Mob Star (29 page)

Angelo also decided to include John Gotti’s phone and later told Conroy to contact his source.

“Why don’t you tell him, make a package deal? I’ll give you three, four guys and we’ll have a package deal instead of charging us [$1,000 each].”

Gimme a price,” Conroy said. “Give me a price for the four.”

“Five hundred apiece.”

“He’ll do it … Yeah, absolutely … Fuck him.”

After the scam was sealed, Gene professed confidence he had not been indiscreet on the phone.

“If they got my phone earlier, then there’s nothing, you see, I mean, they might, but, you know who I speak to? There’s only one person I speak to on the phone.”

“Me,” Angelo said.

“That’s it. Nobody else calls my house.”

Gene wanted to be careful now. “Watch this phone, Angelo.”

“Ah, there’s nothing I can do now, Genie. What should I do now? I’ll make my kids answer the phone, my wife … Find out who it is, tell them I’ll call them back [from a pay phone].”

Angelo was impressed by Conroy’s telephone tipster.

“The guy he’s got, he’s the guy who installed [the tap]. Gene, we got some fuckin’, we got some score here. This is a helluva score.”

Gene wanted to make sure that brothers were warned. “Tell your brother,” he said to Angelo. “Tell my brother.”

That day, after Conroy left, the basement bug overheard a Bonanno Family soldier arriving at Angelo’s house to discuss “a shit load” of heroin.

“Try not to let too many people know who we are,” Angelo said. “I got to speak to my brother at one-thirty today.”

“I got thirty things of heroin,” the Bonanno man said. “That’s why I’m here.”

The next day, Angelo told John Carneglia his phone would be checked for a wiretap. He said Conroy had been highly recommended by Michael Coiro.

“That’s good,” said Carneglia, who now saw Conroy as a long-term source of inside information. “You want to know the truth? This guy will become a hook.”

“Oh yeah. I’m fattenin’ him up already.”

“This guy’ll become a hook.”

“I asked Mike Coiro today. He said ‘Listen … go to sleep with him.’”

After playing charades with his gadgets, Conroy delivered a report on the other phones: only John Gotti’s was tapped. It was another fictional story, but very believable.

Angelo was ecstatic about going to sleep with Conroy. Source BQ told Agent Colgan that Angelo was “bragging” that Conroy had “direct access to court records and telephone company information.” He said Angelo, Gene, and Carneglia told him they had “an ex-FBI agent in their pocket.”

BQ was worried the ex-agent might know about BQ’s secret role, but Colgan told him to forget about it.

Source Wahoo also tipped his control agent, James Abbott, who wrote: “There is a leak somewhere in the federal system and this leak is through [Michael] Coiro. This source does not know where the leak is, but Gotti and his associates get advance information on federal probes.”

At the time, the FBI was not certain all of Conroy’s claims were false. And though in fact there was no leak—not yet anyway—the bureau decided to pull its two property-crimes agents out of Diane Giacalone’s Dellacroce-Gotti investigation.

From the FBI perspective, her investigation had been a bother from the start; it would undoubtedly tread on areas the Angelo team was working, posing possible prosecution problems down the road. Lately, there also had been a cantankerous dispute over whether the FBI or the DEA would take responsibility for managing Kenneth O’Donnell, the informer who told Giacalone that John Gotti gave an armored-car robber money for drugs.

It was suggested that the two agencies share the job, as well as the expenses of O’Donnell. The FBI said an informer as difficult as O’Donnell could not have two masters, and if it paid the bills, it would have to manage him alone. The DEA said no way, because O’Donnell was setting up drug targets in New Jersey. Some members of Giacalone’s team felt the FBI just wanted to dominate the case.

The stalemate broke after the bug went in and the FBI investigation turned toward heavy-duty trafficking. The agents assigned to Giacalone were in an untenable spot: They were part of her team, but were not permitted to share the intelligence the surveillance was producing.

Why? In the wake of events at Angelo’s house, the FBI was paranoid about “a leak somewhere in the federal system.” An FBI participant in the drama recalled: “There was no certainty the information wouldn’t be compromised.”

