Operation Family Secrets Part 3

I was spending a lot of time with my dad and my uncle, helping out a lot. I had ideas. For instance, why not take over a spot on Grand Avenue and put in an arcade? At the time, arcades were making a ton of legal money. Video games were just coming out. But my father would shoot down my ideas, so I kept them to myself. One day he said, "I don't understand what the f.u.c.k's going on with you. You had these great ideas. Now you've got no ideas or ambition."

I wanted to say, "It's not me, it's you!" If my kid came to me, especially when he was nineteen years old, and wanted to start a business, I'd work with him and maybe put up the money. I'd want to see my son succeed. But it was always about him. So I backed off.

Back in the neighborhoods, the young Italians were still fighting one another. Different neighborhoods would hang out in the nightclubs where there would be matchups. Elmwood Park against Melrose Park, or Riis Park versus Taylor Street.

One club was the 1-2-3 on Diversey and Central in Chicago. In 1993, it became a Polish nightclub called the Jedynka Club. But back in early 1980s, when you walked in the door, the 1-2-3 was a cross between GoodFellas GoodFellas and and Sat.u.r.day Night Fever Sat.u.r.day Night Fever. The crowd was predominantly Italian, and every neighborhood had its section inside. The club owner would take a guy from each neighborhood and designate him as a bouncer. The guy would stand around with the people in his section, drink, and keep order.

The rule at 1-2-3 was that you couldn't fight inside. When a section was ready to fight another group, everybody piled out into the street. Most Fridays, Diversey Avenue and Central Avenue traffic was blocked off because so many guys were hanging out and street fighting. Occasionally the Italians clashed with other races, especially when the North Austin district turned black. Sometimes it was the disco guys wearing leather jackets versus the rock guys with the long hair and biker look. Usually it was guys from different Italian neighborhoods fighting over a girl.

I wound up getting a weekend job at the 1-2-3 bouncing the Elmwood Park section. I was perfect for the job: tall and good at handling myself, and well respected in the neighborhood. The pay was fifty dollars a night, plus drinks. I didn't tell my dad until one night when he asked me what I was up to. Then he told me, "Whattaya mean you're f.u.c.kin' workin' security? I don't want you to be no f.u.c.kin' goon bouncer at some crazy place." But eventually he agreed to let me earn the extra hundred dollars a week.

I got along with the guys from the club, and one day I was talking to my friend Johnny Galioto, who was James "Little Jimmy" Marcello's nephew. Johnny was working the 1-2-3 as a bartender when he and I talked about starting our own club.

We had a lot of ideas about opening up a champagne room. There was a guy from the Patch who had a place called Sa.s.safras and was looking for someone to reopen and run it. Johnny and I had a following. The guy came to us and asked if we'd be interested. We sat down and worked out a handshake deal. He gave us ten thousand dollars to fix up the club. We ordered drink inventory and had about four thousand or five thousand dollars left in the till. We got our friends together, gla.s.s etchers, electricians, builders, and carpenters. We fixed up the club and it was absolutely beautiful. We called it Frankie & Johnny's. It was on Irving Park, just west of Harlem. This was 1984 and I was twenty-four years old. We were the first place in the city to feature a VIP champagne room. We had waitresses in s.e.xy outfits. People loved it.

At first my dad gave me a hard time.

"Who the f.u.c.k are you, owning a nightclub?" To him, a nightclub was way too high-profile. Plus, if I began making money, he would feel that he had lost control of his son.

As much fun as I had running my own joint, it took its toll. I was working during the day for the city, running the club at night, and going out with my father and uncle on the crew. I was running around all the time, but I loved the idea of having a legit business. Not only was there prestige, but I had a feeling of accomplishment. And there were the beautiful girls. It was a business Johnny and I both enjoyed. We hired the best bartenders in the area.

After about a year, the owner, a guy nicknamed p.o.o.psy, started getting uneasy. p.o.o.psy ran a concession at city hall, which made lots of money. He wore black combat boots, a toupee, and a little hat. When he found out who Frankie and Johnny were related to, he feared the worst. But I was determined to keep the place afloat by being straight, since there was no paperwork verifying our arrangement with p.o.o.psy.

One weekend, Johnny and I arrived at the club to find the locks changed and the doors padlocked. Somebody must have bent p.o.o.psy's ear, because he got scared. We sat down and pleaded with him.

