Mob Star by Gene Mustain Read Free Book Online Page A

unimposing storefront that was Dellacroce’s longtime command center. They tailed DeCicco to Brooklyn, where he met his mentor and Sparks companion, James Failla, at the Veterans and Friends Social Club.
    Later, they saw New Jersey Family delegates visiting Gotti at his headquarters, the Bergin Hunt and Fish Club in Ozone Park, Queens. As Gotti’s notoriety grew, an early reporting error would be institutionalized and the name of this equally unimposing storefront would be spelled as “Bergen,” even though photos of the club’s sign show Bergin is correct.
    Outside the Bergin, the men watching Gotti also counted dozens of Gambino men entering and leaving. Were they readying for war, or making the peace?
    On Sunday, December 22, 1985, Kenneth McCabe—then an NYPD detective for the Brooklyn District Attorney’s office—saw Gotti at the Veterans and Friends. McCabe had never seen Gotti there during hundreds of stakeouts. Gotti was accompanied by Joseph Massino, a longtime friend who had recently become acting boss of the Bonanno Family. McCabe also saw DeCicco, Failla, and several other captains, who in groups of two and three kept shuttling between the club and a nearby restaurant.
    “There appeared to be a meeting at the location,” McCabe later testified. “They would go in the club, come outside, go into the restaurant, back and forth into the club … so they would not be overheard.”
    On Christmas Eve, Gotti and DeCicco were back at the Ravenite. So was Andrew Rosenzweig, chief investigator of the Manhattan District Attorney’s Investigations Bureau. Gotti and DeCicco retreated to the narrow streets of Little Italy for several private talks, and at one point they walked within earshot of the unassuming, undercover Rosenzweig.
    “They’ve got to come to me,” Gotti said.
    The same day, from a surveillance van 100 feet away, NYPD Detective John Gurnee took photographs of two hundred men coming to see John Gotti. Outside the Ravenite, as one shiny car after another pulled up, he saw the men bypass all the others and go directly to Gotti, who they embraced and kissed on both cheeks.
    Gotti was always treated deferentially at the Ravenite Social Club, but never before like this. “It was very similar to the respect accorded Aniello Dellacroce,” Detective Gurnee said.
    It now seemed to McCabe, Rosenzweig, Gurnee, and all the other detectives and agents that there would be no war. Gotti was enjoying a peaceful Christmas Eve and many wiseguys—a New York term for gangsters—were rallying around his tree to wish him goodwill toward them.
     
     
    Without inside information, which is not always shared by the Crime Capital’s anticrime forces, the surveillants could only speculate who the new boss would be. They didn’t know the inside details that were available; these indicated that Gotti took control of the Family on December 20. A symbolic vote would be held in a few weeks, but Gotti was boss a day after the Pope was buried.
    One captain rallying around Gotti was Ralph Mosca, who also had a Queens crew. He was a Castellano man, but fond of Gotti and sailing with the prevailing wind. After meeting with him on December 20, Mosca briefed his crew, which included Dominick Lofaro, 55, a U.S. Army veteran, concrete worker, dice-game operator, numbers runner, illegal-loan collector, thief, and murderer who had spent two days in jail during his life.
    “Johnny says everything’s goin’ be all right,” Mosca told Lofaro. “We won’t have to carry no guns around.”
    Mosca instructed Lofaro—whom Gotti was considering for a new gambling operation—that he now must communicate with Gotti through an intermediary, a sure sign that a power shift was afoot.
    A lot was afoot that Mosca didn’t know about. At the time, Lofaro was wearing two masks. He was working for Mosca and for the New York State Organized Crime Task Force; he was a perfect example of the rationale behind one of the few policies Castellano had