Made Men (30 page)

pinkie rings. One guy had on a black leather knee-length jacket perfect for hiding large-caliber weaponry. A gaggle of gindalettes screamed out in unison, “Vinneeeeee!!” from the balcony as “The September of My Years” played loudly off ornate art deco walls the color of gold and bronze.

“When I was twenty-one,” Frank Sinatra sang, “it was a very good year.”
All the cast members of the TV show were present, dressed in expensive suits and evening gowns, looking just like they did on TV except shorter. The only one who seemed not to fit in was the guitarist-turned-actor, Steven Van Zandt. He strolled toward his reserved seat wearing his usual bandanna and a black leather jacket and waved to the crowd. The crowd cheered.
In a middle seat, Robert Funaro sat with his brother-inlaw watching in awe. Robert had snagged a job playing Eugene, an associate who works with the character Ralphie in controlling the carting industry in New Jersey. He was a tall, bulked-up guy with blue-black hair, wearing a light suit with dark shirt and tie. For the crowd assembled, this was very conservative attire. Nevertheless he had the look. The look was hard to describe. You knew it when you saw it. It was partly in the walk and partly in the talk. In Robert Funaro’s case, it was also in the childhood.
He had grown up in Bensonhurst and knew both made guys and wannabes. He was working booking acts at Caroline’s Comedy Club in Manhattan when James Gandolfini, the star of the TV show who pretends to be a Mafia boss, came in and suggested he audition for the show. At Caroline’s, he’d booked Goomba Johnnie. “I don’t know him by any other name,” Funaro said. “He had a date that he had to cancel once because of that problem.”
Goomba Johnnie was actually John Anthony Sialiano. That problem was Sialiano’s arrest in January 1998. At the time Sialiano was living a rather colorful life. He was handling the morning-drive time slot at WKTU-FM in New Jersey, where he cultivated his wannabe gangster shtick as Goomba Johnnie. Goomba Johnnie had come to realize that gangsters can be funny guys. He was trying to break into comedy, and was working on a TV show with his partner, Sean (Hollywood) Hamilton, dubbed
Let’s Get Stupid.
He had also been a bodyguard and bouncer at strip clubs around New York for years, including a club called Scores in midtown Manhattan. There, it was alleged, he got involved in extorting the owners for the Gambino crime family. He was indicted with John A. (Junior) Gotti and others on charges of pocketing $230,000 from shaking down Scores and gambling. The day after his arrest, Goomba’s legitimate employer, WKTU-FM, issued this unusual statement: “John is an exemplary employee. The matter being investigated is related to a second job.”
At Caroline’s Comedy Club, where Robert Funaro booked the acts, Goomba Johnnie had to cancel at the last minute due to indictment. Some of his Goomba buddies showed up anyway, demanding to know where their paisan was.
“There’s guys who talk about it and guys who don’t talk about it. The guys who talk about it, you know they’re not the real thing. These guys come in the night Goomba Johnnie didn’t show. Some of these guys showed up, saying ‘Where’s Goomba Johnnie?’ They had the rings on, the suits, the whole thing. They weren’t the real deal.”
Now Robert Funaro sat in Radio City Music Hall, surrounded by anything but the real deal. There were pretend capos sitting next to pretend soldiers hanging out with pretend associates commenting on the pretend boss. Funaro prepared to watch himself on a giant movie screen pretending to be a gangster. He described his role cryptically, the way a real gangster might describe his. “I’m going to play Eugene and I’m going to be working my way in to the family more and more,” he said. “I can’t really talk about it.”
The room went dark and two episodes of the TV show played on Radio City’s huge screen. When it was over Funaro stayed to see his name in the credits for one last time. Some guy called out, “We love you, Paulie!” and Tony Sirico, the actor who plays Paulie Walnuts, waved to his unseen fan. Slowly they filed out into the frigid night air, walking a few blocks to the big party for cast members and their guests that would surely resemble a scene from a Staten Island wedding.

prosecutor from the Eastern Disrict of New York in Brooklyn. He had specialized in prosecuting gangsters—not defending them. He could not be called a “mob lawyer.” He was, instead, a negotiator. This is an attorney who is known to accept clients who are willing to cooperate with the federal government. When a gangster hires a negotiator, it’s clear right away he’s at least thinking about going over to the other side.

