by Philip Carlo
Phyllis was somewhat surprised that Pitera was being so nice. That was the only word to describe his tone and pitch.
“I’ve never given her any drugs; we’ve gotten high together, but I’ll make sure to never turn her on,” she replied.
He stared at her. Having Tommy Pitera stare at you with those ice-blue eyes of his was unsettling, to say the least. He nodded. They shook hands. With that handshake and with his eyes, he warned her that it could become dangerous, that he absolutely, positively did not want Celeste using drugs, did NOT want Phyllis to give her any drugs!
CHAPTER NINETEEN
THREE-TIME LOSER
Frank Gangi was six foot three, thin, and wiry. When he walked around Brooklyn, he looked like a scarecrow that had stepped off his pedestal and was moving about. He had a large, oval-shaped face. He was a chain-smoker, and when he laughed, phlegm readily bubbled in his lungs and he coughed. He did not have the demeanor, the features, or the carriage of a predatory animal. When you looked at Gangi, you thought more of a cook working in a busy kitchen, a friendly grocery-store clerk, or, perhaps, the local pizza man, not a killer, certainly not a Mafia associate.
However, Frank Gangi was a dedicated drug dealer, had been charged with murder, though he was acquitted. He was associated with the Bonanno crime family and he came from a culture of mafiosi. His father, uncles, and cousins were associates in the Bonanno and Genovese families. His uncle was Angelo Prezzanzano, a respected capo in the Bonanno family. His father, Frank Gangi Sr., was also an associate of the Bonanno family and had dealt in drugs. His cousin Rosario “Ross.” Gangi was a highly respected captain in the Genovese family.
Frank Gangi was one of those individuals who existed on the periphery of Mafiadom. He was the proverbial three-time loser. Whether it was a combination of bad luck, bad timing, being ill informed, or abusing drugs was all up for debate. Suffice it to say, Frank Gangi would become one of the most important players in the life and times and crimes of Tommy Karate Pitera. Certainly a large part of Frank’s difficulties in life stemmed from the fact that his father had spent three years in prison, from when Frank was five until he was eight. Without his father, the boy’s feeling of isolation from his family and from society at large was amplified. His mother, Margaret, had a male child from a previous marriage and she openly and without question preferred her first boy to Frank. To further muddy the waters of his turbulent life, Frank’s father was murdered when Frank was nine years old. He was killed in a mob-related incident that involved Sicilian hit men being brought down from Canada to kill Frankie Tuminaro and the senior Gangi. With the loss of his father, Frank Gangi withdrew further and further into himself. Whatever problems the young boy had were magnified. He was destined for trouble with the law, society, and especially those of his own kind. He would become a pariah from not only the Mafia but his own family as well. He would become a man with no country.
Though Frank Gangi was an average-looking man, women were drawn to him in a big way. He was tall and well put together. He had the golden gift of gab and was easy to warm to. He was not threatening. He seemed sincere and would readily offer to help if he could. Unlike many of the connected men that come from Bensonhurst and Gravesend, Frank Gangi was not a natural-born killer; it seemed that he was born in the wrong place at the wrong time.
When he was in his early twenties, Gangi had a marijuana business. With his two partners, Billy Bright and Arthur Guvenaro, he sold hundreds of pounds of pot every week, happily filling the need for marijuana in Brooklyn and the tristate area. Arthur Guvenaro was a freebase head and began stealing from Bright and Gangi. They realized what he was doing and made up their minds to kill him. The night of the murder, April 27, 1985, Bright and Gangi lured Guvenaro to their stash house near Stillwell Avenue in Gravesend and began freebasing with him. When Bright and Gangi finally pulled out guns, they were so stoned, they were inefficient, and their minds so fogged by the drugs that they bungled the murder. Still, the two aimed and shot Guvenaro. After Guvenaro was shot several times, he dove through a large bay window, rolled onto the street, and, miraculously, took off with incredible speed, bullets lodged in his upper back as well as the back of his head. When he reached the corner, he dropped. A police car rolled up to him. His dying words were, “Frank Gangi and Billy Bright did this to me.”
Gangi and Billy Bright were quickly arrested.
