Five Families: The Rise, Decline, and Resurgence of America's Most Powerful Mafia Empires (52 page)

Commiserating, Ruggiero said his uncle Neil Dellacroce, the Gambino underboss who was then alive, agreed with the Colombos. “Neil told me,” Ruggiero said, “he wanted to give it [the $50,000] to youse.”

Ruggiero assured Langella that Dellacroce, an old-fashioned, violence-loving
gangster, was equally dismayed at the Commission’s preoccupation with construction-industry rackets at the expense of other Mafia matters. “He’s disgusted with construction,” said Ruggiero. “He said, ‘They [the Commission] meet for construction.’ He said, ‘I can’t believe it. That’s all they talk about is money. Money, money, money.’”

The Concrete Club

T
he most compelling evidence of the Commission’s money-making prowess centered on the Concrete Club. At the trial, the jury got a clear picture of how the governors of three families and the slain Paul Castellano had ripped off at least $1.27 million from thirteen major building projects over a four-year period.

Prosecutors trotted out as witnesses two contractors who testified that they had been compelled to participate in the extortion scheme as the price for staying in business. “I don’t think I had much of a choice,” James Costigan, president of the XLO Concrete Corporation, said. He related that Ralph Scopo, the Colombo soldier and president of the concrete-workers’ union, approached him in 1981 with news that he would have to kick back to mobsters 2 percent of each gross contract that he was allowed to obtain. If Costigan defied the system, Scopo threatened him with unparalleled union miseries.

Asked by prosecutor John Savarese what the effect of the labor problems would have been on his company, Costigan answered, “Cost a lot of money, you know, to the point where you may as well not be in business.”

Scopo told the contractor that payoffs to the Cosa Nostra would be collected on all contracts over $2 million. “He said it was going into a pot and would be divided among the families.”

Seven companies were in the club, Costigan testified: “The people who controlled it made a decision on who got what job.” Costigan clarified that none of the companies suffered financially from the Mob’s scheme. Indeed, they profited from the plot. Like other concrete subcontractors, he added 4 percent to his bids and simply passed along the inflated costs to the developer or general contractor in charge of the overall project. (Analysts ultimately determined that the Mafia’s collaboration with corrupt contractors elevated actual overall concrete costs in the city from between 15 percent to 70 percent because all of the prearranged bids were grossly inflated.)

Scopo directed Costigan not to compete for contracts below $2 million, implying that the Mob bosses were not overly greedy. “Well, there was a lot of small contractors and he said they had to eat too.”

Backing up Costigan’s testimony, the prosecution played a recording made by a bug in Scopo’s Lincoln sedan. On the tape Scopo was heard rejecting a request by an insistent contractor, Sal D’Ambrosi, whose company was not in the Concrete Club.

S
COPO
: “The concrete’s gotta be twelve million.”

D’A
MBROSI
: “Yeah. Why can’t I do the concrete?”

S
COPO
: “You can’t do it. Over two million you can’t do it. It’s under two million, hey, me, I tell you go ahead and do it.”

D’A
MBROSI
: “Who do I gotta see? Tell me who I gotta go see?”

S
COPO
: “You gotta see every family. And they’re gonna tell you, no. So don’t even bother.”

D’Ambrosi persisted in determining what price he would have to pay if he were fortunate enough to be included in the club.

S
COPO
: “First of all the job costs you two points.”

D’A
MBROSI
: “Why two points?”

S
COPO
: “That’s what they pay. Anything over two million. All the guys in the club, got so much out, pay two points.”

D’A
MBROSI
: “Uh huh. Put two points into the job.”

S
COPO
: “That’s what I say, you gotta put it in ahead of time.”

Digging a deeper hole for himself in the taped conversation, Scopo informed D’Ambrosi that, on a project not covered by the club, he would have to cough up separate bribes to him for labor peace. It was a lesson for the jury on the fundamentals of corruption and exorbitant construction costs in New York.

