Mafia Prince: Inside America's Most Violent Crime Family (20 page)
Read Mafia Prince: Inside America's Most Violent Crime Family Online
Authors: Phil Leonetti,Scott Burnstein,Christopher Graziano
Tags: #Mafia, #Nonfiction, #Retail, #True Crime
While guys like Chickie Narducci and Pete Casella were playing checkers, Nicky Scarfo and Philip Leonetti were playing chess. Each move was calculated and measured, and in March 1981, Little Nicky and Crazy Phil were one step away from running the entire Philadelphia–Atlantic City mob.
Scarfo had just turned 52, and in a matter of days Leonetti would be 28.
Scarfo’s meeting scheduled the next day with his old pal from Yardville, Bobby Manna, was at this point merely a formality.
The morning of the funeral, me and Lawrence get up early and we’re getting ready to go to Philadelphia. My uncle’s up and he’s getting ready to head up to New York for his meeting with Blackie Napoli and Bobby Manna.
He’s gonna go through the back alleys and get in the car Dutch had left for him so he doesn’t pick up a tail. We were always careful, but going to New York you had to be extra careful. Guys like Bobby Manna and the Chin did everything top secret.
So my uncle says, “Tonight when I get back we will meet up for dinner. When you guys are up there today, keep your antennas up. I want to know who’s saying what and who’s gathering with who.”
As Philip Leonetti and Lawrence Merlino were on their way to Philadelphia for Phil Testa’s funeral, Nicky Scarfo was on his way to North Jersey to meet with Blackie Napoli and Bobby Manna in the back room of an Italian restaurant in Hoboken to discuss the future of the Bruno crime family and, more specifically, Little Nicky’s future as its boss.
Ten years prior, the trio of Scarfo, Napoli, and Manna walked the track together at Yardville State Prison and discussed their future plans as mob leaders.
My uncle was very tight with those guys, ever since they were in Yardville together.
Scarfo told Manna everything he had learned about Phil Testa’s death: the beef with Chickie Narducci, the rumors about the Irish, and his less-than-friendly meeting with Pete Casella the night of the wake.
Scarfo told Manna that he believed Casella, Narducci, and others not yet known to him were behind Testa’s murder. Manna told Scarfo that whoever had killed Philip Testa did not have the permission of the Commission and, as such, the hit was unsanctioned.
As it had done with the unsanctioned murder of Testa’s predecessor Angelo Bruno, the Commission would launch an immediate investigation to identify those responsible and make arrangements to mete out the
appropriate punishment: death.
Sitting at the head of the Commission was Manna’s boss and Scarfo’s friend and ally, Vincent “The Chin” Gigante. Manna told Scarfo that he would schedule a meeting in a week and that both Scarfo and Casella would present their case to the Genovese hierarchy, which consisted of Gigante, Manna, and Anthony “Fat Tony” Salerno—the same individuals who presided over the investigation of Angelo Bruno’s murder one year prior and who had ordered the gruesome torture killings of those involved.
This time around the Genovese would be without their minister of manipulation, Frank “Funzi” Tieri, who was on his deathbed in a prison hospital after being convicted of racketeering and sentenced to 10 years in prison.
With or without Tieri, the deck was heavily stacked in Scarfo’s favor and Little Nicky knew it. In one week he would likely become the undisputed boss of the Philadelphia–Atlantic City mob.
That night, after his meeting with Blackie and Bobby Manna, me and my uncle went out to dinner at Caesars. I told him about the funeral and he told me about the meeting. He said, “For the next week, until I go to New York, we gotta watch our p’s and q’s. We’re gonna stay close to home. This treachery, it may not be over.”
For the next week, Scarfo and Leonetti stayed in Atlantic City and kept a low profile, shunning hastily called mob meetings in South Philadelphia and doing their best to avoid their usual haunts.
Back when Ange was boss and him and my uncle started having problems over the unions, we had heard that Ange had sent this big Irish guy from Northeast Philly down to Atlantic City and that this guy may have been looking to kill my uncle. We found out that he had a big tattoo on his arm and a couple people in the neighborhood described him to us and said they had seen him around Georgia Avenue, and he was asking people questions about us.
