See No Evil
Page 23
There was another reason why the Mafia, under the steerage of unsophisticated criminals like Joe Columbo, a small-time gambler, John Gotti, a hijacker, Sammy Gravano, a construction worker-murderer, could not survive in America, I concluded. If all you’re bringing to the table is an “enterprise,” think again, because America is the Ultimate Enterprise. The United States government came to the conclusion sometime during the early 1960s, as the CIA began to flex its muscles, that it didn’t need La Cosa Nostra any longer, viewed it as competition, and could use the Mafia to consolidate its power against a created “enemy.”
Assassinations, known as “wet jobs,” a euphemism for “liquidations within the CIA, could be done in-house. Narcotics trafficking, a multibillion-dollar industry, could be carried out clandestinely, the money used to support secret wars in South America, Southeast Asia, or the Middle East. Gambling, once the stock and trade of the Mafia, could be used as a hidden tax on American citizens, creating huge revenues to help finance state and local governments.
La Cosa Nostra, out in the open since the televised McClellan Subcommittee Hearings, had become a hobbyhorse for law enforcement. Street soldiers, capos, and even godfathers became easy prey for the insurance of government funding in lean times and an opportunity for the institutions of law enforcement to dig their tendrils deeper into citizens’ Fourth Amendment rights during good ones, thanks to the star status demanded by Americanized Mafiosi like John Gotti.
I got a taste of this that day when I left Bring’s Funeral Home in one of the twelve limousines that made up the caravan headed for Saint Peter and Paul Catholic Church. There were hundreds of people in attendance. Earlier the church had been swept by local police for bombs, and it was clear to me that in addition to the half-dozen television crews present, FBI agents were busy photographing immediate family members and those of us along with them. Since I would probably have to leave early to catch a plane back East, I left my briefcase with the driver, asking that he keep an eye on it until I reclaimed it to head to the airport by taxi.
As it turned out, time became a problem, and I was forced to leave the church about ten minutes before the service concluded. As planned, I walked up to Limousine #3 in the waiting procession of cars, collected my briefcase, handing the driver a $10 bill for his trouble, then walked to the bus stop where a cab had been instructed to meet me.
Paying attention to the main street where cars were passing at a forty-mile-per-hour clip and looking for my cab, I suddenly noticed that two uniformed policemen had walked over to the bus stop. “Good morning, officers,” I said, continuing my lookout for the taxi as two more officers approached so that I was now literally boxed in by them. Next, I looked up to see my cab being flagged to the roadside by yet another cop and noticed, to my amazement, that the television crews had converged on top of me and were shooting footage!
“Is there some problem?” I asked the officer nearest me.
“Who are you with?” he asked.
I hesitated. “I’m not with anyone.”
“Who do you know here?”
“I know Bill Bonanno. Is that a crime?”
“Is that your briefcase?”
I glanced over to the cab driver, who I’m sure was thinking his next ride if he made it out of town at all would be some kind of latter-day Al Capone. “Yes, it’s my briefcase. Why do you ask?”
“Did you just get that briefcase from one of those limousines over there?” the cop asked pointing.
“Yes, I did. It’s mine. I gave it to him to hold while I was inside the church for Mass.”
“May we look inside that briefcase?” he pressed.
Understanding that I was already late for my plane and would no doubt be held until they could obtain a search warrant, I handed the briefcase over, and they searched it.
“What is this?” one of the cops asked holding up a sheaf of papers, the bag’s only contents outside of some pens and a pack of Juicy Fruit.
“It’s the manuscript for a book I’m writing. It’s about a physician who leads a kind of double life, working at a famous New York hospital, while also working as a doctor with patients in the Mafia. That’s how I know Bill. I’m an author. He gave me an introduction to the main character.”
The police officer loaded the contents back in my briefcase. “Okay, Mr. Felber, you can leave now. Who knows, maybe someday I’ll read your book.”
I entered the cab as the television crews, some probably FBI investigators, melted away, repositioning themselves back near the church’s exits to cover the mourners as they made their way to Holy Hope Cemetery where fifty doves would be released as Joseph Bonanno, the last founding member of the Commission, was laid to rest.
Afterward, looking at Elliot Litner, his life, and this book, I knew that my initial hunch about doing his story was correct. The experience had allowed me to see through him an intimate history of the Mafia in America that would never have been otherwise accessible. In doing the research for this book, he had taken me along with him on a trip through his experiences with Carlo Gambino, perhaps the last true godfather, to the goring and imminent demise of some imitation of that proud beast, relentlessly pursued by prosecutors like Rudolph Giuliani, served up to them on a silver platter by the last man who would call himself godfather, John Gotti.
Through that period, Elliot had evolved, but in significantly different ways. Unlike the organization that so intrigued and fascinated him, what he saw and felt during those years changed, but did not break him. Early along, I wondered, “Was there a price to be paid for living a double life? What did it cost a man for living too much?” The answer is in a song called “Judy Blue Eyes” by Crosby, Stills, Nash, and Young.
Just a word before I go
The les-son to be learned,
Traveling twice the speed of sound,
It’s easy to get burned.
Elliot Litner did both the traveling and the burning. In his case, he was lucky, and the flames that might have consumed him became a baptism of fire that purified the instincts he already had in him and the lessons he’d been taught as a child by relatives like Uncle Saul. If Elliot’s first take on life was to yield to the temptations of easy money, friends, and women, the price he paid was the loss of all of those comforts, along with the enduring necessities one genuinely treasures: family, friends, even his identity. Fortunately, he had his heritage and upbringing to save him.
Today the fabric of institutions in the United States are falling apart before our eyes, much as the fabric of La Cosa Nostra fell apart before his: divorce, corporations pushing for productivity at the expense of children, pedophilia in the Catholic Church, skyrocketing drug dependencies, hypocrisy in politics, bio-weapons and diseases, some of them man made and without cure, all part of the unbridled enterprise mentality.
In that sense, Joseph Bonanno was correct. Americans yearn for closeness. They need family. They long for a “father.”
Copyright
First published in Great Britain in 2013 by
The Robson Press (an imprint of Biteback Publishing Ltd)
Westminster Tower
3 Albert Embankment
London SE1 7SP
Copyright © Ron Felber 2004
Ron Felber has asserted his right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 to be identified as the author of this work.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the publisher’s prior permission in writing.
This book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, resold, hired out or otherwise circulated without the publisher’s prior consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition, including this condition, being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.
Every reasonable effort has been made to trace copyright holders of material reproduced in this book, but if
any have been inadvertently overlooked the publishers would be glad to hear from them.
Originally published as Il Dottore, The Double Life of a Mafia Doctor by Barricade Books.
ISBN 978–1–84954–578–5
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.