S
COPO
: “You know, if I bring you a customer [a general contractor], twenty
yards [a concrete measurement], and I tell you, Sally, the concrete is $60 a yard, the guy’s gonna give you $63.”

D’A
MBROSI
: “Three’s yours.”

S
COPO
: “Three you gotta give me. What do you give a fuck?”

D’A
MBROSI
: “What do I give a fuck for.”

S
COPO
: “You’re getting your 60.”

D’A
MBROSI
: “That’s it. What the fuck is the problem?”

S
COPO
: “And meantime, I’m bringing you the customer.”

The FBI tapes illuminated the Commission’s power of life and death. Scopo admitted that he feared for his life should the Concrete Club come under investigation. Talking with Costigan, the XLO contractor, Scopo’s mind was on the fate of Roy DeMeo, the Gambino soldier and sadistic killer who was murdered after he was implicated in the Gambino family’s stolen-car network. Scopo described DeMeo as a strict enforcer with “cast-iron balls.” Nevertheless, he was whacked because one boss, Paul Castellano, decided without proof that DeMeo was no longer reliable. DeMeo’s fate alarmed Scopo, the Commission’s bagman.

S
COPO
: “Now I get indicted and they’re [the bosses] afraid. ‘Oh geez, we never knew that guy Jimmy Costigan.’ The only guy they got to worry about is me. If I open my mouth, they’re dead. So to kill the case—bango!”

C
OSTIGAN
: “Really?”

S
COPO
: “Yeah. Here I am all my life makin’ them make money. I’m takin’ the fuckin’ chances in the street. I’m willing to go to jail, never gonna open my mouth, but they’re not sure of that, see?”

Sounding grave, Scopo said that a corrupt carpenters’ union leader, Theodore Maritas, recently had been murdered after his involvement with the Mob was exposed and he was about to go on trial with Mafia codefendants. He reminded Costigan of Roy DeMeo’s frightening end.

S
COPO
: “And I mean, he was a tough guy, all right? Bein’ he got picked up, they figure, ‘Maybe this guy under pressure, he’ll rat.’ That’s bullshit. But not to take the chance, not knowin’ whether he would or not, they went and killed him. It’s just like what I’m doin’ now. Say this thing kinda blows up. I’ll be one of the first guys to get arrested.”

COSTIGAN: “Why?’

S
COPO
: “Because of this club shit. Now when that happens, no matter how much faith they got in you, there’s always that little bit. They say, ‘Oh, geez,
maybe he’ll open his fuckin’ mouth.’ And then you don’t see the guy no more.”

From the grave Paul Castellano contributed to the evidence against the live bosses. A Genovese soldier, Louis Giardina, a laborers’ union official, had visited Castellano’s Staten Island home in June 1983 to discuss interfamily business in the construction industry. Castellano dropped the names of several of the city’s largest general contractors who, he said, had personally promised him they would give lucrative subcontracting jobs to Mafia-controlled companies.

The FBI bug then recorded Castellano complaining that the Century-Maxim Company, a contractor in the Concrete Club, was bidding for contracts without the bosses’ permission.

C
ASTELLANO
: “YOU know the Century-Maxim outfit, Century-Maxim?”

G
IARDLNA
: “The concrete?”

C
ASTELLANO
: “Yeah. Been acting a little funny and so far, they’re not acting right. And they’re supposed to be with Gerry Lang [the Colombo acting boss] and so forth. They’re part of the club, part of it. They’re raiding everybody.”

G
IARDLNA
: “You never want that. It don’t make sense.”

C
ASTELLANO
: “It’s a pain in the ass. Isn’t it?”

G
IARDLNA
: “You would think they’d be big boys. Go according to some rules like, right?”

C
ASTELLANO
: “Well, we don’t know who the hell is causing it. You know, they can’t expect to do too much of the jobs. Too much work. There’s work to go around and then everybody can get a piece of it.”