"We're running a legit business. We put in our time and haven't taken a dime out of the business."

But we knew the club was history. p.o.o.psy wound up giving us the keys back. As soon as we got them back, we stole everything out of the joint. We carried out the liquor and sold it. We sold whatever we put into the place. Later we locked the doors behind us and never went back. p.o.o.psy called, tossing around Joey Lombardo's name to try and scare us into returning everything.

We told him, "Do what you have to, but are you sure Joey knows you're using his name like that?"

My ace was that Lombardo senior was in jail at the time, and we knew that my dad and Johnny's uncle, Little Jimmy Marcello, would back us.

Still in my early twenties, I returned to work at the 1-2-3 part-time, while Johnny opened a bar with his father on North Avenue. Then I left my job with the city and felt ready to work with the crew full-time. My dad was more than happy to expand my role in the family business.

Throughout the 1980s, under the noses of federal and local law enforcement, my father and his Chinatown crew ran wild. It was the climax of an era during which my father survived the Outfit's changing leadership, starting in 1969 with hit man Milwaukee Phil Alderisio.

Next was the b.l.o.o.d.y decade-and-a-half (197186) reign of Joey "Doves" Aiuppa. Then came Sam "Wings" Carlisi in 1989. Throughout the 1980s, my father weathered numerous power plays between Angelo LaPietra and Turk Torello. My dad complained that Torello repeatedly snubbed the 26th Street/Chinatown crew because of Angelo when legit money opportunities-like owning legal OTB (off-track betting) parlors-became available to Outfit crews.

One constant remained. Whenever the boys on top needed someone eliminated, my father got his share of calls. He was respected and feared as an accomplished killer.

The June 1981 a.s.sa.s.sination of Michael Cagnoni in ritzy Hinsdale in DuPage County, twenty miles from downtown Chicago, is a case in point. Cagnoni was a successful entrepreneur in the refrigerated-trucking business who made sure his trucks crisscrossed the country fully loaded. As a result of his load efficiency, Cagnoni's firm retained satisfied customers including the mob's produce-hauling concerns. By maintaining high profitability in a tough business, Cagnoni offered lower rates, which caused compet.i.tors such as Flash Interstate, one of Cagnoni's local subcontractors, to lower theirs.

Flash Interstate Trucking in Cicero was co-owned by mob bosses Joe Ferriola and Turk Torello. Located on South Laramie Avenue, Flash conveniently served as a clubhouse and rendezvous spot for organized crime figures like Rocky Infelise. According to one Flash insider, there was always one hundred thousand dollars in cash waiting in the safe to bankroll mob bookmaking or juice loan operations.

In the tradition of gangsters hiding "in plain sight," Ferriola and Infelise often held their meetings both in the Flash parking lot and in an adjoining garage, out of earshot of FBI surveillance agents parked nearby. For over thirteen months, the FBI listened in via phone taps and monitored visitors. By mid-1981, the FBI was convinced that Flash was the site where many Outfit schemes and hits were hatched, during visits by Ferriola, Infelise, and a lineup of other gangsters and jewel thieves.

Cagnoni religiously paid his weekly street tax of two thousand dollars in cash. He was often seen entering the Hyatt Hotel in Rosemont, where Joey Aiuppa would lunch. Cagnoni would go to the Flash office to drop off money. In return for his cash payments, Cagnoni's operations ran free from labor problems. dollars in cash. He was often seen entering the Hyatt Hotel in Rosemont, where Joey Aiuppa would lunch. Cagnoni would go to the Flash office to drop off money. In return for his cash payments, Cagnoni's operations ran free from labor problems.

When he realized that he could no longer justify the weekly cash outlay in case of an IRS audit, Cagnoni tried negotiating to make the payments some other way. He was willing to draw up contracts and continue making the payments by check. Ferriola and Infelise were inflexible and demanded cash. Ferriola had eyes to take over Cagnoni's business, so when an exasperated Cagnoni stopped making payments, he hired a bodyguard, donned a flak jacket, and hoped for the best. While the FBI kept a watch on Flash Trucking, another surveillance unit placed John Fecarotta, Frank Santucci, and my father meeting together in a parking lot about a block from Cagnoni's business.

