28.

THE FIX.

WHILE JOHN GOTTI AND HIS SUPPORTERS celebrated, his opponents retired to their boss's office and gathered near a case of beer. It was their boss's idea. Andrew Maloney became U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District after the case began, and while he knew the FBI and the Eastern District Strike Force, among others, had opposed putting Gotti into Giacalone's case, he strongly backed her and John Gleeson throughout the trial.

For reasons he could not tell them about earlier, he also harbored suspicions that somehow Gotti-despite the secrecy surrounding the jurors' selection and their deliberations-managed to fix the case.

"Look, you will be replaying the trial for the rest of your lives," Maloney said as the prosecutors and their colleagues began to relax. "It'll never go away, but I'm telling you, Gotti was too cool during the trial, especially for the verdict."

Maloney was standing up for his troops, but also believed what he was saying. A former commander of an elite United States Army Ranger unit, he was good-natured and informal-most people called him "Andy"-but highly combative; while at West Point in the early 1950s, he was a welterweight boxing champion.

"I don't care who they are," he continued, "when the jury's out for a week, defendants start to sweat."

Giacalone and Gleeson thought Maloney was just being gracious until he began describing a memo the FBI's Gambino squad sent weeks earlier. It quoted an informant saying Gotti had reached someone on the jury. Maloney had not shared the memo with his lawyers or Judge Nickerson; that likely would have caused a mistrial, and without anything but the unsubstantiated word of one informant, would have been foolish.

Because one of its agents was a witness in the trial, the Gambino squad asked another FBI squad to investigate. The Eastern District's chief judge gave that squad the ident.i.ties of the anonymous jurors, and checks led to vague suspicions about two, but without anything more specific from the informant, the agents could go no further.

Giacalone and Gleeson remained dubious as Maloney told the story. They instead wondered whether they had failed. If they had performed better, they reasoned, at least a few jurors would have believed enough in the case to refuse to go along with an acquittal and would have fought for a hung jury-which would have meant a retrial-no matter how much a secretly crooked juror trashed the case in deliberations.

Maloney wasn't dubious at all. "We may never prove it, but the case was fixed," he was soon saying, as the mood in his office lightened. "What happened in Nickerson's courtroom wasn't justice. It was fraud. We may not get Gotti for that, but we will get him."

In a few months, Maloney got the Justice Department to give Giacalone and Gleeson $5,000 bonuses for their work. Giacalone's statement at a post-acquittal conference with the press-"my personal feelings are mine"-were her last public words on the subject. In a few months more, despite her promotion to special prosecutions chief, she resigned for a job with the local transit authority.

Gleeson, who clashed with Bruce Cutler during a fiery moment in the trial-"he is not a lawyer"-would stick around.

Gotti celebrated his first night of freedom in nearly a year with a five-hour dinner at his favorite Queens restaurant, Altadonna's. Over the next couple days, he visited son Frank's grave and attended a wake for Angelo Ruggiero's father. Angelo himself stewed in prison on the heroin charges, much to his chagrin.

In the days after, Gotti vacationed in Florida without his wife. Persuaded now more than ever by Salvatore Ruggiero's death to stay off airplanes, he took the train and stayed in a $730-a-day suite at the Marriott Harbour Beach Resort in Ft. Lauderdale under the name "Russo." This was a gag on the FBI, which had recently arrested a little old lady by that name, a federal courthouse clerk, for pa.s.sing secrets about gangster cases to a Family capo.

While in Florida, he and his entourage-including son Junior-piled into a sleek cigarette speedboat owned by Carlo Vaccarezza, a New York restaurant owner whom he had befriended a few years earlier. Vaccarezza had named the boat "Not Guilty," and the men reveled in the in-joke left for boaters tossing in their wake.

Gotti also visited Lewis Kasman, a Garment Center businessman whom he also had befriended a few years earlier. Kasman had a winter home at tony Williams Island, where actress Sophia Loren and singer Whitney Houston also had homes. The acquitted don caused a stir at the resort's clubhouse; actor-comedian Eddie Murphy, a guest of Houston, stopped by to say h.e.l.lo and congratulate him, as did Sophia herself.

