Underworld: How to Survive and Thrive in the American Mafia

By Roman Martín

"Accurately describes 'the Life,' and the pros and cons of becoming a mobster . . . in a very unique manner that will no doubt have you in stitches." —Frank Cullotta, coauthor of Cullotta: The Life of a Chicago Criminal, Las Vegas Mobster, and Government Witness

 


For the first time in history, there is now an easy-to-follow self-help guide on how to join and rise in the most exclusive men's club in the world—the Italian-American Mafia (aka La Cosa Nostra). Learn everything from loansharking to leg-breaking to corpse disposal, all without leaving the comfort of your mobile home or prison cell.


 


Based on interviews with dozens of former high-ranking Mafiosi and many other hardcore mobsters from across the globe, true-crime auteur Roman Martín has risked life and limb to bring you this spellbinding tour de force. Whether you're a couch-surfing gangster-wannabe or simply someone who's watched The Godfather too many times, this breathtaking exposé of "the Honored Society" offers something for everyone.


 


Pushing the bounds of the First Amendment to their breaking point, Don Martín also reveals the FBI's most closely guarded secrets when it comes to "wiseguys" and "goodfellas." Wanna know the one surefire way to find out who in your crew is an undercover cop or fed? Or the best way to deal with those annoying witnesses? Then look no further, friends, for all your questions about the outlaw lifestyle shall be answered in Underworld.


 


"I laughed so hard at times that my jaws ached!" —Dennis N. Griffin, award-winning true-crime author of The Rise and Fall of a "Casino" Mobster: The Tony Spilotro Story

• Language: English
• Publisher: Open Road Integrated Media
• Release date: Oct 1, 2019
• ISBN: 9781948239899

Book preview

Chapter One – The Benefits Of A Career In The Mafia

"I’d rather laugh with the sinners than cry with the saints." – Billy Joel

In deciding whether a career in organized crime is right for you, you should first consider all of the ins ‘n’ outs, the ups ‘n’ downs, and the what-have-youse of La Cosa Nostra. In other words, the good, the bad, and the fugly. Let us begin on a happy note with the benefits of being a mobster.

Good times, baby!

Whenever Marco Babar Falcón found himself in jail (or rehab) and someone asked him what he was in for, that was always his response. It also sums up the best that the Life has to offer. The hedonistic opportunities and orgiastic excesses of being a Mafioso (made man or higher rank) are truly limitless, as exemplified by Anthony the Animal Fiato.

During his ten-year reign (late ’70s to late ‘80s) in Tinsel Town, Fiato always ate at the finest restaurants, hobnobbed with the glitterati, and schtupped the most aesthetically-pleasing women. They included Alana Stewart (Rod the Mod’s then wife) and later, Denise Brown (O.J.’s sister-in-law). A-list actors begged to hang out with him, including James Caan, who reportedly swam in his cocaine slipstream like an insatiable remora fish for days on end.

Where was I? Oh yeah, models and starlets would claw over each other to velcro themselves to Anthony’s Herculean physique and inhale his man-scent. Fiato is a testament to the undeniable truth that power, even more than money or fame, is the ultimate aphrodisiac.

And that really is what being a made man – a formally inducted member of the LCN (La Cosa Nostra) – is all about. The power, the money, the lifestyle, and the ladies. What’s not to like about it?

(Um, quite a lot as it turns out, but we’ll get to that in the next chapter.)

Doing Whatever the Fuck You Want, When You Want, to Whom You Want

This is arguably the ultimate perk of being a gangster. In the immortal words of Bonanno soldier Benjamin Lefty Guns Ruggiero (Al Pacino in 1997’s Donnie Brasco), as told to Donnie Brasco (undercover FBI agent Joe Pistone) in Pistone’s eponymous book:

"As a wiseguy, you can lie, you can cheat, you can steal, you can kill people – legitimately. You can do anything you goddamn want, and nobody can say anything about it. Who wouldn’t want to be a wiseguy?"

Who, indeed?

Personally, I think that being a gangster means never having to say you’re sorry, and most certainly never having to take shit from anything that walks, crawls, or breathes. Amen.

In 1964, Jon Roberts was a connected guy (an associate, not a made man) with the Gambino crime family in New York. This was over a decade before he moved to Miami and became one of the biggest cocaine traffickers in the history of the United States. He smuggled in tons of cocaine from the late ‘70s to the late ‘80s, and was considered by the DEA to be the Medellín Cartel’s top distributor in North America.

One particular evening, Roberts was besieged by a marauding band of Hells Angels. The bloodthirsty bikers were seeking retribution for some perceived slight and decided to storm his bar. Terrified and alone, he locked the door and called his mentor, fellow Gambino soldier Andy Benfante.

Roberts braced the door with whatever was at hand, but the wood buckled and strained from the weight of the invading Hessians. You fucking guinea! the barbarian horde screamed through the thick oak. We’re gonna stuff you like a Christmas goose!

Roberts held out as long as he could, then boom! The door exploded inward, and twenty leather-clad Neanderthals burst through the entryway. Roberts saw his twenty-one years of life flash before his eyes. He knew he was a dead man, so he braced for impact and prayed for a miracle...

The miracle barged in hot on the heels of the Angels – it was Andy Benfante and two refrigerator trucks’ worth of 300-pound monsters. These were massive Italians from a nearby meat-packing plant, armed with baseball bats and metal hooks. They crushed the invading Huns and turned the Harleys parked outside into scrap metal.

It was in that instant that Jon Roberts truly understood that by being formally associated with a Mafia family, he had virtually unlimited power in the underworld. He knew that after stomping the Angels, there was nobody he couldn’t fuck with.

Fiato summarizes this mob mindset. Being a gangster isn’t about being Italian or Sicilian. It’s simple, really. When you’re a criminal, when you have people behind you, you’re a mobster. If you have a mob behind you, you’re a mobster. That’s what makes you dangerous. It’s not one gun, it’s many guns. It sends a message that’s powerful: if you fuck with me, you’re fucking with them.

