Mob Daughter: The Mafia, Sammy The Bull Gravano, and Me!

by Karen Gravano; Lisa Pulitzer

  That set my father off. “You fucking cocksucker, motherfucker.…” At that very moment, his jaw got all tight, like it did when he got really mad. “Take the tickets and stick ’em up your fucking ass.”

  He grabbed me by the arm. “Where’s your brother?” he screamed and pulled me into the ER.

  “He’s fine,” I told him, trying to calm him down. “But I think he broke his leg.”

  “Where were you?” he asked. “You were supposed to be home watching him.”

  It didn’t take long for the hospital lobby to fill up with fifteen guys in suits. John had sent down a couple of guys to make sure Gerard was okay, and everybody else had followed straight from the funeral to make sure everything was under control. They completely took over the lobby. They all brought food and bagels and stuff, a big Italian spread.

  The next morning, the driver of the car sent flowers to Gerard’s hospital room. Dad and I were there when they arrived. “This is from the guy who hit you,” Dad told Gerard. “Do you know how dangerous it is, driving a bike at night? This poor guy, he’s freaking out. He wants to leave town. It’s dangerous to be riding a minibike at night. You shouldn’t be sneaking out.”

  “And you,” he said, turning to me. “You were supposed to be watching your brother.”

  Later that day, Gerard was back from surgery; a metal rod was put in his leg. The guy who had hit him came by. He apologized, saying it had been an accident. It was at night, and he hadn’t seen my brother when he was turning into his driveway. He was still devastated.

  I remember seeing how stricken with fear this guy was of my father. It looked like he wanted to take off running and get out of town. I felt so sorry for him because it was not his fault. Everybody knew what happened to the guy who had hit Frank Gotti. He wound up dead, shot execution style with his body put in an acid bath. My dad reassured the poor guy that everything was okay. He sent him away, saying, “Don’t worry about it.” He even sent him a nice basket of fruit.

  PART II

  CHAPTER NINE

  “Gangsters, they sent flowers for everything.”

  The road I traveled sometimes did not seem like it was my own. My parents never talked to me about life after high school. There was talk of college, but Dad knew that school was never my strong point. My father had certainly given up on me being a lawyer. I was a fast learner but I was no A student. The problem was, I wasn’t really fond of classes and formal education. Dad was gonna help me launch some sort of business instead. Whatever I wanted to do in life, he’d be right by my side helping me.

  When I was eighteen and had graduated from Richmondtown Prep, my father asked me “What are we going to do with you, Karen? What do you want to do with your life?”

  I said, “A flower shop is a good business.” What with all the funerals, weddings, and parties that my friends and their families had to deal with, a florist fit right into the whole scheme of things. So, for my graduation present, my father gave me the keys to my very own flower shop.

  It was right next door to his construction headquarters on Stillwell Avenue in Brooklyn. I guess it was part of his master plan for me, that I run my own business. My parents assumed I would run the flower shop, meet a nice guy, get married, and have a family. They wanted nothing but the best for me. Even if it seemed like Dad was trying to mold my life by being so involved, I knew he only wanted me to be on a different path than he was, away from the ups and down that went with the lifestyle he had chosen. He never wanted to worry about Gerard and me or to get the phone call that one of us was in jail. He thrust me into my post–high school life with my best foot forward. His idea of a little flower shop couldn’t have been a better plan.

  In many ways, the last thing I wanted was the responsibility of running my own business. But if I was going to be in charge, at the very least, I wanted to pick the name of the place. After thinking about it long and hard, I decided to call it Exotic Touch, a name both elegant and tropical. I was very proud of my shop, and it was important to my father. The name Exotic Touch reflected that perfectly.

  My father’s big thing with Gerard and me was that we should always be responsible, and I’m certain he put the shop next to his headquarters so he could make sure I was taking care of business. He didn’t get me the shop just so I’d have something to do. He wanted me to run it, to take it seriously, to be on time. He told me, “Never forget, this place is yours. You’re the one who’s going to put the key in the door at eight A.M. You should be proud of it.”

