Chin

by Larry McShane

  DiGilio’s style was seriously rubbing the crime family’s leadership the wrong way by late May 1988. Unlike his boss Gigante, DiGilio seemed to relish the media attention that came with his position. It was a fatal flaw.

  A Genovese hit man blasted five shots into the back of DiGilio’s head in a murder so grisly that the killer was left to clean blood and pieces of teeth from the interior of the Lincoln Continental where the hit took place. The victim was later fished out of the Hackensack River.

  His replacement atop the 440-member union was Genovese associate Joseph Lore, who had once threatened to take a blowtorch to a fellow mobster’s testicles.

  * * *

  Despite Vincent Gigante’s rising profile and expanding influence, the feds were no closer to putting handcuffs on the Chin in the early 1980s than the flummoxed Bergen County prosecutors a decade earlier. Gigante’s visits to St. Vincent’s had evolved into an annual getaway–a demented version of a week in the Hamptons.

  He was prescribed medications to treat his “illness,” but once the nurses left, he slipped the pills under his tongue and spit them out. Gigante, as usual, signed himself in, and signed himself back out when he felt the time was right.

  Gigante arrived for a short stay on March 9, 1982. The next year he checked himself in on April 20. He stopped back in, yet again, on May 7, 1983. In each case Gigante showed the same symptoms, received the usual treatment and headed back to the Village.

  There was one difference: The FBI was now waiting outside, along with the Chin’s driver. Within hours of his departure on May 23, 1983, Gigante was back in the company of Dominick “Baldy Dom” Canterino, Frank Condo, Vito Palmieri (the Chin’s driver) and other Genovese associates. It was like a trip to Lourdes, and then it was business as usual. As was a 1983 meeting with an up-and-coming Colombo capo who became a moneymaking Mob machine before his thirty-fifth birthday.

  The 1980s

  In 2014, on a fall weekend morning in New Jersey, Michael Franzese shook hands with a steady stream of guests inside an industrial park in tiny Totowa, a town where the dead (one hundred thousand in five cemeteries) outnumbered the living (ten thousand residents).

  Franzese was dressed casually but neatly, with a fashionable hint of stubble. He was here to show his new movie, From Godfather to God The Father, a tale of redemption that the born-again Colombo capo hoped would save a few souls.

  Things were far different three decades earlier, in the 1980s, when Franzese, conspiring with the Russian Mob, conjured a massive scam to circumvent federal and state taxes by peddling bootleg gasoline in several states. His personal take in the rip-off was estimated at somewhere in the area of $2 million a week, and his rise through the family ranks was meteoric.

  By one account, he became the Mafia’s most prolific earner since Al Capone. Franzese drove a Cadillac El Dorado, took to the seas in a yacht and flew through the skies on a private jet. He even opened a Florida moviemaking business, Miami Gold.

  A 1986 Fortune magazine piece ranked Franzese at number eighteen on its list of the nation’s fifty biggest Mafia bosses. On the other hand, they listed the long-deposed Salerno at number one, while slotting the Chin one spot behind Franzese at number nineteen.

  Franzese came with an impeccable Mob pedigree: The gangster’s dad was the legendary Sonny Franzese, who adopted the boy as an infant and raised the child as his own. In an oft-repeated bit of lore, Sonny was behind bars in 1974 when he heard that a Colombo soldier was hitting on his wife. The body of suitor Carmine Scialo was found buried in a cellar, a garrote around his neck and his severed genitals stuffed in his mouth.

  The elder Franzese, who was a pal of Roulette Records’ McCalla, hoped his boy would become a doctor. Instead, Michael followed him directly into the family business. His skills at making huge amounts of cash soon earned the younger Franzese a true 1980s nickname: “the Yuppie Don.”

  His dad was an old-school guy, with a standing reservation at the Copacabana in Manhattan. Guests at his table included Sammy Davis Jr. and Bobby Darin. Michael became a made man in the 1970s, and he quickly ascended through the ranks to become a captain.

  It was the gasoline scam that led Gigante to reach out for Franzese. Genovese capo Fritzy Giovanelli, one of the Chin’s most trusted capos, was dispatched to arrange the sit-down.

