The Coffey Files (32 page)

When Goldstock took over the task force he refused to be part of a “political toy.” He began to assemble a cast of first-class investigators with backgrounds in pursuing organized crime. By 1985 when Coffey came aboard, it was the only unit in the state, except for the gang Coffey had assembled in the NYPD, with the specific mission of investigating organized crime. With Goldstock's expert leadership and investigators like the ones who planted the bug in Sal Avellino's Jaguar, the task force made itself a significant part of organized crime cases from Buffalo to Brooklyn.

Joe was determined to start fresh. No cynicism, no sarcasm would find its way out of his mouth. Sitting with Gold-stock that first morning on the new job, he was filled in on the major investigation the task force had going at the time. They were deeply engaged in trying to prove that organized crime controlled the carpenters' union in New York City. The reason it cost 40 percent more to build something in New York than anywhere else in the country, Goldstock theorized, was that tribute had to be paid to the Mafia on almost every construction and renovation site in the five boroughs. The first indictments against Castellano, which included charges that the Gambino family operated a “club” that extorted construction companies and extracted a “tax” on everything from demolition contracts to laborers' jobs, barely touched the surface of the overall problem. Coffey was assigned as the coordinator of the construction industry investigation.

He would be working with Eddie Wright, another old friend from Hogan's office. Wright was the detective whose badge was stolen fourteen years earlier as he helped lead Joe Frazier from the ring the night Coffey and the guys from the DA's office protected the heavyweight against death threats.

Coffey quickly caught up on old times with Wright, and was beginning to feel at home once again. Goldstock had given him a new gang to work with, and these guys knew what they were doing. He had known for years that the Mafia controlled New York's construction industry. “Maybe,” Coffey thought, “I can still hurt them, even if my office is twenty miles outside the city limits.”

Wright had some good news right away. He explained that one of the task force's expert lock pickers had broken into the Bergin Hunt and Fish Club in Howard Beach, Queens, and a “bug” had been installed in the ceiling.

Throughout his career Coffey marveled at the work of the cops who were better burglars than the mob. They consistently were able to break into and enter Mafia sanctuaries, even the kitchen of Paul Castellano's mansion, to place bugs. The bug in Jimmy's Lounge was crucial to the Vatican case, the bug in the Jaguar had become a legendary feat, and the one in the Palma Boys Social Club had almost cost Coffey his own career. He liked to tell reporters about how cheap the Mafia was. They never had twenty-four-hour security on the hangouts and never spent money on burglar alarms.

The Bergin Hunt and Fish Club, not incidentally, was the headquarters of a Gambino capo named John Gotti who was thought to be behind the mob's efforts to take control of unions with heavy membership among plumbers and carpenters.

By the end of 1985, Joe was busy with major investigations into Carpenter's Local Union No. 257 on East 25th Street in Manhattan, which had a predominantly Italian membership, and No. 608 on West 51st Street, the heart of Westie territory, which had predominantly Irish membership.

He continued to maintain an interest in the two major indictments against Castellano and the rest of the godfathers. Giuliani's office was busy preparing for trials, and Joe was often called into Manhattan to consult with the assistant U.S. attorneys. So his fears of being banished to the suburbs were pretty much behind him. He was spending as much time in the Dirty Apple as he always had.

One day in November he ran into Castellano in Foley Square near the Federal Court House. By this time the law man and the godfather had developed a kind of mutual respect. Castellano asked Joe how his family was. Joe answered politely while thinking to himself about how Castellano had ordered the murder of his own son-in-law.

The thing Joe remembered most from the conversation was Castellano's complaining that he could not go to dinner in the area around the court house. The surrounding blocks, which bordered the area known as Little Italy, home to many capos and soldiers of the Gambino and Genovese families, contained a few of New York's best Italian restaurants. Castellano was embarrassed that the owners of the restaurants would not take his money. They treated him like some kind of godfather or something, not like the millionaire meat wholesaler he and his lawyer, James LaRossa, said he was. He told Coffey he was starting to use the uptown steak houses for his dinner meetings. There they were used to millionaires and celebrities and everyone got a check. Joe left the meeting wondering how “Big Paulie” would like the food in the Big House.

