Mob Star (20 page)

In between these domestic matters, Carmine Fatico was finally sentenced to five years probation after several delays engineered by Roy Cohn, his lawyer.

After so much time away from the Bergin, it didn’t matter that Fatico got probation instead of prison, which is what his brother Daniel would get a year later. Gotti had undisputed control, although now and then he would seek the old man’s advice. They would meet secretly in a tailor shop near the Bergin.

About the same time the Faticos faded away, Source Wahoo’s control agent, Martin J. Boland, was transferred to Tampa and replaced by James M. Abbott. Source Wahoo was wary, but agreed to continue informing “on the condition he never be compromised or told to testify.” A memo explained: “He will not testify under any circumstances and would deny he ever cooperated in the event he was ever surfaced. Source is very sensitive as to his confidential relationship and was given assurances by agents Boland and Abbott.”

In a final memo, which successfully requested that Wahoo be reimbursed for gambling losses at the Bergin, Agent Boland said: “Source has been very well accepted by individuals at the club.”

Gotti continued to content himself with gambling and loan-sharking. “Until such time he is sure [that] the parole officers are not going to be bothering him, he will continue to earn money in this slower fashion,” Agent Colgan noted after another BQ contact.

Source BQ, however, added an interesting footnote. He said drug-fugitive Salvatore Ruggiero, though he never risked being caught by coming to the Bergin, was in “occasional contact” with Gotti and with Angelo.

BQ would develop a different perspective than Wahoo on John Gotti and drugs. He would come to believe that Gotti was a major drug investor, whereas Wahoo, who was closer to him, would say he was not. BQ’s suspicions first surfaced early in 1979, after Gotti told crew members not to deal drugs—an order that would be frequently and robustly violated. BQ told the FBI that the ban did “not mean that Gotti himself is not involved in a large-scale way … investing money, in cocaine and other high-value drugs.”

 

 

Most Crime Capital cops still regarded Neil Dellacroce as the Gambino boss and, in June 1978, the Manhattan D.A.’s detective squad opened an investigation of him. The investigation centered on his Ravenite Social Club, located on Mulberry Street in Little Italy—an island of narrow streets and tenements virtually surrounded by another ethnic neighborhood, Chinatown. Mulberry was Main Street; a few blocks south of the club, tourists clogged cafés named after Amalfi Coast villages like Positano and Sorrento.

Dellacroce was no tourist. He was born and raised in Little Italy. Though he now had a home on Staten Island, he also maintained an apartment near the Ravenite; on 124 consecutive days of surveillance in 1979, the D.A.’s detective saw him at the club on all but 5 days.

The detectives had been rediscovering a familiar problem conducting surveillance in Little Italy. It was noted in an affidavit seeking approval to bug the Ravenite, inside and out:

“The denizens of that area are very alert to the presence of strangers and strange vehicles,” Detective Joseph Borelli said. “The fact [that] even law-abiding inhabitants of that area will report the presence of strangers to the organized crime figures who frequent it is legend in the NYPD.”

Detectives tried to eavesdrop while hiding in trunks of cars parked outside the club, but dropped the tactic after someone opened a fire hydrant and flooded the street. When they got permission to break into the club and install bugs, they met a large German shepherd named Duke.

On two occasions, Detective John Gurnee tried to neutralize Duke by feeding him meatballs spiked with tranquilizers. The first time, Duke still kept charging the door and Gurnee retreated. The next time, more powerful meatballs made Duke a puppy and Gurnee made it inside. Then a half-dozen men with baseball bats appeared outside the club and Gurnee fled through a rear exit—as several police cars filled the street.

One of the batsmen was Mickey Cirelli, the 76-year-old caretaker of the Ravenite who lived on an upper floor. A few days later, John Gotti, according to Detective Victor Ruggiero, was overheard telling Cirelli that the next time he discovered cops breaking in, he should shoot them and say they were burglars. Detectives saw Gotti at the Ravenite 35 times during the same 124-day period.

The detectives successfully planted bugs outside the Ravenite, hoping to overhear conversations on Mulberry Street, where it was obvious that club members and their visitors discussed business. The outdoor bugs, however, were soon discovered and destroyed.