When my uncle found out about it, he went crazy. He knew someone who knew the guy and he told them, “You tell that Irish motherfucker if he ever steps foot in Atlantic City again, for any reason, I’m gonna chop him up and send him back to Philadelphia in six trash bags, one for each of his arms, one for each of his legs, one for his
torso, and one for that big stupid fuckin’ Irish head of his.”
We never heard nothing about the guy from that point on. From that point on, everyone who came to Atlantic City checked in with us to let us know why they were in town.
This is back when Ange was the boss. My uncle even told Ange, he said, “I’m gonna cut your friend’s arm off, the one with the tattoo, and I’m gonna send it you.”
I remember Ange was steaming, but so was my uncle. This was towards the end, before Ange got clipped. Him and my uncle were beefin’ over the unions.
Now several years later, with Scarfo on the cusp of assuming the throne, Atlantic City was crawling with wise guys looking to curry favor with Little Nicky.
It’s like overnight every guy and their mother wanted to come to Atlantic City and see my uncle for one reason or another. This is in the days leading up to the meeting in New York.
It was me and Lawrence in the office, and we’d see this one and that one, whoever came. My uncle stayed upstairs in his apartment. He didn’t come down to see anyone.
They were all coming to score points, and we knew it.
The day was finally here, it was finally time for the meeting with the Genovese leadership in New York.
The meeting was set for 1:00 p.m. inside Vincent “The Chin” Gigante’s personal headquarters, the Triangle Social Club on Sullivan Street in New York’s Greenwich Village.
Nicodemo “Little Nicky” Scarfo and Peter “Pete” Casella would sit before Gigante, his consigliere, Bobby Manna, and his front boss, Anthony “Fat Tony” Salerno, and learn their respective fates as Gigante, the
il capo di tutti capi
of the Commission, dictated the future of the Philadelphia–Atlantic City mob.
Me and my uncle are up early, dressed and ready to go. I’m driving him to New York for his meeting with the Chin. In addition to getting him up there on time, I also had to make sure we didn’t pick up any tails.
The night before I told Dutch to take his car and to drive it to the Parkway and get off at the 7-N ramp. Me and my uncle were going to drive to the Parkway and we were going to get off at 7-S. The S is for South and the N is for North. There is a sharp bend where 7-S and 7-N are running parallel to one another. I told Dutch to pull his car over like he was broken down right at the bend, next to the divider.
Me and uncle come around the bend and there’s Dutch, and his car is parked right where I told him and it’s running. We slow down and we pull right up to the divider parallel to his car. Me and my uncle jumped the divider and got in his car and he jumped the divider and got in our car.
The cops who were following us knew we were in the Cadillac and that we were on the Parkway heading south. So they’d radio ahead and another car would pick us up with the surveillance. That was how they did it, but we knew their moves.
So now after the switch with Dutch, me and my uncle are in his car heading north on the Parkway, and Dutch’s in our car heading south on the Parkway. I told him to go all the way to Cape May, which is the end of the Parkway, and turn around and come home. The cops would be following the Caddy and have no idea we weren’t in it. By the time they figured it out, we’d be in New York.
Leonetti’s plan worked. In addition to shaking a law enforcement tail, driving in a “clean” car gave Philip and his uncle an opportunity to talk freely for the nearly two hours it would take them to get to Greenwich Village.
My uncle knew they were gonna make him boss. I said, “You think they’re gonna do to Pete what they did to Tony?”—meaning kill him. And my uncle shrugged his shoulders and said, “If it was up to me, I’d kill Pete, his brother Anthony, his brother-in-law Johnny Cappello, Chickie Narducci, and that fuckin’ Rocco Marinucci. But it ain’t up to me; it’s up to this guy,” and he stroked his chin, which is how we referred to the Chin.
As Scarfo and Leonetti got closer to New York, both men became more anxious, spotting in the distance the site of the World Trade Center’s Twin
Towers and the Empire State Building as they prepared to enter the city through the Holland Tunnel.
Once we were in the city, my uncle started going over the protocol for the meeting. We were to first go to a restaurant in Little Italy, and then they would send for my uncle. He would go to the meeting and I would stay at the restaurant.
