Last Don Standing

by Larry McShane

  Ralph Natale sat cluelessly in a Florida prison as the night’s events unspooled.

  Bruno’s presence at Torano’s was intended to soothe hard feelings within his family. Sindone and underboss Testa had had a falling-out over business, and the boss wanted to set things right. Earlier in the day, Testa volunteered to join the two men for dinner. Bruno believed this issue was best handled by himself alone, a response that left the Chicken Man uneasy.

  Decades later, Natale remains astounded that Testa failed to connect the murderous dots pointing directly at the boss. “Phil Testa was as dumb as they come,” he sniped. “He didn’t see what was going on with Caponigro and Sindone. He should have sensed something wasn’t right. If Skinny Razor was around, they all would have been gone before anybody got close to Ang. He would have seen it, sensed it, smelled it. But Testa was a dunce. He was dim-witted. And what happened, happened.”

  Testa meekly obeyed his mentor and benefactor, who had ruled unchallenged for so long after plucking him from the obscurity of a butcher’s shop. “I’ll see you tomorrow,” said Testa before Bruno headed toward the car where his driver awaited.

  John Stanfa started the engine and delivered Bruno to the restaurant.

  Sindone, who had ascended from small-time dope dealer to millionaire during Bruno’s reign, hustled across the room when his boss entered through a side entrance. As Natale heard it, Sindone nearly made a fatal error: He started to embrace Bruno, a move guaranteed to set off the careful boss’s internal alarm system. Sindone caught himself and instead offered a handshake of pure betrayal. He then led Bruno to a table for his last supper.

  The two men ate and talked. The chain-smoking Bruno went back to his waiting vehicle, lighting another of his ever-present cigarettes. Stanfa would typically lower the passenger-side window an inch or two to let the boss’s cigarette smoke waft into the night. Instead, Stanfa had let the window down about halfway before they drove through the misty night toward Bruno’s row house on Snyder Avenue. The boss never noticed the difference, and the car would soon become his coffin.

  “He trusted everybody around him too much,” Natale observed with hindsight.

  Lying in wait was the ruthless Caponigro, who’d decided to handle the execution personally, hoisting himself into the top spot with a single blast from the shotgun that he cradled in his arms. Bruno’s car eased into a spot outside the home where the boss had bid his wife farewell only hours before.

  Caponigro emerged from the darkness and put the barrel against Bruno’s right ear. So came the violent end to the Docile Don, longtime padrone of the Philadelphia La Cosa Nostra. The sound of the blast echoed across the quiet streets, and throughout the world of organized crime. Neighbors and the simply curious rushed onto Snyder Avenue as the sounds of sirens filled the night.

  Sue Bruno knew what the sound meant, and she wept inside their home for her husband.

  John Stanfa—imagine the good fortune—escaped with just a few stray pellets in his arm. He was taken to a nearby hospital, with Bruno’s body left in the open for all to see inside the car spattered with his blood.

  Caponigro climbed into a waiting getaway car headed for Newark, his bloodthirsty work for the evening now done. Freddie Salerno was behind the wheel. “I waited over twenty years to do it,” Tony Bananas reflected. “When Carlo died, it was only a matter of time.”

  Bocchino and Ferrante broke the shotgun back into parts and dumped the weapon into the Delaware River near the foot of the Walt Whitman Bridge. The pair climbed into Ferrante’s Mercury Marquis and drove to a preplanned rendezvous at Caponigro’s condo. Only now, when the deed was done, did the consequences of the plot begin to play out in their minds.

  Sindone, in his dark-colored Eldorado, made the same northern pilgrimage, his ghoulish features awash in the green glow of the dashboard. He rode alone, accompanied only by the promise of a slot as underboss in the new Caponigro regime. As with Bocchino and Ferrante, the fallout from the killing was suddenly in the forefront of his thoughts.

  The worst of those scenarios: What if Tieri had suckered them all into a Sicilian scam from which there was no escape—at least while breathing. Sindone finally arrived at Caponigro’s posh four-bedroom condo with its views of the sprawling New York skyline. The Newark capo was waiting, along with the rest of the plotters: Salerno, Ferrante, and Bocchino.

  Ferrante asked about the one person missing: Stanfa, who was taken to a Philadelphia hospital and would face a grilling by the feds and local cops.