Now if these illuminating vignettes don’t give you at least half a chub, perhaps you should seek another line of work. I hear Foot Locker is hiring. For the rest of you, I’d suggest that power is, again, the number-one perquisite enjoyed by knockaround guys.

But don’t get me wrong – there are plenty more benefits...

The Goomaras (The Women)

Personally, my favorite bennie of livin’ la vida loca – even more than the cash, flash, pizazz, and champagne – would most definitely be the chicas. And plenty o’ goodfellas out there will wholeheartedly agree with me. There’s nothing quite as intoxicating as a sublime one-night stand. "How you doin’?"

Vegas-by-way-of-Chicago mobster Frank Cullotta was astounded at the raw animal magnetism that even a squat, unappealing toad like Anthony Spilotro (Joe Pesci in 1995’s Casino) exuded. According to a bewildered Cullotta, broads in Rolls Royces, including movie stars, would shamelessly throw themselves at Spilotro because of his unmistakable power.

Of all the gangsters I’ve interviewed or even read about, nobody got as much action as Kenny Gallo, even as a youngster. (Ever heard of another high schooler taking two dates to prom?) After producing and directing pornos became too much like a real job in the ‘90s, he started collecting debts for infamous Hollywood madam Heidi Fleiss. Once, he even had to slap around her most famous client (you know who I’m talking about) for shorting her three K.

(This same client testified at her criminal trial. "I’m a famous actor – I didn’t pay Heidi’s girls for sex. I paid them to leave when I was done with them." Ouch.)

Gallo then segued into working for Michelle Braun, the proprietor of Nici’s Girls, a phenomenally successful online escort business that allegedly provided $10,000-a-night sex workers to Tiger Woods. All the top porn stars, and even several future big-name Hollywood actresses, turned tricks for Michelle. After partnering up with her, Gallo single-handedly created a new niche in gangsterdom – the ho wrangler (not my term). It worked like this:

Throughout the ‘90s, Arab sheiks from Kuwait or Dubai would order a Gulfstream packed with Nici’s Girls, for which Michelle would receive $50,000 per girl per weekend. Gallo would come along to ensure nobody shorted them.

His primary function, however, was to make sure that the girls didn’t take too many sleeping pills at night, woke up on time, and timely made their fellatio appointments. And, of course, when the ladies got bored and nothing good was on TV, they’d shag the hell out of eager-to-please, too-polite-to-say-no Kenji.

Earning with Both Fists and Spending Like a Drunken Sailor

These are two more obvious upsides to the Life that spring to mind. Take the high-rolling lifestyle of John Alite for starters. He was an Albanian-American associate of John A. Gotti Jr., son of the late not-so-great Dapper Don. For over a decade, beginning in the ‘80s, Alite earned as much as $75 million for the Gambinos. Of that, approximately $10 million went into his own pocket and $6 million into Junior’s. (He shorted Junior $4 million.)

Alite bought dozens of luxury cars, $3,000 Brioni suits, $500 Bruno Magli shoes, and watches, including an $80,000 diamond-studded gold Rolex. He also invested in expensive real estate, including a weekend home in the Poconos and a huge home in Massapequa, Long Island. He owned a trucking company and valet parking concessions, as well as stocks, gold bars, and diamonds.

One of the biggest earners in Mafia history was also Anthony Big Tony Peraino, a badged (made) member of the Colombo crime family. In 1972, he and his brother Joseph invested $25,000 in the production of Deep Throat, the most successful film in porn history.

By the mid ‘70s, it had grossed $25 million and would ultimately gross more than $600 million. This enabled the Perainos to build an empire that included garment companies in New York and Miami, a string of triple-X-rated movie theaters, record and music publishing companies, and a 65-foot yacht in the Bahamas. Sweet fortunatu!

So what do these guys do with their filthy lucre? Spend!

When Anthony Fiato wasn’t busting up loanshark victims, he shopped like Paul Manafort in Beverly Hills. He bought $1,500 sport coats, $1,000 cashmere sweaters, and handmade Italian loafers. At night, he’d blow more money on a dinner tab than his father earned in three months tending bar. He’d spend three grand just on Dom Pérignon and Kristal champagne. Wherever he dined, the waiters would hover around him like Tinkerbell in heat. Like Jimmy the Gent Burke (Robert DeNiro) in 1990’s Goodfellas, he’d tip the bartender a hundred bucks for a single round of drinks. He’d even toss a sawbuck to the bathroom attendant just for spritzing him with Giorgio cologne.

Similarly, during Gallo’s eight-year run in New York, whenever he wanted to buy anything that caught his fancy – clothes, guns, computers, or cars – he simply peeled off Benjamins from his four-inch-thick gangster roll. The cost of any particular item never once crossed his mind.

Indeed, throughout the ‘90s, Gallo was raking in $700,000 a year in cash. And when I say all cash, I mean he paid zero income taxes. Even if he wanted to, he couldn’t because he’d been a gangster so long that he literally had no idea what his social security number was.

Crime Doesn’t Pay

Another major perk for wiseguys is they rarely, if ever, have to reach into their own pockets to pay a tab.

In the summer of 1976, John Gotti was just a freshly-minted Mafioso with the Gambinos. He also became a secret owner in a Queens discotheque from which one night Son of Sam serial killer David Berkowitz followed home one of his female victims. Gotti’s crew then organized nightly, heavily-armed lynch mobs which trolled the local streets searching for Berkowitz. I can only imagine what they would have done with him had they caught his insane ass.

Anyways, the original owner defaulted on a loansharking debt to Gotti. Big John wasted no time in sending over his Bergin crew, named after their then social club, the Bergin Hunt and Fish Club in Ozone Park, Queens. (Not a lot of marlin catching went on there.) The visiting gangsters included John’s brother Gene Gotti, Tony Roach Rampino, and Matthew Traynor, who were armed to the teeth. In no time at all, Gotti had a new income stream, and his loyal goombata (criminal associates) had a new place to drink for free. Needless to say, they never paid a cover charge.

