Last Don Standing Read online

  And Ralphy paid attention: “I studied men for a long time. Even when I was a little boy, I was always a people watcher. Always.”

  DiTullio admired Natale’s don’t-give-a-damn approach to life, going balls to the walls without worries about the fallout and taking responsibility for his actions.

  “I never was a con artist,” said Natale. “I never gave a fuck who liked me. That’s my life. Skinny loved that more than anybody. Skinny had a little Louie Prima in his voice, he used to say, ‘Man, you don’t care who likes ya, do ya?’

  “And I said,” Natale recounted with a loud laugh, “‘As long as you like me.’”

  DiTullio’s survived the local war for control of the mob between the old school Mustache Petes of Sicily and the American-born Young Turks eager to make the family their own. Though himself born in Philly, Skinny Razor was brutally instrumental in keeping the old guard in control.

  The young Razor’s take-no-prisoners crew included the legendary Harry “the Hunchback” Riccobene and future capo Freddie Iezzi. Natale offered a poetic appraisal of his friend and mentor: “Skinny Razor was to the Philadelphia La Cosa Nostra what the Great Wall of China was to the enemies of that vast empire.”

  If you were Skinny Razor’s friend, you had a friend for life. And if you were his enemy, that life would be considerably shortened. “We had more arms than an armory under the bar,” Natale recalled.

  DiTullio’s way of handling mob business provided Natale with a template for his own career. He wasn’t flashy and never did anything for show. Killing was for business, period. Your reputation speaks for itself; there’s no reason to go shouting from the rooftops about anything related to the family or your part in it.

  “I never tried to impress anybody in my life,” says Natale. “Maybe when I talked and said things, people responded in a certain way. That’s on them. Maybe they got dirty underwear. That’s the old saying in the mob—if you don’t show up, you got dirty underwear. In other words, you did something wrong. If they make a mistake, they gotta go. You gotta go sometime. You know the old saying: everybody dies.”

  Natale, as his financial status improved, started dressing in style. He favored tailor-made shirts with a barrel sleeve and double buttons, a nice suit, nothing gaudy, no jewelry, and a hint of cologne.

  Natale bought into the mob ethos without hesitation, and the Philadelphia family quickly became the epicenter of his existence. He looks back on that choice without regret: “At that time in my life, with those kind of men, it meant more than anything. It meant my whole life. It meant more than my family, because my family will benefit from me being what I am. I didn’t have anything. I didn’t know anything. I didn’t have a formal education. I didn’t have a trade. I didn’t have nothing.

  “All I had was me. At that time, I weighed 140 pounds. That’s all I had! But I knew what I was. And I didn’t fear anything in the world. If you die, at least you die good—‘Hey, I’m somebody!’ And that’s what you feel. And that’s what I felt. Just being near that circle of power makes you something better.”

  The illegal money was good, but Natale still looked forward to the nights when DiTullio handed him a pay envelope after a night of pouring drinks. When the bar closed, the lights and the jukebox were turned down low and the two men sat and talked about life to a musical backdrop of Ella Fitzgerald and Billy Eckstine.

  DiTullio did the talking, and Natale listened.

  “I’d say, ‘What’s the matter? You got something on your mind?’ And he say, ‘No, I just wanna talk.’ Sometimes we’d sit for two, three hours, sip our Scotch, and talk about everything—people and life. You’d be surprised the things I learned from him about people, so-called tough guys and the mob and this and that. I learned you were a gentleman toward other men and women. And I learned that in this world, there are motherfuckers that you cannot be good to. I’m not talking about criminality. I’m talking about life.”

  Sitting there one night over a glass of good booze, he heard the sad tale of Harry Barry—a fake tough guy with a phony name. He dressed the part and talked the talk and downed the drinks. In the world of Texas ranchers, there’s an expression for guys like that: big hat, no cattle.

  There’s a name for them in South Philly, too: asshole.

  The tale was told by Joe Panisi, the bookie who handled all the bar’s betting action.

  One night in the early 1940s, Barry bopped into a Jersey nightclub with a camel-hair coat and an attitude. The rest of the clientele included Philly bigwig and future boss Marco Reginelli and his crew.

