by Ron Felber
Suddenly Elliot could feel the heat of Rosengarten’s eyes as they honed in on him. “Well, of course, you’re right in saying that age, excessive weight, and the fact that he’s a heavy smoker are all negative f-factors, but Mr. Rosengarten, umm, Al, the mortality rate even among patients over sixty-five is low, maybe 1 percent to 3 percent on the outside.”
“Exactly! One percent, 3 percent, who’s counting? Point is, there’s risk entailed in any of these procedures. It’s a fact that can’t be denied by you, me, even Mr. Castellano. Each of us understands that life doesn’t give a pass to every sick man that lies down on the operating table, even when he’s in front of a surgeon as skillful as you.
There was a pause and then Rosengarten continued, “After all, you’ve been a friend since you were a small kid back there in the Bronx when Sal Micelli took you under his wing and helped pay for your education. Favors like that? These are the bridges that lead us from one life and into another, don’t you agree?”
“Sure, y-yes,” Elliot stammered, understanding more than he wanted to about the intended fate of Ralph Scopo. “I would never want to disappoint you, Mr. Castellano, or Sal Micelli.”
“Of course, we know that. Hell, even Dr. Dak brags about your loyalty to him and to the hospital,” Al confirmed, patting the back of Elliot’s hand again as he motioned for a waiter. “Bobby, why don’t you bring Dr. Litner and me two of your best New York strip steaks. One ‘rare’ like it’s still breathing. The other ‘well done.’ You know about these doctors with red meat. If it don’t taste like shoe leather, it’s got to be fucking bad for you. Heart disease,” Rosengarten added with a sense of irony that only Elliot could appreciate. “Thousands of people die from it every year.”
“Yes, th-that’s true, Mr. Rosengarten.”
“Fine. You just remember that, Elliot. Oh, and one last thing. Your father-in-law, Mort? He’s gone to Simon with some wild notions about you and some kind of relationship with organized crime types. Mort’s getting up in years and has been depressed since Hanna’s mom passed away. We all understand that. Still, that kind of talk is very unwise, Elliot, particularly during these trying times, and so I’ve spoken with him indirectly about it.”
“Spoken with him?”
“A couple of our associates went over to Prospect Park to visit him last night, just as a kind of reminder. I’m sure you can understand our sensitivities about the subject.”
26
“NEW GODFATHER HEADING GAMBINO GANG”
“Don’t feel like the Lone Ranger. The pressure is on everyone. There’s a good chance this city is gonna blow sky high before it’s over.”
It’s odd how things go sometimes.
For months, even years, events can pass by so visible to a man that he can almost reach out, grab them in space like a hand of playing cards floating in front of him, then arrange them with great deliberation for the best possible result. Then there are the other times when the shit hits the fan and the episodes that make up a person’s life come hurtling at him so fast and furiously, it’s like he’s in some kind of perverse Star Wars sequel, having lost anything even vaguely approaching control, and he knows that God, the Devil, or maybe just Life in General is about to give him the butt-fucking of his life.
Well, that’s how events were shaping up for Elliot. Later that night, after having been with Al Rosengarten, he stopped by Elaine’s to talk to Frank Silvio. It was not sanctuary he found, but more chaos, more adrenalin-jolting vulnerability.
“Hey, you look like shit” were Silvio’s first words upon seeing him. It was already after eleven o’clock, it had been a long day, and it showed, but Elliot’s dapper and inexhaustible friend seemed immune to all of that. “Look here‚” Silvio said pointing to a glass of Diet Coke effervescing on the bar top, “I ordered your favorite while I was waiting.”
“Thanks‚” Elliot muttered. “You have no idea the pressure I’m under.”
Frank sipped Glenlivet from a glass. “Maybe I do, but don’t feel like the Lone Ranger. The pressure’s on everyone, and there’s a good chance this city—the ‘Volcano’ as Joe Bonanno used to call it—is gonna blow sky high before it’s over.”
“The trials?”
“You don’t keep your ear to the ground much, do you, Dottore? Neil Dellacroce died two days ago over at Mary Immaculate Hospital in Queens.” Silvio chuckled, amazed himself at the machinations of this world of theirs. “Registered under the name Rev. Timothy O’Neill. That’s the alias he used in the old days as a gunman for Albert Anastasia to gain the confidence of the cafones he was about to ice. Some sense of humor, huh? No wonder Johnny Gotti loved him so much.”
