by Ron Felber
Enormous pressure was applied by the district attorney’s office, but Piecyk refused to testify claiming he’d received telephone threats on his life and that the brakes on his truck had been intentionally severed by Gotti’s people. When Sgt. Anthony Falco of the Queens prosecutors’ office reminded his star witness that he had no choice but to testify or be imprisoned for contempt, Piecyk made a remarkable turnabout. “I’m not going to testify against Mr. Gotti,” he told him. “I’m going as a witness against the government’s case on his behalf.” This move wouldn’t work, either, Falco counseled Piecyk, because in either the first or the second testimony, both given under oath, he would have perjured himself, a crime that would also earn him multiple years in prison.
When Gotti’s case did come to trial, a contrast in styles could never have been so evident. Piecyk, who failed to appear at the Queens’ courthouse having admitted himself to a local hospital for elective shoulder surgery, was arrested and brought before the jury as a material witness. Having spent the previous night in Falco’s office crying his eyes out, Piecyk showed up with arm in a sling, wearing dark sunglasses, and chewing his fingernails. Gotti, on the other hand, with former championship wrestler and one-time Brooklyn District Attorneys’ Office superstar Bruce Cutler at his side, sat behind the defense table as nonchalant and voluble as a man watching “Monday Night Football” on TV in his living room.
Tensions were high. Already the subject of media interest, John Gotti was photogenic, even handsome, some would say, but more, tanned and dressed better than most Fortune 500 CEOs, Teflon Don was as charismatic as any movie star. From the first clapping of the gavel, the packed courtroom was abuzz with speculation about what would happen in this the first of many facedowns to come between John “Johnny Boy” Gotti and the federal government of the United States.
“Mr. Piecyk, on September 11, 1984, you were punched and kicked and then robbed in Maspeth, Queens. I ask you to look around the courtroom,” said Asst. District Attorney Kirke Bartley, gesturing around him. “Do you see the men who did this to you here today?”
“I don’t see them,” Piecyk answered looking down at his lap.
“You don’t see them here now?”
Piecyk cast a cursory glance around the room, his eyes falling if only for an instant on Gotti, whose lips were curled upward in a small, contemptuous smile that would become his media trademark. “I do not.”
Bartley stared at his star witness, stunned. Could Piecyk actually be risking his freedom by perjuring himself in front of judge, jury, and more media than a Queens courtroom had ever seen? Bartley began making very specific inquiries relating to the assault itself in the hopes of untying Piecyk’s extremely knotted tongue: questions about the location, the blows that he endured, and what type of clothes his assailants may have been wearing.
“To be perfectly honest, I don’t remember anything about the assault at all…. I remember that I was slapped, but I don’t know by who…. I have no recollection of who may have slapped me, what they looked like, or even how they were dressed,” Piecyk finally blurted back to the exasperated prosecutor.
When the not guilty verdict was announced, Gotti stood up, hugged Bruce Cutler, received hearty handshakes from the dozens of associates, paparazzi, and well-wishers in attendance, then left the courtroom for a massive celebration in Ozone Park. The headline of the New York Post probably said it as well as anyone could with the three-inch high, front-page headline, I FORGOTTI!
Over the next three months, John Gotti, stung by Ruggiero’s heroin charges as well as Castellano’s indictments, would worry about listening devices planted at his Bergin headquarters, the possibility of an FBI rat in the family, and fatal retribution from Castellano over Angelo’s stubborn refusal to turn over government surveillance tapes to him. Yet, no matter how low-key Gotti tried to be, at heart he remained the same John Gotti who admired the taciturn Neil Dellacroce, but remained thoroughly enamored of the high-riding, gangster-brute, Al Capone, born in another age and predominant in another time.
On December 9, 1984, when his daughter, Vicki, married Carmine Agnello, twenty-four, proprietor of Gambino-operated Jamaica Auto Salvage, it was not just a wedding. It was a gala bash with more than 1,000 guests in attendance, many of them the nation’s most notorious mobsters, with entertainment provided by Jay Black and the Americans, singer Connie Francis, comedians George Kirby, Pat Cooper, and “Professor” Irwin Corey.