  “Every family wanted a piece of the gas business,” Franzese recounted. “When I first realized what I had in 1978, 1979, I told [Colombo boss] ‘Junior’ Persico that I would show him more money than he had ever seen before.”

  Other families, including the Gambinos and the Luccheses, made efforts to muscle their way into the illicit gas operation, so Franzese was unsure what to make of this summons to Sullivan Street.

  “The word among all of us was that no one—made guy or not—was allowed to meet with Chin, unless he sent for you, or someone who he trusted very much would first vouch for you, qualify the reason for you to meet, and then be there when you met,” said Franzese.

  “In my case Chin asked to meet with me. Fritzy told me Chin wanted to meet with me about the gas business.”

  From the rip-off’s inception, Franzese was insistent that the profits should remain for the Colombos only. He braced himself for an overture from the Chin, angling for a slice of the lucrative petroleum pie.

  He was instead pleasantly surprised. Gigante, as befitting an elder statesman, wanted only to meet with the rising star and offer any needed assistance for the operation. He was more father figure than cutthroat boss to the up-and-coming gangster.

  “Chin did not try to grab a piece from me,” Franzese recounted. “In fact, he told me if anyone bothered me, to let him know and he would help. I believe we would have done business eventually, but we were both having issues at the time and it was best not for us to be seen together.”

  Franzese recalled several subsequent meetings, all at the Chin’s request and all down in the Village. Whenever Gigante called, he always found time to answer.

  “My father told me early on that Chin was the real power behind the Genovese family,” he recounted. “In general, that was the word on the street. My dad was happy when Chin asked me to meet with him, and told me to stay close to him.

  “My personal conversations with Chin were all good. I know he commanded a load of respect on the street. I knew he was feared. I know how he treated me. I believed him to be a very good boss.”

  Franzese also knew the Genovese boss to be absolutely lucid and deeply involved with his family’s business, although he couldn’t help but notice Gigante’s robe and slippers.

  “A dapper dresser, he was not,” said an admiring Franzese. “However, I always said that in order to play crazy so well for so long, and at the same time run a very powerful operation with pretty much of an iron fist, you had to be a bit crazy—no other way to pull that off, in my view. I know I couldn’t have done it.”

  Franzese insisted that he never knew Chin or the Genovese family to handle any of the drug trade. The Colombo capo also knew enough to make sure he kept his mouth shut about any dealings with Gigante—or even mentioned his name.

  “For sure,” said Franzese. “We knew he was serious about it. To me, that was very smart. More guys got into trouble, with names being dropped on surveillance equipment, than you can imagine. Chin was smart in that regard.”

  Franzese left the Mob behind in 1989, signing a cooperation agreement with the feds. With the help of his wife, he improbably turned to God and launched a new career, where he often referred to his old one as a tale of redemption.

  His name would later surface as a potential witness against the Chin, although he never took the stand against Gigante.

  CHAPTER 10

  ALL ALONG THE WATCHTOWER

  THE FEDERAL FOCUS ON CHIN AND HIS FAMILY HEIGHTENED IN 1983, with each of the five New York families assigned a specific team of FBI and NYPD investigators responsible for identifying the top players and gathering evidence to bring down the bosses.

&nbs
p; John Pritchard, a native New Yorker who launched his law enforcement career with the NYPD in 1965, led the law enforcement team focusing on the Genoveses. Within six years as a cop he was named to the Major Case Squad, an elite crew of detectives. He moved to the FBI as a special agent in 1976, and became head of the joint NYPD-FBI team chasing the Chin.

  “What happened was the FBI thought if we created a squad for each family, it would be a little more effective,” Pritchard explained in his understated style. “It was a good move for the bureau. For a long time, under ( J. Edgar) Hoover, they didn’t want to acknowledge the existence of organized crime.

  “It was a very powerful idea, and eventually we convinced headquarters. There was a lot of work done on organized crime, but this was the first time a La Cosa Nostra family was gone after as a whole.”