“I read about Dellacroce. It was all over the papers just like these Nazi show trials going on all over Manhattan. Didn’t I hear that Gotti was on his way to court along with Dellacroce on RICO charges on the day he died?”
“That’s right, but now let me tell you something shocking. Big Paulie didn’t show up for Neil’s wake. His own goddamned underboss! I was there, Elliot. Gotti, who kept vigil at his bedside through the entire deathwatch, was pissed at the boss like I’ve never seen. Even capos, guys in Castellano’s camp like Frank DeCiccio and Jimmy Brown Failla, didn’t like it, and every one of them was fallin’ all over John. Now, word is that Big Paulie is going to snub Gotti by naming Tommy Bilotti as his new number two.
“Now there’s a mistake even Stevie Wonder could see because whether Paul likes it or not, John controls what Dellacroce has on the street, something like ten out of the twenty-three Gambino crews.” He paused for a moment to let his words sink in. “Everyone knows there’s been two factions within the family since Carlo passed. Now, with Dellacroce out of the way and Castellano up on three separate indictments, I tell you, Dottore, either John Gotti or Big Paulie is going.”
“I’m sorry, Frank,” Elliot moaned, covering his ears with the palms of his hands. “I didn’t come here to listen to all of this Mafia shit. I’ve already got a migraine that f-feels like my head is being used for Yankee batting practice. Over dinner tonight, Al Rosengarten tells me Ralph Scopo is coming in for bypass surgery, heavily suggesting a not-so-subtle failure in the surgery. On top of that, Hanna has somehow gotten my father-in-law involved. Now you’re telling me the Gambinos are on the verge of civil war! Jesus Christ, do I need this? Do I fucking need any of this aggravation at all?”
“Scopo, I should have known,” Silvio calculated as much for himself as for Elliot. “It doesn’t take much to see what’s going on. In fact, it was Simon who asked me to take a look at his charts at Beekman.”
“Dr. Dak?”
“Yeah, why?”
“It shouldn’t surprise me, I suppose, but Rosengarten brought up his name more than once, and though I know he’s on the board and contributes a shitload of Gambino money to the hospital, sometimes I just have to wonder, ‘Is there anybody or anything that isn’t mobbed up in this city?”’
Silvio lifted his glass in a kind of mock toast. “Until today I might have said you, but I have a feeling that by week’s end, all of that will have changed.”
Much of what Silvio had told him that night at Elaine’s was on the money, but later when information about the ongoing Gambino disputes came out, as usual, there turned out to be more to the story than Elliot knew at the time. The extent of the rivalry that had developed between Gotti and Big Paulie, for example, was much deeper than even Silvio had imagined. Castellano, who’d been petitioning Angelo Ruggiero for copies of his trial tapes through Dellacroce for months, had obtained transcripts legally in a pretrial motion connected to his own case. In them, he’d read about Angelo’s drug involvement in international heroin trafficking as well as the involvement of other Bergin crew members, right under Gotti’s nose, and probably with his tacit participation. How else was the Bergin capo going to pay for his enormous gambling debts, averaging as high as $80,000 per month? Certainly not through his formal Gambino interests, the arithmetic of his own cut as godfather simpl
y didn’t add up. What’s more, in those same transcripts he’d read about Ruggiero’s most flagrant transgression against La Cosa Nostra, specific and unambiguous references to the Commission, tied directly to Castellano’s name and the names of other family leaders!
Under the rules, Castellano had all the evidence he needed, but beset by his own legal difficulties, did not summon the will to act against the Bergin crew by ordering hits on Gotti, Ruggiero, and the others. Instead, Big Paulie, the spoiled Sicilian businessman, decided to forego violence in the short run for “neutralization,” or a series of family demotions for members of the Bergin crew, while Gotti, the razor-edged Neapolitan street thug, plotted the assassination of his own godfather one block at a time.
That night when Elliot returned home, the culmination of his worst fears was waiting for him. Hanna met him at the door in tears.
“Elliot, my father phoned. He sounded very upset and said he needed to speak with you, face to face, no matter what time you came home.”
“Jesus, Hanna, it’s after midnight!”
“He said he had to see you,” she insisted. “He said it was important. I don’t know anything more than that, but then again, I rarely do.”