Shockingly, when the case went to trial, they were acquitted. Their lawyer convinced the jury that Guvenaro was the bad guy, that he pulled out a gun and had started shooting at them, and they were just defending themselves. Because there was no one to contradict them on the stand, the jury found them not guilty. They were, however, found guilty of possession of a gun. For the gun charge, they were each sentenced to a year in prison.
In the spring of 1986, Frank Gangi emerged from jail. He had little money, little resources, and was looking for something to do. He was a friend of Judy Haimowitz’s and she suggested he go see Tommy Pitera. She said that Pitera had a lot going on and could, perhaps, help set him up.
When Frank Gangi first met Tommy Pitera in the Just Us Bar in 1986, Gangi was taken aback by Pitera’s voice. Those who knew Pitera knew the sound his voice made coming out of his mouth and readily accepted it. However, Frank Gangi was hearing it for the first time, and couldn’t help but think of Mickey Mouse or, worse yet, Minnie Mouse. Here was this ruthless killer, with a reputation that far preceded him, talking like a cartoon character. The comedy of it was not lost on Gangi. In that Gangi had this outgoing, gregarious personality, it was easy for him to get Tommy to warm to him. After the two of them had talked awhile, Tommy said, “What can I do for you? What are you here for?”
In a vague sense, Gangi talked about borrowing money.
“Hold on a second. I’m not a shylock. That’s not what I do,” Pitera said.
“I’m sorry. I thought maybe you could help me tide things over until I can get something going.”
“No,” Pitera said. “I don’t loan money. But maybe there are other things we can do together.”
Pitera already knew who Frank Gangi was. He knew his family was all mobbed up; that Frank had previously sold large amounts of marijuana; that he had murdered Arthur Guvenaro with Billy Bright. These were the best credentials Gangi could have had. Pitera knew he was an amiable guy who had come up the hard way, who came from the nearby streets, and he immediately viewed Gangi as a potential member of his world. Likewise, Frank Gangi had heard all about Pitera and was open to becoming involved with him and working with him. Pitera arranged for Gangi to be fronted weight in cocaine and heroin and even marijuana. With his reputation and former connections and outgoing personality, Gangi was able to quickly make money for not only himself, but Tommy Pitera, too. Like this, little by little, over the weeks and months, Frank Gangi became a trusted confidant of Tommy Pitera’s.
Pitera also hooked Gangi up with an Israeli coke dealer who was one of several sources Pitera had outside the Bonanno family. His name was Shlomo Mendelsohn. A rough-around-the-edges, military-trained Israeli, Shlomo was part of a drug-dealing cartel that consisted of all Israelis. They were arrogant, tough, independent, and well connected. Because Pitera liked to stay as far away from the drugs as possible, it was not unusual for him to have underlings meet people, pick up the drugs, and distribute them appropriately. Knowing that Gangi was working for Pitera, Shlomo pretty much gave him whatever he asked for on consignment. Suddenly Gangi was no longer a Mafia wannabe. Thanks to Pitera, he was up and running and in the game again, though Frank Gangi still had a problem that would come back and shake the very foundation of the Bonanno crime family.
CHAPTER TWENTY
GROUP 33
With Pitera’s bar under surveillance and the DEA aware of his links to the Bonannos, Hunt’s boss Ken Feldman saw the potential for a big bust that would get some serious bad guys off the street. This combined with Jim Hunt’s impeccable reputation pretty much guaranteed Hunt would get whatever he a
sked for. One of the first things he requested was a nimble, quick-moving strike force made up of agents from Group 33 to bring down Pitera. His boss gave him the green light and soon he was using rotating shifts divided between sharp, highly experienced agents who would eventually monitor all of Pitera’s moves, who was going in and out of the Just Us Bar. The strike force also managed to get warrants to listen in on Pitera’s phone conversations. The team of DEA agents, each of whom Hunt had given a nickname, was made up of Tom “El Gordo” Geisel, Eric “Eric the Red” Stangeby, Bruce “Spike” Travers, Mike “Nunzio” Agrifolio, John “Big John” McKenna, Mike “Big Mike” Grabowski, John “Little John” Welch, John “Jethro” Wilson, and Violet Szeleczky. They quickly noticed Frank Gangi show up on the scene. Frank was hard not to notice. At six three, with his long beak of a nose and black fedora, he was easy to spot in the crowd.
