An old timer laments Massino's release and RICO ending the mob life
“We got one guy who sends pictures in his Speedo bloomers leading the
pack for mayor, yeah?” he says. “And a guy no different from the dirty
old men sneakin’ outta the local massage parlors is ahead in the polls
for controller, yeah? Maybe Massino becomes police commissioner because
he knows from crime. Don’t laugh. It’s all over.”
He says it’s all over.
The old-time street guy thumped his cane in the Dunkin’ Donuts on 18th Ave. in Bensonhurst, Brooklyn, reading a story in his morning Daily News about how mob boss-turned-rat Joseph Massino had two life sentences for eight murders commuted by a federal judge.
He says this storefront was once called Caffe Mille Luci, built with a half-million dollars worth of imported Italian marble and granite, where local knockaround guys elevated hairy pinkies glittering with diamond rings as they ate cannoli and sipped double espressos and compared parole officers.
Today, the chain store franchise serves Munchkins and coffee to an evolving city of yuppies, hipsters and a brilliant rainbow of new immigrants.
He jabs a wrinkled finger into the headline “Mafia rat flees trap.” All about ex-Bonanno crime boss Massino going into the witness program as a free man after ratting out dozens of fellow wiseguys.
“This here changed it all,” says the old street guy. “It’s all over. In 20, 30 years, our grandkids will be reading about ‘the life’ we knew around here the way we grew up readin’ about Billy the Kid and Jesse James. They’ll look at reruns of ‘The Sopranos’ the way we watched ‘Gunsmoke.’ They’ll say, ‘Did this stuff really happen in the old days or is it just Hollywood fantasy?’ ”
He waves his cane across 18th Ave. and says it all started to change when the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations law was used as a mob-fighting weapon in the 1980s.
“It turned the town into one long perp walk,” he says. “Everyone spent whatever they had stashed on legal fees. Restaurants and upscale cafes like this died. Social clubs closed because, with modern technology, you couldn’t even whisper without a federal lipreader nailing you on secret cameras.”
The RICO law also turned simple three-year bookmaking pinches into life-sentence conspiracy raps. The traditional code of silence known as omerta morphed into a competition to squeal the best song of betrayal from the witness stand to stay out of prison.
“Italians started to flee the neighborhood and the city,” he says. “New immigrants flooded Brooklyn. Russians landed in Bensonhurst like 18th Ave. was an Aeroflot airstrip. At the local subway stations, you used to have your Italian shoeshine guy, your Italian newsstand, your Italian car service. Today it’s a Pakistani selling cotton candy from a 10-foot pole, an Asian lady selling DVDs, Mexican day laborers lined up at the parking meters, Russians running the ambulette business and a guy with a turban pulling up in the car service. The Italians are mostly gone — Staten Island, Jersey, Florida.”
Some were sentenced under RICO to federal pens.
The street guy gazes down 18th Ave., pointing out once-upon-a-time Italian fish and fruit stores now run by Asians.
“The pizza joints are falafel stands now,” he says. “Your Starbucks, that’s an international classroom where college students with Harold Lloyd glasses glom a chair at breakfast and sit at a computer over one coffee for nine hours. And this right here gotta be the most expensive Dunkin’ Donuts on the planet, marble like the Sistine Chapel, serving something called a Dunkaccino. Imagine this? Over. All over.”
He jabs his finger into the Massino story.
“Meanwhile, Massino the rat cakewalks from two life sentences, and Spitzer, the sheriff of Wall Street who banged hookers two at a time like Fredo in ‘The Godfather,’ runs to keep the city’s books,” he says, shaking bunched fingers. “This here while neighborhood street guys who fought in the Second World War, Korea, Vietnam can’t vote because they’re convicted bookmakers? O-ver.”
He ranted on, sipping his bland franchise store coffee in a once high-end cafe.
“And Massino rides off into the sunset with Tonto and the Lone Ranger to collect Social Security for a lifetime of fugazy no-show jobs involving government contracts,” he says. “And he collects rent from properties he bought with dirty mobbed-up money? This is American justice?”
The old street guy finished his coffee with a sour grimace and limped out into what was left of the Brooklyn he grew up in.
“We got one guy who sends pictures in his Speedo bloomers leading the pack for mayor, yeah?” he says. “And a guy no different from the dirty old men sneakin’ outta the local massage parlors is ahead in the polls for controller, yeah? Maybe Massino becomes police commissioner because he knows from crime. Don’t laugh. It’s all over.”
