by Gene Mustain
“Your guy says nothing is going on there?” Angelo replied. “This is fucking amazing.”
Coiro said the Eastern District’s investigation was nothing more than IRS agents snooping around for Salvatore’s assets—no big deal.
“Mike, listen, you’ve always come through before, so I really believe ya.”
Hedging their bets, Angelo, Coiro, and Gene decided to seek more intelligence and hatched a plan to buy a secret Gambino Family report from an unidentified police official on Long Island. They debated who should be told, if anything damaging turned up.
Gene said Angelo must decide who to tell the news to—if it was bad news. “It’s his decision, he’s an assistant … captain.”
“Big Ange,” Coiro said.
“Big Ange Ruggiero,” Gene chimed, “associate of captain, powerhouse captain John Gotti.”
The next day, several of Salvatore’s former business partners and nominees visited Angelo to discuss how to thwart the grand jury. Before that, they reviewed the gold-chain market.
“You bought busted chains, right? Chances are they get ripped off,” one man said to Angelo.
“Yeah. The store up in Harlem does best.”
“Yeah, I bet.”
“Got all them fuckin’ junkies and everything.”
The men talked as if the grand-jury battle were no big deal, and over the next few days Angelo dove deeper into the heroin cesspool.
On May 30, he told John Carneglia that two other suppliers wanted to supply them, but if they turned out to be all talk and no dope, at least he and Carneglia had $450,000 in cash to shop around for other sources. That night they discussed hiking the price they would charge a distributor—William Cestaro, brother of Philip Cestaro, who ran the Cozy Corner Bar, allegedly for John Gotti. Sources Wahoo and BQ had also said William helped manage the Queens disco they had said Gotti partially owned.
“Angelo is taking over Sal’s business,” Source Wahoo told Agent Abbott the next day.
The heroin arbitrageur also was a venture capitalist, and he was soon heard making plans to cop six more kilos. On June 11, Gene dropped Angelo and Carneglia off at LaGuardia Airport. Using aliases, the pair flew to Palm Beach to meet one of Sal’s friends. Back home the next day, Angelo told Gene they were assured delivery of another load. It hardly needed saying, but Angelo was intoxicated by the color green.
“There’s a lot of profit in heroin,” he said.
On June 18, the shipment arrived. Angelo told Gene he had just “picked up eight things,” six kilos from agents of “them guys” in Florida and two from another supplier. A day later, he learned his efforts to badger his in-laws into silence were starting to unwind; one relative had come clean in the grand jury about her contacts with the fugitives over the years. It was bad news for Angelo—it meant the government might get a better line on Sal’s assets—but Angelo was a runaway freight train and on the very next day he agreed to sell two kilos.
The exchange of money for 97 percent pure heroin took place on June 23 as government agents watched. William Cestaro and a man named Salvatore Greco were arrested; years earlier, Tony Roach Rampino had wanted to “get close” to the “Greco brothers,” who were “big dope guys” from Canada—and now Angelo had. A week later, however, the FBI dropped the charges against them to avoid disclosing how extensive its eavesdropping had been. Cestaro, age 49, and Greco, age 51, were “mules”—small fry—and the heroin was off the street.
Agents also might have hoped that letting the mules out of the corral would tickle the boys. But Angelo hid out in his mother’s house, certain of a security breach and now as worried as his in-laws about the grand jury. It’s not known what happened to Cestaro and Greco, but they have not been seen since.
Predictably by now, the FBI’s principal Bergin informants reacted a little differently to the arrests. Source Wahoo said Gotti returned from Florida and “jumped all over” Gene for his “close allegiance” to Angelo and “John’s suspicion they are involved in narcotics activities.” John was “outraged” that those arrested were hanging “around the club and unknown to him had been dealing drugs.” BQ, on the other hand, said John and Angelo “definitely back large-scale narcotics transactions … they use Willie Boy Johnson, Carneglia, and others.” BQ said Willie Boy had side deals with Mark Reiter, and Wahoo added that Johnson had recently assaulted a loan-shark customer.
Wahoo and BQ did agree the arrests were a surprise and triggered inquiries by Angelo into possible buggings.