By the time Elliot got to Mort Shapiro’s place, it was two o’clock in the morning. The old man was waiting for him, nursing a glass of Glenlivet straight up. He motioned Elliot to a chair in the living room of his brownstone, then took a sip of Scotch, his bloodshot eyes peering above the glass. He looked tired and depressed. It was only then that Elliot noticed the red-and-blue blotch around his right cheek and eye.
“Look at me,” Shapiro said. “Do I look like I’ve got my life together? No, I don’t. My wife is dead, and I’ve been drinking myself numb every night for the past five years. But I harm no one, except maybe myself. You? You’re different. Walking around like some kind of big-shot genius, pulling the wool over everyone’s eyes. Buying fancy cars and fancy gold wrist-watches and fancy thousand-dollar suits, thinking those things are going to make you happy. You think you’re leading some kind of double life when all you’re really doing is hiding because you’re scared of failing, terrified that somehow a low-class Jew like you doesn’t really deserve the success you’ve gotten. Ever thought about that, Dr. Litner, or should I say ‘Dottore’? Hell, you’ve squandered your talents, destroyed our family, and now you’re putting the life of your wife and children in harm’s way!”
Elliot rose, walking toward him. “You’re hurt, Mort …”
Shapiro slapped away Elliot’s hand as he tried to touch his bruised face. “It was two of your friends, your soldiers or associates, or whatever the hell they’re called, did this to me. It seems I overstepped my bounds trying to protect my daughter, daring to confide in my friend of thirty years, Simon Dak!” He looked at Elliot scornfully. “They’ve really got you this time, don’t they boy? ‘In for a dime, in for a dollar‚’ isn’t that what they say? And now they want you to kill Scopo. Kill or be killed. I want you out of my home and out of my daughter’s life‚” snarled the man who’d put his own life at risk both as a civilian in South America and as a front-line surgeon during World War II where he’d won a Silver Star medal for bravery. “I trusted you, Elliot. I trusted you with my only child and grandchildren. I believed in you, in your integrity and goodness, but I was wrong and now it’s too late for me to do a damn thing about it.”
Elliot left Mort Shapiro’s home sick with worry and despair. What the hell did it mean? First, Al Rosengarten a Mount Sinai board member, tries to strong-arm him into murdering a government witness about to come under his care. Next, Mort, an innocent who shared a deep-rooted friendship with both Rosengarten and Simon Dak, is roughed up and threatened for daring to utter a word about his son-in-law’s affiliations within the family. Both actions would have been incomprehensible to Elliot at any other time. Could Scopo’s assassination be that vital to the New York godfathers’ survival?
This was the question caroming through Elliot’s mind that morning as he returned by cab to his New York apartment. Within hours, however, he would uncover the motives behind these underworld tremors because nearly simultaneous with those events, Elliot learned that Paul Castellano had summoned his caporégimes and announced that he was going to close the Ravenite and assign John Gotti and his crew to other decimas, in effect, demoting Gotti to soldier and eliminating the Bergin crew altogether. Next, just as Silvio had predicted, Castellano added another provocation by appointing Tommy Bilotti as his underboss while making it known to anyone that mattered that he was shelving his earlier idea of a triumvirate of acting bosses that had included Gotti.
While Castellano’s instincts, blunted by his cushy ride to the top, were failing him, those of the New York tabloids were set in high gear as they observed the roiling broth of politics and violence that was stirring.
As early as March 1985, the New York Daily News had run the headline, NEW GODFATHER REPORTED HEADING GAMBINO GANG. As poignant was the acute interest the media was showing Gotti. Now that his mentor Neil Dellacroce was dead, Gotti was the lead defendant in a RICO case based on criminal conspiracy charges for crimes dating back to his hijacking days and three murders including that of Jimmy McBratney for which he’d already served jail time. With his name now at the top of all the court papers, most assumed that Barry Slotnick, a pro when it came to defending against RICO, would be his choice as lead attorney. But based on a deep friendship that was developing between him and one of the family’s lesser mouthpieces, Gotti chose another dynamo out of Brooklyn, like himself, Bruce Cutler.
