Mafia Prince: Inside America's Most Violent Crime Family (7 page)

             
On the days I didn’t drive my grandmother and Ange’s wife to Yardville, I’d go by myself to see my uncle or Ange and they would give me messages to take back to Philadelphia. Usually I’d bring the messages to Phil Testa or Chuckie Merlino. My uncle would also give me messages for the Blade, who was in Atlantic City.

             
I had known Phil Testa and Salvie since I was a kid. When I was a baby, Phil Testa would watch me when my mother went shopping on Seventh Street in South Philadelphia. Salvie and I were always very close; he was one of my best friends. We were basically raised the same, we were both taught about
La Cosa Nostra
when we were very young. Me and my Uncle would go see them in Philly, or they would come see us at the Shore. Chuckie was also close with Phil Testa and Salvie.

             
Chuckie was a great guy and he loved my uncle. He understood
La Cosa Nostra
from being around my uncle. My uncle had mentored Chuckie the same way Skinny Razor had mentored my uncle. Chuckie was a bookmaker and had his own crew in South Philadelphia, and they were all under my uncle, so they treated me with a lot of respect. When I’d go see him, we’d hang out together at the 9M Bar downtown; that was one of Chuckie’s main hangouts. He also had a social club at the corner of Shunk and Sartain Streets in South Philadelphia where there were always a handful of neighborhood guys playing cards or we would go to the city’s best restaurants like the Saloon or Bookbinders. Chuckie was a lot of fun, and I enjoyed being around him. He was a very classy guy and always dressed real sharp. He looked like the singer Al Martino who was also from South Philadelphia and had played Johnny Fontane in the
Godfather
movies. But most importantly he was fiercely loyal to my uncle. My uncle used to confide in him; he trusted Chuckie.

             
We called him the Blade because he stabbed a guy eleven times and killed him. The guy was a sailor and him and the Blade got into an argument. It happened in 1952, the year before I was born in South Philadelphia. If someone who didn’t know him would ask him, “Why do they call you the Blade?” he’d say, “Because I’m a sharp dresser. Sharp as a blade.”

             
The Blade had a girlfriend whose stepfather was abusing her and she’d always cry to him about it. So one night when he was drunk, he sees the stepfather on the street and he shoots him, right in front of the cops. That was the Blade—he didn’t give a fuck that the cops were right there. He’d shrug it off and say, “That fuckin’ guy had it comin’, I don’t care who was watchin’.”

             
The Blade was like Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. He was the nicest guy in the world when he was sober, but when he was drunk he was evil. He was like Skinny Razor and my uncle in the sense that was a no-nonsense stone-cold killer. The three of them used to hang together in Atlantic City in the early days, before Skinny Razor died. When my uncle got out of Yardville, the Blade was in prison. Judge Helfant had made a big mistake by crossing the Blade, but an even bigger mistake by crossing my uncle. On
the very day he was released from Yardville, my uncle told me he was going to kill Helfant. The fact that Helfant was a judge meant absolutely nothing to my uncle—my uncle didn’t give a fuck. He’d say, “This Jew cocksucker wants to play games with me, we’ll see about that.”

             
A few days later he told me we were going to wait until the Blade got out of jail, because the Blade had gotten word to my uncle from jail that he wanted to do it himself. You’ve heard the phrase, forgive and forget? My uncle would never forgive and he would never forget. Once he got something in his mind, that was it, it was over.

             
When Scarfo got out of Yardville and returned to Atlantic City in the summer of 1973, his gang was beginning to take shape and things were on the upswing. In addition to Philip, who was now 20 years old and well schooled in the ways of
La Cosa Nostra,
Scarfo’s two childhood friends, Salvatore “Chuckie” Merlino and Nicholas “Nick the Blade” Virgilio, formed the inner circle of Scarfo’s gang.

             
Lawrence was a great guy and, like his brother Chuckie, he was very loyal to my uncle. He and I were closer in age, so we spent a lot of time together.

