Dinner With Three Capos; A Personal Experience
The three men were murdered in one fell swoop in May of 1981. I was 13 at that time. A year or two before they met their demise, they had had dinner at my grandparent’s home at my grandfather’s invitation. Unfortunately, because I was so damn young when it happened, I have only a few vague memories of the evening—an historical evening, in my opinion.
I asked my parents, and they don’t remember exactly when the dinner occurred, nor do they remember many details. My grandparents, in whose Queens, New York, condo the dinner took place, have since died—my grandfather 11 years ago, my grandmother two years ago, each at ripe old ages. I love them both dearly and will never get over their deaths.
I may not remember much of that specific dinner, the one the three Bonanno capos attended before their murder at the hands of Joe Massino, Sonny Black Napolitano and Phil Rusty Rastelli, but I can imagine it. My grandmother would have cooked her sauce as she did every Sunday, like any self-respecting Italian Grandmother with a hungry family and guests to feed would do. There would have been giant bowls of ensalada and pasta, served first, followed by the arrival of huge oval platters of every kind of meat you could imagine—beef, pork, chicken—soaked in sauce, the meat so tender (and tasty) it would fall off the bone. An endless supply of thick tomato sauce, baskets of chunks of seeded Italian bread, pecorino romano shredded cheese would have been on hand as well, all par for the course. And bottles of red.
We would all be seated at the custom-made, long table that nearly took up the entire dining room of my grandparents’ condo. (My grandfather was somewhat wealthy at the time—wealthy enough to have had the duplex condo professionally decorated. Too bad he blew it all.) The comfortable, padded, long-backed chairs made sitting through the hours-long meals extremely easy, even after you finally dropped your cloth napkin on top of your sauce-smeared plate and were so full you felt like your stomach would burst (a rather tasteless analogy, I must admit, considering what is coming in the next couple of paragraphs).
Then coffee and dessert. I won’t delve into that. I have trouble writing about food—I tend to get carried away and lose the thread of what I am trying to say in favor of, say, the rich cream floating out of a cannolli shell – but I digress.
My grandfather would have been sitting at the head of the table. I, his daughter’s first born, usually sat at his right hand, though that night I have a feeling a Mafia captain was in my usual seat. I might have even been hurt by that, I don’t remember. To me, my grandfather was God: He had such a powerful presence, he could drown out an entire roomful of people (which he often did at family functions, to the chagrin of many). Whenever we gathered together he would hug me so tight, squeeze our faces together, his sometimes-bristling cheeks would tickle my face. When I was really young, he’d hold me aloft and take me in his car--always a long black Lincoln--to the local candy story and buy any candy I wanted.
Looking back, I wish I was older because I’d have surreptitiously taken notes so I’d be able to provide a fuller, more colorful portrait of that night. Instead I remember a heavyset man, who resembled a somewhat heavier version of my grandfather. That would have been Dominick “Big Trin” Trinchera. When they shot him, his stomach supposedly split open and pasta came flying out—that’s what happens when you whack someone after eating a big meal. The stealthy Bonannos should have arranged a pre-dinner meeting; clean-up might have been easier.
I remember a thin, good looking man with sharply parted black hair: Phil “Lucky” Giaccone, whose nickname carried an irony so very unfortunate for the man himself. I believe my grandfather had a separate relationship with Phil; he knew Giaccone better than the other two, because over the years, before Giaccone’s body was found, my grandfather would sometimes mention with a deep sigh how his friend “Philly” had disappeared. I know Giaccone was punched in the face by Massino himself before the execution in that basement from hell; Phil was once Massino’s capo, I have read.
Oddly, I don’t remember the third guy, who would have been Sonny "Red" Indelicato. (Forget the Pacino/Depp Brasco film, with its cinematically engineered Sonny Red/Sonny Black rivalry. The problems between the three capos and the rest of the family were more complex than what was portrayed in that film).
The general, albeit vague, consensus: It was a good meal with plenty of laughter. The three capos were not threatening. Why would they be? Mobsters, after all, are human beings; they put their pants on one leg at a time like the rest of us do. One thing my parents did remember was that they were extremely respectful to all of us. My parents knew these men were involved in the Mafia, either at the dinner or after it, but, as I said, they have no specific memories, no anecdotes to tell me, other than it was a nice dinner—no cursing, just a bunch of well dressed men, some chain smoking cigarettes, along with my grandfather, who was the unfiltered Camel type. It was a typical Sunday dinner composed of family and friends.
We didn’t of course know about the power play going on in the Bonanno family about that time. It followed the Commission-sanctioned hit of Carmine Galante. The feud was for control of the family. Rastelli, who had the support of the other families, and his lieutenants, came out on top.
