Police help for Mafia

Press, 5 April 1989, Page 18

Police help for Mafia

CHARLES LAURENCE reports from New York for the “Daily Telegraph”

EVEN the Godfather’s dog has died. After 18 years of snarling and snapping at F. 8.1. snoopers and over-inquisitive reporters, Charlie the Neapolitan mastiff, 60kg of state-of-the-art “attack” dog, no longer patrols the yard behind John “Dapper Don” Gotti’s home in Queens, New York. He died of natural causes, nursed to the end at the Howard Beach Animal Hospital. Granted the rites appropriate to a faithful soldier, he was cremated in Nassau County, Long Island, and his ashes returned in a SNZ6SO pewter urn.

Charlie, a beast with heavy jowls and fierce eyes, cut a security profile in keeping with the reputation of his master, the man held to be the “capo” of the Gambino family and the senior Godfather of the New York Mafia. His passing brought an extra measure of grief to a brotherhood already facing a far greater loss; its credibility. Gotti himself is due once more before the courts, this time charged in connection with the shooting of a union official. He has had several serious brushes with the law since Mr Rudolph Giuliani, the U.S. Attorney for Manhattan, who recently retired to run for mayor, launched his purge against the Mafia early in the 1980 s. Once, Gotti was even brought as far as the city jail — swapping immaculate leather pumps for running shoes, and handing his

gold Rolex watch to his lawyer, in one of those perfect gestures that established his legend — before being “sprung” on appeal. It is not, however, the prospect of a new trial for Gotti that has gangster watchers shaking their heads and pondering the Mafia’s future. No; it is a sequence of events that has questioned the Mob’s reputation for ruthless competence and revealed the police in the unlikely role of protecting one family from another. Since when did a "capo” need a cop to protect him? Charlie would surely turn in his urn. Take the assassination threat that kicked off the Mob’s New Year: “Contract Out For Gotti,” announced the tabloid headlines. It seemed good old-fashioned Mafia stuff, until it emerged that the F. 8.1. itself had picked up news of the "contract,” put out by the rival Genoveses, and warned Gotti to take precautions. Then there was the case of the bomb. The New York Police Organised Crime Squad took a telephone call, on a number not known to the public, giving warning that a “surprise present” had been left for the Don at one of his favourite haunts. The police found a package containing wires, batteries and some white powder. Gotti turned up to preen fearlessly over his own invincibility. Then the bomb turned out to be bogus; someone had had the cheek to tease a Godfather on his own turf.

Odder things, meanwhile, have engulfed the Genoveses. Since the jailing of “Fat Tony” Salerno, this family is thought to have been run by Vincent “The Chin” Gigante, the “Howard Hughes” of the Mob. For years, Gigante has been noted for patrolling the streets of Greenwich Village in the dead of night, dressed in pyjamas and bathrobe with a flat cap pulled low over his eyes. Here and there, he stops for a whispered word in alley or doorway. He operates from two private “clubs” with blacked-out windows adjoining my daughter’s school in Sullivan Street. His retinue of ageing “wiseguys” have earned the approval of the parents, as they chuck the cheeks of passing children and keep the street free of drug dealers. The FBI and the police say that The Chin has simply found the best cover with his eccentric antics. But now Gigante’s own brother has gone to court seeking a protection order, claiming that far from being a Mafia mastermind, The Chin is “unable to manage his personal affairs by reason of mental illness.” The F. 8.1. still claims that this is no more than deepening cover — they fear he will plead insanity when they eventually launch a racketeering case — but others are pondering the possibility that the second biggest of New York’s five “families” has fallen into the hands of a genuine kook.