Mob Star (11 page)

At the wake, McCabe also saw Bruce Cutler and Barry Slotnick, then law partners and an odd couple. Slotnick’s courtroom style was the opposite of Cutler’s, though historically as successful. He was cunning, too, but in a softer way. He also was a physical opposite; he was tall and slim, and sported a salt-and-pepper beard.

Slotnick’s public profile then was much higher than Cutler’s. He had represented many organized crime leaders and several major politicians, and was then defending Bernhard Goetz, the seemingly mild-mannered man whose bullet-filled meeting with four black teenagers in a subway car in December 1984 was worldwide news.

Dodging raindrops, Cutler, Slotnick, and all the other mourners departed the wake of the abruptly absent Frank DeCicco, who was buried later in the week in a cemetery on Staten Island, the same burial ground where the Pope also lay.

 

 

Extensive coverage of the wake once again hampered jury selection in Brooklyn, which resumed the next morning. Not much was accomplished, although Judge Nickerson warned Cutler and Gotti to stop laughing at the comments of potential jurors.

The warnings came after Nickerson asked one candidate whether he had read anything about a Mr. Castellano.”

“You know, I read the names,” the man replied. “They don’t stick with me. You know, it is not something I would retain in my head.”

The sounds of incredulous laughter reached Nickerson, who ordered Cutler to a sidebar.

“I get the distinct impression that you and Mr. Gotti are trying to intimidate these jurors by the way you are laughing,” the judge said.

Cutler denied it was so, but Nickerson persisted.

“You keep a poker face. You tell your client to do that.”

Cutler denied it again.

“It certainly was intimidating, and I took it as such,” said the judge.

The laughter was a tonic for the last few days. The murder of DeCicco preyed on Gotti’s mind. At night, encamped with soldiers in the fortress next to the Nice N EZ Auto School, he tried to figure it out, and what he would do if he had a clue.

For instance, a few hours after he was rebuked by the judge, the boss and his driver, Bobby Borriello, were taped discussing an article in the
Staten Island Advance.
Before the bombing, the newspaper received, but did not publish, a letter predicting DeCicco’s death. The anonymous letter writer said a revengeful relative was recruiting an inmate on Rikers Island, a city-run prison, to carry out a contract on the life of DeCicco.

Gotti speculated that the bombing might not have been the work of a relative, but “a crackpot”—after all, “it happens.”

“It can’t be a crackpot,” Borriello said.

“Well … so we gotta put some investigation on it right away,” Gotti said.

Borriello did not think this would be so easy. After all, Rikers Island had about 7,000 inmates confined to overcrowded cells in the middle of the East River.

“No, not that,” Gotti said impatiently, before explaining what he meant:

“We don’t take the guys who did this, we take the guys that sent them … you gotta get the guys who’re paying them. Know what I’m saying?”

Two days later, Gotti discussed the DeCicco hit with his brother Gene, five years younger. The brothers were similar, though Gene had a little less of all of John’s traits, good and bad. It was a reason they quarreled a lot, but not now.

“Isn’t it a shame that we lost him?” Gene said. “Isn’t it a shame?”

John agreed that it was and the two brothers speculated about the possible culprits.

“Them kids ain’t got the smarts for that,” Gene said about one unidentified group. John said the same about another unspecified party, before wondering:

“You know who it might be? That Irish mob.”

Gotti was referring to the Westies, a notorious gang of Irish-American thugs from the hardscrabble Hell’s Kitchen area on the West Side of Manhattan. In the past, some Westies had been employed by Paul Castellano to kill people; in the near future, Kevin Kelly, a 31-year-old Westie, would be indicted in the shooting of the carpenters’ union official Gotti had complained about. Presently, they were the target of many investigations and trials. Their number-two man had “rolled over” and become a federal witness.

In time, it became clear that only those responsible knew who blew up DeCicco; for the second time in five months, talk of war subsided. And so the Zips went back to the asphalt trucks and the Westies went into hiding or jail. The specter of jail soon surpassed DeCicco in the worry department of John Gotti’s mind.

