my fuckin’ day,” he added. “Ain’t my fuckin’ day.”
He wondered if he should visit the company, investigate why ice cream wasn’t profitable in New Jersey, but the associate advised against it: too many surveillants around.
“This is pathetic,” Gotti complained again. “I don’t even get ice cream out of it. If I want ice cream I have [to see another person]. I love those fuckin’ frozen red somethin’s. We got the company three years, never saw a dime. Never seen an ice cream bar out of it! If you took [the money] and you put it on the street for a point and a half, we’d be rich over three years! We’d be rich without all the ice cream meltin’ or nothin’.”
Gotti’s impatience was easy to understand. He was in a much higher world of commerce now. On March 6, an unidentified man asked him to meet three others seeking to acquire control of gambling casinos in Puerto Rico. The men already owned a casino in the Bahamas. What the bug overheard was limited, but it appeared that the men wanted to give Gotti a piece of their action if he would solve a problem they were having with a disposal company they owned.
It was probably no problem at all. James Failla was an official of the Manhattan Trade Waste Association, the management group, and other Family men dominated the sanitation unions.
Another man, identified only as Joey, enticed Gotti with a story about gasoline. Two soldiers in another Family recently had been indicted by a grand jury because of a scheme to skim money from the sale of gasoline by not paying federal and state taxes. But Joey said that didn’t mean similar opportunities were not available.
“A fuckin’ twenty-eight cents [a gallon] you can steal,” Joey said. “I’m talkin’ about doing twenty, thirty million gallons a month.”
Gotti did some quick figuring, noting that even at two cents a gallon on 30 million gallons, “It’s six hundred thousand dollars.”
“Wow,” an unidentified person in the room said.
“I gotta do it right now,” Gotti said. “Right now, I gotta do it. I gotta call this guy …”
Gotti picked up a telephone, dialed one of his bodyguards and asked him to contact someone he referred to as “Bobby the Jew” and “tell him to call me.”
Gotti was free to receive such propositions because he had been granted bail after his indictment in the federal case. Ironically, a young and well-educated movie producer, who also was a capo in the Colombo Family, was being held without bail and preparing to plead guilty and pay $15 million in restitution for the largest gas-tax ripoff in history. The case was before the same judge who would preside at Gotti’s trial.
Somewhere in a schedule clogged by men bearing gifts, deals, and problems, Gotti was able to find time for his lawyers. To properly manage his Family, take advantage of opportunities, and enjoy his status, he had to stay out of jail.
The nagging business with the Queens mechanic he was accused of assaulting and robbing was about to come to trial. The case had taken a few remarkable turns since the events in December—unusual is usual in Family cases—and by the time it was over, there would be many more.
Even after the case was officially closed, the turbulence around Gotti would keep it unofficially open.
4
I FORGOTTI!
T HE CASE OF THE MECHANIC versus the mobster began
September 11, 1984, the day an empty double-parked car blocked the impatient way of Romual Piecyk. He was a gruff, burly man who earned a living wage fixing cooling equipment, including the large walk-in refrigerators used to hang animal carcasses.
Piecyk was 35 years old, and no saint, at least not from 1972 to 1979, when on different occasions he was arrested for drunkenness, possession of a weapon, and assault. He was 6 foot 2 and considered himself a tough guy.
He ran into some other tough guys while in Maspeth, a tough working-class neighborhood in Queens. His car was blocked by the double-parked
He wondered if he should visit the company, investigate why ice cream wasn’t profitable in New Jersey, but the associate advised against it: too many surveillants around.
“This is pathetic,” Gotti complained again. “I don’t even get ice cream out of it. If I want ice cream I have [to see another person]. I love those fuckin’ frozen red somethin’s. We got the company three years, never saw a dime. Never seen an ice cream bar out of it! If you took [the money] and you put it on the street for a point and a half, we’d be rich over three years! We’d be rich without all the ice cream meltin’ or nothin’.”
Gotti’s impatience was easy to understand. He was in a much higher world of commerce now. On March 6, an unidentified man asked him to meet three others seeking to acquire control of gambling casinos in Puerto Rico. The men already owned a casino in the Bahamas. What the bug overheard was limited, but it appeared that the men wanted to give Gotti a piece of their action if he would solve a problem they were having with a disposal company they owned.
It was probably no problem at all. James Failla was an official of the Manhattan Trade Waste Association, the management group, and other Family men dominated the sanitation unions.
Another man, identified only as Joey, enticed Gotti with a story about gasoline. Two soldiers in another Family recently had been indicted by a grand jury because of a scheme to skim money from the sale of gasoline by not paying federal and state taxes. But Joey said that didn’t mean similar opportunities were not available.
“A fuckin’ twenty-eight cents [a gallon] you can steal,” Joey said. “I’m talkin’ about doing twenty, thirty million gallons a month.”
Gotti did some quick figuring, noting that even at two cents a gallon on 30 million gallons, “It’s six hundred thousand dollars.”
“Wow,” an unidentified person in the room said.
“I gotta do it right now,” Gotti said. “Right now, I gotta do it. I gotta call this guy …”
Gotti picked up a telephone, dialed one of his bodyguards and asked him to contact someone he referred to as “Bobby the Jew” and “tell him to call me.”
Gotti was free to receive such propositions because he had been granted bail after his indictment in the federal case. Ironically, a young and well-educated movie producer, who also was a capo in the Colombo Family, was being held without bail and preparing to plead guilty and pay $15 million in restitution for the largest gas-tax ripoff in history. The case was before the same judge who would preside at Gotti’s trial.
Somewhere in a schedule clogged by men bearing gifts, deals, and problems, Gotti was able to find time for his lawyers. To properly manage his Family, take advantage of opportunities, and enjoy his status, he had to stay out of jail.
The nagging business with the Queens mechanic he was accused of assaulting and robbing was about to come to trial. The case had taken a few remarkable turns since the events in December—unusual is usual in Family cases—and by the time it was over, there would be many more.
Even after the case was officially closed, the turbulence around Gotti would keep it unofficially open.
4
I FORGOTTI!
T HE CASE OF THE MECHANIC versus the mobster began
September 11, 1984, the day an empty double-parked car blocked the impatient way of Romual Piecyk. He was a gruff, burly man who earned a living wage fixing cooling equipment, including the large walk-in refrigerators used to hang animal carcasses.
Piecyk was 35 years old, and no saint, at least not from 1972 to 1979, when on different occasions he was arrested for drunkenness, possession of a weapon, and assault. He was 6 foot 2 and considered himself a tough guy.
He ran into some other tough guys while in Maspeth, a tough working-class neighborhood in Queens. His car was blocked by the double-parked
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