This Family of Mine: What It Was Like Growing Up Gotti (5 page)

I
t was 1956—the year the New York Yankees defeated the Brooklyn Dodgers for the World Series title. Elvis Presley’s “Heartbreak Hotel” claimed the number one spot on the
Billboard
charts, and the top-grossing movie at the time was
Giant
, starring Liz Taylor, Rock Hudson, and the latest Hollywood heart-throb, a brooding kid named James Dean. Young women everywhere swooned at the mere mention of his name, while young men imitated him and his
Rebel Without a Cause
demeanor. And nowhere was this truer than in Brooklyn.

Gang lore has always been painted with a romantic brush, the violence and death overshadowed by the power of brotherhood and the allure of wealth. There was a reason
West Side Story
was such a blockbuster, and it had less to do with choreography and
catchy tunes than with the public’s fascination with gangs. Teens, in particular, were vulnerable in those days, when membership in a turf-minded gang was the ultimate status symbol. The black leather jacket, slicked-back hair, and tough-guy attitude could be seen in almost any teenage Brooklyn male back then. It was
the
look—especially among the toughest gang members.

At the age of sixteen, my father dropped out of school. Later on he would say that quitting school was one of the great regrets of his life. His decision was provoked by an accident that left him crippled and hospitalized for months. There was much speculation surrounding what really happened during this incident. It was widely reported that Dad and a few neighborhood kids were offered twenty dollars to steal a cement mixer from a construction site. And allegedly, things did not go quite as planned. The cement mixer tipped over and fell on my father’s toes, crushing them in the process. And the so-called swagger so often used to describe my father’s gait was attributed to a limp caused by the accident.

Not true.

The real story, as told to me by Dad and Grandma, is much less dramatic than the embellished neighborhood gossip.

Dad and a few of his friends were offered “a few bucks” to move some furniture for a neighbor. While crossing the street carrying an antique chair, my father was hit by a moving cement truck, crushing his leg and four toes. He was forced to drop out of school—and his boxing career was finished.

But drifting from one menial job to another didn’t encourage my father, either. The only positions available to “wops” (as the Italians were unapologetically known) were degrading jobs, like cleaning toilets at the local movie house. When my father was fortunate enough to land something respectable, like pumping gas at a local gas station, my grandfather often sabotaged his efforts. It wasn’t
unusual for Grandpa to come along and cause a ruckus because he needed money to gamble. The incidents were humiliating for Dad, and bad for business, so my father would lose his job. Even before the accident, when Dad was fortunate to make a few dollars boxing, Grandpa was always ringside, waiting for the payout. That’s probably why Dad told me years later that he believed education was the most important thing in a person’s life. “Something no one can ever take away from you.”

By the time he was seventeen, Dad had grown resentful of those fortunate to grow up privileged, or anyone who had enjoyed a childhood more pleasant than his own.

“Kids like me, we didn’t dream of becoming doctors, lawyers, or accountants,” he would say, sometimes with more than a trace of bitterness. “Those professions were for the rich kids—the kids with respectable fathers and mothers.” Being poor had taught my father that surviving was much more important than dreaming. He would never walk away from his own obligations. He would do whatever it took to survive.

Dad often noted that his own father deserved credit for teaching him one thing, and one thing only: fear. As a boy, Dad feared hunger and poverty and loneliness. More than anything, though, he feared the beatings he absorbed at the hands of his father. He learned early on to defend himself against those who were bigger, stronger, and more powerful. He learned to use his fists as a weapon, because they were the only tools at his disposal. Later, his role models were those who were similarly disenchanted with society and its usual rules of decorum: the local hoods who hung around the Brooklyn street corners. My father learned that running errands for these men made him quick money and gave him an advanced education in street smarts. He grew up believing that these men—who wore expensive suits, flashed shiny diamond pinkie
rings and attracted all the pretty girls, not to mention neighborhood respect—were worthy of his admiration. And so he emulated them.

My father, along with his brothers Peter and Gene, Angelo Ruggiero, and a few other teens, formed the Fulton-Rockaway Boys, a street gang in Brooklyn. Angelo was known as “Fat Ange” since he was pudgy as a teenager; he would become a lifelong friend. In the many books that have been written about my father and his cohorts, Angelo is nicknamed “Quack-Quack,” an allusion to the fact that Angelo supposedly couldn’t keep his mouth shut. He is typically depicted as an inveterate gossip, forever chatting recklessly about everything from mob-related activities to the personal lives of those around him.

This was a myth, or most of it, anyway. While Angelo did love to chat and gossip, he earned the nickname Quack-Quack for a thoroughly prosaic reason: he literally walked like a duck. His toes pointed out to the side with each awkward step, giving him a distinct waddle in his stride. It was a gait he’d developed as a growing adolescent, and it had become even more pronounced over time as his waistline expanded.

Angelo and my father were inseparable as the years passed, to the point where they rarely did anything—professional or personal—without the other. They worked, hung out at the social clubs, had dinner, drank, played, and fought together.

Another member of Dad’s gang was Wilfred “Willie Boy” Johnson, a Native American, who went on to become a prominent amateur boxer. He and Dad met in the gym, after an amateur boxing match.

It came as no surprise to any of these young men that Dad rose rapidly to leadership in the club.

With active participation in any gang came the very real risk of spending time behind bars; indeed, incarceration was considered
nothing less than a rite of passage. In 1957, at age seventeen, my father was arrested for the first time. He was charged with unlawful entry in the wake of a turf war with another neighborhood gang. The charges were later dismissed, but Dad would be arrested four more times—for crimes such as petty larceny, aggravated assault, and possession of bookmaking records—while he was still a member of the Fulton-Rockaway gang. The arrests didn’t amount to much, if any, time in jail and were seen more as a way of establishing credibility among the gang than anything else.

