Reiter knew that Adams was going to Florida on vacation. Alite waited a few days, then called the apartment complex, posing as Adams. He told one of the security personnel that while he was away, he was having a new carpet installed. He said two workmen would be coming by and that they should be let into the apartment. He said he trusted the workers and there was no need to stay with them while they took up the old rug and installed the new one.
“I’ll make sure they take care of you,” Alite, as Adams, told the apartment guard, holding out the prospect of a nice tip. “I think we gave him a nickel [five hundred dollars], which right away let him know something was wrong. But he took the money and let them in.”
Alite tapped Mike Finnerty and Patty DiPippa to carry out the heist. Both were friends of his from the neighborhood. DiPippa was the brother of a woman who would eventually become Alite’s common-law wife and the mother of two of his kids.
“They wore hats and hoodies and used the service elevator,” he said. “They had an old rug that they had rolled up and a dolly and a tool box. They got right in.”
They spent a few hours in the apartment so it would seem as if they were, in fact, replacing a rug. What they actually did was locate a safe that Adams had in his apartment, take it out of the wall, and put it on the dolly. They then covered the safe with the old rug and exited the apartment building. They told Alite there was $160,000 in the safe when they broke it open.
“Probably was more than that,” Alite said, repeating a story that he had also told a federal jury during Junior’s 2009 racketeering trial. “It’s part of the business of the street. . . . Everybody is robbing everybody. They probably took thirty, forty, fifty thousand out before they told me it was a hundred and sixty thousand.”
Knowing the way Junior operated, Finnerty and DiPippa wanted to make sure they got a good cut, Alite said. Junior was notorious for leaving himself the lion’s share whenever he racked up a score.
In this case, Alite said, he and Junior split one hundred thousand and Finnerty and DiPippa, who did all the work and took the biggest risk, split sixty thousand with Mike Reiter, who had come up with the scam to begin with. That was the economic reality of the Gotti underworld. Everyone knew it. Privately, guys would complain to him, Alite said, but publicly there was nothing they could do.
“It was a complete dictatorship,” he said.
John Gotti’s Rules of Leadership: Always keep underlings waiting. It reminds them who’s in control without saying a word.
Junior was running his crew the same way his father ran the crime family. He’d call a meeting and then show up an hour later, just to keep everyone waiting. He’d go to a card game and the guys with him would have wait for hours until he was ready to leave. And he demanded a piece of everyone’s action.
Money flowed up, never down. There were a few times when Alite was able to challenge that situation, but not very often. The only way to ensure a fair split, he and the others knew, was to cook the books, to lie about the actual number before turning the take in to Junior.
There was more than one occasion, however, when that wasn’t possible. Junior seldom got directly involved in a heist after he was initiated as a mob soldier, but, according to Alite, he still liked to be on hand when things went down. Alite would recall him being off to the side, sitting in a car a block away, maybe using a police scanner and serving as a lookout. Alite believes this was Junior’s way of being sure the robbery went down. It also put him in a position to get away as quickly as possible if something went wrong.
The robbery of John Kelly, another big-time drug supplier, went down as planned, but Alite ended up doing jail time in the aftermath. Kelly, according to Alite’s testimony, was the brother of Tony Kelly, the guy from whom Alite, Junior, and Kevin Bonner were buying after Bonner was “persuaded” to change suppliers.
In fact, Alite told a jury, it was John Kelly who was the source of the cocaine they were buying.
“This guy was moving fifty to a hundred kilos a month,” Alite said. “Junior wanted him to kick up some cash, like two thousand a kilo.”
It was the typical mob street tax that Junior imposed on anyone he could get this hooks into. But John Kelly figured he was playing at a higher level and ignored the request for a tribute payment. In fact, Alite said, the message he sent back was “Fuck you.”
“I went to see him,” Alite said. “I didn’t want to rob the guy. I said, ‘John, just give him some money. Keep the peace.’ But he didn’t want to pay.”
