11

CLEVELAND PLACE

It was never about the money. Some weeks, thanks to the loan shark interest collected by Danny Cutaia and other scores that now drifted his way as the new captain, he was taking in as much $10,000. He was glad to have it. He wasn’t about to give it back. But it had never been about the money.

He was satisfied to live in the two-bedroom apartment in the neighborhood where his wife had grown up, walking the same streets where he’d learned most of what he knew about being a gangster. If the family traveled, which they did on occasion, they went to the Miami Beach condo Dolores’s parents had left her. It was a small place, not far from the water, but it was fine with him.

He didn’t lust for expensive cars, big or small, like the sporty little job that Hickey DiLorenzo had been driving the last time he had seen him alive. In fact, he didn’t even own a car. Other men drove him around these days, Pete Del Cioppo or Dom Truscello. If his men needed an auto, he bought them one. “Nothing cheap, I didn’t want them in old heaps. But nothing flashy either.”

He didn’t gamble anymore. He’d once enjoyed the toss of dice in a crap game, but that pleasure had ebbed. He’d never cared much about the horses, a passion of many of his pals.

He’d given up smoking. At dinnertime, he still enjoyed a single glass of wine or cognac, but that was it. And there were no girlfriends tucked away in their own apartments. He still had eyes only for the woman who had swept him off his feet that night at the Town & Country Inn out on Flatbush Avenue in 1953, the mother of his five children.

In many ways, Al D’Arco wasn’t much of a mobster. At least he didn’t aspire to be the new neon-light-flashing model that John Gotti was then putting on display to the world as he swaggered through the city’s nightclubs in designer suits.

So what was the point? His special parole status guaranteed him another prison stretch if he was found to have violated the rules, as he did every waking day. A third conviction on any one of the crimes he actively pursued would be likely to send him to prison for most of the good years that, at the age of fifty-six, he could rightfully expect.

Not that he thought much about it, but when pressed Al D’Arco’s answer was that status in the gangster life was every bit as important to him as the family he loved. And respect from those around him was probably even a little bit more so. Money was one key measure of that respect. And at the end of the day, he said, that was probably the one thing that mattered to him most in his life and his chosen line of work. “Yeah, respect. From whoever I had to deal with.”

*   *   *

He still needed to do something with the money. He had one idea, a notion that the more he tossed it around, the more he liked it. He would open an Italian restaurant. He would do it for his younger son, John, who liked to cook and who wasn’t cut out for the gangster life like his older brother. He would do it as well to have a place to gather his troops, fete his friends, and celebrate the food of his ancestral homeland. He wasn’t sure where or what it would be, but he kept his eyes open for possibilities.

He was inspired by the example of Dom Truscello, another jack-of-all-trades like Petey Del who had helped out with the burger stand and acted as an occasional mob messenger. Truscello was partners with a neighborhood landlord named Joe Zaza in a pair of buildings on a one-block strip of Little Italy called Cleveland Place. On the ground floor of one of the buildings, they’d opened a small café for pastry and coffee.

Called Il Giardino, it aimed at the tourist trade and was doing a good business. Truscello and Zaza had purchased the property with three other partners from Joe LaForte, a wealthy Gambino captain whose real estate holdings included the tenement around the corner at 247 Mulberry Street that Gotti had adopted as his local base, the Ravenite Social Club.

The four-story building where the café was located had its own history. It had played a bit role in the 1984 presidential election when it was revealed that the broker who helped mob real estate mogul LaForte turn a healthy profit on the sale was John Zaccaro, the husband of Democratic vice presidential candidate Geraldine Ferraro.

Zaccaro’s brokerage business operated out of a second-floor office on Lafayette Street across from the café on the other side of a small wedge of park. The park had a history as well. In 1987, the local city councilwoman, Miriam Friedlander, had persuaded the city to name the little spot after a much-neglected hero. City police lieutenant Joseph Petrosino had grown up on the block. Handpicked by then police commissioner Theodore Roosevelt, Petrosino had been one of the first Italian American detectives. Wearing an ever-present derby, Petrosino had made it his mission to combat the gangsters who preyed on neighbors and local businesses. In 1909, he traveled to Sicily in an effort to identify New York’s most powerful Mafiosi. Tracked by the mob, he was assassinated. A crowd of twenty thousand lined the streets for his funeral at St. Patrick’s Old Cathedral.