A second significant relationship that had developed over the recent years within the Gotti decima was that of rising star Sammy Gravano. Sammy “the Bull,” so named because of his awesome strength, wasn’t lured into the Mafia, but willingly pursued it. In 1968, he befriended Tommy Spero, whose Uncle Shorty was associated with the Columbo Family. Though he worked construction with his brother-in-law by day, through Spero, his mob career began as a burglar, but soon graduated to murder when Shorty tapped him on the shoulder for a contract to kill a criminal who’d supposedly double-crossed him. Sammy shot and killed the guy, then found out the motive was simply that a friend of Shorty’s wanted to fuck the victim’s wife, a task that would prove easier for him if she was made a widow. That was no problem for Sammy because as, capos in both the Columbo and Gambino organizations would learn, the Bull was good at two things: muscling percentages out of the New York construction trade and murdering men, known and unknown to him, with absolutely no sense of remorse.
By 1985, with Sammy switched over to the Gambino Family, Gotti and Gravano’s destinies were inexorably linked when Neil Dellacroce saved the Bull’s life by taking him into the Bergin crew after Sammy committed the cardinal offense of threatening to kill another made man. Despite the fact that both were multiple murderers who relished violence over negotiation, Gotti was from a different world than Gravano, who specialized in construction shakedowns, as opposed to hijackings, gambling, and loansharking. So the diversification and earning power Sammy brought to the Bergin were welcomed.
Gravano held interests in discos, nightclubs, and a popular Bensonhurst bar-restaurant called Tali’s. But if Sammy liked the entertainment industry, construction was where he really contributed to the Gambino borgata. In addition to hidden interests in plumbing and dry-wall companies, a hardwood flooring firm, and a painting company, with bids fixed through Lucchese Family contacts, Sammy held ownership in Gem Steel and Marathon Concrete. All these companies were deeply involved in construction projects throughout New York. It was only natural that around that time, the Bull would parlay Commission concrete-pouring kickback arrangements brokered through Ralph Scopo into a deal that was consummated by a Commission vote allowing Marathon to enter the club.
Once a member of the Bergin crew, Gravano and Gotti formed something like a mutual admiration society. Gravano, a cold-blooded murderer personally responsible for dozens of hits, admired Gotti’s charisma a
nd sense of style. Gotti, the ruthless, Machiavellian leader, had early along seen Gravano as savvy and business minded enough to be competition for him in his climb to the top. Gotti decided to co-opt those talents keeping Sammy out of play while reaping the financial benefits of his work. All of those capabilities Gotti would be calling upon in the days to come as he used Gravano as a messenger gathering support among the Fist of Five and others for his plot to kill Castellano.
First on his agenda was to get Frank DeCiccio and Jimmy Failla on his side. Using Sammy as the go-between, Gotti convinced both that they were never going to make any real money under the boot of the greedy Castellano and his “scumbag” underboss Tommy Bilotti. They agreed. Next, Gotti put feelers out to leaders of the other families. He used Angelo Ruggiero to meet with Gerry Lang of the Columbos who wondered, “What’s John waiting for, his own funeral?” Then, he met with Joe Messino, underboss of the Bonannos, who Gotti bragged he had “in his hip pocket.” As for Tony “Ducks” Corallo of the Luchesse Family, Sammy was pleased to report back that Castellano was hated by him; more, that Corallo, who’d been secretly recorded talking conspiratorially about Big Paulie, was concerned himself about getting clipped by the Todt Hill godfather, an additional incentive for wanting him out of the way.
The only family boss who would be opposed to a Castellano hit, the plotters of Fist concluded, was Vincent “the Chin” Gigante, aging godfather of the Genovese Family. It was suspected that Gigante, upset at rampant narcotics trafficking within the Bergin crew, had already arranged for a shot to be taken at Gotti outside his Ozone Park headquarters. Beyond that, the Chin was a Sicilian traditionalist who hated the instinctive brashness of the Neapolitans that Gotti represented. He and Big Paulie went back to the founding of the Gambinos and were joined at the hip by loyalty to Carlo Gambino. All agreed that Gigante would never go along with a tradition-shattering plan akin in his eyes to something as unforgivable as patricide. Nevertheless, even someone as powerful at that time as the Chin was not going to stop John Gotti. In characteristic fashion, it was Gotti who puffed out his chest in front of the others and proclaimed, “Fuck the Chin! We’re going after Big Paulie. If it comes down to it, we go to war with the Genovese Family, too!”