In addition to Junior, Vaccarezza, and Kasman, the Gotti group also included two other men who had become close friends in recent years-Jack D'Amico, a roguish type who, like Gotti, looked straight out of Central Casting's gangster division, and Joe Watts, who became part of the inner circle by doing some of Gotti's dirty work. The in-group also included Eddie Lino, who again put the lie to Gotti's claim that he avoided drug dealers. Lino was out on bail in the heroin case involving Angelo and Gene.

The Florida contingent did not include a man who also had grown close to Gotti in recent years-a man who would now become increasingly important, Salvatore Gravano. Virtually no one knew him by that name, however; in the Family and in the construction trades that provided him seeming legitimacy and growing wealth, Gravano was known by either of his two nicknames, Sammy Bull or Sammy.

Sammy didn't like to travel, much less hang out in places where he could be seen a.s.sociating with known gangsters. He thought the gangster life meant being undercover, and that is how he tried to live. He looked like a construction foreman, and usually wore clothes to match. So far, he had managed to avoid much law enforcement scrutiny, even though he had been living the gangster life since 1968, when at age 23 he joined a Mafia farm team in Bensonhurst, Brooklyn, where he grew up. He committed his first murder two years later; the victim was a friend who had broken some gangland rule. It was the beginning of Sammy's reputation for cold-bloodedness.

Unlike Gotti, Sammy grew up middle cla.s.s. But the Mafia pulse in New York beat loudest on the streets of Bensonhurst, and Sammy embraced it as a teenager when he saw his father-who owned a small dress factory-and other ordinary people give cash and respect to the neighborhood's "connected" men. Their status appealed to him. Growing up, Sammy was badly teased because he was short and people thought he wasn't that bright.

But Sammy was bright; he did poorly in school because his dyslexia was never diagnosed and because he stopped trying. As a criminal, he quickly proved how capable he was. Unlike so many others, he didn't throw his money away gambling. He built up businesses. At 32, Sammy became one of the "connected" men. The business-minded Gambino boss, Paul Castellano, gave Sammy his "b.u.t.ton" in 1977, the same year as Gotti but in an earlier ceremony. Over the next eight years, he became one of the Family's most respected "earners" and also one of its most steely killers. By 1985, however, he was among the many who were unhappy with Paul's leadership. They believed Paul was only interested in acc.u.mulating personal wealth. With the crisis ignited by the heroin case involving his men, Gotti's reasons for disliking Paul were different, but he and Sammy became secret allies.

When Gotti's bail was revoked in the Giacalone case, he asked Sammy and two others to run the Family. Sammy accepted, but did not attend any of Gotti's trial. A Daily News Daily News story had recently described him as a little-known gangster on the rise. He didn't want to bring more attention to himself by going to the biggest media event in town. story had recently described him as a little-known gangster on the rise. He didn't want to bring more attention to himself by going to the biggest media event in town.

Behind the scenes, however, Sammy was the trial's most pivotal figure. He was the person who arranged to do exactly what Andy Maloney feared had happened-fix the case.

It was fixed almost from the beginning, when the jurors were chosen. Soon after taking his seat in the jury box, George Pape, a middle-aged suburbanite with a drinking problem, contacted a man he thought might know someone in the Gambino Family and offered to sell himself. That man, Bosko Radonjich, the boss of a gang of mostly Irish-American thugs known as the Westies, took the offer to Sammy, who bought Pape for $60,000. Pape would vote "not guilty" no matter what.

It was the best-kept secret in New York. Only Gotti, brother Gene, Sammy, and Radonjich, who pa.s.sed the money from Sammy to Pape in installments, knew the story. Someone got wind of it-the informant who tipped the FBI-but did not know enough to give agents anywhere to go. Pape gave Gotti the confidence to predict acquittal. Gotti devised the get-Giacalone strategy to give his ringer on the jury something to work with in deliberations, but he knew almost from the start that he would get at least a hung jury.

Radonjich and Pape had met on a construction job years before. Radonjich moved into the Westies and Pape into odd jobs and periodic unemployment. He was 48 years old and lived on Long Island with his wife, two children, and his drinking problem. After reporting for jury duty and realizing he might get picked for the Gotti trial, he recalled that Radonjich's gang, the Westies, was affiliated with the Gambino Family. Suddenly, jury service became a financial opportunity.

During jury selection, Pape lied several times when asked questions designed to eliminate jurors who might know people connected to Gotti or who had partic.i.p.ated in legal cases that might affect their independence-as Pape had when he was a character witness for Radonjich in a deportation proceeding nearly ten years before.

