The Pope of Brooklyn

by Joseph Di Prisco

  As they claim in country songs, you gotta dance with the one that brung you. Despite my father’s “unsavory character,” “Additional support for the credibility of Di Prisco’s testimony can reasonably be found in the testimony of the men charged, which on crucial questions is so inconsistent and evasive as to permit the inference that had they testified in a straightforward manner, their guilt would have been apparent.”

  In the end, Benny Ficalora was dismissed from the police force, but though my father testified on this matter to the grand jury, he and Tartarian were not indicted.

  •

  On many fronts the city was cracking down on police corruption, and the press was gearing up for big sweeps and crackdowns. As The New York Times reported, on April 24, 1962, Peter Celentano, a plainclothes Vice cop, was found guilty of consorting with gamblers, clearly a reference to my dad, and dismissed from the force. “He also had been linked with a paid informer”—also my dad. I am pretty sure my father never perused the Times. No copy ever showed up in our apartment. Back when there were eight metropolitan papers, he was a News and Mirror guy—at least those were the papers he usually sent me out to buy at the candy store on a Sunday morning. I wonder if he would have felt relieved not to be named. The New York Herald Tribune did name names, in “Cop Fired for a ‘Shakedown’” on April 24, 1962:

  “Peter R. Celentano, 27, working with an ex-patrolman dropped from the force last year, used a police informant ‘to put the shake’ on bookies and policy operators [number runners] who could not stand being arrested, according to the testimony of the informant, Joseph Di Prisco.

  “Di Prisco testified…that he along with Celentano and Vincent Santa entered a conspiracy in which Di Prisco would give them the names of gamblers going full blast…

  “Di Prisco testified that in March, 1961, he fingered a bookie operating in a truck. This was in violation of the bookie’s parole. The bookie thereupon was shaken down for $1,000, with Di Prisco pocketing $100 and the rest going to the two officers, according to his testimony.

  “About the same time last year, Di Prisco, through the two officers, ‘put the arm’ on a paroled policy operator, who shelled out $2,000, of which Di Prisco got $250, he said.

  “However, Di Prisco testified, there were times when in acting as finger man for the two officers, they did their duty and made arrests, shunning shakedowns.”

  That’s interesting, and a curious turn. Wonder if it was true. But if they didn’t extract a payoff, the cops did my father a service by popping his rivals.

  New York State Appellate Division

  RECORDS AND BRIEFS

  While Di Prisco’s identification of Respondent Ficalora was weak, this was explained by his admission that he did not know Ficalora too well, having only met him once and seen him a few times with Tartarian before the incident with Valenti. It is conceded that there were several inconsistencies in Di Prisco’s testimony and that he was not truthful at a previous departmental trial when he said he did not know other policemen, whereas in fact he did. It is also conceded that his character and background are unsavory and that his relationship with the District Attorney, while under indictment at the time of this trial, provided a ready motive for his testifying against these Respondents.

  Notwithstanding these facts, I am constrained by an analysis of all of the evidence to believe the essentials of Di Prisco’s testimony which proves the charges against these Respondents…

  There was nothing on the record to indicate that Valenti ever met Di Prisco between the time of the incident and the subsequent investigation by the District Attorney years later. It follows, therefore, that there was no opportunity for them to collaborate on a story. In addition, the corroboration of the details of the incident by Valenti, a reluctant witness, and to a lesser extent by Lo Guericio, make it clear that Di Prisco’s story is not a fabrication.

  Supreme Court—State of New York

  CRIMINAL TERM—PART K-9 QUEENS COUNTY

  •

  THE PEOPLE OF THE STATE OF NEW YORK

  -against-

  JOSEPH DI PRISCO, Defendant

  Ind. No. 1120/1961

  •

  Not-Naomi, Esq., argued to unseal the Queens County criminal records. In the essential parts of her argument, she contended on behalf of the Movant, me:

  Over half a century ago, on or about September 28, 1961, Movant’s father, Joseph L. Di Prisco, was arrested in Queens County on charges of forgery in the second degree and grand larceny. (A copy of Joseph L. Di Prisco’s Criminal Record is annexed as Exhibit A.)