When we got there we went into the restaurant and the first guy we saw was Benny Eggs.
Venero “Benny Eggs” Mangano was one of Chin Gigante’s closest friends and was the reputed underboss of the Genovese crime family.
Benny Eggs said, “Nick, it’s good to see you,” and he gave my uncle a kiss on the cheek. My uncle said, “Ben, I want you to meet my nephew Philip Leonetti, he is a friend of ours,” and Benny shook my hand and gave me a kiss on the cheek and said, “So this is the young man I’ve heard so much about.”He couldn’t have been nicer to us.
He tells us to have a seat and right away they start bringing over food and drinks. He says to my uncle, “Let’s wait awhile for the other guy to get here, and then we’ll get you over there,” meaning the club where the Chin was.
As Scarfo, Leonetti, and Mangano made small talk, at 12:45 p.m. sharp three Genovese soldiers walked into the restaurant and Benny Eggs excused himself from the table.
Now the meeting is scheduled for 1:00. Me and uncle get there at 12:00, and here it’s 12:45 and Pete Casella is nowhere to be found.
My uncle checks his watch and whispers to me, “I’ll betcha this cocksucker ain’t gonna show,” meaning Pete. I just made a face back at my uncle like, no way, because that was a major no-no. If you got called to a meeting with the boss of the Commission and you didn’t go, the penalty was death, no questions asked.
So now Benny Eggs comes back and says, “I sent one of those fellas back to see what they want to do, if they want to get started, or wait a bit longer for the other guy.”My uncle said, “Doesn’t matter to me, Ben. Whatever you guys want.”
So five minutes later the guy comes back and whispers in Benny Egg’s ear, and he says to me and my uncle, “It may be a little while.”
Now we’re just sitting there eating a little bit, having a couple of drinks, but this isn’t the way it was supposed to be. All the sudden all these thoughts are racing through my mind. Were we getting double-crossed, like Caponigro did? Was I gonna wind up in the back of a car, like Freddie Salerno?Maybe they were gonna take us all out so they could have Atlantic City all to themselves.
My uncle’s sitting there and I can see his antenna is up, but we can’t talk because Benny Eggs is with us and he’s telling stories and making small talk. But I know my uncle is thinking the same thing.
So next thing you know, it’s three o’clock. Now my uncle knows the rules and so do I; we’re not gonna say, “Hey what’s takin’ so long,” or “Is there a problem?” So we’re just sitting there.
What Scarfo and Leonetti did not know was that while Scarfo had his ace in the hole with Bobby Manna from their days together in Yardville State Prison, Pete Casella had made a similar connection with a powerful Genovese captain when the two men were doing time together on federal drug-trafficking charges.
At that very moment, the Genovese captain was pleading Casella’s case to Gigante, Manna, and Salerno, trying to intervene on his behalf by either swaying the Genovese leaders to name Casella the new boss of the Philadelphia–Atlantic City mob or, at a minimum, spare his life in the event Gigante was looking to make an example, like he did with Antonio “Tony Bananas” Caponigro.
The whole time we’re sitting there, the same guy who was running back and forth between Benny Eggs and the Chin keeps coming and going, whispering to Benny each time he does.
All the sudden the door opens and here comes Pete Casella and he has Rocco Marinucci with him. Benny gets up to greet him, and Pete introduces Rocco as a “friend of mine”—which means he’s not
Cosa Nostra,
he’s not made—and Benny’s colors change and he won’t shake Rocco’s hand.
“You can’t bring him in here,”Benny says to Pete, and one of the Genovese guys barked at Rocco, “Go wait in the car,” and Rocco was out the door. He never looked back.
It was almost four o’clock and Pete didn’t even get a chance to sit down. And the guy who was going back and forth all day reappeared and whispered to Benny, and Benny said, “Okay, gentlemen, they are ready for you,” and my uncle and Pete were being escorted towards the door. Benny said, “Nick, I’m gonna stay here with your nephew and teach him how to play cards,” and we all laughed, everyone except for Pete. Pete looked like he was scared to death.