Mafia Prince: Inside America's Most Violent Crime Family (36 page)

             
No one had any idea what I was doing, and the FBI wanted to keep it secret until we were all out of Holmesburg and started getting designated in whatever federal prisons we were going to be assigned to. They told me to just sit back and wait, and that’s exactly what I did.

             
My uncle broke Lawrence’s balls so bad when we were in Holmesburg, it’s almost like he wanted him to cooperate. When my uncle found out about Lawrence, he said to me, “I told you he was no good. I shoulda killed him three years ago.”

             
I just walked away. I know Chuckie took it bad when Lawrence became a cooperator, but Lawrence had been distancing himself from us for the last couple of years, even before my uncle took him and Chuckie down. I always liked Lawrence; me and him were very,
very close. But before we got arrested, Faffy came down to Atlantic City and told me that he heard Lawrence tell someone, “Don’t say nothing in front of Philip unless you want him to go back to his uncle with it,” which was an absolute lie. That bothered me and I didn’t have too much to do with Lawrence after that.

             
In late July/early August 1989, we all got transferred out of Holmesburg and moved to the federal prison in Otisville, New York, which is upstate. Me, my uncle, and Chuckie had all been designated as high-security inmates because of our leadership positions in
La Cosa Nostra.
At the time, Otisville was a federal transfer center where all inmates going into the federal prison system had to pass through before they got to their designation. It is where you got classified by the BOP. The place was like a big warehouse full of guys who had been sentenced and were on their way to federal prison.

             
One of the first guys I bumped into in Otisville was Bobby Manna, who was the Chin’s consigliere and helped my uncle become boss. He had just been sentenced to 80 years and was waiting to get classified and shipped out. He said to me, “Your uncle made the right choice in picking you as his underboss,” and I thanked him and we talked for a little while.

             
Bobby was a good guy, a stand-up guy. Being the Chin’s consigliere, he had seen it all. What happened was, Bobby and some
of the North Jersey Genovese got convicted of racketeering and trying to kill John Gotti and his brother Gene. Bobby told me that Gotti and the Gambinos were trying to move in on the North Jersey gambling–loan-sharking operation that the Genovese took from “Tony Bananas” Caponigro after they killed him.

             
Me and my uncle weren’t on the same cellblock, but I would see him sometimes in the yard or if we had visits on the same day. I’d see some of the other guys—like Faffy, Joe Punge, Philip Narducci, and Chuckie—the same way, but we were all on different cellblocks. Joe Massino, the boss of the Bonnano crime family, was on my block, and he and I became friendly.

             
Now this whole time I’m in Otisville, I’m calling home and I’m speaking to Maria, to Little Philip, but mostly to my mother, who was communicating with the FBI for me. She would mention things in code about what they were telling her and I knew that in a matter of weeks I would be out of Otisville and shipped off to a Wit Sec prison for those in Witness Protection. Both my mother and grandmother were just like me and my uncle in that they were very good at speaking in code. My mother was telling me what the FBI was telling her, but was saying it in a way that no one would know what she was talking about. As days went by, I began to hear through the grapevine where the other guys had gotten designated and who was going where.

             
One day, I’m down in the visiting area to see Nicky Jr. This is late August 1989. He was still running the operation on the street for his father, but he was telling me that things weren’t good out there. He was telling me that Chuckie’s son Joey and Chickie Ciancaglini’s son Michael were very aggressively trying to muscle in on what had been our operation in South Philadelphia. He said, “They’ve got guys who should be paying my father, paying them because they got six or seven guys and I got me and Cousin Tony.” I told him, I said, “Nick, why don’t you get out of that and go do something else? What do you wanna do—end up in here or get killed?” And he said, “You’re right, Philip.”

             
Now, Nicky Jr. is my cousin. We grew up together on Georgia Avenue. I was 12 years older than him, so he looked up to me like a big brother. I looked him dead in his eye and said, “You’re going to end up getting killed; leave that life alone,” and he just nodded.
I knew sitting there that I would likely never see him again and if he didn’t take my advice that he would end up either dead or in jail.

             
Toward the end of our visit, I asked him how our Mom-Mom was doing and he told me some story about her chasing some reporter off the steps of our apartment building, and we both laughed, and then I asked him about Mark. He just shook his head and said, “He just lays there. It’s like he’s dead, but he’s still alive. . . .” And his voice trailed off. We sat there in silence for a minute or two, both of us thinking about how my uncle, his father, had fucked up our family.