  I was proud of the place, but I was also a kid. The truth was I didn’t know anything about flowers, boutonnieres, bridal bouquets, or centerpiece arrangements. Still, everybody in the entire neighborhood bought their flowers from me, including John Gotti himself, and my business was booming. Catering halls, funeral parlors, and small businesses all placed their orders with me. It seemed like I could charge whatever I wanted, that price was no object. Many of the big bouquets and arrangements were selling for $500 a pop.

  I worked grueling hours in the flower shop, opening at eight A.M. and often staying until nine or ten at night to fill all the orders. Gangsters, they sent flowers for everything. We got all the work for the Scarpaci Funeral Home on Eighty-sixth Street, and were the house florist for two local catering halls. Everybody wanted to use us. We were overwhelmed with orders and could barely handle all the work. I was utterly exhausted. Then one day, it suddenly hit me that the reason I was getting so much business was because I was Sammy the Bull’s daughter. People respected my father so much they would not take their business anywhere else.

  Dad was a feared man, but he was also liked and respected. He always treated the people around him well, helping them to make money. If anyone close to him opened a new business he would be the first to support him, and he expected everyone he knew to do the same. So, when it came time for me to open the shop, everyone he had once helped returned the favor. We were pretty much the florist for the entire Gambino crime family. That was good enough for me. I liked that my store was popular.

  In light of my steady stream of customers, Dad brought in a partner for me, a friend of a friend of a friend named Mario. Poor Mario! He was completely stressed out most of the time, knowing he was creating flower arrangements for the likes of John Gotti and Sammy the Bull. The reality was they probably would never have known if the flower arrangments weren’t perfect and I am sure they would not have put up a big beef if they weren’t one hundred percent satisfied. But Mario was always striving to make sure that all of our arrangements were flawless, just in case. He put a lot of pressure on himself.

  John would call us all the time to send out flower arrangements, and every time he did Mario would put himself in a frenzy trying to make them perfect. Plus he had to deal with me, a nineteen-year-old, not-a-care-in-the-world Italian girl who was only casually interested in being a businesswoman, although I was doing my best not to shirk my responsibilities.

  After the shop closed, I’d go into the city to party with my friends at the nightclubs. I’d get home at four A.M. and be at the shop at eight with a horrible hangover. Mario would be so paranoid! There would be a funeral or something equally important, and there I was staggering around nauseous from the sweetness of the flowers. Even though I was a kid, and a little on the wild side, I knew how important it was to my father that I be responsible, so I’d work despite the hangovers. I was a lot like my dad. When I did something I gave it my all. At the flower shop, I strove to make him proud.

  The funeral pieces were a nightmare for me. I had to cut all the flowers on an angle so they’d be the right height for the arrangement, something that was always huge and elaborate. We’d haul the monster floral pieces to Scarpaci’s or the church or both, and then race back several hours later to collect them, bring them back to the Exotic Touch, pull out stems we could use again, and recycle them into something bridal. Mario was taking on most of the stress of the place. I’d be saying, “Don’t worry,” and he’d be hustling around li
ke a man with a gun pointed at his head. My father never put us under pressure, but I guess he felt it on his own. He acted as thought every order we filled had to be flawless, and if something went wrong, it would all fall on him, even though that was not the case. My father was harder on me. I think he realized the importance of grooming me early so I could be successful. Although I was never good with school, I had definitely demonstrated that I was good with business. I had a certain hustle, a lot like him. I felt that one of my father’s main reasons for opening the flower shop was to teach me responsibility and how to run a business; the fact that it was a good money maker was an added bonus. Still, I think I drove Mario nuts.

  I had heard that I wouldn’t need to charge sales tax for people who chose to pay in cash. The next day, a customer called the shop with a fairly big order, and asked if she could pay with a credit card. I responded, “Sure, but if you pay in cash instead of credit, we won’t charge you tax.”