Giacalone was insulted and perturbed, and got permission from her boss, Raymond J. Dearie, U.S. attorney for the Eastern District, to carry on against Dellacroce and Gotti without the FBI. Giacalone, age 32, a former tax attorney, was now boss of the first major organized-crime investigation in the country not involving the FBI.

Eventually, the Brooklyn District Attorney’s office gave money to help support Kenneth O’Donnell. But when the money dried up, he became useless; on May 7, 1983, he held up a bank and later was sent to prison.

 

 

Afraid of telephone taps, but not bugs, Angelo carried on, too. Late in April 1982, he invited into his house one Edward Lino, a Bonanno Family associate and former client of Marty Light.

Lino said Angelo would get “first shot” at an unspecified shipment that was due soon. Angelo said he would take a shot “if it’s a very good price [because] I’d just like to [deal in kilos].”

The two men discussed the perils of modern-day heroin dealing. Angelo said the raw product couldn’t be imported on planes any longer because the government was using an AWACs plane to identify low-flying aircraft. Even dropping bags of drugs into fields for later pickup had become hazardous.

“Forget about it! They got a helicopter that goes over the fields that picks up human bodies. They’re very fucking … they’re up to date on us.”

Throughout April, the bugs in Angelo’s house produced a record that told the story of a murder plot that perfectly illustrated the death-defying game Ruggiero was playing with heroin.

The story began when two members of another crew “ratted out” Gambino soldier Peter Tambone. They told Neil Dellacroce that “Little Pete”—one of those arrested the year before in the Little Italy dice-game raid—was dealing heroin supplied, off the record, by Salvatore Ruggiero. It’s not clear who told Castellano.

A hearing on the charge was not possible—if a “friend of ours” accuses another “good fellow,” there is a presumption of guilt. The news upset the Pope, still agitated by the recent presence of agents outside the White House and more concerned than ever he might become the victim of some turncoat caught in a drug vise. He decided it was time to put bite in his bark and proposed to the other three bosses sitting on the Families’ ruling council, the Commission, that they murder Little Pete, a 62-year-old grandfather.

Castellano summoned John Gotti to discuss his proposal, according to what Angelo told Edward Lino during one of their heroin sales conferences.

“Johnny, we got a bad problem with Little Pete,” Angelo quoted the Pope. “You know that anybody that’s straightened out that moves
babania
[gets killed].”

Angelo summoned Little Pete and told him the Commission was meeting to decide whether to kill him.

“How’s the weather so far?” Little Pete asked.

“Half and half, Pete.”

Angelo was telling Tambone that the commission was deadlocked on Castellano’s proposal: two bosses for, two against.

The boss on Castellano’s side was Vincent Gigante of the Genovese Family. Like the Castellano branch of the Gambino tree, Gigante’s Family was making big money from labor rackets and wasn’t as vulnerable to the drug virus.

Two years after the Little Pete episode was played out, John and Gene would tell Source BQ that during the 1970s “Chin” Gigante—a former boxer who used a punch-drunk act to beat a few cases—was used by the Commission to eliminate members who were caught hustling heroin. Those who dealt drugs—but got away with it—were not harmed. In the only attempt at humor found in the FBI memos, Agent Colgan summed up BQ’s talk with the Gotti brothers this way: “However, those apprehended and/or convicted … normally met with individuals associated with Gigante, and these meetings normally were their last.”

Vincent Gigante himself had been convicted of dealing heroin in 1959, which was within the grace period for getting out that was established during the Commission meeting at the Apalachin Conference two years earlier. John and Gene told BQ that one of Gigante’s first victims was a man named “Consalvo” who was pushed off the roof of a twenty-four-story apartment building in New Jersey. Indeed, police in Fort Lee say this is what happened to one Carmine Consalvo in 1975, while he faced trial on heroin charges. One Edward Lino was the victim’s wife’s uncle. Three months later, Carmine’s brother Francis was found dead in Little Italy; the police said he had been pushed off a five-story building.

At Angelo’s house, Little Pete was given some advice.

“Pete, listen to me like a brother,” Angelo said. “I’m telling ya, worse comes to worse, get your wife and take off.”

Angelo wanted Tambone to get in the wind because he suspected a murder contract would be handed to the Gotti crew—and possibly to him because he was a longtime acquaintance whom Little Pete might trust.