Similarly, before he hooked up with Lefty Guns Ruggiero in the mid ‘70s, Joe Pistone was with Anthony Mirra. Tough Tony – everyone’s least favorite psychopath – was a made man with the Bonannos. On the plus side of this relationship, Pistone never once paid for a drink while he bounced around Manhattan’s hippest night spots with Mirra, including the red-hot Hippopotamus club. There they would post up at the bar all night while wiseguys lined up to kiss Mirra’s ass (even though they all hated his guts) and pay for his and Pistone’s libations.

The downside was the fact that if you got into an argument with Terrible Tony, you’d best stay out of his reach, as he was likely to stab you. Thank God somebody finally whacked this psychotic prick! Actually, you can thank Pistone, who was the reason Mirra got clipped, for bringing an undercover fed into the fold.

Full disclosure, pals – free drinks could come back and bite you in the ass if you’re not careful. Case in point: in June 2008, centenarian Colombo underboss John Sonny Franzese was indicted for shaking down the Hustler and Penthouse strip clubs in Manhattan. He eventually served eight years in the can for too many lap dances on the arm, as well as other racketeering, loansharking, and extortion charges involving a Long Island pizzeria.

Free Stuff

Besides free drinks and copious blowjobs, wiseguys also get lots of swag (stolen property) gratis. During his early days in the LA mob during the ‘60s, a teenage Anthony Fiato was introduced to a Sicilian gangster named Blackie Gallo. Speaking in broken English, Blackie brought him back to his apartment, which was bulging with designer clothes pilfered from the finest boutiques in Beverly Hills. Everyone from movie producers to cops to gangsters bought stolen merchandise from Blackie. Even famous local hoods like Mickey Cohen and Jimmy the Weasel Fratianno shopped at Blackie’s. Thus, after selecting from hundreds of suits, shoes, shirts, ties, and cufflinks – for which he paid pennies on the dollar – Fiato was bedecked like a movie star.

Particularly pleasurable is glomming off rich folks. In the days when Anthony Gaspipe Casso was comin’ up the ranks of the Luccheses in the early ‘80s, a true Mafia bromance sprung up between him and Russian mobster Marat Balagula. They loved frolicking on each other’s yachts and dining with their wives together at Manhattan’s finest restaurants.

Gaspipe loved being treated like a visiting dignitary at Balagula’s chic, expensive nightclub in Brighton Beach (called – what else? – Odessa). There, attractive, disturbingly young Ukrainian models latched onto him like an Alien baby. Hopefully those glorious, on-the-cuff nights provided Gaspipe with enough masturbatory fodder to last him the rest of his life in federal prison.

Rub one out for me, little buddy!

Nobody freeloaded off the jetset crowd better than Gallo, who explains in his autobiography Breakshot, that as a ho wrangler, he would spend weeks at a time living like Scott Disick sucking on the teet of Kimye (or whatever they call those blithering idiots). This means Gallo would travel around the world in first-class seats or PJs (private jets), and stay at only five-or-more-star hotels. (That’s right, ignoramuses – the Burj Al Arab in Dubai is the only seven-star hotel in the world, and offers an indoor ski run.) He would also eat at only Michelin-starred restaurants. All of this, of course, was on somebody else’s dime – specifically, the johns who had hired one or more of Nici’s girls. See, Gallo’s nut was included as an ancillary expense.

Gallo’s dining exploits as a world-class mooch would have turned even Ivan Boesky green with envy. One of Gallo’s duties as a ho wrangler was to accompany the woman and her date to fancy restaurants like Morton’s or Peter Luger (the famous, over-the-top-expensive steakhouse in Williamsburg, Brooklyn). There, he would keep an eye on her and the john. During these outings, Gallo would order the five most expensive entrées, take a few bites of each, then doggy-bag the rest back to his hotel. The next morning, he would wake up to lobster, steak, and a hummer – all comped.

Oh happy day!

The Fistfights

Okay, ‘nuff said about the obvious perks – let’s examine a few of the not-so-apparent bennies. Few things in life produce a pure adrenaline rush like a bench-clearing bar brawl. Gallo described one particular evening when he was chaperoning for porn superstar Jenna Jameson at a strip club in NYC, Howard Stern’s then favorite hangout, the infamous and now-defunct Scores. That night, a drunken buffoon tried to grab a handful of Jenna’s twenties off the stage.

Gallo immediately charged out from backstage like Ferdinand the Bull, plowed into the buffoon, and smashed him back into the slathering crowd. Gallo then pie-faced him with one hand and retrieved the pilfered cash with the other. Unfortunately, this landed Gallo on the disgustingly sticky floor, giving the buffoon and his fellow assholes the chance to stomp and kick him.

But Gallo managed to grab the buffoon’s leg and bite it to the bone. The buffoon screamed so loudly that his friends temporarily stopped their shit-kicking. Gallo popped up and bashed a few of their faces. At that sweet moment, several gigantic bouncers joined the fray, knocking over the buffoon and attached bungholes like ten pins. Strike!

Moments later, the troublemakers were unceremoniously dragged out and tossed into the warm embrace of the waiting coppers. Kenji, Jenna, and company trailed after them, enjoying a hearty laugh at the sight of the buffoon sobbing hysterically as he was being handcuffed. Boo hoo hoo!

I like the old-school brawl that Jimmy the Gent Burke, Tommy DeSimone, and Joe Buddha Manri got into with some white-trash racists at Robert’s Lounge in 1978. That night, their friend, African-American credit card scamster Parnell Stacks Edwards (Samuel L. Jackson in Goodfellas) was playing guitar and singing.

Cody, a blond, goateed, and tatted-up out-of-towner, who had been hassling Stacks, warned him to stop playing his nigger music or he was going to catch a beating. Overhearing this, Burke stood up from his bar stool and nudged Manri, who nodded in agreement: let’s fuck him up.

Burke grabbed Cody by his lapel and reared back to smash his jaw. But before he could launch his punch, one of Cody’s confederates smashed a chair across The Gent’s spine. Jimmy kissed the floor, blinded by pain and temporarily rendered breathless.