  One of the unexpected results of the increased attention was the firsthand sightings by FBI agents of Chin’s almost mythic crazy act. With their eyes now directly on Gigante at all hours, the investigators marveled at what they saw from the venerable boss.

  The first tale—and still, decades down the road, perhaps the most infamous—came in 1981 when two FBI agents arrived at his mother’s apartment to serve Gigante with a subpoena. They knocked on the door, and she asked the two men to wait a minute before letting them inside—possibly to give her son a little time to get set up.

  By the time the agents made their way through Yolanda Gigante’s home and reached the bathroom, the pair found themselves staring at the naked Chin standing in a running shower, beneath an open umbrella.

  The eyes-on pursuit continued, with the FBI arriving for almost daily sessions around the Triangle. The oft-repeated images and tales sealed the Chin’s reputation as a secretive, rationally paranoid man, willing to do just about anything to avoid jail.

  First, of course, was the “Looney Tunes” outfit: floppy hat, dingy shoes, ratty pants and, of course, a bathrobe that had long seen sharper days. When feeling frisky, Vincent added a belt to his robe. His five o’clock shadow bristled twenty-four hours a day, and his hair was in permanent porcupine mode—unwashed and disheveled, pointed skyward like some strange divining rod.

  Second was the attitude. Like a demented Marlon Brando, Vincent Gigante was a true method actor. Standing inside his mother’s apartment across from the Triangle, his wardrobe in place, the Chin would slip into character. His posture would slowly slip into a slump, his face devoid of emotion, his walk suddenly the shuffling gait of an ancient man.

  The show—a bit of dark nuttiness that often left the agents slack-jawed—would begin once the Chin took in the Village air. The tales, passed around endlessly, became the kind of can-you-top-this stories swapped by the agents during their downtime.

  The Chin would occasionally stop during his strolls on the crowded sidewalks, turn and urinate in the street. At other times Gigante would pause during his ramblings to chat with parking meters and trees. “We’re going for a walk, parking meter,” he once announced. “Want to come?” He looked down to address imaginary pets or spoke with invisible friends.

  There were impromptu sidewalk monologues, unleashed for no apparent reason—except, perhaps, to amuse himself or annoy the feds. One night, as Gigante walked along Houston Street, he spotted FBI surveillance. He instantly dropped to his knees in prayer before one of the religious statues outside St. Anthony of Padua Church.

  “For all I know,” Pritchard has said, “maybe he really was praying.”

  Pritchard recalled watching in disbelief as Gigante climbed inside a waiting car wearing his grungy robe, but emerged decked out in a sharp sharkskin suit. “Looked like a million bucks,” recalled Pritchard.

  There were occasions when the act fell into slapstick. The Chin once stood on a Sullivan Street sidewalk waiting for one of his sons to pull his car out into traffic—and an unwitting motorist honked his horn at the momentary delay. Gigante ran into the street and berated the driver: “What are you, in a rush?”

  Agents watched as Chin and driver Vito Palmieri slowly exited a building on busy Sixth Avenue, arm in arm, with the aide helping his boss meander along the sidewalk. The two then bolted separately through the traffic like a pair of NFL halfbacks dodging oncoming linebackers. Once reunited on the other side of the avenue, Palmieri took Gigante by the arm, slipping into their characters of doddering old man and helpful pal.

  And there were glimpses of a more cunning and cogent Chin. After shuffling through the Village, he would dodge FBI bugs by making calls from a pay phone on the street—and use a credit card to cover the charges.

  * * *

  The stories weren’t limited to law enforcement. Trusted waterfront sage George Barone was summoned to meet with Gigante, some union officials and other mobsters before heading to prison in 1983. Barone was waiting for Gigante’s appearance in an apartment when he was rattled by the arrival of an unknown and terrifying presence.

  The gangster later told the FBI that the interloper “looked like the Man from La Mancha,” and that he instantly thought “this person was there to kill them.”

  As the person came closer, he realized it was Chin dressed in a robe with the hood up over his head, read an FBI summary of the meeting. Gigante embraced him, told the others how much he loved [Barone], and described how they were together years ago with Vito Genovese.

