Читать книгу The Rise of the Mafia - Martin Short - Страница 17

‘Carlo Gambino and Funzi Tieri were meek men,’ says Joey Cantalupo recalling two mighty godfathers who led New York’s biggest crime families until a few years ago. These absolute monarchs, with the power of life and death over hundreds of ‘made’ men and thousands of henchmen, both sponsored Cantalupo.

‘You could run into Carlo Gambino in the street and you would never know this poor, meek, humble man was the boss of bosses and the boss of the biggest crime family in New York. He would fit in with anybody. The same with Funzi Tieri…. They demanded respect because of the tragic things they’ve done through all the years they were coming up in the families. People fear these bosses, even though today they don’t go out and kill people (they would have somebody else do it!), but during the early years you can believe they’ve murdered people, cut ’em up and threw ’em to the fish.’

Born in Palermo in 1902, Carlo Gambino never became an American citizen. When he was arrested at Apalachin in 1957 he was in serious danger of deportation. He was in his sixties when Cantalupo first knew him and looked frail and weak. Appearances were deceptive; according to police records he had been a ruthless killer. In the early 1930s Gambino and his brother Paul had been at the heart of the victorious Castellamarese faction and Carlo became a boss when Albert Anastasia was murdered in 1957. He assumed the unofficial rank of boss of bosses when Vito Genovese died in jail in 1969. His immense power lay partly in his family’s strength on the streets and its massive investments in legitimate businesses. All this had been insured over many years by corrupt cops, judges and politicians. As boss of bosses Gambino commanded respect from members of all the families. When it was not shown redress was swift.

‘A typical for-instance,’ recalls Cantalupo. ‘There was a captain in the Colombo family named Mimi Sciala. He controlled Coney Island which is a vast area with a large population. He had the numbers, the Shylocking and all the rackets. But Mimi had a terrible problem: he liked to drink. And when he drank he didn’t care who you were. You could have been Carl Gambino and if he didn’t like the way you looked he’s say, “Hey, you look like a jerk, Carl.” But he was drunk, the liquor was talking for him.

‘And that really happened at a restaurant on Coney Island. Carl walked in and who’s there falling on his face but Mimi. Now Mimi had his own crew of twenty or thirty men but because he insulted Carl it was decided this man has no respect – respect is a big thing – and eventually he had to die. So a wiseguy named Charlie, who was also a captain in the Colombo family, got the contract to kill Mimi and Mimi was killed.

‘Now the people who worked for Mimi loved and cherished the guy. He supported them and everybody made money. So one night Tommy Barbusca and another member of the Colombo family, who were both in Mimi’s crew, were sitting in a bar called the 1770 in Brooklyn. And they’re talking: “Jeez, it wasn’t right what they did to Mimi. We’re going to have to get our guys together and take a stand or do something to Charlie.”

‘As they’re talking the bartender overhears. He goes in the back, drops a dime, and tells whoever’s on the other end of the phone what’s going on. Tommy and his friend go out to the car across the street. They get in the car and the next thing you know, two blasts from a shotgun and they’re dead. This shows the control they have over their own people. Nobody is going to step on anybody’s feet. You’re going to do what you’re told.’

You had to show just as much respect to Funzi Tieri who was nearing 70 when he became boss of the mighty Genovese family. ‘He was nothing to look at,’ says Cantalupo, ‘not more than 140 lb. A nothing man. I was partners with him in a flea market in Brooklyn. Another partner was a captain in the Genovese family named Louis La Rocca. Louis is a monster of a man. Six foot two, 280 lb. He also demands respect because of his fine position within the family. He answers only to the boss Funzi Tieri.

‘We were behind in our rent. And I ran into Funzi and he asked me, “How are you doing in the flea market?”

‘And I said, “Well, Funzi, we’re behind on the rent.”

‘And this little meek man saying to me, “You tell that motherfucking Louis to go and get the money or I’ll cut his balls off.”

‘I go back to the flea market and Louis says, “Did you see the old man?”

‘I says, “Yeah.”

‘He says, “What did he say? Did you tell him we’re behind with the rent?” I was embarrassed to tell Louis.

‘He says, “Tell me. What did he say?”

‘So I say, “The old man says, go and get the money or he’s gonna cut your balls off.”

‘The guy must have got diarrhoea in his pants. He was so scared that he ran out and got the $5000. That shows you the respect and the fear they had for this man. And it’s not only Louis La Rocca. It’s everybody in the family.’