A lesser player, like Georgie Grosso, was killed for that kind of attitude, but Kelly was such a big moneymaker that it made more sense to go after his cash.
“At this point, in the late 1980s, I’m not even touching cocaine anymore,” Alite said. “I have other guys who are making the deliveries, collecting the cash, cutting the product, whatever. We’re still big in the business, but we’re not in the business, if you know what I mean.”
The idea was to set up a buy from John Kelly and then rob him. Keith Pellegrino, who was one of Alite’s major operators in the cocaine business, put in a request for five kilos of coke.
“This was Junior’s idea,” said Alite. “I know Kelly is not going to show up with five kilos. He’s too smart and too paranoid for that. He’ll sell us the five, but it’ll be two kilos now and two kilos next week and another kilo after that. That’s what happened here.”
Kelly showed up at Pellegrino’s mother’s house, around Eighty-Seventh Street and 103rd Avenue, Alite said. He brought two kilos of cocaine. Pellegrino paid eighty thousand in cash. Kelly put the money in a satchel and dropped the satchel in the trunk of his car as he left the house. There were six sets of eyes on him as he pulled away. Alite and Junior sat in one car watching. Phil Baroni, the former New York City police detective, and a kid named Frankie were in a second car. Two other associates were in a third. Depending on which way Kelly turned, one of those three cars would pull him over. Baroni had gotten badges for everyone. They were going to pose as cops and rip him off. Kelly turned Baroni’s way and within a minute, he was pulled over.
Baroni and the kid Frankie flashed their badges. Kelly and his young girlfriend, who was in the passenger seat, were asked to step out of the car. The “cops” searched the inside of the vehicle and then the trunk, taking the satchel with them as they left Kelly and the girl on the sidewalk. Alite told the jury that the money was returned to Junior and after Pellegrino cut and sold the two stolen kilos of coke, the crew split what amounted to 100 percent profit.
Alite said he and Junior each got about thirty grand from the score while the others split another sixty thousand. A few years later, after that money was long gone, Alite, Junior, Frankie, and a few others guys were on Fire Island one summer afternoon when John Kelly walked by. Everyone said hello, but Kelly recognized Frankie as one of the “cops” who had rousted him. He had originally written the heist off as the work of a couple of rogue detectives. Now he knew better.
“He couldn’t do anything to Junior,” Alite said. “He knew that, but he called me up and threatened me and Keith Pellegrino.” A few years later, Kelly would follow up on that threat and Alite would end up in jail as a result.
Not every robbery, of course, went off as planned or brought back the cash that was expected.
Alite testified that Junior sent him to Florida late in 1987 to follow up on a tip that came from one of Junior’s cousins, a kid named John DiGiorgio, the brother of Sonny DiGiorgio. These were cousins on Junior’s mother’s side. Junior said his cousin was trying to help out a woman who was caught in a bad marriage. Her husband was some kind of doctor or surgeon and he was abusing her. The doctor, said his wife, had a million dollars stashed in his house. DiGiorgio, through Junior, wanted Alite to rob the doctor and rough him up in the process.
“Bobby Boriello had two tough Spanish kids who were with him at the time,” Alite said. “He told them to go down to Florida with me for this job.”
Boriello was a big,
six-foot-two, 250-pound mob soldier and one of Junior’s best friends. He would be Junior’s best man at his wedding a few years later.
“I always liked Bobby,” Alite said. “He was a tough kid, but a genuine nice guy. Funny. But he didn’t know how to make money. He had a nephew who was a jockey and one time the three of us, Bobby, Junior, and me, went down to Delaware, Dover Downs, I think it was, to watch the kid race.”
The kid was giving his uncle Bobby tips on what horses to bet. Boriello told Alite and Junior and they placed their bets accordingly.
“We’re watching the races with the kid’s wife, who was pregnant at the time,” Alite said. “We bet a few races, but we’re not doing too well. I was beginning to wonder about how good the info was.”
But on the fifth race that day, the kid had given them three horses and said to bet a trifecta. These were the horses that were going to come in.