  “Those days, Italians would act like they weren’t Italians,” Natale explained of Barry’s adopted surname. “All the fighters became Irish, different names. All the guys used to go there, eat and drink and this and that. Harry Barry’s dressed nice, acting like a dangerous guy. He goes into the bathroom, and the guy who comes in behind him is Marty Martell, the bodyguard of Marco. An old fighter. He says, ‘You know Harry, why don’t you come over and say hello to the boss over there?’

  “Harry Barry gets snotty when he drinks: ‘What the fuck do I care? I do what I want to do.’

  “Harry carried a razor like Skinny did, in his suit pocket, covered with a handkerchief. Pulled it out, zoom! He opened Martell’s whole face up. Blood all over. Then he spit on him and walked out. He carried that scar for his whole life.”

  Word quickly leaked back to DiTullio about Barry’s insolence toward Reginelli and the attack on Martell. The mobster frowned at the idea of people disrespecting his friends and was keeping an eye out for Barry when his target walked into the Friendly Tavern with a pal.

  Barry was looking for Panisi, a gambling savant who kept all his records—point spreads, wins, losses, debts unpaid—in his head. DiTullio and Panisi were sitting at the bar having a drink.

  DiTullio leaned over and asked the bookie about Barry’s gambling habits. He was betting big, said Panisi, and was currently a week behind in making good.

  “Skinny says into Panisi’s ear, ‘You’d better collect tonight,’” recalled Natale. “The next morning, I was in George Washington Elementary School. There’s a crowd around. They said, ‘Somebody’s laying over there! The cops are there!’ Harry Barry’s laying against the steps of a row house, and he’s dead. Years later, I found out about it because I became somebody.

  “And Panisi—he was a good friend of my father, too—says, ‘I’m gonna make you laugh with this one: “You’d better collect your money tonight!”’”

  4

  NEW YORK, NEW YORK

  “Where are we going?”

  A twenty-year-old Ralph Natale asked the question, unsure if he would get an answer.

  “Just drive north,” said his lone passenger, Angelo Bruno, a revered top-level mafioso and Ralph’s mob patron. “To the Holland Tunnel and Little Italy in Manhattan.”

  Ralphy, who had recently started chauffeuring the boss, started the car and headed silently toward the New Jersey Turnpike.

  “He would have all these kiss asses drive for him,” Natale said. “And he said, one time, ‘Maybe later this week I’m gonna go somewhere. You come pick me up in the morning.’ What he liked about me was I didn’t talk too much.”

  The long, quiet round-trip wound resonate for Natale in the years ahead, changing forever the arc of his life and his career.

  “We went to a nice little social club in the Italian section of Manhattan,” said Natale. “He gets out, and all the men sitting outside get up. He told me, ‘Stay out here. I’m gonna say hello to somebody in there, and then we’re gonna go to a hotel.”

  Ralphy, in a sports coat and dress slacks, was ready for anything: “I knew when you went to New York, look proper.”

  Bruno emerged and began dictating directions to the hotel; they headed uptown until they arrived at their destination: the Waldorf Astoria Hotel.

  Natale was stunned. “I thought, ‘What the fuck is he going to the Waldorf Astoria for?’ We pulled up to the side entrance, not the
front. He says, ‘Okay, put the car there.’ They had people out there waiting to take my car. Me and Ang went in, past the Peacock Alley—the bar. The Waldorf Astoria, Jesus Christ. It was funny. And he said, ‘Okay, sit outside. Don’t go in the bar.’

  “I gave him the look: I know better than that. I wouldn’t breathe if he didn’t tell me it was okay. So I sat down and waited. The waitress came over: ‘What do you want, young man?’ I got a club soda with a slice of lemon. Of course, she knew who I was with.”

  The ritzy Park Avenue hotel held a special place in mob lore. Founding father Charles “Lucky” Luciano kept a suite in the Waldorf Towers for years, apartment 39C, paying $800 a month. The Mafia’s ties to the Waldorf continued long after Luciano was deported; the spacious suite was now leased year-round for use by the Commission and its members, using the name of a small Queens real estate business. Its owner’s parents had lived next door to mob boss Carlo Gambino’s cousins in Sicily.

