The Butcher (12 page)

I
t didn't take long for Jim and Tommy Geisel to again cop from Judy Haimowitz. Angelo was with them. Angelo, again, could not set up a meeting with Pitera. Still, Jim and Tommy felt that what they were doing was now slowly and methodically building a case that would ultimately end in the arrest of not only Pitera but the people he worked with, his minions, and the people he worked for, his bosses. This time Judy Haimowitz was more relaxed. She readily handed over the drugs. She asked them if they'd like to do a toot. They declined. Here, now, was a very slippery road. Dealers liked to see their customers get high in front of them. Cops, for the most part, would not use drugs. Jim and Tommy had been in this position before. They had a pat answer, viable and ready.

“We got serious business later and can't party right now,” Jim said.

“Okay, next time,” Judy said.

With that, Jim and Angelo and Tommy were soon back outside. Angelo promised he would arrange for them to meet Tommy. He seemed sincere, though his words did not ring true to the seasoned agents.

Jim and Tommy and backup agents from Group 33 began surveil
lance of Tommy Karate Pitera's bar, the Just Us Bar. They quickly noticed that it wasn't a crowded, loud place. It was a quiet neighborhood bar on a residential street in the heart of Gravesend, Brooklyn, more like a social club than a public bar. Curious, wanting to know themselves what was going on inside the Just Us Bar, Jim and Tom made it their business to learn as much about the bar and Tommy Pitera as possible.

What Pitera had done, somewhat comically—when a civilian came into the bar—was charge exorbitant prices for a drink or beer. Pitera really meant this place was
just for them,
thus his calling the bar the Just Us. What the bar was all about was creating a hangout for Pitera and his crew, his customer base—anybody in La Cosa Nostra. It was the squares, the “civvies” as they called them, they wanted to keep out. The patrons who did enter the bar were rough and talked like they were right out of central casting for a mob movie.

Interestingly, it wasn't only men who hung out there. So-called guidos—Cadillac-driving, pinkie-ring-and-gold-chain-with-medallion-wearing, blow-dryer-using, Sergio Tacchini sweatsuit-clad men—hung out here. But there were also women who came into the bar, women who belonged, women who were part of the culture of Bensonhurst and Gravesend—guidettes. These women spoke the same vernacular as the men. For them, made men were very appealing. They had money and were oversexed. The women unapologetically teased their hair and wore five-inch heels with pants so tight it looked as though the seams would burst at any moment. Their makeup was overt and in-your-face, their eyeliner caked on, their lip liner mismatched to their lipstick. Their nails were fake, airbrushed, and ridiculously long. For these women to date or even marry a made man, a lieutenant, a captain, was a goal in life. No matter how you cut it, mob guys, mafiosi, had money to burn. One of the places they most liked to spend money was on women, lavishly and without reservation.

As Jim and Tommy observed the bar, learned about its rhythm and pace, they saw these women, heard them talk, and were…amused.
They appreciated them for who they were. They didn't necessarily judge them or make fun of them, but they thought they were comical and harmless, which, for the most part, was true. However, tragedy, sudden and amazingly violent, could strike these women at any time. By becoming involved with mafiosi, they were entering a world where, at a moment's notice, they, their boyfriend, or husband could be murdered.

Murder was as intricate a part of that life as silk socks and diamond pinkie rings. If any woman was in the wrong place at the wrong time, she could get killed. If she did something excessively disrespectful, she could get killed. For the most part, the mob did not kill women. But still, when tempers flared and bullets flew, anyone could die.

One weekday evening, while Jim and Tom observed from a car across the street, Pitera walked into the bar. Jim and Tommy had seen photos of him and he was very easy to discern. His face was white like chalk, stern and stoic. He had receding straight black hair. Even in the dim light of Avenue S, they could see his eyes, a piercing blue. They stood out on his face like headlights. It was obvious he was an athletic man, wide-shouldered and muscular, well coordinated and comfortable in his own skin.

Tommy and Jim viewed Pitera only as part of something larger. It was the something larger they were after: not only the heads of the Bonanno crime family but the other heads as well. They knew, for instance, that many of the captains in the Gambino family were moving drugs. They knew, too, that John Gotti's brother Gene was a drug dealer. They knew that Gambino captain Eddie Lino was a drug dealer. They knew that they all worked together, hand in hand, that they were all part of a large, tightly woven cabal. What Tom and Jim were after, the reason they were sitting there, was to gather irrefutable evidence that would hold up in a court of law, against the blistering scrutiny of mean-spirited defense attorneys.