G
IARDLNA
: “And if they cooperate, it’s gonna be good for everybody, you know, rather than creating confusion and everything else.”

C
ASTELLANO
: “Sure.”

Castellano’s concrete deals sometimes confused other gangsters. Fat Tony Salerno was concerned that he was getting cheated in December 1983 in a secret, three-way partnership with Castellano and Nicholas Auletta, the owner of record of a company that had been sold to Century-Maxim. Louis DiNapoli, a Genovese soldier who handled construction rackets for the family, tried vainly to chart for Salerno how a $200,000 illicit profit would be shared. Their talk was recorded in Salerno’s East Harlem headquarters.

D
INAPOLI
: “But it’s in other words like a payoff.”

S
ALERNO
: “Nah. But they still gotta give it. They give, they paying us off 200,000 down, at 20,000 a month.”

D
INAPOLI
: “Nicky [Auletta] only was entitled to a hundred.”

S
ALERNO
: “SO where’s the hundred?”

D
INAPOLI
: “Of that money. Yeah. Now out of the hundred, he gives fifty back to Paul. And fifty back to you. Credit to what he owes you.”

Still perplexed
, Salerno asked why he was not getting more cash. DiNapoli’s explanation that Auletta’s corporation had lost money in part of the transaction left Salerno even more confused.

D
INAPOLI
: “If’s the corporation that lost it, not just Nicky. The corporation. You own 25 percent of the corporation. And Paul owns 25 percent of the corporation, and Nicky owns 50 percent. So you split it up that way. You’re under the impression that you knock a hundred off.”

S
ALERNO
: “What he owes us.”

D
INAPOLI
: “NO, it’s only fifty comes off what he owes. That’s why I, that’s why I had to give you another twenty.”

While the high-finance economics lesson might have been abstruse to Salerno—and to the jury—the conversation nevertheless clearly showed his and Castellano’s complicity in illegal Concrete Club payoffs.

Some interfamily concrete transactions were far from harmonious. The Jaguar bugs bared the resentment in the top ranks of the Genovese and Lucchese families of Castellano’s schemes to produce money from construction companies and unions for himself.

The Luccheses’ Tony Ducks Corallo was eager to learn about new Mafia machinations he had not tried. On a Jaguar trip, Duck’s underboss, Tom Mix Santoro, outlined a $500,000 score by Castellano. Santoro described a meeting with “Fat Tony” Salerno and Vincent DiNapoli, another DiNapoli brother who specialized in construction extortions for the Genovese family. In discussing shake-downs with Salerno, Santoro had deliberately roiled Salerno by telling him about Castellano’s pocketing a huge amount from a concrete manufacturer, Certified Ready Mix. Santoro seemed pleased with himself as he described the
conversation
.

S
ANTORO
: “Now I went and steamed Fat Tony up. I says, ‘Hey, do you know Paul got one-half million for selling Certified?’ He looked at me, ‘What are you kidding?’ ‘Yeah,’ I says, ‘he got a half a million.’”

Santoro said that the irate “Fat Tony” Salerno called Vincent DiNapoli to his side, demanding to know, with “daggers in his eyes,” why he had not been clued in to the Certified sale. More important, why had he been excluded from a slice of the profit?

Then Santoro, instructing Sal Avellino on the finer points of Mafia protocol,
said Vincent DiNapoli had committed a grievous error by replying that he had thought Castellano’s plot had nothing to do with Salerno, his immediate overseer. “It’s not your fucking business to think,” Santoro said of DiNapoli’s response. “You tell him [Salerno]. And then it’s business for him to think, not you.”

Avellino had his own story to tell Ducks Corallo about Castellano’s acquisitive nature. He had accompanied Santoro to a rendezvous with Castellano and had overheard the Gambino boss whining that the leaders of a teamsters’ local had reduced his yearly payment from their labor-peace shakedowns with Gambino muscle support to $25,000 from $200,000.