Manri grabbed the confederate (another Deliverance extra), hoisted him up with both arms, and launched him across the room. The confederate landed on a table, and it was game over for him. Two more peckerwoods jumped on Manri like tigers on an elephant. As Manri fought to shake them off, Tommy DeSimone entered the bar and joined the fray. He grabbed one of the ‘woods by the hair, yanked him backwards, and repeatedly smashed his fist into his face.

Finally, Jimmy the Gent regained his breath, stood up, and smashed into Cody like an NFL linebacker. With his huge left hand encircling Cody’s throat to hold him steady, the right shot forward like a bazooka, shattering his nose. Cody slumped to the ground, unconscious, spewing blood.

Meanwhile, Manri grabbed the third confederate in a bear hug, squeezing him until he heard ribs crack. Someone in the bar yelled something about cops, so Jimmy, Manri, and Tommy fled into the night, laughing.

Cue Queen’s We Are The Champions.

The Gunfights

Even more exhilarating than fistfights are gunfights. Nothing cures erectile dysfunction like the sound of a 9mm, full metal jacket round grazing your skull as it shatters the sound barrier.

On October 1, 1979, a firefight involved Anthony Nino Gaggi, a powerful Gambino caporegime (captain, for you dunskies), and off-duty NYPD police sergeant Paul Roder, who was moonlighting as a car service driver at the time. The incident occurred only minutes after Nino and Mafia serial killer Roy DeMeo (the Gambinos’ most prolific hitman ever) murdered two men. The victims were father-son gangsters, Gambino capo James Jimmy the Clam Eppolito Sr. and made man James Jim Jim Eppolito Jr. They were accompanied by an unsuspecting associate, Peter Piacente. Roder saw the bright flashes from the gunshots in the car and the three surviving occupants get out and flee. Gaggi and Piacente power walked in tandem down the street; DeMeo wisely went the other way. Roder trailed the former in his ride.

Roder screeched his sedan to a halt in front of Gaggi and Piacente, hopped out, and crouched behind the driver’s door. NYPD, freeze! Put your hands up! he screamed, drawing a bead on them with his police-issued .38 revolver.

Rolling the dice with his life, Nino circled around Piacente, using him as a human shield against Roder. Let me see your hands! Roder bellowed, crouching into a shooting stance, left hand cupping the right with the revolver.

Nino suddenly appeared from behind Piacente, semi-auto in hand, pointed at Roder. Bam! Bam! Bam! Every shot went wide. Roder returned fire. Bang! Bang! Bang! One round pierced Nino’s neck, barely missing his artery, and spun him around. The next bullet splattered Piacente’s leg, and the third missed.

Nino face-planted onto the sidewalk, his arms outstretched like Christ on the cross. His right hand inched towards his gun. Roder yelled at him to stay still. Don’t touch it or I’ll shoot again!

Nino’s trembling fingers closed around the firearm, but he was too weak to lift it. He finally let go, rolled onto his back, and stared at the sky. His dream was always to die in the street with a gun in his hand, and he came damn close. He was eventually convicted of assault with a deadly weapon and sentenced to five to fifteen years. But don’t worry, folks – Nino had the last laugh in the end. After fixing the jury on his first trial, he was able to get his conviction overturned on appeal in 1981.

In The Animal In Hollywood, Tony the Animal describes the first time he shot someone. It happened during a robbery of a high-stakes card game in LA during the ‘60s, before he returned to his native Boston for a long spell. The game was attended by pimps, thieves, and dopers.

Fiato whipped out his trusty .32 semi-automatic and screamed for the players to put all their cash on the table. In the midst of everyone complying, a shotgun-wielding thug suddenly emerged from a back room. Without thinking, Fiato – Blam! Blam! – shot him twice, then fled.

But following close behind was a second, previously-hidden thug, who chased him down the block. Fiato spun around and – Blam! Blam! – pumped several bullets into the man.

Fiato laughed with exhilaration as he raced away from the scene, thrilled by the terrified looks of his victims. He nabbed almost 12 Gs from this score – a small fortune back then. He never found out whether the men he shot survived.

The Weddings

For all you weak sisters out there (and you know who you are, you candy-ass, salad-tossing, bubblegum-chewing yatches), have no fear – the Mafia offers plenty of non-violent fun too.

No other organized crime group on Earth has better matrimonial ceremonies than the LCN. Weddings like the one in the famous opening sequence of The Godfather are not uncommon. For example, every top mobster in the Big Apple turned up for the 1990 wedding of the Teflon Don’s son, John Gotti Jr. It was held in a grand ballroom of one of Manhattan’s swankiest hotels, the Helmsley Palace.

The groom’s father insisted the hotel fly the Italian flag over its main entrance, an honor typically reserved only for visiting foreign dignitaries. Since the Dapper Don shelled out a cool $100K for the nuptials, the manager was only too happy to accommodate him. It was a good investment though, ‘cause Big Daddy forced all the attendees to gift at least $5,000 in cash to the bride and groom. As a result, Junior made almost 400 large that day.

Jon Roberts once attended an equally sumptuous Mafia wedding reception in Manhattan that occurred during the early 1970s. Roberts’ pal Vincent Pacelli sought to expand his heroin-trafficking business to the Midwest by marrying the daughter of one of Chicago boss Sam Momo Giancana’s top lieutenants. The wedding reception was held at the famous Pierre Hotel, and was considered to be the social event of the season for LCN. Guests were entertained by no less than two orchestras, a rock band, and a bevy of bellydancers. Oldtimers breathing from oxygen tanks cavorted with young Turks powdering their noses with disco dust while undercover feds posed as waiters.

I highly recommend attending as many Mafia weddings as possible – they present invaluable networking opportunities. Just watch out for all the feds who’ll be filming everyone coming in and out.

The Food

The next best thing to weddings for peaceful mob festivities is eating. Food is sacred to racketeers – it’s like communion for lapsed Catholics. Even Gallo was amazed at how much the Bay Ridge, Brooklyn, boys revered food. They would lovingly film pasta-laden tables and show off the photos to their friends like proud parents bragging about their brood. And the meals would stretch on hour after hour, until lunch became dinner, dinner became supper, and supper became breakfast. The only thing missing was a vomitorium like in ancient Rome. If you don’t believe me, ask former FBI agent Joaquín Jack Garcia, who gained eighty pounds(!) during his nearly three year stint working undercover against the Gambinos in the early oughts (the 2000s).