Never to be left out when it came to business or social events with so many choice Mafia targets prominent, FBI surveillance teams observed every transaction from vans parked near the entrances and exits of the Marina Del Ray reception hall in the Bronx that night. Elliot’s buddy, Frank Silvio, who had a way of being anywhere that seemed like it might be fun, later surmised that within the Gambino’s inner circle, this was the moment that high school dropout and former JFK Airport hijacker John Gotti truly arrived as leader of the family. With Castellano under a raft of weighty indictments and just about to get slammed again, there were at least thirty tables occupied only by men, Silvio told Elliot, each of whom took turns paying their personal respects to the father of the bride.
It was almost three months later, on the night of February 26, 1985, that Elliot had the shock of his life while watching local New York reporter John Miller broadcasting the news on NBC. Complete with footage of Paul Castellano being hauled from his Todt Hill estate in handcuffs by a cadre of FBI, while Miller did a voice-over, Elliot saw the first beam in the building that was his life and career come crashing down.
“A Federal racketeering indictment charged nine men yesterday with participating in a commission that governs the five organized crime families in New York City. The fifteen-count indictment said the commission regulated a wide range of illegal activities that included narcotics trafficking, loansharking, gambling, labor racketeering, and extortion against construction companies …”
“Hanna! Hanna, come here now! You’ve got to see this!” Elliot called out, pressing up the volume on the remote as she rushed in from the kitchen.
“What? What is it?”
“Rudolph Giuliani, the United States attorney in Manhattan, conducted a news conference in the federal office building earlier today,” the reporter continued as the picture shifted to background footage of Giuliani standing before a flip chart that diagrammed the Commission’s structure. “This case, undertaken by the federal government under newly expanded RICO statutes, charges more Mafia bosses in one indictment than ever before. Paul Castellano, boss of the Gambino Family; Anthony Salerno, boss of the Genovese Family; Gennaro Langella, boss of the Columbo Family; Anthony Corallo, boss of the Lucchese Family; and Philip Rastelli, boss of the Bonanno Family …”
Hanna started to say something, but Elliot interrupted.
“Quiet! For a minute! Just listen!”
“Besides racketeering and conspiracy, the indictment specifically cited extortion and bribery charges involving concrete pouring,” Miller continued, “charging that the commission established a club of certain construction contractors who poured concrete, controlling the allocation of construction jobs, designating which contractors could make successful bids for contracts, and obtaining payoffs from those concrete contractors …”
“Oh, my G-God!” Elliot moaned hitting the channel up button seeing Mary Martin of CBS reporting the story, then ABC’s Pablo Guzman, finally stopping at the airing of yet another “live” press conference held by Giuliani outside the federal office building earlier that day.
“Today we exposed the structure of organized crime on a scale never done before,” Rudy crowed to a gaggle of journalists including Daily News gangland reporter, Gene Mustain, New York City Newsday’s Murray Kempton, and CBS Radio’s Eileen Cornell. “This indictment proves beyond a doubt that the Commission was formed in 1931 by Salvatore Maranzano to regulate family relationships and that its current membership used murder as a regulatory tool—the contemporary group had also formed a club of c
ontractors and used extortion to gain control of all concrete jobs in New York City over $2 million.”
“Honey, what is it? What’s happening, Elliot?” Hanna asked, startled at his horror, as she sat down, putting her arm around his shoulder. “Why are you so upset?”
“Mr. Castellano has been arrested—and Mr. Salerno and Corallo,” he lamented, barely able to say their names.
“You know these men? They’re friends of yours?”
“Yes, I know them, as patients, but this is unbelievable! Those men are the ones you met here at the house that time and in Manhattan. Silvio, Sal, even Mr. Gotti … it seems too amazing to believe, but I’m going to tell you something that I probably shouldn’t, Hanna, but me, even I could get h-hurt by what’s going on with all of this …”
“Elliot,” she said, the color draining from her face, “I’m frightened. I’m frightened for you and for our family. I want to call my father. I want to tell him everything that’s gone on so that he can talk to Dr. Dak and Mr. Rosengarten. Elliot, these friendships, these associations, they could affect your career.”
