Five Families: The Rise, Decline, and Resurgence of America's Most Powerful Mafia Empires (115 page)

Mulling over the tactics used by the government in high-echelon RICO cases, Massino returned from prison determined to avoid the mistakes that had struck down other dons. At forty-nine, there was a long tenure ahead of him if he could avoid the pitfalls of RICO. His first move to protect himself and to remodel the family was to close the gang’s social clubs; he considered them an open invitation to law enforcement for electronic eavesdropping and surveillance. An incentive for banning the traditional hangouts came shortly before his release. During Massino’s imprisonment, Vitale encouraged a central meeting place for members, a one-story building at the rear of an alley next to the Maspeth Public Library on Grand Avenue. Known as the “Grand Avenue Social
Club,” it was headquarters for capo Michael “Mickey Bat” Cardello. Vitale frequented the club and began holding large-scale weekly Tuesday feasts there for soldiers from all crews. He was, in fact, imitating Massino’s previous weekly get-togethers at the old J&S Club, where wiseguys had come to show their respect to Massino; now, they came to honor Vitale as Massino’s highest representative.

The festivities on Grand Avenue were spotted by the FBI, and agents planted a video camera and three bugs in the main room. Although careful inside the club, Cardello and soldiers spoke freely in the alley outside. Their walk-talk conversations were picked up by two bugs ingeniously hidden in the exterior walls and from a tap in a street public telephone booth that the mobsters considered a secure line. To Massino’s chagrin, the FBI operation, code-named “Grand Finale,” culminated in racketeering convictions of Cardello and seven soldiers and associates shortly before his parole.

Vitale, the FBI’s prime objective in Operation Grand Finale, escaped the FBI dragnet. Nevertheless, a fuming Massino excoriated Vitale for sponsoring mass gatherings at the Grand Avenue Club that encouraged FBI penetration and indictments.

Closing the clubs was the prelude to Massino’s security program. To insulate himself from potential informants and to evade direct implication in the family’s crimes, he decentralized the borgata’s structure, creating more secretive cells. A tight cadre of senior capos would each oversee a major activity without knowledge of anyone else’s affairs and reporting indirectly to him through Vitale. Despite the contretemps over the Grand Avenue Club debacle, he named Sal underboss, realizing that his help would be indispensable in running the borgata as long as he was himself on supervised release. Massino could be returned to prison anytime in the next two years to complete his sentence if he violated the conditions of his parole. One prohibition was consorting with known criminals and convicted mafiosi. Even though Vitale was suspected of being a made man, he had never been convicted of a Mob-related crime. As close relatives the two men could reasonably justify visiting each other at their homes and meeting at personal family dinners and social events without endangering Massino’s freedom. It was a discreet way of conferring without raising the hackles of the parole authorities and would complicate an FBI attempt to establish proof there was an illicit aspect to their association.

Upon returning to Queens in November 1992, Massino did preside at one celebratory session with all his capos in a hotel suite near John F Kennedy International
Airport. He used the occasion to assure the captains of their reappointments and to inform them that while on parole he would transmit orders to them through Vitale. Furthermore, they would continue to funnel cash tributes to him through his brother-in-law.

For added security, he pulled a leaf out of Vincent Chin Gigante’s play book, outlawing the use of his surname or his nicknames. Gigante’s Genovese battalions tapped or pointed to their chins when referring to him. Massino directed his underlings to touch or point to their ears instead of mentioning his name. Eventually, investigators unearthed Massino’s secret command and jokingly tagged him “the Ear.” Respectful gangsters in other families nicknamed him “Big Joe,” signifying his reputation as a Mafia luminary as well as his 350-pound weight.

Passing along the warning to capos about using Massino’s proper name, Vitale was emphatic: “We’re only as strong as our boss is to other bosses. We must protect Joe or the family will disintegrate.”

Another change ordained by Massino hinted at a touch of vanity. He decided that wiseguys should no longer consider themselves the “Bonanno” clan, the name that had cleaved to the organization for more than sixty years. Henceforth, it would be known among themselves as the Massino borgata. Massino claimed that expunging Joe Bonanno’s name was long overdue because his autobiography and television interviews had disgraced the family, exposed Cosa Nostra secrets, and helped convict Commission members in 1986. “Joe Bonanno disrespected the family by ratting,” Massino told Vitale. Massino’s ego allowed him to overlook the inconsistency of renaming the family in his honor while forbidding the use of his name in conversations.