Without question, no OC (organized crime) syndicate has ever eaten like the Mafia. In his book A Man of Honor, Giuseppe Joe Bonanno describes feasting with Mustache Petes (pre-LCN Old World gangsters) back in the 1920s. On those glorious occasions, Don Bonanno, fellow boss Joe Profaci, and Profaci’s righthand man Joseph Magliocco would feast with Don Vincent Mangano at his country estate just outside the city.

Oh, what a delightful time they would have! They not only shared happy tales of murder, money, and bootlegging, but Mangano and Magliocco cooked up food that was superior to the best Italian restaurants in the tri-state area. These home-cooked meals were both elaborate and endless. Better yet, all the fresh food fell off the back of a truck or fishing boat, and therefore was F-R-double-E. For example, il primi piatti (the first course) was always halibut, red snapper, shrimp, clams, and lobster – all donated earlier that day by Sheepshead Bay fishermen.

Secondi would be huge platters of filet mignon and veal. By the time the pasta was served in the wee hours of the morning, these Mustache Petes would have been blissfully shitfaced on bottles of homemade vino. (Since Magliocco was the low man on the Mafia totem pole, it would be his fleshy feet stamping the grapes.) The foursome gorged, quaffed, sang Sicilian and Italian folk songs, recited poems, cracked jokes, and made toasts to their hearts’ content. No surprise, then, that Bonanno considered these fraternal fiestas to be some of the most pleasurable experiences of his life.

Cue Dean Martin’s "Volaré."

For you fatfucks with see-through socks out there, I know this has got your little soldier standing at attention. But even the New York wiseguys can’t hold a candle to their Chicago amico nostra, whose single Family is known simply as The Outfit. Hitman Frank Sheeran illustrates in I Heard You Paint Houses:

The Chicago Outfit guys liked to eat. They would bring in the food and the wine and the booze and put it all on big tables. It was a banquet with main dishes of veal, chicken, baccala, sausage, meatballs, different pasta dishes, vegetables, salad, different kinds of soup, fresh fruit, and cheeses, and all kinds of Italian pastry. They’d eat and drink and smoke big cigars. Then they’d eat again. All the while they’re joking and telling different funny stories. They’d drop off and go into a steam bath and sweat out all the food and alcohol. They’d come back after a shower and start eating again.

I’m going to pause here to give you a few related tips on how to conduct yourself at restaurants. Wiseguys never order off the menu, and always make special requests that are all but certain to infuriate the chef. They also never wait in line to be seated at restaurants. Instead, they simply shove all the other waiting diners out of the way, palm the maître d’ a hunskie, and barrel towards the center table to hold court – regardless of whether it’s already taken.

And when the bill finally comes, in the rare event the mobsters choose not to ignore it, they simply pull out a cauliflower-sized roll of bennies (wrapped in those giant blue rubber bands that bind broccoli bunches), and slap a handful down. Goodfellas always pay in cash because they don’t have credit cards – at least not in their own name. Nor do they carry wallets or any form of ID, which only a square would do.

Oh, and connected guys never verbally express their enjoyment of the food since speaking to a lowly waiter is beneath them. Follow their lead and, instead, simply put your thumb and index finger together, and kiss them with a dramatic flourish.

Minghia!

If you’re having a big dinner out with all your goombata, especially somewhere you’ll be seen by other mobsters or feds, then bypass all that Italian cuisine and go straight for the beef. Order the biggest cut of meat on the menu – a straight-up brontosaurus steak that would make Fred Flinstone cry. (When I was in Florence, Italy, the bone-in Fiorentina bisteca I ordered at one of the city’s oldest restaurants weighed over three and a half pounds!) And the rarer the better. Make sure that shit is swimming in blood. Let everyone around you see that you are a meat eater in every sense of the word. Do you really want your enemies talking about you the next day: Yo, d’you see Roman last night eatin’ that tiramisu?! He’s goin’ soft!

The Lifestyle

I’d like to end this first chapter with a reminder about how incredibly glamorous and exciting a career in the Mafia can be. (A slight pause here to tell all my player-hating detractors to go eff themselves – just read the next chapter if you think I’m not being fair and balanced, you chode-gargling fuck toilets.)

Perhaps no mobster has ever lived it up as intensely as Anthony Casso. By the early 1970s, he was spending like the Kartrashians, frequently vacationing with his wife Lillian in the US Virgin Islands, Bermuda, the Caribbean, Florida, and Vegas. They also enjoyed the best the city had to offer, dining at Michelin-starred restaurants and taking in all the top Broadway shows. Then, once he dropped his wife off at home after their obligatory weekly date night, Casso would head off to hotspots like 21 and Regine’s. There, he would impress the waiters by buying $5,000 bottles of wine, then horrify them by mixing the bottles with Dr. Pepper. You can take the boy out of Bensonhurst…

Age certainly didn’t temper Gaspipe Casso’s profligacy. By 1990, he was blowing thirty grand a week on wine, women, and song, dining at only the finest establishments in NYC and shopping at the most exclusive haberdasheries.

The only other Mafioso I can think of who lived it up almost as much as Gaspipe, but certainly over a longer period of time, was Aladena Jimmy the Weasel Fratianno. Jimmy was a made guy with The Combination (the Cleveland Family) before transferring to the so-called Mickey Mouse Mafia, as the LA Family has been derisively known since the ‘60s (after its legendary and very first boss Ignacio Jack Dragna died in 1956).

During the late 1940s in LA, Jimmy was living la dolce vita, with not one but two mistresses stashed away in deluxe pieds-à-terre. Nights were reserved for professional prize fights followed by Sunset Strip club-hopping at Ciro’s, Mocambo, Slapsy Maxie’s, and the Band Box.

During the ‘60s, when he wasn’t breaking big rocks into little ones, Jimmy cavorted in Sin City, where he was fawned over by executives at all the major casinos, downtown and on the Strip. Everywhere he went, Jimmy reveled in his popularity, in the love and respect shown to him by all his old friends. None of them had bothered to visit him in the joint, of course, but now that he was free, everything was on the house – dames, chips, ringside seats, you name it.