  “That Zip’s got more balls than that whole crew of Testa’s,” Caponigro sneered. “He knows what to do. Remember, he’s the only live witness to what was done.”

  Tony Bananas poured everyone a drink and made plans to contact Tieri about the pot of gold at the end of their bloody red rainbow.

  Testa was warming up a leftover veal cutlet when the door of his home in the posh Girard Estates flew open. His son Salvie burst inside, barely able to utter the words that now poured from his mouth: “Dad, they killed Ang.” The young man could barely breathe as he delivered the news. All the color had drained from Salvie’s face as his father stood in their kitchen.

  The two had bonded as the Chicken Man’s wife battled unsuccessfully against cancer. Her death left father and son living alone in the house with its stone front and welcoming porch. Salvie wanted to deliver the news personally to his dad, but he had another motive for coming home: he wanted to make sure that Phil Testa was not next on the hit parade.

  “Who?” shouted the elder Testa. “And where?” Only then did he notice that Salvie was accompanied by his whole crew of young hoods.

  The son provided the details: Outside Bruno’s house. The cops had left the bloody corpse of the boss sitting inside the car. “They left him there for everybody to see, the motherfuckers,” said Salvie. “The greaseball [Stanfa] was driving him.”

  His father’s spit out his venomous reply: “That no-good motherfucker. He was in on it, or else they would have killed him, too.” Testa then instructed his son to call Nicky Scarfo in Atlantic City and assemble the city’s made men at the Hilton Hotel near the old Veterans Stadium.

  “Make sure, Salvie, they come loaded,” the father commanded as he slipped on a trench coat. “Those cocksuckers really did it.”

  Before Phil Testa could leave, Chuckie Merlino—a Scarfo loyalist—burst into the house. Nicky had sent him to protect the underboss, and Nicky was already on his way to the city. Scarfo’s nephew Phil Leonetti and Nicky “the Blade” Virgilio were with him. They were headed for Merlino’s home, where his son Joey was waiting for further instructions.

  A crowd was now gathering outside the home of the presumed new boss, unaware of the machinations that had led to this night. It was as if they half expected Testa to emerge like a politician on election night and deliver a statement. Most fully expected the blast that had killed Bruno would not be the last volley fired by the Philly family, now under the direction of the man inside the house.

  The first silent shot was fired by Scarfo from a pay phone in a rest stop off the Atlantic City Expressway. He pulled a small, leatherbound phone book from his pocket and dialed the number of Bobby Manna, an old friend from the Genovese family in New York. The two had done time together in the early seventies for refusing to speak at a New Jersey hearing on organized crime. A mutual respect and friendship was forged inside the walls of a South Jersey prison where the two men spent hours walking in the yard and talking quite candidly about their lives and The Life.

  Upon their release, Manna shared this phone number with the Brooklyn-born Scarfo. If Little Nicky needed anything, Manna advised, he was reachable 24–7. The Blade, over Scarfo’s initial objection, stood guard as his boss made the call. Another pinpoint in time.

  It was a calculated gamble by Scarfo, as the details of the Bruno killing were yet to shake out. The Commission would decide who would pay for the assassination. Scarfo’s mind cleared when he heard Manna’s voice on the other end of the
line.

  Manna was expecting the call because of Tieri’s conniving chat with Caponigro months before. The two New Yorkers saw the Bruno hit as the chance for the rising Genovese family, under the guidance of the Chin, to grab their piece of the New Jersey rackets. The agreement on Atlantic City was now a deal between two dead men: Gambino and Bruno.

  Manna invited Scarfo to bring Testa with him for a breakfast meeting in New York, 7:00 a.m., at his place. He hung up abruptly, feeling no need to wait for a reply. The connection to the Genovese family gave Scarfo a leg up on the new boss, Testa, as Little Nicky exercised his “in” with the New Yorkers.

  Scarfo was already angling to play Brutus to the Chicken Man’s Caesar. Testa and Scarfo were headed to the city before sunrise the next morning. Gambino boss Castellano would send his own man down to Philadelphia to get the lay of the land, unaware that the Genovese family had beaten him to the punch.

