Lion in the Basement Growing up in the Gallo Crime Family

by Frank DiMatteo

  CHAPTER 21

  On the Way to New York

  Blast started to stay in Little Italy, he got the opportunity to invest in "La Casa Bella" a restaurant on Mulberry and Hester Streets, and that, he did. He then left President Street for good, he left a sunken ship, a hand full of us were still there till the end.

  All meetings were held at "Bella's," so I went often with Ricky or who ever was left in the crew, went. After a while you didn't see much of the guys anymore, only if you were doing something with them. Pretty much we were broken up, offically we were with Blast, but that didn't mean shit anymore. We all had to go out and make a living.

  Louie and me started to hang out at "Bella's." We didn't go to the city often, before that we mostly ran around Brooklyn and most of the times in the local joints.

  There was a guy and his mother at Bella's that sang Italian music, they were great. So when they played we would take the girls to go see them. One night we were having dinner there when Blast came over to our table and sat with us. Blast liked Louie because he thought he was smart and he liked young guys like that. He talked about school, I think Louie was still going to Pace university fooling around, Blast said to Louie "what are you doing with Frankie?", Louie quickly said "Blast, don't think Frankie is not smart, I'm learning from him, and not all bad things!" Blast said "I like that you didn't miss a beat!" they laughed. Blast said to me, 'you got a good friend there'. He asked where dad was I said, with Al Goldstein.He said, 'I hope he's making money with that fat fucking Jew,' then laughed. The rest of the night we enjoyed the drinks and listened to the music, a lot of the guys came in. We spent a lot of money in "Bella's," we didn't mind cause we we were making a lot of money. I really liked Blast, even though he wasn't the type of guy who was very friendly but I knew him since I was a baby, so it wasn't like Wow, he's Albert Gallo, he was like an uncle.

  The next day after Louie and me had that talk with Blast, Louie gets a call from someone he knew in the NYPD. They told him the place was bugged and they heard the conversation, and warned him to "stay the fuck out of there." So Louie called me down to see him. When I got to his house he told me what was said. That night when I saw Blast, I told him what I was told, he looked at me and walked away. I got the message, there was no need to talk about it, he trusted me enough not to question me.

  I drank a few Dewars and water, before I left. I saw Mike "The Owls" son Nicky there with his girl. I had a few more drinks with him, he was a good guy from the neighborhood. Let's just say, if you came up short and needed some funds he was there. I also ran into Bulleye, a guy with the crew, I don't know what his function was, he was always with Stevie G. We called them "Martini and Rossi". He was a character, a small guy with thick glasses, bald with his hair swept across his head. I used to meet him at the "Gamesmen Barber", on Court Street once a week. I would get a manicure and he would get his hair fixed. He spoke like a real street guy but would always ask how Ricky was, and if I was staying out of trouble. I would say "Why" are you the only one that can have fun? he would smile, but a smile like a sneak, I liked him but I felt he had no respect for me. Yes, I was young but everyone was young, then I left to go back to the neighborhood.

  A few weeks later I was leaving "Casa Bella" before going back to Brooklyn. We went to Rodney Dangerfield, a comedy club on First Avenue and Sixty-fourth Street, in the city. I was with a few of the guys. We were having a meeting there with some guy that was a pot dealer, who was making 20,000 a week.

  He knew someone that knew us, so he called us for help, he was having some trouble with some Armenian junk dealers that wanted to move in on his pot business. Thay were selling some pot and uppers, coke, and smack, so before there were any 'beefs' we met with these four Armenian's, around the block at "Hipppopotamus." We sat and had a drink, we asked how we could end this. They said they would give us two thousand a week to keep out. We said 'OK', we were not going to get close to that from the guy that called us. So we went back to Dangerfields and told the guy to back off or the Armenian guys would kill him, and that we couldn't do nothing about it. He looked at us like, "Wow, I just got fucked!"

  I had a young guy named David with me that night. As we were leaving, two girls we knew from "Ju-Ju's Bar" asked if I could give them a lift back to "The Hook", I said "no problem". I was driving down Second Avenue when I got into an argument with a guy in a car that was blocking the intersection talking to someone. I got out of the car and asked the guy to move, he told me to "go fuck myself." So I pulled out a 25 auto and shot at him three times. I missed and he moved the car! I got back in the car and as I was putting the gun back in my waistband the gun went off, just missing David and me. The two girls in the back started to scream, they thought someone was shooting at us. I said to calm down, it was me putting the gun away, they cried all the way to 'Ju-Ju's Bar'. When we got to the bar I got them some drinks to relax, when they did, they said I was a "sick fuck" and would never get in a car with me again! As the night went on I think they started to get turned on. Then they started to come on to me, let's say it was a "wild night."