  Unsealed contemporaneous records, available on Google, reveal that the case against Joseph L. Di Prisco was resolved in his favor. Presumably, the records pertaining to the case were then sealed in accordance with Criminal Procedure Law (“CPL”) §160.50(1), which provides that “[u]pon the termination of a criminal action or proceeding against a person in favor of such person, … the record of such action or proceeding shall be sealed…”. Notably, there are no other bases for sealing that could potentially apply here. Movant seeks all records and papers relating to his late father’s arrest and prosecution in the criminal action identified herein.

  Movant is entitled to the Sealed Records pursuant to CPL §160.50(1)(d), which provides that the records sealed under CPL §160.50(1) “shall be made available to the person accused or to such person’s designated agent…”

  Joseph L. DiPrisco is dead. If he were alive, he would be entitled, as the accused, to unseal the records.

  Movant should be authorized to unseal those records as his father’s “designated agent” under CPL §160.50(1), as explained in his accompanying affidavit, sworn to on October 16, 2015 (“Di Prisco Aff.”):

  Movant was designated as his father’s agent with broad powers when his father was alive, and was given a Durable Power of Attorney.

  There is no countervailing justification to prevent access in this case. The Court of Appeals has explained that the legislative objective was remedial: to prevent a person charged but not convicted from suffering the by-products of an unsuccessful prosecution, such as unemployment or disqualification from a profession, licensing or job.

  Here, the remedial legislative purpose underlying CPL §160.50 is not implicated because Movant’s father is deceased. His arrest took place over half a century ago.

  Accordingly, pursuant to CPL §160.50, we respectfully request that the Sealed Records be released to Movant, as the son, heir and designated representative of the late Joseph L. Di Prisco, through his undersigned counsel and legal representative.•

  The day before Thanksgiving, the judge rules in our favor.

  The motion to unseal records is granted with appropriate redactions reflected on the copy provided to defendant’s son.

  This constitutes the decision and order of the court.

  Date: November 25, 2015

  •

  The unsealed file contains various pieces of clarifying information as to chronology, the scope and scale of the crimes, and the role my father played in their commission. There is also a record of legal maneuvering: failure to appear; bench warrants issued and bail determined; arraignments; revocation of bench warrants, etc.

  On December 11, 1962, he appeared before The Honorable J. Irwin Shapiro, roughly nineteen months after his initial flight from Brooklyn. I was twelve and I have no recollection of this trip to New York. I find it perplexing, if not unfathomable, that I can recall nothing pertaining to his extended periods of absence, nor anything about my parents’ explanation, presuming they must have offered something, but it is indeed the case. If I had to take a wild guess, they probably intimated he had to leave town to work at another job. That sort of thing would have sounded credible enough for me not to register.

  We know now that he had been indicted and arraigned in July 1961 and was arrested when (or possibly before) he appeared in New Yo
rk, in September 1961, and that he had testified in assorted cases during that fall. Before Judge Shapiro, the People are represented in 1962 by Assistant DA Bernard M. Patten, who weighs in:

  If Your Honor pleases, this defendant was indicted on an indictment charging forgery in the second degree–six counts, grand larceny second degree–four counts, attempted grand larceny second degree, and conspiracy, along with a codefendant, [NAME REDACTED]. The evidence against this defendant came about by way of the testimony of a coconspirator who was not indicted by the Grand Jury and was given immunity. Further, there were wiretaps introduced into evidence before the Grand Jury. [NAME REDACTED] made a motion to inspect the Grand Jury minutes, and as a result of that motion, on October the 3rd, 1961, Judge Bosch dismissed the indictment against [NAME REDACTED].

