Fascination and fear the key to Mafia's grip

By DAVID USBOURNE

When it comes to the Mafia, the people of New York seem to want it both ways. They love it that the wiseguys are still in their midst, and glory in reading of their latest adventures and feuds.

Just witness the baroque extravagance of the wake and funeral of former Gambino family head John Gotti, who died of throat cancer in a Missouri prison.

Yet when prosecutors announce their latest triumphs in shackling the Mob, the city's residents applaud.

This is not as nonsensical as it sounds. For 70 years, this city and its tabloid writers have romanticised the brutal world of the Cosa Nostra. Its existence is part of what gives the city its cosmopolitan edge.

Former mayor Rudolph Giuliani may have taken some of the grit out of its streets and sanitised Times Square, but at least New Yorkers still have proper gangsters. Or do they?

Gotti's death and a series of high-profile arrests, trials and convictions have given rise to the once unthinkable suggestion that the Mob may have lost its grip on the Big Apple.

Indeed, it is tempting to think that the spectre of the Mafia has always been more Hollywood-fuelled myth than reality.

But the Mafia remains deeply soaked into New York's culture. To realise how deeply, you only had to be present at the comic opera that was the farewell to Gotti.

First there was the two-day wake at a Queens funeral home. As if from the central casting department, the mobsters came to pay their obligatory respects. Huge Italians beefed up with steroids and arrogance guarded the doors to keep reporters out.

The funeral could have been scripted in Hollywood. Its over-the-top vulgarity was epitomised by the obscene floral tributes and fawning accolades by some of the city's tabloid columnists. There was a martini glass made of flowers, a racehorse and a straight flush of playing cards.

Fifteen black Cadillacs tracked Gotti's hearse through the streets of Queens, the pavements five deep with gawkers. A further 80 less pretentious cars made up the rest of the cortege.

And the cops were everywhere, taking notes on who had showed, who was paying the most respects to whom, and who seemed to have faded from centre-stage.

Licence numbers were noted. Surveillance cameras were mounted on city lamp-posts for the weekend.

All this hoopla for a murderer and hoodlum whose downfall was his arrogance and thirst for fame.

The city's contradictory view of the Mob is fed by the media, which oscillates between declaring that the Mafia is on its last legs and then devoting every available column inch when there is some new twist in the organised-crime saga.

Wiseguy murders and Mafia trials sell newspapers. Rupert Murdoch's New York Post ran 16 pages on the Gotti funeral. Wait a few weeks, however, and the same newspaper will once more be pronouncing on the impending demise of the once-mighty Mafia.

The truth about the health of the New York Mafia lies somewhere in the middle. Much has happened in the past 10 years, most of it bad for the Mob.

In 1992 there was the conviction on racketeering and murder charges of Gotti, who had previously earned the nickname the "Teflon Don" because nothing thrown at him by prosecutors in three earlier trials had stuck.

Commentators declared that the reign of the five Mob families in New York - Gambino, Lucchese, Bonanno, Genovese and Colombo - that had started at the beginning of the 30s was at last coming to a close.

Since then, pressure on the Mafia clans, particularly the Gambinos, has been relentless. Since Gotti's conviction, scores of its members have been imprisoned or charged with various crimes, and three of its acting bosses have been convicted.

Gotti's family has been badly hit. His son, John jnr, named acting boss by his dad, was convicted of racketeering and illegal gambling in 1999 and will not be free until 2004. Gotti's brother, Peter, took over a few months ago, but was charged with overseeing extortion and other rackets on the Brooklyn waterfront. Another brother, Richard, and his son, Richard jnr, were nabbed in the same arrest sweep.

There is no Gotti left to run the Gambino clan. Once the Gambinos were reputed to be taking in about US$1 billion ($2.05 billion) a year; that figure has probably now fallen by more than half.

Other families have suffered, too. During the 90s, the Racketeering Influenced and Corrupt Organisations Act put numerous bosses in prison cells. Prosecutors in Manhattan, Brooklyn and Queens are still announcing arrests almost monthly.

The Brooklyn waterfront indictments this month named 17 Gambino associates. About 75 members of the Genovese clan were arrested at the end of last year, accused of robberies, hijackings and assorted rackets.

Others now in the care of the Government include Alphonse "Allie Boy" Persico, head of the Colombo family, and Vincent "The Chin" Gigante, the Genovese boss, who tried in vain to plead lunacy.

Much of the credit for the new ferocity of city prosecutors in going after the Mafia has gone to Giuliani, who was a prosecutor before turning to politics and serving two terms as mayor.

The authorities have also been helped by a degeneration of the old rules of the Mafia. As the judicial net has widened, associates have opted to escape long jail sentences by giving evidence against families.

The roster of death and incarceration would suggest that the Mafia is tottering. Not so, says one law-enforcement figure.

"Each family is still vibrant and powerful," he says, "and they are still inflicting economic and physical destruction on the inhabitants of New York City and the larger society. They are domestic terrorist armies."

Leading the armies are the bosses. Even those in prison manage to run their clans' affairs by making their decisions known through messengers. Acting bosses mind the shop while they are "away".

Beneath them are the skippers or capos, who control individual crews made up of full members of the clan. They are variously known as soldiers, goodfellas, wiseguys, made men, buttons or friends of ours.

Latest estimates suggest that, even after all the recent carnage, the Gambinos have 200 members, the Colombos 120, the Genoveses 250 and the Luccheses 120. Membership of the Bonanno family is much smaller, but the clan is considered to be strong and the most disciplined.

Beyond the member crews, the families use the services of thousands of people known as associates, who help out with criminal operations for the extra dollars but are not fully inducted into the families. "Because you have arrested a John Gotti and taken out 10 or 20 others, it doesn't mean there aren't thousands more out there," says the law-enforcement source.

"Assume that the Mafia is a middle-sized company. If the president falls ill, it doesn't stop functioning and the workers still make the product. In this case, they are still stealing the money."

The bread and butter of the families remains loan-sharking - extending loans to individuals and businesses who can't raise cash elsewhere and then bleeding them for repayment.

Drug dealing, hijackings, robberies and private gambling add to the coffers. And the Mob is still deeply involved in rubbish collection, the construction industry and unions. The pocket of just about every New Yorker is hurt in some way by the activities of the Mafia. Not long ago, the control exerted by the five families on the rubbish-collection business was costing taxpayers about US$500 million ($1025 million) a year.

Many US cities have declared victory over the Mob. But they are mostly small ones, where perhaps 10 FBI men were hunting down 15 gangsters. In New York, about 75 federal agents are up against thousands of crooks.

And there is the other problem to contend with. As much as New York wants to be rid of the wiseguys, it is also deeply in love with them. The dons and the capos and the buttons get respect. People see their wealth - most of the senior Mafia figures who have been caught have been multi-millionaires - and want to live like them.

In some neighbourhoods, it is dangerous to bad-mouth the Mobsters. You might get knocked about. It is easier and safer to love them.