Last Don Standing

by Larry McShane

  Natale did as he was told and earned Hoffa’s enduring respect. Without going into too much detail, Natale recalled taking a phone call directly from the union boss to handle another bit of business: “He said, ‘Come and see me. I have a little problem, and maybe we can fix it.’ I was on a plane to Detroit within the hour. In a couple of weeks, problem solved. He took care of me handsomely—and whenever he called, I answered.”

  According to Natale, Hoffa had a unique relationship with the Mafia families from coast to coast. “He was connected with the mob in every city, but they never owned him,” Natale said with admiration. “They couldn’t tell him what to do. They didn’t own him.”

  Natale’s involvement with Local 170 actually predated his role in Atlantic City and his work for Hoffa. In the late fifties, a housing boom in South Jersey produced a sudden influx of new entrepreneurs eager to serve the growing population with restaurants and nightclubs. The venerable Latin Casino, the Philly stop for such stars as Frank Sinatra and Dean Martin, pulled up stakes on Walnut Street in the city and headed to Route 70 in Cherry Hill.

  The change in demographics would, as so many things did, offer the Philadelphia underworld a sparkling new revenue stream. The employees at these new businesses became members of Local 170, then under the command of Joe Siedman and Sam Rifkin—two men with “friends” of their own.

  Unlike most unions, this one appeared more concerned with the business owners than the rank and file, cutting a series of sweetheart deals that benefited the businesses and the two local leaders more than the membership.

  Unfortunately for Siedman and Rifkin, workers moving from the Philly union to Local 170 soon became acutely aware of the difference in the way things operated on the Jersey side of the Walt Whitman Bridge. The money was less, and the health benefits were meager. A group of dissidents grew, headed by a pair of waiters from Philly and a Cherry Hill bartender. They were soon appearing at every union meeting and nominating their own slate of candidates to run the show.

  A loss would mean the end of the cash-stuffed envelopes for Siedman and Rifkin that came once a month from the local businesses and the Cadillac Linen Co.—two groups brought together by the union. Both of those groups belonged to Philly’s “Jew Mob”—headed by a pair of contract killers once aligned with Louis “Lepke” Buchalter’s infamous Murder, Inc. A change in leadership would hit the pair directly in their wallets, as the dissidents soon learned. The challengers decided they would not back down, but instead recruited some muscle of their own: two ex–amateur boxers who once worked as strong-arm organizers for the Teamsters.

  Richard “Bucky” Baldino and Joe McGreal were summoned by the dissident leaders. Baldino, a man of fierce reputation, suggested they needed a third man: his old boyhood friend Ralph Natale, currently aligned with the DiTullio crew of the Bruno family. Baldino reasoned, quite accurately, that Natale was the man they needed if their takeover bid should run afoul of the Jew Mob.

  The challengers triumphed overwhelmingly in the election. Siedman and Rifkin were out. And the new leadership was suddenly in—too deep, as it turned out. Natale recalled election night as “a gush of fresh blood in the ocean, with a couple of great white sharks circling nearby.”

  The sharks were McGreal and Natale. But before they would eat, Natale had to make things right with Philly’s two top Jewish gangsters, men of great repute and a pair of stone killers.

  A luncheon get-together was arranged, with Natale heading to the rival mob’s home turf.

  The two hulking men at the front door of Rose Linchik’s restaurant greeted Natale and his driver by name, though neither recognized the pair. The restaurant was closed for the day, but opened specifically to welcome the Italian visitors entering off the narrow stretch of Quince Street.

  Driver Frankie Vadino was ordered to wait downstairs while Natale headed to the private dining room where Willie Weisberg and Cappy Hoffman awaited. The two were the heads of the local Jew Mob, legends of the Philadelphia underworld, and onetime contract killers for Murder, Inc.

  Natale was well aware that through the years the two had hosted many last meals in this very spot for unwitting victims. Before heading upstairs, Natale spoke to his driver: “Frankie, if you hear shots from upstairs, open up on whoever you’re with and screw. Don’t worry about me. I’ll already be dead.”

  The driver nodded, and Natale started up the staircase. He was at peace with whatever happened: “If that’s what is supposed to be, it’s too late now to be scared.” Thoughts of prior lunches when Angelo Bruno and he summoned a poor unfortunate to a meal that ended in murder drifted through his mind.