Once Aiuppa pushed the b.u.t.ton on Cagnoni it was up to my father and the crew to carry out the hit. For almost a year, Cagnoni was shadowed in and around his affluent west suburban Hinsdale home. Once the crew determined his daily routine, they elected to firebomb him. My dad tested different combinations of explosives, blasting caps, and remote firing devices to determine how close they needed to be to set off the fatal explosion in or around Cagnoni's automobile. During the preparation stage, there were mishaps, including one ill-fated test that nearly took off my father's hand.

After months of stalking, my father and Fecarotta settled on a plan. They inserted a brick-sized portion of malleable C-4 underneath Cagnoni's silver 1978 Mercedes. Then they placed a transmitter inside an unattended car left in a restaurant parking lot next to the Ogden Avenue on-ramp, which Cagnoni habitually used to drive onto I-294. A remote car starter receiver was attached to the explosives under Cagnoni's car either the night before or early in the morning. Inside the parked car, a K-40 antenna and the transmitter, modified to increase its range, emitted a continuous signal. The b.u.t.ton on the transmitter was taped down under a block of wood. Once Cagnoni drove by, the receiver and the explosives in his car would set off a lethal blast.

Michael Cagnoni's pending murder became a turning point for my uncle, as he harbored doubts about his role as the dependable cold-blooded killer. He was a family man with kids, and while staking out the Cagnoni residence one day, he watched in horror as Cagnoni's wife, Margaret, started up the family Mercedes to take their young son, Michael junior, to school.

"This poor woman," Uncle Nick later said, "got in the car. If she had come east and not west...I don't know what..."

Had she driven by the engaged remote-control detonator, the device would have set off the C-4, instantly killing Cagnoni's wife and child. After the close call, my uncle confronted my dad. Killing gangsters and shaking down businesses for Outfit money was one thing, but murdering innocent women and children was another.

My father responded angrily by smacking my uncle with his hand, fracturing his face, his psyche, and his allegiance to his older brother. This incident would prove to be the beginning of the end of their relationship.

Cagnoni later drove into the trap alone. One witness, James Mammina, testified that on June 24, 1981, while driving his Ford van, he saw Cagnoni's Mercedes pull up in front of him and head toward the Tri-State Tollway at Ogden Avenue and I-294. He heard a loud explosion, saw a white flash, and felt a burst of heat through his windshield.

"The smoke cleared and I was able to see his vehicle, or what was left of it."

In a grisly FBI photograph that no jury would see, human remains, mostly head and shoulders, are plopped in the middle of the I-294 on-ramp. Pieces of the luxury Mercedes-Benz were strewn everywhere, and from as far away as a quarter mile, birds came to feast on Cagnoni's scattered body parts.

In the months that followed, more bodies were strewn in my father's wake. Barely three months after the Cagnoni bombing, Nicholas D'Andrea, a lieutenant of Chicago Heights boss Al "Caesar" Tocco, was found in the trunk of a burning car in Crete, Illinois. D'Andrea was suspected of partic.i.p.ating in the botched hit of Al Pilotto, whose day job was president of Local 5 of the Laborers' International Union of North America. At night Al ran the gambling, prost.i.tution, extortion, and juice business in the southern suburb Chicago Heights. As Pilotto was playing a round of golf, out of the bushes came a surprise visitor with a .22-caliber pistol. After a couple of misses and a nonfatal hit, the a.s.sailant ran off, missing his hole in one. Illinois. D'Andrea was suspected of partic.i.p.ating in the botched hit of Al Pilotto, whose day job was president of Local 5 of the Laborers' International Union of North America. At night Al ran the gambling, prost.i.tution, extortion, and juice business in the southern suburb Chicago Heights. As Pilotto was playing a round of golf, out of the bushes came a surprise visitor with a .22-caliber pistol. After a couple of misses and a nonfatal hit, the a.s.sailant ran off, missing his hole in one.

D'Andrea was quite the ladies' man at age forty-two. He was courting his fifteen-year-old girlfriend, Terry. D'Andrea eventually married Terry and left her behind when he was dispatched by the mob's trunk stuffers.

