…. He told me about you.”
Elliot undid the remaining buttons of Gotti’s shirt, then hesitated.
“So go ahead. I’m a tough guy. Do what you need to do,” Gotti said, talking like a man who hadn’t slept in three days. “Take my pants off. Give me a fucking blow job if it makes the burning in my stomach go ’way.”
“How long have you been in pain like this?”
“Off and on, maybe a year,” he answered eyes still fixed on the TV. “Sandy, get the doctor a martini. Get me one, too …” Then, he leaped from the chair. “Oh, fuck!”
“Sorry?”
“Son of a bitch! Did you see that? He just knocked ’im out! This fucking guy Duran gets hit with a fucking two-by-four and smiles. Tonight I bet five dimes on the motherfucker, and he goes down with one fucking right over the top!” Gotti withered back into the sofa. “Can you believe this shit?”
“No.”
“What?”
“No, martini, but I’ll take a Diet Coke. And, n-no, I can’t believe that Hearns just knocked Duran out.”
“Sandy! Bring Il Dottore a Diet Coke,” Gotti called into the other room. Then he belched. “Fuck! Like I don’t have enough fucking problems, I’ve got what now? An ulcer? Stomach fucking cancer?”
Elliot felt his dilated abdomen. It was hard. “The pain, is it sudden and sharp, or dull and gnawing?”
“Sharp like a fucking knife.”
“Have you been vomiting?” Elliot asked without any trace of a stutter. “If you have, is there blood in it? Black blood that looks something like … coffee grounds?”
“Coffee grounds, huh?” Gotti repeated. Then he grinned in a way that said more than any words could. It was a tired, world-weary grin, so cynical and yet so well grounded that it was chilling. Like if you were torturing him, driving nails through his fingertips with a hammer, he’d still give you that same half-smile, lips slightly curled up, like he knew everything and had lived a thousand lives. “No, there ain’t no blood, but every morning it don’t feel normal if I don’t walk to the bathroom, throw water on my face, go to the commode, then puke my guts out before I brush my teeth.”
“What about your stool. Is it bloody? Black?”
“Sometime blood, yeah, but not much. Tell ya somethin’, Doc. Used to be my stomach was made outta fucking cast iron. Now, I eat a slice of pizza, drink a beer, and I got adjeda all fucking night. Don’t seem right does it? Beautiful broad like Sandy here,” he said taking the martini glass from her. “Nice fucking digs. But a goddamned stomach turns itself inside out right when I’m about to make love to her like Rudolph Valentino. So what do we do now, Dottore? What’s the fucking verdict?”
“You have what’s called a duodenal ulcer, not so uncommon, particularly for a man like you who’s very busy and has a lot of stress in his life. What have you been taking for it?”
&n
bsp; “Pepto-Bismol.”
“Nothing else?”
Gotti shook his head with certainty. “Not a fucking iota more.”
“Well, there’s nothing wrong with Pepto-Bismol, but I’m going to write you two prescriptions for what’s called triple therapy,” Elliot explained, scribbling the names of the drugs on a pad. “One is a strong antacid, bismuth subsalicylate. The other is Valium, a mild sedative. Together they’ll settle the digestive enzymes that have been attacking your stomach lining. Oh, and Mr. Gotti,” Elliot said watching as he sipped his martini, “for the next two weeks, you need to avoid food or drinks that might upset your stomach—alcohol, dairy products, spicy meals.”
Gotti held his glass up in a toast. “Salud!” he said as if to proclaim “Yes, I’m the toughest fucking guy in the world!” Then, Elliot put the two pieces of paper into Sandy Grillo’s waiting hand.
“You should get the prescriptions filled first thing tomorrow. If you run into any more problems or if the pain continues, you need to give me a call. You could have a gastric ulcer, in which case you’re going to need an upper G.I. series.”
“That all sounds fine, Dottore, except for one thing. Why wait to get these prescriptions? Joe!” Gotti called into the adjoining room. Within seconds, his bodyguard/chauffeur had materialized “Take these to one of our pharmacies. I want the medicine back here in an hour. Also,” he said taking five $100 bills and putting them into the palm of Corrozzo’s hand, “take Il Dottore with you. Drop him off anywhere he wants.”
Elliot left the suite as quietly as he’d arrived with Gotti sipping his martini on the sofa watching the postfight wrap-up, the adorable Sandy Grillo, wife of Gambino associate, Ernie Grillo, daughter of Castellano underboss Neil Dellacroce, sitting on his lap, giggling as he played with her breasts, now exposed from the black lace negligee that was hanging loose from her body.