The new don’s fixation with safety prompted him to alter the ritual for inducting members. Concerned that an FBI raid on a ceremony might uncover props for the oath of
omertà
—a saint’s card for burning and a knife or gun symbolizing loyalty to the family—he prohibited their use. Vitale, Spero, and capos were authorized to conduct a simplified ceremony after he approved the new member. Those officiating could “make” the recruit without drawing blood from a trigger finger or holding a flaming saint’s card. If agents burst in, the mafiosi could claim they were a group of friends playing cards or just spending a social evening together.

Another rigorous security test enforced by Massino was the requirement that a candidate for membership had to have had a working relationship with a made man for at least eight years. He believed it would ensure the reliability of
the new soldier and decrease the possibility of another infiltration by the likes of FBI Agent Joe Pistone.

Vitale supervised about twenty ceremonies in homes, stores, factories, and hotel rooms using a new procedure. All participants, the new and old soldiers, rose in a tie-in, a
ticada
, as Vitale intoned, “In the name of the Massino family, we are locked in a network, in secrecy. You’re reborn today. Today, you start your new life.” After his supervised release was lifted in 1995, Massino attended inductions and proudly informed the new soldiers of the family’s unique record among all of the nation’s borgatas as the only American clan that had never spawned a stool pigeon or cooperative government witness.

Massino tried to restrict the flow of information, even to capos, on “a need to know basis,” to prevent wider leaks if agents recruited informers or eavesdropped electronically on soldiers. Believing that danger lurked in depending upon the reliability of other families, he virtually banned participating in joint projects with them. He pulled a new capo, James Big Louie Tartaglione, off a major Mob committee; “We really have nothing to do with construction unions,” Massino said. Capo Anthony Graziano withdrew from the gasoline excise tax scams that generated millions of dollars. “Let’s forget it,” was Massino’s terse explanation.

He entwined his capos in specific areas of the family’s rackets to create loyal courtiers and security screens for himself. Each capo would have his own personal fortune at stake, an incentive for vigilance against investigative traps. He also pressured captains and soldiers to volunteer their sons as made men on the theory that they would be more knowledgeable about Cosa Nostra practices and steadfastly loyal. Massino thought by recruiting offspring and placing them in the fathers’ crews, the capos’ lips would be sealed to protect their sons—and himself. And crew commanders would know that if they became traitors, their sons would be endangered by internal retaliation, possibly death. Massino insured that a defector would have a lot to lose.

Meeting with other godfathers was another bugaboo for Massino. Photographs of dons entering and leaving conferences was excellent circumstantial evidence in the Commission case, and he had no intention of being trapped by cameras. After the Commission convictions, high-powered gatherings were held infrequently, and he sent Vitale or Spero as his understudies.

His long friendship and admiration for John Gotti deteriorated. Gotti’s life term in prison began just as Massino’s incarceration ended. The newly crowned boss had learned from the Gambino chief’s downfall that notoriety only inflamed law enforcement. In a heart-to-heart talk with Vitale, he critiqued
Gotti’s flaws, censuring him for violating Cosa Nostra codes and riveting public attention on their previously secret society. “He broke every rule in the book. John destroyed this life. John set us back one hundred years and what he did to Paulie [the murder of boss Paul Castellano] I would never have done.” When Gotti died, Massino boycotted his wake and funeral.

Unlike Gotti, Joe Massino preferred anonymity. He wanted to be unknown, his face kept off television news shows and his identity and photograph never emblazoned in newspapers. For that reason, he shunned most Cosa Nostra social events, the wakes, funerals, weddings, and baptismal celebrations of members of his own borgata and hierarchs in other gangs. Avoiding the prying eyes and cameras of investigators, he sent deputies to these Mob events only when respect for Mafia traditions had to be observed.

Up to date on technology, Massino banned the use of mobile phones for Mob matters. He knew that such phones could be monitored as easily as land-line telephones. Listening in, law enforcement might identify previously unknown soldiers and gauge the borgata’s true strength. He also believed that tiny mobile phones had been employed by the FBI to conceal bugs carried by informers trying to infiltrate the families.

