The Mafia Encyclopedia (30 page)

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Authors: Carl Sifakis

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Page 75
certain measure of independent power and prestige. Given that, Dellacroce did not want to provoke a war that would ravage the family and probably provoke drastic action by the authorities. He accepted second spot to Castellano.
As Castellano refused to expand the family's activities in certain areas, the Gambinos lost some influence, and the Genovese crime group under Funzi Tieri became the most important organization in the Mafia, as it had been before Gambino had built up his group to primacy through an unremitting mixture of force and cunning. Only with Tieri's death in 1981 and a succession by weaker men were the Gambinos once more to become supreme, just by the sheer weight of their numbers and prestige.
Castellano continued operating the way he felt best, dickering with businessmen and ignoring the hoodlums in his own organization. For example, Frank Perdue, the chicken king known for his "tough man, tender chicken" TV commercials, determined that the retailing strategies of a large supermarket chain in the New York area were not giving him a fair shake. His chickens often didn't make the weekly shopping circulars while his competitors were getting great display. That was when he decided to switch distributors, signing on with Dial Poultry, which happened to be run by two of Castellano's sons. After that, Perdue reportedly had no more complaints about the proper merchandising of his neglected chicks.
While Castellano was smitten with dealing with businessmen, he kept vetoing plans for capo John Gotti, one of the toughest men in the organization, to move into the lush field of airport rackets where a fortune could be made in freight disappearances and union racketeering. Gotti was one of the younger capos straining under the Castellano rule, feeling the don to be so inept that it was costing family members vast profits. All that kept Gotti and others in line was fear of, and a sense of loyalty to, Dellacroce. As Dellacroce's pet, Gotti was rightly feared by Castellano who tried to keep him down by limiting him to goon squad hijackings and other bush-league activities.
Then on December 2, 1985, Dellacroce died. Evidently Castellano didn't fear Gotti much, and he made no attempt to rub him out. Instead, Castellano planned to keep Gotti down by naming Bilotti his underboss. It was incredible. Castellano was acting like he was in some sort of company proxy fight. A smart Mafia boss would have started killing the opposition instantly. Castellano was thinking long-range while the countdown was on.
Gotti or whoever was working against Castellano had cleared things with the other bosses in the citynobody seemed to mind that Big Paul went. In fact, most of the bosses had reason to be sore at Castellano, who had allowed his fashionable 17-room mansion on Staten Island to be bugged by the FBI. They had been furnished transcripts of some of the tapes since they were, along with Castellano, under indictment for a number of racketeering counts. Castellano had talked disparagingly about all of them, which was bad enough, but the tape also revealed he blabbed about Mafia business with almost anyone who came into his home, even people who did not belong to any crime family. He also told Bilotti things, which violated the Mafia need-to-know code. Castellano's wagging tongue clearly was a menace, and there was the added worry that the 70-year-old Castellano might not be able to take prison. If convicted he could get sentences totaling 170 years and know he was not going to spend his twilight years a free man. Under such circumstances a weak boss like Big Paul might talk.
After the hit at Sparks, much press was devoted to speculation about what the Castellano murder meant. Was it or wasn't it the start of a general gang war, was the hit an inside job, and so on. The only concrete fact to come out of the affairaside from two corpses on a Manhattan sidewalkwas that additional eavesdropping and informer information confirmed for various investigative agencies a successor to Paul Castellano.
It was John Gotti.
Catalano, Salvatore "Saca" ( 19331983 ): Sicilian drug smuggler
The 1970s and '80s became the heyday of Zips, tough, mean Sicilian gangsters imported into America. They were the prime movers of a massive drug trade operation that became known as the Pizza Connection, a case in which American law enforcement had a hard time sorting out the players. This was especially true of Salvatore Catalano, until investigators finally figured out they were dealing with two drug smuggling cousins with exactly the same name.
In the 1960s Italian and Canadian police experts classified this Salvatore Catalano as an "important international trafficker." He was identified by Italian authorities as an associate of several U.S. and Italian crime chiefs.
At first he seemed the more important of the two Catalanos but eventually law enforcers determined that his younger cousin eclipsed him in more ways than one. To distinguish the pair, the older one was identified as "Saca," the name of a jewelry business he ran in the New York diamond district on West 47th Street, a front for money laundering and drug dealing.