During the early to mid 1970s, whenever he blew into Vegas, he was treated like a visiting king. Even Tony Spilotro rolled out the red carpet for him. The Weasel particularly enjoyed holding court in a huge, comped suite at Caesar’s Palace as fair-weather friends lined up to pay homage.

Finally, I’d like to leave you with a quote from Marco Babar Falcón. In 2010, the Discovery Channel produced a one-hour documentary about Gallo entitled Flipped: A Mobster Tells All, which you should be able to catch on YouTube. Being a self-diagnosed toxic narcissist, Marco was only too happy to talk about their glory days in Newport Beach from the mid ‘80s to the early ‘90s:

The best times were bouncing around the nightclubs. We were the kings then. They loved us because we were palming quarter-gram bindles of pure cocaine to everyone we shook hands with. It was a beautiful life. It was like a movie to us. We had all the guns and the cash, the girls, the glitz, the glamour. It didn’t seem real.

The boys were millionaires before they could legally drink.

Namaste, bitches!

Okay, if the foregoing doesn’t convince you to make a Faustian bargain and join the Mafia today, then I’m sure I don’t know what will. However, for all those of you who are ready to earn your wings and enter the most exclusive men’s club in the world, a.k.a. the Honored Society, I say this: slow your roll, pendejos! Pump the friggin’ brakes! Have you never heard of the flight of Icarus? Are you unaware of a phenomenon known as gravity? The primary law of physics is quite simple: what goes up must come down. Or as Dr. Eldon Tyrell once famously explained, The light that burns twice as bright burns half as long. In other words, read the next chapter before you sign on the dotted line.

Lessons to Be Learned

Burke and DeSimone clearly displayed their genuine love for Stacks by coming to his aid and endangering themselves in this manner. Obviously, if you want to be a man’s man in the mob, then you too should always back up your friends, regardless of the odds. (Or as the Hells Angels like to say, One on all and all on one.)

However, in the event you are forced to permamently dispatch one of your friends down the road, please don’t let these fuzzy feelings cloud your judgment. Indeed, this is precisely what Burke and DeSimone did to their beloved Stacks several years later. Stacks dropped the ball big time when, following the infamous 1978 Lufthansa Heist, instead of torching the work van as instructed, he instead left it parked on a street while he got high and shacked up with a girlfriend.

After several days, the cops found the van, which had been papered with parking tickets, and realized it had been used to transport the heisters and loot. More importantly, they found Stacks’ fingerprints everywhere. The dumb shit had forgotten to wear gloves. Thus, it was with a heavy heart that Burke gave the nod to DeSimone, who sniffled with emotion as he blew Stacks’ brains out on December 18, 1978, one week after the heist.

My award for best mob brawl of all time has to go to Kevin Weeks, Whitey Bulger’s righthand man for twenty-five years. One night, Weeks accidentally walked into the wrong bar with seven drunk buddies – it was a lesbian bar packed to the brim with badass, lady-loving homegirls. Unfortunately, and suicidally, one of Kevin’s seven dwarfs loudly cracked a homophobic joke.

As Weeks explains in his autobiography Brutal, before the doofus even spat out the punchline, the women attacked. In a riot reminiscent of the famous 1969 Stonewall uprising in Greenwich Village (which sparked the modern gay civil rights movement), every woman in the bar pounced with pool cues, beer bottles, and chairs. Weeks and comrades fought back with everything they had, but they were getting the shee-it beaten out of ‘em. With every wave the now-shriveled menfolk beat back, another would crash over them like a tsunami. The emasculated eight somehow managed to fight their way outside, bloodied but laughing maniacally at their near-death experience.

Shameless Namedrop

FYI, the last time I was slummin’ it in Beverly Hills, I had the distinct pleasure of meeting James Jimmy Caan himself at the Montage Hotel’s rooftop restaurant. He was hanging out with two gorgeous blondes, who were either his granddaughters or his dates for the afternoon. During our brief repartee, he reminded me, Ant’ny prefers to be called Craig.

When Mr. Caan asked me where Fiato was currently living, I chortled, You know I can’t tell you that, Sonny!

Jimmy, who was dressed in a designer tracksuit and pristine white sneakers, gave me a knowing smile. See, Santino Corleone still knows lots of people who would be very interested in finding The Animal.

Chapter Two – The Downside of Being Mobbed Up

"There are no happy endings in the Life. – Joseph Joe Campy" Campanella

The mob ain’t all fun and games, people. Plenty of bad shit happens – as with the upsides, some of the disadvantages are more obvious than others.

Getting Whacked

This is the first obvious downer that springs to mind. Indeed, the body count in LCN is so high that it’s pointless for me to spend too much time on this subject. For example, during the Roaring Twenties, there were over a thousand mob-related murders in Chicago alone, most of which remain unsolved.

Or how ‘bout this one: in researching this book, I stayed in an apartment in NYC’s Hell’s Kitchen on West 43rd Street between 10th & 11th Avenues. This neighborhood was the birthplace of the Irish mob in America, beginning in the mid nineteenth century after millions of immigrants poured into America to escape Ireland’s catastrophic potato famine.

My original plan was to do a walking video tour of the neighborhood, pointing out the locations of the most notorious Irish mob killings in modern times. But I soon realized that this would be an overwhelming task. Between 1965 and 1985 alone, the NYPD attributes as many as one hundred murders to the so-called Westies. That’s five murders a year, each and every year for twenty years, in one single neighborhood in the Big Apple alone.

For a more specific illustration of just how pervasive murder is in the Mafia, I’ll defer to Beantown mobster Johnny the Executioner Martorano. After he flipped in 1995, the Boston Organized Crime Strike Force investigators gave him a list of eighty gangsters he had known since the early 1960s. They wanted him to identify which criminal clique each gangster had belonged to – In Town (the Boston LCN Family), The Hill (Bulger’s Winter Hill Gang), and so forth. Martorano was dumbfounded when he realized that out of that entire list, seventy-five of the men had been murdered. That’s almost a ninety-four percent attrition rate!

