The Pope of Brooklyn

by Joseph Di Prisco

  A. Yes, sir.

  Q. And what date was that?

  A. That was April the 15th, it was on a Saturday.

  Q. April 15, 1961?

  A. Yes, sir.

  Q. And how did you get—

  A. (Interrupting) I called his office. I wanted to talk to Peter Celentano, and he was in the field, so they asked me to leave a number, and I left a number, and about a half hour later he called me and he said, “Don’t say nothing on the phone. I’ll be down to see you.” So he came down. He came down to see me on Greenpoint Avenue, and with Celentano was Frisher and Gallagher.

  Q. All right, where did you go to?

  A. Over the Greenpoint Avenue Bridge, by the cemetery.

  Q. In one car?

  A. No, I went in my car, they went in their car.

  Q. All right. When you got to the cemetery, what happened?

  A. Well, Pete got out of his car and said, “Don’t say nothing in front of Frisher.”

  Q. Say nothing about what?

  A. The Babe Dereda thing.

  Q. Did he say why?

  A. Frisher was not there.

  Q. Frisher was not in on that?

  A. No, Frisher was not in on that.

  Q. And then what happened?

  A. Well, he asked me—

  Q. (Interrupting) Then did you remain outside the car or did you go in the car?

  A. No, we got in the car.

  Q. And what was said in the car?

  A. He asked me what I was doing and I told him I wasn’t doing anything, and because he was brought into the office and asked about me…And he told me not to do anything, he didn’t want to hear from me, “Just lay low.” I was hot. And, “Get lost.”

  Slouching from Brooklyn

  When I wrote Subway to California, I had an incomplete picture of my family. Of course, I still do and perhaps to some extent always will. I still have an incomplete picture of myself. But I knew I didn’t have all the pieces in place, and that was my burden to read between the lines, make a few guesses. My father never held dinner company spellbound by his stories. There was never much in the way of company around, at dinner or any other hour, and nobody touted him as the Italian Frank McCourt. Yet my hunches, based upon my father’s rare and truncated and oblique disclosures, were occasionally in the ballpark, as it turned out.

  The details surfaced unexpectedly and fleshed out the history when I lurched upon the transcripts of three of my father’s trials that Google posted in January 2015. Google may be richly deserving of the privacy- and copyright-protection criticism leveled against it, but these materials were a godsend. I am neither a consumer advocate nor a legal scholar, but I know what I like. And no amicus briefs in support of the tech giant will be forthcoming from me. I have written some books, however, and I taught for a long time, and I had my own dustup with the FBI when I was a young man, so I could read the testimony and I had a personal stake in the findings. Nobody in my family besides me ever graduated from high school, and there were no book discussions or bedtime readings in my Greenpoint home, but I think it’s probably not the worst upbringing to grow up with a father who was a criminal and a snitch, a fabricator and a world-class evader who internalized the street maxim that nobody was ever hanged for something he didn’t say, and he didn’t say much—at least before those trials. Probably not terrible DNA for a novelist, poet, and memoirist.

  This book of mine begins with an assertion: I am not my father.

  And with a question: how would I know one way or the other?

  The Pope Meets Santa

  Q. You knew that when you gave that answer, you were telling an untruth, didn’t you?

  A. No, I wasn’t lying about it. You didn’t give me a chance.

  Except for a few newspaper articles and my refracted childhood recollections, most knowable information about his criminal life is gleaned from police disciplinary proceedings that took place in Manhattan, 1961–62, and as recorded in New York State Appellate Division, Records and Briefs:

  1949

  Convicted of bookmaking in Brooklyn, given a suspended sentence, pays a fine of twenty-five or fifty dollars (evidence varies). Testified twelve years later that he took the arrest for a bookmaker named Jim Discano as a favor, which was known as a “stand-in” arrest.