Later the second Catalano came to the fore as a vital cog in the Colombo family and evidenced a penchant
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for violence and murder that his older cousin may have lacked. Eventually the younger Catalano, or "Toto," a nickname for his given name, ordered the murder of his cousin without a qualm. If other Mafia figures promised the death penalty for those engaged in the drug racket, the traffickers had their own criteria. Death was reserved for those falling victim to the wares they handled. It was evident by 1983 that Saca had freaked out on heroin. For several months he exhibited such erratic behavior that his associates regarded him as a mortal danger to their enterprise.
Saca was shot in the neck and eye by a gunman, possibly Cesare Bonventre, a prime suspect in the murder of Carmine Galante and a close associate of Toto. Government taps indicated that Toto and his closest associates felt no surprise at Saca's demise. One Zip was overheard asking Toto about Saca's funeral: "You're saying the rosary?"
Toto responded, almost apologetically, "What can I do?"
At the funeral Cesare Bonventre showed up in a way that could be construed as a final insult to the victim, driving up in a black Ferrari which he parked ostentatiously outside the chapel. On the sidewalk.
See also:
Catalano, Salvatore "Toto
."
Catalano, Salvatore "Toto" (1941 ): Brutal boss of the Zips
The Zip invasion of the American Mafia hit its zenith under Salvatore "Toto" Catalano, a criminal who exhibited a terrifying penchant for double-dealing. Long a ''protégé" of crime boss Carmine Galante, who sponsored many of the Zips coming from Sicily, Toto was regarded by authorities as a prime mover, along with many family bosses in New York and around the country, in the plot to assassinate Galante, an operation accomplished in spectacular fashion in 1979. It was a move that made Catalano and his supporters richer than they had ever been, reaping millions in drug profits from heroin smuggled in from Sicily where it had been processed by Sicilian crime families.
What horrified many American mafiosi was the senseless slaughter and violence Catalano and the other Zips engaged in to further their aims. Toto was considered one of the wildest. Without the slightest qualm he had his own cousin and namesake murdered when he developed a strong heroin addiction. Toto felt his cousin's blabberings might endanger the entire drug operation that later became popularly known as the Pizza Connection.
After the Galante murder, Paul Castellano, the reputed boss of bosses of the American Mafia, decided to fill Galante's position with the Zips. According to assistant U.S. attorney Richard Martin, the lead prosecution in the Pizza Connection trial from 1985 to 1987, Big Paul had a sitdown with Catalano and his leading aides at Martini's Restaurant in Bay Ridge, Brooklyn, to "work out the new terms of payment for the heroin franchise.... Carmine Galante was out of the way; now the money would go straight to Castellano himself."
Louis Freeh, another assistant U.S. attorney and later head of the FBI, said: "We know that the Sicilians have been paying off the U.S. bosses on heroin all along.... Paul Castellano got paid, in spite of threatening others with death for dealing."
Catalano readily agreed to Castellano's terms, which were more favorable than what the Zips got from Galante. But would the agreement last?
Despite the agreement Castellano continued to have woes with the Zips. They grew stronger in what had been Gambino family strongholds, and they operated rackets without seeking Gambino family approval. Violence broke out and a full-scale war loomed. But the battle never began. The government's Pizza Connection prosecution netted Catalano and all the important Zips, and Castellano fell under the guns of the John Gotti forces that took over the Gambino family.
Even after his arrest Catalano remained a threat, apparently penetrating the secrecy of the witness protection program to learn the whereabouts of some of the witnesses who testified against him. He continued making threats even after the conclusion of the long trial and while appeals were still pending. In the end Catalano's terror campaign was neutralized. He was sentenced to 45 years, meaning that if he served the full time he would be 91 years old when released.
See also:
Bonventre, Cesare; Catalano, Salvatore "Saca"; Zips
.
Cerone, John "Jackie the Lackey" (1914): Day-today boss of Chicago Outfit
Captured on tape on a number of occasions bragging about his prowess as a mob executioner, Jackie the Lackey Cerone was a dapper, expensive dresser, a throwback to the Capone era. From the late 1960s he had also functioned as the day-to-day boss of the Chicago Outfit although he took orders from his superior, Joey Aiuppa, and beyond him the ever-present Tough Tony Accardo.
Cerone's was a meteoric rise for a gangster who operated best on the enforcer level, but Jackie the Lackey was highly regarded for his ability to take orders. These orders brought him the bulk of his 20-plus arrests on such charges as bookmaking, robbery, armed robbery, keeper of a gambling house and con-
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spiracy to skim Nevada casino profits. Before the McClellan Committee, he took the Fifth Amendment 45 times.