The old-time street guy thumped his cane in the Dunkin’ Donuts on 18th Ave. in Bensonhurst, Brooklyn, reading a story in his morning Daily News about how mob boss-turned-rat Joseph Massino had two life sentences for eight murders commuted by a federal judge.
He says this storefront was once called Caffe Mille Luci, built with a half-million dollars worth of imported Italian marble and granite, where local knockaround guys elevated hairy pinkies glittering with diamond rings as they ate cannoli and sipped double espressos and compared parole officers.
Today, the chain store franchise serves Munchkins and coffee to an evolving city of yuppies, hipsters and a brilliant rainbow of new immigrants.
He jabs a wrinkled finger into the headline “Mafia rat flees trap.” All about ex-Bonanno crime boss Massino going into the witness program as a free man after ratting out dozens of fellow wiseguys.
“This here changed it all,” says the old street guy. “It’s all over. In 20, 30 years, our grandkids will be reading about ‘the life’ we knew around here the way we grew up readin’ about Billy the Kid and Jesse James. They’ll look at reruns of ‘The Sopranos’ the way we watched ‘Gunsmoke.’ They’ll say, ‘Did this stuff really happen in the old days or is it just Hollywood fantasy?’ ”
He waves his cane across 18th Ave. and says it all started to change when the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations law was used as a mob-fighting weapon in the 1980s.
“It turned the town into one long perp walk,” he says. “Everyone spent whatever they had stashed on legal fees. Restaurants and upscale cafes like this died. Social clubs closed because, with modern technology, you couldn’t even whisper without a federal lipreader nailing you on secret cameras.”
The RICO law also turned simple three-year bookmaking pinches into life-sentence conspiracy raps. The traditional code of silence known as omerta morphed into a competition to squeal the best song of betrayal from the witness stand to stay out of prison.
“Italians started to flee the neighborhood and the city,” he says. “New immigrants flooded Brooklyn. Russians landed in Bensonhurst like 18th Ave. was an Aeroflot airstrip. At the local subway stations, you used to have your Italian shoeshine guy, your Italian newsstand, your Italian car service. Today it’s a Pakistani selling cotton candy from a 10-foot pole, an Asian lady selling DVDs, Mexican day laborers lined up at the parking meters, Russians running the ambulette business and a guy with a turban pulling up in the car service. The Italians are mostly gone — Staten Island, Jersey, Florida.”
Some were sentenced under RICO to federal pens.
The street guy gazes down 18th Ave., pointing out once-upon-a-time Italian fish and fruit stores now run by Asians.
“The pizza joints are falafel stands now,” he says. “Your Starbucks, that’s an international classroom where college students with Harold Lloyd glasses glom a chair at breakfast and sit at a computer over one coffee for nine hours. And this right here gotta be the most expensive Dunkin’ Donuts on the planet, marble like the Sistine Chapel, serving something called a Dunkaccino. Imagine this? Over. All over.”
He jabs his finger into the Massino story.
“Meanwhile, Massino the rat cakewalks from two life sentences, and Spitzer, the sheriff of Wall Street who banged hookers two at a time like Fredo in ‘The Godfather,’ runs to keep the city’s books,” he says, shaking bunched fingers. “This here while neighborhood street guys who fought in the Second World War, Korea, Vietnam can’t vote because they’re convicted bookmakers? O-ver.”
He ranted on, sipping his bland franchise store coffee in a once high-end cafe.
“And Massino rides off into the sunset with Tonto and the Lone Ranger to collect Social Security for a lifetime of fugazy no-show jobs involving government contracts,” he says. “And he collects rent from properties he bought with dirty mobbed-up money? This is American justice?”
The old street guy finished his coffee with a sour grimace and limped out into what was left of the Brooklyn he grew up in.
“We got one guy who sends pictures in his Speedo bloomers leading the pack for mayor, yeah?” he says. “And a guy no different from the dirty old men sneakin’ outta the local massage parlors is ahead in the polls for controller, yeah? Maybe Massino becomes police commissioner because he knows from crime. Don’t laugh. It’s all over.”
http://www.nydailynews.com/opinion/massino-prison-release-shows-shows-old-time-street-guy-rico-ended-life-article-1.1398122#ixzz2YzN7Swxi
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