Philip Leonetti was now on his way home, behind the wheel of his 44-foot yacht, heading back to New Jersey to visit his ailing grandmother.
My plan was to lay low and sneak back into Atlantic City without anyone knowing I was there.
But sometimes, even the best plans don’t work.
Going Home
A few days after we found out about my grandmother’s stroke, we got into Cape May and docked at a marina down there, and me and my mother rented a car and we drove up to Atlantic City, which was 40 minutes away. Maria stayed on the boat. This was early May 1996, and I hadn’t been in Atlantic City since April of 1987.
I wasn’t nervous, but I was anxious. I knew that this was extremely dangerous, but the way I saw it, I had no choice. My grandmother was sick, and I had to do what I had to do.
I drove right to Georgia Avenue and dropped my mother off in front of our buildings, and then I went and parked the car around the corner on Florida Avenue. My mother and I agreed that she would go outside on the back porch, which had been my uncle’s porch, and smoke a cigarette 30 minutes after she got there if the coast was clear for me to come inside. I remember that my heart was pounding waiting for her to come outside on that porch. The only person I didn’t want to bump into was Nicky Jr. because I knew from talking with my grandmother that he was still involved with my uncle and I didn’t want any aggravation from him because I wasn’t sure where his head was. I knew he himself wouldn’t try anything stupid, but I wasn’t sure who he was hanging with and if one of them would try and make a name for themselves if they saw me. I knew that if word got back to my uncle that me and my mother were back on Georgia Avenue, he would have ordered us to be killed on sight, even if we had come back to take care of his mother. He didn’t give a fuck.
So 30 minutes later, I’m sitting in the car on Florida Avenue and I’m waiting for my mother to appear on the porch with the cigarette so I can go in. I can go right through the same back alleys we used to use when we were sneaking out of Georgia Avenue when had the bail restrictions during the Falcone case.
Now, Philip Leonetti would use those same back alleys to sneak back into the Scarfo compound on Georgia Avenue to avoid detection.
It was just like the old days, only in reverse.
And Philip Leonetti was no longer the underboss of the Philadelphia–Atlantic City La Cosa Nostra. He was a man with a $500,000 bounty on his head.
All the sudden, I see my mother on the porch and, boom, I’m out of the car. I quickly walk through the alleys and hop the little brick wall and no one sees me. I go right up the back steps and me and my mother go into what was my uncle’s apartment, but was now where my grandmother lived.
When my grandmother saw me, she started to cry and so did I. It was very emotional. She was lying in her bed, which was where my uncle had his bedroom, and looked me in the eye and said, “Philip, I never thought I was going to see you again.” I kissed her and I held her hand and I told her, “We’re here, Mom-Mom. We’re going to take care of you,” and she was crying and squeezing my hand.
My mother and I went into the living room to talk and we agreed that my grandmother was in pretty bad shape, worse than we had expected. My mother said without hesitation, “I’m moving back in here with her; she needs me.” My mother was a lot like my uncle in the sense that she was stubborn and, like him, once she said she was doing something, it was done—there was no talking to her. That was the Scarfo in her.
I told her that we would keep the boat in Cape May for the next few months, and I would be close in case she needed me. I told her that I would come up every other day to help out and do whatever she needed me to do. My mother was a tough woman and very street smart, so I wasn’t worried about her safety. Nobody, including my uncle, would do something to my mother and leave me alive. If they were going to hurt her, they would have to kill me first. If they didn’t and anyone so much as raised their voice to my mother, they know I would have killed them. So I figured the only time she was actually in danger was when I was actually around. Plus, I knew she was going to stay in the house and wouldn’t be going out, and I was only 40 minutes away.
That night, Philip Leonetti drove back to Cape May and stayed with Maria on the boat, while his mother stayed on Georgia Avenue with his ailing grandmother.
The next day, I’m up early and I call the house and my mother says, “I saw your cousin last night,” meaning Nicky Jr., and I told her I will be right there, and she said, “It wasn’t what you think.” And I said, “Whatever it was, I’m on my way; I’ll see you in an hour.” Now my heart is racing because now Nicky Jr. knows that at least my mother is back, and he probably knows that I am not too far away.
