Last Don Standing

by Larry McShane

  With Bruno now gone and Natale locked up, Scarfo’s eyes were refocused on the prize—boss of the family, king of Atlantic City. Even on the night when the Commission anointed Testa, the South Jersey mobster worked the room inside the executive suite at the ritzy St. Regis Hotel as if he were one of their peers.

  The sight was enough to send a shiver through Testa’s soul despite his rise to the lofty spot, succeeding his old friend Bruno. He felt like an outsider among these New York men who were now his equals. Even his outfit, an expensive but simple suit, seemed out of place on this night of nights.

  Part of the blame belonged to the late Bruno, who kept Testa close to himself and far away from the mob’s hierarchy beyond the Philadelphia city limits. But Testa was cheered by his new consigliere Scarfo’s friendship with the New Yorkers, believing his loyal pal’s ties would benefit Testa’s reign.

  And his spirits were boosted by a conversation with Gambino boss Castellano that left both bosses smiling. Big Paul had reminded him of the pact made by their predecessor when it came to looting Atlantic City and its unions.

  But it was not Castellano who welcomed Testa to the bosses’ ranks, a subtle sign of the shifting alliances already under way. Bobby Manna stood instead, a glass of champagne in his hand as the other bosses sat around a large table, to welcome Testa. “To the new boss of the Philadelphia family, Phil Testa,” the Genovese consigliere declared to the clinking of glasses. There were handshakes and hugs of welcome and congratulations, along with a promise of help—if needed—in restoring order to the new Testa family.

  The thoughts of Scarfo, from his seat in the same suite, were already drifting to the next morning in Atlantic City. He was also busily compiling a mental hit list, with one name at the top: John McCullough. Natale knew exactly what Scarfo was thinking: “Now that Ang is gone, and Ralphy’s buried in Lewisburg, their ends of Atlantic City come directly to us. There’s no one left to come to us for what used to be Ralphy’s.”

  Scarfo shared his thoughts with the new boss on their ride home from Manhattan, holding the promise of fast cash from Local 54’s health and welfare pension funds as a carrot for Testa. The money was particularly enticing for Testa, whose previous earnings were dependent on his ties to the late Bruno. Scarfo appeared poised to open a spigot flowing with riches.

  On the morning after the Commission officially installed Testa, Little Nicky summoned union boss Gerace to his home—an invitation delivered by the terrifying Virgilio. Scarfo appeared in a robe and slippers, while his guest stood as a show of respect to the newly promoted gangster. He sat in the kitchen near the lone window, where an unusually high cinder-block wall blocked the sunshine.

  There was a tale behind the wall’s construction. Scarfo contracted for its creation over fears that Natale might one day pay an early-morning visit to resolve their feud with a few hollow points, ignoring Bruno’s orders to the contrary.

  Scarfo offered Gerace a smile that belied the glare in his eyes. He explained that the union now belonged to him and promised a larger cut of the cash to the union head. Gerace, who had a wife, kids, and a mistress to support, saw a vision of the future: No financial worries. His girlfriend, now working in his office, set up in a home of her own, free to work only on her tan and taut physique. A steady stream of cash as the union membership exploded from seven hundred dues-paying members to more than twenty thousand.

  Gerace’s role was simple: In addition to access to the union money, he would arrange for a consulting firm to find companies that would handle various union duties. The businesses would pay dearly for the access, and the money would come back to the mob.

  It sounded too good to be true, mostly because it was. By 1982, The New York Times was already reporting Gerace’s ties to the Scarfo crew. Subtlety was not among Scarfo’s limited charms.

  On this March morning in 1980, such concerns were not part of the agenda. Scarfo envisioned the same windfall as Gerace: he would enjoy the ear of Phil Testa, whose knowledge of the free-flowing cash would come only from the lying mouth of his new consigliere.

  The future seemed bright, with the promise of fast cash for the family. None of it was going to Natale, one of the architects of the mob’s grip on the revitalized seaside resort. It would take only a few short years for Scarfo to undo what was so carefully put in place by the prescient bosses of New York, Chicago and Philadelphia.

