The CO responded in the same surreptitious style: “I’m sure he will be glad to know what you think of him. He’s my father.”
“If you’re one-tenth of what your father was to the men at Lewisburg, you’ll be okay.”
The second-generation hack immediately told Natale that he would land in the unit run by the young CO. The guard, after speaking by phone with his father and checking the inmate’s reputation, summoned Natale the next morning. The old man had vouched for Natale as more convict than inmate, and trustworthy.
The CO now approached Natale with an offer. The CO was eager to keep his unit free of problems. Natale could help by reviewing the twice-a-month “bus list” of incoming inmates and selecting any names that fit the right criteria.
“I want guys who you know are good, not pieces of shit,” he told Natale.
“You got it—I don’t want them in here anyway.”
Four months later, Natale spied a familiar name headed his way and heard the long-awaited if unexpected sound of opportunity knocking—loudly.
Joey Merlino was coming to McKean. “It’s like hitting the lottery,” he thought. “When I see his name, I thought, ‘The kid’s coming in.’ I brought him in, I introduced him to everybody who was somebody in there.”
Until that very moment, Natale’s long-festering bitterness and burning desire to reclaim the mantle of the old Philadelphia mob remained a mostly abstract concept. And now, coming down on the next bus, was a Philly gangster straight from the streets, with details on mob business in their old hometown.
“I had no information at that time—who was there, who wasn’t there,” Natale recalled of their initially fortuitous meeting. “I thought, ‘Wow, here’s a godsend.’ Funny, me using the word godsend. Maybe the devil sent him.”
The processing routine was the same for Merlino as it had been for Natale, waiting while chained to the other inmates as their names were called. When the same CO summoned Joey, the guard assigned Merlino to his unit and advised, “A friend is waiting for you.”
“Is it Ralphy?” asked Merlino, who was aware through the prison grapevine that Natale was at McKean.
Merlino recalled the 1982 Senate hearing, when he had watched the marble-hard mobster uphold his sworn oath of omertà under the most difficult circumstances, at tremendous personal cost. A surge of confidence, like a jolt of electricity, filled Merlino’s body.
Theirs was a May-December mob romance, star-crossed like many unions of mismatched partners. Natale’s vision was clouded with dreams of redemption and revenge. Merlino’s commitment to the cause was at least partially steeped in his knowledge that the bloodthirsty Scarfo, even from behind bars, wanted him dead.
After Little Nicky was jailed for life, he attempted to run the Philly family from prison through his son Nicky Jr. The family was in a shambles after Scarfo had depleted its ranks with murder after murder.
Natale, though his hatred of Scarfo burned bright, took little satisfaction from Little Nicky’s demise. “To be honest, I don’t want to see anyone in jail. I know Ang made me swear on my life that I wouldn’t kill him—‘Don’t do it, Ralph!’ But I wasn’t happy about the conviction, not really. I wish he lives a thousand years now. He’s got his own punishment. He has to get up every day and look in the mirror and see the face looking back.
“He’s got a hole in his soul that can never be filled. A sick guy.”
Without Scarfo on the street, the opportunity for instant mob advancement was obvious. Joey Merlino was among those who acted on his shot at the big time.
On Halloween night 1989, the younger Scarfo sat with two friends enjoying an Italian repast at Dante & Luigi’s, a restaurant in South Philly. A man in a Halloween mask approached the table. Rather than a bag filled with candy, he carried a semiautomatic MAC-10 pistol. It was long rumored that the shooter was Merlino, and he pumped five bullets into Nicky Jr. The Philly mob scion collapsed as the floor became stained with his leaking blood. Incredibly, not a single bullets struck a major organ or blood vessel—and he survived.
The would-be assassin dropped his weapon on the way out, aping the infamous hit scene in The Godfather where Michael Corleone did the same after killing a mob boss and his NYPD crony. One informant later said that was a message to Nicky Sr., a big fan of mob movies.
Whatever the reason, Natale was unimpressed by the botched murder try: “The guy’s sitting down. He had him sitting there. Joey was scared. Scared.”