The special steps taken by Judge Nickerson to a.s.sure the jury's integrity were no match for one man's greed. His decision to empanel the jury anonymously was meant to prevent defendants from contacting jurors; it did not imagine the opposite problem. But soon after the trial began, Pape contacted Radonjich, who contacted Sammy, who sent word to Gotti through brother Gene, free on bail and able to visit him in prison.

"Unbelievable that this f.u.c.kin' drops out of the sky like this," Gene said during a meeting with Sammy in Gene's lawyer's office. "My f.u.c.kin' brother has nine lives."

Pape kept his end of the deal. In the jury room, on the first day of deliberations, he said: "This man Gotti is innocent. They are all innocent, and as far as I am concerned, there is nothing left to discuss."

Several jurors thought otherwise and urged Pape to deliberate. He said it was a waste of time; obviously, Giacalone was out to get Gotti, but had not proved her case. For three days, the others deliberated almost as if Pape was not there. Most leaned toward conviction.

At night, at the hotel where they were sequestered, Pape refused to mingle. Some jurors began to suspect that somehow the defendants had threatened Pape. This suspicion heightened the danger some felt in the courtroom stares of Gotti and his men, and made them dwell on unpleasant thoughts. Over the last two days of deliberation, an unspoken group paranoia took hold and the tide turned, creating a beach of reasonable doubt upon which early beliefs in the government case were gradually discarded. Not guilty.

Naturally, the verdict-the only not-guilty one in all the recent Mafia cases-fed the wildest blizzard yet of myth-making publicity. Gotti did seem a genuine phenomenon, a modern-day Al Capone, an underworld "untouchable," and a headline writer gave the Dapper Don a new tabloid handle that captured that idea perfectly: "Teflon Don."

All the stories soon to be written about the Teflon Don-that he was a modern-day Robin Hood, that his acquittal symbolized the nameless little guy's contempt for the faceless government bureaucrats who run his life-were built on the lie that he had won fair and square. The coverage awed and intimidated even the cynical men in his Family. Like the rest of New York, they didn't know the fix was in. Even to them, Gotti was a phenomenon.

In the previous five years, in cities across the U.S., the government had critically wounded or decimated all 23 Cosa Nostra Cosa Nostra families. In New York, it had won a virtual life sentence against Philip Rastelli, boss of the Bonanno Family, and actual life sentences against three other bosses who pillaged the city for decades with nearly the same impunity as Carlo Gambino-Carmine Persico of the Colombo Family, Antonio Corallo of the Luchese Family, and Anthony Salerno-a Chin Gigante stand-in-of the Genovese Family. families. In New York, it had won a virtual life sentence against Philip Rastelli, boss of the Bonanno Family, and actual life sentences against three other bosses who pillaged the city for decades with nearly the same impunity as Carlo Gambino-Carmine Persico of the Colombo Family, Antonio Corallo of the Luchese Family, and Anthony Salerno-a Chin Gigante stand-in-of the Genovese Family.

If the gangster from Central Casting had not come along, any of those bosses would have been an apt choice to ill.u.s.trate, as Gotti was when his trial began, a Time Time magazine cover story on the magazine cover story on the Cosa Nostra Cosa Nostra crackdown. But now that he was the boss who got away, the crackdown. But now that he was the boss who got away, the Time Time cover became a dartboard for agents and prosecutors; by wagging a finger at Giacalone and Gleeson, and taunting them while celebrating, Gotti also made sure that agents and prosecutors would come at him with the kind of gusto reserved for those who have been personally wronged. cover became a dartboard for agents and prosecutors; by wagging a finger at Giacalone and Gleeson, and taunting them while celebrating, Gotti also made sure that agents and prosecutors would come at him with the kind of gusto reserved for those who have been personally wronged.

Just as there was the get-Giacalone defense, there would be a get-Gotti offense, and it would begin that very day, a Friday the 13th in March of 1987.

Bruce Mouw, boss of the FBI's Gambino squad, was driving across the Brooklyn Bridge with his car radio tuned to an all-news station when an announcer broke in with a bulletin about the Gotti acquittal. Mouw cursed the announcer's voice. He had just left a meeting at FBI headquarters in Manhattan and was bound for the courthouse in Brooklyn to meet the Eastern District Strike Force lawyers on the so-called "Gambino heirarchy" case against Armone, Gallo, Angelo, and others-a case Gotti would have been in, had the Strike Force won its turf war with Giacalone years before.

