Mob Star Page 5

  One captain rallying around Gotti was Ralph Mosca, who also had a Queens crew. He was a Castellano man, but fond of Gotti and sailing with the prevailing wind. After meeting with him on December 20, Mosca briefed his crew, which included Dominick Lofaro, 55, a U.S. Army veteran, concrete worker, dice-game operator, numbers runner, illegal-loan collector, thief, and murderer who had spent two days in jail during his life.

  “Johnny says everything’s goin’ be all right,” Mosca told Lofaro. “We won’t have to carry no guns around.”

  Mosca instructed Lofaro—whom Gotti was considering for a new gambling operation—that he now must communicate with Gotti through an intermediary, a sure sign that a power shift was afoot.

  A lot was afoot that Mosca didn’t know about. At the time, Lofaro was wearing two masks. He was working for Mosca and for the New York State Organized Crime Task Force; he was a perfect example of the rationale behind one of the few policies Castellano had laid down for both the Family and the other mob: no drug dealing.

  The policy had nothing to do with the destruction of lives or neighborhoods and everything to do with self-interest. New York punished a drug dealer as severely as a murderer, and the Pope believed anyone arrested on a serious drug charge would be tempted to tattle on the Family if prosecutors dangled a deal with a dainty sentence. Serious was only four or more ounces of a controlled substance such as cocaine or heroin.

  For men who make their living illegally, the profit in drugs was frequently too strong a lure. Many interpreted the rule this way: Don’t get caught dealing drugs. They dealt on the side, secretly; they called it going “off the record.” It was a gamble, and many who got caught were killed by Family antidrug police.

  Dominick Lofaro had “rolled over” two years earlier after a 25-to-life heroin arrest in upstate New York. He was there to manage a gambling operation, but off the record he was making between $30,000 and $50,000 a kilo (2.2 pounds) for simply buying and reselling heroin to local dealers. He informed the arresting officers he was a “made” Gambino soldier in Ralph Mosca’s crew.

  A made soldier is a formally inducted member of the Family. In a secret ceremony, the soldier promises loyalty to the Family above all else. It’s sometimes called “getting your button” or “getting straightened out.” Made men are also known as “good fellows” or “nice fellows” or “friends of ours.” Many men spend years as “associates,” waiting for the day when they’ll be deemed able money earners with the right character traits. They must be of Italian blood.

  Made men are required to take a vow of noncooperation with the authorities. This is why Lofaro was so prized by the state’s Organized Crime Task Force—only a few have ever broken the vow. There could have been only one explanation for his admission when he was arrested: He wanted to deal.

  “We had him turned that night,” recalled the director of the Task Force, Deputy New York Attorney General Ronald Goldstock. “He was facing big time, but we think he was more afraid he would be killed by Mosca or Castellano. Mosca was an old-timer; he would have enforced the no-drug rule.”

  A body transmitter was added to Lofaro’s wardrobe. No court had to approve this action because legally, a person can secretly tape his own conversations in New York. Lofaro wore the device many months before he met John Gotti and taped him discussing an illegal gambling operation.

  Lofaro’s taping of Gotti gave the Task Force what it needed—evidence of a crime—to undertake an electronic mugging that would have been illegal without a court order. It asked a judge for permission to plant a listening device—a bug—in an annex to Gotti’s Bergin Hunt and Fish Club; and in March of 1985 the bug crawled in and alighted somewhere, according to a court paper, “within two rooms located behind the red door immediately adjacent to the Nice N EZ Auto School,” which was one door down from the Bergin club.

  Over the next several months, the bug—and, later, a phone tap—raised a secret window on the life of John Gotti, although none of his “overheards” could be used in the federal racketeering case pending against him and others because they were recorded after Gotti was indicted.

  The Task Force’s eavesdropping order expired in October 1985. After the December murders, Ralph Mosca’s conversations with informer Dominick Lofaro were cited in an affidavit requesting approval to reinstitute surveillance. Beginning on December 27, the two rooms behind the red door next to the Nice N EZ Auto School were rebugged and the phone was retapped.

