The Good Rat (10 page)

Aside from funerals, the lone organized business in the Hole was Mike’s Gun Shop. Mike was in a wheelchair and lived over the shop. Nobody knew how he got up and down, but he was usually at work in back, making silencers that were popular all over New York. Particularly with the people in Midnight Rose’s candy store on Saratoga Avenue in Brownsville, a short ride away. The candy store’s back room was a hiring hall for Murder Inc. Mike also sold stolen guns and automatic weapons that caused the ranks of rival mobs to be sharply depleted.

Mike’s wife sold legal guns and ammunition in the front of the store.

One great champion of the Hole in Ozone Park was an Italian pit bull called U Couraga. He was brought over from Sicily by old Vincenzo from Crescent Street. He was an Italian pit bull, because he understood only commands in Italian. If you told him, “Sit,” he didn’t move. If you said, “Siediti!” he sat. The command “Attack!” required no translating. The dog knew that word in a thousand languages, and he got into such a wild frenzy that it would be cruel not to let him go and chew somebody up.

He had a match on this particular Sunday morning against a dog brought down to the Hole by people from the Bronx who believed that their beast could hold his own in a zoo. They knew nothing of U Couraga. Reputations of fighting dogs rarely got out of their neighborhoods. Dogfights were not reported in the newspapers, so there never was an account of U Couraga except rumors of greatness, and who
in the Bronx could believe anything about this crummy Ozone Park neighborhood in Queens where they claimed championships that nobody else knew anything about?

All during this Sunday match, people were going to back doors and buying homemade wine costing a dollar-fifty a gallon and made with real grapes in a barrel, strong enough to leave you senseless. At fight time at the Hole, the people took huge swallows of the red wine and the dogs snarled insanely and the crowd shouted for dog murder.

The main-event dogs were in cages facing each other in a dirt ring inside a chicken-wire fence. They were left to look at each other and raise hatred to an indescribable pitch.

Everybody in the Hole bet U Couraga to an eight-to-one favorite. This is not a random recitation; the dog always was eight to one. The Bronx people thought they were being given an opportunity to rob a big crowd without even pulling out a gun. “My dog could fight Germany,” one of the Bronx guys said.

With a shout, the cages were opened, and the two pit bulls were blurs of hate as they went for each other.

U Couraga’s teeth got there first. He got hold of the throat of the Bronx champion, and that took care of the Bronx champion.

“I won a hundred from the guy with the pieces of his dog in the dirt in front of him,” says Sal Reale. He was out of East New York and then Ozone Park. He can tell of hiding from cops with grand-jury subpoenas for days in the
basement of a bakery in East New York. Because his mother knew that he was living on lemon tarts, she brought sandwiches down. She stamped on the metal cellar doors, and, from underneath, her son Sal pushed the door open just enough to take the sandwiches and tell her he loved her, and then he pulled the door shut. The mother remained. Some days she stayed and spoke to a half dozen people going in and out of the bakery. Sal was sure it was going to be trouble, and it was. The next voices he heard were of cops standing right overhead. “She stood there a long time,” one voice said. “Sal must be right around here. We’ll get a warrant.” Deep in the night, Sal fled the bakery and drove to Col-chester, Vermont, where a kid gas-station attendant looked at Sal’s alligator-skin boots and said, “What’s your hurry? Are you in the May-fia?”

After the fight in the Hole, the Bronx dog was removed with a shovel and buried back in the same weeds and rocky earth that held those who were deemed candidates to break the most sacred oath,
omertà.

Law enforcement remained outside the Hole. “I am in a car at the corner of Miller and Sutter avenues,” Reale states authoritatively. “That was in the Seventy-fifth Precinct, where I had no legitimate business, because I was carrying a gun. The guy with me also had a gun. It was all right in the Hole, but not here. We had the lights off, but it was the dead of winter, and we kept the motor on to keep the car warm. A patrol car sees the exhaust coming out of a dark car, so they come over. They found the two of us with guns.
I said, ‘Officer, we didn’t mean to embarrass you.’ We were in the Hole, and nobody would bother us for this. They asked me, ‘Why do you have one?’ I said, ‘For our self-protection.’