  Roy Roy was still staying in the neighborhood. He didn't like to go to New York. He said Blast was all bullshit, so he stood local, in fact he didn't leave the club much. One night I went into a bar named "Butchs Inn", on Court Street. I was going to meet Roy there, as I walked in, I see Roy at the corner of the bar with Hugh "Apples" McIntosh, a Colombo killer. He was a mean motherfucker, and was giving Roy a hard time. As I walked, in Roy looked at me giving me the "eye, to go away". So I just walked to the bar next to him, not saying a word and ordered a drink.

  After a few minutes Mac leaned over to me and said "What are you going to do when I blow his brains all over you," I said "you better have two bullets!"

  Macintosh laughed and said to Roy, "Who's that fuck?," Roy said "Ricky's son", Mac grinned and walked out. Mac respected Ricky, so he just walked away. Roy started to yell at me, I stopped him and said "what the fuck did you want me to do, I just saved your ass!" Roy just looked at me in shock, then smiled and said 'have a drink', that ended that. I heard the barmaid say to someone "their like a bunch of cowboys, another wild night at Butchs!"

  The next night Punchy calls me to be at "Ju-Ju's" about 5:00, "Ju-Ju" is the old "Park Inn" on Court and Carroll Streets known for 'chink food.' My Mom worked there in the late 60's. It was an old bar with a small stage next to the bar. I mean small maybe you could fit a guy with a guitar! any way, I got to the bar about 5:30. Punchy was sitting at the end of the bar with Lauren Becall and Tanya Roberts, he introduced me and said "Were going out tonight, your driving!" We went to a piano bar on Sixty and First Avenue in New York, called " The Red Velvet". They had a fat broad playing piano and singing, she was "Out of this world!" I pretty much had to baby sit Tanya. It was a wild night bouncing from club to club. We got back to Brooklyn about 8:00 in the morning!

  I woke up to Emily who was ironing my underwear. We were going to "The Crazy Country Club", in Bay Ridge. It was a crazy place, they had a speaker in the ladies room. So when the girls were talking, the whole place could hear them!, and when some girls would walk in they would blow air up their dresses! It was a fun place. We were meeting with Louie and Jo. I was feeling like shit, but did what I had to do.

  A few weeks went by, we were still going back and forth to "Casa Bella's" Blast liked us there, he liked Ricky to be with him, he felt comfortable. Ricky was still officially with Blast until we got the call to come to the restaurant. When we get there about noon, Blast was at the bar.

  He said "Ricky, lets go upstairs," so we went up. When we got up there, a few guys from the crew where sitting around. Preston, Steven G, Bulleye, and Steven B. Blast sat down and told Ricky that Vincent "Chin" Gigante found out that we were selling drugs and was pissed off, and wanted to call us in. Blast told Chin that Ricky wasn't with him and he would take care of it. Blast told Ricky he had to put it on record that Ricky and me wasn't with him any longer. Ricky looked at him and smiled and said
that was fine with him. He got the message, no more had to be said. Then Ricky got up and said to the guys "I hope that you don't think you were here to scare me, because I don't want to think that of you guys, that maybe one of you are going to kill me," they all said that Blast called them to come and they didn't know what the fuck was going on! Everyone kissed and we left. We got to the car, I was driving back to Brooklyn. I didn't say a word, Ricky was grinding his teeth and talking to himself. Then after twenty minutes he said that Blast did the right thing by telling Chin we weren't with him or Chin would have had us killed. You couldn't sell drugs if you were with "The Chin", or at least, don't get caught! Then he said to keep an eye out, that it would be someone in our crew who will kill us. I said "that's great now I got to watch my back again, from the guys I grew up with".

  When the wiseguys found out that Ricky wasn't with the Blast any longer, they came to the bar, on Mill Avenue. Guys from the Bonnano crew and the Lucchese crew asked Ricky to go with them. Ricky said to them "I always told you, if you need me for anything, call me, but for now let me just do what I'm doing."

