Business or Blood (14 page)

It was during this time of tensions with Simon, on November 5, 1931, that Vito Sr. was granted his American citizenship. His address was listed as 94 Ridgewood Road, Oradell, New Jersey, and he now told the truth on his government paperwork and declared that he was married. His citizenship form described him as five foot six and 155 pounds, an average size for the time. He stared directly into the camera for the photo that would become part of his police file, looking prosperous in a
fine-fitting suit, dress shirt and tie. His expression was deadly serious, with no trace of a smile.

Rather than immediately follow through with his threat to punish Simon, Vito Sr. chose to move on to Patterson, New York, a rural town upstate in the Hudson Valley. (It's often confused with Paterson, New Jersey, a much larger industrial community that featured in some episodes of the television mob series
The Sopranos
.)

Summertime newcomers like Vito Sr. didn't attract too much attention in Patterson. At the time, the tiny community's population doubled during the summer, as tourists were drawn to its scenic hills and waterways. It was also a destination spot during all seasons for lovers of alcohol. Aside from its natural charms, bucolic out-of-the-way Patterson was home to several speakeasies and stills. In 1931, the smell of hops and malt hung in the air as the Patterson fire department was called to the home of Lillian F. Lloyd, where they found an illegal brewery capable of making five hundred gallons of beer per day. In March 1932, the
New York Times
reported that “women turned out by the hundreds and cheered” as federal agents carted out hundreds of jugs of whiskey and wine, dozens of barrels of cider and countless bottles of beer from restaurants, stores and homes throughout Putnam County, including Patterson.

The few people who noticed the newcomer in the summer of 1933 called him “Vito the Watchman,” as he settled in a shanty by a swamp at the Tuckahoe-Patterson Marble Company's limestone quarry, a mile off the main road. Limestone from the area was used in the construction of the Empire State Building, but it wasn't a major industry, which left the shanty sitting in a fairly secluded spot. Vito Sr. lived alone by the quarry for about a month and then vanished. His exit was as quiet as his arrival. Oddly, the door to the shanty was found open and Vito Sr.'s clothes and belongings remained inside, as if he had planned to return. There was also talk of a car with New Jersey plates arriving at the quarry hours before Vito was noticed missing.

Within days of his disappearance, a storm hit the area with such ferocity that it uprooted a tree by the swamp, leaving a large crater in the soil. The rain had subsided by August 12, when the local deputy
sherrif was startled by an ungodly stench that wafted from that hole. He also noticed a faint trail through the grass from the foot of the uprooted tree back to the shack. Peering into the hole, the deputy sherrif saw something wrapped in canvas, peeking out of the dirt beneath a foot of water. The canvas turned out to be in the shape of a body, with two ropes around its neck. An autopsy at the Oelkert Cox funeral parlour in nearby Brewster determined that the dead man was Vito Rizzuto Sr. and that he had suffered a fractured skull, four cracked ribs on the right side and a ruptured liver. Cause of death, according to the coroner, was blunt-force blows from a heavy object, meaning murder.

Vito Rizzuto Sr. had come to America from a highly structured world where funeral ceremonies were grand public statements of the deceased's power, status and popularity. That made Vito Sr.'s final send-off particularly sad. No family or friends were in attendance as he was lowered back into the ground at taxpayers' expense in an unmarked public plot at Patterson's county farm. For the time being, the Rizzutos of Cattolica Eraclea were anonymous and defeated in the New World.

Investigators suspected Simon had struck back in answer to Vito Sr.'s threats. Certainly the publisher seemed capable of such a thing. Vito Sr.'s murder also meant one less potential witness against Simon's arson gang. Plenty of others fresh off the boat could be found to fill his place. Vito Sr. had already been ratted out by four of his former partners when police had probed a hotel fire; it was no great leap to believe they later plotted to kill him too.

Vito Sr.'s relative Spinella was a natural suspect, as he was the only man from outside the Patterson area who knew where Vito Sr. lived. He was picked up and taken to Patterson for questioning. In a bizarre piece of policing that was perhaps intended to rattle Rizzuto's former partner in arson, Vito's body was exhumed and shown to Spinella for identification.