  “Gotti is [now] the central figure in the Gambino Family, and seems to have decided that the Family members need not carry weapons; therefore, Gotti must necessarily have knowledge of the facts behind the killings of Castellano and Bilotti,” the affidavit said.

  Only a few of the overheards on the preexecution and post-execution bugs and taps have ever been revealed. Almost all—and the affidavits supporting them—have remained secret, until now.

  On December 27, 1985, the first day the reinstalled bug was in place, Gotti and a crew member referred to an article in that day’s New York Times attributing to law enforcement sources a theory that Bilotti was the real target of the assassination.

  The unidentified man was heard describing the article as “some kind of fuckin’ off-the-wall story.” The story was later broadcast on local television. “They said that he, that ah, the hit wasn’t meant for Paul, it was meant for the other guy.”

  Gotti’s response was partially inaudible, but the bug did hear him say it didn’t matter whom Castellano was with that day. “No one was to—Paul, whoever it was, whoever went there, was gonna get shot.”

  In a separate conversation, agents monitoring the bug heard Gotti utter a tantalizing remark about whether the hits were sanctioned by the other Crime Capital bosses, who included Gotti’s friend Joseph Massino, the acting Bonanno boss.

  The conversation was with a childhood friend, his closet friend and henchman Angelo Ruggiero, a burly schemer who already had been recorded, bugged, and tapped more than any other Gambino, and probably more than any Family man ever. Ruggiero was under indictment, too, in a heroin-dealing case, and he was about to succeed Gotti as captain of the Bergin Hunt and Fish crew.

  Gotti and Ruggiero talked about many matters, including other bosses, which prompted Gotti to say: “One half sanctioned us, the other half said, they’re with them, we sanction ya.”

  Though hardly proof of who the actual murderers were, it was obvious the remark meant that two of the other four bosses backed a plot against Castellano and that two others went along.

  Early in January 1986, as the boss-elect acquainted himself with the reins of power, a personal note in his life went unnoticed. In Manhattan, a judge slapped his youngest brother, a non-crew member, with a six-years-to-life term for selling cocaine to an undercover agent. No family members attended the sentencing and Vincent Gotti, age 33, went directly to jail.

  Another brother, Gene, age 39, was an important crew member and a defendant with Angelo in the heroin case; he would be by his brother’s side as the heir-certain contemplated his moves—unaware of the electronic plot taking place against him. One of John Gotti’s early ideas, which he shared with Ralph Mosca, was hiring Dominick Lofaro to run his Queens gambling operation.

  “This could mean a promotion for you,” Mosca told Lofaro.

  Mosca also said that once Gotti approved Lofaro to run the Queens operation, Lofaro would not need the okay of other captains to operate within their areas—whatever a boss wants, he gets.

  Gotti stated this principle to a soldier who expressed concern about stepping on a captain’s toes.

  “No big deal,” John said.

  “But he’s a captain.”

  “I’m your boss!”

  Gotti was thinking a lot about how a boss should conduct himself as the day of his coronation approached. For instance, Angelo brought him a problem about a loan-sharking customer, but Gotti replied, “I don’t deal with this anymore.”

  Gotti elaborated while discussing what he would
say to a soldier who wanted to propose a business deal directly to him. “I’ll tell him, ‘Listen, your skipper will keep me up to date, you keep your skipper up to date.’ I can’t socialize with these guys. I can’t bring myself down. I’m a boss, you know what I mean? I gotta isolate myself a little bit.”

  On January 10, Gotti held a similar discussion with Angelo in which he revealed—no surprise here—that he had chosen Frank DeCicco as his underboss.

  “What we’re gonna suggest to you is, everybody comes and sees us [captains],” Angelo said. “We’ll see Frankie [DeCicco], we’ll decide if we think it’s important, then we’ll bring it to you.”

  “Frankie’s an underboss at least,” Gotti replied.

  “All right, so …”

  “They have to go through a skipper, then go to [the] underboss.”

