Mafia Prince: Inside America's Most Violent Crime Family (26 page)

             
While I’m standing outside the office, who comes walking up the street but the Blade. Now according to my uncle, I’m supposed to kill him. I say, “Hey, Nick, want to grab something to eat?” And he says, “Sure, Philip,” and we walk to Caesars. Me and him had been there a few times and we were there together on the night that Ange had gotten killed.

             
While we’re eating, the Blade says, “I know your uncle’s mad at me.” I say, “Nick, my uncle’s mad at everybody. He’s mad at me, too,” and we both started laughing.

             
And he said, “I know, Philip, it’s just hard for me sometimes.”

             
You see, the Blade had a young son who had drowned and died and the Blade used to carry a picture of him around and he would get fall-down drunk and talk about what had happened with his son, and then after awhile, he’d start trouble and get into a fight.

             
I understood why he was the way he was. It wasn’t his fault.

             
A few days later Chuckie drives down from Philadelphia and me, him, and Lawrence go to Angeloni’s for dinner. He says, “Bobby Simone came to see me. He talked to your uncle and your uncle wants you and Bobby to go down to Texas to see him.”

             
I said to Chuckie, “Hey, Chuck, you wanna come down with us, we’ll have a good time,” and Chuckie said, “He didn’t ask for me, just you and Bobby,” and we both laughed.

             
If anyone knew my uncle besides me, it was Chuckie. He and Chuckie had been hanging since the ’50s. Chuckie knew my uncle like the back of his hand.

             
I think, like me, Chuckie was enjoying not having my uncle around.

             
So the next day, I’m in the office and the phone rings, and it’s my uncle. It’s the same routine with the collect call, only this time, when he gets on he’s not screaming. He says, “I’m glad I got you. How are things going? How is Scarf, Inc.?” Now I know he could care less about Scarf, Inc., but this is his way of breaking the ice a little bit. I say, “Scarf, Inc. is good; everything is good.” He says,
“Good, I’m glad to hear it.”He says, “I want you and Bobby to come down and see me. You’ll like it down here. It’s right on the border of Mexico. The Rio Grande is right there.” I say, “Oh, yeah?” And he says, “Yeah.” I tell him, “We will set it up and get down there before Christmas,” and my uncle seemed happy with that.

             
I’m thinking to myself: now we’re making small talk. I think my uncle knew I was getting sick of all of the bullshit.

             
Then I told him I had dinner with Chuckie and Lawrence, and he asked how they were doing—again more small talk—and then I couldn’t help myself. I said, “Guess who else I had dinner with?” And he said, “Who?” And I said, “The Blade.” He said, “You had dinner with him?” I said, “Yeah, we went to Caesars. He apologized for all of that trouble and he’s trying to clean his act up.”

             
Now by saying this, I am telling my uncle that I am not going to kill the Blade. Surprisingly, my uncle says, “Good, good. Tell him I said hello and tell him I said to knock it off with the drinking and to start coming around more.”

             
I knew it was only a matter of time before he was screaming and yelling again, that’s just how he was. In the meantime, it was back to work for me.

             
On most days I was in the office or I was taking meetings with guys in restaurants. I’d usually have either Lawrence or Saul Kane with me, and sometimes the Blade.

             
Blackie Napoli was coming down from Newark twice a month to bring my uncle’s money and the guys from Trenton were coming down once or twice a month.

             
I was meeting with the Taccetta brothers, who were with Tumac Accetturo and the North Jersey branch of the Lucchese crime family, and I was seeing a lot of “Sammy the Bull” Gravano who was with the Gambinos. Me and Sammy started getting real close. He’d always stop by the office if he came to Atlantic City, and me and him would go out to dinner.

             
When all of these guys would come down to Atlantic City, out of respect they would check in with my uncle. Now with him gone, they were checking in with me.

             
We’d go out to dinner, we’d talk about who was doing what, who was making moves. Most of the time I’d get an envelope with cash, usually a few thousand dollars, as tribute money for my uncle.

             
The street tax money coming down every month from Philadelphia could range from $50,000 to $100,000—it depended on what was going on.

             
Don’t forget, we still had our bookmaking and loan sharking operations and we were involved in a million other deals. Making money wasn’t a problem for us.

             
I’d always pick the money up directly from Chuckie and I’d bring it home and I would count it out with Nicky Jr.