Until his arrest, Spinella lived at 231 East 150th Street in the south Bronx, about ten blocks from the newly built Yankee Stadium. That placed him in the centre of the crime turf of Jewish-German gangster Arthur (Dutch Schultz) Flegenheimer, a particularly brutal
Prohibition-era beer runner whose life ended on October 23, 1935, when two gunmen interrupted his dinner at the back of the Palace Chop House and Tavern in New York City. Flegenheimer's murder marked the end of the big-time independent gangs, as Italian-American Mafia groups expanded their reach.

A Putnam County grand jury probing Vito Sr.'s death indicted Spinella (incorrectly spelling his name as “Spinello”), Simon and Rosario Arcuri, also from Cattolica Eraclea, for first-degree murder on November 4, 1933. The indictment stated the three men, with “divers other person or persons,” killed Vito Sr. “on or about the 6th day of August, 1933” with an iron bar or other blunt instrument. The indictment stated that Simon didn't commit the crime with his own hands, but declared that he was also guilty because he “aided, counseled, advised and procured” the others.

Arcuri was nowhere to be found when charges were eventually dropped against Simon for what was said to be lack of evidence. That left Spinella alone in the prisoner's dock in century-old Carmel courthouse, which was more cute than imposing. Murder trials were rare here, and neither the prosecutor nor the judge had previously been involved in a death penalty case. Not surprisingly, a crowd packed the courtroom for the rare drama.

Spinella must have had a sinking feeling when he saw undercover officer Anthony Aurizeme from the National Board of Fire Underwriters walk towards the witness stand. Aurizeme had been placed in Spinella's cell in Carmel County Jail as part of an undercover operation. Aurizeme testified that Spinella told him in their cell that Max Simon paid him six hundred dollars to kill Vito Sr., and that Spinella further confessed to clubbing Vito Sr. to death in his sleep with a heavy cement tamper.

Spinella had a wife, two children and a father in Italy. If the jury accepted Aurizeme's testimony, he would never see them again. Instead, he faced the very real possibility of a trip up the Hudson River to Sing Sing penitentiary, where his last sights would include “Old Sparky,” the electric chair. To escape death row, Spinella pleaded guilty to manslaughter, for which he was sentenced to a term of between seven and twenty years.

Although authorities had dropped murder charges against Simon for lack of evidence, he still faced arson charges in June 1934, after gang member John Chirichillo turned on him. For this, Simon was sentenced to two to three years in prison and fined two thousand dollars, although he used his skills as a lawyer to string out proceedings with a series of delays and appeals. In the end, Simon served only nine months in the state penitentiary in Trenton. Even that wasn't hard time, as he was allowed to continue editing his newspapers from prison, and had access to steaks and a stove for his dining pleasure.

Arcuri fled the area, hunted by police, insurance investigators and mobsters alike. Perhaps he was thinking of his own childhood in Sicily late on the afternoon of August 20, 1934, as he stood under a tree in the Bronx on Crotona Park North, idly watching children play. Maybe he didn't see the maroon sedan as it pulled up alongside him or the barrel of a twelve-gauge shotgun as it appeared from a window. The last sound he would have heard was its loud blast, which dropped him to the sidewalk and left fifteen pellets in his body.

For Vito Sr., insult was added to fatal injury when an immigration and naturalization officer noted on August 22, 1935, that he had entered New Orleans with a fraudulent visa, supported by bogus documents. As he lay in his pauper's grave, Vito Sr. was subjected to one final indignity: he was posthumously stripped of his American citizenship.

Nicolò was nine years old when his father was murdered in America, and they had lived apart almost all of that time. Nicolò's uncle, Calogero Renda, had provided one strong male influence as the boy grew up. Renda, the
campiere
, had outfitted Vito Sr. with his false documents and travelled with him to America, but returned to Cattolica Eraclea in 1936 after a stopover in Argentina. Once back in Sicily, Renda married Don Nino's sister, Domenica Manno, increasing his status in the community. Renda's son, Paolo, would later marry Vito Jr.'s sister, Maria, and become an important part of the Rizzuto narrative. Nicolò also grew up close to his half-brother, Liborio Milioto, who was seven years older and whose father had also been murdered.