On December 2, 1985, Aniello “O'Neill” Dellacroce died of cancer at the age of seventy-two. When Joe heard about the death the next day he was disappointed that the underboss of the Gambino family, indicted as part of the Ruling Commission, had not lived to face the charges in court. He would rather see old capos die in prison.

For more than fifty years Dellacroce worked as a Mafia soldier. He rose through the ranks to capo and finally underboss. He was greatly responsible for helping La Cosa Nostra evolve from a loosely knit collection of Sicilian immigrant gangsters running illegal booze to speakeasies to the $50 billion a year hidden government Rudy Giuliani charged it was in 1985.

Before Carlo Gambino, the one-time henchman of Lucky Luciano, died in 1976 he declared that his place as don of the family that bore his name would be taken by his brother-in-law and cousin Paul Castellano. Because the Gambino family was the largest and most powerful in America, with hundreds of gunmen among its assets, its don was automatically the capo di tutti capi—the ruler of all the mafiosi in America.

The naming of Castellano angered quite a few of the longtime Gambino associates who had toiled many dangerous and evil hours for Don Carlo. They had hoped Dellacroce, the loyal underboss, would be handed the mantle of leadership. The general opinion of Castellano was that he was selfish, greedy, and not as smart as he liked people to believe. Dellacroce, they argued, was the real brains of the family. He deserved the top spot.

There was much agitation for Dellacroce to reorganize the family by having Castellano hit. His associates suggested taking by force what godfather Carlo Gambino had denied him. But Dellacroce was an old-style mafioso. He would not think of going against the wishes of his godfather. He argued with his loyal henchmen and won. In the end they listened to him. In effect he was the man who really ran the family anyway, and that would not change. “Big Paulie” needed him, and all would prosper if they just stayed cool.

Castellano did nothing over the next eight years to improve his status with the mobsters who worked for him. But they did prosper as Dellacroce continued to be the criminal mastermind Carlo Cambino had put his trust in for so many years.

But no matter how much he relied on him, “Big Paulie” always resented Dellacroce's authority and influence in the Gambino family. When the underboss died, the godfather decided not to go to his wake. He told his counselors that he was afraid it would bring too much attention to the family because he was being followed by a host of agents from several different law enforcement offices at the time.

Following Dellacroce's wake, law enforcement officials believe, Castellano contacted Jimmy “Jimmy Brown” Fialla, the long-time chauffeur of Carlo Gambino, who was a man trusted by all factions within the Gambino family. He told Fialla he would like to sit down with Dellacroce's son Armand to offer his condolences in private and suggested that Fialla set up a dinner meeting at Spark's Steak House.

The meeting was set for December 16, 1985. At about 6:00
P.M.
Castellano and his driver-bodyguard Thomas Billotti pulled up outside the restaurant on East 46th Street. As the two men got out of their car, eight gunmen who had been hiding in the shadows of nearby doorways approached from all directions.

It is unlikely Castellano and Billotti ever realized what happened. The killers opened fire. “Big Paulie” was halfway out of the car when the hail of small-caliber bullets tore into his chest and head. He was dead before he hit the gutter. Billotti actually made it to the street but never had a chance to protect his boss. The bodyguard died without doing his duty. The killers fled into the night. They would have to deal with forces that were sure to rise up against them, the same way the killers of Carmine Galante never lived to enjoy their rewards.

When he heard the news about Castellano, Coffey traveled to the scene of the crime. Art Ruffles from the FBI was there. So was Dick Nicastro, supervising the work of his detectives. Most of the talk was about how Castellano was probably better off. He would have hated dying in prison. There was also a lot of talk about John Gotti.