E
UGENE H. NICKERSON was an extremely patient judge, and determined to move forward in the Gotti trial despite all of the
ex-parte
distractions.

For two weeks after the DeCicco murder, he kept trying to screen candidates—more than 200—for the juror pool. At one point, he had to take nine steps backward and eliminate those who admitted talking about the case among themselves. Finally, on April 28, citing all the contaminating publicity, he threw in the gavel and delayed the trial until August, when he said he would adopt a more elaborate screening process and consider seating jurors whose identities would be kept secret.

“I’ll get banged around some more with this,” Gotti said afterward.

It was an accurate prediction. That same day, assistant U.S. attorney Diane Giacalone said she would ask the judge to revoke the bail of John and Gene Gotti and two other defendants—a move she had been contemplating for several days.

Not just the defendants were shocked by her announcement. Upstate in White Plains, where the state Organized Crime Task Force had its main office, many agents were upset—if Gotti were in jail, he wouldn’t be talking on the Nice N EZ bug, which they felt was certain to produce indictable crimes, eventually.

Giacalone was not officially aware of the bug or tap, but she and co-prosecutor John Gleeson suspected that the state agency had something cooking on Gotti because of the cautious way it had responded to her during her investigation. Still, Giacalone and her boss, Reena Raggi, then the interim U.S. attorney in Brooklyn and soon to be its first woman federal judge, believed they had to immobilize Gotti, for fear that witnesses would be located and intimidated while the trial was delayed.

 

 

Hearings on Giacalone’s bail-revocation motion were held in early May. She had to show “probable cause” to believe that Gotti violated his bail by committing any local, state, or federal crime. She attacked on three grounds: Gotti had continued to participate in the criminal affairs of the Gambino Family; he attempted to intimidate a federal witness, Dennis Quirk, of the court officers association; and he did intimidate a state witness, Romual Piecyk.

Giacalone called twelve witnesses to the stand, including local and federal organized crime experts, the detectives and cops who surveilled Gotti during his takeover or were involved in the Piecyk incident, and Dennis Quirk. The state Task Force tapes remained secret and unavailable to her.

Surprise testimony about the Piecyk matter came from Edward Magnuson, a Drug Enforcement Administration agent. Curiously, because the case did not involve drugs, the DEA, not the FBI, had been the principal federal law-enforcement agency involved in the investigation leading to Gotti’s indictment. Behind this drama lay an interesting tale of federal intrigue no one wanted to talk about, at the time.

Magnuson testified about the statement of a DEA informant who had been talking about the Gotti crew and organized crime for the past year. The informant said members of Gotti’s crew told him Piecyk “had received a kick in the ass,” a warning not to testify. Other than Piecyk’s own initial statements, which he later denied, the informant’s remark was the most damaging indication that the mechanic had been physically threatened.

Putting his spin on it, Bruce Cutler argued that Piecyk frightened himself into silence, after reading about Gotti’s “violent and impulsive” reputation. As to Giacalone’s other witnesses, he ridiculed their statements as “regurgitation of newspaper articles,” “comic-book gossip,” and multiple hearsay from unknown informants.

Nickerson issued a written opinion on May 13. He said that while the testimony showed Gotti did become boss of the Gambino Family while on bail—and “it is a bold, not to say reckless, man who will act in that way”—Giacalone’s witnesses did not show that he engaged in Family crimes. As to the Quirk incidents, while they did lend “credence to the inference that [Gotti] was and is prepared to subvert the integrity” of his trial, there wasn’t enough evidence to link them directly to Gotti or his men.

Gotti had been playing a game of chance for months and had just landed on two more lucky squares, but on Giacalone’s third move—Romual Piecyk—he drew a Go-to-Jail card.

“The court concludes that there is substantial evidence that John Gotti, after he was admitted to bail, intimidated Piecyk,” Nickerson wrote, “and that if continued on bail John Gotti would improperly influence or intimidate witnesses in this case … the court revokes the release of John Gotti and orders that he be detained …”

Earlier in his opinion, Nickerson explained why he rejected Cutler’s argument about Piecyk’s memory loss.