Despite the danger, Cantalupo was exhilarated by his work for the Mafia: ‘I was thrilled. I enjoyed being part of this tremendous organization that could open doors to you all over the world. Anything you wanted you could get.’

Joey soon became aware that another salesman working at Cantalupo Realty was Joe Colombo, at 40 the youngest family boss in New York and the youngest member of the National Commission. Cantalupo recalls how close Colombo was to Carlo Gambino. In about 1962 Colombo, then just a capo in the Profaci family, told Gambino that Joe Bonanno, boss of another crime family and a founder member of the Commission, was plotting to kill him. Gambino was naturally indebted to Colombo and showed his gratitude by ensuring that Colombo became boss of the Profaci family when Joe Magliocco died in 1963. Gambino then gave Colombo $1 million to put on the streets in Shylock loans. In this way the Colombo family became a subsidiary of the Gambinos.

Cantalupo felt that Colombo was too flash for a boss. Old-timers like Gambino and Tieri had chauffeur-bodyguards, but they drove modest Buicks or Chevrolets. Joe Colombo always had a Cadillac. He wore diamond rings, $400 suits and $200 shoes. It was as if at 5 ft 6 in he was not too sure people would respect him even though he was a boss.

Gambino, in contrast, was the Supreme Being. ‘These people don’t believe in God,’ says Joey, ‘but to them Carlo Gambino was God.’ Joey felt enthralled just to be in his presence and would willingly perform his most menial tasks. The pair were like grandfather and grandson. Once Joey wrecked his car on his way to visit Carlo. He was taken to hospital and awoke to find the boss of bosses at his bedside offering comfort and a new car. At Joey’s wedding Gambino was an honoured guest.

Joey became a trusted mob underling, a role which invaded even his home. ‘Early in 1960 Joe Colombo asked me if he could use my house for a meeting and I said yes.

‘He says, “Fine. You have your wife make a pot of black coffee, set the table for six people, go out and get Italian cookies. About seven o’clock send your wife out, you be downstairs and we’ll be coming in.”

‘So I would be sitting on the stoop and a car would pull up with a driver and a passenger. That’s Joe Colombo with his bodyguard Rocky. Joe would go right upstairs. The next car would be Carl Gambino with his driver, Jimmy Brown. Carlo would come out of the car, we’d say hello, he’d go upstairs and the car would pull away. Then Funzi Tieri would come in. My job was to sit there until the meeting was over and keep my eyes open for cops or FBI.

‘Then at a precise time a car would pull up, an individual would come down and he would be driven away. That meeting was very big. Three heads of families that I knew, so the other two had to be bosses. It was meeting of the five families. Since Apalachin this was the only way it could be held.’

There were countless meetings at different houses. On Sundays many crime family members used to gather at Colombo’s home. Sometimes Joey would drive Colombo to Gambino’s house, wait for an hour or two until Colombo came out and then drive him back to Cantalupo Realty.

The bosses have to meet to plan Mafia strategies, to co-ordinate tactics against the police and the FBI, to settle inter-family disputes and, most important of all, to talk business. New York’s five families still dominate the fundamental rackets of gambling, loan-sharking, narcotics and extortion. They also handle goods stolen by freelance crooks in hijackings, burglaries and robberies. They have specialists who handle stolen stocks and bonds worth millions of dollars. They also organize arson for profit: a building is ‘torched’ so a fraudulent insurance claim may be made on both the structure and its non-existent contents.

The Mafia owns hundreds of outwardly straight businesses of all kinds: pizza parlours, pastry shops, catering halls, photographic and printing companies, car dealers, florists, funeral parlours, embalmers, liquor importers and wholesalers, furnishing stores, pinball arcades, vending-machine companies, entertainment agencies. They govern entire industries in New York: garments and garbage; fish, meat and poultry; trucking and construction.1 These ‘legal’ businesses make a lot of money, not because they are well run but because they have the ‘edge’. In garments or trucking so many companies are mob-owned that they face little genuine competition. Their brother mafiosi who control the labour unions corruptly depress the wages Mafia employers have to pay. Union troublemakers are easily fired and fired at. Genuine competitors are crippled by inflated wage bills or Mafia-inspired strikes and sabotage. This can go on until the straight operator goes out of business or, in desperation, pays off the mob and joins the club.2

Yet many of these businesses are never meant to make money. ‘They are fronts,’ says Joey. ‘They gotta be covers because the families are making so much money. How do you maintain a style of life, spending say $5000 a week, if you’re only bringing home $150 a week? Every legitimate business that you can draw a cheque from will help you tell the government, “Well, I’m making $500 a week here, $300 a week there.” You won’t have to worry about income tax evasion like Al Capone. This is how modern-day organized-crime families are living so lavishly because they are into so many businesses where they can show a legitimate income.’

