Roger Franklin: Mafia laid low by its own mistakes

COMMENT

Whatever feelings Joseph Massino inspired as head of New York's Bonanno crime family, he probably never expected to see the day when his hulking presence would prompt nostalgia rather than fear. Slumped in a federal courtroom and wearing an expression of old-school indifference to the parade of witnesses whose evidence will almost certainly send away the fiftysomething crime chieftain for the rest of his life, he keeps up the daily pretence that he is still a man of respect.

But in the packed public gallery and outside on the steps, where spectators take their smoke breaks, it is a trip down memory lane. "It was the golden age," said Larry, mysteriously identifying himself only as "a friend of some people". Indeed it was, and the cold-blooded testimony of long-ago rub-outs, brazen scams and the Mob's connections with some of New York's leading citizens and officials is a reminder of how far the Mafia has fallen.

Give a New York prosecutor half a chance and you'll soon be plied with tales of the Mob's many defeats: The hoods are out of the garbage-collection industry. Mobbed-up trucking companies no longer move the fashion houses' latest collections from warehouse to store. At the fishmarket, where no box of salmon ever changed hands without a "Mob tax", there is hardly a button guy still to be found. And if a trial needs fixing, bent judges these days decline to take the wiseguys' calls - or their cash-stuffed envelopes.

Rigorous law-enforcement and anti-racketeering laws assembled that string of victories, but the stock explanation tells only part of the story. As veteran New York crime reporter Jerry Capeci puts it, what laid the Mafia low was the Mafia itself - and Massino's trial is the latest proof.

So far, no fewer than six "made men" have broken the code of silence to turn state's evidence against their former boss and, while just about any of their insider accounts makes a first-rate illustration of a crime empire's decline, turncoat Richard "Shellackhead" Cantarella makes by far the best case study.

On his tax returns, Shellackhead - a nickname inspired by the grease he plasters on his slicked-back hair - listed his occupation as newspaper delivery driver. The paper was the New York Post, where the mobster, now 60, ran the loading bay as a Bonanno fiefdom.

It was lucrative scam for all concerned - the mobsters and the newspaper, as an investigation by Manhattan's district attorney spelled out. After Ted Kennedy forced Rupert Murdoch to sell the paper in 1988 (he has since repurchased it), it passed to property developer Peter Kalikow and soon fell on hard times. Circulation was down, costs up, and Kalikow, whose real-estate interests were in even worse shape, couldn't make ends meet.

According to investigators, the solution was a stroke of criminal genius: Kalikow's chief executive, the aptly named Rick Nasti, a former aide to then-Republican Senator Al D'Amato, began claiming that the paper was selling 50,000 more copies a day than rolled off the presses.

That kept the suits happy, since they were able to fleece advertisers by charging higher rates. And Shellackhead was pleased, too. As the DA found, the hoodlum and his crew were given carte blanche to use Post trucks for delivering guns and drugs throughout the five boroughs.

Even better, much of the print run was being skimmed and sold through the Mob's network of delis, news-stands and bodegas. At 50 cents a copy, 20,000 papers a day represented a sizeable windfall.

When Kalikow declared bankruptcy, auditors looked at his books and the cosy arrangement came unstuck. That was when Shellackhead vanished.

At the time, the word was that he had been abducted halfway through his shift and taken for a one-way ride, rubbed out before he could testify.

As it has emerged at the Massino trial, the truth was rather different. Shellackhead saw the writing on the wall and went running to the feds, who salted him away in the witness protection programme, from which he unexpectedly emerged late last month to testify against Massino - and to expose the web of corruption that bound the Mob to the highest levels of city government.

In addition to the half-dozen hits Shellackhead has pinned on his former boss, he also gave prosecutors a bonus: a blow-by-blow account of the Mob's decision to rub out Rick Mazzeo, the City Hall commissioner who, back in the 80s, approved permits to operate sidewalk news-stands.

To the Mob, the cramped little booths jam-packed with papers, gum, cigarettes and lottery tickets were goldmines, since they did their business in cash and could be used to launder money and sell those stolen copies of the Post.

The trick was to oust the stands' immigrant operators, and that is where Mazzeo came in. According to Shellackhead, he would falsify charges that the newspaper vendors were selling prohibited merchandise - scalped football tickets, and the like - yank their permits and reassign them to the mob. At 35, Mazzeo was a millionaire, thanks to the Bonanno family's payoffs.

A millionaire with a worsening drug habit - and as Shellackhead told the court, that was a problem. If Mazzeo were ever to be busted, chances were he would start singing.

So one night, the Post crew lured him to a rendezvous and eliminated the threat with a bullet behind the ear. A senior city official murdered, wrapped in black plastic and never seen again - such was the freedom to operate that mobsters enjoyed in their Golden Age.

When the verdict comes in and Massino goes down, as he almost certainly will, prosecutors will hold yet another triumphant press conference. They will be entitled to gloat, because the Bonanno boss is a prize catch.

But visitors to the courtroom will be just as entitled to take that boasting with a pinch of salt. Yes, the Mob is on the ropes, but that doesn't mean virtue now reigns triumphant.

The cause for concern? That would-be former Post publisher and Shellackhead's former employer, the politically connected Peter Kalikow, who avoided indictment in the circulation scam. He now heads the city's subway system, where old mate and convicted scam artist Rick Nasti helps him to dole out the contracts.

In New York, no matter how much some things change, the impression that some things aren't quite kosher never varies.