“They took us to the Seventy-fifth Precinct. The lieutenant sent us up to the detectives’ room. Right away I knew what this would be. I told the detectives that I was from the Hole. They said, ‘Two thousand.’ I said, ‘Are you fellas sick?’ We started going back and forth, and then we settled for a thousand. The one detective got up and went over to the window and threw it open. Then he pretended to go right to work at his desk. We went out the window and onto the fire escape, and we were gone. Don’t we get a block when the same patrol car pulls up. I told them, ‘We never escaped.’ They threw us back into the precinct. We had to sit with the detectives again. They tried to act like they never seen us before. I wouldn’t give in. ‘A thousand, what are you crazy? Zero is the number.’ Finally it took two hundred to get the window open again. This time we run for the Hole and they don’t come in to get us again.”

Had you caught snatches of their shoptalk, you would have thought they were steamfitters discussing a job. Kaplan, Casso, and the two cops called their trade in murder “work,” or “a piece of work.” It was all done with the smoothness of an assembly line. Their kind of homicide gave organized crime its name. The other kind of crime, disorganized and angry, filled with missteps, left dead innocents all over the city, like the afternoon back in the thirties when Mad Dog Coll tried to kill one of Dutch Schultz’s thugs on a street in East Harlem. The site was a day nursery when he arrived with blazing weapons and a funeral parlor when he was done. The shootings in our story resulted in but one innocent death. Outside of that, all the other bodies they piled up belonged to people whose killings were Long Overdue. Which made the Casso-Kaplan-Cops group marvelously proficient at murder.

• Q:
  Can you tell the jury, sir, do you know of someone named John Otto Heidel?
  
• A:
  He was an associate of the Lucchese family. He was part of a gang called the Bypass Gang. They did expensive burglaries. They did banks. They bypassed the alarms. They did warehouses, that type of stuff.
  
• Q:
  Did there come a time, sir, that you went to the El Caribe and overheard or observed a conversation between Otto Heidel and another person named Tommy Karate?
  
• A:
  Yes. Tommy is a made member of the Bonanno crime family.
  
• Q:
  What was the sum and substance of the conversation between Otto Heidel and Tommy Karate?
  
• A:
  I had went to the El Caribe that day to the beach club and to see my tenants who had the luncheon concession there, and we were talking, and Tommy Karate was standing with us, and Otto Heidel walked over, and he was playing racquetball in the facilities. And Tommy Karate says to him, You know something, Otto? I think you’re a stool pigeon. And Otto Heidel got very affronted by it. He said, Why are you talking like that, Tommy? And Tommy says, It just seems that every time we do something when you’re involved, somebody gets pinched or they know we’re coming in before we get there, and nothing ever goes right. I personally think you’re a stool pigeon.
  
• Q:
  What else was Otto’s reaction besides denying it?
  
• A:
  To me he looked like he was a little afraid. Tommy Karate was the type of guy that was very, very capable of killing him.
  
• Q:
  Had you been involved in a watch deal or Bulova watch deal?
  
• A:
  Yes.
  
• Q:
  Can you tell the jury, was that related somehow to Otto Heidel?
  
• A:
  What had happened just before that, Casso told me that this same gang had broken into Bulova’s warehouse in Queens and that if I wanted, he could get me the watches from that burglary to fence. And it was a fairly reasonable price, and I said okay, I would do it. And he said, Don’t worry about the money, I’ll vouch for the money, and we were delivered a truckload of Bulova watches, and Otto Heidel was one of the people who delivered it to Tommy in Staten Island. We had a house we used as a drop there, and Tommy said that there was three or four guys on the truck, and when Tommy came back and told me that, I said to Tommy, Let’s do ourselves a favor and load that stuff up and take it to a different spot. And the next day, law enforcement went to that first spot and were looking for the Bulova watches, but they weren’t there. People that were involved in the Bulova watches were arrested.
  
• Q:
  After hearing that conversation between Mr. Karate and Mr. Heidel, did you inform Casso about it?
  
• A:
  I told him exactly what happened, the exchanges between the two of them, and I said, You know, I know you’re close to this Otto Heidel, and he says, Yes, we’ve been friends and doing things together for years. We never had no problems with him. I said, To me it didn’t look right, the conversation. He said, Well, why don’t you ask our friends to find out what they could about
  Otto? They came back, and Louie told me that Otto Heidel was hot. It means he was cooperating.
  