In Vinny Ocean’s case, the process of becoming an informant could certainly not be called, as it often is, “flipping.” Flipping implies fast action.

For months Vinny Ocean sat down with O’Connell and prosecutors Hillebrecht and Korologos and the FBI, working to come up with a deal in which he would plead guilty to some of the crimes he committed, but not all, so that he would not have to go to jail forever. His major concern was to get a prison term that would allow him to spend as much time as possible with his three younger children, even if they did have a new last name.

That was the implication. If he decided to become an informant, his family would have to go into the Witness Security Program—Witsec. This would mean that his two youngest children would suddenly disappear from their Catholic high schools and never see their friends again. The daughter at Fordham would have to quit and enroll elsewhere. The United States marshals would arrange to have new transcripts made up to reflect lives lived elsewhere in the country so nobody could trace them back to New York. They would be given new social-security numbers, new birth certificates, new names. They would be told it was not wise to contact relatives. Vinny’s son from his first marriage, Michael, had just had his first child— Vinny’s first grandchild. Vinny would not be able to see his new grandchild, at least for a long, long time. The entire family would relocate to another neighborhood in another part of the country where they knew no one and where they could blend in. They would drive down unfamiliar streets and receive mail addressed to unfamiliar people. The Palermos would cease to exist.

The alternative was simple. Vinny Ocean could go to trial and watch the faces of jurors as the FBI played tape after tape after tape. Although he was not on many of the tapes, some of his trusted soldiers had had quite a lot to say. Between Joey O Masella’s ghostly voice and the nonstop color commentary of Tin Ear Sclafani, Vinny would certainly face a tough audience.

He knew what he had to do. In the late summer of 2000, he agreed in principle to plead guilty to shooting Fred Weiss, as well as to his participation in the John D’Amato murder. And there was more.

Vinny Ocean told the FBI about the murder of Fat Lou LaRasso, a holdover from the days of Sam the Plumber, whom John Riggi had decided was a “subversive threat” to his leadership. In late 1991, Palermo and Capo participated in the decision to have LaRasso killed. His enormous body was found stuffed in the trunk of a car parked at Kennedy International Airport in Queens a short while later.

Vinny Ocean talked about attempts. There was the Big Ears Charlie Majuri matter, and the Frank D’Amato matter, and the aborted attempts to kill Thomas Salvata, his manager at Wiggles. Tommy had a bad heart and it was felt he would become an informant, so a decision was made to kill him. The same was true for Frankie the Beast Scarabino, for whom a hole was dug but never filled somewhere in New Jersey.

There was only one small concession. Vinny Ocean had been charged in the murder of Joey O Masella, his longtime driver and the guy who once made him laugh. The FBI was no longer convinced that Vinny had anything to do with Joey O’s death. If anything, it was an act of omission. It was thought that when Vinny told Joey O he would have to kill him and Joey O told everyone else, the end of Joey O came to be. The FBI came to agree that the allegations that Vinny Ocean deliberately and willfully ordered Joey O’s death—the worst charge in the indictment, the death-penalty charge—were based on purely circumstantial evidence. The Joey O murder charge was dropped.

Vinny began to tell them everything he knew, starting back in 1965 when he first became a made man in the DeCavalcante crime family. He told them about other crimes involving other people. He implicated just about everybody else in the crime family of his mentor, Sam the Plumber, three years in the grave. He started with the boss, John Riggi, and worked his way down and back in time.

One after another, the members and associates of Sam the Plumber’s legacy fell. On the day in December 1999 when the FBI found Vinny Ocean at Long Beach with his bags packed, they had arrested him, an acting boss, along with two captains, three soldiers, and a busload of socalled associates—guys who hang around but are not made guys. Guys with names like Joey Cars and The Kid. Despite the press conference and the parade of officials, the first arrest was in a larger sense a minor event. It made the TV that night but barely registered in the next morning’s papers. It hardly marked the end of the DeCavalcante family. There were, the FBI estimated, seventy members of the group, including the boss of the family, two other acting bosses, a consigliere, a half-dozen more captains, and a score of soldiers, all still on the street. They were now well aware that their organization was under siege, which meant that they would likely stop talking about their criminal activities except in the most cryptic manner possible. They were on notice, so they would now be far more difficult to arrest. Probable cause would all but disappear. Ralphie the informant—a lifelong resident of New York City—was now out of town for the first time in his life and unavailable for future government work. The game was over.