Thus, my precious time is better spent on discussing the likelihood of insult being added to injury when you get clipped. What I mean by that is, your murderer will probably be someone you love – maybe even your father, son, or brother. That sucks big time. In the Mafia, one day a guy is your closest friend, and the next day he is your undertaker.

Fratricide tops even friend-icide as the more offensive way to meet your maker. Here’s a chilling example by way of Colombo Family capo Gregory the Grim Reaper Scarpa.

Just before midnight on January 14, 1987, The Grim Reaper’s older brother, Salvatore Sal Scarpa, was drinking and playing cards in a Brooklyn social club. Sal was not having a good night, having recently been convicted of cocaine possession and now awaiting sentencing. It was about to get worse: five masked, armed gunmen suddenly burst into the club. This is a robbery! one of them screamed. Everyone on the fucking floor now!

Everyone in the club, including Sal, immediately kissed the ground. Several of the robbers began rifling through the patrons’ pockets, snatching their cash and jewelry, while the other robbers stood guard. But when they moved onto Sal, they didn’t bother taking his gold watch, gold necklace, or $313 in cash. Instead – Boom! – they blew the back of his head off.

Sal’s murder was never solved, though it was common knowledge in the underworld that his own brother Greg had ordered the hit. See, for the last several decades, rumors had persisted that Greg was a rat. Sal had always defended him. However, as the years passed and Greg miraculously dodged every single federal case thrown at him, he began to suspect the same. Then he made a fatal mistake: he told one of their mutual associates of his suspicion.

Reporter Peter Lance reached out to Gaspipe Casso, who was (and still is) doing life in a federal hellhole, and asked him whether he believed Greg could have sanctioned his brother’s murder. Casso responded in the affirmative, confirming that it was indeed Greg who had ordered the double-tap because Sal was telling everyone the Reaper was a rat. According to Mr. Lance, Greg Scarpa’s daughter, Little Linda Schiro, was also convinced that her father had ordered her uncle Sal’s murder.

An eerily similar incident occurred on April 14, 1973, in Chicago. The Outfit’s boss, Joseph Joey Doves Aiuppa, issued a murder contract to Tony Spilotro. At the time, Spilotro was facing homicide charges with Mario DeStefano and his brother, Spilotro’s mentor, Mad Sam DeStefano.

Mad Sam was a raging psychopath and out-and-out loony bird who could not be trusted to keep his mouth shut in court. He had recently stretched a simple traffic-violation hearing into a one-week trial and media circus where he represented himself, making a mockery of the proceedings. Mad Sam showed up daily in a wheelchair, wore pajamas, and addressed the court through a megaphone. The Outfit shotcallers were none too pleased with his antics.

Thus, on the day in question, Mario and Tony arrived at Mad Sam’s house, ostensibly to discuss eliminating the key prosecution witness against them, co-killer Charles Chuckie Crimaldi. When they pulled up, Mad Sam was puttering in his garage. Mario approached him first, right arm extended to shake his big brother’s hand. Tony was just behind him, concealing behind his back a sawed-off, double-barreled 12-gauge shotgun.

Mario suddenly stepped aside. Tony raised the shotgun and – Boom! – blew Sam’s right arm clean off. Boom! The second blast caught Sam flush in the chest, killing him. Ironically, twenty years earlier, Sam had murdered his other brother Mike for disgracing The Outfit with his heroin addiction.

Good riddance, I say – couldn’t have happened to a nicer guy. Mad Sam was the worst torturer-murderer in the history of the LCN. He soundproofed his basement so he could torture victims while his oblivious wife and three kids lived their lives upstairs. He was also crazy as a shithouse rat, always opening his front door to FBI agents while wearing only a robe and boxer shorts – with his monstrous, disfigured salami dangling out in all its hideously deformed glory.

Cue Juice Newton’s Angel Of The Morning.

The Paranoia

The constant fear of getting two in the back of your head from even your own flesh and blood results in another major Mafia bummer – paranoia. Constant, inescapable, endemic fear that permeates every fiber of your being.

Gallo recalls the constant dread experienced by John JB Baudanza, a.k.a. Johnny Goggles, a Lucchese made man. JB should have felt safe and protected in light of the fact that his father-in-law was the all-powerful Lucchese capo Domenico Danny Cutaia. Alas, twas not to be.

Baudanza’s life was consumed by dread. Whenever they bounced around together, he would always have Gallo go into a place first to ensure assassins were not lying in wait. JB was perpetually concerned that the reckless and bloodthirsty Persicos (who ruled his previous Family, the Colombos) would eventually kill him for past indiscretions. For Baudanza, it was only a matter of time before they exacted their revenge against him for siding with the losing faction in the 1991-93 Colombo War.

Gallo personally experienced this foreboding on numerous occasions. Whenever Colombo made man Eddie Garofalo Jr. called for him, he never knew if he was going to be sent for in order to kill or be killed. Every call from Eddie would immediately cause Gallo to hyperventilate and break into a cold sweat. He was convinced that Garofalo was the only gangster in Brooklyn who could rub him out without any forewarning.

This paranoia occasionally takes a comical turn. Philadelphia underboss Philip Crazy Phil Leonetti describes in his autobiography Mafia Prince what happened at his son’s tenth birthday party in 1984.

As the party was raging in the backyard with all of his kid’s friends present, Leonetti and fellow Mafioso Lawrence Crazy Larry Merlino were inside the kitchen plugging candles into the birthday cake. Suddenly, a large masked figure appeared in the alley leading to the backyard. Phil and Larry looked at each other and shrieked, It’s a hit!

Without thinking, they opened the side kitchen door, grabbed the guy, and pummeled and booted the poor bastard. It was a teenager in a dinosaur costume whom Leonetti’s wife had hired to entertain the kids!

Crazy Phil and Crazy Larry pulled the kid’s masked off – he was sobbing hysterically, begging them to stop, as all the attendees in the backyard stared in horror. This is how fucked up their lives had become.

