Five Families: The Rise, Decline, and Resurgence of America's Most Powerful Mafia Empires (106 page)

Between 1980 and 1987, Gigante met numerous times with Savino, introducing him to his wife and his mistress. Chin objected to anyone else in the borgata getting free services from Savino, but he encouraged him to replace windows at the Gigante home in Old Tappan and in his mistress’s East Side town house. After meeting several of Gigante’s children, Savino asked Baldy Dom about the sons’ occupations. “Vincent doesn’t want to have his kids involved in the life,” Canterino said, ending the discussion.

Savino was immersed in “the life,” and it could be scary. Once at 3:00
A.M
., he was awakened at home by a telephone call from Baldy Dom. “Get down
here, right now,” Canterino barked. “I’m not coming back,” Savino thought. Unaware of what fatal mistake he had made, Savino left all his pocket cash and jewelry with his wife. To him it looked like he was being set up for a Mob “ride.” No one would be seen leaving with him from his home, and he was to meet Canterino on a deserted Greenwich Village block before dawn; there would be no witnesses to his disappearance. On Sullivan Street, Canterino wordlessly escorted Savino to the rear of a barber shop near the Triangle Club. Gigante was waiting for him, holding a catalogue of men’s clothing in his hand. Pointing to jogging suits, Chin asked Savino, “Can you get me one in red, blue, and green?”

Inwardly sighing with relief, Savino remembered having given a mail-order catalogue to Canterino, telling him that he would obtain whatever Chin wanted. “It’s not for me. It’s for my kids,” Gigante said, handing the booklet to Savino. “You can go now.” Pondering the events of the last few hours as he drove home, Savino fathomed that the late-night command appearance had been a test. Chin was gauging his unquestioning obedience and dependability at any hour, the hallmark of a made man.

Brought to Bay

C
hin Gigante’s first line of defense against the FBI was his insanity subterfuge. He also hit upon the queer notion that he could safely conduct his underworld affairs late at night. Pete Savino learned from Baldy Dom Canterino that their leader was unshakably convinced that FBI agents never worked after midnight. Gigante was certain that he would not be under the bureau’s surveillance during predawn hours.

Savino grew accustomed to late-night summonses, usually to the Triangle Club. At one session, in another test of his reliability, Gigante asked if he could get “close”—a euphemism for a hit—to a man who had killed the son of a Genovese soldier. Savino was reluctant because the target was a neighborhood acquaintance, but it would have been foolhardy to disregard Chin’s request. He suggested a plan for the murder. “Take him,” Gigante directed. To Savino’s relief, before he could carry out his assignment the intended victim was convicted of a crime and imprisoned.

Despite occasional tense moments, Pete Savino enjoyed his ties to Gigante and his assured profits from the Housing Authority fixed contracts. His cartel stratagem worked to perfection, enabling him to buy a maroon Rolls-Royce and a Jaguar, and to move from Bay Ridge in Brooklyn to a more luxurious house in Staten Island. His financial future was bright, and his new factory in
Brooklyn was humming to meet contracts obtained through his own business savvy and Mob affiliations. Easy money whetted his philandering eye and, although married three times, he had numerous paramours. His first two marriages, which produced five children, ended in divorce. At forty, Savino’s once rugged physique became bloated and, rather than exercise and diet, when his weight reached almost 300 pounds he underwent liposuction surgery to trim down. His schooling (a year at a southern college) and early background set him apart from the mobsters he mixed with. They thought he was quirky; he read books and magazines. Even odder to them, he enjoyed collecting old Charlie Chan movies, the 1930s and ’40s series about a brilliant Chinese detective.

By 1987, Savino had given up the dangerous business of merchandising narcotics. He far outclassed Bobby Farenga in underworld high finance and had severed all relationships with his unreliable ex-partner. But it was Farenga who led the FBI to his front door. Picked up for questioning but not arrested, Savino heard the grim tidings that Bobby had ratted on him. The government had unearthed two bodies buried in the Williamsburg warehouse when he owned the building, and Farenga had yoked him to five murders, dozens of drug transactions, and the huge Housing Authority windows scam.

