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  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.”

  “Just punch the card and go. Don’t worry about it.”

  Willie Boy left instructions for Jamesy’s ghost employer: “If his parole officer comes around, just tell ’im he’s out on a run.”

  Willie Boy also told Jamesy that Genie wanted to see him about beating up the co-worker.

  “You can’t raise your hands to nobody over there. You got to control yourself,” Genie admonished.

  Cardinali soon considered himself to be “with Johnny,” which meant “You did anything he wanted.” Johnny wanted Jamesy to hang around the club and be available for errands.

  “Take a walk around the corner and pick up my salary from Arc [Plumbing],” Gotti would tell Jamesy.

  In addition, Jamesy was also told to pick up a $22,000 check from Arc and go with Tony Roach to Staten Island to pick up another new Lincoln to replace Gotti’s almost-new one.

  “Neil picked it out for me,” Gotti said.

  Another time, Jamesy was in a nearby motel helping Angelo, Gene, and Willie Boy count $20,000 in small bills, when someone from the club called and told Jamesy to go fetch a new white shirt for Gotti, who had an important meeting.

  Jamesy, who had some stature because he had done time, escaped some of the more tedious clubhouse chores. These fell to younger attendants, who picked up laundry or washed cars. At the club they answered the phones and dialed Gotti’s personal calls, like secretaries whose boss had power and wanted people to understand it.

  About the telephone Gotti told Jamesy, “Don’t ever say anything you don’t want played back to you someday.”

  Jamesy wanted to do more than run errands, but Gotti urged him to be patient.

  “Everything is going to be all right,” Gotti said. “Maybe I’ll have you collect my small loans.”

  At the time, Source Wahoo said Gotti had $100,000 “on the street.” Some was in the form of “knockdown loans,” which Gotti explained to Jamesy required repayment in equal installments, with the interest—the “vig”—built in.

  Gotti was particular about how money was delivered to him. Once a debtor dropped off an envelope with two names on it. One was Gotti’s, the other an associate with whom the debtor had a separate relationship. The envelope was passed along to Gotti, in his car outside the club.

  “If I ever see my name on another envelope, I am going to kill you,” He shouted, tossing the envelope out the window as he sped away.

  Jamesy was not patient, or candid. He had started using cocaine and was developing a monster habit that required more than the $100 or $200 a week Gotti paid him. Jamesy and his new friend, Neil’s son Buddy, spent much more than that in a single night of snorting their way through discos in Manhattan and Queens.

  As a heroin addict, Jamesy had beaten a priest during a robbery; on coke, he killed. In October 1979, he and another man shot two South American coke dealers and stole three kilos—six and a half pounds of disco nights.

  Jamesy entered the coke trade even though Gotti had warned him about the consequences.

  “If I ever catch anybody in my crew [selling drugs], I’ll kill them. I’m not going to let no one embarrass me and I am going to make an example out of the first one I catch.”

  Gotti seemed confident that no one could deal drugs without his knowledge. Referring to another Bergin associate, Johnny told Jamesy: “He thinks I don’t know he’s [pushing drugs]; he is going to wind up dead.”

  At the time Gotti was warning Jamesy, Source BQ was telling the FBI he knew from “overheard conversations” that Gotti and Angelo were buying rolls of quarters and calling drug-fugitive Salvatore Ruggiero from pay phones. BQ also said Gotti was losing big at the track and on sports contests.

  “Source states he does not know where Gotti obtains all his money in order to incur such losses and not be severely cramped in his lifestyle,” Special Agent Patrick Colgan wrote.

  Like Source Wahoo, Source BQ helped in many ways. Late in 1979, agents asked him to identify surveillance pictures taken outside the Bergin. BQ identified men previously unknown to the surveillants: William Battista, Peter Gotti, Willie Boy, and Tony Roach. As for Tony Roach, BQ said
Gotti had decided not to propose him for formal Family membership.

  BQ said Rampino had defaulted on certain “street deals” and was heavily in debt because his son was being treated for cancer. “Gotti, however, does trust Roach and will use him in any capacity,” he added.

  Though Gotti wasn’t privy to all of Jamesy’s sides, what he saw he apparently liked. In 1979, he invited him to his home on Christmas Eve, an honor accorded such men as Angelo, Willie Boy, Tony Roach, and John Carneglia. Jamesy was so touched he offered Gotti money from a non-cocaine robbery.

  “Put that in your pocket,” Gotti said. “All I want is your love and respect.”