Killing the Wrong Person

Only a pure psychopath like Gaspipe or Gambino button man Roy DeMeo actually enjoys whacking people out; Roy used to brag that it made him feel like God. Instead, old-school good guys like Johnny Roselli and Jimmy Fratianno simply did what they had to do (It’s just one o’ dem t’ings), and took no pleasure from it. Murdering innocent people, however, is downright unpleasant and can make you feel terrible about yourself. This presents our next organized crime buzzkill. Unfortunately, whether out of sheer stupidity or mere happenstance, this occurs far more often than you’d imagine.

The most obvious situation arises when you go out on a hit and accidentally kill the wrong person. In 1971, during the Irish mob war in Boston between the Killeen and the Mullens gangs, Whitey and his friend Billy O’Sullivan served as the two main shooters for the Killeens.

One night, Whitey went out hunting for members of the Mullens gang. He couldn’t believe his luck when he came across their leader, Paulie McGonagle, sitting alone in his car. Paulie, who was parked directly in front of his own house, never saw Whitey coming from the opposite direction.

Hey, Paulie! Whitey called out as he pulled up right next to him. He shot Paulie almost point blank in the face, instantly killing him.

Oops. Whitey suddenly realized he had shot the wrong McGonagle. Instead of Paulie, he’d murdered his brother Donnie, who bore a startling resemblance to him. Donnie had never been involved in crime, much less in the Irish mob war. That’ll put a damper on your evening. Or not.

Horrified, Whitey drove straight to O’Sullivan’s apartment. Deeply shaken, Bulger staggered into the kitchen and put his head on the table. I shot the wrong one, he said. I shot Donald.

Billy O, as he was known on the street, told him to shrug it off, explaining that Donnie was a heavy chain-smoker who was probably going to die someday soon from cancer anyways. Now, how do you want your pork chops?

An equally unfortunate but certainly more gruesome example of smoking someone who found himself in the wrong place at the wrong time comes courtesy of John Gotti Sr. His oops, my bad moment occurred on April 29, 1987, when Jeffrey Ciccone, a mentally disabled citizen dressed in a black suit, was walking down the street across from the Bergin Social Club in Ozone Park.

Suddenly, a truck backfired just as the don himself, Gotti, was walking out the front door. Gotti regularly visited the Bergin before heading over to his new headquarters at the Ravenite Social Club in Manhattan’s Little Italy. Located at 247 Mulberry Street, the Ravenite served as the Gambino Family’s primary HQ for sixty-six years, from 1926 until 1992, when the feds seized it.

Gotti, fearing gunfire, ducked back into the Bergin. Several bodyguards, including his burly 6’3 chauffeur, Bartholomew Bobby" Boriello, charged across the street at Ciccone, believing he was the shooter. Seeing their guns, Ciccone hightailed it. Boriello shot him once in the ass, bringing him down.

In broad daylight, in full view of numerous bystanders, who later told the police they saw nothing, Gotti’s goons grabbed Ciccone, threw him into the trunk of 400-pound Dominick Borghese’s tinted Benz, and roared off. They drove him to a store on Staten Island owned by a Gotti capo for a basement interrogation.

As Borghese would testify a decade later, the goons, including hitman Joe the German Watts, savagely beat and tortured thirty-seven-year-old Ciccone, demanding he tell them who had ordered the hit on Gotti. He pleaded for mercy, claiming he had no idea what they were talking about, and began frantically quoting Bible passages. The goons finally began to suspect that Ciccone was some type of insane vigilante who had acted entirely on his own.

The German was getting tired and hungry from all the exertion and so sent a message to Gotti asking what they should do with him. Kill him was the response, and so that’s what they did. Watts and Borghese tied up Ciccone’s hands and feet, and stuffed him into an orange body bag. He was sobbing and begging for his life when they zippered it shut. Five bullets to the dome from Watts’ .380 automatic put an end to the cacophony.

The killers were starving so they decided to get supper, during which they would arrange a place to dump the corpse. They were only gone a few hours when, incredibly, burglars broke into the store. Although they didn’t go down into the basement, they did leave the store’s metal gates open when they left. A passerby noticed the open gates and called New York’s Finest, who investigated and discovered Ciccone’s body at 4:30 a.m. There were no arrests.

Man, I sure hope Johnny Boy – named Time magazine’s Man of the Year in its September 19, 1986, issue, with his own Andy Warhol cover to boot – didn’t lose too much sleep over this blunder.

Aw, fuck it, Dude – let’s go bowling.

Inadvertently Killing Your Own Kin

If killing innocent people isn’t bad enough, how about accidentally causing the deaths of your own (biological) family members? For example, if the mob wants you dead – presumably because of something you did – but can’t find ya, it will occasionally eradicate an immediate member of your gene pool. The Mafia’s fabled policy against killing innocent relatives is not exactly chiseled in stone.

During the ‘70s, George Jay Vandermark’s title at the Stardust Resort and Casino in Las Vegas was Slot Machines Supervisor. His real job, however, was to manage the slot skim for The Outfit, which back then had a controlling interest in the casino. Prior to that gig, George worked as a slot machine thief in Chicago.

On May 18, 1976, the Nevada Gaming Control Board (NGCB) raided the casino and discovered that the coin scale in the Stardust count room had been set to undercount coins by one third. This resulted in the skimming of as much as $20 million from the slots in a single eighteen-month period alone.

Anyhoo, wily George skedaddled out the back door during the raid and got the heck outta Dodge. And for good reason too – turns out greedy Georgie was skimming from the skim, having helped himself to a cool three million. That’s over thirteen big ones today. Mama mia! Realizing the raid would uncover his embezzlement from the mob, he fled to Mazatlán, Mexico, where he lived in a trailer park.

Since the boys from Chi-town couldn’t find him, they did the next best thing. They tracked down his son Jeff, which wasn’t particularly difficult since he was also a Stardust employee, and bashed in his skull with a mallet.

Cue The Beatles’ Maxwell’s Silver Hammer.

So what happened to Georgie, the glomming grifter? Bet your sweet tukas he never returned to Vegas, though he apparently settled