Involving leaders in the Genovese, Gambino, Colombo and Lucchese families, the Windows investigation had all the earmarks of a career-making trial for ambitious prosecutors and agents. Charles Rose, Gregory O’Connell, and the lead agent in the developing case, Dick Rudolph, were at the starting gate for a multifamily Mafia trial. Centering on the new Mafia overlords, the investigation loomed as potentially just as devastating to the Cosa Nostra as the Commission trial had been.

Though only a Genovese associate, Savino was the brains and most likely would be the core witness against the Mafia at a trial. His role was important enough for him to be in direct contact with mafiosi in four families, and he knew the statistics on how much money was siphoned by each of the borgatas and by crooked union leaders. And there was yet one more riveting element to Savino’s story. The mobster who had taken him under his wing, met with him frequently, and protected him for the last seven years, was supercautious Vincent Chin Gigante.

Only a little pressure from Rudolph and the prosecutors was needed for Savino to roll over, to confess all he knew about Gigante and other mafiosi. First, Rose met alone with Savino at a diner, and over coffee delivered an
ultimatum: “You have twenty-four hours to agree to cooperate and help us or you’re going to jail.” The next night, Savino showed up for a follow-up session with Rose and agents in a motel room in Queens and heard the terms set by prosecutors and the FBI. Confessing to his own crimes was not enough to swing a soft sentence for him. The government could easily convict him for six murders and the multimillion-dollar swindle. To build a case against important mafiosi participating in the Windows scam, prosecutors needed more evidence than Savino’s testimony. An admitted conspirator, profiteer, and murder accomplice, Savino’s word alone would fall short of obtaining indictments, let alone guilty verdicts. Essential evidence could be obtained only if Savino worked undercover. Rudolph and the prosecutors wanted him to wear a wire and secretly record incriminating conversations about the ongoing bid-rigging with as many players as possible, especially Chin Gigante.

It was a risky proposition for Savino—sure death if wiseguys discovered the wire. The FBI could not protect him around the clock. Desperate for leniency, Pete Savino agreed to the terms. Otherwise, at forty-four, and looking ahead to a minimum of twenty years in prison, life seemed pointless to him.

News of Bobby Farenga’s arrest and the uncovering of the warehouse bodies had filtered out to the Genovese hangouts. No formal charges against Savino were made public, and to deflect suspicions that he was in the clutches of the law, prosecutors and agents devised a disinformation tale. Rudolph informed Savino’s lawyer that he wanted to speak with Pete about the two corpses in the warehouse. The attorney, according to Savino, cooperated with the Genovese family and would communicate information about the FBI’s interest in Savino to the borgata’s high command. Questioning Savino at the lawyer’s office, Rudolph assured him that Pete was not a suspect in any crime. The agent’s line was that the FBI was only interested in what Savino knew about the construction of the Williamsburg building and who had access to it. Rudolph’s questions painted Savino as an innocent, victimized businessmen, and implied that the bureau had other suspects in mind for the murders. The ruse seemingly worked. The lawyer passed along the news to the Genovese rulers that Savino was in the clear and had not divulged any useful information.

The only snag in Rose and O’Connell’s plan arose from the continual rivalries between the city’s two federal Justice Department jurisdictions. A prosecutor in Rudolph Giuliani’s Southern District learned of Farenga’s arrest and began questioning him as a potential witness in an investigation of corrupt practices in the construction of a high school. Fearing that Giuliani’s office
might hijack the Windows case and get to Savino, the Eastern District’s Andrew Maloney had another of what he termed sit-downs with Giuliani at FBI headquarters. “Rudy knew it was shaping up as a major organized-crime case and he wanted to grab it,” O’Connell, who was at the meeting, asserted. “We told him that Farenga didn’t want to work with the Southern District and Giuliani lost the argument.”

Savino’s agreement required him to plead guilty to participating in six murders and to RICO violations. He did so at a sealed hearing with the routine proviso that the maximum sentence of twenty years might be shortened, depending on his assistance in the investigation.