“Had Piecyk acquired a generalized fear of John Gotti solely because of his reputation, Piecyk would have simply claimed he made a mistake in his original identification. He would hardly have tempted Gotti’s displeasure by accusing ‘his people’ of making telephone calls and tampering with brakes. Those specifics are not the kind of thing Piecyk would readily concoct. Indeed, they have the ring of truth … Gotti had a clear motive to prevent Piecyk from testifying and the boldness to accomplish that end.”

The government dropped its effort to revoke a second defendant’s bail, and Nickerson denied its motions on Gene Gotti and John Carneglia, though he ordered them to stay out of social clubs and each other’s company. Nickerson said Gotti would have to surrender on May 19.

As expected, Cutler mounted an appeal; unexpectedly, he invoked a new ally—the now-famous refrigerator mechanic, Romual Piecyk.

On the day stories about the decision were published, Piecyk had called Cutler. “He indicated to me that he was concerned that an injustice had been done,” Cutler later said.

Piecyk went to Cutler’s office and denied all of his previous statements to Sgt. Anthony Falco. Cutler then prepared an affidavit, which Piecyk signed.

“At no time was I ever warned, threatened, coerced or in any way persuaded not to testify against John Gotti, or anyone else,” Piecyk’s affidavit said.

The next day, Cutler filed the document with Nickerson and asked for a new hearing so Piecyk could testify that he was not intimidated. He offered a surprising theory as to why he had not called Piecyk as a witness earlier. He said he had relied on a ruling by Nickerson that details of the Piecyk-Gotti encounter could be admitted into evidence at the bail-revocation hearing—“but not for the purpose of showing [Gotti] committed a crime while on bail.”

Gotti was not on bail at the time of the incident, but the issue at the hearing was whether the crime of intimidation occurred while he was on bail. Cutler’s briefs and examination of witnesses seemed to indicate that he fully understood this. But now he was making a fourth-down-and-big-yardage play, trying to force overtime, by lofting an inference he had been faked out.

The judge’s words, Cutler said, had led him to believe that “the Piecyk incident would certainly not be the linchpin upon which the court based its decision … and wouldn’t even be considered by the court during this hearing.”

Cutler’s hail-Gotti pass fall short, but not before Diane Giacalone expressed her barbed astonishment.

“Your Honor, [these are] the remarkable and extraordinary lengths to which counsel has gone and are highlighted by the affidavit of Mr. Piecyk … the government is convinced that if called to testify, [he] would not deviate from the words in that affidavit. … Mr. Piecyk is scared to death, [his] fear would fill this courtroom.”

She said the court had provided Gotti ample time to attend to his family affairs before entering federal prison, and that Cutler, in conversations with her, had rejected moves to expedite a hearing at the court of appeals. “Mr. Gotti has no family business to wrap up except the business of the Gambino Organized Crime Family,” she said.

Cutler responded with a jab at Giacalone—the antagonism between the pair and between her and the other defendants’ attorneys would flare again when the trial resumed, and grow ugly as time wore on, until it was genuine personal contempt and not just legal combat.

“Whenever I speak to Ms. Giacalone out of court, your honor, there are misunderstandings and quotes from me that are not so. I don’t know what to do about this, other than to try and speak to her as much as possible on the record.”

“The motion is denied,” Nickerson said.

 

 

An appeal to the court of appeals was still available, and Cutler began preparing one, but no one was counting on a reversal of Nickerson’s decision.

Suddenly, Gotti confronted a harsh reality. When he surrendered in four days and entered jail, and the doors clanged shut, he might never leave. His trial wasn’t scheduled to start until August 18, and for the same reasons he was going in, he would probably have to stay in while it was being conducted. If found guilty, he was vulnerable to a 40-year sentence, and it was unlikely he would be freed to await the outcome of an appeal.

Even so, the boss went about making plans for a short absence.

Many leaders had bossed their Families from prison. Vito Genovese, whose Family still carried his name, did it for ten years. His successor, Anthony Salerno, and Carmine Persico, the Colombo boss, were doing it now, from the same facility Gotti would be at—the Metropolitan Correctional Center in Manhattan.