For the first time since leaving La Cosa Nostra in 1989, Philip Leonetti is back home and he knows that if he is spotted, his life is in danger.
As I’m driving to Atlantic City it occurs to me that I should have a gun in case anyone saw me and decided to try something. I took a shot and I went to a bar in Ducktown that was owned by a kid I used to play basketball with. So I park the car and I walk into the bar, and I am wearing sunglasses and a baseball hat and I see him behind the bar, stocking it. He was getting a delivery because when I was coming in, the delivery guy was going out. It’s early in the morning. He sees me and says, “We don’t open til’ noon,” and I go up to the bar and I take my sunglasses off and I say, “But I’m thirsty now.” He’s getting ready to tell me to get the fuck out of his bar when all the sudden his eyes get real big and he says, “Jesus fuckin’ Christ, is that who I think it is?” And he comes around the bar and gives me a big hug and a kiss, and then we have a drink together, a Cutty and water, just like the old days.
Me and Lawrence used to drink in this bar, and so did me and the Blade. It brought back a lot of memories sitting there with him. The guy says, “Do you remember the last time you were in this place?” And we both started laughing and I told him, “I’ll never forget it.”
It was the late fall of 1986, a couple of months before my uncle got locked up. I was the underboss at this time and I went down to the bar to watch the football games and have a few drinks. It was a Sunday afternoon. I was all by myself. A couple of guys from the neighborhood were there.
I’m sitting there drinking, having a good time, minding my own business and the phone in the bar rings and it was my mother, and she says, “Your uncle needs you back here. He wants you to drive him down to Margate.” I finished my drink and I start walking back to Georgia Avenue, and I am steaming and I was a little drunk. I’m thinking to myself: This cocksucker can’t leave me alone for a couple of hours. He can’t find someone else to drive him to his girlfriend’s house. Why is he always breaking my balls?
So as I’m getting close to the office at 28 North Georgia, my uncle is standing outside and he is talking to a guy who worked for Vince Sausto at Scannicchio’s. He was a waiter there, a fuckin’ two-bit wannabe wise guy that always had something to say. Anytime he saw me or my uncle, he fawned all over us and he would sometimes bring food and liquor to the house for us. So me and my uncle tolerated him.
As I walk up, the guy looks at me and says, “Hey, Philip,” and I hear the guy talking about “motherfucking” Vince, calling him “a jerk off” and saying all kinds of things about him. And my uncle is just standing there listening to the guy. I don’t say a word to either one of them, but I grab the guy by the throat and I start choking him. This guy is gasping for air and his eyes are real big and his arms are flailing. I got both hands around his fuckin’ neck and I’m just squeezing the breath out of this guy. His face is purple and his head looks like it is going to explode. My uncle is goin’ nuts. He says, “What are you doin’? You’re gonna kill the guy.” And after a few more seconds, I let go and I shove the guy to the ground, and he goes down right in the gutter next to his car.
I say to my uncle, “You let this cocksucker (and now I’m kicking this jerk off) come around here and talk about Vince like that? Vince is our friend
; Vince is my friend,” and I start going in on this guy, kicking him good. If I had a gun on me, I woulda killed this guy. I was in such a fuckin’ rage—not so much at the guy or what he said about Vince, but at my uncle. It was the accumulation of everything, all of his bullshit.
I reach into my pocket to take out my car keys; I was going to throw them at my uncle, and I was going to tell him, “Drive yourself to Margate.” But I realized I had left my keys at the bar. At this moment, the guy who owns the bar is walking up Georgia Avenue with my keys; he’s bringing them to me. He senses that he is coming up on a bit of a situation. He sees the guy down on the street and I guess he senses the tension between me and my uncle. He says, “Philip, why don’t you let me drive your uncle to Margate?” And right away my uncle says, “Let’s go.” It was like he couldn’t wait to get away from me, so much so, that he is going to get in a car with a civilian and drive to Margate, which is something my uncle would never do in a million years because he is the boss of La Cosa Nostra, but he knew the guy was from our neighborhood and that the guy was with me, so he went.