Joe Colombo’s job as a broker with Cantalupo Realty was just one of his business fronts: ‘He had his own office in there with see-through mirrors to see who was coming in and out. Every day members of his crime family would come in to talk deals. Members of the Gambino and Genovese families would drop in too. If any of them were questioned by the cops or the FBI they would say they were coming in for a mortgage, to buy a house or rent an apartment.’ Colombo had a house in Brooklyn, worth $150,000 in 1970. He had his Cadillacs, a home in upstate New York with 10 acres of land worth $250,000 and he belonged to the best country clubs. This public display of wealth was essential when he moved into political prominence with the Italian American Civil Rights League.3

Colombo had a flamboyant way of showing affection for judges and politicians. ‘He had an “in” with a tie maker. Every Christmas he gave expensive gift-wrapped ties to his friends and associates. Some people would get six ties, all custom-made. One top lawyer only wore bow-ties so he would get twenty bow-ties in a package to show Joe’s gratitude for all he had done through the years.’

Cantalupo believes the New York bosses he knew were brilliant as underworld generals, businessmen and political strategists. The bosses of Los Angeles displayed no such talents, according to Jimmy ‘the Weasel’ Fratianno who was that family’s under-boss while its hierarchy were in prison. If the New York bosses were men who, given a different start, might have headed legitimate corporations, the Los Angeles family was led by ‘dead heads’.

‘California was never organized like the East. The East goes back to the twenties. In California it was the forties before they got active. By then Mickey Cohen had everything. California was never successful because they never had a boss that was capable or had the “smarts” to move where everybody could make money. If they had made Johnny Roselli the boss we’d have been millionaires, richer than any family in the country. You just gotta have a capable boss that knows how to make money. They just didn’t have the right people runnin’ it.

‘We even let Las Vegas slip out of our territory. I told Jack Dragna back in the forties to put a capo up there with a few soldiers. If we’d have done that then nobody would have come into that town. That was our town. He just didn’t see it coming. In them days there was only three places on the Strip. Now? Forget about it!’

When a ‘made’ man goes to prison the crime family is meant to look after his wife and children. Jimmy Fratianno was jailed in 1964 for extortion. ‘I left a lot of money and they squandered it away. Louis Dragna gave my wife a little money, $100 a week for two years. That was it. I stayed in six and a half years. The money I left just went down the drain. When I went in I had two bars, a dress shop and two offices. I had $100,000 in Shy lock money on the street. They went through it all. Just ripped me off.’

Fratianno may have been treated badly by his own bosses when he was inside but in the wider community even the humble soldier has immense status. As Cantalupo puts it, ‘When you are a “made” member of a family it demands respect from people under you and people on the street. They know you don’t fool around with “made” men.’

Sometimes a soldier gets respect because he is mad as well as ‘made’. Joey found one psychopath in the Colombo family was not good company for a night out.

‘There was nothing nice about Shorty Spero. He lived by violence. I was in a sociable game of four-handed pinocle with him at the house of Michael Bolino who was also a “made” member of the Colombo family. Our wives were in the same area. I caught Shorty cheating and I said “Shorty, you can’t do that.”

‘And he takes a .45 out of his pocket, he puts it to my head and he says, “Don’t you ever call me a fuckin’ cheat or I’ll blow your brains out.”

‘At that time I got a little diarrhoea and … we left. But the man lived that way. And he died that way. His brother was shot to death. He tried to avenge his death and was killed himself. So there’s no more Shorty Speros.’

Herbie Gross is another federal witness. In the 1960s he ran his own hotel in Lakewood, New Jersey and became a front man for organized crime. He ran gambling operations, sold stolen stocks and bonds and secured favourable land deals for the Mafia by corrupting local politicians. One man he worked with was Nicky Valvano, an associate of the Genovese family.

‘Nicky Valvano had an extremely violent nature. I was present at a poker game where he became so annoyed and upset about comments being made by Jimmy ‘the Brush’ Fife that he grabbed his head, pulled him forward and bit off his earlobe. Bit it off and spat it out! And then he took the guy into his car and drove him down to the emergency hospital. About five minutes later they came rushing back to look for that piece of earlobe so they could sew it back on. That was Nicky Valvano.’

‘He was the same guy who got a message once that his wife Dorothy wants to see him. He hadn’t been home for several weeks – he had girlfriends all over the place – and so he asked me if I would drive him out to his house. He walked in and he says, “What’s the matter, Dorothy?”

