Massino put himself into a small room with desperation with the murder of one Gerlando Sciascia, who was known as George from Canada because he was from Canada. According to testimony, Sciascia and Massino killed three Bonanno family dissidents in 1984. Sciascia then thought he was as good as Massino.They found Sciascia and his ambitions in a lot in the Bronx. Entire flights of stool pigeons immediately went to the grand jury to put a gun into Massino's hand in premeditated murder.And now he talks.
Bosses must go first.There are five families, and they are supposed to have bosses, but most of them change every forty-eight hours. The Gambino family had John Gotti. The old man of the Gambino crew, Joe N. Gallo, told Gotti,"It took one hundred years to put this together, and you're ruining it in six months."
This appears to be right.This old crime organization-which started in the narrow, wet alleys of Palermo and Lercara Friddi and other towns in Sicily, then rose out of the packed streets of the old downtown east side of New York, with names like Joe the Boss and Lucky Luciano, then with Al Capone coming out of Brooklyn and putting the Mafia into Chicago-had a murderous, larcenous hand everywhere. It weakened with time and the convictions of commission members in New York, but nothing matched the magnitude of what Gotti did to the Mafia. He had Paul Castellano hit in the midst of rush hour on the east side of Manhattan. It was brazen, and Gotti loved it. He failed to hear the sound of tank treads on Mulberry Street.They were bringing in an armored division to get him. They did.
He proudly put his son, Junior Gotti, in charge, and agents fell from the skies on him. He did six years and now is up for attempted murder, and he may not be seen for decades. The new head of the Gambino family was Nick Corozzo. He said he was exhausted from not working and needed a vacation. He flew to Miami and was on the beach for about half an hour when two men in subdued business suits walked along the beach toward him. "So what's up, fellas?" Nick said.
"You are," they said. They displayed FBI cards. Nick the Boss went off the beach in handcuffs and then to court, where nobody wins. He is back on the street now but is a loud target.
The family named after Joe Profaci, an old-time Mafia boss, was shot up by an insurgency group, the Gallos, in the 1960s. Crazy Joe Gallo was shot dead at Umberto's Clam House on Mulberry Street. The news business loved the story. Joe Colombo took over. He believed he was a legitimate citizen. He invented the Italian American Civil Rights League and ran a rally at Madison Square Garden during which his crowd shouted "Uno, uno, uno," the old Roman cheer for Benito Mussolini. New York Post columnist Murray Kempton observed, "The entertainment was provided by Diahann Carroll and Sammy Davis Jr., two striking illustrations of pre-Norman Sicilians."
Colombo then ran an outdoor rally at Columbus Circle during which he was shot, later dying from his injuries. The killing gave the Mafia a bad name. The next boss was Carmine Persico Jr., known as Junior. He is in federal prison in Lompoc, California, for about the rest of his life. During a succession disagreement, one Vic Orena, pronounced "Vicarena," was convicted of mayhem and sentenced to two lifetimes and one eighty-year sentence.
"Which one should I do first?" he asked Judge Jack Weinstein, who nodded to his clerk. "You name it," the clerk said.
"Put me down for the eighty years first," Orena said.
He went to Atlanta, and his lawyers entered a motion to throw everything out and let him come home. He was certain his motion would prevail over the whole government. He called Gina, his girl on Long Island, and told her,"Get my suits and have the tailor take them in. I've lost weight down here. Then go and get me some new shirts. I'm going to win this motion and make bail. We're going to Europe on the first day."
Orena was brought up by prison bus from Atlanta. His motion, a foot-high stack of paper, was on Weinstein's desk.The judge had studied it for some days.
Gina was in the courtroom with a suit for her now-slim love. The clerk called out "All rise," and Weinstein entered the courtroom. The door to the detention pens opened and a slim Vic Orena came in, his eyes glistening with hope.
"What is he doing here?" Weinstein asked. "He belongs in prison."
"He is here on his motion," the lawyer said. "Motion denied," Weinstein said. "Marshal, take this man back to prison."
Vic Orena, his one and a half minutes of hope over, went through the door and onto a prison bus that would stop five or six times at dingy county jails on the way to Atlanta.
His love, Gina, with his suit folded neatly over her arms, went back to Long Island.
Vic Orena is still doing the eighty-years part of his sentence; then all that remains for him to do is the two lifetimes.
There is now no real Colombo family boss whose name is worth typing.
The largest, fiercest, and busiest family, the Genovese, had Vincent "the Chin" Gigante as boss-the boss in a bathrobe. Babbling in pajamas, robe, and truck driver's cap, he staggered through the night on Sullivan Street in Greenwich Village and entered the black-painted private club at number 206, where the guys played cards all night. The Chin, suddenly alert, sat down at the game.The cards were dealt. He picked up his hand and without looking at it called "Gin!" Money was pushed to him. Next he tired of picking up the cards.While they were being dealt, he called "Gin!" Always he got paid.
When in front of Judge Jack Weinstein in Brooklyn, he flopped around in his chair and mumbled for hours without stopping. My guess, and it is well educated, is that he was saying the Hail Mary, a lovely prayer that is short and can be repeated without end. Lawyers presented results of new tests they said showed the Chin had Alzheimer's. Weinstein, who reads science periodicals every morning, was greatly interested in the new test, the PET scan. "Congratulations.You are on the cutting edge of science," he told the lawyers. "But you omitted one important part of your test. In order to show that it is Alzheimer's, you need an autopsy."
Gigante shook and went to prison. The outfit was left with nothing.
Now there were five families in name and no bosses.At the start of 2005, in the midst of all the squalling over the Christmas money that went to Joe Massino's wife, federal agents came through Brooklyn like armed locusts and arrested twenty-seven members of the Bonanno family.
It followed that one morning when Tony Cafe was at home in Brooklyn, where he lives with his eighty-year-old sister, the last of four sisters, the first three dead of cancer, he heard knocking on the door downstairs. He looked out. He could see two agents, each holding up identification.
Tony Cafe sighed. "I'll be right down," he called. He threw his wallet to his sister.
When he got downstairs there were three agents, one of them a little Irish woman who did the talking.
"Are you going to lock me up?"Tony asked.
"No, but you're number one."
She made it official. A week before, an article by Jerry Capeci appeared in New York magazine and was first to mention that Tony Cafe-proper name Anthony Rabito-was suddenly an important figure. Capeci, whose Gangland News is on the Internet, is the authority on the Mafia to the extent that all those left in crime know that on Thursday, when Capeci's work comes out on the Net and in the afternoon's New York Sun, they will find out where they stand, if anybody is left to stand. Now on Tony's stoop, the FBI confirmed that Tony was number one in the Bonanno family. He was in shock as the agent, Kim something, told him, "We don't want any bodies in the street, we don't want witnesses bothered, and we don't want agents threatened."
"I live upstairs with my sister. I don't have any money or guns in the house," he said.