Somehow, sometime in late June, the Bergin crew finally demonstrated it could get accurate information. Angelo obtained a pasted-together version of the last of the FBI’s six Angelo electronic-surveillance affidavits. The notes told him that Jack Conroy was not all he cracked himself up to be and that Coiro was not as wired into the Eastern District as he imagined. Critically, the FBI working papers confirmed the depth of the probe, and that it was supported by a three-bug invasion of his home.
I am a dead man, was among Angelo’s many thoughts, said Source Wahoo. This memo went into the FBI file:
“Source advised Angelo Ruggiero is scared to death … because he has been lying systematically to Big Paul and Neil insofar as he has constantly told them that he is not dealing in drugs by himself, but is merely cleaning up the loose ends of his brother’s narcotics operation … [if] they learn he was [lying] it is quite likely that Angelo might be hit.”
Though Angelo thought Conroy had been merely incompetent, not insincere, Conroy suffered an attack of thanatophobia, too, and moved away. Much later, Conroy did surface briefly—as a cooperating trial witness against Angelo, which was when Quack-Quack finally knew he had been had.
At the time, Wahoo said that shortly after the FBI affidavit was obtained, “Angelo advised the Bergin … that three bugs had been found in his house.” In fact, Angelo had not found the bugs, but they were shut down because Angelo was not home to be overheard.
Even so, the leak astounded the FBI, which began investigating itself and everyone in the Eastern District with access to the affidavits. Three years later, agents would find the notes in the home of Anthony Moscatiello, pal of the brothers Ruggiero. The mystery of how the papers got to his house in Howard Beach has never been solved; neither has the mystery of why Moscatiello would bother keeping them around.
Although the government would not arrest Angelo and the others for more than a year, the greedy game was up, or so it seemed. “Angelo thinks he is a fugitive and is acting it,” said a Wahoo bulletin. “Angelo is in hiding,” added BQ.
John believed trouble was imminent, too, and avoided the Bergin. Wahoo, possibly unaware of the Commission’s inability to reach a decision on the Tambone case, said, “Because it is policy to issue contracts on anyone charged with narcotics violations, Gotti feels he will most likely get instructions from both Neil Dellacroce and Castellano … to carry out a contract murder on his good friend Angelo.”
Despite all the danger, Angelo ventured outside at least once—to make another score, the FBI says.
In August, agents learned a major heroin deal was afoot; they followed the trail to a Long Island motel, where Angelo was registered in Moscatiello’s name. They saw Quack-Quack, Carneglia, and others meet in a lounge and exchange envelopes. Still building a case, the agents did not intervene; afterward, Angelo and Carneglia decided to lay low in Florida.
Gotti hung out in Little Italy, waiting for the other shoe. He told Wahoo he feared he might be arrested on some cooked-up conspiracy charge. Wahoo understood because he had just reported that “John’s man,” Anthony Rampino, was peddling and using heroin.
“Source advised that at the present time he feels [the entire crew] with the exception of John Gotti have dealt or are presently dealing in drugs.” Wahoo didn’t say if this meant he had or was; he and BQ, who didn’t know about one another, had been told that their FBI romances did not entitle them to commit crimes, except maybe for a little bookmaking.
Wahoo’s opinio
n on the impact of the Angelo affair on Gotti contained a caveat: “Gotti’s position has not been diminished or enhanced … however, [if] Dellacroce died or is imprisoned, Gotti will not have the support he now enjoys … Neil is a ‘street guy’ with power while Big Paul Castellano is not as streetwise.”
Angelo, of course, was Gotti’s biggest booster, despite the behind-the-back barbs. In June, two weeks before the heroin dam broke, he was sure John had emerged untarnished by Little Pete’s tie to Salvatore Ruggiero. This was evident when Angelo told Gambino capo Robert DiBernardo about “a little rumor” he had heard:
“The rumor came right from [consigliere] Joe Gallo, that uh, they spoke. Paul, Neil, and Joe Gallo. They said that every Family has groomed or has put somebody on the side in case something happens to them, and we’re the only Family that hasn’t been doing this. And Johnny’s name came up three times, Joe Gallo told me. He says, ‘Tell Johnny to be cool.’”