  The bug in the room next to the Nice N EZ Auto School captured many conversations that demonstrated Gotti was fully ready to exercise his power. He told Angelo that no new men would be made for six months to a year. He discussed which soldiers he would move to which crews—“We got to clip these guys’ wings a little bit.” He also boasted: “I could break every one of the captains now … a new boss does that as soon as [he’s elected]; [then] he gets up and makes a speech.”

  He didn’t intend to demote the captains, but felt he was entitled to their resignations. He was the new president and they were the old cabinet. Gotti told an associate he had threatened to strip the skippers in a meeting with the aging Joe N. Gallo, the counselor, or consigliere, of the Gambino Family since the Carlo Gambino era. Gotti considered Gallo a yes-man.

  Gotti’s description of this meeting, also attended by several captains, or capos, indicated how thoroughly he enjoyed Family politics.

  He recalled Gallo giving a speech in which he agreed the new boss had the power to break up the cabinet. Gotti believed that Gallo was merely granting the point, to stop him from demoting Gallo as the Family counselor. The boss let Gallo know he couldn’t be fooled.

  As Gotti explained:

  “I said, ‘Joe, don’t flatter yourself.’ I said, ‘You ain’t no Paulie. You think you’re dealing with a fool? I break twenty-three captains [and] I put ten in. They vote you down. I break them, put my original captains back and you ain’t no consigliere!’”

  Gotti, as many other recorded conversations had and would demonstrate, regularly regaled friends, soldiers, and associates with tales of his Family prowess. “[Gallo] told Angelo,” he said, summing up the meeting, “‘Where the fuck has he been? How did he figure this out?’”

  On January 13, 1986, Gotti appeared publicly for the first time since the Castellano-Bilotti murders. He attended a pretrial hearing on his racketeering case at the U.S. District Court House in Brooklyn. The borough president of Queens had just attempted suicide, after a friend agreed to spill his political-corruption guts to a grand jury. A huge scandal involving organized crime of an above-world sort was on, but even so, the press showed up to take a look at the new underworld boss and fire a few hallway questions.

  Gotti was jovial and coy when asked if he was boss of the Gambino Family: “I’m the boss of my family—my wife and kids at home.”

  It was unusual for a Family man, let alone a boss, to answer any questions, even the most innocuous, but Gotti—a GQ model of good grooming and style with his double-breasted gray suit and camel’s hair overcoat—acted like a politician too dignified to respond to his opponents’ gutter charges:

  “We don’t know nothing ourselves. We hear [the boss talk] the same place you [reporters] get it. We get it from the FBI.”

  Gotti and WCBS radio reporter Mary Gay Taylor arrived at the courtroom door at the same time.

  “I was brought up to hold the door open for ladies,” he smiled, a twinkle in his eye, as he grasped the door with his right hand and waved her in with his left arm.

  After the brief session, he climbed into his lawyer’s black Cadillac and rode off—having left a fairly positive impression, considering that the case against him and six codefendants involved three murders.

  3

  MEET THE NEW BOSS

  AT AN UNGODLY HOUR at some unbugged location on January 16, 1986, John Joseph Gotti Jr., at the comparatively young age of 45, was officially selected as boss of the Gambino Family, the largest, most powerful organized crime group in America.

  As expected, Frank DeCicco was confirmed as underboss and “for now” Joe N. Gallo remained counselor, according to Ralph Mosca, who attended the swearing-in ceremony and immediately informed Dominick Lofaro and other Mosca crew members.

  DeCicco, who held a no-show International Brotherhood of Teamsters job, was given his own squad, the crew of the late Thomas Bilotti, and Angelo Ruggiero took over Gotti’s Bergin Hunt and Fish crew, which, besides Gene Gotti, included Peter and Richard Gotti. Peter was a year older than John, Richard two years younger. They had minor criminal records, but Gene—in addition to the heroin case with Angelo—was a defendant with John in the Brooklyn racketeering case.

  After a meeting, Angelo accompanied Gotti back to the club. Angelo had come down a long dirty road with Gotti, a road with many bodies alongside it. They had suffered similar personal tragedies. Angelo relished this triumphant moment and felt partly responsible—he had served Gotti dishonorably well.