             
I stood up and hugged him and kissed him, I had my hands on his face and I told him that I loved him and I said, “Nicky, remember what I told you, this life is no good, it’s not for you. Go do something else,” and he didn’t say anything and we hugged and kissed again. I told him, “Tell Mom-Mom I love her,” and as I was walking away I remember getting a little teary-eyed knowing I was never going to see him again, and that if he had any problems, I couldn’t do anything to help him.

             
Now Nicky Jr.’s visit was divided between me and my uncle. They brought me down first, and then when my visit was done, they would bring my uncle out. So when I’m done the visit they put me in a cell and I am waiting for someone to strip-search me, and then for an escort to take me back to my cellblock, when all the sudden my uncle comes walking in with his escort. They put him in the cell directly across from me and they have to strip-search him before they let him go out for the visit. Everything in federal prison is regimented like this. Me and him are five feet away from each other.

             
Now I hadn’t seen my uncle in maybe a week or two, and in all likelihood this is the last time I am ever going to see him, and the first thing he says to me is, “Did you handle that thing I asked you

             
to do?”

             
I knew by his tone that he was annoyed that I hadn’t done whatever it was, and I said, “What thing?” and he said, “The thing for Joe Black,” and I said, “I looked into it, but I couldn’t get an answer one way or the other,” which was bullshit. My uncle says, “I’ll look into it, and I’ll get the answer,” and I could tell by his tone that he was worked up about something. Then he says, “I heard you and Bobby were talking,” meaning Bobby Manna, so I said, “I bumped
into him, so what?” And he said, “You weren’t going to tell me,” and I said, “You wanna know everybody I bump into in here; there’s a thousand guys in here,” and then I could hear the guards coming. He says, “Did Nicky Jr. tell ya where I’m goin’, where these motherfuckers are sendin’ me?” And I shrugged my shoulders and shook my head no. He said, “Marion, Illinois.” I said, “Jesus Christ, that place is the worst.”

             
Right then a guard came and yelled, “Scarfo!” and they led my uncle into another room to search him. As they were walking him out, my uncle said, “Fuck Marion, these cocksuckers ain’t never gonna break me,” and then he starts giving me instructions on what to do when I get to whatever prison I get designated to. He says, “Call Bobby Simone and have him tell Nicky Jr. so he can let me know where you are and who you are with,” and with that they open the big steel door and I know that in about 20 seconds, when that door shuts behind him, that I may never see him again or have to hear that fuckin’ voice of his barking out orders at me.

             
As the guard yells “Gate!” the door is electronically going to close and my uncle is still talking. He says, “Did Nicky tell ya what those two fuckin’ snake kids are doing downtown?”, which was a reference to Joey Merlino and Michael Ciancaglini in South Philadelphia. And with that the door shut and it was quiet. He was gone.

             
They called me down, but I had no idea where I was going. The marshals took me and turned me over to the FBI, to special agents Jim Maher and Gary Langan. They drove me from Otisville to an office somewhere in New Jersey, maybe in the Cherry Hill area, which was outside of Philadelphia. We talked the whole ride down, trying to get to know one another. They seemed like decent guys and all they kept saying was, “If you tell us the truth, we can help you; if you lie to us, there is nothing we can do to help you or your family,” and I told them that I understood.

             
When we got to the office, there were a few more FBI guys and one of the US attorneys. The US attorney told me, “If I find your cooperation to be 100-percent truthful, I will recommend to the judge that he consider giving you a lower sentence. You have to understand, the judge is not bound by my recommendation and that, in fact, even if you do cooperate, you may still have to serve your entire 45-year sentence. Do you understand?” And I said,
“Yes, I do.”

             
They put me in protective custody in a county jail in South Jersey, either Salem or Gloucester County, under an assumed name, and every morning they would come and pick me up and take me to the same office and they would ask me a series of questions about everything you could imagine about
La Cosa Nostra,
historical stuff. They asked about Ange, Phil Testa, my uncle, the Riccobenes, Salvie, you name it. They were very, very thorough, and they treated me well. They were always respectful. They knew everything, even stuff from the early ’70s when we first got started. All them years we thought we had them outsmarted, they had us down pat.