DiBernardo, a loan shark and pornographer, was favorably impressed.
“And Joe Gallo is not a bullshit artist,” Angelo said.
“Will Johnny give Angelo [Gallo’s] position?”
“That I don’t know. I believe in my heart that position is going to [Carlo Gambino’s son] Tommy.”
Angelo spread the little rumor a few days before he and Gotti, sporting a Florida tan, were spotted by U.S. Secret Service agents and NYPD detectives eating at the Sheraton Centre Hotel in Manhattan. President Reagan was coming to the hotel that day to address a state Republican party meeting, and the president’s protectors told the pair they would feel more comfortable if they left beforehand.
“Gotti and Ruggiero are extremely proud of the fact that they intimidated the Secret Service and the NYPD as being potentially harmful to the President,” BQ’s Agent Colgan wrote.
Soon, the men from Howard Beach, especially Angelo, would feel differently about posing a potential threat to the man from Washington, D.C.—and all because Angelo was taped talking about Commission politics to an unmade man, Edward Lino.
When he spoke of the Commission while updating the Little Pete murder plot for Lino, Angelo caused hearts to stop—first among the Gambino-squad agents and then all the way up the line to FBI headquarters and the Justice Department in Washington. No one had captured the word on tape before; until this point, the Commission existed only on the word of informants cutting deals. The breakthroughs invited a RICO conspiracy attack on the Crime Capital bosses. Angelo’s indiscretion would be used to help establish probable cause to go “up” on many, notably Paul Castellano, and, later, a dying Neil Dellacroce.
Over the summer, a battle plan was drawn up. One of its architects was Associate Attorney General Rudolph W. Giuliani, who came from humble beginnings in Brooklyn. He would be going home soon, as U.S. attorney for the Southern District. But before he did, he took part in a cabinet meeting that primed Reagan for a major announcement on October 14, timed to benefit GOP candidates in the midterm elections of 1982.
Then, at the summit of his popularity, Reagan strode into the Justice Department auditorium and, in remarks later given to the press, told department employees:
“It comes down, in the end, to a simple question we must ask ourselves: What kind of people are we if we continue to tolerate in our midst an invisible, lawless empire? Can we honestly say America is the land with justice for all if we do not now exert every effort to eliminate this confederation of professional criminals, this dark, evil enemy within?”
In the next few months, Congress approved plans to add 1,000 agents and 200 prosecutors. Ominously for the Families, the Justice Department removed a cap on electronic-surveillance applications, once limited to 100 a year. The value of electronic warfare had just been demonstrated; the Angelo bugs had thrown a light on the dark, evil enemy within.
Days before Reagan spoke, someone fired shots inside the Cozy Corner Bar, alleged center of the Bergin gambling empire. A man was shot nine times, but lived. It was the second attempt on Edward Maloney’s life within four months—and, amazingly, both times he was hit twice in the head.
“Enough is enough,” Maloney said on his way to the FBI.
Maloney began in crime at age 15 after running away from home, and was one of two survivors of a gang that snatched loan sharks and bookmarkers. He outlived James McBratney—the man John and Angelo killed in 1973—and three others. Maloney says he did not take part in the murder of Carlo Gambino’s nephew, although “my name popped up” because McBratney was a friend.
The FBI suggested to Maloney that John Gotti, settling the last debit on an old account, had issued a murder contract, and his bookmaker Philip Cestaro had aided the second attempt by tipping off the gunman when Maloney came into the Cozy Corner.
Maloney agreed to wear a body wire. In meetings with Cestaro, who was known as “Philly Broadway,” Maloney did not determine if Gotti was behind the plot—in fact, the hit had upset Gotti, Cestaro said; gunplay was not good for business in “Johnny’s bar.”
“You know how Gotti got his wings?” Maloney asked.
“I didn’t know him [then].”
“This guy got his wings for whacking out a friend of mine, Jimmy McBratney, an Irish kid, fucking Irish kid from Staten Island. Gotti was the last fucking guy he saw in his life.”
“I know he ain’t involved,” Cestaro said.