Nicolò matured to become a well-established
campiere
himself at just twenty years of age. He was taller, stronger and smarter than most of
his neighbours, and his smile called to mind the discomforting grin of a wolf, quietly confident in its strength and instincts. It was a common sight for a sociable Nicolò to ride up on a donkey, offering a freshly rolled cigarette to a labourer in a gesture of friendship. “Nick was charming and tough at the same time,” recalled his former neighbour, Liborio Spagnolo, the son of the village's first Communist mayor. “He was always smiling and trying to convince people with words and not violence.”

But sometimes words fail.

B
ig Joey Massino was sometimes called “The Ear” for his rule that members of the Bonanno crime family of New York couldn't mention him by name, even when he wasn't around, in case police were listening. Instead, they were to refer to him by tugging on an earlobe. That kind of vigilance helped Massino stay atop the Bonannos for two decades. Among his credos was “Once a bullet leaves that gun, you never talk about it.”

Big Joey got his start running a lunch wagon business catering to factory workers, and then worked his way up in the underworld by doing “pieces of work” for the Bonanno and Gambino crime families. His most notable “piece of work” was organizing the Three Captains Murders in 1981 that eventually put Vito Rizzuto in prison.

The twenty-first century opened badly for the Bonannos, and took a nosedive from there. In 2002, beginning a humiliating string of firsts, Frank Coppa became the first known member of the crime family to talk to police. Not long after that, acting captain Joseph D'Amico became the first made member of the Bonanno crime family to wear a police wire. Underboss Sal (Good Looking Sal) Vitale took things a step further when he became the highest-ranking member of the American mob since Sammy (The Bull) Gravano in the early 1990s to co-operate with the government. James (Big Louie) Tartaglione left his
own stain on the family's reputation when he became its first member to record an administrative meeting for investigators.

Things had collapsed in a big way for Big Joey by the time the first decade of the new century was half done. The rat infestation in his group led to his conviction for seven murders, with prosecution pending on an eighth and prosecutors mulling the death penalty on that remaining count.

Faced with the possibility of a lethal injection at Sing Sing, on July 30, 2004, Big Joey flipped. He began wearing a hidden recording device in the federal Metropolitan Detention Center in Brooklyn and agreed to testify for the government in upcoming mob trials, including one against his successor, Vincent (Vinny Gorgeous) Basciano, who once teased and clipped hair for a living at Hello Gorgeous, a hair salon on East Tremont Avenue in the Bronx. Among other things, Big Joey's wire caught Basciano outlining plans to murder a federal prosecutor and Nicholas Garaufis, the same Brooklyn federal judge who handled Vito's case. Ironically, when Big Joey took the stand, he testified about talking with Basciano about killing a suspected informer: “Vinny told me that he had him killed. He said he was a scumbag, a rat.”

Things only got worse for Big Joey Massino. His seventy-one-year-old former
consigliere
Anthony (Fat Tony) Rabitto was knocked out of commission with sport-betting charges in June 2005. The
New York Post
dined out on the arrests of Fat Tony and some of his geriatric associates, headlining the story
THE GOODFOGEY'S—GRANDPAS BUSTED IN $15M LOAN-SHARK AND GAMBLE RING
, with a caption over a photo of Fat Tony that read
RIPE BONANNOS
.

The ultimate low point came when the public learned of Big Joey Massino's decision to become the first top boss to turn stoolie. The New York
Daily News
dubbed the Bonannos “the Rodney Dangerfields of the city's five mob families.” No one gave them respect anymore.

That meant both Massino and Vitale were co-operating with authorities in May 2007 when Vito was finally called before a New York judge to answer for his role as a triggerman in the Three Captains Murders. As Vitale told authorities, Massino and Dominic (Sonny Black) Napolitano invited captains Alphonse (Sonny Red) Indelicato,
Philip (Philly Lucky) Giaccone and Dominick (Big Trin) Trinchera to an “administrative meeting” at a Brooklyn social club. Vito was one of the three designated shooters. With him was another Montrealer named “Emmanuel” and yet another Montrealer who was considerably older, whose name Vitale didn't know.

“Was someone designated as the lead shooter?” a prosecutor asked Vitale.

“Vito and Emmanuel,” Vitale replied.

“Was there any discussion where the shooters, why some of the shooters were from Canada?”