  Right then, Uncle Eddie wandered into the shop. Being next door at the construction office, he came by once in a while to check in on me for Dad. When he heard what I said, he pulled the phone out of my hand, slammed it down, and yelled, “What’re you doing?! There might be a wiretap. You can’t say things like that on the phone!”

  Dad showed up later that afternoon. Uncle Eddie had clearly filled him in, because the first thing he said to me, before he even said hello, was “Karen, people have to pay taxes. People want to pay taxes. You can’t tell them something like ‘don’t pay your taxes’ on the phone.”

  I knew that people didn’t really want to pay taxes, but I understood my father’s hint—don’t say that on the phone.

  * * *

  I had owned the shop for less than one year when I started noticing surveillance vehicles watching our building. I had noticed them on a side street near our house as well. I used to see them from time to time when I was still sneaking out of the house. They even knew me by name. One time, I was tiptoeing through the side gate, and one of the agents rolled down his window and said with a smile, “Going out again, Karen?”

  Now surveillance had picked up dramatically. It seemed like they were watching Dad twenty-four hours a day.

  I understood that John Gotti and my father were running a criminal enterprise, but it was hard for me to envision the illegal part of the business. My father took his work with the construction company very seriously. He followed a very strict regimen. First, he’d start with his workout at the gym in Brooklyn, not too far from the office. Then he’d head for Stillwell Avenue, arriving before noon. He’d stay there until four-thirty or five, making sure he’d be home for dinner at five-thirty. He loved construction and took great pride in it. Although he got most of his contracts because of who he was and his reputation as a feared gangster, he still treated each job with integrity.

  With my flower shop right next door to Dad’s headquarters, I’d see him sitting behind his desk talking about construction and cement to customers. People would show up at his office, and after they shook hands, they’d do the rest of their business walking along the sidewalk outside my shop. I thought it was a little odd, but I realized later that the only way he could keep his conversations from being recorded was to have them away from the office. Dad would always wave to me when they passed.

  I knew they were talking about illegal stuff. And they were being extremely cautious about not being recorded. Although I knew there were illegal activities going on behind the scene, looking at it from my perspective it was hard to envision the criminal side of it because everything appeared on the up-and-up. In the mornings, I would see all the crews climbing onto the Marathon Concrete Corp. trucks and going out. They were dressed in their Marathon construction uniforms, black shirts with red lettering, that Dad had made for all his workers. Friends of the family had them, too. Even Gerard and I had our very own Marathon Construction bomber jackets. Dad’s secretary, Sherry, was always at the reception desk, answering the phones, paying the bills, and doing the books. I guess I just really didn’t see the criminal side of it. Even though I knew it was there, it didn’t matter to me because I saw a man who took pride in what he did. As much as he took pride in being a gangster, that was the side of him he kept hidden as much as possible from his family. The way he ran his business was so organized, I guess that’s why they called it organized crime. Dad was so successful in the construction business that he controlled most of the unions in the five boroughs. I think even the people who weren’t in the mob didn’t mind working with him. A big part of his success was that he made sure the jobs got done.

  John Gotti was Dad’s “boss,” and my father always made sure that John got a large kickback from all the construction jobs he was doing. That’s how it worked in the mob. But Dad was pretty much the go-to guy in construction for the Gambino family. Not only did he have Marathon, but he also had his hand in drywall, Sheetrock, excavation, and plumbing companies, to name a few.

  “If Donald Trump wants to build a building, he can’t do it without us,” Dad told me. “We control the unions, so we just call and tell them to stop the trucks.”

  * * *

  It was October of 1990 when my father sat the family down and told us he was going on the lam. We had just gotten home from the reception for my cousin Gina’s Communion when he summoned my brother and me to his bedroom. I already knew something big was going to happen. The FBI had been staked out in front of my flower shop for weeks. They even had agents in unmarked cars posted outside the reception hall that night. Over the years, I had always been aware of the Feds and their surveillance vehicles, but within the last couple of weeks they were everywhere my father went. By now, I was one hundred percent aware that Dad was the underboss of the Gambino family and for the first time, I felt his world closing in on all of us. It was at this point that I realized that no matter how much he tried to keep us away from it, this was my world as well. Yet I still knew so little about it.