When I was reminded of this meal a few years ago by my grandmother when all the stuff about Joe Massino was on the news, and they found the remains of Big Trin and Phil Lucky, I transformed into a question machine: What were they like? Why were they over for dinner? Was Grandpa involved with them?
From what she could recall they wanted my grandfather to do a “favor” for them. My grandfather, as I said, was a small-business owner and never a criminal, and had never been arrested, even though he was born in a time and place were Mafiosi were produced as if via an assembly line. He owned and operated a fleet of limos. A huge chunk of his business was tied into the airports—JFK and LaGuardia—and my grandmother said it had something to do with my grandfather’s airport contacts … and garbage delivery. (What else? Really – what else?)
He had other contacts even earlier, before yours truly was born. In those days (the early 1960s) the Mafia was a common presence among small business owners in New York City; I think Marty Scorcese talked about this in a documentary he filmed. Everyone knew the "racket boys," as my grandfather called them. (My grandfather hated John Gotti because of all the publicity he attracted, and to his dying days refused to believe Gotti ran the Gambinos; he believed the real boss put him out front to catch all the attention. No matter what he read or what I told him, that was his story, and he stuck to it. It's a shame for the Gambinos he was wrong.)
The one anecdote my mother remembered was the loanshark who used to loan the drivers money. I won't name him. My mother, a young woman at the time, was walking into my grandfather's office one day lugging groceries. The loanshark looked at his guys -- they hung around the office on occasion, I guess when money had to change hands -- and said something like, "What the f---- is wrong with youse? Help the lady! Now!" They ran outside and took the bags from my mother and helped her inside the building.
I do know the alleged deal between my Grandfather and the Bonanno capos never panned out. I would think that the failure of my grandfather to fulfill whatever his obligations were would have meant bad things for him, but nothing happened. While my grandfather wasn’t in the Mafia he had “friends.” Phil, for one. Also, some of his regular customers had “Gambino” for their last name.
That’s it. Just a little story about how close my family and I came to Mafia infamy. We had dinner with it.
And I still remember the last thing my grandmother said about that night.
“Sonny, I felt so sorry for him. His son had bad trouble with drugs.” She was 94 when she told me that. I knew Sonny’s son Bruno had a Coke habit from books I have read over the years. But my grandmother knew it because she had dinner with a man some 30 years ago and he had told her about it and she felt a compassion for him and his problems that transcended decades. I call that a caring heart.
I asked my parents, and they don’t remember exactly when the dinner occurred, nor do they remember many details. My grandparents, in whose Queens, New York, condo the dinner took place, have since died—my grandfather 11 years ago, my grandmother two years ago, each at ripe old ages. I love them both dearly and will never get over their deaths.
I may not remember much of that specific dinner, the one the three Bonanno capos attended before their murder at the hands of Joe Massino, Sonny Black Napolitano and Phil Rusty Rastelli, but I can imagine it. My grandmother would have cooked her sauce as she did every Sunday, like any self-respecting Italian Grandmother with a hungry family and guests to feed would do. There would have been giant bowls of ensalada and pasta, served first, followed by the arrival of huge oval platters of every kind of meat you could imagine—beef, pork, chicken—soaked in sauce, the meat so tender (and tasty) it would fall off the bone. An endless supply of thick tomato sauce, baskets of chunks of seeded Italian bread, pecorino romano shredded cheese would have been on hand as well, all par for the course. And bottles of red.
We would all be seated at the custom-made, long table that nearly took up the entire dining room of my grandparents’ condo. (My grandfather was somewhat wealthy at the time—wealthy enough to have had the duplex condo professionally decorated. Too bad he blew it all.) The comfortable, padded, long-backed chairs made sitting through the hours-long meals extremely easy, even after you finally dropped your cloth napkin on top of your sauce-smeared plate and were so full you felt like your stomach would burst (a rather tasteless analogy, I must admit, considering what is coming in the next couple of paragraphs).
Then coffee and dessert. I won’t delve into that. I have trouble writing about food—I tend to get carried away and lose the thread of what I am trying to say in favor of, say, the rich cream floating out of a cannolli shell – but I digress.
My grandfather would have been sitting at the head of the table. I, his daughter’s first born, usually sat at his right hand, though that night I have a feeling a Mafia captain was in my usual seat. I might have even been hurt by that, I don’t remember. To me, my grandfather was God: He had such a powerful presence, he could drown out an entire roomful of people (which he often did at family functions, to the chagrin of many). Whenever we gathered together he would hug me so tight, squeeze our faces together, his sometimes-bristling cheeks would tickle my face. When I was really young, he’d hold me aloft and take me in his car--always a long black Lincoln--to the local candy story and buy any candy I wanted.