“Don’t!” he said, taking hold of her wrist. “Don’t talk to anyone now, Hanna. We’ve got to think, to wait, until we know for sure what’s happening!” His mind raced through these associations like a Rolodex gone wild, each name he scanned involved with the family at least as deeply as himself.
“No,” Hanna finally snapped, tearing her arm away from him. “I’ve listened to you long enough. I don’t trust you anymore, Elliot. I don’t know who you are anymore, and sometimes wonder if I ever really did. I’m going to call my father. He knows people at the hospital who can make certain no one misunderstands and thinks you’re in some way involved in any of this.”
It was at that moment, as his loving wife of nearly ten years stared at him frightened, with thoughts of his best friend, Nicky Micelli’s murder and funeral, visions of himself and the quiet destruction of medical records, all-night sex and gambling sprees, his role as international courier, and his tenement-home upbringing in the Bronx, that Elliot suddenly realized the depth of his vulnerability as a doctor, husband, and human being. The thought of those things, at that particular moment, chilled him to his core. Whether he saw it that way or not, federal prosecutors hearing about Elliot Litner would contend that he was in the Mafia, as complicit as any associate or soldier. The thought of that, and all that went with it, terrified him.
24
THE CONCRETE CLUB
“So, I guess you two Boy Scouts disapprove of me and what I do. That’s what it’s all about, ain’t it? The federal government wakes up one day and decides it don’t like the way certain guineas earn their daily bread.”
On the night of February 25, 1984, when two FBI agents named Kurins and O’Brien showed up at Big Paulie’s estate on Staten Island, the hulking grandfather was speechless and hadn’t the slightest idea what the RICO conspiracy charges against him meant. Silently, wearing a bathrobe and slippers, he led them through his home to the kitchen, where his doctor sat with Gloria Olarte as she was preparing a roast beef dinner.
“Do you mind if I change into a suit?” Castellano asked the agents, glancing out of the estate’s enormous bay windows where media people were already gathering with video cameras and television crews were setting up for live coverage of the arrest.
“No problem,” Kurins responded.
Moments later, as the agents waited in the foyer, Nina Castellano, the godfather’s wife of fifty-two years, entered the house along with daughter Connie and her husband, who was holding their one-year-old baby. When Castellano heard the commotion, he reappeared dressed resplendently in a double-breasted blue suit with a striking red tie and Italian black leather, slip-on shoes. He greeted his family, kissed his granddaughter, and watched stoically as his wife, mistress, and daughter cried.
“I think we should go now, Mr. Castellano,” suggested O’Brien.
Castellano nodded. The FBI agents handcuffed him as his family looked on, then escorted him out the front door to the flash of cameras and the badgering questions of dozens of newspaper and television reporters who sought to shove microphones in their direction. Though it was already dark, it appeared like daytime at Todt Hill such was the degree of illumination given off by television camera crews trying to capture this moment for the late evening news and posterity.
“Who was it got me?” Castellano asked the two agents as they led him to a team of others waiting to transport him. “Giuliani? Was it Giuliani got me?”
“Yeah, it was Rudy who got the indictment,” Kurins answered.
“Well, if you got to get fucked, at least let it be by another paisan, huh?”
The two agents said nothing as Paul Castellano entered the car, one agent on each side of him. “So, I guess you two Boy Scouts disapprove of me and what I do. That’s what this is all about, ain’t it? The federal government wakes up one day and decides it don’t like the way certain guineas earn their daily bread. Okay, fair enough. But don’t you two guys ever think that I’m wrong and you’re right because it just ain’t that fucking simple, and that’s the part that burns my ass. Come on. We’re not fucking children, are we? Your laws are, how can I say it, a convenience. A convenience when you guys need to fuck a guy like me. A convenience for your bosses when they decide to make some money for themselves and just look the other way.”