  One day Jamesy felt that he was being tested by Gotti, who gave him what he said was $5,000 in small bills to exchange at the bank for larger denominations. The teller told Jamesy the wad totaled $5,500, which Jamesy later explained to Gotti, who shrugged and pocketed the money.

  Jamesy was occasionally able to witness how Gotti handled himself in problem-solving situations: sitdowns. These ensued after men were “brought up on charges.” In these tribunals, Gotti drove to the point in a bulldozer style laced with a smart dark humor that was uniquely his.

  Jamesy accompanied Gotti to a Bronx sitdown. The charges involved a visit by members of another Family to the home of the wife of a mobster jailed on a drug charge.

  “I wish it was me,” Gotti told the Bronx men. “You would never be safe if you stopped and spoke to my wife while I was locked up.”

  “John, you are here defending a drug pusher.”

  “If every drug pusher in this room dropped dead, I would be the only one alive.”

  Typically, Gotti left a warning on the table: “You tell your skipper I said, ‘You ever go to a guy’s house while he is in jail, I’ll kill you.’”

  On another occasion, a problem arose when Michael Franzese—the son of a Colombo Family skipper—and another man sought to open a flea market near one run by a man who told them he was affiliated with Gotti.

  “Fuck John Gotti,” replied Franzese.

  Franzese was a modern mobster. Cool, educated, almost a yuppie. He would graduate from promoting flea markets to producing movies—credits include such teenage gang movies as Knights of the City and Savage Streets—and to stealing millions in a sophisticated gas-tax ripoff that would later stir Gotti’s interest. In hardball, however, he didn’t play in the same league as Gotti.

  “Watch this, I am goin’ to take you to school,” Gotti told Jamesy shortly before Franzese and his associate arrived at the Our Friends Social Club for a sitdown.

  Gotti informed Franzese that flea-market rights in the area were taken and he must abandon any claim. “I don’t care if you tell your father. I don’t care who you go to. You can take it to Yankee Stadium, you can’t win this.”

  As Franzese rose to leave, Gotti told him: “There is a guy running around the city saying ‘Fuck John Gotti.’ What do we do with a piece of shit like that? Should we beat him up? Kill him? He’s a dog, right?”

  “Yes, anybody who said that wouldn’t be a friend, they would be a dog,” Franzese replied.

  Tails between their legs, Franzese and his associate left, two more recipients of Gotti’s confident terrorism.

  In Jamesy’s version, Gotti never tired of displaying a bully swagger when he perceived a slight. Even Mike Coiro, the lawyer who had done such nice work for Gotti, was not exempt from a dressing-down.

  Gotti arrived at the club one day ranting that Coiro had shown disrespect for him in a Queens restaurant. Coiro was dining with Jimmy Burke, then under scrutiny as the Svengali of the $6 million Lufthansa airline heist at JFK Airport, and failed to stop by Gotti’s table and say hello. In Queens, at the time, Burke’s reputation was as bad as Gotti’s. He was aligned with the Luchese Family capo Paul Vario.

  Gotti sent for Coiro, who was in too deep with the Bergin to overlook the invitation. As he had done before, Gotti urged Jamesy to pay attention.

  “Watch what I am goin’ to do,” he said. “I might stuff him in the fireplace.”

  Coiro felt indigestion in the wake of Gotti’s screams.

  “I found you when you were a fifty dollar ambulance chaser. You are a piece of shit. You’re supposed to run when you see me. You sit there with Jimmy Burke, don’t get up to say hello to me. I’ll kill you.”

  Coiro, a former cop for the city’s Waterfront Commission, apologized. In time, Jimmy Burke was convicted for conspiring to fix Boston College basketball games and went to prison. None of the Lufthansa cash was ever found. Much is believed to have gone to the Luchese Family, some to the bosses of other Families. Many suspected hijackers and their accomplices or friends—13 in all—were found. Dead.

  From prison, Burke began complaining about “unauthorized” murders of the suspected hijackers. His Luchese captain, Vario, told Gotti about Burke’s complaints, according to Source BQ, who added: “John Gotti is the most powerful captain of any Family and does not want to hear any comments from Burke.”

  Gotti’s court was not without irony. One day, two steaming-mad men arrived at the club threatening to kill a young man named Carmine Agnello, for a reason described only as “some beef.”

  Agnello was an industrious youth just starting out in the auto-salvage business. The young men who wanted to kill him brought the idea to John Carneglia, who they regarded as a mentor.