They, Jim and Tom, were consummate professionals. They were not in a hurry. They would put in as much time as necessary, unlike
the case in most law enforcement outfits, where everyone was in a hurry, everyone was looking for headlines, everyone was looking for the positive publicity that goes along with a big bust. Crime fighting was political. The more accolades any given agency received, the more funding they were given, the more respect they received. The DEA, however, was more about working cases patiently and professionally until they came to true fruition. Not only did this work well as a matter of policy, but when they did move, when they did make arrests, the arrests stuck. Bad guys went to jail. That's what they were after, getting bad guys off the street once and for all.

Both Jim and Tommy could sense in their bones that something substantial was happening here. Yet, still, they had no idea just how diabolical and dangerous and what a menace Tommy Pitera really was.

Pitera and a few other men exited the bar and hung out in front of it. They smoked cigarettes, talked quietly among themselves. At one point, Pitera seemed to stare across the street, stare at the Cadillac in which Jim and Tommy were sitting. It was as though he knew cops were in the car, though he did not know if it was the FBI, NYPD Organized Crime Unit, or the DEA. Whoever they were, he wanted to defy them, treat them as though he knew who they were and why they were there, and almost dare them to do something.

T
ommy Pitera was married to his childhood sweetheart, Carol Boguski. Carol was somewhat typical of a Bensonhurst/Gravesend girl. She had the walk, talk, dress. When Tommy first met her, he was a far different person than he was now. As often happens with couples, one of the pair, for a host of reasons, outgrows the other. Tommy considered himself now more sophisticated, worldly, a man of respect. He had a child with Carol—Charles. Though Tommy and Carol were not living together anymore, did not see each other much, Tommy did everything he should for her and his son—provided what they needed in every way he could. He paid their rent, bought clothes, food, whatever else they needed. Generally speaking, Tommy showed tremendous deference toward women.

Now it was the mid-eighties, and he was deeply involved with a Brooklyn girl named Celeste LiPari. Celeste was attractive. She had a triangular-shaped face, pronounced cheekbones, a narrow, delicate chin and a high, broad forehead. She had large dark eyes, full lips, a perfect figure—small waist, curved hips, full breasts. As attractive as she was, Celeste sounded like a rough, tough truck driver when she talked. She, perhaps more than even Tommy, wanted to be a gangster, comported herself like a gangster. Her Brooklyn accent was excessive. She talked out of the side of her pretty mouth.

For Tommy Pitera, Celeste was perfect. He worshipped the ground she walked on. Everything about her was right for him except one thing: her drug use. She was not an occasional, weekend user. She was one of those people who had “an addictive personality” and she regularly used both cocaine and heroin. It got so that the two of them fought over her drug abuse. He swore he would leave her; she promised she'd stop. It went on like this for month after month. Now he was getting fed up; now he was getting desperate. The difficulty for him was that he loved the woman and that was a big problem. It went beyond their relationship. He was a bona fide member of the Bonanno family. Having a girl like her, going around and snorting cocaine and partying, undermined his credibility as a man.
If you can't control your woman, you can't control your business.

He sat her down. He looked her in the eyes and explained the situation. He grabbed her by the shoulders and implored her to stop. She promised she would. The next week it would be the same thing. Unless she towed the line, he was afraid that sooner or later this could end in tragedy. He was careful to keep his business away from her, but she knew things about what he did, about who he was, and she was becoming a liability.

He came to realize that one of the problems was—Phyllis Burdi.

Phyllis was a Brooklyn girl, raised on its mean streets, and she, too, was a drug abuser who, like Celeste, used cocaine and heroin excessively. Phyllis came from a family of five who lived on Bay Thirty-fifth Street in Bensonhurst. They were a large, loud clan and most people on the block shunned them. Phyllis, by far, was the prettiest one. Like Celeste, she was strikingly attractive. She looked very much like a young Cindy Crawford, though a Cindy Crawford who had been up for a couple of nights on a drug binge. There were circles under her eyes, her skin was mealy, and her hair, for the most part, looked like she had just crawled out of bed. The most striking feature Phyllis had was her smile. It was a particularly beautiful smile that went from ear to ear and exposed large, square white teeth. Her lower lip was full
and curved into a natural pout. Phyllis had an abundance of street smarts and knew her way around Brooklyn as well as she knew her way around her small, dingy one-bedroom apartment on West Fifth Street. Some say that Phyllis was a prostitute, that she sold her sex for clothes and for money and for drugs. There are people who say she prostituted herself on Coney Island when on a drug binge—a place where the disenfranchised of society go to party, for sex and drugs. Here, the blue collar let their hair down.

Phyllis was not a prostitute. What she was about was doing what needed to be done to make ends meet, whatever it was. She liked wiseguys and wiseguys liked her right back. She had relationships, intimate, intense sexual relationships, with a long list of important mafiosi. One of her lovers was none other than Eddie Lino, the feared Gambino war captain—cousin of Frankie Lino, Tommy Pitera's boss.