             
Without fail, no matter what the amount was, it would always be light a few hundred dollars. I knew Chuckie wasn’t skimming three or four hundred dollars; he was making tens of thousands of dollars himself. I believed it was his son Joey who was robbing the money.

             
Joey Merlino was always a no-good kid. He was a punk even as a teenager, 18 or 19 years old. He was constantly starting trouble in Atlantic City, and my uncle would always make me straighten it out. He would bet with bookmakers who were with us and not pay them when he lost, then he would lie and say that it wasn’t him. On top of that, I believe he was robbing the money that was coming down from Philadelphia to Atlantic City for me and my uncle.

             
Around that time I wanted to kill him, but he was Chuckie’s son and I know there was no way my uncle would sanction it. At that time my uncle liked this kid very much because the two of them were very much alike, and Joey was always respectful around my uncle. Plus, Chuckie was my uncle’s best friend and he was the underboss, and Joey and Nicky Jr. were also the best of friends.

             
I thought he was no good and, if I could have, I would have killed him.

             
A couple times a week my uncle would call and say things like, “Did Salvie clean that boat yet? Tell him to get the boat clean,” which was his way of saying tell Salvie and his guys to get the Riccobenes. He would say, “Tell him the whole boat, top to bottom, clean the whole thing,” which meant he wanted everyone dead—Harry and his whole crew.

             
Right before Christmas, me and Bobby Simone flew down to Texas to see my uncle, like I had promised him. He seemed to be in good spirits because he knew we were making a lot of money, but he was still hell-bent on killing all of Harry’s guys, even with Harry in jail.

             
When we got down to Texas and went to the jail, they would only let Bobby in and told me I was prohibited from having any unsupervised contact with my uncle. I said, “No problem,” and I told Bobby to meet me back at the hotel when he was done. Truth be told, I was okay not seeing him, I actually preferred it. I was enjoying my time away from him, especially my time with Maria and Little Philip.

             
I decided to drive around a little bit and, boy, was I out of place. It was all cowboys and Mexicans down there. I felt like I was on another planet. I knew my uncle couldn’t have been happy in there and now I knew what he meant when he said that the other prisoners in La Tuna were “not our kind of people.”

             
My uncle had told me that the whole place was full of Mexican guys and black guys. He said, “There’s not two white guys in this whole fuckin’ place.” The Mexican Mafia was very big down there, and there were a lot of fights in that jail, a lot of stabbings.

             
My uncle kept to himself while he was in there, but he had two Mexican guys who were with him the whole time he was there. He called them his
pistoleros,
and they served as his bodyguards.

             
He’d have me send money to put on their books or do things for their families. These guys were dirt poor but they were loyal, and like my uncle, they were stone killers. My uncle told me when he got out, he said, “I wish I had ten more guys just like them.”

             
So I’m back at the hotel and I’m in the lobby having a drink, and in comes Bobby back from the prison and seeing my uncle. I say,
“Hey, Bob, how did it go?” And he says, “You know how he is,” and we both smiled. He said, “Let me go upstairs and freshen up a bit and I’ll be right down.”

             
Bobby and I were staying in the best suite in the hotel, but, remember, we were in El Paso, not Beverly Hills.

             
Five minutes later Bobby pages me and he’s out of breath and I can barely make out what he’s saying. He tells me that when he put the key in the room he sees two guys in the room dressed like maintenance workers, and that they seemed startled to see him and hurried out of the room once he arrived.

             
Now my mind is racing, I’m thinking, “Is this a hit? Was someone there to kill me?” There was no reason to kill Bobby—he was our lawyer. No one wanted to kill him, except maybe the prosecutors and judges he dealt with.

             
But I was a captain in
La Cosa Nostra
and my uncle was the boss, and here I am, 2,000 miles away from Atlantic City. Like Harry Riccobene in that phone booth, I realized I was essentially a sitting duck.

             
Two minutes later Bobby’s down in the lobby and I tell him, “We’re out of here, we need to pack our bags and go back home,” and Bobby agrees. We were supposed to be there all weekend and Bobby was supposed to go see my uncle the next morning.

             
We went to the room and packed our stuff and drove right to the airport and got on the first plane back to Philadelphia.

             
On the plane I tell Bobby, “That was either a hit or the FBI trying to bug our room; either way I don’t like it,” and Bobby agreed.