  “Meet your new boss,” Angelo beamed to crew members as he and John walked into the Bergin.

  “It’s gonna be nice, you watch,” Gotti told the men.

  His election had as much suspense as a meeting of the electoral college an hour after the polls close. The fact that Gotti was under indictment made no difference. The fact that he could be sent away for the rest of his life made no difference. The only thing that made a difference was him, John Gotti—he had measured the odds, put all his chips on the table, and busted the house.

  Almost everyone had already forgotten about another legal detail nagging the boss, whose victory was celebrated by the purchase of a $60,000 Mercedes-Benz SEL.

  He also was under indictment in a state case, accused of assault and theft—the embarrassing result of a temperamental scuffle with a refrigerator mechanic over a double-parked car in Queens in 1984. Gotti was accused of slapping the man; an associate of Gotti’s was accused of taking $325 from the man’s shirt pocket—out of spite, not larceny, but it read like theft by both in the newspapers, which made it acutely embarrassing.

  “The crime is beneath him,” his attorney would point out.

  Except for the unseemliness of the idea that he had mugged a mechanic, the case was a nuisance to Gotti, compared to the federal case. The state trial was set for March, but he believed it could be handled. Somehow.

  The day after his inauguration, Gotti griped about the miserliness of the old boss. Theoretically, a boss gets a cut of the operations of each captain, who get a slice of each soldier’s. But Gotti learned that Castellano had been taking $5,000 every Christmas from the life savings of the wife of an elderly captain who had only $2,000 coming in from an untypically moribund crew.

  Castellano was a “fuck” for doing this. “Well, listen to me, that’s ended,” Gotti told an associate. “[It] don’t mean [however] that you don’t have to try to hustle and put something together for us.”

  Other aspects of the Family’s far-flung money-making ventures crossed Gotti’s desk his first day on the job. He revised the payments that an unspecified industry was making to Castellano and Bilotti so that a soldier in the scheme got a bigger share. He discussed a plan to stop a threatened labor action against concrete plants if they would “sweeten the pie.”

  Many conversations over the next several weeks showed the graduate of the blue-collar Family within a Family becoming a white-color boss, or trying to. On January 18, Gotti told Angelo about a deal headed his way with a representative of an unknown group: “He won a deal, supposed to get a job. Three and a half million in [contracts], a hundred and ninety-five thousand dollars in kickbacks or more than that. He
says it all goes to Johnny Gotti.”

  On January 23, the new Gambino troika—Gotti, DeCicco, and Gallo—traveled to the Helmsley Palace Hotel in Manhattan to meet with recording industry executives seeking venture capital for an album by a new artist. The introductions were made by a longtime captain, Joseph Armone.

  Someone tipped off the police as well as a network television crew working on an industry payola story; they arrived as Gotti and the others stepped off an elevator into the lobby. The ambushed mobsters declined interviews, but sinister footage of a handsome, well-dressed man described as an unknown gangster with record-industry contacts was telecast nationwide.

  A few days later, back at the Bergin annex, after someone brought a copy of the singer’s sample tape, Gotti was uncertain about the idea. It was risky to invest in a new singer—and the recording industry was too dishonest.

  “They change two or three sounds and they make their own [record] and you get fucked.”

  The duties of a boss were many, and one was punishing miscreant subordinates. He grumbled about one offender this way: “This kid is as high as he’s ever gonna get in life. This kid, I’m just trying to think of the way to punish him now. Enough to know how I didn’t like that. Teach him what bitterness is. Give him something fuckin’ [to] really feel sorry about. This ain’t a ball game here. This ain’t no ball game. This ain’t no game.”

  Gotti was amazed after his ascension that at least one captain—Anthony Gaggi, uncle of the car-case witness against Castellano—had not adapted to the new game. He learned this during a telephone call from a soldier reporting about a dispute involving a Brooklyn restaurant. Family members had just bought into it and the landlord wanted to check them out.