  “The Commission used to meet there in the Waldorf. They had a set of rooms under a phony name,” Natale recalled. “They kept that place for years, and nobody knew.”

  Natale recalled waiting alone for two hours, silent and unsure of what was going on. He was starting to get antsy when the elevator doors opened. Bruno exited, but he wasn’t alone. Ralphy recognized the second man instantly.

  “Carlo Gambino,” Natale says of his first encounter with capo di tutt’i capi, the powerful boss of the nation’s most powerful mob family. “My God. I come to attention. I went over. I didn’t come right up because that’s improper. Angelo says, ‘Come here, say hello to Mr. Gambino.’ He puts his hand out, and he shakes my hand—firm.

  “I looked at this face, and he looked me straight in the eye: ‘I hear many good things about you.’”

  The two bosses from either end of New Jersey were close friends who once hailed from the same hometown in Sicily. Bruno arrived after Gambino, who helped introduce his old friend to the ways of this new world across the Atlantic. Natale recalls the pair as kindred spirits, men of unusual dignity, class, and honor:

  “They weren’t men like John Gotti, the type of guy who walks in: ‘Look at me!’ Neither one of them. You could sense these were men of substance. Angelo adopted the spirit and the manner of Carlo Gambino. Carlo was like an older brother to Angelo. Over the years, they shared different things—legal and illegal.”

  The two dons walked back outside, with Natale trailing at a respectful distance. Bruno’s car was already waiting at the curb.

  “I’m bewildered,” Natale remembered. “Do they own this place? The waiters knew Gambino. The people at the desk knew him. Ang climbed into the car right away. He was a chain-smoker, so I’d have the window open. We start driving.”

  The ride south was dead silent, with Natale behind the wheel. It wasn’t his place to say anything, and so he said nothing. The boss lit cigarette after endless cigarette, the smoke wafting out a window opened just a crack. “He smoked so much, I thought I was gonna get cancer,” said Natale.

  Bruno finally broke the hush. “Do you know what that means when that man says that to you?” he asked, a serious look across his face.

  “Yes, I do,” Natale replied. “And I will always remember that.”

  Bruno looked directly at his young associate, his eyes turning soft. Natale, despite a childhood devoid of such attention from his own father, recognized the unspoken message of paternal concern on the Philadelphia boss’s face.

  “There are ways—men of power have a look that tells you, ‘We’re talking to you, but don’t think we’re friendly here,” Natale said. “But when they soften their eyes: ‘I care for you. I’m looking out for you, like a son.’”

  Natale remembered this trip for the rest of his life, and years later his respectful demeanor and boss’s support would catapult him into the upper echelon of the mob.

  Natale crossed paths with the New York City boss at a second meeting. Just as he had at the Waldorf, young Ralphy impressed the older man—who kept the memory with him for years, until the day when he decided the kid from Philly was just the man he needed for a major mob undertaking.

  5

  THE RISE OF THE DOCILE DON

  Angelo Bruno, the man who became known as the Docile Don, assumed command of the Philadelphia Mafia family in a fashion befitting his nickname: no shooting, no killing, just a peaceful ascension after a successful career. Bruno, after his installation by the mob’s ruling Commission, spared the life of his rival for the post to earn his nickname of tranquillity.

  Earlier Philly management changes had come in more spectacular fashion: John Avena was gunned down in the street back in 1936. Things were different when word of boss Marco Reginelli’s 1956 death from pancreatic cancer reached the South Philly bars owned and frequented by the city’s Mafia.

  The future of each and every one depended on the choice of the new padrone.

  The Sicilian-born Bruno was the popular choice, but one of only three candidates for the top spot in the late 1950s. One was Skinny Razor, who opted for his golf game and his bar business over the headaches of running the family. In mob parlance, DiTullio didn’t have the time or inclination to sit with every guy walking into his bar, hat in hand.

  The other was Joe Ida, already part of the family’s ruling elite. But Natale says there was little question that Bruno was the man for the job: “It’s simple—he ran the business end when he was a capo. He ran the street. Honest to a fault. Loyal? Beyond that. Everything was right. If the money was supposed to be here, it would be here.”