The courthouse was just a couple minutes over the bridge. Mouw calculated that by the time he arrived, Gotti, his men, and their lawyers and supporters would be spilling into the streets and dancing to their cars-sights he did not care to see. He instead drove to the FBI's office in Queens, and began reviewing his squad's latest intelligence reports on Gotti.

Mouw had been investigating the Gambino Family since 1979, when the bureau's New York bosses reorganized their organized crime section into distinct squads-one for each of the city's five families-and Mouw was plucked out of a desk job in Washington to lead one. Organizationally, the squads were like crews and Mouw was like a capo.

It was a long way from his first job-sports reporter for his high school paper in Des Moines, Iowa. He did so well in school, he won an appointment to the United States Naval Academy, then his commission. In the Navy, he was involved in the highest-stakes game the world has ever known-the underwater hide-and-seek game pitting the navies of the U.S. and the former Soviet Union. He was a navigator on a submarine capable of killing millions; tracking Soviet subs, but never provoking a response the world would regret, was a game requiring skill and patience.

He joined the FBI in 1972. After a year in St. Louis, he went to New York, where he spent two years investigating Genovese Family loansharking. The FBI was just then beginning to learn how the families were organized, thanks to illegal eavesdropping it conducted in the 1960s and to a hood named Joseph Valachi-the first to reveal the existence of La Cosa Nostra. La Cosa Nostra.

In 1979, Mouw took over the Gambino squad just as the FBI decided on a major Cosa Nostra Cosa Nostra offensive. In 1981, after Ronald Reagan's election and after Congress gave the FBI more money and eased restrictions on electronic surveillance, the campaign was launched. With his background, Mouw was inclined to surveillance, and his squad's first major target was Angelo Ruggiero, who had bragged that his home telephone was "safe." offensive. In 1981, after Ronald Reagan's election and after Congress gave the FBI more money and eased restrictions on electronic surveillance, the campaign was launched. With his background, Mouw was inclined to surveillance, and his squad's first major target was Angelo Ruggiero, who had bragged that his home telephone was "safe."

The Angelo Ruggiero tapes led to many unforeseen consequences-bad ones for Paul Castellano and Thomas Bilotti. But they also shot Gotti to power, and Gotti's victory now made the squad's triumph against Angelo, who hadn't even been brought to trial yet, look small. It really was time to start a new case.

Three months after his crooked victory, Gotti annoyed authorities even more. His muscle-bound son Junior, who had been accused of slugging an off-duty cop in a bar brawl a few months after his father slugged refrigerator mechanic Romual Piecyk, was found not guilty.

In a virtual replay of the Piecyk case, a waitress forgot what she had seen, and a man hurt during the brawl-the man whom the cop was trying to help-testified for the defense. Gotti went to the courthouse to escort Junior through the media pack.

"They gotta try to rig a case to get us," he crowed.

29.

TEFLON DON.

"TEFLON" WAS A MORE APT METAPHOR for John Gotti than headline writers knew. Because of the law's double jeopardy provisions, his pre-paid acquittal on racketeering charges also immunized him for crimes committed prior to indictment in March 1985. He had been in prison nearly half the time since. Maloney, Mouw, and several others in law enforcement would have to build cases from scratch. They needed time and mistakes by the target, who would get what he was overheard asking for on the Bergin bug, shortly after Sparks: "If I can get a year run without being interrupted, get a year, I'm gonna put this thing together where they could never break it, never destroy it, even if we die."

Potential interruptions abounded. Many gangsters in and out of his Family-notably, Chin Gigante of the Genovese Family-were angry that Gotti was now boss of the Gambinos. They did not like him, or how he grabbed power. Traditionalists like Chin believed in the Commission rule that a boss cannot be removed from office by murder unless the other Family bosses agree.

Gotti believed he could get away with this infraction by simply denying he had anything to do with Paul's murder. Still, in the weeks following the verdict, many reprisal rumors reached him. Several involved avenging relatives of Paul and Bilotti, and so Gotti always had several bodyguards around. In the post-Sparks atmosphere, trigger-happiness was never far away, and six weeks after the verdict, it led to the murder of a man in the wrong place at the wrong time.