  Now I have been in touch with this situation for the last few years and in my opinion [NAME REDACTED] is the main conspirator in this case. Di Prisco in my opinion was a tool of [NAME REDACTED]. I’m confident that if Di Prisco himself had made a motion to inspect the Grand Jury minutes, the same reasoning that Judge Bosch gave in deciding the indictment against [NAME REDACTED] probably would apply; but aside from that, there are some times I suppose when the District Attorney has to consider the equities involved, and in my opinion Di Prisco is not as culpable as [NAME REDACTED] and yet [NAME REDACTED]’s not before this court, and yet after the indictment of this man, I’ve gone into his background and I’m satisfied that he has been rehabilitated. …but I tell you this, your Honor, that I believe that this man is not at this time in a position to be a recidivist. His wife and family live in California. He has the prospect of a good job.

  Then in view of the “equities involved,” he requested that Di Prisco’s indictment be dismissed. “There are other considerations,” he further explained, which he is not willing to “spread on the record.” Doubtless, he was referring to my father’s cooperation with law enforcement in the prosecution of other crimes. The Court acknowledged it had been apprised of the details off the record, and in short ordered the indictment to be dismissed.

  “Defendant is discharged,” ruled Judge Shapiro.

  •

  Scale and scope of the crimes? Not the JFK Lufthansa heist.

  He was charged with six counts of forgery on checks to some individuals and two grocery stores between 9 and 13 February 1961, all in the same mysterious amount, $105.75, which would amount to a not-trivial haul at the time. Those crimes were deemed Forgery in the Second Degree, and four counts of Grand Larceny in the Second Degree, along with ancillary charges including conspiracy as a misdemeanor. He was indicted along with another man, [NAME REDACTED], who was given immunity, probably in order to secure cooperation in another criminal investigation. The man's identity was tantalizingly surmisable upon a review of the entire file and the transcripts; the coconspirator was no one other than the eminent Cheesebox Callahan, for whom my father was an uwitting pawn, according to the ADA. One key piece of evidence: the unsealed indictment details that my dad met [NAME REDACTED] at what was Callahan’s Queens workshop-office address. For years, then, it seems my father travelled along in the same universe with the likes of Callahan and mobsters such as Santa and Aloi. Maybe my dad owed Callahan money, and maybe that explains the checks. He wasn’t the first and he wasn’t the last gambler or loan shark to whom he might have been indebted.

  Even so, the file contains confirmation of the district attorney’s willingness to go to bat for my father. In a memorandum dated January 25, 1962, re: PEOPLE AGAINST DEPRISCO [sic], ADA Patten, Chief of Homicide & Investigations Bureau, gives the court assurances that Di Prisco will appear as promised, as soon as he returns from California. To that end, he requests an adjournment to accommodate his travel schedule. Kind of the gentleman.

  Now, all that was left for him to deal with was the charges in Brooklyn. And his family in California.

  One last thing: as for uncovering his criminal files in Brooklyn, we struck out. They had been destroyed in a warehouse fire.

  Ciao, Bella

  They say learning a second language guards against cognitive decline.