  He is twenty years old, residing in Brooklyn, though he sometimes gives his address as my grandparents’ farm in East Islip. I am born in 1950; my brother John, fifteen months later, in 1951; my parents marry at St. Cecilia’s Catholic Church in Greenpoint on February 21, 1953. That means that for at least a few years my mom is a single, unmarried, and divorced young woman living with her four sons (John and me, along with my two older half-brothers, Bobby and Eddie, share one bedroom) in her working-class, Catholic, Polish, and Italian ’hood of Greenpoint. Her living arrangement might have conceivably tested a woman possessed of less intestinal fortitude. She was evidently immune to any social stigma. This observation would not shock anybody who was her neighbor, waiter, physician, priest, spouse, or offspring.

  My father moves into my mother’s apartment around the time of their wedding; before then, he would visit his two boys, he told me in his advanced years, take them in a carriage to the park a couple of blocks away. This is her second and last marriage; his one and only. If anybody snapped wedding portraits, I never saw them framed on the mantle (no mantles either). And if they ever once in their long married lives celebrated their wedding anniversary, I missed the festivities. As for the date of his wedding, he testified that he was married, not in 1953, but in 1948. Husbands can be confused on the anniversary subject, or so I have been curtly informed on occasion, but that seems a significant alteration of the timeline. It’s probably a reach to make too much of this. After all, he was attention-challenged and, at the moment he offered that misinformation, battling with a pit bull attorney.

  1950

  Convicted of petty larceny in the Bronx (theft of granite monuments). Pleads guilty, receives a suspended sentence.

  1955-57

  Jobless. Operates as a paid confidential informant for Officer Vincent “Jimmy” Santa, whom he knew from the neighborhood, who is stationed in Brooklyn. His information, he believed and contended, led to many arrests.

  Meets Officer John Tartarian and Officer John Scire through Santa. Under oath, Tartarian later denies knowing him.

  February 1957

  Fingers bookmaker Sal Valenti, mentioned before; Officers John Tartarian and Baldasaro “Benny” Ficalora shake down Valenti for six hundred dollars. Receives one hundred dollars from Tartarian later that night.

  December 23, 1960

  Unemployed again; laid off as stonecutter.

  Testifies that he owed loan sharks $1,500 and was in debt for a total of about $3,000; most of the money used by him to gamble. States that gambling was not his business, it was his “vice.”

  January 29, 1961

  Playing cards with Joe Cacavella, “Babe” Dareda, and Junior Loterzio. Picks up a name and number for a possible score. Tells Santa; Santa and Officer Peter Celentano “hit” the location in Maspeth, but nothing there.

  (Hallmark Opportunity: this is his wife’s birthday.)

  February 20, 1961

  Celentano calls, informs my father his phone is tapped.

  Meets with Celentano and Officer John Gallagher; they want a name of a bookmaker they can shake down. Owes Celentano $150-$200. Gives them a name: Corky, but that revelation does not bear fruit. Celentano wants more names. Gives him the names and license plate numbers of two other bookmakers: Dominick Spinelli and Joe Cacavella.

  March 1961

  Informed by Santa his phone is tapped.

  Late March 1961

  Meets with Celentano, Santa, Gallagher, and Officer David Frisher; waits with them in a truck and then points out a bookmaker. The co
ps score “Cock-eyed Jerry” for $1,000.

  Receives one hundred dollars, his cut, from Santa the next week.

  Provides Santa with another name, a bookmaker on parole, “Babe” Dereda. Cops go to Dereda’s house, score $2,000. Receives $250 from Celentano, who also forgives a debt of $125. Celentano tells him they should “start from scratch,” an apparent reference to the forgiven loan.

  Targets Junior Loterzio as another potential score during that meeting with Celentano. Celentano tells him they should let things cool down for now after the two recent scores totaling $3,000.

  April 12, 1961

  Santa dismissed from the police force after he refuses to answer questions pertaining to Di Prisco and presumably about the shakedowns of “Cock-eyed” Jerry and Dereda.

  April 15, 1961

  Receives a call from Celentano, telling him not to say anything over the phone, prompting this writer to wonder all over again—what the hell was he was thinking, talking on the phone? Meets with Celentano, Gallagher, and Frisher on Greenpoint Avenue.

  Later told by Celentano not to say anything about the Dereda score in front of Frisher because that cop wasn’t in on it.