They pull away and I go over to the guy in the street and I tell him, “Don’t ever come around here again. If I see you on this street, I’ll kill ya.” And I went upstairs. My uncle never said another word about it, and the guy never came back to Georgia Avenue.
So here I am back in this bar more than 10 years later, and my friend says to me, “What are you doin’ back here, trying to get yourself killed?” And I told him about the situation with my grandmother. He says, “Jesus Christ, Philip, I’m sorry to hear that. Is there anything I can do to help?” And I said, “Yeah there is—you got a gun?” And he pulls a small little .38 from underneath the bar and slides it across the bar to me. He says, “I never saw you and you didn’t get that from me,” and I tuck the gun into my pants and I gave him a hug and a kiss and I thanked him, and as I was leaving he said, “Philip,” and I turned around and he said, “Take care of yourself and be careful.” And I said, “You, too,” and I was out the door.
I parked the car on Florida Avenue, like I had the day before, and I had a bag with some groceries for my grandmother. I put the groceries in a plastic bag and I tore the bottom of the brown grocery bag and I stuck my hand inside the hole of the bag and had the loaded .38 in my hand. I walked through the alley, hopped the wall, and went up the steps into the apartment and saw my mother. The first thing I said was, “Is Nicky here?” And she said, “No. He has a restaurant down in Ventnor and he is down there.” I said, “What happened when he saw you?” And she said, “He was very respectful. He gave me a hug and a kiss and he told me that he figured you’d be coming around with Mom-Mom being sick.” I said, “What did he say about me?” And my mother said, “He said if you’re around, it’s better that you two don’t see each other on account of his father.”
Now here I am standing in what was my uncle’s apartment on Georgia Avenue in Atlantic City, with a .38 in my pants and I’m thinking to myself, “My name must be ‘Crazy Phil,’ if after everything I went through, I ended up right here in the same fuckin’ place that I started.”
The freedom that Philip Leonetti had experienced on the boat was now replaced with the anxiety that he would be spotted and forced to shoot it out with whomever came looking for him, including his cousin Nicky Scarfo Jr.
I said to my mother, “Where is Nicky’s restaurant?” And she gave me the address, and then her eyes got real big and she said, “You’re not going down there, are you?” And I told her, “I want to get this over with. I’ll be back in an hour.”
As Philip Leonetti drove the short distance from the Scarfo compound on Georgia Avenue to Nicky Jr.’s new restaurant, Amici’s Ristorante, on Atlantic Avenue in Ventnor, he wasn’t sure what to expect from his cousin, who was now 32 years old and who had been his uncle’s proxy since his father and Philip went to jail in April 1987.
I drove by the place, and it looked like a classy joint. Right away I noticed the law parked right across the street, watching the place. I knew Nicky had been away and I figured maybe he was on parole, so they were watching him like they used to watch us. I drove right by them and went up the side street and parked halfway up the block. They never made me.
There was a side door on the place that had a green door that went into the kitchen, and I could tell there were workers in there prepping food because I could hear them talking when I walked by. They were all talking Spanish. I opened the door and none of them flinched, and I said, “Where’s Nick?” And one of them nodded towards the dining room that was through a set of double doors that swung in and out like you see at restaurants. I could see through the window in the door that Nicky was sitting at a table with one of the girls who worked there and he had his back to the kitchen.
I took my sunglasses off and I walked through the doors and Nicky had no idea I was there. I pulled a chair up, and when he saw me he turned white as a fuckin’ ghost. I said to the girl at the table, “Dear, can you give us few minutes?” And she left. The first thing I did was give him a hug and a kiss to put him at ease. He put his hands up and said, “Philip, I don’t want any trouble; I got enough trouble,” and I said, “Nick, I’m not here to cause you any trouble, I’m here because Mom-Mom is sick.” I took the gun that I had in the small of my back, the .38, and I put it on the table. I said, “I’m not here to hurt you. Maybe I can help you.” And I could see right away he relaxed.
