King of the Godfathers: "Big Joey" Massino and the Fall of the Bonanno Crime Family (11 page)

CHAPTER 10

Up on the Roof

What a fuckup.

Dominick “Sonny Black” Napolitano had no other way of describing what had happened at the Ruby Street lot.

Neither Alphonse Indelicato’s body nor those of any of the other dead captains was to have been found. But here it was, not even three weeks after they had been killed and the corpses were starting to surface. That was not supposed to be, Napolitano told his crew members, if Massino had done the job right.

The finding of Indelicato’s body raised concern that the corpses of Dominick Trinchera and Philip Giaccone would also surface. If that happened, it would lead to more leads that could, even with the state of forensic science in 1981, provide evidence that could implicate the Bonanno faction, which had engineered and carried out the murders. Massino, police later learned, had farmed out the disposal of the bodies to the Gambino crime family, which did a sloppy job.

Disconcerted over the discovery of Indelicato, the Bonanno family became nervous. As the earlier episode with the pen registers in the FBI Rego Park office indicated, the agency needed to get some good wiretaps and to plum informants for clues. Joseph Pistone had been able to glean information showing how the Rastelli faction had clearly won the day, but there was still the need to gather more intelligence.

It also became clear to FBI officials that Pistone’s long-running tenure as an undercover agent within the crime family was coming to an end. The politics of the family still remained dangerously unstable. Massino and Napolitano were vying for the job as the powerful captain in the family and it was evident there was friction between the two even though they had both won the backing of the Commission for Rastelli. Massino was also very wary and looking closely for signs of informants.

Napolitano had not just given Pistone a contract to kill Bruno Indelicato on a whim. The Bonanno captain had come to trust the undercover agent and became impressed with his ability to earn money through the King’s Court Bottle Club in Florida, not knowing it was an FBI undercover company. By 1981, the books of the crime family, so to speak, were being opened again for new members and Napolitano told Pistone he was going to propose him for membership. The plan was for Pistone to be proposed to become a made member shortly after boss Philip Rastelli came out of prison later in the year after serving his sentence for the lunch wagon extortion case.

Napolitano didn’t keep secret his plan to have his buddy Pistone become a made member. He talked about it openly. As Salvatore Vitale later told police, he and Massino learned of the plan to elevate Pistone during a visit to Napolitano’s Motion Lounge. Vitale had driven Massino to the club on Withers Street in Williamsburg, where his brother-in-law got out of the car and approached Napolitano. It was clear from the body language of the two captains that they were having a heated conversation, Vitale noticed. Massino seemed very upset.

Walking away from Napolitano, an angry Massino returned to the car where Vitale was waiting.

Napolitano wanted to “straighten out” the brash newcomer Donnie Brasco, a fuming Massino told Vitale. What especially bothered Massino was that Brasco would be proposed for membership before Vitale. It also seemed odd to Massino, indeed imprudent, that Napolitano would even think about submitting this fellow Brasco’s name for mob membership after only knowing him for a couple of years, Vitale recalled. It takes years of close association with someone for mob bosses to feel comfortable with a man before proposing membership. Brasco had rocketed into contention almost overnight and no one knew if he even did a “piece of work,” meaning had a hand in an actual killing sanctioned by the crime family. Massino and Napolitano already had some friction between them and now there was the added problem of Brasco being favored over the ever loyal Vitale.

Though Pistone later said that he saw benefits to the FBI having one of its agents serving undercover as a made member of the Mafia, the law enforcement agency saw things differently. Killings from the Bonanno factionalism had spread to those outside the crime family when two other mobsters believed to have been friendly with Alphonse Indelicato were murdered. Things were getting dicey. The decision was made to pull Pistone from his undercover assignment at the end of July 1981. The man known as Donnie Brasco to the men in the world of the Bonanno crime family would cease to exist. Joseph Pistone would then resurface in his true identity on the witness stand.

Court records show that Pistone, as well as another FBI agent, Edgar T. Robb, who was known by the street name of “Tony Rossi,” were officially pulled from their undercover roles on July 30, 1981. Robb had worked as the undercover agent at the King’s Court Bottle Club in Florida, the place Napolitano and Benjamin Ruggiero had conducted business in and believed to be their racket. Pistone wanted to tell Napolitano himself about his true identity, but that was one final role he wouldn’t play. FBI officials decided the Bonanno mobsters in New York had to be told of Pistone’s true identity, by other special agents. Napolitano, Ruggiero, and any others involved with Pistone were to be told he was a government agent and not an informant because it was believed it would help safeguard Pistone from retribution.