‘She said, “You’ve got to do something about JoJo.” (JoJo was his son, about 11 years old.)

‘“What’s the matter with JoJo?”

‘“He’s acting up. I was called to school. They want to throw him out. He’s unmanageable. You’ve got to do something about him.”

‘He said, “Where is he now?”

‘“He’s out the back.”

‘“Hey, JoJo! Come here.”

‘And JoJo walks in and he says, “Yeah?”

‘“Hey what’s the matter with you? Why can’t you be good in school? What are you acting up like that? Don’t you like school?”

‘He says, “No I don’t.”

‘“What do you wanna be when you grow up?”

‘The kid says, “I wanna be a thief, just like you.”

‘He says, “Then pay attention to me!”

‘I witnessed this and I’m thinking of my pure kids back home: what am I in with here? I’m ordered to work with this paranoid bastard. If you knew him you didn’t cross him. You didn’t argue with him. I’m proud of my earlobes and I still have them!’

Herbie Gross knew an even more distasteful New Jersey organized-crime figure called Joe Celso. ‘Early on in his mob career Celso was the official counter of foetuses aborted in an illegal abortion ring owned by ‘Bayonne Joe’ Zicarelli. He was there to make sure Bayonne Joe wasn’t being short-changed on the number of abortions. You can imagine, just like people in prison look down on sexual offenders and child molesters, how mobsters would look down on Celso for doing that job.

‘Some years ago the FBI got information that there were at least three bodies buried in a pit in a grave on Joe Celso’s property where he lived and so they came down with warrants and dug it up. Sure enough, they found bones of three bodies. They had one positive identification of someone on the fringe of the mob but they couldn’t bring any charges against Celso.

‘Now about that time I sponsored a show in Lakewood where the headliner was Pat Henry. He was the warm-up comic for Frank Sinatra on all his shows. He got up on the stage and he said, “I know there’s a guy here who’s had quite a bit of trouble with all the authorities. Now I know he had nothing to do with the death of those people they’ve dug up on his property. His problem is that he was operating a cemetery in a residential zone.”

‘Everyone collapsed and laughed. Celso went as red as a beet, not so much embarrassed as discomforted by it, but he couldn’t say a word. Most of the audience were mobsters and he was too low on the totem pole to have any comeback. He was an outcast, even among criminals.’

Even the sex life of a ‘made’ man, in and out of marriage, is a matter for respect. They place their wives on a pedestal, says Joey Cantalupo, but they keep them at home, ‘pregnant and barefoot’. Ninety per cent of them also have girlfriends on whom they lavish money, ‘but they go through girlfriends like they go through veal cutlets.

‘One of the commandments in organized crime is that you do not fool with another member’s wife or girlfriend. This is a law you do not break. If you do the penalty could be death. And a perfect example of this is that Joe Colombo’s father was fooling around with a member of organized-crime’s girlfriend or wife and they caught them in a car together. The next day when the cops found them they were both dead, shot in the head. But the unfortunate thing is that they cut off his prick and stuck it in his own mouth.’

In Chicago this rule was applied even to a mobster’s extramarital affairs. ‘Milwaukee Phil’ Alderisio was acting boss of the Chicago Outfit until he was jailed for bank fraud in 1970. Gerry DeNono, who later turned informer, was working with the Chicago family at that time under Joe ‘Little Caesar’ DiVarco. Once a week DeNono would drive DiVarco to a restaurant called Mio’s where the bosses would meet. Mio’s sister, Nancy, was Milwaukee Phil’s girlfriend; he was married with children. DeNono recalls: ‘She [Nancy] was dating this guy Blackie, a bookmaker in Cicero. Nan went to the jail to ask Milwaukee Phil for permission to get married to Blackie. You get this! Phil’s married. He’s in prison. He gives his permission to her to marry this other mustache, right? Then Milwaukee Phil dies in prison.

‘Joe DiVarco tells me, “See Blackie over there? He’s dead. He’s gonna be killed.”

‘I said, “What for? Milwaukee Phil’s dead. He died in prison and that was only his girlfriend, Joe, what’s the difference?”

‘He says, “From his grave he ordered the hit.”

‘Three weeks after they were married Blackie was shot right in front of Nan in a rockin’ chair in the house. From the grave he ordered that hit. This told me, don’t be foolin’ around with nobody else’s girlfriend. This man had so much power that out of respect they killed Blackie. It don’t make any sense to me, but this is how their minds work.’4