The Best American Crime Writing 2006 by Mark Bowden Read Free Book Online Page B

keyboard. I don't know what he was looking for.What he needed was an old movie of the battle of Dien Bien Phu, where he could identify closely with the French, who lost; the brother-in-law, Good-Looking Sal, would be shooting at him from the hillside.When Massino stopped typing, his hand went to the top of his head and, with thumb and forefinger, moved the glasses.This was the style of removing eyeglasses for all those in the underworld in Queens County.
    On this day he noticed a reporter who had just had a death in the family. Massino mouthed, "I'm sorry." This was probably the last time we'd see someone in the Mafia showing the old-world class it was always reputed to have but rarely did.
    Watching her brother destroy her husband, Mrs. Massino wailed softly, "This is the same as a death in my family.You don't know what I am going through."
    "How could Sal do this? Joe taught him how to swim," Tony Rabito, from Massino's restaurant, the Casa Blanca, complained. Sal Vitale is on his way to prison for a whole lot of years.
    Joe Massino always was a very good swimmer. He could swim from Coney Island all the way across a wide inlet to Breezy Point, on the ocean. He taught his wife's brother, Good-Looking Sal, how to swim. This is a very big thing; you teach a kid to swim so he never drowns. Joe Massino could do that. He taught all the strokes to Good-Looking Sal.A lot of good that did.
    During the trial, from out of the past, from Jimmy Weston's on Fifty-fourth Street and P. J. Clarke's on Fifty-fifth, from Pep McGuire's on Queens Boulevard, from his scungilli restaurant on Second Avenue, came Tony Cafe, who is called that because he was always in saloons. He arrived at my building one night with a handwritten open letter from Joe Massino's daughter. She pointed out that Massino had been in prison and Good-Looking Sal Vitale had been running the Bonanno family when many of the murders were committed.While this was true, she was not able to cover all the murders. But she did try.
    "I don't know why the government is so mad at Joe," Tony Cafe said. "He's a nice fat guy, likes food."
    A t this time T ony was a blessed unknown, but that would change.
    Tony Cafe's previous experience was to make the mistake of rolling through the nights twenty-five years ago with the whole Mob and its new big hitter, Donnie Brasco.
    "He is Joe DiMaggio!" everybody said one night at the old Pep McGuire's on Queens Boulevard.
    When next seen, Brasco took the witness stand in room 103, federal court, Manhattan.Tony Cafe (his courtroom name Anthony Rabito) sat listening with his lawyer, Paul Rao.
     
    q: What is your name?
    a: Joseph Pistone.
    q: What is your occupation?
    a: I am a special agent for the Federal Bureau of Investigation.
     
    Tony was sentenced to eight years. Rao told the judge that Tony had served two years in the artillery in Korea, that both his brothers had served and that he deserved something for this.
     
    the court: Mr. Rabito, is there anything you would like to add to what Mr. Rao has told us on your behalf?
    defendant rabito: Judge, I think I got a fair trial.There are a couple of things I don't like. I fought for that flag. I was in the Army. I believe in the press. I believe in you.You open up somebody's head, you find love in my head, but in some people you find the little Italian flag.
     
    The judge took two years off the sentence, one for each year Tony spent in the service. He did six years at Otisville federal prison in upstate New York. I didn't see him when he came out and never heard about him, so I figured he wasn't up to much, which I thought was good because a second sentence would run a thousand years. In court for one thing or another over several years,
    I would take a look at the government's Mafia three-deep charts. The pictures of the Bonanno varsity players were mounted on cardboard. I never saw Tony's picture nor found his name in a news story, even if it was about guys at the bottom.
    Bad things now