“Our belief, again based upon experience, was that while members of La Cosa Nostra have readily killed any number of ‘informants’ or ‘stool pigeons,’ they would not threaten the lives of undercover FBI agents,” said one of Pistone’s supervisors.

Despite the high stakes in criminal investigations, FBI agents and police often developed working relationships with the mobsters they targeted. Not only did the agents of law enforcement come to know their targets but also the mobsters themselves saw the investigators as a form of brethren. Mobsters knew the cops had a job to do and for the most part respected them, particularly if they did the job well and treated the people they targeted with some respect. In return, the wiseguys in the crime families reciprocated the simple courtesies and respect they received.

On July 30, 1981, three veteran FBI agents took a trip to Williamsburg and parked not far from the Motion Lounge. Together, special agents Doug Fencl, Jim Kinne, and Jerry Loar, all dressed in summer blazers and suits, went to the building at the corner of Withers and Graham in Williamsburg, which housed the Motion Lounge. Fencl rang the bell to Napolitano’s apartment on the second floor. Napolitano screamed out, asking who was calling.

“Doug Fencl, I need to talk to you,” the agent said.

“Come up,” said Napolitano.

Once inside the apartment, Fencl sat with Napolitano around the dining room table. The agents asked Napolitano if he knew Donny Brasco and Tony Rossi and he said he did. Fencl then told Napolitano that they were FBI agents.

Fencl pulled out a picture of Pistone, Robb, and other FBI agents. The photo showed a smiling Fencl and a total of four other men including special Agent Loar posing against a wood-paneled wall that had been brightly lit by the camera flash. It wasn’t a very arty shot. To the left of Loar stood Pistone in a stripped polo shirt and his hands clasped in front of him. Pistone seemed almost expressionless in the picture but looking closely you could see the slight suggestion of a smile on his face. That man in the short-sleeved shirt, Fencl told Napolitano, was an FBI agent.

Napolitano kept his cool and said he didn’t know Pistone but that if he did meet him in the future he would know who he was and that he worked for the FBI. Fencl also told Napolitano that he could have a potential problem with his gangster friends for bringing both undercover agents into Bonanno crime family business. Fencl pulled out his business card and offered it to Napolitano, just in case he needed it.

“You know better than anybody I can’t take this,” said Napolitano. “I know how to get a hold of you if I need to.”

The agents left the lounge and were captured on film by an FBI camera as they crossed Withers Street.

Though he had been cool and collected when Fencl told him who Pistone was, Napolitano quickly jumped into action after the trio of agents left. His crew members, Ruggiero, John Cerasani, and others were called in for a hasty meeting and told what Fencl had said. There was disbelief. On one wiretap a crew member was overheard saying that the FBI must have kidnapped Brasco (Pistone) and then forced him to pose with the agents in the picture Fencl had showed Napolitano.

According to Pistone, Napolitano and his crew kept the disclosure to themselves and began to look for him, putting out feelers in Florida and Chicago but came up blank. Pistone was of course off the street and would no longer be found in the old haunts of his alter ego Donnie Brasco. Napolitano knew that he had to inform the powers that be and he made several other calls. One of those calls was to Massino, another was to Paul Castellano. Rastelli eventually got word in prison.

In the hours immediately after the shocking disclosure that Donnie Brasco, the man he had been pushing for membership in the family, was really an FBI agent, Napolitano needed some time to himself. He did what he always did to escape and think. He went up to the roof where his pigeon coop was and looked out over Withers and Graham streets.

Surveillance photos caught a worried-looking man, his brow creased with deep frown lines, surrounded by pigeons. The winged creatures were the only living things Dominick Napolitano could really trust.

CHAPTER 11

Do It to Me One More Time

Anthony “Fat Tony” Salerno had long been a power in the Genovese crime family. By the summer of 1981, he was getting on in years—he was seventy years old—but still held sway as a major source of loan-sharking money in the garment district and a controlling force behind the crime family’s gambling operations in central Harlem. Federal investigators considered him the boss of the Genovese family, although the real power was held by Vincent Gigante. Salerno was a front man, important in his own right, but still just a front.

Salerno traveled around a lot, mainly between New York, Florida, and Las Vegas, places where he had legal and illegal business holdings. He had a large farm near the upstate New York town of Rhinebeck that he escaped to every Friday. But when he was in the city during the week, Salerno could be found at his social club on 115th Street in Manhattan. The Palma Boys Social Club was another one of those nondescript places where mobsters knew they could find their bosses and associates. The origin of the name was obscure, it was possibly an allusion to the Spanish word for
palm
or a bay in Majorca. In nice weather, Salerno, who wore a wide-brimmed hat, would sit outside the club with one of his trademark cigars clamped in his mouth. He walked with a cane for assistance.