Savino’s main handler was Dick Rudolph, a native New Yorker who grew up close to the Gambino family’s Bergin Club in Queens, and was well acquainted with Mafia practices. A bored accountant, eager for a more adventurous life, he had joined the bureau a decade earlier, at twenty-six, and had spent most of his time in the Lucchese Squad. It was now Rudolph’s job to advise and direct Savino on the day-to-day tactics of collecting evidence that would stand up in a courtroom. For almost two years, they talked daily about the progress Savino was making and the perils surrounding him, usually meeting at night in New York motels or out of town. “Regardless of the stress, Pete was a charmer and gregarious with a great sense of humor,” Rudolph said. “Putting aside the murders and other crimes in his background, there was a flip side to him that made being with him enjoyable.”

The undercover pursuit began in February 1988 with the wiring of Savino’s Brooklyn office in Bay Ridge, where Mob conferences on window contracts were sometimes held. Savino’s most hazardous task was wearing a concealed body mike at Mob clubs, in restaurants, in diners, and on walk-talks without arousing suspicion. To his amazement, he was never “tossed,” patted down and searched, by a wiseguy. Chin Gigante was the ultimate objective, and FBI technicians devised miniature equipment that presumably would record Gigante’s voice even if he whispered in Savino’s ear. Savino never caught him on tape, but he recorded dozens of incriminating conversations with representatives of the four families that suggested Gigante’s involvement.

On March 11, 1988, reviewing a contract with Mangano, Savino tried to interject Gigante’s role in the conspiracy, saying, “Vincent had said when it comes time to …” Mangano cut him off. “Don’t mention that guy.” Trying again, Savino continued, “Okay. I won’t mention him. All right, he had said to go out and bid the work.” The only reply he got from Mangano was “Yeah.”

During a walk-talk with Savino in front of the Empire State Building, Mangano reiterated that he must falsify records to cover up the frauds. “But make everything aboveboard, papers, everything. Everything legit. … Keep your nose straight because we’re not looking to get caught in a trap here for no reason at all.”

On another occasion, Savino explained the ABC’s of the rigged-bid process to a newcomer, Vincent Ricciardo, a Colombo family enforcer who had obtained a piece of a windows company. “Let’s say a bid came out tomorrow and we flipped a coin. Okay,” Savino said. “This is 10,000 windows. All right, you won the toss. Now, you get that one, the next one I get. Whatever it is.”

Ricciardo emphasized that the four families would prevent any maverick company from landing a contract; they would arrange for a Mob-controlled union to picket the building site. “We stop the job,” he added. “It’s that simple.” Referring to a contractor who was balking at paying kickbacks of $2 for every window, Ricciardo had a solution. “I’m throwing him out that window. I’m telling you, he’s getting it. He don’t want to pay nobody. I’m telling you, Tuesday he’s going out that window.”

At a conference attended by made men from the four families, Sonny Morrissey, the Local 580 official who was bagman and enforcer for the Luccheses, angrily announced that a non-Mafia-controlled company in the cartel had won a contract without permission. After Morrissey threatened “to break every window on the project,” the company withdrew its bid. As punishment for the owner, the families decided to tax him $14 a window on all future contracts.

At Ruggiero’s Restaurant on June 5, 1989, Savino reported to Mangano that the Luccheses’ Gaspipe Casso and the Gambinos’ Peter Gotti wanted more loot from the contracts. Setting Savino straight, Mangano admonished him to remember that the Windows racket belonged primarily to the Genovese borgata. “It’s all ours. Nobody’s supposed to touch it,” Mangano said firmly.

It was one of his last face-to-face meetings with Mangano and other mafiosi. For almost two years, Savino had been on thinner ice than he realized with Gambino and Lucchese leaders. After the warehouse bodies were found in November 1987, the Gambinos’ Sammy the Bull Gravano told Mangano that the wisest course would be to kill Savino and not take a chance that he might betray them. “Sammy,” Benny Eggs replied, “I don’t like him myself but Chin loves him. We’re not going to be able to do nothing.”