Al the history buff got a kick out of it all. “I saw the movie where Ernest Borgnine plays the cop Petrosino, Pay or Die. He’s looking for the boss of the mob in Palermo and the boss comes up to him and says, ‘It’s me!’”

He was bothered, however, that next door to Truscello’s café a member of the Bonanno crime family had opened a sandwich shop called Big Mike’s Heros. Al viewed it as an intrusion on his turf. “This was our area—they were supposed to talk to me first.” Adding to the insult, the Bonanno operators were running a gambling den in the back catering to local Chinese gangsters, many of them drug dealers.

Al initially decided to let things be. “I figured, all right, we can make money here too. My cut would be to put a couple of slot machines back there.” He had Joseph and his friends install a pair of Joker Poker machines in the back. The Chinese gangsters unplugged them. After Al sent his team back into the shop to reinstall the machines, they were again disabled.

That was enough for Al. “I go in and tell them that’s it, everyone clear out. Mike and his hero shop, the whole bunch of them. I told them this is our place now.”

Aside from occasional scrapes over gambling dens, the Italian American mob and their Chinese counterparts got along pretty well in lower Manhattan. “Normally they dealt with fireworks, and they had their own gambling, the mah-jongg, and drugs. There was no tension unless you started tension.”

The sharpest local exchanges were over real estate. When reporters went knocking on doors to find out more about John Zaccaro’s mob dealings during the 1984 campaign, residents defended the broker. “Leave him alone, he kept the Chinks out!” shouted one woman from an upstairs window.

But the Chinese expansion into Little Italy was also assisted by some Italian American dealers looking for fast profits. “There was a guy, Joe Cap, they called him. His name was Joe Caputo. He was going around to the Italians in the neighborhood trying to get them to sell their houses to him so he could sell them to the Chinese who were buying with big bags of cash. He’d come with these gifts for the ladies, a little bottle of olive oil with a sprig of basilico, basil, inside. He’d say, ‘Signora, you want to sell your house? The Chinese are moving in next door but you can get away from them right now, I’ll give you all cash money.’”

Joe Cap’s block-busting had been interrupted by Al’s old friend from 121 Mulberry Street, the broad-shouldered Genovese mobster Georgie Argento Filippone. “One day Georgie Argento grabs Joe Cap and tells him to cut it out. Joe Cap tries to argue and Georgie belts him. Bang! He smacked that guy, drew blood with one punch.”

The Chinese gang that had adopted the gambling parlor in the back of the hero shop as its hangout also put up a brief argument. The gang was the Flying Dragons, one of the largest in Chinatown. After their eviction, the gang members returned in force. “They came walking in one behind the other, about twenty guys, like in military formation, all of them trying to look fierce.”

The leader of the group was John Eng, known as “Onionhead.” Eng was already facing charges of smuggling thirty-two kilos of heroin from Hong Kong in boxes of tea. He was soon to flee the country after being indicted in an even bigger dope deal, hiding three hundred pounds of heroin in stuffed animals and machines for washing bean sprouts.

Al was diplomatic. “We had a sit-down, me and this Onionhead. I told him he shouldn’t get involved. I said, ‘You don’t want to cause a problem over this. It’s not worth it.’” It was the last complaint he heard about the building from the gang.

*   *   *

He already had a name in mind for the restaurant. “I called it La Donna Rosa, a woman like a rose. First thing, I had a girl draw a picture of a nice red rose we could use on the menu. Our slogan was ‘Authentic Sicilian cooking by authentic Sicilian chefs.’”