With the bombing death of Cagnoni accomplished, restaurant owner Nick Sarillo was the next victim when his blue Econoline cargo van suddenly exploded in April of 1982. According to court testimony, the blast "had something to do with gambling," and it was alleged that Sarillo, a tough guy in his own right, refused to pay off Joe Amato, the designated leader of Outfit gambling interests in the northern suburbs. When the explosion occurred, Sarillo was driving in the village of Wauconda in Lake County, located on the far northeastern tip of Illinois. Sarillo was seriously injured and very sooty, but he miraculously survived Wile E. Coyotestyle and remained silent. Since there was no room for the explosives under the driver's seat, they were placed instead under the pa.s.senger's side. The engine area between the driver and pa.s.senger sides deflected the blast, and the blowout backfired to the cargo portion of the van.

"He looked like a cartoon face, all in black," recalled Chuck f.a.gan, a deputy for the Lake County Sheriff's Office. "But when you try to talk to these fellas, it's like talking to a wall. Even in all that pain and agony, they've got nothing to say."

Years later, despite Sarillo's silence, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms would link the characteristics of his bombing to Cagnoni's, thanks to the identical brand of motherboard connected to the electronics and the modus operandi used to detonate the chunk of C-4 strategically placed under the seat of the van. detonate the chunk of C-4 strategically placed under the seat of the van.

But it was the deaths of Richard Ortiz and Arthur Morawski in the summer of 1983, dubbed the "Half and Half Murders," that would propel my father's reputation as. .h.i.t man du jour. Ortiz had drawn the ire of Johnny Apes, who was irritated by Ortiz's drug deals and that Ortiz owed him money-whether from street tax or juice-and was ducking him. The Outfit also suspected that Ortiz had killed one of their own, Leo Manfredi, in a Cicero pizza parlor without authorization. This meant Ortiz had to go.

My father served as the maestro of Ortiz's demise. On July 23, 1983, after pulling up in front of the His 'N' Mine Lounge on Twenty-second Street in Cicero, he dispatched Uncle Nick and Jimmy DiForti, both carrying shotguns, to do the dirty work while he strategically parked his car diagonally, blocking any chance of escape. Arthur Morawski, it was later revealed, was an innocent victim who was in the wrong place at the wrong time. He had just hitched a ride home from the racetrack. A prime piece of evidence collected on the scene, a live shotgun sh.e.l.l, was found on the back pa.s.senger-side window of Ortiz's car.

By the mid-1980s, the domestic landscape of the Calabrese home was dramatically changing. After nearly a dozen years with his mistress, Diane Cimino, on the side, my dad separated from and divorced my mom, or more accurately she divorced him. Dad married Diane at an intimate family gathering at Tony Spavone's restaurant in Bloomington, Illinois, in early 1986.

I believe that my father manipulated my mom into divorcing him. He wore her down with his ways. Living in the Compound with his whole family, she'd had enough. Moving to a brand-new house in the affluent suburban village of Oak Brook with Diane, he found that transitioning his goomah-turned-wife into his sons' stepmother wasn't easy. enough. Moving to a brand-new house in the affluent suburban village of Oak Brook with Diane, he found that transitioning his goomah-turned-wife into his sons' stepmother wasn't easy.

None of us wanted to meet her, but we were never comfortable telling my dad no. My youngest brother, Nicky, was just a teenager at the time, and he took the divorce badly. Dad called Nicky and me upstairs to talk about meeting Diane. Nicky wouldn't answer. My dad kept pushing, but Nicky wouldn't say anything. His eyes were full of tears. I wanted to b.u.t.t in and tell my father to lay off him, that he was having a hard time with it.

Nicky yelled, "I don't wanna meet Diane because I hate your f.u.c.king guts for what you did!"

My father lost it. He jumped up and whaled on Nicky, both hands flying, swinging and cracking him in the face. "You don't f.u.c.king talk to me like that. I will kick your a.s.s."

It kills me that I didn't protect my little brother.

After my dad moved out of the Elmwood Park Compound, he would occasionally show up for one of Mom's home-cooked holiday meals. I would take my mother out every Christmas in my pickup truck to buy a Christmas tree. One year, with me in bed with the flu, my father happened by in a cheerful mood and volunteered to take Mom to get a tree if she agreed to make one of his favorite Italian chicken dishes. Kurt was enlisted to come along, although he had plans. My mother took a long time selecting the tree, and by the time they got back to the house, Dad was in a foul mood.

Kurt was pouting "with a puss on his face," and as my father tried to straighten the tree in the stand, he erupted. He cracked Kurt in the head, knocking him and the tree to the floor, and stomped out, yelling, "Look what you made me do, a.s.shole!"