The detectives next installed a parabolic microphone and video camera in an apartment overlooking the Ravenite, but not too long afterward Neil’s son Buddy and another man placed a ladder against the building, climbed up, and confirmed their suspicions. Other men threatened to set the building afire.

Despite the obstacles, the district attorney’s detectives did hear and see enough to warrant a grand jury investigation into loan-sharking and gambling. Neil, John, Angelo, and others were subpoenaed to testify, but the investigation went nowhere—not then, at least.

The recipients of subpoenas discussed among themselves who would plead the Fifth Amendment and refuse to testify, and who would answer questions and shadowbox with the grand jury. Dellacroce and Gotti sparred, and one day outside the grand jury room a police detective complimented Gotti on his elegant suit, now practically a trademark.

“I got it from a hijacked load,” Gotti teased. “Solve that case.”

Dellacroce had more than a Manhattan grand jury to worry about. In Florida, he had been indicted by a federal grand jury for ordering the murder of a loan shark. The contract allegedly was carried out by Anthony Plate, another loan shark accused—in the same case—of loan-sharking for Dellacroce in the Miami area. The indictment stated that Plate, on behalf of Dellacroce, had jumped onto the desk of a Florida auto dealer and spit in his face, which he threatened to “bite chunks” out of unless the businessman made good on a loan.

One day at the Bergin, Daniel Fatico, about to finally go to prison for three years for hijacking, gave this view of the Florida case to Willie Boy Johnson:

“If Neil would go to trial without this guy [Plate], he could beat the case, but he’s going to sit next to him and the jury is going to find them both guilty.”

In June or July 1979, a Bergin crony—who later became a government witness—was at the Ravenite with Neil, John, Angelo, Willie Boy, and Tony Roach. He said they had just returned from a trip, he didn’t know where, but all were newly tanned. He said Angelo suggested that they should call Plate in for a strategy session on Neil’s case and everyone laughed at the idea.

In August, the FBI reported that Anthony Plate had left the Tropicana Hotel in Miami Beach and disappeared. He was not seen again. The following spring, the government witness was at the Bergin when someone from the Ravenite called with a message.

“Neil got a hung jury. It’s like a win.”

During the summer Plate vanished, the Crime Capital underwent another fatal quake whose epicenter was the Ravenite Social Club.

Carmine Galante, the wild man of the Bonanno Family, was tamed by two shotgun blasts as he lunched on the patio of Joe and Mary’s Italian-American Restaurant in Brooklyn. A Galante bodyguard also was killed, but the assassins botched the job and also shot two bystanders; one, the restaurant owner, was fatally wounded. His son, however, survived a bullet in the back as he dialed for help.

Galante had been out of prison for only a few months, but had unnerved the other Family leaders with his ambitious talk.

“With five heavies at the top, something like this was bound to happen,” a detective said as Galante, a Medicaid card tucked into a trouser pocket, was carried out in a green bag.

Unfortunately for Dellacroce and his son Buddy, the cops watching the Ravenite had picked up fragments of conversation about an upcoming hit. The camera across the street had recorded four suspected plotters arriving at the club after the murders, which now became part of the Ravenite grand jury investigation.

Source BQ gave a report on the hit to Special Agent Patrick Colgan. The Bergin men knew in advance, but were not involved, and Gotti had left for Florida by car early the same day.

“Source stated John Gotti was driving and not flying because Gotti has a dreadful fear of flying,” Colgan wrote. “Source also stated Gotti has a fear of boats, and once nearly killed an associate for going too fast.”

After Gotti returned, and the grand jury stepped up its investigation, BQ said the Gotti brothers and Angelo discussed what to do if they came to suspect crew members who had “gone bad.” They decided they would kill them, BQ said.

In time, six Gambinos, including Buddy Dellacroce, and two Galante capos were indicted for refusing to testify before a grand jury. Buddy would do a year in jail. Neil would battle the grand jury to a draw, but in 1985, in a federal conspiracy case, he was accused of ordering the hit to install Galante subordinates at the top of the Bonanno Family.