Reporters covering the assassination reasoned that Castellano was hit because he would not stand up to the pressure of the two trials he was facing. His mob colleagues were afraid he would sing, the columnists said, while law enforcement sources were quoted as saying that Gotti, the don headquartered at the Bergin Hunt and Fish Club, had ordered the hit so that he could take over the Gambino family before Castellano either went to jail or rolled over for the law to protect himself. Joe Coffey saw it a little differently: “Dellacroce was the only reason Castellano was alive to that day. When he died, Castellano lost his protection. There was no one else, especially not John Gotti, who was going to protect the Mafia code. No one else cared who Carlo Gambino chose as his successor. It was a sanctioned hit. The commission—‘Fat Tony,' ‘Tony Ducks,' Jerry Langella, and the rest—all approved it. It may be the last classic sanctioned hit in mob history. The way the Mafia in New York handled its own disputes changed forever the day Dellacroce died. There are no longer any ties to the original dons and godfathers—the guys who understood the importance of a commission. More and more families are letting their own in-fighting get in the way of making money.” John Gotti, in contrast, was a cowboy. He wrote his own rules as he needed them.

A year earlier the murder of Castellano would have become the Coffey Gang's number one priority. But Joe was no longer concerned with solving only homicides. He took notes and gathered all the intelligence he could but basically filed it away for future use. Joe would continue to concentrate on the mob-influenced unions. Of course he would be happy if there were a tie-in somehow to the assassination of the capo di tutti capi, and he would not be surprised if there were one.

Over the next few months the bugs in the two carpenters' union locals in Manhattan convinced Goldstock and Coffey that it was time to press the investigation harder. The key figure, the man the tapes seemed to indicate was the liaison between the unions and the mobs that were controlling them, was John O'Connor, the business agent of Local 608, the “Irish” local on West 51st Street and Broadway. O'Connor's duties as business agent were much the same as those performed by “Sally Balls” Briguglio for Tony Provenzano. “We believed at the time,” Coffey says, “that O'Connor was the bag man for the union's president, Pascal McGuiness. He visited the construction sites, made the threats, and picked up the money.” McGuinness was acquitted after a trial in the Summer of 1991.

The decision was made to bring O'Connor into the White Plains office for questioning. However, because Coffey hoped to turn the business agent and convince him to rat on the mob to save his own skin, he set up a simple but effective plan to get O'Connor to the office without anyone's noticing.

O'Connor was an early riser, who usually left his home in the Putnam County town of Brewster a little after 5:00
A.M.
in order to make the one-hour drive into Manhattan in time to get to the union hall when the members were arriving looking for work.

On the morning of May 5, 1986, a New York State Police patrol car was positioned on the southbound shoulder of Route 684 about five miles outside Brewster. When the waiting trooper saw O'Connor pass, he followed for a short time. Then the trooper flashed his turret lights and sounded a short blast on his siren.

O'Connor pulled over immediately, and the trooper pulled up behind. As if he was about to issue a traffic ticket, the trooper approached O'Connor. When he got to the driver's side window he issued an unusual order. “Mr. O'Connor,” the trooper said, “please follow me. We're going to the offices of the New York State Organized Crime Task Force in White Plains.”

Without objection, O'Connor followed the cruiser down Route 684 about twenty miles to Coffey's office.

Coffey was waiting at his desk for the union man. O'Connor seemed a little stunned by the sudden developments. He knew he was not under arrest but obviously wondered just what was going down.

“Mr. O'Connor,” Joe began, “I do not want you to say anything. I do not want you to answer any questions. You have the right to remain silent. Anything you say or do may be used against you. There is something I want you to hear.”

For the next three minutes Coffey played a tape recorded by an undercover agent. On it, the agent was heard offering a bribe and O'connor was heard accepting it.

When the tape ended Joe continued, “We have enough on this tape and others to send you to prison for many years. But we also know that you have more to fear from the mob than from us. We've heard them repeatedly refer to you in less than flattering terms. They are not happy with the way you run your local. They think you are ripping them off. Today is Tuesday. I'll give you until Friday to make up your mind. Join our team or you will be indicted. If you don't come aboard, we will prosecute you. What the Mafia decides to do about you is up to them.”