  The strange tales, viewed as a whole, made one thing clear: What started as a ruse to beat a New Jersey bribery rap had somehow morphed into a full-time lifestyle for the Mob boss. For the Chin, as William Shakespeare once noted, all the world had become his stage.

  Though Gigante was the undisputed star of this strange production, he needed a large cast to make it appear legit. Family members, underlings and average Village denizens each contributed to the endless charade.

  “It wasn’t just Chin,” said Pritchard. “It was the other people around him. It was so stupid and nonsensical.”

  And frustratingly effective.

  His Sullivan Street walking companions varied as Gigante inevitably made his way to the foreboding Triangle. Daughter Rita was sometimes asked to join her father on his stroll across the block. A famous 1988 photo caught a mumbling Chin and his brother Louis, hidden behind sunglasses, walking arm in arm through the neighborhood, with big brother in terry bathrobe, pajamas and slippers.

  “He would take me. ‘Let’s go for a walk,’” recalled Louis Gigante. “And I would walk with him, up and down the street, different places. And he was seen. He purposely, in my mind, he wanted to be seen. And he was seen! They were taking pictures! I swear, we were on Sullivan Street walking and I saw somebody from a building—the cameras! Look at this! So what? They saw the way he was.”

  Gigante’s method acting extended into his day-to-day non-Mob activities. The Chin appeared for appointments with his dentist and chiropractor in character and costume, remaining silent and disheveled while receiving treatment.

  The feds also learned about Gigante’s insistence on dead silence when it came to speaking his surname, his nickname or anything else referring to him. Genovese family members, including top capos Mangano, Baldy Dom Canterino and Quiet Dom Cirillo, spread the word that people referencing the Chin should simply point to their own chin rather than utter the C word.

  Making the letter C with your hand was also deemed acceptable. So was the term “this guy.” Capo Giovanelli was caught in a wiretapped conversation referring to his boss as “Aunt Julia,” a nickname that likely remained unknown to his murderous chieftain. Tales quickly emerged attesting to Gigante’s dead-serious no-name edict.

  When Colombo member Joseph “Joe Black” Gorgone was caught mentioning the Chin’s name in a wiretapped conversation, Gigante sent along word that the mobster would be killed if the mistake led to an indictment against the Genovese boss. Lucchese family associate Joe Fiore endured a fearsome beating from three of Chin’s underlings after a Genovese family member learned that he invoked Gigante’s name in a business deal.

 
Sammy Gravano was chastised for jokingly bringing Gigante’s name into a discussion about Mob construction business. Genovese capo Vincent DiNapoli was hardly amused: “Sammy, you get caught on tape or you get this guy hurt, you’re going to get hurt. We refer to him like this.”

  The capo touched his chin.

  “You’re gonna get me killed,” DiNapoli concluded.

  A wiretapped conversation between two Genovese members illustrated the fear inspired by the Chin’s declaration. One mentioned how he’d met and wooed a woman, finally convincing her to stop by his house. The mobster was so thrilled that he ran outside to greet her—in a bathrobe.

  “The Chin is going to be angry that you’re stealing his act,” his pal warned.

  When he was summoned by Gigante the next day, he assumed the omniscient Mob boss had somehow learned of the accidental indiscretion and was fully expecting to be murdered once he appeared. He left with his life and a resolution to keep the bathrobe as strictly an in-home outfit.

  The success of Chin’s mental dodge prompted other mobsters to consider the psycho defense, but Gigante put the kibosh on any would-be imitators.

  “He’d make sure a message was sent directing them to knock it off. ‘Hey, get off my act, you’re watering it down,’ ” recounted federal prosecutor George Stamboulidis, now the cohead of white-collar defense and corporate investigations for the law firm BakerHostetler.

  “The mental incompetency act was unique to him. He invested a tremendous amount of time and effort in it, and perfected it over a few decades. It suited him very well.”

  * * *

  Gigante’s other ruse—installing Salerno as the family’s straw boss—was equally successful. By 1983, with Gigante already two years into his reign atop the family, a U.S. Senate report identified him only as a “major contender for the position of boss.” Chin was covered in a mere two sentences, about the same amount of space given to his New Jersey waterfront underling DiGilio.