Nicky Sr., whose opinion mattered more than most, was convinced of Merlino’s role and put a $500,000 contract on his life. Scarfo also made sure a personal message was sent to Skinny Joey that no place, behind prison bars or on the Philadelphia streets, would ever insulate him from the deranged ex-boss’s deadly reach.
Publicly, Merlino put on a brave face: “Give me half a million dollars and I’ll shoot myself.” But Natale remembered the young thug as scared shitless.
Merlino landed in prison after a January 1990 conviction for a $350,000 armored car robbery. He faced fifteen years, but received just four from a compassionate judge worried about his mother and two sisters surviving without him. His father, noted Philly mobster Chuckie Merlino, was already doing forty-five years for his work alongside Scarfo. The elder Merlino was dispatched to die in a Texas penitentiary.
Joey Merlino was likely to do two years, then return to Philadelphia.
Natale pondered the situation as he awaited his reunion with the young wannabe gangster. Natale, accompanied by some of his close inmate pals, waited at the front entrance of Hilltop Unit 3 for Merlino. Natale donned a pair of sweatpants and a gray polo shirt for the get-together. Merlino instantly approached the older man and shook hands.
Merlino’s cocky street persona was a thing of the past as he stood before Natale, who recalled Skinny Joey as frightened yet thrilled by the sight of the old gangster.
“He was scared of Scarfo,” recalled Natale. “Let me put it this way—if he wasn’t scared, he was crazy. He was concerned, and I could see it in his face. He looked at me like he was a drowning man and I was a branch to grab on to.”
But Natale saw something else in Merlino’s face, almost as if he felt guilty about something. It registered with Natale, but the moment passed.
“You don’t look any different from when I last saw you in Washington,” Merlino finally announced. “Boy, am I glad you’re here.”
Natale had his reservations about Merlino, but Ralph’s single-minded focus led him to overlook any imperfections in the twenty-eight-year-old mobster: “I knew what he was, but I needed him. Listen, if I say I was hungry—I was hungry to know who was doing what on the streets. And I thought, sooner or later, I will straighten this thing out with Mr. Merlino. But let him bring these guys in.”
Natale introduced Merlino all around, and he was welcomed warmly out of respect for their fellow mafioso. There was Joe Sis of the Gambinos, and Teddy from Baltimore, and even a Philly mobster named Jack Manni.
For Merlino, this was like manna from heaven. After living in a haze of fear and paranoia about the Scarfo Jr. hit, Skinny Joey had found his protector.
“They all put in for your welcome bag,” said Natale. “Sweats, coffee, and of course cigarettes. The rest I put in your cell. It’s next to mine. C’mon, I’ll show you where we live.”
Natale and his prison comrades all had single cells. And now, so did Merlino. Natale departed with a promise of extra towels and a spare pillow.
“Get that jumpsuit off and go take a shower,” he told Merlino. “The water’s always good and hot. When you’re done, we’ll have a good cup of coffee and a few doughnuts. And then, we’ll talk.”
Mostly, Natale planned to listen. Only then would he explain what the future held for the mob mentor, now in the position of his old pal Skinny Razor, and his unlikely new protégé. Ralph prepared for the meeting that would change everything by drinking dark coffee alone in his cell, the smell filling his nostrils with thoughts of home.
B
ut the ambitious mobster wasn’t considering his family’s future together back in their old hometown. He thought instead of his long-suffering wife, Lucia, shaking his head ruefully at the memory of their sitting together in the kitchen of their old home in suburban New Jersey.
The thought passed, and he focused on the business at hand. Natale now recognized the look on his young associate’s face as duplicity, bred into Merlino first by his father and then by the elder Scarfo. Natale dismissed the thought, refocusing on his long-delayed mission of redemption and reclamation.
He needed Merlino and his new breed to execute the plan of ascension to the throne of the now-scattered Philadelphia family, and to reestablish the Philly mob’s seizure of Atlantic City’s riches. The first step was filling the shoes once held by old friend Angelo Bruno, and now under control of the backstabbing Stanfa.
“I knew I had to act as quickly as possible to put into action what I began to think of on the night when Angelo Bruno was killed,” Natale said. He had long waited for this, never sure when or where it would occur, but always certain it would come.