  In 1991, a new era in our life started. Rudy Farone and Louie T, "Capo's" in Sammy "The Plumber's" DeCavlcante crime family from New Jersey, "they had a few crews in Brooklyn" came to the restaurant. to speak to Ricky. I get a call to come to the restaurant. Rudy wanted Ricky to help Anthony Rotondo, a "New Capo" in the Decavalcante crime family run his crew. Ricky said "Yes", because Anthony's father Jimmie, "A Capo" in the family, was a dear friend and was killed a few years earlier and Anthony needed the help and wanted Ricky with. Ricky said "Yes" and we wound up in the Decavlcante family. Here we go again!

  La Casa Bella on Mulberry Street in Little Italy

  Me, Jo, Em, Delma, Sal, at Casa Bella's

  Louie in the photo in my place, the next day Louie gets a call from a pal at NYPD

  Ricky at home holding Court with Anthony Rotondo "Capo" in the DeCavalcante crime family you can see whos talking and who's listering

  CHAPTER 22

  Reflections

  I've seen friends kill friends, and guys grow up and kill their mentors. Then mentors that groomed guys, kill them for no reason or just because they were paranoid. I've seen guys who would die for each other or for a cause then break up for money or a better rank in a family. In this world, your good as long as your needed. In the forty-five years that Iv'e been in this life, going back over everything that I know or heard, is that "The life is an "Oxy Moran". The rules it was built on, was a mirror and never really happened.

  It's filled with rats or potential rats no loyalty to anyone. How can you be loyal when the bosse's are ratting on you!

  I thought they were Gods and Gods aren't suppose to die, but they did, they died when my father died.

  Ricky lived much longer then he should have after being shot three different times and had two bad car accidents. The joke was that Ricky had "Nine live's", and that "He was so bad that the devil didn't even want him." When he was dying we still weren't sure if he was going to pull through. His mind was still there, but his body gave up on him.

  I called him just before he died. I didn't go down to Florida because I didn't want to believe he was going to die. To tell the truth, I just didn't want to see "My God", dying.

  The last words we spoke was just before he died. He said to me "Hey pal, don't worry, I'm going to be fine" and "To come down so we could go to dinner and drinks". Then he died and left me alone. It was a shock he never left me alone in the fifty years I was with him.

  Then the following year I visited my Godfather Bobby "Darrow" Bongiovi in jail. He was in Cocksockie Medical Facility, dying of throat cancer, he'd been in jail since 1973, for a premeditated murder. He was a hit man for the Gallo crew and got punished for it.

  Bobby was a small guy with big balls. I can also say he was a lovable lunatic! He drank and smoked pot like each day was his last. When he saw me a smiled came on his face. A soft spoken man with a trigger so fine he could turn like a animal. When it was time to work he would put his work face on. He looked at his mirror, then looked at me again and smiled.

  I think he was a natural gangster not someone who wanted to be one. As I look back it was like a game to him. I don't think he gave a fuck. He refused treatment for the cancer because he knew he was going to die. I asked him why he refused the treatment, he said, with a raspy voice and a smile, "The only thing I have left is my hair, and I'm not losing it! I noticed that he had two mirrors and a comb and a bunch of letters. That is what he had, for 74 years of life. I felt like "Wow, this is all he has what a waste of a life!" He also said "Its time to be with Dad." He said he was sorry he couldn't be there for Ricky's funeral. I said "It's not like you just didn't go, you've been in jail for 37 years!"

  We laughed and talked about the times when he was young and I was a kid and all the good times we had. I said, "Bobby, do you remember the time when I was picking you up and driving you around?" He said, "Yes." I said, "Do you remember the time I came up to the apartment on Ocean Avenue and Avenue L, you were having coffee and you asked me if I wanted some? Then you gave me a cup, as we sat there you got up and opened the window and threw the rest of the coffee out the window?" He stopped me and said, "I told you then, that the dead had to have their coffee in the morning." I looked at him and said, "I still think that's nuts!" He said, "Why", do you think were normal?" and smiled.

  It was getting late, and I knew I wouldn't see him again. I said, "Besides being in jail for the last 37 years, what do you regret?" He said "Frankie boy, one, I should never have got caught for killing that prick in the bar, the law 'rail roaded' me, and the guys left me out to rot.

