Chin

FATHER G. IS ALMOST DONE WITH HIS BREAKFAST IN BRUNO’S. HE’S told some old stories, and held a few more back. His fondest memories of Vincent are kept in a 550-page memoir cowritten in the mid-1970s with a trusted newspaper reporter and friend. There are just a few copies, printed and bound, all in the hands of family members. And that, he says firmly, is where they will remain.

“I made it, with a few pictures and everything,” he explains. “I asked him, I said, ‘I’d like to write my life, because I may lose my brain and I’ll forget.’ In my book I’ve got everything about Vincent.”

The conversation winds down as the waitress clears the table and the street traffic outside picks up.

“My brother was a good man,” he declares, speaking quite deliberately. “My brother was part of the very essence of New York at the time, in this neighborhood.... He’s gone quite a few years now. That’s why I’d even talk to you about him.”

Very little in the now-upscale neighborhood outside remains the same. At 208 Sullivan Street, once home to the Chin and his Triangle card games, the Sullivan Street Tea & Spice Co. now serves the city’s “finest and most extensive selection of organic teas.”

Across the street, apartments once populated entirely by immigrants are morphing into luxury homes for the 1 percent—the wealthiest of the wealthy. At 215 Sullivan a large sign promises the imminent arrival of four luxury town houses, seventeen lofts and four penthouses. Construction workers and equipment fill the street where Vincent Gigante once strolled in a robe instead of a hard hat.

The entrance to 225 Sullivan, where Gigante and his mother shared an apartment, remains unchanged—the buzzers to ring residents upstairs in the building remain affixed to the right of the front entrance.

Hit-making Tommy James finally wrote a book about his time working for the Mob, but not until after the Chin and the other Genovese bosses were dead. His effort may turn into a Broadway musical.

Sammy Gravano is behind bars, where he will take his last breath after leaving the Witness Protection Program to resume his life of crime. Bobby Manna and Benny Eggs Mangano, silent to this day, face the same fate. Phil Leonetti is out of the Witness Protection family, enjoying his second life after finishing his government testimony. He wrote a book, too: Mafia Prince. Unlike with his ABC News appearance, he shared a voice in choosing the title.

George Barone continued to testify against his former Mob compatriots until he died at age eighty-six in December 2010. The feisty gangster went down swinging. In July 2009, Barone swore to tell the whole truth one last time before blasting old pal Harold Daggett: “The bastard. No fucking good, never will be.”

One of Father G.’s nieces, Chin’s daughter Rita, came out as a lesbian and even wrote a book of her own, The Godfather’s Daughter. The priest did not approve. She is now happily married to her longtime partner.

But other things endure. The Genovese family lumbers on, its ranks depleted and its subsequent bosses unable to rule in the Chin’s imperious style. Law enforcement attention and the steady parade of informants eroded the family as surely as the conviction of their longtime leader. There was now a reluctance to become the boss, a position that came with more problems than perks.

SEBCO remains a force in the South Bronx, run now by Chin’s son Salvatore. Father G., who stepped down in 2007, still stops in about three times a week. The agency created six thousand new or rehabilitated homes in some 450 buildings throughout the South Bronx, and employs more than three hundred people.

The priest spends his weekends at the upstate getaway purchased from Morris Levy.

In the ports of New Jersey, Chin’s son-in-law and his nephew Ralph were two of eleven relatives making a combined $2 million a year, according to a 2010 investigation by the Waterfront Commission of New York and New Jersey.

“So the port has been pretty good to the extended Gigante family, hasn’t it?” inquired commission lawyer Eric Fields at a 2010 hearing.

“Unions are always good for family,” replied Ralph Gigante, son of Chin’s brother Ralph.

In Las Vegas, there’s now an attraction devoted to the history of organized crime: the Mob Museum. Among the exhibits is a photo of Gigante, in his bathrobe, walking along Sullivan Street.

Father G. reflects back on Vincent one last time.

“You know why my brother went to jail?” the priest finally asks. “Because all of the underworld couldn’t keep their mouths shut. If they all just kept their mouths shut . . . you don’t rat on your own people.”

Gigante holds his glasses in his right hand and reaches across to squeeze a guest’s wrist.

“If he didn’t go to jail, he would have been alive today,” the priest declares before very pleasantly deciding that he’s said enough. “I hope I threw out a few things to you. I gotta really think about this, ’cause he is really sacred to me and I don’t see a purpose to this.”

A few minutes after this remark, Father Gigante gets up to leave. Before the check arrives, he takes care of one last bit of business: it’s his treat.