After his honeymoon, he felt threatened by Diane's close relationship with her father. Dominic Cimino was a retired police chief of Melrose Park and a war hero, and was well-liked around town. I was with my dad one night in Diane's father's garage. I could see that something was eating him and that he was hatching a plan-to lure Dominic into the garage and whack him.

I was speechless. I couldn't believe it. Suddenly murder became the best way to solve a family problem. I no longer knew where he drew the line and whom he would or wouldn't kill. He never whacked Dominic Cimino. In time, their relationship improved, and Cimino died from natural causes in 2008. the best way to solve a family problem. I no longer knew where he drew the line and whom he would or wouldn't kill. He never whacked Dominic Cimino. In time, their relationship improved, and Cimino died from natural causes in 2008.

Gunning for a family member wasn't an entirely new concept to my dad. According to a story captured on tape, my uncle Ed was once heard bad-mouthing Italians and the Outfit during a drunken tirade at a downtown bar. After confronting Hanley, Joey Aiuppa set up an ambush at a local steam room with my father and Angelo parked outside. On Aiuppa's signal, when Uncle Ed walked out of the bathhouse, the two were to spring into action. But the signal to kill did not come. My father's original plan was to spirit Uncle Ed into the car by telling him that something had happened to my mother, his sister.

I asked Dad if he was okay with that, and he said, "An order is an order, and the Outfit comes before your family."

Angelo became part of the family when Kurt became romantically involved with his granddaughter, Angela Lascola. Kurt and Angela were young when they began dating. At first, Angelo took a shine to Kurt. He was "Frankie C's" son, and Kurt and Angela's impending marriage "would keep things in the family." But the couple's relationship soured.

A few years later Kurt and Angela reunited, which didn't sit well with Angelo, who was in jail at the time. Kurt and Angela continued to see each other secretly, and when Kurt confided his renewed love for Angela to my father, he blew a gasket. Kurt and Angela reacted by eloping at city hall.

When my father found out, he nearly killed Kurt. He chased him in his car at speeds over ninety miles per hour, trying to run him off the road. When he caught up with Kurt, he gave him a beating and threatened to disown him.

In 1986, not long after his marriage to Diane, my father suffered intense migraine headaches and had problems with his eyesight. He wasn't keen on doctors, dating back to his childhood, when he spent months recovering from scarlet fever. Diane persuaded him to get a checkup, and after the results of the tests came back, I met with him at his Oak Brook home. The news wasn't good. He had problems with his pituitary gland. His white blood count was minuscule, and it was feared that he might have a tumor in the middle of his brain. to get a checkup, and after the results of the tests came back, I met with him at his Oak Brook home. The news wasn't good. He had problems with his pituitary gland. His white blood count was minuscule, and it was feared that he might have a tumor in the middle of his brain.

After further tests confirmed the tumor, my dad required immediate brain surgery. a.s.sembling his family for a sit-down, he sugarcoated his condition, laughing it off. But privately with me, he was very worried. His orders were precise.

He told me I needed to step up and run things with Uncle Nick because there was a good chance that he would die from the surgery or else go blind. I was to stay in the background with the bosses and let them think my uncle was running everything.

As my dad's health problems worsened, my devotion to my ailing father increased. We spent "quality time" together going over specific scenarios and rules: Never completely trust or confide in anybody. Any direct questions about his businesses, plead ignorance. Take care of my mother, and don't fight with my brothers over anything material. He wanted me to be cautious and work closely with Uncle Nick. He knew that people on the street could take advantage of Nick's kindness whenever they came up short on collections.

My father sat down with me and Kurt and pulled out a large case of expensive jewelry. He urged us to divide everything in half. Kurt and I looked at each other.

"We don't care about your jewelry. We only want you to get well." We knew how hard it was for him to give up control.

On the day of the operation, my father insisted that both families be present in the waiting room. My dad's will was strong. At the same time, he looked vulnerable as they wheeled him away. For the first time in my life, my big strong dad looked helpless.

An awkward air hovered over the waiting room as my father's two families occupied opposite ends. On one side was Diane and her family; on the other was my mother and my two brothers and Uncle Nick. After Dad had been under the knife for hours, the doctors pulled a golf-ball-sized tumor out of his skull. But the prognosis was good. He would be in pain for a while, but the surgery had gone smoothly. I was encouraged. prognosis was good. He would be in pain for a while, but the surgery had gone smoothly. I was encouraged.