  Two, I didn't get the chance to kill Pete 'The Greek' the bodyguard with Joey Gallo the night Joey got whacked he was involved in Joey's hit. I should have known when he told me to leave 'The Copa,' and that he had it covered, he couldn't protect himself, never mind Joey. Pete got a gun pinch and I got picked up so I didn't have the time to kill the mutt. Three, if I knew that 'Al was a piece a shit that he is', I would not have wasted the bullet on the prick in the bar. He left me here like a dog, what a mutt!" "Hey Al, if you read the book, these words came from Bobby's mouth, I have no opinion, I'm just telling the story". Lol.

  I said "Bobby, you had time to think, in 37 years, you don't regret doing this shit at all?" He said, "Frankie boy, I did so much more work, this is what I am, if I regret it I'm going to hell as a 'Fag' I'd rather go to hell recommended!" Some more little talk, went on I saw he was getting weaker, so I said to my mother, "lets go", I leaned over and kissed Bobby goodbye, with a tear in my eye, then left.

  As I was driving home I said, "I just lost the two guys I loved, within a year." I got that feeling of being alone again. We got a call two day later from the prison, died in his sleep.

  After many years I went to see Punchy at his restaurant on Columbia Street. I didn't realized how long it has been since I saw him last. He was always good to me. I stopped hanging around because I felt like he was not treating me like I was a man. I felt like he was treating me like a kid. I was hurt, no matter what I did, I got no recognition, he was a hard guy, and a real tough guy. I know that in this life you don't get a pat on the back or a star in your book, but there are ways you know that what you did in life is recognized.

  When I saw him, I realized how old I am. As a kid coming up with the guys, they were young and strong men you can depend on. As soon as I saw him I got a flashback of the day he got shot on President Street, while he was standing with Tony Bernardo, getting a hotdog. It was a frightening scene and something you don't forget. I didn't mind when I had to stay with him in the hospital. I liked him and he was one of the big boys, and I thought it would be "a feather in my cap."

  As I looked at him, it felt like my world was coming to a end again. He looked old, sick, and frail, it was him but he was not there. We talked a few minutes, he asked me how I was and what I'm doing. Then my mother came over to him, and they sat and spoke. I
walked away, I got the same feeling I got twice in the last three years, my father dying and then my godfather dying. I felt the same feeling again, of loneliness. It's like when you're a kid and all your heroes die and you are left alone.

  I went back to see Punchy and had a drink or two. I know another "Chapter in my life" is coming to an end. Frank "Punchy" Illiano passed away Jan 2014, the last of the Gods. I am not here to justfy what they did in their lives: "The Lord will." I don't care if these guys were gangsters, hoodlums, or murders, to me they were "husbands, fathers, grandfathers, brothers, uncles or a friend." They were Gods who are truly missed, and they are turning over in their graves at, "This thing of ours". I can hear Ricky saying to Punchy "What a joke!"

  If you got this far in the book I have to tell you a little secret. Blast was just the "Boss in name" Ricky was the boss. "Everything" went through him.

  I wake up most mornings and ask myself "Has this been a dream or a nightmare?"

  Now the story starts, life after the Gallo's. Ten years with the Decavalcante crime family, this one was even crazier then the first thirty years between the drugs deals in Miami, partying, porno video companies and the "Soprano" tapes, then being put up to "Get made" in 1999. To the families of the guys in the book. They were my Gods, and it was history I had to tell it like I saw it. They are my Memories!

  Now, whoever reads this book and is from Brooklyn, I'm telling you, I didn't have a chance from the beginning! If you ever drove over the Crospey Avenue Bridge going to Coney Island and saw a guy on the bridge, "shadow boxing", that's my birth father, "Alphono "funzi" MiLone!"

  Now The Challenge!

  Real Rats!

  These guys are walking around signing autographs. Not one wise guy or tough guy or somebody that says they "know the code", has killed one of them. Why? Then I hear people that never did a fucking thing in their lives talk about "Our Thing" and how you "Can't say this or that." I hear people say "my family is," or "I know someone," everybody knows someone. To all of you go grab your balls. Here is the list of Rats go bust their balls! Go, be a stand up tough guy. You can also go after 1000 authors and hundreds of so called "wise guys" that helped on movies sets that were from the streets. Let's not forget all the wise guys that told you stories, because that "broke the fucking code." In my book everyone's dead and no one can go to jail. That's more than I can say about the list below. Til then, don't bust my balls with bullshit!