  Word of the assassination soon reached the Federal Correctional Facility in Homestead, Florida, where Natale was held in a special unit known as the Glass House—an homage to a prison within a prison, with walls of bulletproof glass. The space was reserved for mobsters and other inmates deemed high-security risks.

  The first-floor recreation area, with its pool table and television, had closed at 10:00 p.m. on March 21. Ralphy had returned to his cubicle and slipped into a restless sleep. At around 11:00 p.m. Gambino family associate Frankie Verna appeared, his voice as soft as his news was harsh.

  “Ralphy, wake up,” Verna whispered. “Take it easy. I just heard on the radio. They killed your friend.”

  That moment stayed with Natale through the rest of his time behind bars, and even to this day: “I could see his face now. He came and told me, ‘I just heard some news.’ ‘Your friend’—I knew who he meant right away.”

  Natale regained his composure and asked if there were any details: Was anyone seen after the murder? Any arrests? Any details?

  Verna saw the suddenly angry Natale rise and head toward the prison phones, which recorded all inmate conversations. He urged the hotheaded Natale to take some time before calling anybody or saying something that might raise the hackles of those listening to the tapes.

  “I’ll go make some coffee,” said Verna. The two men sat in Natale’s cubicle for the rest of a long, sad night.

  A frustrated Natale was unable to strike back at the killers of his friend and boss, even as his mind and soul screamed for vengeance. The impotence was crippling. “I felt like I wasn’t a human being,” said Natale. “I couldn’t do anything that a man could do. That’s how I felt. I called the next morning to my wife.”

  As the phone rang back in Pennsauken, New Jersey, Natale’s mind began racing—his head suddenly filled with the sound and fury of the opening lap of the Indy 500. One name kept surfacing through the confusion: Tony Caponigro. Lucia picked up after just two rings, and Natale—without so much as a “good morning”—began to speak rapid-fire. “What are they saying on the TV?”

  After a quick news update, Natale provided his wife with specific directions: “Lucia, there are two things I want you to do for me. First, call Long John. The numbers are in our personal directory. Tell him to be at the Centani at one o’clock this afternoon. Secondly, take [sons] Michael and Frankie with you to the wake. Lucia, I’ll talk to you after I speak to Long John. Don’t worry. Everything will be okay.”

  He hung up without saying good-bye.

  At 1:00 p.m., Natale was back on the prison phone dialing the number at the Italian restaurant where he was a partner with the current head of Local 170, Charlie DeRose—who picked up after a single ring. Without small talk DeRose handed the phone to Martorano. FBI agents had trailed Bruno’s longtime sidekick to the restaurant this afternoon.

  “What a terrible thing last night, our friend,” said Long John, his voice sounding uneasy to Natale. Martorano, knowing every word was being recorded, was about to declare his innocence in the hit for the unseen listeners who would review their conversation.

  Natale interrupted, snapping, “Listen, my friend was killed. So don’t play silly games with me. I am in no fucking mood. This is being recorded here, so don’t pretend that it’s not what it is. Those two motherfuckers did it, didn’t they?”

  There was a long pause once Natale had pointed the finger directly at Caponigro and Sindone. “How did you know that from down there where you’re at?” asked a perplexed Martorano, setting off an eruption from the other end of the phone.

  “You dumb motherfuckers!” Natale raged. “Nobody was even near my friend when he died! The shame is on your souls, starting with Testa and Scarfo.”

  Martorano’s explanation, that Bruno had asked Testa to steer clear of the sit-down, fell on deaf ears.

  “Jerk-offs!” Natale ranted. “Why didn’t Phil send some of his crew to babysit Ang until he got home? I wonder why not. Well, fuck them all! Somebody’s got to pay for this, and if it takes a hundred years, I’ll make sure of it. Longy, if you hear anything else on this, tell my wife at the wake. I’ll talk to you after that.”

  Natale slammed down the phone, sending a message from Florida: he was unsure of Martorano’s role, if any, in the slaughter of their mutual friend.

  17

  THE WAKE

  Lucia was home on the day of Bruno’s wake when the phone rang again. She answered to hear the voice of Bruno’s longtime business partner Martorano. Don’t wait in the line at the funeral home, he told her, but come to the front and look for him. Lucia and her sons, Michael and Frankie, would be escorted directly inside, where Sue Bruno wanted a few minutes with the wife of her slain husband’s imprisoned loyalist.

