In Brooklyn, as in anywhere in the world where people walked on the outside of the law, there were always people on the lookout for “scores.” Often those involved were professional thieves, rip-off artists, cat burglars—or tradesmen who, on a regular basis, were welcomed inside of people’s homes by unsuspecting innocents. If a tradesman came across something particularly valuable, he could very well pass the information on to a thief…to someone willing to do a rush—break-in.
B&E crews were made up of toughs with guns willing to knock on a door and pose as any of a dozen different people to get the home owner to open the door. Once the door was cracked a quarter of an inch, they would hard shoulder it and burst in, guns drawn, yelling, screaming, cursing—the object to scare. These crews usually consisted of two or three men, coarse, gruff, hard individuals. It was obvious they might confront women, mothers, grandmothers, young females, yet they were more than happy to break in. If there was a totem pole of crimes, B&E gangs of this nature were surely at the low end of it.
Workmen were restoring fancy kitchen cabinets in the home of wealthy Russians who lived on East 104th Street in Canarsie, a nice, residential neighborhood, solidly upper middle class. The head of the household was a successful jewelry dealer. As well as selling jewelry on the up-and-up, he sold stolen jewelry, precious stones, all types of extremely expensive watches. One of these cabinetmakers was Larry Santoro, a larceny-hearted tradesman who would steal money from a blind man. Santoro went to Manny Maya, who, in turn, went to Frank Gangi and told him about the Russian jeweler. Gangi was always up for a score. Though this kind of work was not something he liked, something he often did, something he was particularly adept at, he’d still do it. No matter how much money Gangi made, it never seemed to be enough. That was, of course, due to the fact that he was abusing alcohol and cocaine to such a degree that money passed through his fingers like water. A man who had his act together might very well have passed on this opportunity, but Frank thought it was a good idea and in turn went to his partner and friend Billy Bright.
Since their time in prison together, Bright had become a born-again Christian, though he was a paradoxical born-again. He believed in God, the Ten Commandments, the many dictates of the Bible, but he was also willing to sell drugs, rob, and steal. Bright had no reservations about robbing a woman in her home and readily agreed to do the job. Bright and Gangi soon sat down with Larry Santoro and Larry explained that he would leave the back door of the house open, that they should get there early in the morning, that at that point there should only be the jeweler’s “young wife” home.
“It’ll be a piece of cake,” Larry said.
After the meeting, Billy said that he would use one of Pitera’s guns, that he was holding Pitera’s stash of weapons. This was an interesting anecdote. Pitera always had a cache of guns being held by someone else. These guns Billy Bright was holding for him now were for killing. Pitera in fact had a gun permit for target shooting. The gun he had the permit for he actually did carry around with him, though he never used it in any crimes and never would. When Jim Hunt learned that Pitera had a gun permit, he felt it was an infamy, a miscarriage of justice, a wrong that would soon be righted, he’d make sure.
By now it was late February of 1989. Gangi and Billy Bright made their way to the Canarsie home of the Russian family, the Blumenkrants. The house was on a quiet residential street. The homes were set apart from one another. Frank and Billy parked their car down the block, got out, and walked back to the house. They had guns in their waistbands. The sun shone brightly. Sparrows and blackbirds chirped gaily in trees that lined the block. Self-absorbed, people were on their way to work. Though it was early, children were out playing on lawns. Unchallenged, unnoticed, Gangi and Bright made their way to the house. Calm on the outside, their faces relaxed, though nervous inside, they reached the home and, as though they owned it, walked to the backyard. As they had planned, they found the back door open. Without hesitation, they went in. Bright pulled out the gun. It was hot and they were both sweating. They had been expecting to find the wife of the jeweler but instead were confronted by an elderly lady—his mother.
“Be quiet,” Bright ordered. “We don’t want to hurt you. We just want the jewelry. We don’t want to hurt you.”
Her eyes were nearly popping out of her head. Bright’s words, however, did seem to soothe her. She calmed down somewhat. They demanded the jewelry. They wanted to know where the safe was. They threatened her. She apparently knew little English, as she kept answering them in Russian, saying over and over again, “I have a bad heart. I have a bad heart. I need my medicine.” Not knowing what the hell she was saying, they threatened her, pointed guns at her, demanded “the jewelry.” In Russian, she kept begging for her medicine, desperately pointing to her bag.