It was no secret that Eddie Lino was deeply immersed in drugs. Phyllis told people that he gave her whatever she wanted, ounces at a time. Eddie Lino was only one of a dozen seriously connected men with whom Phyllis was having sex. She was that attractive. When goodfellas were around Phyllis, it was like bees around spring flowers. When she was dressed and well put together, she looked like a striking model who had just stepped off the pages of the latest
Vogue.
Everything about her worked. Her small, perfectly round breasts, the perfect bubble that was her derriere.

It didn't take long for Tommy Pitera to learn that Phyllis was providing drugs to his beloved Celeste. When he first heard this, he knew he had to be careful. He was aware that Phyllis knew a lot of powerful men; he, like everyone else, knew she was having an affair with Eddie Lino. Eddie Lino and Pitera were close. Pitera knew that if he went to Eddie and asked for his help in this matter, he'd get it, but it was a very delicate situation. This was about Pitera keeping his own house clean. He didn't want to hang his dirty laundry out for public consumption. Plus he had endless respect for Eddie Lino. He viewed Eddie as
the
dark prince of dark princes. He aspired to be like Eddie.

Taking that into consideration, Pitera wondered how he could go to Eddie and ask for his help in this matter. He would, he decided, be diplomatic. Pitera looked for Phyllis for several days and then finally ran into her at an after-hours club. By now, all throughout Mafiadom, Pitera was known as a killer; it was rumored that he was butchering people, cutting them up after murdering them. He was notorious in the world of the notorious. Though Phyllis knew she had friends in high places, she also knew she had to take Pitera very seriously.

He took her outside, and leaning against a red-brick wall, speaking in his high-pitched voice, he said, “Phyllis, I have a problem and I need your help. Celeste is out of control. I don't want her using drugs. But I—listen to me—I'm not blaming you for anything; I'm not saying you did anything. What I'm saying is that she can't control herself and I'd really appreciate it if you made sure not to give her any drugs—ever. She has a couple of toots, she starts drinking, and next she's using heroin. I'd really appreciate this.”

Phyllis was somewhat surprised that Pitera was being so nice. That was the only word to describe his tone and pitch.

“I've never given her any drugs; we've gotten high together, but I'll make sure to never turn her on,” she replied.

He stared at her. Having Tommy Pitera stare at you with those ice-blue eyes of his was unsettling, to say the least. He nodded. They shook hands. With that handshake and with his eyes, he warned her that it could become dangerous, that he absolutely, positively did not want Celeste using drugs, did NOT want Phyllis to give her any drugs!

F
rank Gangi was six foot three, thin, and wiry. When he walked around Brooklyn, he looked like a scarecrow that had stepped off his pedestal and was moving about. He had a large, oval-shaped face. He was a chain-smoker, and when he laughed, phlegm readily bubbled in his lungs and he coughed. He did not have the demeanor, the features, or the carriage of a predatory animal. When you looked at Gangi, you thought more of a cook working in a busy kitchen, a friendly grocery-store clerk, or, perhaps, the local pizza man, not a killer, certainly not a Mafia associate.

However, Frank Gangi was a dedicated drug dealer, had been charged with murder, though he was acquitted. He was associated with the Bonanno crime family and he came from a culture of mafiosi. His father, uncles, and cousins were associates in the Bonanno and Genovese families. His uncle was Angelo Prezzanzano, a respected capo in the Bonanno family. His father, Frank Gangi Sr., was also an associate of the Bonanno family and had dealt in drugs. His cousin Rosario “Ross.” Gangi was a highly respected captain in the Genovese family.

Frank Gangi was one of those individuals who existed on the periphery of Mafiadom. He was the proverbial three-time loser. Whether it was a combination of bad luck, bad timing, being ill informed, or
abusing drugs was all up for debate. Suffice it to say, Frank Gangi would become one of the most important players in the life and times and crimes of Tommy Karate Pitera. Certainly a large part of Frank's difficulties in life stemmed from the fact that his father had spent three years in prison, from when Frank was five until he was eight. Without his father, the boy's feeling of isolation from his family and from society at large was amplified. His mother, Margaret, had a male child from a previous marriage and she openly and without question preferred her first boy to Frank. To further muddy the waters of his turbulent life, Frank's father was murdered when Frank was nine years old. He was killed in a mob-related incident that involved Sicilian hit men being brought down from Canada to kill Frankie Tuminaro and the senior Gangi. With the loss of his father, Frank Gangi withdrew further and further into himself. Whatever problems the young boy had were magnified. He was destined for trouble with the law, society, and especially those of his own kind. He would become a pariah from not only the Mafia but his own family as well. He would become a man with no country.