• Q:
  What did Casso say?
  
• A:
  What he normally says: Are you sure? I know this guy a long time. Do you think these guys are accurate? I don’t know, I says, they haven’t told us anything that wasn’t accurate yet. He said, Okay. I’ll take care of it.
  
• Q:
  What did you take that to mean? When Casso said he would take care of it?
  
• A:
  Someone had given Otto flat tires. While he was fixing it, he got shot.
  
• Q:
  Do you know what precinct Otto Heidel was killed in?
  
• A:
  Sixty-third.
  
• Q:
  Did Mr. Eppolito give you information about that investigation?
  
• A:
  He came to my house, and he handed me two mini-tapes, and he said, This will prove that I was right, that the guy was cooperating and that he was taping people. And I didn’t have a tape player to play that, and I gave the tapes to Casso. Louie said, I got them out of Otto’s apartment while I was doing the investigation, and I put them in my boot. His boot, his shoe, his boots. He wore boots.
  
• Q:
  Did Eppolito indicate to you that he knew where Otto Heidel lived?
  
• A:
  Yes. It was sure he was there. It was a crime scene. He went to it. He told me he got the tapes from his apartment. I gave them to Anthony Casso. He said, You were
  right. There is a conversation from a bank burglary and Vic Amuso’s voice is on the tape, saying to Otto, Do you want anything? It was a cold night. And Otto was in a van listening to police radios, and Otto said, Yes, soup.
  
• Q:
  Sir, can you tell the jury, who was Peter Savino?
  
• A:
  Peter Savino was an associate of the Genovese crime family. He and Anthony Casso were partners in a marijuana business and then a windows business.
  
• Q:
  Did there come a time that you received information about Mr. Savino from either Mr. Eppolito or Mr. Caracappa?
  
• A:
  Yes. I believe it was from Louis Eppolito. Louie brought me a piece of paper, a report, a police report, and it said that Pete Savino was cooperating with the government, that he was cooperating with them for a few years, and that he was cooperating originally with a detective in the Sixty-second precinct and that when the government came to Savino and started asking the questions about the window business, he took them immediately down to the basement, where he showed them some bodies buried.
  
• Q:
  Did Mr. Eppolito indicate to you what precinct he had gotten that information from and how he had gotten it?
  
• A:
  No.
  
• Q:
  You mentioned some paperwork?
  
• A:
  It was a report of the background of the whole interview with Pete Savino, that he was originally an informant with somebody in the Sixty-second.
  
• Q:
  What did you do with that information about Mr. Savino?
  
• A:
  I gave it to Anthony Casso.
  
• Q:
  Did Savino have a nickname that you remember?
  
• A:
  “Black Pete.”
  
• Q:
  Did there come a time that Casso told you what he did with the report?
  
• A:
  He gave it to Benny Eggs Mangano, who was high up in the Genovese crime family. Benny Eggs came back about a week later and said that they took Black Pete down into a basement, they put a gun into his mouth, and that he believed and that the other people in the Genovese family believed that Pete wasn’t an informant.
  
• Q:
  Did Mr. Eppolito ever make a statement to you regarding about whether he liked working with you?
  
• A:
  He said that he liked doing things with us, because when he gave us information, people got taken care of that deserved it, and that in the past he gave information to other people and they never acted on it. When he gave us information about an informant and eventually the guy got killed, that’s the context that I take it in.
  
• Q:
  And you also mentioned somebody named Dominick Costa?
  
• A:
  Yes. Louie came and told me that there’s a guy by the name of Dominick Costa that’s involved in the Bypass Gang that’s cooperating. I passed the information to Anthony Casso.
  
• Q:
  What did Casso say?
  
• A:
  He said he was going to go see Carmine Sessa and another gentleman by the name of Fusco—I don’t remember his first name—and tell them, they were his bosses.
  
• Q:
  Did anything happen to Costa?
  
• A:
  Someone followed him into his apartment and shot him in the back of the head, but he lived.
  
• Q:
  Have you heard of James Bishop?
  
• A:
  Yes. He was active in the painters’ union. He was an associate with the Lucchese crime family. They controlled the union. Bishop was their man.
  
• Q:
  Did Casso express some concern regarding Bishop to you?
  