Bright finally retrieved the bag, found the medicine, and gave it to her. She immediately took a pill. They now went and found Larry’s cousin, the other cabinetmaker, handcuffed him, and took him and the elderly woman to the finished basement. It was there that they found the trove of jewelry. Neither one of these two was particularly informed about the worth of jewelry, different stones. They took everything they found. With the jewelry in a bag, Billy Bright and Gangi left the house, walked back to the car, and took off, overjoyed. Everything had gone as planned. They high-fived one another and slowly drove away, back to Gravesend.
Unbeknownst to Larry Santoro, Manny Maya, Billy Bright, and Frank Gangi, the Russian jeweler was friends with a capo in the Gambino crime family, Joe “Butch” Corrao. They could not have found a worse person to rip off. This capo was a particularly tough, jaded individual. He was not just a capo, he was a war capo. His wife had left a very expensive pair of diamond earrings with the Russian family. Joe Butch wanted the earrings back. He also wanted a part of what was taken. The Gambinos had heard that whoever did this had earned $250,000 from the rip-off.
In that neither Gangi nor Bright was a professional thief, a professional B&E person, they did not have fences readily available, though it didn’t take them long to find fences willing to take the jewelry off their hands. Gangi split up his part and sold pieces to the owner of the Wrong Number, a Genovese captain named Salvatore Lombardi, aka Sally Dogs, and to a jewelry store on Fourth Avenue called Bianco Jewelers.
In reality, La Cosa Nostra is one big fraternity. Except during times of war, they intermingle as freely as stockbrokers on the New York Stock Exchange. Even members from different families regularly have coffee, lunch, dinner. Part and parcel of why they’re so successful is how they network. This custom was something that they had brought over from Italy. In any town across Sicily, people walk and talk after dinner. Families, friends—it’s a built-in custom. The Italians in LCN kept this custom very much alive, and because they did not have nine-to-five jobs, they were free to meet as they pleased, walk and talk to their hearts’ content—until the cows came home. In that their business was crime, in that crime was their primary concern, what they talked about all the time were different aspects of different crimes.
When Joe Butch Corrao said he wanted to find the thieves who took the jewelry, word quickly spread throughout Mafiadom, from block to block, neighborhood to neighborhood—all over Brooklyn. Capos heard it, lieutenants heard it, soldiers heard it. It didn’t take long for the Bonanno family to hear what had happened. Tommy Karate quickly learned what went down. In that he was always interested in earning “brownie points” with the Gambinos, it didn’t take long for him to find out that Billy Bright and Frank Gangi had been involved. This was a shocking revelation for Pitera. What they had done could very well have caused problems between the Gambinos and the Bonannos. Neither Bright nor Frank Gangi had come to Pitera and asked his permission to do this score. They were way out of line—Pitera was responsible for them, their actions.
As it happened, there had to be an official sit-down over this incident. Gangi’s cousin Ross, a capo in the Genovese crime family, sat down with Joe Butch and Tommy. Joe Butch was bent out of shape. He not only wanted his wife’s diamond earrings back, but he demanded half the score. Ross Gangi explained the reality of the relationship he had with his cousin.
“Frank’s his own man,” he said. “There’s nothing I can do. I can’t order him to do anything. He’s been a problem all his life. He uses drugs, drinks too much. I’d do anything I can for you, Joe. You know that. But the kid’s a wild card.”
By Ross Gangi saying what he just said, he was, essentially, giving Joe Butch the right to kill Frank Gangi. If it wasn’t for Pitera’s intervention, if it wasn’t for the respect and admiration the Gambinos had for Pitera, the meeting might very well have ended there with the deaths of Billy Bright and Frank Gangi. Pitera spoke up for them. He promised to get what jewelry he could back and give it to Joe Butch. Joe Butch seemed to accept that. The meeting broke up. They all went their separate ways.
Watching, waiting patiently, agents were building a case against Pitera—fastidiously noting who came to and left the Just Us, what was said on the tapes, the rumors spreading throughout the dangerous Mafia jungle known as Gravesend.