After Joseph Pistone had surfaced in his true identity as an FBI agent, bureau officials knew that there was a great incentive for the Mafia families in New York to prevent him from testifying any way they could. Pistone had collected a great deal of evidence against the Bonanno family. The depth of his unprecedented penetration of the mob, his FBI colleagues believed, was an embarrassment to many if not all of the bosses of New York’s five families. At least one informant had reported that pictures of Pistone and Edgar T. Robb had been circulated to Mafia families throughout the United States. To let the mob know that Pistone and Robb were federal agents, the FBI decided to talk with leaders of each Mafia family. The object of the talks was simple: Pistone and Robb were federal agents, and any attempt to harm them would bring the wrath of the government down on those who tried.

One of the mobsters approached for a little chat was Salerno. Agents found him at the Palma Boys club, seated in the back at his habitual table. He had on a suit and tie and was smoking one of his ubiquitous cigars. The agents told him they were investigating some mob homicides, notably the deaths of the three Bonanno captains, and that the bureau also didn’t want Donnie Brasco (Pistone) harmed.

Salerno was a little perplexed about why the FBI was worried about the disappearance and death of three mobsters. The mob takes care of its own, Salerno told the agents. If the three captains were killed, they probably deserved it, he added.

Though a gruff talker, Salerno understood what the agents were saying about Pistone.

“Nobody is gonna hurt Donnie Brasco,” Salerno assured the agents.

Salerno didn’t hold the Bonanno crime family in high regard. That became evident after he was heard on a bug placed in the Palma Boys club saying the family was a collection of drug dealers—“junk men” as he called them. So his remarks that the Genovese crowd wouldn’t do anything drastic about Pistone seemed a sign to the FBI that the Bonanno family’s penetration by Pistone wasn’t going to result in any Mafia-wide hunt for the agent. However, it was another story with Benjamin “Lefty Guns” Ruggiero.

When Pistone first made his entrée with the Bonanno family, Ruggiero was in effect his mentor. A gangly man who seemed like Rodney Dangerfield because he was always denied the respect he deserved for being a good soldier for the mob, Ruggiero took Pistone under his wing and taught him the ropes about mob protocol and how to make his way around mobsters. Pistone, through his secret law enforcement connections, was able to generate money for Ruggiero’s associates, the most important being Dominick “Sonny Black” Napolitano. It was Napolitano whom Ruggiero decided to align himself with instead of Joseph Massino in the aftermath of the assassination of Carmine Galante. So, when Pistone’s undercover identity was uncloaked, it was Ruggiero who felt particularly betrayed.

FBI sources in the mob reported that Ruggiero became obsessed with finding Pistone. One FBI informant said that Ruggiero stated that he was going to find and kill Pistone “if it was the last thing he did.” Investigators took the threat more seriously when the same source said that Ruggiero was going to ingenious lengths to find out anything about Pistone that might help locate him. Since Pistone had stayed in a particular Holiday Inn when he visited Florida on undercover business, Ruggiero had contacts who would try to obtain through hotel records the telephone numbers “Donnie Brasco” called, said the source who was only identified as “Source A” in FBI court records. In a more ominous vein, the source said that he had actually seen one such telephone number obtained from a Holiday Inn in Miami Beach where Pistone had stayed. Ruggiero seemed obsessed with the search, and his only mission was to locate “Donnie” said the informant.

Throughout August 1981, Ruggiero worked feverishly trying to find Pistone, the man who had betrayed him. But where was Napolitano and what was he doing? Federal agents had picked up informant information that the powerful Bonanno captain had disappeared and might have been killed. But it was just as possible, investigators thought, that Napolitano had fled to either avoid arrest or the harm he might face from his mob brethren. In August 1981, nobody in law enforcement knew for sure what had happened to Napolitano.

Sonny Black Napolitano said he had a meeting to attend and his girlfriend, Judy Brown, didn’t press him for details. He gave her some of the jewelry he had—Napolitano favored expensive rings—and left her the keys to his apartment. He took his car keys because he had to drive. It was an evening in August 1981, just a couple of weeks after the Pistone bomb shell had landed on the world of the Mafia.

Napolitano drove himself to the parking lot at Hamilton House, a restaurant in the Bay Ridge section of Brooklyn. Known for its American cuisine until it closed in the 1990s, the Hamilton House was a central meeting place that was convenient to Staten Island because of its nearness to the Verrazano Narrows Bridge.