  Testa “failed to see the obvious, that the foundation of Atlantic City—the union—was now in the hands of his murderous partner, Nicky Scarfo,” Natale said in hindsight.

  Scarfo’s plan had a second part. As Natale knew, this was not a man to let bygones be bygones. The new consigliere was plotting his revenge on all those who’d left him to rot in the wasteland of Atlantic City as they whispered in the Bruno’s ear.

  “He wanted them to feel what he felt in all those damp, cold years before gambling came to Atlantic City,” Natale said. “Before Angelo Bruno was killed.”

  The Atlantic City of 1980 was a burgeoning mob wonderland when Scarfo invited the new boss for a visit. Little Nicky was behind the wheel as the two men drove to the Resorts International casino—the first of the gambling meccas to rise alongside the Atlantic Ocean. The two men entered the lobby side by side, with Testa marveling at the Carrara marble and plush carpeting. Scarfo’s nephew Leonetti walked a respectful step behind the pair.

  Slightly ahead waited the hulking Gerace, who lived in mortal fear of the five-foot-five Scarfo. Unlike his predecessor Bruno, the new boss was unused to the position of power that he now held. Bruno was a true peer of the old New York bosses and the Outfit in Chicago. Testa was still feeling his way around. Gerace shook hands with the new don as he looked directly at Scarfo—a small gesture that spoke volumes.

  Gerace led the visitors on a tour of the premises. As they walked, Scarfo got down to the business he really wanted to discuss: John McCullough, the popular head of the Roofers Union Local 33. Scarfo broached a subject he had raised before, that another union was nosing around Atlantic City and threatening their stranglehold on the casino business.

  He laid out a grim scenario for Testa: McCullough was trying to organize the city’s bartenders to form their own union, with their own business agents. They would operate outside Gerace’s sphere of influence. No money from this group would find its way west to Philadelphia.

  “How the hell did this happen?” Testa asked. Scarfo had a ready answer: McCullough had the backing of his fellow Irishman, the powerful union boss (and old Natale ally) Ed Hanley.

  “How the fuck did our friends in Chicago give the green light to Hanley to allow this to happen?” Testa shot back. The explanation was simple: as long as the Outfit got paid each month, they couldn’t care less about which union provided the cash. In time, Gerace explained, outsiders could take over Local 54 and turn off the flow of money to Philadelphia.

  While initially enraged by the blunt talk, Scarfo soon realized it was to his benefit. McCullough was atop the first wave of interlopers and needed to be stopped right away. He asked for a moment alone with Testa.

  “Phil, we can’t allow them Irish motherfuckers to take all of this away,” said Scarfo, waving his arm toward the jangling slot machines and busy gaming tables. “Too many people have worked at this, it belongs to us. The Philly family needs to show we can police our own territory and protect what is ours.”

  Testa reacted with emotion, rather than the patience and consideration needed in such a situation. The boss, standing inside the first floor of the casino, approved a contract for Scarfo to murder McCullough. The decision had repercussions that the new boss could never imagine.

  The contract was given to the dapper Martorano, suddenly a part of Scarfo’s murderous inner circle after all those years with Bruno as his partner.

  Nine days before Christmas 1980, a flower deliveryman knocked on the door of McCullough’s home, carrying an armful of holiday poinsettias. McCullough was talking on the phone as his wife stood in the ki
tchen watching when the visitor dropped the flowers and opened fire. McCullough was shot six times and died right in front of his horrified wife.

  “Shameful,” Natale said of the killing. “A complete disregard of all La Cosa Nostra rules of killing any man. In front of his family! John McCullough was as courageous and tough a man as ever put on a pair of pants. A Marine, and a World War Two hero.”

  Nicky Scarfo was just getting started.

  19

  THEY BLEW UP THE CHICKEN MAN

  Shortly after Testa’s ascension, he selected a longtime Philly mob figure as his underboss—family capo Pete Casella, a convicted heroin dealer who did seventeen years behind bars without ever opening his mouth, a true stand-up guy from the mob’s old guard. Before the appointment became official, Casella visited the stone-front home of Frank “Chickie” Narducci on South Broad Street, where the host’s wife, Adeline, poured coffee and offered to make breakfast. Casella politely declined, and the two men began to talk. They had a shared history: Narducci had come to Casella’s aid when the mob veteran returned to Philly after doing his drug-rap time.