Wow! Things were going to change for the best. With a second chance at life, my father would be more humble. He would see the light and maybe walk away from his life with the crew. Maybe the tumor was the reason for his multiple personalities and abusive behavior, and after the surgery the "good dad" would return permanently.

I spent most of my time with Uncle Nick while my dad convalesced. We both hit the streets and collected loan payments and street taxes and set up a temporary office in the bas.e.m.e.nt of my father's Oak Brook home. While he was getting stronger, I hatched a bold plan. I painted an overly grim picture of his health to Dad's mob friends and a.s.sociates. Every time I ran into a friend of my dad's or an Outfit a.s.sociate, I'd sadly hang my head. Soon word spread on the street that my dad was very sick and possibly wouldn't make it. I asked him, "Why not play the sick card and step back from the crew so that you won't be obligated to the Outfit anymore?"

He seriously considered the idea, but the stronger he got, the more remote the possibility of "stepping back" became. All my hopes of his retirement fizzled after he told me he was itching to get back into action and reaffirm his presence on the street. "I'm gonna be back out on the street and get everybody back in line! And the first place I'm gonna start is in the neighborhood. I will get everybody's a.s.ses twitching again."

While recovering on the sidelines, my father missed out on a pair of plum Outfit a.s.signments: the killing of Emil Vaci in Arizona and the murders of Tony and Michael Spilotro.

With its sprawling green industrial parks and grand highways, Oak Brook in DuPage County was a long way from the Patch. It was home to the world corporate headquarters of the McDonald's fast-food chain. One intersection in Oak Brook could be as large as a city block in Grand and Ogden. Although it was out of his comfort zone to build a large dream home and be ostentatious, my father hired an architect to design his very own McMansion. ostentatious, my father hired an architect to design his very own McMansion.

He didn't set out to build the biggest house in the neighborhood, as he now lived among the Outfit bra.s.s. Joe "Nagall" Ferriola had a home one block away, while Joey Aiuppa's compound was just down the street. My father's finished house featured a grand wood staircase cascading into a large open foyer. The bedrooms were s.p.a.cious and jumbo-sized compared to the salad days of the Elmwood Park three-flat. The home's interior was similar to television gangster Tony Soprano's. Years later, whenever my mother and I watched the TV series, we would laughingly a.s.sociate the Soprano dwelling and its fancy appliances with my dad's house in Oak Brook.

Unlike today's Chicago Outfit bosses, who have converted much of their Outfit fortunes into legitimate business enterprises, it was difficult for my father to make the same transition. He was often too stern and unyielding to be a lawful, let alone silent, business partner. Just like with the adult-bookstore owner, he would wear people down and drive them away with his demands. As a result, his foray into legitimate business was limited to co-owning hot-dog stands and other eateries with his mob buddies.

My father, Uncle Nick, Kurt, and I launched a general contracting company, hiring a few of my Elmwood Park buddies. Together we would remodel income properties to resell at a tidy profit. After I gave up my coveted city job, the fledgling Calabrese contractors won the bid for the masonry work and drywall for an addition at North Central College in Naperville. The partnership proved tense from the start. With my father in total control, the shortest tasks might take hours to complete.

Outfit business on the streets of Chicago flourished. Father controlled his empire like Genghis Khan. It would take the smoothest of the smooth to bilk a Calabrese out of his hard-earned cash-that is, until he hooked up with journeyman Outfit juice collector Philip "Philly Beans" Tolomeo.

Philly Beans started out as a Chicago policeman who grew up with another Chicago cop gone bad, Mike Ricci. They worked side by side until Philly got kicked off the force. In fact, Philly ran the Bistro A-Go-Go the night Larry Stubitsch was shot and killed by d.i.c.kie DeAngelo. As a young man Philly had that by side until Philly got kicked off the force. In fact, Philly ran the Bistro A-Go-Go the night Larry Stubitsch was shot and killed by d.i.c.kie DeAngelo. As a young man Philly had that Sat.u.r.day Night Fever Sat.u.r.day Night Fever Italian pretty-boy look that women ate up. Italian pretty-boy look that women ate up.

Philly had a weakness for underage girls, and loved to con older women out of their fortunes. Yet Philly the hustler could effectively lay out a ton of new juice money on the streets. He had a load of connections and was especially well liked. My father was confident he could manage Philly Beans and let him join his crew. Joe Ferriola felt that if anybody could rein him in, it was Frankie C.