  Bruno’s candidacy was boosted by his close ties to Gambino, the head of the New York crime family that bore his name into the new millennium. The pair followed similar career paths in the two East Coast cities—with one major exception: Gambino’s ascension to the seat of power followed the brutal murder of Albert Anastasia. Bruno would take a different approach.

  Ida had different ideas about Reginelli’s replacement. No one, the treacherous mobster decided, was better for the job than Joe Ida.

  The selection process was simple: The Philly capos would vote on their choice for the new boss. Their pick would be sent to New York to the Commission, the heads of the five Big Apple families. The final decision was theirs.

  Ida decided to fix the election by killing his top competition, Angelo Bruno. “Jealousy, ego, and greed,” said Natale of Ida’s twisted mind-set. Within hours of Reginelli’s death, Ida reached out to a Naples-born shooter named Ignazio Dante and laid out his plot inside the latter’s small casino operation on Christian Street. Dante, who had fought alongside DiTullio in the earlier mob war, was promised a higher-ranking family position and a percentage of its illegal income for his cooperation.

  But Ida had failed to do his homework. When Dante had wanted to retire from the mob’s cutthroat world, Bruno had swayed the bosses to set him free. His small casino operated with the full approval of the Philadelphia family.

  “Normally,” noted Natale, “a retirement for a soldier of the Mafia is not followed by a Social Security check, but by a hearse.” Bruno had insured Dante would live long and prosper. And now, as befitting the owner of a gambling operation, he would repay his benefactor in spades.

  Dante made a beeline for a no-frills Italian restaurant called Corona di Ferra, a compact eatery with a distinctive floor fashioned from diamond-shaped black and white tiles. The same men always seemed to occupy the same half dozen tables near the bar, but Dante wanted to see the man seated in the main dining room up three steps from the entrance.

  Angelo Bruno was holding court, with members of his crew at the surrounding tables. Dante respectfully inquired if he should wait at the bar or head inside to speak with Bruno.

  “He hasn’t ordered yet, so do what you please,” responded the manager.

  Dante made his way slowly toward the dining room, offering a smile as he caught the attention of one of Bruno’s dinner guests. The guest returned the smile, and Bruno turned to see what prompted
the grin. When he spied Dante, the capo offered his own warm smile of greeting.

  “Ignazio, here, take a chair,” said Bruno.

  Dante, using the seat only to brace himself, instead leaned down and whispered into Bruno’s ear, “I must speak to you alone. It’s a matter of the most serious of things.” Bruno told his old friend by the elbow and headed toward the front, with the mafiosi standing in a sign of respect as the two walked out the door for a walk around the block.

  The pair were now arm in arm, walking almost as one, while Dante laid bare the murder plot proposed by Ida. As Natale heard it, Bruno’s face remained a blank slate—not a flash of anger nor a hint of disappointment. The two men walked back to the restaurant, where Dante offered an apology to Bruno’s table for his interruption.

  “I’ll get back to you,” promised Bruno, who then offered his own apology and made an exit, pleading a sudden emergency. A phone call was placed to Gambino in New York, and Bruno—with capo Freddie Iezzi at the wheel—was on his way to the city within the hour. They headed to the Waldorf, where New York’s bosses awaited.

  Bruno shared the details and received their approval to give Ida what’s known as the eternal nap. Instead, the new boss—approved now by the nation’s five most powerful bosses as the successor to Reginelli—returned to Philadelphia and gave his would-be killer a pass. Joe Ida was deported in 1959, and Angelo Bruno earned his oxymoronic nom de Mafia by sparing his life.

  There was one other change. The South Jersey faction of the Philadelphia family would report to Bruno from now on, a change from the old days when the city and its suburbs answered to two different leaders. Bruno was already showing one of the main attributes for successfully running a family: insuring its stability in times of unrest.

  Before leaving the Waldorf, Gambino pulled Bruno aside for a short primer on his new life as a don. The two sat at a table, a plate of the Waldorf’s finest china filled with biscotti and espresso between them, as Gambino explained that job one was choosing the right underboss. The two spoke in Sicilian, like a father advising his son. Bruno lit a cigarette as he listened intently to the advice.