Cerone served for a time as Tony Accardo's chauffeur, and was called "Accardo's pilot fish." He also served for a considerable period directly under Sam Giancana. Cerone was one of his top men, more than an ordinary soldier, and part of the nucleus of his power. Rather than run a cell of 20 or 30 mobsters as most capos did, Cerone became a master fixer and political sponsor of applicants to the police force (the mob being much interested in law and order).
Cerone the underling was a notorious namedropper. In 1962, he was overheard on a federal "bug" in Florida bragging to the other gangsters that the hit assignment they were on was awarded by "Moe" (Giancana) to him personally. That particular job was to erase Frankie Esposito, an associate of the syndicate who had fallen into disfavor. The boys discussed various ways to carry out their mission (which at the last minute was cancelled) and Cerone himself came up with the plot that pleased him best. They would approach Esposito when he was alone and, since he knew them all, invite him into their car for a ride. They would then stuff him down on the floor, take him to a boat where they would shoot him, cut his body up in tiny pieces and feed them to the sharks. Cerone said he had brought a special knife along for the purpose.
The boys also took to reminiscing about other hits, especially the horribly gory torture-killing of William "Action" Jackson. The details need not be repeated here, but credit must be given to Cerone's contribution to the festivitiesa cattle prod that was put to ghoulish use. Cerone informed the boys he'd gotten the idea from "some coppers who used the same thing on hoods." Some Southern police forces used the prods on civil rights demonstrators, but there is no record of Jackie the Lackey ever being aware of that.
As Cerone moved up the syndicate ladder he proved to be a stickler for Mafia rules and respect and for firm division in the roles played by mere soldiers and capos and higher-ups.
He could wax philosophical about the virtues of the unbigoted organization. On another FBI tape, he told the boys about some of the gang killings he and Johnny Whales, "a Polack" but "a real nice guy," had pulled off in the ''old days." Unfortunately, Cerone said, Johnny finally "went off his rocker" and disappeared. He had become afraid of the "Dagos'' and told Cerone he feared they might kill him. At this point in the dialogue Cerone turned to Dave Yaras, the Jewish member present, and said, "You see, Dave, he didn't understand that we [the Chicago Outfit] got Jews and Polacks also. I told him this but he was still afraid." When Whales's obsession with fear of Italians became still more intense, Cerone said he brought the matter to Accardo's attention, who obligingly asked if he wished to have Whales knocked off. Cerone said he assured his boss that he liked Whales too much to have him murdered but that he would have nothing more to do with him.
At the top, after he and Aiuppa replaced Giancana who was drawing too much heat to the organization, Jackie the Lackey did not act so benignly, according to most accounts, exacting a correct code of conduct from Chicago soldiers. It was speculated that if Giancana's 1975 murder was a mob hit (the mob has always insisted it was a CIA job), it had to have Jackie the Lackey's approvala case of the underling outlasting his mentor.
In 1986, Cerone, aged 71, and his current mentor, Joe Aiuppa, were convicted with three other organized crime figures for conspiring to divert more than $2 million in untaxed winnings from gambling casinos in Las Vegas. Both men were given long prison terms guaranteeing they would spend the rest of their lives behind bars.
Charity and the Mafia
Image, especially in recent years, has become a major concern within the Mafia. One of the best ways to polish up their reputations, crime bigwigs have apparently decided, is through charitable giving.
Beneficent gestures are not new to the Mafia, however. Al Capone was big on helping individuals in distressand seeing to it that the press knew about it. Then, in the Great Depression, Capone got into organized charity in a big way, playing the role of a "socially responsible" gangster, taking care of many of Chicago's unemployed. Capone opened a storefront on State Street to provide food and warmth for the destitute. Puffing on his big cigar, he espoused to reporters his great concern for the jobless. Capone's Loop soup kitchen gave out a total of 120,000 meals at a cost of $12,000. On Thanksgiving Day, Capone said he was personally donating 5,000 turkeys.
Clearly Capone's famous soup kitchen made for great publicity, but, as it turned out, the operation hadn't really cost him very much. City coffee roasters and blenders were leaned on to donate supplies. Various bakeries found their day-old doughnuts and pastries requisitioned by mobsters. Packinghouses saw the wisdom of donating hearty meat dishes, and the South Water Market Commission merchants got into the spirit of things with potatoes and vegetables. Soon everything was on a strict quota basis and those who felt they were being asked to give too much were informed by mobsters that the Big Fellow was growing concerned that their trucks might be wrecked or their tires slashed.

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