  When Natale reached the landing upstairs, two men who looked more like tailors than hit men awaited. Weisberg greeted him with a question: “Are you armed?”

  Ralphy knew better than to lie. He never blinked or hesitated. “Yes, I am.”

  “Ralphy,” declared a smiling Hoffman, “I would do the same thing coming to lunch with us two old gangsters.”

  With the mood lightened, owner Rose Linchik headed to their table to take a lunch order. “They say the chicken soup here is to die for,” deadpanned Natale as the tension in the room dissipated. Weisman quickly got down to business, noting that previous union heads Siedman and Rifkin were generous business partners through the years.

  The conversation was interrupted by the arrival of the soup, accompanied by a basket of dark bread and a slab of unsalted butter. “Eat and be well,” the owner advised Natale, who was by now fairly certain that he would do both.

  Weisman grabbed a piece of the bread, smeared it with butter, and said, “You eat, Ralphy. And I’ll talk. Angelo told me that he said only this to you, that we were his friends long before any unions.”

  “That’s true,” Natale responded evenly.

  Weisman continued speaking as Natale kept eating. Finally, with the chicken soup gone, the younger man felt that he could resolve the issues at hand:

  “What you and Cappy has stays the same, and if we could get more for you, I’ll make sure it will get done. My respect for you and Cappy doesn’t come down to dollars and cents. The both of you were gangsters when I was peeing off curbs. Nothing changes.”

  All three men stood, exchanging smiles before shaking hands. They came from different eras, Natale reflected, but they were men cut from the same cloth. The Philadelphia family was in. And one day, the union would fall under Ralph’s control.

  9

  AN IRISH WAKE

  The 1970s arrived with a new problem for Natale, and his name was George Feeney. He was a tough guy, a hard-drinking Irishman who liked to run his mouth after a few belts, with a tendency to say things that soon proved hazardous to his health.

  Feeney was an ex-con affiliated with local union boss Joe McGreal. Natale soon caught wind of Feeney’s intemperate comments, particularly regarding Natale’s friend and boss.

  “It was starting to get around the city: ‘That man downtown, he ain’t nothing,’” Natale said. “Meaning Angelo Bruno. Some good people heard that. He coulda got killed just for that. People told me they heard what he said. I said, ‘This motherfucker. I’ll kill him today. He ain’t nothing.’”

  Firsthand confirmation came from McGreal, who reported that Feeney was out of control and talking out of school. McGreal finally called Natale one morning at 7:30 a.m. for a sit-down at the Half-Hour Club, a bar owned by McGreal’s brother. Natale appeared amid the morning boozers with a solution.

  “I said, ‘Well, call him now. Tell him you wanna talk to him. And when he shows up, I’ll splatter his fucking brains,’” Natale matter-of-factly recalled.

  McGreal was stunned: “Ralphy, it’s broad daylight! Everybody’s gonna see!”

  A plan was hatched: They would meet up with Feeney that Sunday at Billy Duke’s, a club on Route 73 in Jersey. From there, all three would go down to a bar in Swampoodle—the Irish section of Philadelphia. McGreal implored Natale not to whack Feeney in the tavern.

  “I sa
id, ‘Do you think I’m crazy?’” Natale remembered. “And McGreal said, ‘Don’t make me answer that, Ralphy!’”

  The plan was put into motion—although Feeney initially blanched at going into the city from Billy Duke’s. But Ralph proved persuasive, approaching Feeney in the men’s room:

  “I said, ‘Listen, I don’t want to shoot you, but I will fucking shoot you. Your friend and my friend Joey, we have a problem, and I can’t have that. Let’s go where we’re safe. Let’s go down to the Irish club.’ He looked at me and said, ‘Okay, I’m gonna come.’”

  It was the next-to-last bad decision of George Feeney’s life.

  The bar was jammed and the jukebox blaring on the Sunday night when Natale arrived. He greeted the bartender, an ex-pug who once fought in Madison Square Garden. Connected with Mc Greal and Feeney, Natale suggested the three men go upstairs to the bar’s office and talk. Ralph went into the second-floor bathroom and overheard the irate McGreal trying to talk some sense into his pal.