The man was walking past a florist's shop opposite the Bergin when a truck backfired. Gotti had just walked out the door, and, fearing gunfire, he ducked back in as a bodyguard pulled a gun and pointed it across the street at Jeffrey Ciccone, a mildly mentally disabled distant relative of a Gambino soldier. He saw the gun and ran. Several Gotti men gave chase; chief bodyguard Bobby Borriello fired a single shot that hit Ciccone in the b.u.t.tocks.

In view of bystanders who later claimed to have seen nothing, the men tossed Ciccone into the trunk of a car that glided up from the Bergin. It was driven by another bodyguard, Dominick Borghese. He and Joe Watts, one of the men who helped Gotti celebrate in Florida a few weeks earlier, drove to a store owned by a Gambino capo on Staten Island, so that there, in the bas.e.m.e.nt, Gotti's men could interrogate the wounded and presumed would-be a.s.sa.s.sin before killing him.

But the more Ciccone was beaten and questioned, the more he wailed that he didn't know what his tormentors were talking about. He denied firing a shot and frantically quoted Bible pa.s.sages. In time, Gotti's men began to suspect he was not an a.s.sa.s.sin, but a disturbed man who decided on his own to try and kill Gotti.

Meanwhile, of course, back at the Bergin, Gotti played dumb.

"Nothin' happened here," he told George Gabriel of the FBI, after Gabriel heard of a "shots-fired" report from the NYPD and went to the Bergin to inquire in his newly acquired role as Gotti "case agent" for the Gambino squad.

"We're nice guys," Gotti continued. "We don't have to duck n.o.body. You're the ones who should be duckin', the way you treat people."

"You're right, John. But just make sure you stay indoors. We don't have the manpower to protect you from your enemies."

While Gotti and Gabriel bantered, Gotti's men continued to believe Ciccone had fired a shot. They also concluded he was a crackpot acting on his own. Joe Watts, the main inquisitor, grew tired of pummeling Ciccone and sent Gotti a message asking what they should do with Ciccone.

"Kill 'im," the Teflon Don said.

Watts, a Paul loyalist before switching to Gotti, and Dominick Borghese, a 400-pounder, bound Ciccone's feet and hands; someone produced an orange body bag, into which Ciccone, bawling and pleading, was stuffed. Watts zippered it shut; aiming to please, he fired six shots into Ciccone's head.

Intending to return and remove the body once they arranged a disposal site, Watts and Borghese left the store for a few hours. Amazingly, while they were away, burglars. .h.i.t the store. They did not enter the bas.e.m.e.nt, but left the store's metal gates open. A pa.s.serby called police, who searched the bas.e.m.e.nt and found the body.

Back at the florist's shop, lips were sealed when the cops came by. "It looks like what we have here is a John Lennon-type situation," a top police official soon announced, as the case went into the unsolved murder files. "It looks like some individual had a thing about John Gotti."

Ciccone's only thing was bad luck. He was an occasional carpenter, 38 years old, who lived with two aging aunts in Queens, one of whom later said he had "mental problems." His distant relative, Sonny Ciccone-a Gambino capo who ran what rackets were left at the city's aging, Mafia-ransacked shipping piers-rushed to the Bergin to emphasize how distant.

"Forget about it," Gotti said boisterously. "But good thing he was a lousy shot!"

A gambler on a hot streak, Gotti set about cementing his control of the Family. He promoted Sammy Gravano to consigliere consigliere after seventy-seven-year-old Joe N. Gallo, tired and on trial in one of the Strike Force cases, asked if he could retire. He agreed to allow sixty-seven-year-old Joseph Armone, on trial in the same case, to remain underboss if Armone were found guilty, but this was only symbolic thanks for Armone's treachery toward Paul. He made Frank LoCascio, a bookmaker and loan shark who had moved into the inner circle, acting underboss with non-acting authority. He also made brother Gene boss of the Bergin crew after Angelo from his prison cell-without Gotti's okay and for some personal slight-tried and failed to orchestrate the murder of an important gangster in another Family. after seventy-seven-year-old Joe N. Gallo, tired and on trial in one of the Strike Force cases, asked if he could retire. He agreed to allow sixty-seven-year-old Joseph Armone, on trial in the same case, to remain underboss if Armone were found guilty, but this was only symbolic thanks for Armone's treachery toward Paul. He made Frank LoCascio, a bookmaker and loan shark who had moved into the inner circle, acting underboss with non-acting authority. He also made brother Gene boss of the Bergin crew after Angelo from his prison cell-without Gotti's okay and for some personal slight-tried and failed to orchestrate the murder of an important gangster in another Family.