The storefront at 19 Cleveland Place had been a plumbing supply house for years, and he set about remodeling the dining room and kitchen, and remaking the basement into a bar. “I spent a lot of money there. I put in new floors, we laid in brickwork downstairs to make these grottolike alcoves. There were these old beams supporting the floor, and I got a guy to come in and sand and polish them. It looked like Casablanca when we were done.”

He found a Sicilian chef to fit the bill as advertised, although his son John often did the cooking. Al also sometimes pitched in, donning a chef’s apron and hat in the kitchen.

“We got the best vegetables and fruits from our contacts in the produce markets where we had the Teamsters union. The guys in Frank Kissel’s butchers union got us top-grade meats. Richie Tortorello, Anthony’s brother, was in the fish market and he got us the best fish. Fat Mikey Flowers, who had the stall in the Brooklyn market, got us fresh flowers every day for the tables. Everyone who sat down got a bowl of fruit after their meal, on the house. It cut into your desserts, but people were still asking for the Tiramisu and the Sicilian cheesecake.”

He enjoyed describing his menu. “I had them make disco volante, the big ravioli stuffed with mousse di coniglio, wild rabbit mousse, with the wild mushroom sauce on top. That was a big favorite. Then we had the basics, sarde ripieni palermitana, stuffed sardines, and stuffed calamari. We had spaghetti carretiera, the pasta with mushrooms that all the truckers eat. I gave them vitello scalopini carpene di grappa, salsiccio alla forno con broccoli rabe. For fish we had tonino agro dolce, the sweet-and-sour tuna. Everyone asked for that.”

On his wine list, he offered Moscato di Noto. “It comes from an island off of Sicily. It’s pretty strong, but Sicilians love it.”

To lend an air of elegance, he had his men dress up to greet diners. “Pete Del Cioppo and another guy we had with us, Tommy Christopher, were both tall, so we put them in tuxedos. They looked good. I had Shorty DiPalo, who lived down the street, out front by the door. It was a dark block, so you wanted someone there to give people confidence. We had a signal. If he saw cops or heat, he’d stamp his feet.”

To draw the tourists, he set up a line of tables outside. “On the side of the building there was this little passageway under the fire escapes. I called it Cappuccino Alley. We served coffee and dessert out there.”

The liquor license was in the name of John D’Arco and Joe Zaza. For anyone who had to ask, that’s who owned the restaurant. But a steady flow of money from his newfound criminal riches funded both renovations and operations. The funding flowed mainly in one direction. The restaurant eventually made a modest profit, but free meals cut sharply into the earnings.

“I invited all the old ladies in the neighborhood, some of them had never been to restaurants, to eat for nothing. Father Vinci from Old St. Patricks was in there a lot. Never got a bill. Guys I knew from the crew, they came in to celebrate something, I comped them.”

When the brother-in-law of Anthony “Curly” Russo, a member of Al’s Luchese borgata and a neighbor at 21 Spring Street, died, Al hosted the family after the wake at the restaurant. “I told them, ‘Bring everyone.’ I closed the place down so they could have it to themselves.”

Joseph walked the dining room some nights looking at the tables. “The place was full, but three-quarters of them were eating for free. And they would’ve paid, but my father didn’t take their money.”

The new restaurant attracted attention. Burt Young, the actor who enjoyed hanging around with gangsters, came and signed a poster of Rocky. Robert De Niro came by to dine and signed his own movie poster for Raging Bull. De Niro lingered over his meals, watching Al and his friends. “He was studying us, how we talked and moved, trying to model himself after us. I didn’t care for it.”

Close on De Niro’s heels was the fallen prizefighter De Niro had portrayed in the movie. “Jake LaMotta comes in and after a couple drinks he stands up to do his act, the Shakespeare bit. I said, ‘That’s okay, Jake, everyone’s heard it.’”

The food and ambience won raves from critics. “It’s a restaurant you want to hug,” wrote Cara De Silva of Newsday. “Totally authentic, warm and unpretentious.”

He had the name painted in gold leaf on the window: La Donna Rosa, Ristorante Siciliana. It served lunch and dinner, its doors open to customers as late as 1 a.m. The lunch trade drew businessmen and -women from lower Manhattan. One afternoon Al was standing in front when a well-built young man in a suit walked up to the window. Al’s law enforcement radar sounded. He took a closer look. The young man looked familiar. He seemed to be trying to make up his mind. When he walked inside the restaurant, Al followed. “I look and it’s John Kennedy Jr.”

Al was right about the law enforcement part. Kennedy was then working for the Manhattan district attorney a few blocks away on Centre Street. But he was clearly there for the food. “I told the waiters, ‘Don’t treat him any different from a regular customer. Make sure you give him a bill. You’ll embarrass him and he won’t come back.’”

The son of the slain president appreciated the anonymity. Kennedy returned for several more lunches, sitting quietly by himself enjoying pasta and a salad. Al also put the restaurant to work as a meeting place. “All the other Italian restaurants in the neighborhood would close on Mondays, so we closed on Tuesdays. And then we’d have get-togethers there on Tuesday nights.”

One Tuesday evening, Al was meeting with a dozen organized-crime members and their bodyguards in the restaurant when someone knocked on the door. “I had some guys from the Gambino family there and some from our family, working some things out. Everyone stops talking and looks up. There was supposed to be guards out front, but they were nowhere around.”

Al went to the door. “We had these double doors and the outside entryway is crowded with people. I open it and it’s Mayor Koch, and he’s got this whole entourage with him, about a dozen guys, including the police detectives who stay around him all the time. Koch says, ‘Hi, we heard about your restaurant and we’d like a table.’ He’s looking past me through the inside door at all the guys sitting in there. I had food on the tables and everything so it looks like we’re serving. I said, ‘I’m very sorry, Mr. Mayor, but we’re closed.’ And he gets this look on his face because he can see we’re open to somebody. So I say, ‘No really, we’re closed. It’s a private party.’ He smiles and says, ‘Okay, well, I’ll be back.’”

Al returned to his guests. “I said, ‘It was the mayor. I told him he wasn’t invited.’”

*   *   *

Others took note that La Donna Rosa seemed geared to the tastes of godfathers and their lieutenants. One restaurant critic praised the cuisine, writing that the air of authentic Cosa Nostra only added to the atmosphere. “The guy writes that ‘a certain plumbing salesman dines in the back room.’ That was supposed to be Gotti, since his cover job was salesman for Arc Plumbing. But he was never in there. We had almost every other gangster in New York, but he wasn’t welcome.”

Around the corner from the restaurant, John Gotti was reigning supreme at his Ravenite Social Club. Acquitted in two cases, Gotti was in his heyday, hailed in the tabloids as “the Teflon Don.” When he held court, everyone showed up: mobsters, reporters, TV cameras, plus squads of law enforcement agents taking it all in.

“Every wiseguy in the city was aggravated with him. Wherever he went, the agents were all over the place.”

Gotti’s “walk-talks” through the neighborhood with his retinue following in his trail created a small local circus. Agents tailed the mobsters leaving his clubhouse to see what other interests they had in the neighborhood.

Vic Orena, acting boss of the Colombo crime family, came into the restaurant one night. Al challenged him. “I said, ‘Vic, where’d you just come from? Around the corner with that bum? And then you walk in here, bringing all that heat on you?’”

Actually, La Donna Rosa was doing a pretty good job on its own at drawing law enforcement attention. Not long after it opened, in 1988, investigators from the Manhattan district attorney’s office started noticing the steady flow of wiseguys into the new restaurant at 19 Cleveland Place. The investigators didn’t start out looking at Al D’Arco and his friends. Their original target was Joe Beck DiPalermo and the nonstop heroin plague he brought to the city. But when they saw Joe Beck and Ralph Cuomo coming to the restaurant, they decided to take a closer look.

Al never spotted that surveillance. He did have a friend from Pittsburgh come in and sweep the place for bugs. “He didn’t find anything, but he did say he thought there was a chance the rear windows in the place, back by the kitchen, might have been targeted by some parabolic microphones or something. So we just stopped talking in that part of the restaurant.”

The underboss of Al’s own family wasn’t worried about drawing attention. Gaspipe Casso was so taken with the restaurant that he asked to buy in as a partner. “Gas says he wants to come in with us. He wanted to put a sign up on the roof, a big one in bulbs with Italian colors, red, white, and green, spelling out ‘La Donna Rosa.’ He also wanted to make a penthouse on the top floor. He says, ‘We’ll make it our hangout.’ I said, ‘Anthony, they got tenants up there.’ He says, ‘So we’ll pay them to get out.’ I said no, we were doing just fine as we are.”

*   *   *

It wasn’t all tonino agro dolce and moscato wine. In late 1988, for the second time in his gangster life, Al was summoned to a bar where he was given an order to kill someone. The first time had been Paul Vario’s test in Geffken’s when he’d handed him the knife and told him to go out and stab Red Gilmore. The second time, there was no knife, but the order and the target were the same: Red Gilmore was still walking around, and Vic Amuso wanted Al to find him and kill him. And it wasn’t a test.

The order was given at the London Squire Restaurant, a small tavern located on a commercial strip on Cross Bay Boulevard in Howard Beach, Queens. The neighborhood was a mostly Italian American pocket of single-family homes near Kennedy Airport. Its residents included John Gotti and other gangsters who had found a modest piece of suburban comfort within the city limits. Amuso lived just five blocks from Gotti in a large two-story brick home near Shore Parkway. He had a spacious side yard, a large swimming pool, and a tennis court. For protection and companionship, he had a massive Rottweiler named Bear. Whenever he could, he walked the dog to a nearby park where Amuso played handball.

The London Squire was about a mile from Amuso’s home, and Al had Pete Del Cioppo drive him out there. Del Cioppo waited on the sidewalk outside while Al went into the dark bar to talk to Amuso. They sat at a table in a corner in the back. “Vic leans real close. He tells me that he wants us to clip Red Gilmore. He says, ‘I think he’s trying to set me up. He keeps trying to make appointments with me. I think he’s a rat.’” As boss of the family, Amuso didn’t need any justification for deciding to kill one of his associates. But he added that he had another reason for wanting Gilmore dead. “He said Red had robbed his brother Bobby’s apartment.”

Al wasn’t convinced by either explanation. He knew Gilmore was a burglar, but he doubted he’d be foolish enough to have robbed the home of a made member of the mob, the brother of the boss of the family no less. And while it was possible that police had jammed Gilmore up and made him an informant, the more likely reason was the same one that had long hovered over Tommy Gilmore like a dark cloud. Some people just didn’t like or trust him.

Gilmore’s chief value to the Canarsie crew had always been as a driver and his handiness with cars. He had often chauffeured Paul Vario around, and he was one of those picked up on the Brooklyn DA’s Gold Bug wire back in 1973. He was fifty-seven years old now, and he had spent his career assisting friends from his east Brooklyn neighborhood in crimes large and petty.

For someone who had been relegated to the mob’s fringes, he’d done all right for himself. He had a limousine service, plus a used-car lot that doubled as a chop shop for stolen autos. His specialty was making cars disappear. His customers were those who didn’t want to make their lease payments, or who needed to make their auto vanish for other reasons. “He’d steal the car, smash it into a block. Then help them collect the insurance.”

Al had once bought a car off of Gilmore, an Oldsmobile 88 that he’d passed on to Shorty DiPalo. He’d later argued with Red when he’d found a stack of unpaid parking tickets in the glove compartment.

As far as Al was concerned, that was Tommy Red Gilmore for you. Always trying to sneak one past. But he didn’t wish him dead now any more than he had the first time he’d been told to kill him. Like the first time, however, he didn’t hesitate to do what he was told.

At the table, Amuso told Al to pick someone to help him do it. Al’s first suggestion was a family associate named Frank Trapani. Known as “Harpo,” Trapani was another veteran of the Canarsie crew who had also served as a Vario driver in the past and was now driving Al on occasion. “I knew Harpo was close to Red Gilmore and he was dying to get made. So I said, ‘How about I use him?’” Amuso rejected the idea without saying why. “Just get it done,” he said.

Al decided to try to carry out the assignment immediately. He knew Petey Del had a pistol with him in the car. “I said I had an idea we might find Red Gilmore at a bar where he hung out on Jamaica Avenue.” They drove straight north on Cross Bay Boulevard for about a mile where it turned into Woodhaven Boulevard. At Jamaica, they turned right under the elevated train tracks.

As if he were waiting for them, Red Gilmore was sitting behind the wheel of one of his white limousines, double-parked in front of the bar. Al was amazed at their good luck. “There he is, Pete,” he said as they pulled up. Del Cioppo started to slow down. Al told him not to stop. “He’ll see me. Keep going,” he said.

They drove down the avenue and made a U-turn, approaching the bar from the far side of the street. There was a short block that dead-ended at the elevated tracks. Al told Pete to pull in and park. They couldn’t see Gilmore’s car from where they sat, but they could spot him if he started to drive away. Al figured Gilmore would spook and run if he saw him. But Red didn’t know Del Cioppo that well. He told him to get the pistol. It was a small weapon, a .22-caliber that Pete had gotten from the crew’s gunsmith, Ray Argentina.

“Take the gun,” Al told him. It was cold outside and Del Cioppo was wearing a heavy peacoat and a knitted cap. “Go walk back by Red’s car. See if he’s still sitting there. If he is, pull the cap down low on your face, wait for the train to go by, and then lean in and shoot him in the ear. Then walk back on this side of the street. I’ll swing out and pick you up.”

Al got in the driver’s seat and watched Pete walk back down the avenue toward the bar. He sat there waiting for his first murder to take place.

After a minute he saw Del Cioppo walking rapidly back toward the car. He opened the passenger door and climbed inside. “What happened?” asked Al. Del Cioppo’s chest was heaving. His face was tight.

“He’s still up there,” Pete said. “But he’s across the street in the White Castle parking lot.” Gilmore was sitting in the back of a white Chevy, Del Cioppo said. There were two men he described as “Irish-looking” in the front seat. “They look like cops to me,” he said. The car also resembled the type used by police for surveillance, he added. “And they had these coffee cups on the dashboard. Like they’re sitting there awhile.” He had one more damning fact. The men seemed to be showing Gilmore some papers that he was flipping through.

It was the most detailed description Al had ever heard out of Pete Del Cioppo, who normally wasn’t particularly observant. He wondered if he had gotten cold feet and made it all up. Alternatively, Gilmore might be negotiating prices for a chop shop deal. Either way, Al didn’t want to stick around. “We got out of there fast.”

*   *   *

A couple of days later, Al met Amuso back on Cross Bay Boulevard. The Luchese boss was coming from the law office of Richard Oddo, the labor attorney who was Paul Vario’s cousin. Vic and Al walked along a side street until they got to a short one-block lane. The street sign said “Rico Place.” It was an appropriate spot for a mob murder discussion.

Al explained that they’d had to abandon their first attempt to kill Red Gilmore. He said they were going to keep trying. But Amuso had new instructions.

“I want you to give it to Louie Daidone,” he said. “Tell Louie to do it. Tell him to get it done right away.”

Al didn’t ask why. The boss had the right to choose both killers and method as he saw fit. It was a lesson Al was to learn painfully clearly over the coming months. Both Amuso and his underboss, Gaspipe Casso, took special interest in the architecture of the deaths they ordered.

After leaving Amuso, Al went looking for Louie Daidone. He started with his car service. It was also in Howard Beach, on the boulevard across from a long narrow finger of water called Shellbank Basin. Pleasure boats cruised up the basin from Jamaica Bay, docking at marinas and restaurants along the mile-long stretch. The car service was next door to the neighborhood’s biggest dining hall, the looming Russo’s on the Bay, a popular catering facility associated with the Gambino crime family. Directly across the street was Daidone’s other operation, Bagels by the Bay. It was what gave Daidone his nickname. He was often called “Louie Bagels.”

Al found Daidone inside the trailer that served as offices for his car service. He gave him the rundown. “Red is looking to set Vic up, and he wants you to kill him,” he said. Daidone shrugged. Like Al, he had no choice. He’d known Gilmore longer and better than Al had, but it didn’t matter. “Louie said he would take care of it.”

But it was tougher than he’d thought. “Louie comes to see me a week later apologizing that it is taking so long.” His first effort, he explained, had been a near disaster. Along with a partner in his bagel business named Patty Dellorusso, Daidone had driven to the same bar on Jamaica Avenue. There, they spotted one of Gilmore’s limousines. The plan was for Daidone to crawl into the back of the limo and hide. He’d jump up and shoot Gilmore once he pulled over. Dellorusso was to follow behind and pick him up after the hit.

Daidone broke into the limo easily enough. He was lying on the floor, hiding behind the car’s front seat, when Gilmore emerged from the tavern. He had a woman with him.

“Louie doesn’t want to kill the girl, too, so he doesn’t do anything. Red drives off and Louie is stuck in the back.” Daidone spent a half hour trapped in the back of the limousine, trying not to breathe, listening to the chatter of Gilmore and the woman. Finally, the couple got out. Daidone waited until they left, then slipped out the side door.

“Louie kept apologizing, saying he would get him the next time.” Amuso was pressuring Al, and he passed the message along. “Vic wants it done soon,” he reminded him.

It isn’t so easy to kill someone, Al thought after one of his frustrating talks with Daidone. Even a small-time crook like Tommy Gilmore.

*   *   *

A few weeks after Daidone had been given the assignment for murder, he showed up at the restaurant on Cleveland Place. “He said it was taken care of.” The night before, Daidone told him, he, Dellorusso, and another associate had caught Gilmore returning to his home in Richmond Hill.

They had shot him in an alleyway behind where he lived, in a basement apartment of a two-family house. It was just three blocks from his favorite bar.

The job had gone smoothly, Daidone insisted. There was one small hitch. “He said a woman on the second floor of the house next door might have seen something.”

Proof of the hit was in the next day’s Daily News and New York Post. Gilmore’s body had been found at 9 p.m. on February 6, 1989, by police responding to reports of gunshots. The victim was lying faceup in the alley with three bullets in his head and neck. He was declared dead at the scene. If anyone saw anything, they weren’t talking about it. “All we heard was one big bang,” a neighbor told the Post. Another said he wasn’t surprised. “Everyone knew what kind of business he was in. He didn’t have a job, but he had a big white limo.”

The only importance both newspapers attached to the rubout was Gilmore’s past connections to Paul Vario. “A low-level hood,” the News called him.

Al went to the Walnut Bar to see Amuso to report that the mission was accomplished. When he got there, Gaspipe Casso was with Vic. Al told them what Daidone had said about a possible witness, but that it didn’t look like they had anything to worry about.

The boss expressed satisfaction. But he still wasn’t finished with Tommy Gilmore. He instructed Al to pass the word that no one was to go to Gilmore’s wake. “He said if no one went, it will show that Red was a rat.”

Al rarely attended wakes and funerals, or weddings, either. The easiest way to get violated on his special parole was to be spotted with one of his ex-con friends at a public gathering where FBI agents were snapping pictures. But he still wasn’t sure of the wisdom behind Amuso’s order. Many of the Canarsie crew had known Gilmore most of their lives. If none of them attended his services, the clear implication was that Red’s pals had something to do with his death. But he said he’d pass the word along.

It wasn’t the most emphatic command Al ever gave. Two of Gilmore’s oldest friends in the crew showed up at his wake anyway. Pete the Killer Abinanti went, as did Rugsy Vario. Neither one of them knew that Amuso had ordered Gilmore’s execution.

Amuso was irate when he found out his order had been disobeyed. He summoned Al to find out what had happened. “Go ask them why they went,” Vic said. “Tell them if they like wakes so much we can have one for them.”