  McGreal pulled a gun on Feeney, who was sitting in a chair, and started shouting: “I told you to shut your mouth!”

  Then Feeney made his final faux pas. “Fuck him!” he yelled about Natale. “And fuck the old man down there! We should kill them both!”

  “I hear this as I’m coming out of the bathroom,” said Natale. “I was furious. I grabbed the gun out of McGreal’s hand. I put three in Feeney’s face—boom, boom, boom! Right in his fucking dome. Done. Then I told McGreal, ‘Get this piece of shit out of here.’”

  Another union official entered the room, with Feeney’s blood and brains now splattered on the floor, and nearly vomited. Problem solved.

  10

  THE RAZOR’S EDGE

  When DiTullio died of a heart attack in the early seventies, Bruno summoned Natale for a one-on-one sit-down. Once they were done, Natale stepped into the shoes of the very man who’d taught him everything about the Mafia. He was honored and humbled as he exited the meeting.

  “Ang said, ‘You know, your friend and my dear friend is gone, but he’s not gone.’ I said, ‘You’re right, ’cause I still feel him.’ And he said, ‘That’s not really what I meant. Because he’s sitting right next to me. It’s you.’

  “That was all he had to say.”

  Natale, already a true believer, became unquestionably loyal to Bruno—eager to handle any tasks of any kind as requested by the boss. But their relationship transcended mere business. On Thursday nights, when Bruno and his wife had a weekly dinner date, he would sometimes invite the Natales along. One night, the two men were discussing how others in the crime family were jealous of their friendship.

  “You’re gonna face this,” Bruno told him. “That’s what’s happening with all these other people around you.”

  Natale, to keep their wives from overhearing, said softly, “I don’t give a fuck what they say or what they care about me. I care about you.”

  Looking back, Natale is sure the boss already knew what was coming before Natale said a single word: “He saw it. I didn’t kiss his ass. He knew what I meant. Ang was the man I wanted to be, in my life.”

  Natale would get there, but the path was filled with twists and turns too treacherous to contemplate. One of the biggest came in the form of Charlie Allen, the bastard nephew of legendary gangster Blinky Palermo. Blinky’s brother knocked up a local Philly girl, but couldn’t pass along his name—so young Charlie took his mother’s instead, even as he hung around with his father’s mob cohorts.

  “He was half-nuts, even as a kid,” said Natale. “Hurting cats and dogs. A real screwball.”

  Allen, while doing federal time in Lewisburg, Pennsylvania, landed the position of bodyguard for imprisoned Teamsters boss Jimmy Hoffa. Doing time in the same penitentiary was Ralphy’s old union pal McGreal, who became friendly with a Gambino family made man by the name of John Gotti. The two shared a love for conversation, often about things better off left unsaid. The penitentiary gave the two plenty of time to chat.

  Years later, Gotti—by then the head of the Gambinos—died in prison after running his mouth about mob business and mob murders as FBI agents listened via wiretaps installed inside his Little Italy headquarters.

  But for now, the future Dapper Don wore only a prison jumpsuit as he did time for stealing cargo from John F. Kennedy International Airport near his Queens home.

  The jailhouse topic of conversation between Gotti and McGreal was about something two hours south of the Big Apple: Atlantic City. The mouthy McGreal was the head of Local 170 of the Hotel Employees and Restaurant Employees International Union. Its ranks were certain to swell with the influx of business in the seaside resort—and the Philadelphia family had already made its intentions quite clear about grabbing control of the local union.

  “Joe McGreal, he started bragging: ‘I got a union,’” Natale said. “And John Gotti’s another guy—‘bum bum bum, I got this and I’m gonna be that.’ You could bet your life on it, they’re gonna get together. And they started talking about Atlantic City, because everybody thought Atlantic City would become the Vegas of the East. When Gotti hears this about the union, he doesn’t know that Carlo Gambino and Angelo Bruno had joined together—it was none of his business.”

  Gotti, who knew enough not to get in the middle of such things, sent word to his underboss Aniello “Mr. Neil” Dellacroce about the union guy willing to throw in with the Gambinos if Atlantic City opened up. Dellacroce had a reputation as an old-school guy who took no bullshit from anyone. And he brought the news directly to his boss, Gambino.