  Also told by Celentano that he had been questioned by superiors about Di Prisco. Advised by Celentano to “lay low” and “get lost.”

  In testimony given six months later, he says that he never saw Celentano again after this meeting.

  April 18, 1961

  Celentano questioned by high-ranking officers of the Police Commissioner’s Confidential Investigations Unit (PCCIU); suspended for consorting with Di Prisco and another known gambler, Gerald “Cheesebox” Callahan, and for refusing to answer questions about them.

  April 19, 1961

  The New York Times reports that Celentano and two other cops had been suspended for consorting with known criminals and gamblers, apparently a reference to Di Prisco and Callahan and others.

  April 20, 1961

  The New York Times runs a follow-up story: “19 Police in Queens Shifted in Shake-up of Gambling Squad.” Mentions suspension of Celentano and others.

  Late May/Early June 1961

  Law enforcement attempts to arrest my father at his parents’ farm in East Islip, Long Island. He dashes into the woods and is not apprehended.

  Summer 1961

  Employed briefly in Massachusetts; drives to California.

  My mother, younger brother, and I fly to San Francisco, where we meet my father sitting in his car at a gas station that was then located inside the airport. We live in a Santa Rosa motel for a while not to be confused with Hitchcock’s famous Psycho setting, eek eek eek eek eek, and eventually arrive in Berkeley, where we take up residence. Berkeley? I know, right? Berkeley.

  He finds work first as a stonecutter and later in a dairy.

  June 22, 1961

  NYPD announces a big bust. Among the arrested are Officers Santa and Scire, along with Sebastian “Buster” Aloi and Dominick Spinelli, the bookmaker fingered by Di Prisco on February 20, 1961.

  Aloi is reported to have extensive underworld ties, described as a capo with the Colombo crime family; reputedly a big-time mob loan shark.

  Santa, Scire, and Aloi charged with extorting Spinelli by threatening to have him arrested in connection with a burglary ring that was responsible for more than $250,000 in hi-fi equipment thefts, if he did not pay them $2,000.

  July 19, 1961

  Di Prisco indictment filed in Queens for check forgery, grand larceny, and conspiracy. He is in California at the time. Bail is set at $2,500.

  September 26, 1961

  Remains unclear as to whether or not he reached out to the NYPD or whether they found him. Unlawful flight, in legal parlance, carries with it a presumption of guilt. In any case, he waives extradition, is arrested in Berkeley by Lieutenant Walter Stone of the PCCIU, and returns to New York City. Testifies that he was in jail for five to seven days upon arriving.

  I begin at Saint Joseph the Workman School in Berkeley.

  September 28, 1961

  Arrested for forgery and grand larceny.

  October 1, 1961

  Interrogated by the Police Commissioner’s Confidential Investigations Unit, the forerunner of the Internal Affairs Bureau.

  October 4, 1961

  Arrested on a warrant from Brooklyn for forgery.

  October 6, 1961

  Questioned by PCCIU in connection with the February 1957 shakedown of the bookmaker Valenti. Officers Tartarian and Ahrens also questioned by PCCIU.

  October 18, 1961

  Formally identifies Tartarian and Ficalora as the cops who did the Valenti shakedown.

  October 20, 1961

  Provides testimony against Celentano; is the only witness in the departmental trial.

  October 27, 1961

  Provides testimony against Tartarian and Ficalora pertaining to Valenti shakedown.

  Discloses that there are charges awaiting him; says that he is “living in a hotel,” where he was, according to the furiously exercised counsel for the accused, “treated like a pet.”

  He tells me, a year before he dies, that that was when he was being “squeezed” because he had “a lot of information.”

  Testifies that after he returned to New York City, the DA told him he “would be given consideration for [his] full cooperation.”

  February 8, 1962

  Provides additional testimony with regard to Tartarian and Ficalora on the Valenti shakedown.

  February 14, 1962

  Court date in Queens on his indictments. Some kind of Valentine’s Day.

  April 17, 1962

  Celentano found guilty of consorting with gamblers and is dismissed from the NYPD. The New York Times reports that he had been linked with a paid informer, an apparent reference to Di Prisco.