After parking, Napolitano spotted Frank Lino and Steven “Stevie Beef” Cannone. Lino was a short and stocky gangster who started his life in crime at the age of fifteen when he was a member of the Avenue U Boys, a south Brooklyn gang that did robberies and set up card games for money. A mere three years later, at the age of eighteen, Lino started doing crimes for all five New York Mafia families and finally in October 1977, he became initiated into the Bonanno family. Cannone was a high-ranked Bonanno member from Elizabeth Street in Little Italy who had done time in a federal penitentiary for narcotics in the 1930s. During the fallout in the crime family when Joseph Bonanno was effectively deposed, Cannone was allied with the Paul Sciacca faction. Considered the consiglieri of the family, Cannone could be found spending his hours at the Toyland Social Club in lower Manhattan.

With Napolitano and Cannone in his car, Lino drove from Hamilton House over the Verrazano to Staten Island. Occasionally, Lino checked his rearview mirror to see if a van was following his car. It was.

Getting off the highway on Staten Island, Lino drove to the house of the father of Ronald Filocomo, a mob associate whose previous employment as a state correctional officer denied him the chance to become a made member of the Bonanno family. Still, Filocomo did what he could for the crime family and on that particular day in August 1981, he allowed his home to be used as a meeting place.

Once they reached Filocomo’s house, Lino, Napolitano, and Cannone went to the front door. Frank Coppa, a Bonanno captain whose girth rivaled that of Massino’s, let them in. The meeting was to take place in the basement. Lino opened the cellar door. It was the last courtesy Napolitano would ever receive from anybody.

Acting quickly, Lino threw Napolitano down the basement stairs. There was one shot and then somebody’s gun jammed. Napolitano, knowing the end was near, didn’t want to suffer.

“Hit me one more time and make it good,” Lino heard him say.

There was another shot. Then nothing.

How fortunes had changed. Just weeks earlier, after having engineered the killings of the three rival capos—Dominick Trinchera, Philip Giaccone, and Alphonse Indelicato—Napolitano had been riding high. Many considered him the most prominent and powerful captain of the Bonanno family, although he clearly had to jockey for power with Massino. Napolitano had worked up a nice racket in Florida with that newcomer Donnie Brasco at the King’s Court Bottle Club and even got to hobnob with Florida’s crime boss Santos Trafficante. Napolitano was a force to be reckoned with. Never mind Massino’s suspicions about Brasco. He knew the man like a brother.

But in a world where American and Soviet spies had been playing deep penetration games for years, it was relatively easy for an FBI agent like Joseph Pistone to secret himself into a Mafia family. The mob’s guiding principle, its raison d’etre, was to make money. To be sure there were rules to follow, ones like the code of silence that gave lip service to the old ways and mores of the Castellammarese. But with money and not the deeper filial loyalty of a common heritage driving the more contemporary gangsters, the smell of quick cash blinded them.

Joseph Massino liked money but he kept his antenna tuned for trouble, be it an informant or undercover agent. Then again Massino was just plain lucky that Pistone never came close to his crew. If he had, if Lefty Guns Ruggiero had decided to join Massino’s crew, the man lying dead at the bottom of the basement stairs might well have been the portly caterer from Maspeth instead of the pigeon fancier from Williamsburg.

Frank Lino walked outside the house in Staten Island after the shooting stopped. In the basement, Napolitano’s body was being put in a body bag. Lino walked over to a van with sliding doors parked down the street, the one that had followed him from Brooklyn.

It was all done, Lino said to the men in the van.

Lino then put Napolitano’s car keys for the vehicle that had been left at Hamilton House in the hands of one of the men in the van, Joseph Massino.

One of the things people knew about Lefty Guns Ruggiero was that he liked tropical fish. His small apartment in Little Italy was filled with fish tanks arrayed with all sorts of species he delighted in keeping. But in the summer of 1981, obsessed with finding Pistone, the fish collection probably wasn’t the first thing Ruggiero was thinking about.

Charlie Cipolla, another reputed member of the same Bonanno crew with Ruggiero, was also a fish fancier. So, on an August day in 1981, Cipolla suggested out loud that he had a rare fish he thought of giving to Ruggiero. It would have been a nice gesture. Cipolla said it loud enough that not only John Cerasani heard it but that an informant standing nearby did as well. The informant was later identified in court documents as being someone “who continues to operate in an undercover capacity,” undoubtedly Raymond Wean.

According to Wean, Cerasani had an ominous reply to Cipolla’s musing about a gift for Ruggiero.

“Forget it,” Cerasani said. “Lefty is gonna be with fishes. He won’t need a pet.”