I first met Tolomeo at a hot-dog stand in Melrose Park that my dad co-owned with Mike Ricci, Nick, Johnny DiFronzo, and Ronnie Jarrett. I recall seeing Philly Beans talking on the pay phone, dressed in a loud sport coat with matching slacks, and a garish yellow-and-rust-colored fedora.

By 1987, Philly Beans had juice all over town. He was one of the crew's biggest earners. Although Philly was a moneymaker, he was "a f.u.c.kup" whom my father and I needed to stay on top of. Every Sat.u.r.day night my father and I would meet next door to Armand's Pizza, inside an antique car storefront after closing hours. I would wait for my father to pull into the back. Philly would arrive through the back door, and later Ronnie Jarrett would follow. Tolomeo would turn in his loan paperwork for us to review. A typical Calabrese "loan application" was handwritten on an index card, complete with a customer's vital information, including driver's license, date of birth, job and salary information, what jewelry and t.i.tles he owned, and whatever he could put up for collateral. My father and I would go through the same routine with Philly every week.

When my father returned to working with the crew after his convalescence, he put two and two together and figured that Philly was loaning my father's juice to himself. Apparently Philly Beans had attended the Bernie Madoff/Charles Ponzi School of Banking. My father sent my uncle around to check up on a few of Philly's delinquent customers, and it turned out that he had a long list of ghost debtors. Philly wasn't distributing Calabrese loan money to new accounts after all; he was pocketing the money for himself. To make up for the deficit in payments, Philly Beans rotated different customers as late. On the days he came up short or the numbers didn't add up, he repeatedly took Uncle Nick's kindness for weakness, and my uncle would often make up the shortfall out of his own pocket. ghost debtors. Philly wasn't distributing Calabrese loan money to new accounts after all; he was pocketing the money for himself. To make up for the deficit in payments, Philly Beans rotated different customers as late. On the days he came up short or the numbers didn't add up, he repeatedly took Uncle Nick's kindness for weakness, and my uncle would often make up the shortfall out of his own pocket.

My father confronted Philly with the damaging evidence at M&R Auto, a repair shop in Elmwood Park owned by a mechanic friend, Matt Russo. Dad beat Philly badly, breaking his cheekbone. Philly Beans wound up owing my father over three hundred thousand dollars.

My father and uncle paid a visit to Elmwood Park to sort out Philly's problem with his mother. My dad explained to her that Philly had stolen a large sum of money from "certain people" and that her son could be in deep trouble. While he didn't threaten her, he gave her an out to use the house as collateral for the loan. He promised not to kick her out and gave her the option to sign over the hundred-thousand-dollar house to him or place it in the name of one of Nick's in-laws.

Once the house was taken over, he rode Philly Beans pretty hard, slapping him across the back of the head and giving him barely enough money every week to live on. Philly knew that if he ran wild again, he would get more than a broken cheekbone. This time his life was on the line. The only reason he was kept alive was to work in the crew and make rest.i.tution for the rest of the three hundred grand he had stolen. Yet Philly understood that once he paid the money back he would become disposable.

Philip Tolomeo disappeared from the Chicago area. It turned out that the Calabrese crew was not the only organized crime group Philly Beans had scammed. In addition to embezzling my father's money, he had taken cash from another Outfit crew. Tolomeo fled to California, where he set up more con jobs on unsuspecting ladies and widows. When his luck ran out on the West Coast, Philly Beans turned himself in to the FBI. Before entering the Witness Security Program, he handed over to the Bureau detailed records of the juice collections he had made on behalf of the Calabrese family 26th Street/Chinatown crew. detailed records of the juice collections he had made on behalf of the Calabrese family 26th Street/Chinatown crew.

Now it was the government's turn to babysit Philly Beans until they could build a case against my family. This proved to be highly problematic for the FBI and the WITSEC Program because Philly was up to his old grifter ways. He was arrested for soliciting an underage prost.i.tute and had to be re-relocated. A short time later, the FBI discovered he was back in the juice loan business, working with the South Philly mob. He was arrested again, and had to sit in WITSEC isolation until his case came up.

Despite his flamboyance, Philly was a problem for my father and the crew if they went to trial. His smooth style, personal panache, and firsthand knowledge of the inner workings of the crew could help the government win over any jury.