Always suspicious and paranoid, Pitera was indeed a hard man to pin something on. As it turned out, he very rarely talked on the phone, let alone said anything incriminating. He drove many different cars, so, at that point, it would have been exceedingly difficult to install a listening device.
In that Pitera had been born and raised in Gravesend, he knew its streets, avenues, and alleyways, lots, and dead ends like the back of his hand. Pitera, as most made guys, could smell a cop a mile away. He noted the DEA agents, but he didn’t know who exactly they were—FBI, NYPD Organized Crime, DEA, or ATF. To continue going about his business, Pitera again took to donning disguises. He was a natural-born actor and could bend and twist his body any which way he wanted to. Like this, he often managed to slip away from his pursuers. On several occasions—while agents were sitting in front of his house, he’d leave the building dressed in his Hasidic disguise, moving slowly, bent over like a pretzel, and they did not know it was him. He also dressed as a woman and, so disguised, would boldly strut out of his house, take a left or right, and soon disappear. At this juncture, Pitera was not under surveillance 24/7, though as the case unfolded, as facts and names and details became known to the government, the DEA would become like white on rice to Tommy Pitera. Because Group 33 was the most active, aggressive of all DEA groups in the entire country, they were all always very busy—were working numerous cases with different ethnic groups at any given time. Cases at different stages of development had to be nurtured; witnesses and snitches, new evidence and new leads, would fall out of the sky and have to be tended to immediately. For Jim Hunt, however, the Pitera case was important.
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
THE GUVENAROS
There were four Guvenaro brothers: Vinnie “Mook,” Louie “Bopp,” Frankie, and Arthur. It seemed, for all intents and purposes, that the murder of Arthur Guvenaro was a thing of the past, over and done with. That might very well have been the case had Arthur Guvenaro not had a brother named Louie Bopp. Louie was a tough, street-smart guy who was born and raised on Bath Avenue. As a youth, he had hung out with a group called the Bath Avenue Boys, all stand-up, two-fisted Italian-Americans. Louie Bopp was a naturally gifted athlete. Anything he tried in terms of athletics he did very well. He was a particularly adept street fighter. He had unusually large hands and was amazingly fast and knocked out most of his opponents before they even threw a punch. Coincidentally, sadly, Louie’s older brother, Vinnie “Mook” Guvenaro, was murdered by Gambino capo Nino Gaggi with the help of the notorious Roy DeMeo for whistling at Gaggi’s sister-in-law on Eighty-sixth Street as she came out of the Hytulip Jewish Deli.
Louie Bopp made his living on the outside of the law. Though he was not a made man, he was most definitely connected. He had been born and raised in the Mafia culture, was a part of it, was thought of well—a rough-and-ready guy who often had a smile on his face.
Arthur Guvenaro was Louie’s youngest brother. Louie had always watched over Arthur. He knew Arthur was troublesome, that he was using drugs excessively, and he warned his kid brother. But Arthur, like all the brothers, was strong-willed and stubborn, headstrong, tough, and he wouldn’t listen to his older—wiser—brother. Inevitably, inexorably, Arthur’s freebasing caused problems that resulted in his murder. When Louie Bopp heard about his brother’s killing, he was incensed, distraught, and wanted revenge. Revenge in that neighborhood was the norm, as much a part of it as the Eighty-sixth Street elevated train. The fact that Frank Gangi and Billy Bright only received a year after murdering Arthur compounded Louie Bopp’s anger and frustration many times over. When Louie Bopp learned that Gangi and Billy Bright were out of jail, he decided to kill them—to take a contract out on their lives. Gangi and Bright had been childhood friends, two rogues cut from the same cloth. Bright had been doing business with Pitera before he went to jail, and now that he was out of jail, their business relationship resumed.
It didn’t take long for Gangi and Billy Bright to hear about the contract Louie Bopp had taken out on their lives, and they ran to Tommy Pitera. Pitera was ideally suited to act as an intermediary on behalf of Gangi and Bright. He knew Mafia protocol exceedingly well. He knew its rules and regulations as well as the street on which he was born. Since both Frank Gangi and Billy Bright were working for him now, it was his responsibility to step up for them. Diplomatically, he suggested to Frank that he go to his cousin Ross Gangi, a highly respected Genovese captain, and that he, Pitera, would speak up for Billy Bright.