Looking back, I wish I was older because I’d have surreptitiously taken notes so I’d be able to provide a fuller, more colorful portrait of that night. Instead I remember a heavyset man, who resembled a somewhat heavier version of my grandfather. That would have been Dominick “Big Trin” Trinchera. When they shot him, his stomach supposedly split open and pasta came flying out—that’s what happens when you whack someone after eating a big meal. The stealthy Bonannos should have arranged a pre-dinner meeting; clean-up might have been easier.
I remember a thin, good looking man with sharply parted black hair: Phil “Lucky” Giaccone, whose nickname carried an irony so very unfortunate for the man himself. I believe my grandfather had a separate relationship with Phil; he knew Giaccone better than the other two, because over the years, before Giaccone’s body was found, my grandfather would sometimes mention with a deep sigh how his friend “Philly” had disappeared. I know Giaccone was punched in the face by Massino himself before the execution in that basement from hell; Phil was once Massino’s capo, I have read.
Oddly, I don’t remember the third guy, who would have been Sonny "Red" Indelicato. (Forget the Pacino/Depp Brasco film, with its cinematically engineered Sonny Red/Sonny Black rivalry. The problems between the three capos and the rest of the family were more complex than what was portrayed in that film).
The general, albeit vague, consensus: It was a good meal with plenty of laughter. The three capos were not threatening. Why would they be? Mobsters, after all, are human beings; they put their pants on one leg at a time like the rest of us do. One thing my parents did remember was that they were extremely respectful to all of us. My parents knew these men were involved in the Mafia, either at the dinner or after it, but, as I said, they have no specific memories, no anecdotes to tell me, other than it was a nice dinner—no cursing, just a bunch of well dressed men, some chain smoking cigarettes, along with my grandfather, who was the unfiltered Camel type. It was a typical Sunday dinner composed of family and friends.
We didn’t of course know about the power play going on in the Bonanno family about that time. It followed the Commission-sanctioned hit of Carmine Galante. The feud was for control of the family. Rastelli, who had the support of the other families, and his lieutenants, came out on top.
When I was reminded of this meal a few years ago by my grandmother when all the stuff about Joe Massino was on the news, and they found the remains of Big Trin and Phil Lucky, I transformed into a question machine: What were they like? Why were they over for dinner? Was Grandpa involved with them?
From what she could recall they wanted my grandfather to do a “favor” for them. My grandfather, as I said, was a small-business owner and never a criminal, and had never been arrested, even though he was born in a time and place were Mafiosi were produced as if via an assembly line. He owned and operated a fleet of limos. A huge chunk of his business was tied into the airports—JFK and LaGuardia—and my grandmother said it had something to do with my grandfather’s airport contacts … and garbage delivery. (What else? Really – what else?)
He had other contacts even earlier, before yours truly was born. In those days (the early 1960s) the Mafia was a common presence among small business owners in New York City; I think Marty Scorcese talked about this in a documentary he filmed. Everyone knew the "racket boys," as my grandfather called them. (My grandfather hated John Gotti because of all the publicity he attracted, and to his dying days refused to believe Gotti ran the Gambinos; he believed the real boss put him out front to catch all the attention. No matter what he read or what I told him, that was his story, and he stuck to it. It's a shame for the Gambinos he was wrong.)
The one anecdote my mother remembered was the loanshark who used to loan the drivers money. I won't name him. My mother, a young woman at the time, was walking into my grandfather's office one day lugging groceries. The loanshark looked at his guys -- they hung around the office on occasion, I guess when money had to change hands -- and said something like, "What the f---- is wrong with youse? Help the lady! Now!" They ran outside and took the bags from my mother and helped her inside the building.
I do know the alleged deal between my Grandfather and the Bonanno capos never panned out. I would think that the failure of my grandfather to fulfill whatever his obligations were would have meant bad things for him, but nothing happened. While my grandfather wasn’t in the Mafia he had “friends.” Phil, for one. Also, some of his regular customers had “Gambino” for their last name.
That’s it. Just a little story about how close my family and I came to Mafia infamy. We had dinner with it.
And I still remember the last thing my grandmother said about that night.
“Sonny, I felt so sorry for him. His son had bad trouble with drugs.” She was 94 when she told me that. I knew Sonny’s son Bruno had a Coke habit from books I have read over the years. But my grandmother knew it because she had dinner with a man some 30 years ago and he had told her about it and she felt a compassion for him and his problems that transcended decades. I call that a caring heart.