All members were advised to emulate his courtesy when encountering lawmen. From now on, they would act like charm-school graduates, even when badgered by agents and detectives. They could remain reticent, but he disliked belligerent back talk that might incite aggressive investigations.

If a member got into a legal scrape, Massino’s regime was ready to lend support. He instituted a war chest, requiring each soldier and capo to kick in $100 a month, and he controlled the fund. As long as an arrest resulted from a borgata-related crime, the family would pay the member’s full legal expenses. Collecting the compulsory tax from his crew, Frank Lino observed, “If you have a problem, the boss will help you.” Over the years, Massino doled out as much as $150,000 in one criminal case alone.

The Bonannos had always cultivated international Mafia ties, and Massino reestablished a close relationship with the Zips, the Sicilian-born faction in the family, whose specialty was narcotics trafficking. He had brought important Zips from New York and Canada into the Rastelli camp in 1981 to help wipe out the three rebel capos, and he intended to use them again as a secret army, largely unknown to the New York law-enforcement authorities. The family’s Zip crew of some twenty soldiers in Montreal, led by Gerlando George-from-Canada Sciascia and Vito Rizzuto, enthusiastically endorsed Massino’s ascension.

Rumors that Massino had been installed as a boss were picked up by the FBI. In early 1993, shortly after Massino’s exit from prison, Lynn DeVecchio, then the head of the bureau’s Colombo-Bonanno Squad, and Jack Stubing, his Bonanno expert, paid an unannounced call on Massino at his two-story white colonnaded house in Howard Beach. Opening the front door, Massino kept the agents outside. Stubing knew Massino was too well schooled to allow them to subtly reconnoiter the interior for a spot to plant a bug.

DeVecchio liked to play “head games,” chatting up mafiosi to personally evaluate them and see how they reacted to pressure. There was always the possibility that one of them might slip up and accidentally reveal valuable information. It was also a longshot method of establishing rapport that could pay off if a mobster got into trouble, wanted to cooperate, and needed an FBI contact.

Besides sizing up Massino, the agents’ primary purpose for visiting him was to relay a warning to Lefty Guns Ruggiero, the wiseguy who, fifteen years earlier, had been duped by Joe Pistone. The bureau was sure Massino had once tried to whack Ruggiero for his incompetence, but that Lefty Guns had been forgiven and was about to be released from a prison stretch caused by Pistone’s evidence. DeVecchio and Stubing advised Massino to warn Ruggiero against retaliating against Pistone or his kin when he returned to Mob life. “Nothing is going to happen, you can sleep on it,” Massino said with assurance, in effect confirming that he was in control of the borgata.

Bantering with the agents, Massino apologized to Stubing for having shaken him during a recent car surveillance. It was accidental, he said, not a deliberate dodge, caused by an abrupt turn because he had driven past the spot where he wanted to drop off his wife.

Driving back to their office, the agents knew Massino’s pride was at work in demonstrating that he was the equal of the elite FBI. “That guy has a fantastic, encyclopedic memory for cars, license-plate numbers, and anyone who has ever tailed him,” DeVecchio commented to Stubing. “He may be cordial and from the old school, but he sure does enjoy showing off how smart and careful he is.”

To qualify for parole, Massino had to show a source of legitimate income. He maintained that his chief employment was as a consultant for King Caterers, a Farmingdale, Long Island, company that prepared hot dishes and snacks for roach coach vendors, some of whom, of course, handled bookmaking and loan-sharking
as sidelines. Sal Vitale also was listed as having similar employment at the suburban food-preparation plant.

The brothers-in-law had landed their jobs in 1984 when the owners, knowing of the mobster duo’s reputation, secretly solicited their help. A Lucchese soldier, Carmine Avellino, owned a similar catering establishment nearby and wanted to take over their successful business. Joe and Sal intervened by putting King Caterers under “protection,” preventing further harassment from Avellino, who was heavily outranked by the Bonanno bigwigs. Laundering the payoffs, Joe and Sal created a shell company, Queens Catering, which received one bonus of $300,000 in return for an investment of $50,000, and a monthly fee of $17,500 from King Caterers. While Massino was in prison, Vitale passed along Joe’s share to his wife.