  Dad said he was going into hiding from the Feds but he didn’t explain why. It was only later that I learned he was running on the advice of John Gotti.

  Gotti had learned there was an indictment coming down against him, my father, and Frank Locascio. The three men were going to be arrested and charged with five counts of murder: Paul Castellano; Thomas Bilotti, Paul’s underboss, who had been executed with Paul outside of Sparks Steak House; Robert “DB” DiBernardo, a caporegime in the Gambino family, who had been shot twice in the head in 1986; Liborio Milito, a Gambino soldier, who had disappeared in 1988 and whose body had never been found; and Louie DiBono, another Gambino soldier, who was shot and killed in the parking lot of the World Trade Center in 1990 because he didn’t obey an order to go and see John Gotti. In addition to the murder charges, Gotti was also facing an indictment on racketeering.

  Bugs had been planted by the FBI in a room above the Ravenite Social Club on Mulberry Street and conversations between John and Frankie DeCicco had been recorded, linking my father, John, and Frankie to the murders. Gotti felt they could stall the arrest if my father went away.

  Mom was already in the bedroom when Gerard and I came in. He didn’t tell us why he was running. I guess he figured the less we knew, the better it would be. “You may read some things in the newspaper, but I just need you to trust me. I’ll be okay.” We didn’t ask any questions and went upstairs to bed. A couple of hours later, Dad came into my bedroom to give me a kiss. “I want you to know I love you,” he whispered. “If you need anything, Uncle Eddie and ‘Big Louie’ and them will be here to take care of you.” Big Louie was Dad’s friend Louie Valario.

  I asked my father when he was coming back. He stopped, stared at me for a bit and said, “I don’t know.”

  When I was a kid, my father would say, “Make a fist.” Then, he would make us punch his hand. He would say, “See? When you make a fist and hold your hand tight, it will make you strong. This is like our family. If we always stick and stay tight like a fist, we will always be strong, and nothing
can come between us.”

  No matter what, whether I was playing sports or receiving an award, sick or hurt, it was his way of letting me know he supported me and to stay strong. He had my back, we were one. This signal between us was his way of saying to me everything would be okay without saying it.

  I couldn’t sleep that night, wondering where he was going. When I got up in the morning, he was gone. For a month, I didn’t see him or talk to him. He didn’t call. My mother didn’t talk about it, but I could tell she felt empty. I’d come home every day, and look in his room to see if he was there. He wasn’t, and I felt empty like my mother. I wondered if it was going to be like that for the rest of my life. Not knowing what was going on was worse than anything. Then, speculation came out in the newspapers that Sammy the Bull could be dead.

  I went straight to my mother. “Mom, is it true?” I asked her. “Is Daddy dead?”

  “No, he’s okay,” she assured me.

  “Did you talk to him?”

  “Yes,” my mother answered. She hadn’t really spoken to him. But someone had gotten a message through.

  “Is he ever going to come home?”

  “I don’t know,” she replied.

  “I don’t understand,” I said. “Is this it? Is this how it’s gonna end?”

  “I don’t know how to make you understand, because I don’t fully understand,” Mom said. In reality, she did understand. She had spent her whole life trying to shield us from Dad’s world. She always knew she couldn’t keep the reality of Cosa Nostra a secret from us forever. We always had money, food on the table, nice vacations, and a summer house. Dad always made sure Mom drove a nice car. We didn’t want for anything. But Mom always realized that one day we would have to face the consequences of the way Dad earned his money. Now, that time was finally here. She accepted that, but she didn’t know how to convey it to her children. I had never thought about the death part of it. It was more that when there was a death, everything happening around us seemed bigger than the death itself. I have been dealing with death my whole life, from my uncle Nicky and Stymie on. From the time I was a little kid, my father was going to funerals.