Maloney tried several more times to get Cestaro to bite; each time the answer as to a Gotti-backed plot was no. However, after the men warmed to each other and Maloney asked Philly Broadway to help him buy drugs, the answer was yes.
21
ON THE CARPET WITH BIG PAUL
The government is looking to make us be one tremendous conspiracy.
—Paul Castellano, May 31, 1983
IN THE SPRING OF 1983, Death Hill was occupied by the FBI. Agents had a bunker near the White House; after a four-month campaign, they had broken in surreptitiously. The Pope was bugged now, too, thanks to Angelo and the Reagan White House.
John Gotti had visited Castellano many times during the previous year, but he never turned up—in person, anyway—on the White House bug, probably because he suspected that Death Hill was a place to avoid. During one of his 1982 visits, he and John Carneglia had spotted agents and, afterward, Gotti and Angelo speculated that the agents were up to more than routine surveillance.
Though suspicion was everywhere and thunder was coming from all directions, the Angelo-bugs tension had slipped away as the months had passed by without an indictment. Angelo and Carneglia had come home, ready to try and ride out the storm if the truth was ever washed ashore. Neil was sick with heart trouble, and Gotti—as he had with Carmine Fatico a decade earlier—was picking up the slack, and underboss experience.
Castellano had no special fondness for Gotti—now, at last, the Bergin crew’s official boss. He did respect Gotti’s forcefulness and had used him, as Thomas Bilotti was heard describing it, “to lay down the law” to a union official who needed a lesson in the Family code. The Pope regarded himself as a businessman who regrettably associated with unsavory people out of loyalty to the past. He was happier sitting down with a man like Frank Perdue, whose company supplied chickens to the East Coast, and discussing how to improve Perdue’s business.
Sources Wahoo and BQ formed opinions in a Bergin context. Except for BQ—once in 1985—neither ever indicated that anyone besides Gotti was in line for the top spot. Neither was privy to the Castellano context, however, and thus they did not know two men were at the White House frequently: Thomas Gambino and Thomas Bilotti, who also regarded themselves as businessmen.
One day, Gambino—Carlo’s oldest son—brought Castellano a problem involving Gotti, Angelo, and Marty and Tommy of Mercury Pattern Service. The firm was still paying large-size “shirts” to Angelo, who, after a raise, was now on the payroll for $700 a week. As Uncle Paul told Nephew Tommy what to do, it sounded like a boss tutoring his intended successor.
Beforehand, they chatted about a remarkabl
e book just out—A Man of Honor, an autobiography by Joseph Bonanno, one of the five original Crime Capital bosses, written long after he had retired and moved to Arizona. Bonanno, whose father was an old-world don in Sicily, said his noble “tradition” had been corrupted by a new-world worship of money; soldiers born in America were reckless and impatient. Bonanno also wrote about the Commission, which was something he, like Angelo, would live to regret.
Castellano regarded the book as “interesting reading” because he knew some of its characters; he said Bonanno had accurately described the landmark conference of Families at upstate Apalachin in 1957 and the no-drug rule adopted there. But he was shocked that Bonanno didn’t seem to realize the consequences of writing in such detail about the Commission.
“He don’t know what the government is looking for. The government is looking to make us be one tremendous conspiracy. And anybody that they know who [is] a member, they can lock him up on conspiracy … this guy’s explaining [the Commission]!”
Astute prophecy aside, the Pope listened as Gambino, a power in the garment district, explained the Mercury Pattern problem. The owners had borrowed $50,000 from Angelo—“backed by Gotti”—after Marty got out of prison in 1980. Earlier, they had borrowed from a Luchese Family shylock, who “forgave” the loan when “the Jew went to the can.” Now, however, the shylock had learned that Marty and Tommy were back in business and paying Angelo; he felt it was only right they start paying him again.
“So, it could get sticky, you know?” Gambino said.
Castellano asked if the Luchese soldier was beginning to really “push” for his money.
Gambino said he was, which meant that the shylock might use his Family’s union influence to incite an organizing movement at Mercury Pattern, which was paying the Gambino Family to keep a union out. In the garment trade, as with trucking, sanitation, and construction, the Families always worked it both ways.