  April 24, 1962

  New York Herald Tribune: “Cop Fired for a Shakedown,” referring to Celentano, who was convicted on the basis of Di Prisco’s testimony on the shakedowns. Mentions that Celentano consorted with Di Prisco, who is identified by name as “a known criminal, gambler, and a person engaged in unlawful activities.” Celentano is twenty-seven years old.

  November 1962

  Santa and Scire go on trial for attempted extortion of Spinelli; both plead guilty to a reduced charge of coercion. After Santa finishes his sentence and is back on the street, he becomes a full-fledged mobster.

  January 16, 1963

  Gallagher and Frisher found not guilty after departmental trial.

  Police commissioner states that Di Prisco’s testimony during their trial is unworthy of belief.

  May 16, 1963

  Tartarian and Ficalora formally dismissed in connection with the Valenti shakedown.

  1963

  My father has a job. He wears white coveralls with Joe stitched in red scripted thread on his chest, and drives a truck for a dairy in Oakland, California. I am twelve and he is thirty-eight years old.

  New York State Appellate Division

  RECORDS AND BRIEFS

  Q. All right, now that your answer then was incorrect, is that right, is that right, was it right, or was it wrong?

  A. I seen money in the envelope.

  Q. So that—if you said—

  A. (Interrupting) I’m not going to say incorrect, I seen money in the envelope.

  Q. If this answer, which it appears on the record when you—

  A. (Interrupting) I’m not going to say—

  Q. (Interrupting) Just a minute. You said you didn’t see any money, that answer was incorrect?

  A. I seen money in the envelope. I’m not going to say I didn’t see it.

  Q. Well, you just said you might have said it.

  A. At the time, I might have said it, but there was money in the envelope.

&
nbsp; Dog in the Rain

  My parents were in their sixties, it was Christmas Eve, and Patti, my wife, and I decked the halls of our Berkeley home, fa la la la la, la la la la. We put on dinner for the ragtag family bunch. The twinkling tree, carols playing, the prime rib and the Yorkshire pudding, the exchange of gifts, dogs stretched out before the hearth: the whole traditional festive nine yards that was never quite the yardage tradition in this family. My mother often liked to mix it up with me and others around holidays and birthdays and formal occasions. A solid percentage of time, she and I weren’t talking when those dates rolled around. Although she never missed off-to-prison or welcome-home-from-prison parties, when and where she arrived with her world-class cheesecake or cream puffs, she famously elected, for reasons never elucidated, not to attend my one and only wedding celebration. On this Christmas, she showed and gave out some nice presents, as I recall, and in general became progressively more accomplished at gift-giving, and more generous, the older she got. In the aftermath of this not quite silent night, I thought the dinner went all right, but I always tempered hopes and reserved summary judgment.

  I never could predict where my parents would take it the next day, what imagined slights they had managed to absorb, although it might be impossible for them to articulate. So I called up, Christmas Day, to check in on their mood, to see what they were up to, prepared to take my medicine if it came to that. The old man was depressed. He didn’t use the word, which wasn't in his working vocabulary, but he didn’t have to.

  “Went out, looked for Chinese,” he said, pronouncing it “Chineese.” In his most miserable tone of voice he added: “Like a dog in the rain.”

  He liked his egg rolls and wonton soup, but I would never underestimate his gargantuan appetite for disappointment. I might characterize this disposition as self-pity, but that doesn’t seem quite on the mark. Nothing seemed more obvious than that he had suffered in the remote past some deep primal wound. He would not be healed. As with my mother, my father continually conveyed the sense that he was being left out. It was hard to miss their conveying the suspicion that if they were attending some social gathering, say Christmas Eve dinner, they knew there was a better one from which they had been excluded. If the wine tasted good, they could have been served better—by somebody who appreciated them better. It was a foolproof formula. Their congenital disillusionment contaminated the atmosphere: I had not done enough for them. I don’t doubt that they were sincere when they felt like dogs in the rain, either. It didn’t even have to be raining.