Considering his own activities and Tambone’s connection to Salvatore, it was easy to see why Angelo was sympathetic and why he also told Tambone that he was worried about defending him too openly because people might think he was in with him. Even with Edward Lino, who was well aware of the grim incongruity of it all, he cited other reasons for opposing a Little Pete hit.

As it happened, these seemed noble enough. Tambone had claimed that one of the men who ratted him out was dealing drugs, too, and both had actually introduced him to the business. Although there is no evidence it ever happened, Angelo told Lino what would be done to punish this duplicity:

“Me and Johnny are going to whack ’em,” Angelo said. “We have to wait a year. We can’t do it right now.”

The state of Family harmony and justice was enough to make Lino disinterested in being a made man—“What do I even need it for? I’m gonna get myself killed.” He added, however, he would feel differently if “Johnny becomes the boss.”

Angelo discussed the Little Pete situation somewhat more frankly with Gene. They debated asking Neil to ask Paul to back off, as a “favor” to the crew.

Angelo said John had suggested telling Neil that merely “chasing” Little Pete—kicking him out of the Family—was as good as killing him. But, as Angelo told Gene, this approach had a downside:

“The only thing that your brother made sense [on] was, we ask [Paul] for [that] favor, suppose something happens to us …?”

“We …”

“… we’re using a favor up.”

Gene didn’t like any of it. “Whatever happens, whatever the outcome is with Little Pete, it’s not good for us.” He knew if the favor weren’t granted, a contemporary example for drug dealers would be set; if it were, the favor box would be empty. In any case, Gene said Mark Reiter and Arnold Squitieri should be warned immediately. If they get fingered, they better hide, fast. Meantime, “all of us” should get out of the “business” within six months.

Gene also bemoaned having to ask an aging Dellacroce to intercede with Paul; he was used to a more aggressive underboss.

“It’s a different story now,” Angelo explained. “It’s Paul … him and Chin [Gigante] made a pact. Any friend of ours gets pinched for junk … they kill ’em … they’re not warning nobody, not telling nobody because they feel the guy’s gonna rat. And your brother says he meant that for Neil.”

A few days prior to a final Commission meeting, Angelo and Gene discussed the dilemma again—in bitter, defiant terms that suggested a fatal collision someday. Both were fearful and contemptuous of Castellano and made clear their anxiety about killing someone for what the bugs indicated they were doing.

Gene said he could “take a guy out, a worm” because “I understand the rules,” but Little Pete should not be killed because “there’s a hundred guys that got passes” in similar situations. Gene did not want to be a
babania
“cop.”

“So what do I got to do … become a cop? … [I]f I nail this guy, I gotta go become a cop because … they’ll nail anybody that steps out of line [and] I’m on order to kill them.”

In light of the “conflicting stories” about the extent of Tambone’s involvement, Gene wondered how the Gotti crew would appear to others if it “killed a fuckin’ dear friend of theirs.”

Gene was wondering a lot. He said Castellano, who inherited control of profitable labor-union rackets from Gambino, was against drugs only because “he never had to struggle for a quarter in his life.”

Angelo noted that his heroin contact, Edward Lino, had recently “declared” himself off the record on drugs to Neil.

Gene’s response to this news was remarkable for its irony—a soldier whose Family regarded labor unions only as places to plunder now recommended a union. For Family soldiers. “More guys like us should all come forward. All of them … they should all do that. I wish they would start a fucking union.”

Once organized, the soldiers should boycott all other operations: bookmaking, loan-sharking, whatever. Then, Gene added in his own ironic way, union racketeering is all the Caesars would have left—“because that’s all they got, and [even those] will go [eventually].”

Angelo said he meant to tell Neil this: “I don’t know what John Gotti wants to do, but I’m gonna tell you what me and Gene Gotti want to do, and this kid, Johnny Carneglia … Anybody that we have with us, we’re looking to take off record with us. As of now. Forget about Little Pete.”

“Between you and me,” Gene replied, “if this guy gets hurt, you listen to me, Paul becomes more hard-nosed about it. We could start wars … we can’t turn the tide on everything.”