Philip Leonetti had been in New Jersey for less than 48 hours and already he had been to Georgia Avenue twice, got himself a gun, and now he was having a sit-down with his cousin Nicky Scarfo Jr.
I said, “Tell me about your problems,” and he said, “I wouldn’t know where the fuck to start. I got my mother and Mark that I gotta take care of, then there’s Mom-Mom. I’m up to my neck with this fuckin’ place, and I got problems with the guys in South Philly breaking my balls and trying to shake me down. It’s just me out here; I’m all by myself. Then I got my father with all of his shit, and on top of that, I got those motherfuckers who are parked across the street watching everything I do.”
After he laid out all of his problems, Nicky nodded towards the gun on the table and said, “You know what, do me a favor—shoot me in the fuckin’ head after all,” and we both laughed.
Philip Leonetti quickly recognized that he wasn’t going to have any problems with his cousin.
I knew exactly how he felt. He was going through the motions to appease his father, just like I did, and I knew within two minutes of sitting with him that his heart wasn’t into La Cosa Nostra, and he wasn’t going to do anything stupid.
I told him, I said, “Nicky, remember the last time I saw you in Otisville? I told you to leave this life alone; it’s no good for you. I told you not to listen to your father, but you ignored me and look what happened. Since that time, you got shot and you went to jail. Now you’re sitting here seven years later and you are having problems with the same guys in South Philly, and you got the law parked out in front of this restaurant. That’s not gonna end good either way it goes.” And he said, “I hear ya, but what am I gonna do, pick up and move? I got my mother and Mark to look after, they are my responsibility. They have no one else. I’m fuckin’ stuck here.”
I said to him, “What’s going on with you and the guys in Philly?” And he said, “It’s Joey Merlino and Johnny Ciancaglini. Typical shakedown shit, but I got nothing to give them.” I told him, “Nicky, while I’m here, if you need help, you let me know. Whatever I need to do to help you, I will do. You are my blood, do you understand?” And he said, “Yes, I do, Philip,” and I hugged him.
What I was saying to him was that if anybody posed a threat to him, that I was here to protect him and that I would do whatever needed to be done, including eliminating the threat.
I started looking at one of the menus and I said, “Nicky, this is a classy joint,” and he pointed to one of the items on the menu. It was an Italian dish, but it had an Irish name, and he said, “You wa
nna hear something funny? My father went fuckin’ nuts when he saw that.” And I said, “Why, what the fuck does he care what you call it?” And he said, “My father called and said, ‘You don’t name an Italian dish after a fuckin’ Irishman. What’s the matter with you, you wanna go out of business?’” And we both started laughing. The thought of my uncle sitting in his jail cell at Florence Supermax going nuts over the name of a fuckin’ restaurant dish over a thousand miles away said it all.
We exchanged some funny stories and I left and I told him that if he needed to get a hold of me to talk to my mother. I called my mother on Georgia Avenue and told her everything was fine at the restaurant. As I’m leaving, Nicky walks me back through the kitchen and I say to him, “Nick, you should really keep that side door locked. It’s perfect if someone wanted to come in and make a move on you,” and Nicky started laughing. I said, “What’s so funny?” And he said, “My father said the same thing. He made me take pictures of every square inch of this place and send them to him, and that is the first thing he said to me.”
I gave Nicky a hug and a kiss, and I left. Instead of going back to Georgia Avenue to see my mother and my grandmother, I remember driving back to the boat in Cape May and getting a pounding headache as I did. All I wanted to do was get back on that boat and set sail again, and now I was getting mixed up in all this bullshit in Atlantic City with my cousin.
Philip Leonetti would stay in Cape May and avoid Atlantic City for the next week, checking in on his mother and grandmother by phone.
Me and Maria were living on the boat, which was docked at a marina. We would go to the beach, we would go shopping, we would go out to dinner, and I was bouncing around Ocean City, Wildwood, Rio Grande, Sea Isle City, Stone Harbor, and Avalon, but I wasn’t relaxed like I had been prior to us stopping in New Jersey. I wasn’t happy with the situation that I had put myself in by coming back to Atlantic City.
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