“We bet them,” Alite said. “They were all long shots, the four, the six, and the eight. I think we put a couple of thousand on the trifecta, which would have paid off big-time, maybe a hundred grand, maybe more. We’re watching and those three horses are out front coming into the stretch. We’re screaming. Bobby especially ’cause he doesn’t have a lot of money.”
But out of the corner of his eye, Alite saw another horse coming up on the outside. It was the horse that Bobby’s nephew was riding.
“I can’t believe it,” he said. “The kid’s horse breaks up the trifecta. We lose. Now Bobby’s screaming. He’s running after his nephew. We lost a couple of grand, but Junior and I both start laughing. Bobby’s hollering, ‘I’m gonna kill you!’ He’s running after the jockey. The kid took off. The other people just think it’s a disgruntled gambler who lost, which was true. But they don’t know the whole story. The kid’s wife is crying. I think we laughed all the way back to the city, although Bobby didn’t think it was so funny. He never caught up with his nephew, which was probably a good thing. I never knew what happened that day. The kid must have panicked or something. We would have won big money if he had just held his horse back.”
The Florida robbery was another bust.
“When we get there, DiGiorgio picks me up at the airport,” Alite said. “Bobby’s guys had come in on another flight. DiGiorgio was supposed to have all kinds of intel for me, whether there was a security system in the house, where the money was. He was also supposed to get us a car and some guns. All he had was a fake gun. Nothing else.”
He drove them to the doctor’s house in Fort Lauderdale.
It was across the street from a police station.
“Bobby’s guys don’t want to do it, but I said, ‘We came this far. We’re going in,’” Alite said while recounting the story to a federal jury in Manhattan.
He said he knocked on the door and when the doctor answered, he coldcocked him, knocking him out. He and the two Spanish kids went into the house, rolled the doctor up in a rug, covered his mouth with duct tape, and began searching the premises.
There was supposed to be a safe with a million dollars in cash.
They found about three grand in a drawer in one of the bedrooms. There was no safe.
“We poured some water on the doctor to wake him up,” Alite said, “and I pulled the duct tape off his mouth. We asked him where the cash was.”
The doctor, lying on the floor with just his head sticking out of a rolled-up carpet, went on a rant about his wife. She had taken up with this drug dealer, he told Alite. This was her way of punishing him. He had no cash. It was all bullshit.
Alite, who knew a little about vindictive women, thought the doctor’s story had the ring of truth. And knowing the way the Gottis operated—he considered the DiGiorgio branch of the family part of the same bloodline—he accepted the story. Junior’s cousin, Alite thought, was probably having an affair with the woman and this was his way of showing her how tough and connected he was. Once again it was more perception than reality. Alite was carrying the ball for another branch of the family.
Alite and Boriello’s two guys left the doctor where he was, wrapped in a rug, lying on the floor just off the foyer of the house. They headed for the airport and a flight back to New York City. Alite told Boriello’s two guys to split the three grand they had found in the home.
The take didn’t even cover expenses.
Paul Silvers was a more lucrative score. Alite robbed him twice. The story, which Alite would also recount for the federal jury in Manhattan, offers a glimpse at the petty, everyday deceit that is so much a part of the mob underworld. Men of honor may show up in mob movies, but Alite ran into very few in Queens or Manhattan.
Silvers was a drug dealer whom Junior had grown up with. They were friends of sorts. But when Silvers went into the drug business, he hooked up with Tommy Stabile, who was tied to the Luchese organization. Silvers was kicking up to him every week. Stabile was Silvers’s insurance policy. Junior didn’t care. According to Alite’s testimony, he sent Alite to rob Silvers.
Silvers had an apartment on Queens Boulevard. Alite arranged for a drug purchase but showed up with a gun instead of cash.
“Come on, John,” Silvers said when he realized what was going down.
“Talk to the other guy,” said Alite as he walked out with a kilo of coke and several thousand dollars. They both knew Alite was referring to Junior. Silvers did what would be expected. He went to Stabile. Stabile, in turn, asked to meet with Junior.