  Thousands of mourners—a mix of family and the Family, made men and mob wannabes, all flanked by the merely curious—snaked along the sidewalk outside the Pennsylvania Burial Company on South Broad Street. Inside, the hundreds of floral arrangements included ten carloads of orchids alone. It was a scene straight out of The Godfather, playing out in South Philly.

  “There is no wake like an Italian wake,” Natale said. “It’s as if the Colosseum in Rome was open for business after two thousand years. Here was the wake the South Philadelphians had waited for, a chance to pay homage to their Caesar, Angelo Bruno. This was their chance to mingle with the made men of the Philadelphia Mafia that they read about in the Philadelphia Inquirer and the Daily News.”

  While the wake had the feel of a once-in-a-lifetime event, the future would prove that feeling was untrue.

  Lucia and her sons, with Michael at the wheel, were stuck in the massive traffic jam paralyzing the local streets. They finally found a parking space and started walking to the wake, with Lucia showing her two sons the old dressmaking business where she once worked as a teen. The mother was dressed all in black, the sons in dark suits with black ties, as they grimly approached the funeral home.

  Long John spotted Lucia and the boys, steering the trio through a crowd that parted quickly at the sight of Mrs. Natale. The first five rows of seats near the ornate casket were filled with mafiosi as the Natales inched toward the kneeler, where they would say one final prayer for the soul of Angelo Bruno.

  Bruno’s only son, Michael, a man of the legitimate world, moved to bring Lucia to the empty seat alongside his mother, Sue. Mrs. Natale first put two fingers to her lips, then touched the slain boss’s forehead—a farewell from the absent Ralphy, so furious and powerless in the wake of the murder.

  Sue Bruno stood to greet Lucia, who softly told her friend to sit. Sue’s hands were cold, dry, and trembling as Lucia took them in her own hands. When the two women locked eyes, they broke down in tears and embraced.

  Lucia spoke first. “My Ralphy sends you his heart, and no matter what or who, they will pay.”

  “Lucia,” replied Sue, “just sit a couple of minutes with me until I get myself together, and then I must tell you a few things.”

  Lucia nodded yes, maintained the embrace, and scoured the room with her eyes as her husband wo
uld have done. Standing to the right of the casket was the Chicken Man, Testa, flanked by his demented followers Little Nicky Scarfo, Crazy Phil Leonetti, and Chuckie Merlino. The next generation of the Philly Mafia stood close behind: Testa’s son Salvie, Scarfo’s son Nicky Jr., and Merlino’s son Joey.

  Lucia was struck with a single thought: these men were the enemies of her husband. And then another one: the men mourning Angelo Bruno were men of no substance, unworthy of filling the Docile Don’s shoes. Her reveries were interrupted by the sound of Sue Bruno’s voice.

  “Lucia, please don’t take this the wrong way, but I must say these things to you. I am glad your husband is in prison, only because if he wasn’t, he would be laid out next to my Angelo. They would have had to kill Ralphy with my Angelo. ’Cause if they didn’t, your Ralphy would have made the streets of South Philly run red with their blood.”

  Lucia was somewhat surprised by the blunt comment, as it was the first time anyone had spoken what she knew was true of her husband, her teenage sweetheart and the father of their children. A weeping Sue warned Lucia that the stunning hit would turn their worlds upside down.

  “Tell Ralphy that everything will change for him because of what happened to my Angelo,” Sue Bruno declared as tears streamed down her face. “And tell him my family sends its love and respect.”

  Lucia said good-bye, promising to stop by after the burial. Her two sons kissed the widow on her cheek and followed their mother out past Testa and the rest. As they nodded toward her in a friendly way, Lucia felt the hostility coming off the group in waves—from the pockmarked face of Testa and the ferretlike glare of Scarfo. She went home and booked a flight to Florida for the morning after the funeral. She would tell her husband every word, every detail, every message both stated and inferred.

  The words of Sue Bruno echoed in her head, and Lucia knew she needed to pass the message along. The generosity of the Bruno regime would be buried along with the murdered boss. The timing was terrible: Lucia, alone with her five kids, was dependent on the cash-filled envelope that had come regularly from Bruno to cover her expenses with her husband behind bars.