Castellano, flanked by attorney James LaRossa and “Fat Tony” Salerno’s attorney, Roy Cohn, sat through a two-and-one-half-hour hearing after which underbosses arrested that night were released on $1-million bail and bosses on $2 million each. For Castellano, that made a total of $4 million in bail posted to preserve his freedom, a number that caused pause among other family members including John Gotti and rapidly rising Bergin crew member, hit man Sammy Gravano.
Big Paulie’s support among the family, especially Dellacroce’s faction, never strong, was now further eroding with suspicions that facing lifetime imprisonment and perhaps the death penalty for multiple murders committed by the DeMeo crew, he might make a deal with federal prosecutors and turn state’s evidence. As critical, from Gotti’s side, was the fact that a mortally wounded godfather might be even more dangerous to him than a stable one in that Ruggiero never had turned over the tapes Castellano had demanded after numerous threats. Further, fully understanding the consequences of narcotics trafficking and the longstanding history of its ban by the Commission, Big Paulie could have Angelo, Gene, the Teflon Don, and even Neil Dellacroce whacked with a simple phone call. “Look at what he did to DeMeo, that cocksucker,” one can imagine Gotti arguing to future underboss Sammy Gravano. “He orders Roy to push a button on his slime-bucket son-in-law, then has him iced three fucking months later. Believe me, paisan, it’s fucking Machiavelli with this fucking cazu every fucking step of the way!”
Soon afterward, motivated on multiple levels, John Gotti began hatching a plot. According to Litner and Gambino Family members who would talk about it years after the event, Castellano had severely underestimated Gotti’s savvy and ruthlessness as a blue-collar, street guy and strategist. In a meeting Paul called after his release on bond for his two pending federal cases, Gotti was summoned to Todt Hill where the godfather sought to placate him with an “if I go to prison” scenario that went something like this.
First, Castellano would still run the family from prison. Second, understanding that Neil Dellacroce was dying from cancer, a triumvirate would be formed composed of Carlo Gambino’s son, Tommy, Castellano’s longtime associate, Tommy Bilotti and, finally himself, John Gotti, who would take over the faction of the family formerly controlled by Dellacroce. When Dellacroce died, Bilotti would be named underboss.
This seemed a remarkable turnaround for Gotti, who played the role of flattered underling. So remarkable, in fact, that he didn’t buy it. Gotti knew there existed no example in the world of La Cosa Nostra where three men ever wielded equal shares of power for very long. Always, one was the genuine boss just waitin
g for the appropriate moment to assassinate his counterparts and take control of the family. Gotti concocted his plan with the knowledge that Castellano loyalists like Frank DeCiccio and Jimmy Failla were having their doubts about Paul, and even members of the Commission had quietly put out feelers among their troops about their growing dissatisfaction.
Out of respect for Dellacroce, Gotti would not kill his godfather until his mentor was finally taken from this world by cancer. Prior to that time, however, Gotti would lure DeCiccio and Failla to his side and put together a hit team made up of his best and most trusted soldiers called the Fist of Five because their secret needed to be held that tightly—Sammy Gravano, John Carneglia, Eddie Lino, Salvatore Scala, Vinnie Artuso—along with backup gunmen Anthony “Tony Roach” Rampino, Iggy Alogna, Joe Watts, and Angelo Ruggiero all would be recruited for an assassination plot so daring that mob historians would have to reach back to the days of Al Capone and the St. Valentine’s Day Massacre to find its equal.
The following year, 1985, was probably the most devastating twelve months in the history of La Cosa Nostra and easily the most gut-wrenching of Elliot Litner’s life. In Cleveland, Chicago, Milwaukee, and Kansas City, family bosses were convicted and given lengthy sentences for conspiring to skim vast sums of cash from the Las Vegas casinos that they controlled through the use of teamster pension funds. In Boston, the hierarchy of the Patriarca Family was found guilty of multiple RICO counts ranging from loansharking to murder. In Philadelphia, family boss Nicky Scarfo, target of an all-out federal RICO assault, was sentenced to life in prison.