  “Wait, you can’t,” Carneglia said. “Wait until Johnny gets here.”

  After Johnny got there and went across the street to Lolita’s Café for breakfast, Carneglia sought him out. After a few minutes, Carneglia reemerged from Lolita’s and told the angry pair, “Go ahead, do it, but don’t kill him.”

  The next time Jamesy saw him, Carmine was as dented and scratched as the cars he salvaged. But alive.

  A few years later, Carmine Agnello reentered John Gotti’s life. He married Vicki, John’s second daughter, a contestant in the Miss New York-USA beauty pageant. She was sponsored by Jamaica Auto Salvage, Carmine’s company.

  People didn’t always come to Gotti to resolve disputes. Some merely sought advice, or ambience.

  Such was the case with the actor Jon Voight, who had just won an Academy Award for Coming Home. Voight had grown up in nearby Yonkers and was then interested in a film about the life of Joe Sullivan, a hit man with Bergin connections.

  Sullivan was the son of a cop and the only man ever to escape from Attica prison. He invited Voight and a producer to Ozone Park to visit with Gotti and as word of a movie star’s presence spread, people got excited. Angelo Ruggiero’s daughter called the club to ask if she could drop by.

  Actors practice their profession when they seek out the real-life equivalents of characters they may portray. James Caan, “Santino” in The Godfather, befriended Colombo Family men while researching his role as the hot-tempered oldest son of “Don Corleone.”

  John, Gene, Willie Boy, and Jamesy were in the club when Voight and the others came calling. Eventually they retired to the Our Friends.

  “We drank all fucking night,” Jamesy later recalled in a phone call from prison. “Voight could drink. I think he started with Scotch, then he went with Remy Martins.”

  Jon Voight said he may have met John Gotti, but he has no recollection of it. He said Joe Sullivan introduced him to many people, “but I was only interested in Joe Sullivan.” He said if he had known Sullivan was associating with people involved in crime, he would have advised him not to.

  Voight’s foray into Queens would eventually be reviewed by FBI agents who questioned him as part of an investigation into whether Sullivan’s lawyer, former Attorney General Ramsey Clark, had harbored a fugitive. No charges were ever filed.

  John Gotti was at ease with Voight. He was a celebrity, too; he had cash, a big car, great clothes, many retainers, and a style that caused heads to swivel when he strode into a room. His fame was earned in another world, an underworld, but it was his world, and it was real.

  In some families, when a star eclip
ses another, trouble lies just over the horizon.

  It was true of John and Gene Gotti; Gene had followed John into the Fatico-Dellacroce orbit and proven himself capable in crime. He was similar in many ways; he could be funny, menacing, and forceful, more than his brothers Peter and Richard, but not as much as John. He was both dependent and independent. With a childhood friend, Joey Scopo, a member of the Colombo Family, he had established a separate loan-sharking business, but its base was the Bergin.

  Gene resided in the large shadow cast by John. He was the man left in charge; he was Genie. The blood bond was strong, but under pressure it was a spring wound too tight.

  “I ain’t nothin’ over here,” Gene once complained to Angelo. “I’m just a fucking workhorse.”

  On another boozy night at the Bergin, a dispute between Jamesy and another man over what to play on the jukebox led to an insult, which led to a fight outside. Everyone spilled out onto the sidewalk and tried to break it up. Jamesy described what took place next.

  “Genie was like defending me. And Johnny wasn’t actually defending anybody. [He was] trying to be a mediator. Genie was drunk. They had words. Johnny knocked Genie out.”

  Jamesy said he pulled John away from Gene. “I was holding Johnny. I tried to hold him in a headlock. He said, ‘Get your hands off of me and that’s an order.’ I let go.”

  Jamesy felt responsible for the fisticuffs between John and Gene and apologized.

  “It ain’t you,” Gotti said. “This has been coming a long time, me and my brother.”

  Later, after everyone had sobered up, John regretted the incident and rebuked Jamesy for starting it. “You can’t raise your hands to anybody we hang out with.”

  “John, there are some things I can’t overlook.”

  “I don’t care how serious it is. You are going to get your hands chopped off.”

  The club had many such rules. Gene explained one to a fortunate soul one day. He and other crew members were at a wake when a clubhouse attendant called the funeral home to report that a school bus from a company headquartered on 101st Avenue had been stolen. Jamesy had been told by Angelo that he, John, and Neil were secret partners in the firm, which transported handicapped students under a city contract.