             
One time I was at a bar in Atlantic City with Vince Falcone and a few girls and I got into a fight with some kid who was involved in a local motorcycle gang. We were at a place called the Sand Bar and this guy tried to pick up the girl that I was with. So me and him got into it, we got into a fight, and it had gotten broken up and we ended up leaving the bar. So I go home and I grab a ski mask and a pistol and I go back to the bar, I walk right in and the kid was still there with his whole gang, a bunch of wannabe tough guys. I walked right up to him, raised the gun, and shot him in the arm. I wasn’t trying to kill him, but I did want to send a message to him and his
friends that you don’t raise your hands to us. That’s something my uncle always taught me. The guys he was with start running out of there. They are going out every exit, every door they could find. I think one of them jumped out the fuckin’ window. This kid I shot, this fuckin’ punk motherfucker is screaming, he’s going nuts, he’s crying like a little girl. This is in the early ’70s, before the casinos. Later that night, around 1:00 a.m., here comes all these motorcycles down Georgia Avenue, revving up their engines, making all this fuckin’ noise. They woke the whole neighborhood up. The leader of the gang is in the middle of the street and he is hollering, “Where’s Philip Leonetti?” He started banging on the door and he woke up my grandparents. These guys are looking for me because they knew I shot their friend.

             
Lucky for him, neither me nor my uncle were home at the time. We woulda killed him right there in the street and left him in the gutter. The next day we hear all about it from my mother and my grandparents. My uncle asks me what happened at the bar and I tell him the whole story about the fight and me shooting the guy in the arm. The whole thing was no big deal to me. Now my uncle is furious. He tells me, “You find out who this big mouth, cocksuckin’ jerk off is and where he lives and we’re gonna send this motherfucker and anyone connected to him a message, before they come around here and bother our people again. You understand?” My uncle told me to use Lawrence and he said, “I want everyone down here to get the message loud and clear.”

             
So I tell Lawrence what my uncle said and we find out who the guy was and that he lived on Chelsea Avenue. My uncle takes me and Lawrence down there and we see his house and we work out a route back to Georgia Avenue for after we shoot him. So one night me and Lawrence are watching his place and we see him leaving and Lawrence jumps out with a .22 and he shoots him in the stomach a few times, which is exactly what my uncle had ordered. My uncle had said, “If he dies, he dies. If he doesn’t, he doesn’t. Him and his friends will get the message either way.”

             
Lucky for the guy, he didn’t die, and after that we didn’t have any more problems with him or his gang and my uncle was happy. All the other tough guys in Atlantic City had gotten the message. Lawrence proved to my uncle that he would follow orders to a tee
and that he wasn’t afraid to use a gun. It showed my uncle that Lawrence was a solid guy and that Chuckie had taught him all about
La Cosa Nostra.

             
I used to hang around a lot with Vincent Falcone, me and Lawrence. He was with me that night at the Sand Bar when I had the problems with the motorcycle guys. Vince was a few years older than me and he was married, but he used to go out and drink several nights a week. He always had a lot to say, he was very opinionated and had a bit of an ego. Vince was always complaining about money—who he owed, who owed him, how much he was making, how much other guys were making—just constant complaining. My uncle liked him but would always say, “He’s not
Cosa Nostra,”
meaning he didn’t have the right mindset or attitude.

             
Alfredo was a bit older, and he and Vince were very close. Their families had come to the United States together from Argentina. They were both Italian, but they were from Argentina. My uncle, he’d say things like, “These two guys, they’re not like us,” meaning they didn’t think like us. Both Alfredo and Vince were cement contractors and Alfredo had taught me the ins and outs of the concrete business.

             
Now Saul Kane was a character. He loved Meyer Lansky and he was Jewish, so we called him Meyer. Years later my uncle arranged for Saul to meet Meyer Lansky down in Florida. It was like a Catholic priest meeting the Pope. Saul was in heaven. Saul was a great guy and a lot of fun to be with. He owned a bar in Atlantic City, the My Way Lounge, and he worked as a bail bondsman. He used to hang out a lot with me and Lawrence either at the My Way or Teddy’s West End Lounge on Trenton Avenue.

             
My uncle loved Saul and would do like he did with Bobby Manna, tap his index finger to his head, meaning Saul was smart. But he’d say, “He can never get this,” and he’d rub his thumb and
index finger together, meaning his button, because he was Jewish and not Italian. In this thing,
La Cosa Nostra,
you had to be 100-percent Italian to be made, that was one of the rules. We could do business with Saul and he could be with us, but he could never get straightened out and become a full-fledged member.