Though Frank Gangi was an average-looking man, women were drawn to him in a big way. He was tall and well put together. He had the golden gift of gab and was easy to warm to. He was not threatening. He seemed sincere and would readily offer to help if he could. Unlike many of the connected men that come from Bensonhurst and Gravesend, Frank Gangi was not a natural-born killer; it seemed that he was born in the wrong place at the wrong time.

When he was in his early twenties, Gangi had a marijuana business. With his two partners, Billy Bright and Arthur Guvenaro, he sold hundreds of pounds of pot every week, happily filling the need for marijuana in Brooklyn and the tristate area. Arthur Guvenaro was a freebase head and began stealing from Bright and Gangi. They realized what he was doing and made up their minds to kill him. The night of the murder, April 27, 1985, Bright and Gangi lured Guvenaro to their stash house near Stillwell Avenue in Gravesend and began freebasing
with him. When Bright and Gangi finally pulled out guns, they were so stoned, they were inefficient, and their minds so fogged by the drugs that they bungled the murder. Still, the two aimed and shot Guvenaro. After Guvenaro was shot several times, he dove through a large bay window, rolled onto the street, and, miraculously, took off with
incredible
speed, bullets lodged in his upper back as well as the back of his head. When he reached the corner, he dropped. A police car rolled up to him. His dying words were, “Frank Gangi and Billy Bright did this to me.”

Gangi and Billy Bright were quickly arrested.

Shockingly, when the case went to trial, they were acquitted. Their lawyer convinced the jury that Guvenaro was the bad guy, that he pulled out a gun and had started shooting at them, and they were just defending themselves. Because there was no one to contradict them on the stand, the jury found them not guilty. They were, however, found guilty of possession of a gun. For the gun charge, they were each sentenced to a year in prison.

In the spring of 1986, Frank Gangi emerged from jail. He had little money, little resources, and was looking for something to do. He was a friend of Judy Haimowitz's and she suggested he go see Tommy Pitera. She said that Pitera had a lot going on and could, perhaps, help set him up.

When Frank Gangi first met Tommy Pitera in the Just Us Bar in 1986, Gangi was taken aback by Pitera's voice. Those who knew Pitera knew the sound his voice made coming out of his mouth and readily accepted it. However, Frank Gangi was hearing it for the first time, and couldn't help but think of Mickey Mouse or, worse yet, Minnie Mouse. Here was this ruthless killer, with a reputation that far preceded him, talking like a cartoon character. The comedy of it was not lost on Gangi. In that Gangi had this outgoing, gregarious personality, it was easy for him to get Tommy to warm to him. After the two of them had talked awhile, Tommy said, “What can I do for you? What are you here for?”

In a vague sense, Gangi talked about borrowing money.

“Hold on a second. I'm not a shylock. That's not what I do,” Pitera said.

“I'm sorry. I thought maybe you could help me tide things over until I can get something going.”

“No,” Pitera said. “I don't loan money. But maybe there are other things we can do together.”

Pitera already knew who Frank Gangi was. He knew his family was all mobbed up; that Frank had previously sold large amounts of marijuana; that he had murdered Arthur Guvenaro with Billy Bright. These were the best credentials Gangi could have had. Pitera knew he was an amiable guy who had come up the hard way, who came from the nearby streets, and he immediately viewed Gangi as a potential member of his world. Likewise, Frank Gangi had heard all about Pitera and was open to becoming involved with him and working with him. Pitera arranged for Gangi to be fronted weight in cocaine and heroin and even marijuana. With his reputation and former connections and outgoing personality, Gangi was able to quickly make money for not only himself, but Tommy Pitera, too. Like this, little by little, over the weeks and months, Frank Gangi became a trusted confidant of Tommy Pitera's.

Pitera also hooked Gangi up with an Israeli coke dealer who was one of several sources Pitera had outside the Bonanno family. His name was Shlomo Mendelsohn. A rough-around-the-edges, military-trained Israeli, Shlomo was part of a drug-dealing cartel that consisted of all Israelis. They were arrogant, tough, independent, and well connected. Because Pitera liked to stay as far away from the drugs as possible, it was not unusual for him to have underlings meet people, pick up the drugs, and distribute them appropriately. Knowing that Gangi was working for Pitera, Shlomo pretty much gave him whatever he asked for on consignment. Suddenly Gangi was no longer a Mafia wannabe. Thanks to Pitera, he was up and running and in the game again, though Frank Gangi still had a problem that would come back and shake the very foundation of the Bonanno crime family.