Intense press coverage made the public aware that the Gambino Family was the Crime Capital’s most powerful mob. Neil Dellacroce was called its boss. The public still knew little about the real boss, Paul Constantino Castellano, and nothing about a new happily made man, John Gotti.

 

 

 

T
HE BERGIN HUNT AND FISH CLUB was now a part of the Ozone Park fabric and John Gotti was the mayor of 101st Avenue.

The Bergin men were good customers in the small cafés and stores operating on slim margins. Around his neighbors, Gotti acted like a gentleman; around him, they acted as though he were a successful salesman. He began saluting the community with Fourth of July fireworks displays and barbecues; some residents began saluting him by alerting the club when men resembling undercover detectives were around.

After falling and striking his head against a garbage truck, Peter Gotti retired on a city disability pension and began managing the Bergin for John. In time, brother Richard would manage a companion club across the street and around the corner, the Our Friends Social Club, that John occasionally used for sitdowns. As was the custom in the Family, the crew usually gathered once a week for meetings. The Berginites met over dinner, which they cooked at the Bergin, usually on Wednesday nights.

Sally Crazy Polisi, out of Lewisburg prison on a psychiatric counseling scam, no longer came to the club because under his probation he wasn’t supposed to consort with criminals. But the Bergin—the FBI had linked about 100 men to it—was not lacking in members or visitors with colorful nicknames.

There was Willie Boy and Tony Roach of course, but also: Frankie the Beard, Frankie the Caterer, Frankie Dep, Frankie the Hat, and Frankie Pickles; Mike the Milkman, Brooklyn Mike, Mickey Gal, and Mikey Boy; Tommie Tea Balls and Tommy Sneakers; Johnny Cabbage and Joe Pineapples; Little Pete, Skinny Dom, and Fat Andy; Joe the Cat and Buddy the Cat; Jimmy Irish, Joe Butch, and Tony Pep; Joey Piney, Joe Dogs, Donny Shacks, Eddie Dolls, Philly Broadway, Nicky Nose, Anthony Tits, and Jackie the Actor; Old Man Zoo, Redbird, Steve the Cleaner, and Captain Nemo.

Nicknames were a Family tradition with a sometimes useful purpose: If you don’t use real names, cops and agents won’t know who you’re talking about, even if you’re overheard on a tap or bug.

Gene Gotti was simply Genie; in addition to Johnny and Johnny Boy, John was Junior and
Cump
—a form of
gumbah,
which was a slang derivative of
compare,
which meant anything from good friend to adviser to godfather. Neil Dellacroce was the Tall Guy or the Pollack; he used “Timothy O’Neil” as an alias. At the Bergin, Castellano, who was Big Paul and Uncle Paul elsewhere, was known as the Pope, somewhat disrespectfully.

 

 

Into this ensemble early in 1979 came another man, James Cardinali, a handsome 30-year-old ex-heroin addict, armed robber, and future coked-out murderer. He had met Gotti at the Clinton Correctional Facility in upstate New York before both were transferred to different prisons, Cardinali to Attica, Gotti to Green Haven.

At Attica, Jamesy, as he was called, had met Angelo Ruggiero, doing his McBratney time. Angelo said he and Gotti were partners and invited Jamesy to drop by the Bergin when he got out.

Jamesy was going to Ozone Park anyway; his mother lived there and he had no other immediate prospects. He dropped by on his first day of freedom and stayed 18 months. In great detail, and more explosively than Polisi, Jamesy would testify about what he saw, heard, and did hanging out at the Bergin.

“Whaddaya gonna do, Jamesy?” Gotti asked at the outset.

Jamesy said another prison acquaintance had written him a letter of introduction to a local union.

“If you’re going to be around me you can’t work over there. I’ll send you to another place.”

Gotti instructed Willie Boy Johnson to deliver Cardinali to a trucking company in Maspeth, a firm once included in Carlo Gambino’s no-hijacking-here edict.

“Johnny wants you to put this kid on the books,” Willie Boy told a company executive.

Jamesy didn’t quite get it. He actually went to work. During his first day on the loading dock, he beat up a fellow employee. He also saw time cards for Gotti and Willie Boy, though he never knew them to go to work there. After a few days, Willie Boy stopped by.

“What are you doing?”

“I’m working.”