Beyond his Family, Gotti sh.o.r.ed up relations with other bosses, including the sly stickler for Commission rules, Chin Gigante of the Genovese Family. They even met after Mouw and Gabriel visited Gotti and warned that FBI agents had overheard two Genovese men discussing a plot to kill Gotti and Gene to revenge Paul and Bilotti. The men were overheard in a bathroom where agents had installed a listening device; in such cases, FBI policy requires agents to warn the targets.

"We have solid information about a threat against you and Genie, a legitimate threat," said Gabriel on the doorstep of Gotti's home in Howard Beach in the fall of 1987.

"There's a million plots, so what?" Gotti said.

"All we can say is that this one is for real." Gabriel rubbed his chin mischievously. "By the way, John, it's coming from the Genovese Family."

Gotti frowned. "There're my friends. Chin is my friend. Everybody's my friend."

The warning may well have saved Gotti's life because he decided to let Chin know he knew. Sammy set up the summit, and also invited Luchese Family leaders; the man Angelo had conspired to kill from prison had become Luchese underboss, and Gotti thought it best to at least try to repair the damage. With three of the five New York bosses in the same room, it was the first Commission meeting in years-and probably the most preposterous ever. Everyone in the room was lying and everyone knew it.

"Whatever was said, if it was said, was not authorized by me," Gigante told Gotti, referring to the plot captured by the FBI's bathroom wiretap. "We got enough problems with the FBI all over the place, to bring more problems on ourselves. Our Families have always had a good relationship."

"I agree with you, hundred percent," Gotti said. "We can't fight amongst ourselves. We fight the government!"

"Paul was fightin' the government when he was killed. He was standing up to two RICOs, like a man."

"I swear to you," Gotti said. "I'm as angry about that as you. We don't know who killed Paul. I've been tellin' Sammy and everyone else, the f.u.c.kin' cops might've killed Paul."

Feeling ever more flush, Gotti revealed he was making the Ravenite Social Club in Little Italy-the clubhouse of his mentor, Aniello Dellacroce-his headquarters. He also announced he would hold weekly meetings there of top a.s.sociates, attendance required. The news shocked his men. The Ravenite was within a few blocks of the headquarters of almost every important law enforcement agency in New York, including the FBI and the NYPD.

As consigliere, consigliere, Sammy Gravano was obliged to speak up about these decisions, albeit politely. He did so at a meeting with Gotti and acting underboss Frank LoCascio at a Little Italy restaurant owned by Joseph Corrao, a Manhattan crew leader, a few blocks down Mulberry Street from the Ravenite. Corrao, or "Joe Butch," fell quickly in step with Gotti after Sparks. Some had even urged Gotti to make Joe Butch, not LoCascio, acting underboss. Sammy Gravano was obliged to speak up about these decisions, albeit politely. He did so at a meeting with Gotti and acting underboss Frank LoCascio at a Little Italy restaurant owned by Joseph Corrao, a Manhattan crew leader, a few blocks down Mulberry Street from the Ravenite. Corrao, or "Joe Butch," fell quickly in step with Gotti after Sparks. Some had even urged Gotti to make Joe Butch, not LoCascio, acting underboss.

"I know the idea of being in [Dellacroce's] club feels good, John, but we maybe oughta be more undercover," Sammy said.

"I've been comin' down here fifteen f.u.c.kin' years! What's the big deal?"

"You're the boss now. You gotta be more careful."

"I could stay in bed like the Chin, and they'll still come after me!"

"Maybe, but what I was thinking, you could put Frankie in charge of The Bronx, let everybody up there answer to him. You and Genie stay out in Queens. Joe Butch will stay in Manhattan. I'll stay in Brooklyn. We'll get together when we gotta, in the middle of the night when the f.u.c.kin' agents are sleeping, in a graveyard or some place."

"We don't have to run and hide! What're we afraid of? It ain't a crime to meet and get together. We're Italians. That's the way the Italian people are."

"The old-timers used to hide and sneak and stay in the neighborhoods," Sammy said.