If Uncle Nick's involvement in the murder of Emil "Mal" Vaci wasn't so gruesome, it might be right out of The Gang That Couldn't Shoot Straight. The Gang That Couldn't Shoot Straight. My uncle, Big Stoop, and Frank Schweihs were sent by the bosses to Arizona and Las Vegas to settle a couple of troubling problems. Everything that could go wrong did, and for Nick, it ranked as a very surreal road trip. My uncle, Big Stoop, and Frank Schweihs were sent by the bosses to Arizona and Las Vegas to settle a couple of troubling problems. Everything that could go wrong did, and for Nick, it ranked as a very surreal road trip.

The sad fate of Emil Vaci started at the Stardust Hotel and Casino in Vegas during the 1970s. The Stardust was run by Al Sachs, Bobby Stella, and the Outfit's gambling ace, Frank "Lefty" Rosenthal, portrayed by Robert De Niro in the film run by Al Sachs, Bobby Stella, and the Outfit's gambling ace, Frank "Lefty" Rosenthal, portrayed by Robert De Niro in the film Casino Casino. Lefty worked under a variety of job t.i.tles to get around the gaming license requirements. Rosenthal had previously pleaded no contest to charges of conspiring to fix a New York University basketball game by approaching the star point guard, Ray Paprocky. The Stardust's owner of record, Allan Glick, and his company, Argent, operated three other Vegas properties, the Hacienda, the Fremont, and the Marina. But the Stardust was Glick's flagship hotel.

By 1979, the FBI had begun investigating the Vegas money trail. In what later became known as Operation Strawman, quarterbacked out of the FBI's Kansas City office, a series of FBI wiretaps uncovered the infamous Las Vegas "skim." A skim is cash income being skimmed off the top, uncounted, pocketed, and hidden from government tax returns. During the 1970s, this cash was diverted to Chicago and Kansas City mob headquarters. Part of Rosenthal's job was to make sure the Stardust kept up its skim numbers.

Operating at the nearby Fremont was a clever slot manager, George Jay Vandermark, who was a six-foot-two, 190-pound, older version of Alfred E. Neuman. Vandermark was easy to spot with his trademark black horn-rimmed gla.s.ses and dual hearing aids. Long a mastermind with the slots, Vandermark set up a system at the Fremont where a group of phantom change booths stood in the middle of the casino floor, right under the nose of the gaming commission inspectors, generating pure mob revenue by mis-calibrating the scales that counted the coins by weight. While the Fremont's "legitimate" change booths were only "counting" nine hundred dollars per thousand brought in, "extra" booths generated 100 percent unaccounted, unreported skimmed funds to the tune of millions of dollars a year. The exact amount that was actually sent back to Chicago was another story.

It wasn't long before Lefty Rosenthal moved Vandermark from the Fremont to the Stardust. It was then that Dennis Gomes of the Nevada Gaming Control Board figured out the skim. Only he couldn't prove it, because, time after time, a leak inside Las Vegas law enforcement warned the gangsters of any pending raids on the casino counting rooms. Gomes, tired of the tip-offs, acted independently and staged his own impromptu raid on the Stardust. he couldn't prove it, because, time after time, a leak inside Las Vegas law enforcement warned the gangsters of any pending raids on the casino counting rooms. Gomes, tired of the tip-offs, acted independently and staged his own impromptu raid on the Stardust.

Gomes's spontaneous raid uncovered a seven-million-dollar Vandermark skim. The trouble was that the Outfit had received only four million of it. Realizing that he had just opened a can of worms for Vandermark, Gomes set out to warn him, only to be informed by Jay's son that his father had gone "on vacation" to Mexico in mid-May 1976.

A few days later, Vandermark's son was found dead, apparently of a drug overdose. Vandermark returned to the U.S. after his son was murdered. Instead of coming back to Vegas, he relocated to Phoenix and checked into the Arizona Manor, an Arizona hot spot for celebrities, under the name of George Skinner. The Manor was managed by Emil Vaci-who had run junkets from Phoenix to Las Vegas, and was tied in with the Outfit. Vaci tipped off John Fecarotta and Jimmy LaPietra. They paid Vandermark a visit at the Manor and took him for a walk. After Vandermark was killed on the premises, his body was taken out in a wheelchair, driven to the desert, and buried.