• A:
  Yes. He says that Bishop is acting funny, they sent for him a couple of times, he didn’t come, he didn’t put the right people to work that he was supposed to on certain jobs, and he asked me to find out if there was any cooperation with the government from Bishop. Ask your two friends if they could find out.
  
• Q:
  What did you do?
  
• A:
  I spoke to Louie or Steve, I don’t remember at this particular occasion, and I got back an answer that he was cooperating. Casso didn’t tell me what he was going to do with it, but within a couple of weeks James Bishop was killed.
  
• Q:
  Do you recognize that photograph?
  
• A:
  Yes. Anthony Dilapi. He was in Allenwood with me. Casso asked me to try and get my friends if they could locate him, and I said, I think there’s a way to locate
  him. I said, He’s on parole, he was still in prison when I came home, and if we write to his parole officer, we can get his address.
  
• Q:
  Why did you think Dilapi was on parole?
  
• A:
  Because he came home from jail after me, and I was on parole.
  
• Q:
  Did you know specifically the terms of his parole?
  
• A:
  No. But I knew he was on parole. Casso called for Anthony Dilapi to come in and tell him what he controlled up in the Bronx. Anthony Dilapi was a made member in the Lucchese crime family. He was into the Joker Poker machines and bookmaking places, and Anthony Dilapi said he would come in the following week and give Casso that information. Instead he sold all his stops and he left town.
  
• Q:
  And what did Casso ask you to do with respect to Dilapi?
  
• A:
  Find him. I suggested that we could find him by contacting his parole officer. I asked Steve if he could write a letter to Dilapi’s parole officer, because when you leave one jurisdiction and go to another, you have to be assigned to a different parole officer, and he said he could do that. Again, I asked him, Steve, will this come back and hurt you in the future because it’s going to be a permanent record? And he says no, he’s not worried about it. He could do it.
  
• Q:
  Was there any talk by Mr. Caracappa of putting Mr. Dilapi into an investigation?
  
• A:
  That’s how he said he always did it, whether it be phone numbers or addresses, he would always put it into an ongoing current investigation. He would put the name in with five or six other people in a real investigation going on at that time.
  
• Q:
  Did there come a time that Mr. Caracappa actually gave you information regarding Mr. Dilapi?
  
• A:
  Yes, he did. That he had moved to California and he was involved in some kind of business there, and he gave me an address. I passed it on to Anthony Casso. He told me that he sent three guys out there to kill Dilapi and that he thinks Dilapi spotted one of them that he knew and he moved to a different place.
  
• Q:
  Did Casso ask you to do anything else?
  
• A:
  Yes. He asked me if I could speak to my friend and ask him if he could get an updated address of him. I said, I think that’s dangerous for him to do that, but I’ll ask him anyway. And I spoke with Steve, and I said, Steve, please, if this is going to come back and haunt you, don’t do it. Like always, Steve said, I could do it, and he did it. He gave me his new address.
  
• Q:
  Where was the address?
  
• A:
  In California, a different building.
  
• Q:
  Did you have a conversation with Casso after you gave Casso the second address for Dilapi that you had gotten from Mr. Caracappa?
  
• A:
  Yes. He told me that Anthony Dilapi was killed.
  
• Q:
  Do you know someone named Bruno Facciola?
  
• A:
  He was a capo in the Lucchese crime family. He was a shylock. From Canarsie.
  
• Q:
  Did you know of any of Facciola’s associates?
  
• A:
  A fellow by the name of Taylor and a fellow by the name of Visconti.
  
• Q:
  Did you ever have a conversation with Mr. Eppolito or Mr. Caracappa regarding Mr. Bruno Facciola?
  
• A:
  Louie Eppolito said that a friend of his owes Bruno Facciola some money, and this is the same kid that has the auto-repair business or the auto-collision business, I don’t know what it was, that let us use his place and that Bruno Facciola is pressing him and abusing him, and would I speak to Casso to speak to Facciola and get him to take the pressure off the kid because the kid is a good kid. Casso thought about it for a few minutes, and he said he would speak to Bruno. He said that he spoke to Bruno, and Bruno gave him a little bit of a hard time but finally he agreed to do what Casso asked.
  
• Q:
  What did Mr. Eppolito respond?