  From childhood I exclusively identified with my father’s Italian heritage, and not my mother’s Polish. I formally started learning Italian comparatively late, though as a child I could somehow communicate with my Italian immigrant grandparents, who spoke very minimal English. If the brain researchers know something, I might have a shot. Once a good friend and I were in a fabulous enoteca in the Tuscan countryside. Everybody calls him “Primo” after a character in that funny, sad, nostalgic movie Big Night, which is centered on two restaurateur brothers anticipating the arrival of the then-popular singer Louis Prima (whose presence would advance the restaurant’s reputation, but who in the end, spoiler alert, never materializes); it is equally centered on the creation of a timballo, an incredibly elaborate and delicious pasta and pastry concoction that (trust me) you need to free up a couple of days in order to construct. Our enoteca owner had zero English, but we were emboldened and we jabbered self-assuredly. Then a fairly gorgeous, statuesque, blonde German woman sauntered in, overheard our nattering, and ventured in Italian with a crafty smile, “You guys speak pretty good Italian.” We preened and tut-tutted, modestly full of ourselves. She proceeded to qualify precisely what she meant: that we spoke pretty good Italian “per Americani.” Sheisse, fräulein, auf wiedersehen. Nowadays, after ten years of studying, in classes and with private tutors and by frequent travels and after matriculating at language schools in Italy and California, my Italian skills are receding by the day. I can feel the loss, to my mournful disappointment and sadness. There must be a suitable aria to sing from Puccini, because isn’t there always? I hope the loss is temporary, fleeting. Once I had pretty good command of the two past tenses and the fucking ridiculous subjunctive (which they call the fucking congiuntivo, don’t get me started). I rambled through books by Alberto Moravia and Italo Calvino and Natalia Ginzburg among other great writers in the original Italian. For fun, I powered through the Italian translations of The Great Gatsby and Catcher in the Rye, which might have constituted dirty pool on my part, because I knew every English sentence by heart already. As I studied, I could easily draw on idiomatic expressions from my brain’s linguistic ATM. In class I could venture an R-rated joke in Italian my endearing Italian teacher chuckled over. (My teacher, who was amused and who herself had very little English, once memorably mentioned that she had recently done some excellent shopping in a store she called Bed, Bath, and Behind, which name I think should be adopted immediately.) My wife is off the scale when it comes to language. She can speak in many tongues, so she is very useful in airports (and everywhere else), and her French is absolutely perfect (so I have heard a hundred native speakers tell her). Her Italian accent isn’t quite as good as mine, but she can communicate effortlessly in Italian. Only now my Italian is like an overconfident swimmer who has swum out too far from the Mediterranean shore, swept gently along by the caressing tide. I’m hoping the currents will turn and bring it back to me someday. That would be a lifesaver.

  They say learning a second language guards against cognitive decline.

  •

  Movie clichés of the Italian home: big, bombastic, boisterous feelings, usually of rage and injured merit. Platters of pasta and sausage. Reeking garlic sautéed in the pan. This was my grandparents’ home, but it was not my Greenpoint home. My mother didn’t really cook Italian, and she would sooner eat glass than garlic. My Polish mother’s stock take on the whole Italian thing: “They’re all fucking barbarians, these Italians.” I didn’t care what she thought, I mean I did care because she was my mother, but I wanted to be a barbarian like that.

  •

  Some friends of mine got married in Rome on a beautiful June night. He is Italian, she is Canadian, they met in Paris, and theirs was a lovely wedding and a great celebration at a museum. In case you ever wondered about an Italian wedding party, rest assured that no
Judd Apatow or Adam Sandler movie bromance ever threatens to break out. The food and wine are better than the typical catered American event. People dress better, too, all of the guests looking effortlessly, almost thoughtlessly stylish. But hand an Italian guy a mic at the reception and, surprise, he doesn’t croon like Dean Martin or Andrea Bocelli. Because Italian wedding toasts are pretty much on par with the toasts at your second cousin’s postprandial roasting in Philadelphia or Seattle—remember high school, remember his old girlfriend, remember when she threw onto the street his T-shirt collection…

  At this wedding, there was one remarkable development. During those endless, repetitive toasts, a news flash shuddered through the assemblage like mainlined gelato headache. Two guests, a man and a woman, had been come upon in the women’s bathroom and, umm, interrupted, right there in the act, in flagrante. Both of them married, too. That’s not the unprecedented part. There are a lot of Italian movies with a scene similar to that—could be tragic, could be comic, you never know for a while in an Italian movie. Yet here at this wedding the Italians were horrified. Also not unusual: their theatricalized horror. Italians do high dudgeon with the best Turkish rug traders, who are fake-insulted by your daring to bargain.

  No, the Italian wedding guests were horrified, not because these two wedding guests were cheating, randy married people, but because they were married to each other. The act was conjugal. What, had they no connubial dignity? Did somebody lose a bet? Why didn’t somebody think of the children!

  The band was cued, and the night went on. And on. Like in Philly or Seattle. With better food and wine.

  •

  Probably obvious, so apologies, but to review, in case:

  Ciao, bella: used familiarly to address a female.

  Ciao, bello: used familiarly to address a male.