  “Chickie admired him,” Natale explained. “Casella was known in the family at one time as the number two hatchet man, right behind Skinny Razor. Chickie told him, ‘You come with me.’ He set him up on the outside, with new clothes and an apartment.”

  This meeting was about the present, not the past. Narducci broached the idea of Casella’s appointment to the number two spot. Casella replied that job one was taking care of Bruno’s killers. Job two was making sure Scarfo didn’t get the underboss position.

  “I give you my word,” Casella declared, “that little snake Scarfo will never be what he thinks he will be. The best he will get is the number three spot. If for any reason this does not come about, then—and only then—you and I will talk again.”

  The two men hugged as Narducci’s nervous wife made the sign of the cross for both of them in another room. Casella’s prediction on the new arrangement of the family hierarchy was spot-on.

  His promotion was met with approval by the made men of Philadelphia and the bosses of New York. The lone dissenting voice was Scarfo, relegated to the family’s number three spot—but he made no public pronouncement of his feelings.

  For Natale, the Chicken Man’s choices for the top spots provided further evidence of the new boss’s chief failure after assuming the seat of power. Casella and Scarfo had little use for one another, creating a schism at the very inception of the new regime.

  “It’s like he never heard or read the old axiom ‘those who don’t study history are doomed to repeat it,’” said Natale. “In his haste to appease all the factions of the family, he made a grave mistake in his choices as underboss and consigliere. He failed to recognize the Bruno killing had shattered the aura of invincibility that surrounded the men who rule and set free the demons of unrealistic ambitions and the greed of men who wanted to be more than they were ever born to be.”

  Testa’s biggest fault was putting even an ounce of trust in his friend and consigliere Scarfo: “He was a nonentity until Angelo Bruno was murdered, and then he fell into the role he was born to play: a sycophant who took advantage of Testa. The face of the Philly mob was transformed from the benevolent profile of Bruno into the face of greed and treachery embodied by Scarfo.

  “As Willie Shakespeare would say, ‘Therein lies the problem.’”

  Testa stood flanked by his two choices for the ruling troika inside the dimly lit basement of a South Philly row house as the family conducted its swearing-in ceremony for its new leaders. The smell of damp mortar mingled with the smoke from burning candles. Testa, looking every inch the rightful successor as padrone, wore a dark gray pin-striped suit.

  Through the flickering candlelight, he could make out the face of his son Salvie—there to witness the installation of the new boss, the young man’s father. The pride was obvious on both their faces. The ceremony would also include the induction of new members into the family, including the younger Testa. For many, his arrival as a made man marked Salvie’s designation as heir apparent.

  “Salvie was the prince in waiting,” said Natale, who’d known the young Testa since the new inductee was a boy. “He was a gangster’s gangster. He had the DNA. Pure. He tasted the power, growing up the way he did. And once you feel that, it’s hard to get rid of. It’s like heroin. End of story.”

  Sworn in alongside Salvie were Scarfo’s nephew “Crazy Phil” Leonetti, Salvatore “Wayne” Grande, Anthony “Blonde Babe” Pungitore, Chickie Narducci’s son Frank, and two others. Salvie and Leonetti invited the new inductees and the rest to join them for an after-party at the Saloon, a bar-restaurant in the oldest and most heavily Italian section of the city.

  Pungitore’s oldest son, Joe, helped ferry the revelers to their celebration. Salvie Testa was the main attraction, drawing an admiring crowd of male mob wannabes and attractive young women—including Maria Merlino, whose father, Chuckie, would later move into the family’s ruling hierarchy.

  The men shared a dinner, served promptly at 8:00 p.m., and toasted one another with champagne and iced vodka as the gawkers stared. The very public meeting was meant as a dual statement of purpose: Here we are. And the city belongs to us. Casella, who’d received his button forty years earlier, was the only one to turn down the invitation.

  “I love you,” the ever-respectful Salvie told his old man at the ceremony, planting a kiss on his cheek. “And I am at your service no matter what.”