That he never doubted, not for a moment.
Natale also knew Merlino ran a crew in the city, where they remained a somewhat unknown quantity even as they hung out with the top mobsters. Merlino’s father, Chuckie, had been “defrocked”—booted from his position as underboss—before Scarfo went away for life on the RICO charge. Once the demotion went into effect, the younger Merlino found himself persona non grata in the close-knit world of the local Cosa Nostra.
Natale felt one other thing in his bones, one that should have caused him to pause before plunging ahead: Merlino was cut from the same untrustworthy cloth as Testa and Scarfo, the dead and the jailed successors to Bruno. Instead Natale threw caution to the winds, focused on taking back what was rightfully his.
Merlino finally knocked on the cell door. Each man took a seat before the host stood to prepare a fresh pot of coffee and bring out the doughnuts. “Now you can bring me up-to-date about what’s going on in our hometown,” Natale said.
The ball was now in Merlino’s court; he could spill his guts or play things close to the vest. Natale had a feeling that things would play out the way he wanted, and Skinny Joey would sign on with Team Ralph. But the younger man had been schooled by his father about the ways of the Philadelphia Cosa Nostra, to never reveal his true feeling about any mob business to anyone.
The pair eventually sat side by side, like a penitent confessing to the parish priest. The older man spoke first. “Tell me, Joey, who appears to be in charge of anything—including Atlantic City—since they put Little Nicky away?” Natale sensed immediately that Merlino grasped the unspoken message that Ralph intended to retake the city as his own. And maybe, just maybe, their own.
An obviously pleased Merlino replied without haste, merging his future with Natale’s vision for a mob rebirth in the City of Brotherly Love. “Ralphy, nobody has attempted to put anything together except maybe Nicky Jr., as far as I know. Michael [Ciancaglini] and I have a few sports books turning in to us, and a couple of numbers books from the yams”—a reference to the Black Mafia. “But that’s it.”
This raised the first red flag for Natale. Merlino was a well-known “beat artist,” hiding behind his father’s fearsome rep to stiff bookies on his deep gambling debts. None of the city’s gambling operators would trust the degenerate gambler with their money.
“You can’t buy a reputation,” Natale said bluntly in recalling their conversation. “You have to earn it. And in Merlino’s case, that was impossible. Nobody of worth trusted him, on the street or in prison. And that included his family and friends.”
So Merlino, his credibility shot, needed Ralphy far more than the mob veteran needed him. Natale owned credibility in spades, even after all his time off the streets, with his ties to the men who had first formed the family—Bruno and Skinny Razor—and his contacts inside the five families of New York.
Everything was falling into place. Natale was certain that he could forge Merlino and his crew into a hammer to swing hard in his best interests. But he had one final question about Joey’s pal Ciancaglini:
“Is Michael capable?” Translation: Is Michael a killer?
“Ralph, he banged out his first when he was sixteen,” Merlino replied breathlessly. “He’s got a fearsome reputation throughout South Philly, with or without a gun. Ralphy, you’ll love him. He’s like your old partner used to be.”
Natale enjoyed the reference to his old hatchet-wielding compatriot Mike Marrone. High praise, he thought to himself. “If your Michael is half the man that Mike Marrone was,” he finally said, “he’ll do.”
Ciancaglini, like Merlino, was already surrounded by a street crew. The good news kept getting better. Natale, like a surrogate father, finally reached over and placed his open palm on top of Merlino’s hand. There was one final question.
“Is Michael on your visiting list?”
The answer was yes. Natale told his young charge to bring Ciancaglini up to McKean for a sit-down as soon as possible.
“I’ll have my daughter and wife visit on the same day so we can talk on the visit,” Natale said. “Now, finish your doughnuts, and I’ll show you where everything is at—including ‘our’ TV room and the chairs only for ‘us.’”
Merlino departed with a considerably rosier view of his future and the world outside the prison walls. For Natale, the key was Ciancaglini, a son in a notorious mob clan. His dad, Joseph “Chickie” Ciancaglini, was of Ralph’s generation, a onetime Teamster enforcer and a straight-up killer. He took a bullet during one labor dispute and lived to tell the tale. His rise through the Philadelphia family was aided in large measure by his decision to sell out Sindone in the Bruno assassination, and he wound up behind bars for more than three decades after serving under Scarfo. Among Chickie’s crimes was the ice-pick murder of a rival gangster.