  Dellacroce was “a real man—when he was told something, he did it,” recalled Natale. “’Cause if you question a boss, especially Carlo Gambino, the next morning you will not draw a breath. Gotti did his job, he sent it back to Dellacroce. And he told Gambino.”

  Gambino reached out to Bruno, who assured New York that he was putting Natale on the problem. Ralphy knew this talk was jeopardizing the deal reached by Gambino, Accardo, and Bruno, but he still hoped—somewhat uncharacteristically—to take care of things without any bloodshed.

  “I did everything possible not to be forced to kill McGreal when he was released from prison,” Natale recalled. He traveled from Philadelphia to the Pennsylvania penitentiary for a jailhouse sit-down with McGreal to explain the facts of life.

  “He was told in no uncertain terms that the union now belonged to La Cosa Nostra, and when he came home, he would be compensated,” Natale remembered. During the prison visit, Natale assured McGreal that his cooperation would come with a golden parachute: a down payment on a beautiful home in the Jersey suburbs. A lucrative contract with Schmidt’s Brewery in Philadelphia. And a brand-new Cadillac.

  “That’s what I got him,” Natale says. “But he kept talking. I told him, ‘You’re making me look bad because it goes straight upstairs to Dellacroce and Gambino.’ Ang was like, ‘What did you do? Did you pick the wrong guy for this? This is a big deal with the gambling, with this, with that.’”

  Then mouthy McGreal dropped another bombshell behind bars—this one courtesy of Charlie Allen. McGreal had pulled him aside with an offer: Kill Natale and collect your share of the pot of gold soon to arrive in Atlantic City. Allen, who generally would kill anybody for $5,000, considered his options and Ralphy’s reputation. He ratted McGreal out to the mob.

  “He thought, ‘Ralphy’s already there, Angelo loves him. I gotta be crazy,’” said Natale. He never forgot the words uttered from McGreal to Allen once they reached Philadelphia: “Don’t rush it. Get it right, because Ralphy—you gotta be careful with him.”

  Once out of Lewisburg, Allen made a beeline to his uncle, Blinky Palermo, who unhesitatingly informed Bruno of the nascent scheme. Palermo then shared the tale with Natale as the two men sat at Ralphy’s table in the main dining room at the Garden State Race Track, overlooking the finish line. Allen was looking for a reward, a pat on the back from Bruno for his information. If Palermo had told Natale first, the reception would have been
far different.

  Ralphy didn’t trust Allen, regardless of his blood ties to his pal. His preference was to put a bullet between Charlie’s eyes and let the chips fall. But before he could do anything, Natale was summoned from the racetrack to meet with Bruno. Natale called his driver, Frankie Vadino, and said he would be waiting outside the clubhouse entrance.

  The call from Bruno came with a message: don’t stop anywhere on the way. The boss knew how his old friend Natale would react if he ran into Allen—deliberately or not. Natale paid his tab at the track and went out to meet Vadino, climbing into the shotgun seat before they pulled away.

  Natale was pissed off at Palermo for going to the boss, and the news sent his mind racing and his blood boiling. This was the kind of information that he wanted to hear first. “I was angry when I heard Allen was involved,” Natale said. “After all, it was about killing me. Don’t I have a right to be angry?”

  There was one immediate concern: What if Allen had decided to gun Natale down instead of going to Blinky? The thought just ate at Natale as Vadino steered the Buick Electra toward the Walt Whitman Bridge and South Philly.

  “Just suppose Charlie Allen came over to the track on the pretense of saying hello after doing ten years, but had something else in mind,” Natale said years later. “Like putting two holes in my head while I was welcoming him home.”

  The two men rode in silence until Natale told Vadino to get off at Broad Street and head to Bruno’s home.

  Vadino finally broke the uncomfortable quiet. “What’s up?” wondered the typically taciturn driver.

  “That Irishman,” Ralph responded tersely, “has decided to be more than he was ever intended to be.”

  Natale then laid the whole thing out to his driver: Palermo had gone to Bruno first to save his nephew’s life. He knew that Natale would unquestionably whack Allen, as both an act of self-preservation and a message to McGreal and anybody else that Natale was not to be fucked with.