The social club on Fulton Street became my father’s second home. Even before he was eighteen he was for all practical purposes an emancipated minor. The situation at home never improved; in fact, it worsened. My grandfather and grandmother were constantly at each other’s throats—and when they weren’t beating up on each other, they would direct that violence toward their kids. Grandpa had all but abandoned any hope of securing a decent job, and the financial burden of supporting the household fell solely on the older Gotti boys. Although each week my father would turn over most of his earnings, he looked for any excuse to avoid going home at night. Dad realized early on that his money did more good when given to people really in need, like an elderly woman who lived above the Fulton Street Social Club. “If the family dog gets kicked in the belly every time he comes home from a walk,” my father explained, “sooner or later he’ll stop coming home.”

My father grew to despise his home life and its abusive, volatile environment. Often he would crash at the Smiths, a neighboring African-American family with a son who had befriended my father. The Smiths lived next door to the House of the Good Shepherd. Mammy Mae Smith had six boys of her own to feed, yet she always welcomed Dad and his siblings at her table. John was her favorite Gotti boy—she would tell him he was as handsome as Clark Gable.
She would also tell my dad that he was special. She told him he had “admirable leadership” qualities that would no doubt benefit him when he was older. She even went so far as to suggest that he might someday become a man of great importance. Never had anyone paid my father such a compliment; he was accustomed to hearing insults and criticism, so Mammy’s words were soothing to his soul.

Mammy Mae was a woman Dad truly loved and respected. She had his trust, and not many people fell into that category. Dad often spoke of her, never failing to describe her as “special.” She provided my father with whatever minimal self-esteem he had in those days.

When Dad needed a warm place to sleep, he knew he could count on Mammy Mae, who would always leave the back door open so he could let himself in. Typically this would happen after one of my grandfather’s alcohol-fueled rages, which were easily heard throughout the neighborhood.

Most nights, though, Dad would stay at the Fulton Street Social Club, crashing on a sofa in the back room. It was a moderately sized storefront with a small alcove in the back that was used as an office. The Fatico brothers, Danny and Carmine, were kind enough to let my father stay there, so long as he agreed to keep an eye on things after hours should anyone uninvited come snooping around—like, one of the local cops.

Like my father, the Fatico brothers were young and impressionable men; they were also “tough guys, cool,” and thus admired around the downtrodden neighborhood. It was the ambience, though, of the Fulton Street Social Club that my father found irresistible. The camaraderie and the air of respect that surrounded the men that hung out there impressed the young John Gotti enormously. It provided an escape from his miserable, depressing, impoverished life. It was a home and these men became his only family.

He’d made up his mind to be just like them.

D
ANNY AND CARMINE
Fatico belonged to a crew that answered to the head of the Mangano Family, the legendary mobster Albert Anastasia. Carmine, the elder of the two brothers, was a capo. Anastasia was brutally killed in October 1957 by two gunmen as he sat in a barber’s chair at the Park Sheraton in Midtown Manhattan. The assassins were never identified. Until his brazen daytime murder, Anastasia was my father’s mentor. After the infamous barbershop hit, Anastasia’s underboss, Carlo Gambino, was elected leader and the family name was changed from Mangano to Gambino.

Normally, underage boys lucky enough to be granted permission to hang around the club were assigned various mundane duties: cleaning up at night, making coffee and espresso during the day, and running various errands. If you succeeded in reaching the level where you were trusted with errands outside the club, it usually meant you had impressed one of the elders in some meaningful way; they saw you not only as “trustworthy” but as a “potential earner” for the crew. And so you were taken under their wing and groomed for the business, instructed in their methods, and infused with street smarts. From their earliest introduction, the Fatico brothers were apparently quite taken and impressed by John Gotti.

“Your dad was a remarkable man, even at sixteen,” they once told me as a teenager at a Fatico family gathering. “We saw qualities—leadership qualities—that grown men learned and possessed only after years of living and working on the streets.”

Dad would say that these mature qualities were less God-given than they were acquired—born out of his quest for a better life, a life far different from his dark and dreary childhood.

Physically, my father was of average height and weight. But he was much stronger than he appeared. For one thing, his often calm exterior masked a ferocious temper, a genetic gift from my
grandfather. Most men were exposed to his outbursts only once; after that, they did their best to avoid provoking him.

Years later, my father would often rationalize his “bad temper” by placing blame on his horrible childhood and the constant need to protect himself. But this ferocious side complemented his street persona. The Fatico brothers, for example, viewed my father’s temper as an asset, especially when it came time to collect payment from a client.

Danny, the younger and more fashion-conscious of the two Faticos, was particularly fond of young John, treating him like a son. He frequently sent my father out on “collection runs,” using baby steps as an initial approach: collecting outstanding balances from less threatening individuals such as the local baker, butcher, or gas station owner. These funds were collected to ensure “protection”—a small amount each month to discourage other ruffians or gang members from attempting to shake down the shop owners, or, even worse, damage or destroy their belongings or storefronts. Protection money also ensured an audience with the neighborhood leader should they ever need to express a gripe or require assistance in reconciling a dispute. When it came to the more serious stuff—situations that required more than muscle and intimidation—Fatico usually sent one of his older and more experienced men. He didn’t want my father to get mixed up in anything petty or stupid. When the time was right, Fatico would have more important assignments for my father.