“We grew up together,” Natale said of the family patriarch. “Went to Bartlett Junior High. At that time, when I was rising, he knew everybody. He was a goon for Local 107. They were fighting at the time, and somebody shot him with a small caliber—you can catch them, almost. Hit him, but didn’t do nothing.”
His boys followed him into the family business—Mikey and Joey Ciancaglini, who wound up on opposite sides of the mob war soon instigated by Natale and Skinny Joey.
“Mikey Chang was a gangster,” Natale recalled with admiration. “He was the closest thing to Salvie Testa. Mikey was maybe six foot one, up and down. The kid could fight with his hands, and he could shoot, too. But a nice kid, a handsome kid. Not a bully, but tough as they come. Made for me.”
Natale continued preaching the Gospel of Ralph to new recruit Merlino, who hung on every word, every promise. Philadelphia would soon be theirs, and Atlantic City, too. Ralph would serve as the boss, and Joey as his right-hand man and underboss.
“We did a lot of talking,” explained Natale. “We swore to one another, hugged and kissed one another. I told him, ‘This is gonna get serious, Joey. When I come home, there’s gonna be a lot of action.’ He nodded, but shaky. And I said, ‘If nothing’s done, when I get home, I’m gonna clean it up myself.’ He said, ‘I know, my father told me about you.’”
The pair also entered into a pact that the once-betrayed Natale considered a sacrosanct vow: no matter how it turned out, if somebody wound up back behind bars or in the ground, the man left on the outside would make sure the other’s family was not forgotten. Natale didn’t want a repeat of his first jail term, with promises broken and his wife left to fend for herself.
“With Merlino, that meant I’d take care of his girl, his mother, and his two sisters,” Natale recalled nearly twenty-five years later. “That meant to me that you make sure, no matter what. ’Cause we were gonna do a little work. There’s gonna be a lot of problems. I said, ‘You remember, ’cause somebody might get lucky with a shot at me. I don’t intend it to happen, but you know…’”
Mikey Chan
g, accompanied by his girlfriend and another tough kid named Tommy “Horsehead” Scafidi, made the trip to McKean two weeks after the initial Merlino-Natale summit. Ralph’s wife came with two of his daughters to the decent-size visitors’ room, where inmates were permitted to sit with the guests of other inmates. The guards, focused on the arrival of Ciancaglini’s attractive companion Caryn, paid little attention to the other guests.
Scafidi—his nickname came from his equine profile, not the infamous scene from The Godfather—boasted a mob lineage like Ciancaglini. Scafidi’s brother Tori was a made man, and his grandfather was involved in the Mafia. Despite the odd alias, he was good-looking with typically slicked-back black hair. He stayed with Caryn as Natale sat down with his fellow inmate and Ciancaglini.
Natale looked intently at Michael’s face as the two men shook hands, looking for any sign of duplicity. Instead, he saw honesty and courage. “This one’s a keeper,” Natale thought to himself as he laid out the plot first conjured in a Florida prison on the night of the Bruno assassination. He specifically mentioned taking back Local 54, a potential gold mine awaiting them in Atlantic City.
Once they had control of the roughly twenty-two thousand union members, Natale explained, the family would run the health insurance and severance pension funds. The mob would take $100 per month per member in kickbacks from the insurance brokers running the twin funds. The smiles grew on the young duo’s faces as they did the crooked math.
Three mob bosses had died for the pot of gold at the end of Atlantic City’s rainbow. And now it was about to land in their laps. This was the time for Natale to find out exactly how serious Mikey Chang and Skinny Joey were about doing what now needed to be done.
The three men walked to an outside visiting area, where Natale lit up one of his favorite H. Upmann cigars, brought as a gift by Ciancaglini. A chill was in the spring air as they stood together. The younger men had heard tales of Natale from their relatives, but they would hear firsthand this day exactly what the old hand was capable of doing.
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