  The preparty event struck Natale years later as among the most ironic gatherings in Philly mob history. All assembled pledged allegiance to the family and the new don, including Casella and Scarfo.

  “Here, standing together while swearing a vow of loyalty, were the men who within a few short years would break every promise—including the oath of omertà—to Phil Testa and La Cosa Nostra,” Natale said of the ceremony. “Never in the history of the family was a ceremony so ripe with men who would be a part of killing one another.”

  The first to turn, against all odds, was the veteran Casella.

  Among Casella’s friends was local hood Rocco Marinucci, who in turn had a pal named Teddy DiPretoro—a waiter at Bookbinder’s, a popular seafood restaurant on the Delaware River. The two aspiring gangsters did a bit of drug dealing, and Marinucci was particularly determined to become a made man. DiPretoro boasted a talent for manufacturing silencers, bombs, and assorted other weaponry in his basement.

  Casella was soon accompanied everywhere by the young hoodlums as Scarfo connived to omit the underboss from his discussions with Testa and keep the elder mobster in the dark about the Atlantic City money. What Scarfo forgot was that the Philly mob veteran had friends inside the Gambino family, too, men who had done time in Atlanta alongside Casella.

  Casella’s eyes were opened during a New York social call with his old cellmates. Accompanied by Narducci, Casella checked into the St. Regis Hotel in midtown Manhattan for a weekend reunion in January 1981. Tommy Bilotti, one of boss Castellano’s most trusted men, invited the pair to a small Sunday dinner gathering at a tiny Italian restaurant closed to all but the mobsters. Each table was covered by a checkered tablecloth, a sight right out of every mob movie ever made about New York.

  Bilotti brought one other guest: a Gambino captain jailed alongside Casella. The man would vouch for both Bilotti and Casella, an old Mafia tradition, since the two had never met. Dinner was served, but this was a business meeting as well.

  “Tommy Bilotti was a tough guy,” Natale said of Big Paul’s right-hand man. “If he had something to say, he said it—no questions asked. Paul Castellano needed someone like him.”

  Once the formalities were finished, Bilotti congratulated Casella on his promotion to underboss. He also offered his compliments on the windfall that came with the new position, the buckets of cash liberated from the funds of Local 54. It was the first that Casella or Narducci had ever heard about the money that was already coming the way of
Testa and Scarfo.

  “When he heard the money was supposed to be shared equally, between Castellano, Philly, and Chicago—he wasn’t getting a dime!” Natale recounted of the meeting. “He was dumbfounded. Being the man he is, he always played it straight. And that’s when he said, ‘We gotta do something now.’ That’s what ignited the whole plot against Phil Testa.

  “Casella thought, ‘I’ve gotta get something out of this, even if it’s just three cents.’ That’s the evilness of our life. The greed, with people saying, ‘Eh, that guy, he don’t need this, he don’t need that.’”

  Casella made it through the meal before excusing himself, mentioning a meeting scheduled that night in Philadelphia with Testa. The two old gangsters shared an embrace, with Bilotti sending along greetings to both the new boss and his son, Salvie. Bilotti had earlier shared his private number with Casella, and he urged the Philly made man to use it—particularly if there was any trouble with Scarfo.

  “Keep your eyes and ears open for anything,” Bilotti said in parting. “These are dangerous times for the Philadelphia family after a man like Angelo Bruno was murdered by his own.”

  Casella was reeling as he walked outside the restaurant under the gray city sky. The two Philly vets climbed into their car for the ride home, with Narducci at the wheel. “Not now,” Casella said with a wave of his hand, calling for silence as they drove through the crowded Manhattan streets. But both men were considering the treachery exposed over dinner. And they both believed something had to be done about this disrespectful slap in the face.

  “So be it,” Casella finally said, more to himself than Narducci, and let out a sigh. This was Pete Casella’s pinpoint in time, riding along the turnpike back to his hometown. Two-thirds of the family’s ruling triumvirate had treated him like a fool, hoarding the income from Atlantic City for themselves. The sting of this realization soon evolved into anger and vengeance before Casella finally shared his thoughts with Narducci: