16

FINGERBOARD ROAD

Other law enforcement agents already knew who Al D’Arco was. They also knew exactly where he could be found.

In early January 1991, a pair of detectives from the Brooklyn district attorney’s office went to the Little Italy Restoration Association apartment building at 21 Spring Street and took the elevator to the sixth floor.

Detectives Ken Santare and Matt O’Brien had a message for Al. They knew he’d be interested to hear what they had to say. And as long as they were doing him the favor of a personal visit to let him know what they’d heard, they also intended to ask him if he’d like to do one for them. Like maybe passing some information back.

They had no idea how he would respond. The DA’s squad knew only that he was a rising gangland star with a nice restaurant and a crew of mob assistants. Other than that, they didn’t know much about him. The closest they’d ever gotten to Al was when he had been spotted once out on Canarsie Pier talking to the now-missing Gaspipe Casso.

But it was worth a shot. It was part of their jobs.

On the way up to the apartment the detectives laughed about Al’s residence. “You believe this guy probably has millions and he’s living in this rent-controlled place?” said Santare.

They rang the bell on apartment 6P. No one answered. They waited for a couple of minutes, then went back downstairs. They walked around Little Italy for a while, then made another stab. Again no one answered. Santare was pretty sure that eventually Al would answer the door. They decided to try around dinnertime.

At 7 p.m. they made a third visit. After ringing the bell, they added a loud authoritative knock. There was a shuffling inside and then the door opened a crack. A handsome woman in her fifties with short dark hair flecked with gray peered out at them. The detectives identified themselves and said they were looking to talk to Al.

“He’s not here right now,” Dolores said.

Standing beside Santare, Matt O’Brien could see into the apartment. He saw a kitchen table with a plate of spaghetti, some bread, and a glass of wine. He didn’t think Mrs. D’Arco was dining alone.

O’Brien piped up in a loud voice. “Look, tell Al we’re not here to lock him up.”

From within the apartment, they heard a door open. Al D’Arco appeared beside his wife. The detectives introduced themselves again. “We just want to talk to you,” said Santare. “That’s all we have to do.”

“Okay, come in,” said Al. They stepped just inside the apartment door. Al stood there, Dolores beside him, waiting to hear what they were going to say.

“Al, you want to excuse your wife?” said Santare. “This is something pretty important.”

Al shook his head. “No, no,” he said. “Whatever you have to say, she can hear it. She can stay here.”

Santare shrugged. “Okay. Look, we have information that you’ve been targeted for assassination.” He let that sink in for a couple of moments, waiting to see Al’s response. Al didn’t respond. He stood there stone-faced. His wife also didn’t stir.

Santare continued. “And so have your son Joe and your son John.”

Dolores looked up. The detectives saw her face color.

That was as much as they knew, Santare said.

Al acted shocked. “Me? Where is this coming from? You can’t tell me anything else?”

Santare shook his head and grimaced as though to say he wished he could. He and O’Brien offered Al their cards.

“That’s all we can say,” Santare told him. “But if you want to discuss this further, you can give us a call and come into the office.”

Al took the cards. “I ain’t going nowhere,” he told them with a laugh. “How about a drink?”

The detectives smiled. “Thanks, we can’t right now,” said Santare. “You’ve got our cards. Just give us a call.” Then they said good night and walked back down the hall to the elevator.

*   *   *

Al closed the door behind the detectives wondering what else was going to go wrong. He was besieged with problems large and small that had dropped into his lap as a result of his promotion to acting boss. He was responsible to a pair of increasingly paranoid fugitive bosses whose list of demands and instructions was ever growing.

As for the news the detectives had brought to his door, he had a pretty good idea of what they were talking about.

Along with his appointment as the acting head of the family, Amuso and Casso had told him that they had additional murders for him to arrange.

The new targets were two of Bruno Facciola’s closest associates, Larry Taylor and Al Visconti, who was married to Facciola’s sister. According to Casso, the duo were planning on avenging their friend’s murder. Casso said his law enforcement source had provided a tape recording, allegedly from a social club in Canarsie.

“Gas said he heard the tape and that these guys had a list. They were going to get Frankie Lastorino, Louis Daidone, Danny Cutaia, plus me and Joseph and John.”

It was another of those moments when Gaspipe mysteriously knew everything from his “crystal ball.” Al was hardly in a position to question Casso’s source. But he was hesitant as well to embark on more murder for the same practical reason he avoided it in his business dealings. “Too much killing brings heat. These guys were always looking to kill the whole world.”

But now here were the cops themselves knocking on his door to tell him they’d heard the same thing. He called Frank Lastorino and Louis Daidone.

They met in the parking lot of a Waldbaum’s supermarket in Howard Beach. Al realized right away that Casso had again covered his bets. Lastorino already knew all about it, just as he had known ahead of time about the plan to kill Facciola. Al wondered again what was going on. Did the underboss think Al wasn’t going to do it?

Lastorino had worked out his own plans for the hit. “He wanted to use his cousin, this kid Tommy Red Anzeulotto.”

It was mob patronage, snagging a good job for a family member, regardless of his talent. Lastorino wanted his cousin to take part in the murder so as to give him a better chance of getting his button. Normally, it wouldn’t have mattered. But in the case of Lastorino’s cousin, Al knew there were doubts about him. “Tommy Red Anzeulotto had once told people that he wouldn’t do time for nobody. Why would you do a murder with someone who says that?”

Daidone’s candidate was his partner, Patty Dellorusso, the Teamsters official from the airport. Dellorusso was willing. The agreement was made that he and Anzeulotto would work together.

Taylor was the first victim. “Larry Taylor was very close to Bruno. They used to say he was like Bruno’s son.” The father-son relationship had blossomed amid multiple jewel robberies the pair had carried out together. “He was a stickup guy. His specialty was robbing jewelry salesmen.”

The killers caught Taylor a couple of weeks later. On the night of February 5, he spent the evening partying. “They tailed him from the party. He was in a car with some girls and after he dropped them off they got him when he got to his house. They rolled up on him. Patty Dellorusso hit him with the shotgun, but he said Tommy Red held back. He hesitated and didn’t come out of their car to help.”

Dellorusso told Al he’d been furious. “He said, ‘I almost turned the shotgun on him, too.’ Finally the kid comes over and shoots Larry Taylor while he’s already on the ground.”

Police got to the scene shortly after the gunmen had fled. It was 10:30 p.m. Taylor, thirty-one years old, was lying between his car and the sidewalk in front of his home on Paerdegat Avenue in Canarsie. He was dead on arrival at Brookdale Hospital from wounds to his head and abdomen. He had apparently expected trouble. He had a .22-caliber still in his waistband.

*   *   *

Alfred Visconti was next. The motives for killing Bruno Facciola’s brother-in-law were a little more complicated. Flounderhead Visconti was fifty-one years old. In his prime, he had been one of the city’s most accomplished jewel thieves. Visconti was part of the team that robbed the Pierre Hotel in the wee hours of January 2, 1972, as guests were still recovering from New Year’s Eve. It was one of the biggest hotel robberies of all time. The thieves, dressed in tuxedos and wearing false noses, stole $3 million in gems and cash from hotel safe-deposit boxes. It was a leisurely two-and-half-hour robbery as entering guests and hotel employees were bound and blindfolded.

“Flounderhead was a smart guy. He was a top-notch burglar. In prison he’d become a jailhouse lawyer. He was so good at it, he was still doing it even after he was out. Guys would bring him cases to work on for them.”

But the story was later passed around among fellow ex-cons that while doing time for one of his arrests, Visconti had had sex with a black inmate. Vic Amuso had only heard the story from others. But he often called Visconti a disgrace, and referred to Facciola as a “cornudo” a cuckold for allowing his sister to stay with him.

Amuso had been talking about having Visconti killed since shortly after becoming boss. The alleged revenge plot renewed his fury. He had specific instructions for the murder. Flounderhead’s brother-in-law had gotten the canary in his throat. Amuso ordered that Visconti get a more graphic symbol. Amuso wanted them to get a cucumber, paint it black, and stuff it in the victim’s rectum.

Al shuddered. They weren’t just ordering killings. They were ordering perversion. “I told myself I ain’t doing it. I wouldn’t pass it on.”

But he did pass on the message to have Visconti murdered. At Louie Daidone’s car service, he met with Daidone and Ray Argentina. The able hit man had shifted his loyalties from his old captain, Facciola, to his new one, Daidone.

Casso had thrown another curve into the plans. This time, he had instructed Frank Lastorino to recruit his own separate hit team to kill Visconti. It was as if he wanted to see who could do it first.

“Gaspipe told Frankie not to tell anyone. But he was using his cousin, Tommy Red Anzeulotto, again, and Petey Argentina, Ray’s brother. Petey Argentina didn’t want to do the hit with Tommy Red because of what he’d said about not doing time for anybody.” He asked Al what he should do.

Al told him to hold off, that he’d straighten it out. He tried to contact Amuso via his messenger, Patty Testa. Instead, Casso called him back. The underboss was angry. “He says to me, ‘You don’t want to talk to me anymore. You only talk to Vic.’ We had a little argument. I said too many people knew about what was going on. It was getting out of hand.”

Casso relented, telling him to use Peter Argentina and whomever he wanted. “He said just to do it right away.”

They tracked Visconti down to a large apartment house where he was staying on East Forty-First Street off of Kings Highway in the Flatlands section of Brooklyn.

A hit team including the Argentina brothers and two other men waited for Visconti to come home on the evening of March 27. The victim was punctual. At 7 p.m. Visconti entered the building courtyard, where two of the shooters were lurking. Two others were waiting for him in the lobby. Shot four times, he died at the scene. Al had never passed on the order about the cucumber, but the shooters still got the message that Visconti was to be humiliated in death. One of the bullets was aimed into his groin.

Daidone reported the news to Al, who relayed it to the bosses in their hiding places. The message came back that they were pleased, but wanted more details. Who were the shooters? Who did what?

Al resented being asked. Standard mob practice was never to inquire about such things. Even bosses weren’t supposed to know. Al hesitated, but made the inquiries. Daidone was nervous when Al told him what Casso had asked. “It was almost like Gaspipe was making some kind of report, that if he got caught he would turn it over.”

But Al passed along the information just the same. No one was about to challenge them. “It was a pretty dangerous thing to start balking at that point.”

*   *   *

Meanwhile, the steadily falling bodies had finally been noticed. And the key culprit, authorities were saying, was a mobster named Al D’Arco.

The day after Visconti’s murder, the Daily News reported the killing as the third Luchese crew member to be slain in recent months. Citing law enforcement sources, the News said the murders were part of a purge ordered by D’Arco, “a little-known capo from Manhattan” who was the family’s new acting boss.

D’Arco’s rise to power, the paper stated, had “ruffled many mobsters.” Bruno Facciola’s brutal murder the previous summer had temporarily silenced his enemies. But Facciola’s crew members had plotted retaliation. The News, with deep sources on both sides of the law, reported that the DA’s men had warned Al that his life was in danger.

Three days later, the News was back again, this time with more confirmations of Al’s role. It also ran a large photo, a fuzzy surveillance shot of him standing in a Little Italy doorway, looking relaxed but wary in a sports coat and slacks.

So now the whole world knew who and what he was.

*   *   *

A few days after Visconti’s murder, the Luchese family paused from combat to replenish its ranks. New recruits, individually approved by the absent Amuso and Casso, were initiated as soldiers. Most had played a role in the recent bloodletting. The generals were handing out battlefield commendations.

Jay Giampa, who had helped his brother Joey dispatch Mike Salerno, got his ticket. So did Tommy Red Anzeulotto, just as Al had predicted. Rocco Vitulli, who had helped Frankie Pearl Federico kill the rebel carters, was also initiated. So was Patty Testa, Amuso’s helpful messenger.

Even the two Bronx associates who had grievously fouled up the slaying of Johnny Petrucelli were on the list to be made. Unfortunately for Anthony Magana and Joey Cosentino, they couldn’t be there. They were in jail, soon to be sentenced to twenty-five years to life for the murder.

As acting boss, Al presided over the ceremony. His one recruit was the faithful if hapless Pete Del Cioppo. “I felt sorry for him. I figured otherwise he’s going to get killed for all his gambling debts. This way, no one could push him around anymore.”

Ever mindful of health problems, Al bought special sanitary surgery pins for the occasion. He remembered how the blood had flowed at the prior ceremony as Bobby Amuso had gouged away with a heavy safety pin. He wanted to be careful. “The AIDS was going around heavy then.” Best not to take a chance, he decided. “What are you gonna do? Make a guy and give him AIDS at the same time?” He also honored tradition, holding the ceremony in the basement of the Canarsie home of Peter “Rugsy” Vario, Paul’s son. Vario kept a coop of pigeons in his backyard. The cooing could be heard during the ceremony.

*   *   *

In addition to the fugitive bosses, also missing from the induction ceremony was Big Pete Chiodo. The portly Luchese captain had never managed to climb out of the Luchese doghouse. If anything, he’d gotten himself into much deeper trouble.

Al had never been fond of Chiodo. The feeling was mutual. “I didn’t like how he operated. He was pushy.” But Al watched with sympathy as the lumbering Chiodo became a mob punching bag for the bosses.

Amuso and Casso had skipped town ahead of the windows indictments without letting Chiodo know he was facing arrest as well. A few weeks later, Casso had generously relayed a message from hiding to tell Pete to “lay low.” Casso’s law enforcement source had advised that Chiodo would be arrested as part of the state case involving the painters union shakedowns.

Chiodo quickly checked himself into a hospital, complaining of a heart attack. At four hundred pounds, it was easy to believe. He was arrested there anyway. To help Chiodo post bail, Al gave his attorney $8,000. Casso was furious when Al told him.

“Gaspipe tells me it’s their money and why am I giving it up? He said Pete had taken enough of their money already to afford his own legal expenses.”

It was a steady downhill slide from there. After his second arrest, the capo stayed close to home, a large Tudor house he was refurbishing in Staten Island’s Grasmere section. “He was pretty leery. He was ducking.”

Chiodo had good reason to be skittish. Among Amuso and Casso’s several gripes with him was a major real estate matter. Chiodo had control of the property where the 19th Hole was located. The Luchese-run hangout on Eighty-Sixth Street across from the Dyker Beach golf course in Bensonhurst was where Amuso and Christy Tick Furnari before him had held court. The property had risen sharply in value and was now worth more than $400,000. The bosses wanted Chiodo to sign it over.

Under Furnari, title to the property had been held by his business manager, wealthy painting contractor Frank Arnold. In 1988, Arnold had transferred it to a friend and business partner of Chiodo’s named Richard Tienken, a minor celebrity who ran a popular Manhattan comedy club where he’d helped discover actor Eddie Murphy. Amuso and Casso weren’t impressed. They wanted the property. Chiodo, however, refused. “Pete said they owed him a lot of money. He wouldn’t do it. They were mad.”

Real estate was at the root of another dispute between them, but this one was deeply personal to Anthony Casso.

When he went on the lam, Gaspipe was building a palatial new home for himself. In 1988, he’d purchased a prized corner lot in Brooklyn’s Mill Basin neighborhood. It was on the outer ring of a series of semicircular streets where million-dollar homes had sprouted on a peninsula in Jamaica Bay. Casso’s site was an eight-thousand-square-foot lot tucked along a waterway called East Mill Basin. It boasted a long dock jutting out into the tidal channel, terraces, and a pool.

The property was initially listed in the name of the ever-helpful Frank Arnold. The painting contractor was rich enough so that no one would question his ownership of one more luxury home. But in the spring of 1990, as Arnold was facing charges in the Manhattan district attorney’s painters union extortion case, title was transferred to a company called Highlite Development. It was owned by George Kalaitzis, the Greek contractor from Queens who worked closely with the Luchese underboss.

With Kalaitzis as the builder, construction of Casso’s pleasure palace proceeded apace. To design it, he tapped a young architect named Anthony Fava, a partner with Pete Chiodo in several enterprises. Al had met Fava in 1987 and liked him well enough to ask him to help design his new restaurant in the Village, Pasquale & Wong’s.

“He was a good kid. Pete brought him around and I gave him some work. He was working with my son John on designing a new burger joint, too. He’d come by the restaurant with his girlfriend. I wouldn’t let him pick up a check.”

Al’s role in the project was to make sure the bills were paid from the steady flow of cash from Luchese family earnings. He was stunned by some of the expenses.

“Gas has George the Greek order two glass doors from West Germany that cost $44,000. He was spending hundreds of thousands of dollars on the place.”

Building plans showed the three-story stucco home boasted a thirty-foot-wide master bedroom, an indoor gymnasium, and a solarium. It included two rooftop terraces, and a wide patio leading to the private dock. If he was ever free to live there, Anthony Casso would be residing in mob splendor.

Pete Chiodo was supposed to be overseeing the building of Casso’s castle. Contracting was his expertise and the architect was his friend. Casso expected him to move things along.

But there were delays. One problem was that, like a lot of anxious new homeowners, Anthony’s wife, Lillian, had changed her mind often about what she wanted. Another was that when the exorbitantly expensive doors arrived from Germany, they didn’t fit. Work came to a halt.

Fava had his own complaints. The architect griped to Kalaitzis and Arnold that he wasn’t getting paid fast enough. When the complaint reached Casso, he was irate. He also began to wonder how much he should trust the architect.

For his part, Chiodo wasn’t paying much attention to the project. In addition to dealing with the indictments, he was doing extensive work on his own home. He built a high brick wall and a new apartment over his garage. His place was modest compared to the regal residence Casso was constructing, but Big Pete’s place was also worth almost a million dollars. It sat atop a small rise with a backyard overlooking a pleasant little park called Bailey Pond.

It didn’t help matters that Chiodo’s home renovations were moving along swiftly while the Mill Basin mansion was stalled. Things got worse when Chiodo’s wife went to see Lillian Casso about the problems. The two mob wives got into a fierce argument.

*   *   *

Al had to coax Chiodo to come to Manhattan for a meeting. They met on West Street, near where the burger stand had been. Chiodo showed up with a backup team including his father and uncle. Despite their differences, Chiodo vented openly to Al about his suspicions. As they walked, Chiodo brought up the killing of Bruno Facciola.

“Everybody is getting marked a rat,” Pete said. “These guys have a pattern. They are marking guys rats and getting them killed.”

The two of them, Chiodo confided, were headed for the same fate. “I got information that you and I are going to be killed or hurt,” he said.

Al listened. He had heard the threat already from the detectives who had knocked on his door. The possibility that Amuso and Casso could turn on him, as he had watched them do to others, had also occurred to him. But he wasn’t about to express any of his own fears or concerns to Chiodo.

“Petey,” Al said, “you are getting delusions. You are running away with yourself. Don’t believe that. It’s a money thing. You can always resolve a money thing.”

Al figured that the disputes over the 19th Hole and the Mill Basin project could be fairly easily fixed. The other matter, though, was something to think about.

A few weeks later, Chiodo called Al to say that he’d decided to resolve the twin indictments he was facing. He would use his lawyer, Charles Emma, a Brooklyn attorney with close ties to the local Republican Party, to negotiate plea deals. He would have to do some prison time, but he’d have the matters settled.

Al told him it was all right with him, but that he needed to run it by Amuso and Casso. “What you do is your business,” Al said. “But you have to get an okay if you are going to plead guilty. This involves the bosses and the other families.”

Chiodo was already past talking. He first settled the state case, agreeing to plead guilty to a single count of second-degree grand larceny. In the more serious extortion charges contained in the federal Windows case, Emma negotiated a good deal for his client. Without being obligated to testify, Chiodo would serve up to six years in prison. He was just forty years old. Hopefully, he’d have a long life ahead of him when he got out.

To Amuso and Casso, it was treason.

Al was summoned again to the pay phone on Glen Cove Road in Nassau County. The conversation was a replay of the last time the bosses had sentenced a member to death. Again, it was Casso relaying the order.

“Kill that fat bastard,” Casso said. “He’s a rat.”

Al didn’t have to ask whom he meant. He held the phone thinking how he’d told Chiodo he was imagining things.

“Use the kids,” the underboss instructed. “Plus the Toupe.” He had one more on his list. “And kill the architect,” he added. “He knows too much.”

*   *   *

Al found Richie Pagliarulo at his club, Café Sicilia in Gravesend, Brooklyn. The Toupe was dressed as though he was going out for a night on the town. He usually was. In addition to his dapper attire, Pagliarulo was so vain about his brown toupee that he had a hairdresser, Luchese associate Dino Marino, visit him three mornings a week to style it into place. The Toupe had long been one of Chiodo’s most loyal aides. He had put some of the bullets into Sonny Morrissey and he had kept silent when Chiodo had botched the hit on contractor Joe Martinelli.

But when Al told him what he had to do to his captain, Pagliarulo was delighted. “Good,” he said. “I’ve been doing all the work for him while he got all the credit.”

Later, Al met with Joseph to tell him that Casso wanted him and his friends to reprise their performance from the Anthony DiLapi murder in California. Joseph had already heard. George Zappola had told him. Al wasn’t surprised this time about the back channel. It was just one more curveball from the underboss.

The hunt began, but Pete Chiodo didn’t make it easy. The big captain stayed close to home, rarely venturing outside. Frustrated, the hit team decided to try and get the jump on him by tapping his phone lines. A Luchese associate with expertise clambered up a telephone pole a few blocks away and found Chiodo’s line. A cassette recorder was attached.

Every couple of hours, one of the team would climb up, flip out the old cassette, and insert a new one. It was a painstaking process. But on May 8, a Wednesday, they learned something. Joseph D’Arco listened as they played the recording.

“We heard Pete say he was getting on a plane. He was going to West Virginia.” Talking to his father, Chiodo said he planned a couple of stops before he took off. He had to go to the doctor and stop by the bank. They also planned to pick up his father’s car from the mechanic at a nearby gas station on Fingerboard Road.

Joseph immediately headed into Manhattan, where he retrieved a work car stolen earlier for use in the hit. He also picked up a pair of guns that Petey Del Cioppo had hidden, a 9 mm Smith & Wesson and a semiautomatic handgun. Both had silencers. With the weapons stowed under the seat in Del Cioppo’s vehicle, Joseph followed him back to Staten Island in the work car. He wore gloves to avoid leaving fingerprints. When they got to the tolls at the Verrazano Bridge, Del Cioppo paid the toll for himself and his buddy behind him. Joseph didn’t want anyone to spot the gloves.

“I was supposed to be in the shooter’s seat. That was the original plan. Then Georgie Zappola says he got a message. They want me to drive instead.”

Replacing him as the main shooter was a Luchese associate named Frank Giacobbe. Joseph had little faith in him. “Fat Frankie,” as he was called, was part of Zappola’s crew. He had taken part in several bank robberies, but he also had a heavy drug habit. On the way to the gas station at the corner of Bay Street and Fingerboard Road, Joseph eyed Giacobbe. “We’re about one minute away from the station and this kid puts a cigarette in his mouth. He was shaking.”

Joseph reached over and snatched the cigarette away. “What the fuck are you doing?” he said.

It was midafternoon when they got to the station. Joseph pulled up about twenty feet from the gas pumps. The second car, with the Toupe at the wheel, pulled sideways on Fingerboard Road, blocking traffic. George Conte, the designated secondary shooter, was beside Pagliarulo. Joseph saw Chiodo’s Cadillac parked next to the gas pumps. Chiodo and a mechanic were busy looking under the hood. If they moved quickly, they could drop him easily, Joseph thought.

Frank Giacobbe opened the door and started toward his target. Climbing out of the car, he tripped. The gun in his hand went off. Joseph saw sparks shoot up from the concrete.

Instantly, Chiodo understood what was happening. He pulled his own gun and began firing back. “He was running backward, shooting.” Giacobbe hid behind a large hoist. Despite his bulk, Chiodo moved surprisingly fast.

Joseph’s instructions were not to leave the car. He opened fire from the car window. Then he leaped out, gun in hand, charging in Chiodo’s direction. The two men pegged bullets at each other. Joseph felt time slow down. He was squeezing off rounds, aiming at Chiodo as he fled.

Joseph felt like he was seeing more clearly than ever before, that he could even see the stitching on Chiodo’s shirt. He felt the rush of air as bullets whistled past his head. For a moment, he thought Chiodo had another shooter. But it was Fat Frankie. “He’s shooting and he’s coming closer to killing me than Pete.”

He heard his own bullets thudding into Big Pete’s massive frame. “He’s giving out these yells as they hit. ‘Umph!’” Chiodo finally fell to the ground. He lay there on his back. Joseph approached, aiming his gun for one last shot. It jammed. He started to check what was wrong when he heard someone yelling his name. “Frankie is screaming over and over, ‘Joe! Joe!’”

The rest of the hit team were in their cars. He didn’t know what to think. He raced back to his vehicle, threw it into gear, and tore away from the station.

On the way back to Brooklyn, Joseph had just one thought: “He’d better be dead. He was looking right at me the whole time.”

*   *   *

In Brooklyn, they began getting rid of the evidence. Joseph put his shirt and the guns into a plastic shopping bag. He handed it to someone to get rid of them. They made arrangements to have their two getaway cars, a Jeep and a Thunderbird, torched.

Luchese capo Frank Lastorino was at the Café Sicilia when they arrived. Lastorino advised Joseph to make himself scarce. He handed him $1,000 and told him to go with one of the Toupe’s friends who lived on Long Island. “Stay over there until you hear from us,” Lastorino told him.

On Long Island, Joseph called his father from a pay phone. Al had been anxiously paging his son, without response. He was on Flatbush Avenue when his own pager beeped. “Where are you? How come I can’t get in touch with you?” Al asked when he reached Joseph.

Something had gone wrong, his son explained. Frank Lastorino had sent him out of town until things quieted down.

Al was enraged that Lastorino was giving his son orders. “Get back here,” he told him. “The first thing the cops are gonna to do is look to see who’s missing. They’ll zero in on them first.”

The news of the shooting was now on the radio. Chiodo had been taken to St. Vincent’s Hospital in Staten Island in critical condition. Later reports updated his status. The victim of the attempted mob rubout in Staten Island was critical, but expected to live.

Joseph got a ride to Brooklyn, where he met up with his father. They embraced. He told his dad that Chiodo had to have recognized him. Al scolded him for not wearing a mask.

The question now was how to finish the job.

*   *   *

Plan B was to send Frankie Giacobbe, whose bumbling had put them in this fix, into the hospital. He would make his way to Chiodo’s room, stab him to death, then walk out.

A nurse at the hospital, a friend of one of the plotters, was persuaded to help guide them. She had worked at St. Vincent’s for years and could move about without being questioned. Her shift ended at 7 a.m. A reconnaissance run was planned for that hour when the hospital would be lightly staffed.

Wearing a set of doctor’s white scrub clothes, a pal of Giacobbe’s named Frank DiPietro was led by the nurse down the corridor toward Chiodo’s room. He couldn’t even get close. As he approached, men in suits, clearly law enforcement, stood up to ask him where he was going.

*   *   *

Gaspipe Casso had no trouble coming up with a follow-up strategy. The order came to Al in a phone call to one of the designated pay phones.

“He says he wants me to send members to Pete Chiodo’s parents’ house. And to grab hold of them and threaten them with death if Pete cooperates.” Casso knew exactly who he wanted to relay the threat. “He said to use Louis Daidone and Patty Dellorusso because they’re big guys, intimidating.”

Al listened, ticking off all the Mafia tenets violated by this order. “The rules of this life is that you don’t threaten people’s families. It’s outside. They’re innocents. It’s wrong, especially with women.”

But he didn’t argue. The other rule of the Life was to obey without question. Daidone was even more irate when Al told him what Casso wanted him to do. “Grab the family? I won’t do it,” the bagel baker responded emphatically. Al was encouraged. Maybe they could find a way out of this, he thought.

But Casso had again covered his bases. He sent a backup messenger, George Conte, to see Daidone. “Georgie Conte tells him he’s going to accompany them to the parents’ house, make sure they do it.”

It wasn’t that bad, Conte told them. Casso wanted the parents to know they had a choice. If their son cooperated against the crime family, they would die. But if he didn’t, then all was forgiven. He’d get a pass.

Reluctantly, Daidone and Dellorusso went to the home in Brooklyn. They camped outside, waiting for the couple to show. Casso was insisting that he be told as soon as the mission was completed. They worked out a code with Al. When his pager lit up with a string of 1s, it meant the threat had been made. Al would then relay the confirmation to the impatient Casso.

The intimidators waited for hours outside the house. It was Chiodo’s father who appeared. He and his wife had separated and he was seeing another woman. When the couple arrived, Daidone stepped out of the shadows. Chiodo’s father, whom he’d never met before, turned and greeted him. “Hello, Louie, how are you?” he said.

Daidone hesitated, then spoke his piece in a rush. “If Pete cooperates, you both get whacked. If not, all is forgiven.” Then he turned around and hurriedly walked away.

*   *   *

Pete Chiodo woke up on his way to the intensive-care unit at St. Vincent’s Hospital following surgery. A pair of FBI agents were in the corridor watching him. John Flanagan and Lucian Gandolfo had tried to warn Chiodo that the Luchese bosses would try to kill him. Now they were taking no chances. Standing beside Chiodo’s oversized gurney, dressed in hospital scrubs like the rest of the operating team, was an NYPD detective, Thomas Limberg, who was assigned to the FBI’s Luchese squad, known as “C17.” Limberg had been allowed to remain in the operating room during the procedure. There were serious concerns, the law enforcement officials told alarmed hospital officials, that the gunmen who had shot the patient might try to finish him off right in the hospital.

Gandolfo saw Chiodo slowly roll his eyes open. “He didn’t really smile,” recalled Gandolfo. “But his eyes suggested he was much happier to see us than the guys in baseball caps pointing guns at him.”

The agents stood in the recovery room as the doctor told Chiodo that he had a dozen bullet holes in him. Five shots had passed right through him. Luck and his huge bulk had helped save his life, the doctor said. He had a long way to go, but he should recover.

As the doctor moved away, the agents glided over to Chiodo’s bedside. “Your old friends made it pretty clear yesterday that you have nothing going with them anymore,” said Gandolfo.

“There’s no other way out for you,” said Flanagan. “You know that.”

Chiodo was too groggy to speak. Thanks to a combination of poor eyesight and panic, he had no idea who the shooters were. Nor was he inclined to talk about it. But even if he did, he had little to tell them.

He knew that Amuso and Casso had ordered the attempt to kill him, just as he’d predicted they would weeks earlier. He also knew they weren’t finished. He got the report from his father about Louie Daidone’s murder threat if he cooperated. Another was delivered via his lawyer. Two men had rushed into the lawyer’s Brooklyn office and yelled that Pete’s wife would be next.

Charles Rose, one of the federal prosecutors working the Windows case, also came to the hospital room. It was the second time Rose had urged Chiodo to cooperate. Back in March 1990, Rose had warned him that the Luchese bosses intended to kill him.

He had waved Rose off at the time. He could take care of himself, Chiodo said. Now he looked at his two near-useless arms. He couldn’t possibly protect himself right now, not to mention his wife and family.

Chiodo procrastinated as long as he could. “It’s just the way I was brought up,” he was later to tell a jury. After two months of being shifted between various hospitals and undergoing repeated procedures, he gave in. He’d cooperate, he told the agents.