“This way,” Pitera said, “you’ll have two families speaking up for you. Your position will be much stronger.”
Pitera was, of course, absolutely right.
A sit-down is a classic way the Mafia developed to iron out problems. It was easy to have beef with anyone over a hundred different things, grab a gun, and put a bullet in someone’s head. Though a bullet to the head certainly ended arguments, finalized all debates, there was a better way to settle disputes, differences of opinions, the divvying up of various multifamily schemes without spilling blood. Unbeknownst to the police and, by extension, the public, the Mafia often had meetings to resolve disputes without rancor, yelling or cursing or pointing of fingers. Again, this was a custom that was brought over from Sicily but refined and perfected by the American La Cosa Nostra.
In a sense, sit-downs had become an art form. The modulation of voice had to be just so; the motions of hands had to be subdued; even the look from the eyes had to be neutral, not filled with fire, hatred. Because the Bonanno crime family was deeply involved in this problem, Anthony Spero, the underboss, a highly respected individual in the family, agreed to “host” the sit-down. He would be the final arbitrator. Whatever he decided would be law—indisputable. The meeting was held in a quiet restaurant in Bensonhurst. The attendees were Louie Bopp, Billy Bright, Frank Gangi, Gangi’s cousin Ross, Tommy Pitera, and Anthony Spero.
Louie Bopp was seething with anger. Regardless of how neutral he tried to appear, the anger boiled over and came from his eyes, his every movement, though he was respectful, shook hands and kissed. Louie first laid out his case, said that his brother had been murdered by Gangi and Bright, and he wanted revenge, was entitled to revenge. Conversely, Billy Bright told how Arthur had been stealing from them, that Arthur was an out-of-control drug addict, that he “brought it all on himself.”
Everyone there that day sitting at the table knew exactly what Arthur Guvenaro had been doing: he had been ripping off corner dealers. One day he was rich and driving fancy cars and the next day he was broke because of illogical, bad behavior.
Spero listened calmly to both sides and weighed the options. Gangi and Bright were both earners for the Bonanno family. As if that weren’t enough, Gangi had his cousin in his corner, while Bright had Pitera speaking for him. Spero ruled that the matter was to be forgotten, that no one was going to be killed.
“It’s over and done,” he said in little more than a whisper.
And it was over and done. Had Louie Bopp done anything more, tried to get his revenge, killed Gangi and Bright, he would have quickly and summarily been shot to death, no questions asked, no quarter
given.
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
THE GRAVEDIGGER
On February 11, 1987, Pitera managed to lose the DEA, murder on his mind. He had Vincent Kojak Giattino in tow. He was headed to a desolate warehouse out in Queens for the purpose of filling a revenge contract. This was a particularly important killing for Pitera because he had been tapped by Joe Massino himself. Joe Massino was a rotund, particularly tough, though dapper mafioso, a close friend of John Gotti’s. The two came up the ranks together. They socialized with each other. They were made from the same mold. Joe’s nickname could very well have been Joe “The Gentleman” for he was fastidious about his appearance and was always well groomed. He had a beautiful wife whom he loved very much.
Through guile, brutality, street acumen, and shooting first and accurately, Joe Massino made himself the head of the Bonanno crime family. Philip Rastelli, the acting head of the family, had neither the balls nor the street smarts to go up against him. Whoever challenged Massino’s rule was quickly eliminated.
One such person was Cesare Bonventre. He had been present the day Carmine Galante was shot to death. He had participated in the murder. A tall, hulking blond man who wore his hair slicked back and his shirts open, he was a mercurial mafioso who seemed to be bipolar. One minute he could be sitting there laughing and the next minute he was tearing your throat out. As per Joe Massino’s order, Bonanno family members Sal Vitale and Louie “HaHa” Attanasio picked up Bonventre to take him to a meeting with acting Bonanno boss Philip Rastelli. As is the way of made men, treachery virtuosos all, Bonventre was shot numerous times and killed on the way to the meeting. Specific orders had been given to make sure Bonventre was “buried deep.” This task was given to Gabe Infante. Massino did not ever want Bonventre found.