This was mobster-to-mobster, the typical way disputes of this kind were settled. Junior brought Alite along for the meeting at a car lot Stabile owned on Atlantic Avenue near Eighty-Sixth Street. The negotiations were short and sweet. Paul Silvers got screwed.
Stabile said Silvers was paying him between two hundred and three hundred dollars a week. Alite watched and listened as Gotti negotiated. According to Alite’s recollection, Junior offered Stabile five thousand dollars, part of the take from the first robbery, and said they intended to rob Silvers again. Stabile would be in for a piece of that as well. All he had to do was tell Silvers that everything had been straightened out and that it wouldn’t happen again.
A few weeks later, Alite said he was back at Silvers’s apartment for another drug buy. When Alite got off the elevator, Silvers had his girlfriend waiting.
“I’m sorry,” she told Alite, “but he wants me to frisk you.”
Alite held out his arms as the attractive young woman began patting him down. She moved her hands over his sides and along his thighs. She lifted his pant legs to see if he had an ankle holster.
Alite smiled, looked at his crotch, and said, “Do you want to check my balls?”
She laughed and said, “That won’t be necessary.”
Turns out it was.
Once inside the apartment, Alite reached into his pants where he had a gun stashed in a jock strap. Again Silvers said, “Come on, John.” Alite just rolled his eyes and walked out with cash and coke that was worth about $75,000. Stabile got 10 percent. Alite says he and Junior split the rest.
“With Junior, it was always about money,” Alite said. “Friendship didn’t matter. You could have been his friend for a dozen years and he’d still rip you off. He didn’t care. That’s just the way he was. Him and his father, both the same.”
Silvers figured in another, more lucrative heist that Alite pulled off several years later, although Junior wasn’t thrilled with the outcome. Posing as cops, Alite, Baroni, and Pellegrino hit an apartment owned by Dennis Harrigan, another major drug dealer.
They had badges, but that wasn’t enough.
“After we busted in, Harrigan’s girlfriend, who was in the shower, came out with just a towel wrapped around her,” Alite recalled. “Her name was Claudine. I didn’t recognize her, but she recognized me. She owned a beauty parlor where my girlfriend Claudia was working. She was also dating Louie Dome [Louis Pacella], who was one of the leaders of the Luchese crime family.”
Alite stared at the woman. He had a gun in one hand and a badge in the
other.
“John, I know it’s you,” she said. “I know you’re not a cop.”
There was nothing that Harrigan could do, however. Alite and his partners walked out of the apartment with more than $120,000 in cash. But before taking the money to Junior, Alite took $65,000 and gave it to Greg Reiter. Reiter, in turn, gave the cash to his mother, Delores, the wife of Mark the Jew, the jailed drug dealer. Greg, who was a good friend of Alite, had gotten involved in a drug deal with Harrigan and Silvers in Mexico a few months earlier. The deal went bad. Someone had set them all up and all their cash was stolen. Greg Reiter’s end was sixty-five grand, money he had taken from his mother without her knowing about it. The son figured he would turn a profit and give his mom back more than he had “borrowed.” Instead, he had lost it all.
Alite used the Harrigan robbery to make Delores Reiter whole again. The rest of the cash he took to Junior.
“He was screaming,” Alite said, “but I didn’t care.”
It was the first time Alite had openly defied Junior Gotti. They still were partners and he still was Junior’s go-to guy on the streets, but the relationship was beginning to change. Alite began to recognize his role in the organization, the place he held in Junior’s world and, to a lesser extent, in John Gotti Sr.’s world. He was someone they both found useful. And as long as he was able to deliver, things would be all right. But if he wasn’t able to meet their needs, then he was expendable. It was a way of life in the underworld. It was, he told a federal jury, like walking a tightrope.
“Everything we do, one step and you could be killed; one step and you could get a life sentence. We all think we’re smarter than everybody else. All we do is lie. And all we do is kill and hurt.”
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