For Mafia, It’s So Hard to Get Good Help These Days

In the twin windows of Little Italy’s Ravenite Social Club, a pair of faded, frayed yellow ribbons dangle as reminders of a godfather gone for good: Gambino family boss John Gotti.

The dull fabric recalls a time when Gotti ruled from his Mulberry Street headquarters and spoke--in a 1990 conversation captured for posterity by a government bug--about “a Cosa Nostra till . . . 100 years from now.”

But just seven years later, Gotti is in prison for life. The Ravenite has been seized by the feds. And New York City’s five Mafia families--traditionally the nation’s largest and most powerful--approach the 21st century with shaky futures.

The crime syndicates that long relied on violence and intimidation could die peacefully of old age, with only a motley crew of Generation X-ers left to pick at the remnants of their empire.

Organized crime’s veteran leadership--lifers like Gotti, Vincent “Chin” Gigante, Sammy “The Bull” Gravano, Carmine “The Snake” Persico, Dominic “Quiet Dom” Cirillo--is aging, imprisoned or working for the government.

And its generation of replacements, according to both mobsters and mob experts, is inexperienced, unskilled and undisciplined--more interested in making mayhem than money.

“The best and the brightest are not taking leadership roles,” says Ronald Goldstock, former head of the state Organized Crime Task Force. “Before, people coming up at least paid lip service to Old World values.

“Now, people in the mob have the values of their contemporaries: money and power.”

Howard Abadinsky, president of the International Assn. for the Study of Organized Crime, says the new New York mobsters are “much more psychopathic” than their predecessors. They lack loyalty and love violence--two trends that don’t bode well for the mob’s future, he says.

It’s a drastic change in the city that Joseph “Joe Bananas” Bonanno dubbed “The Volcano,” a cauldron of money, power and intrigue where the mob operated like U.S. Steel. Those days, experts says, are history.

The sudden need for the next generation’s ascendance was created by the government’s decade-old assault on the mob’s top echelon. But when the Mafia searched for replacements, its most qualified candidates were approaching retirement age.

Only one of New York’s five families can point to a boss born after World War II--the Gambinos, where reputed head John Gotti Jr.’s rise is tied to his surname, not his birth certificate.

Young Gotti, 33, the poster boy for the Generation X mobsters, is typical of the next wave: hotheaded, green, not too bright, experts say. Earlier this year, he was arrested for hassling a pair of undercover narcotics cops--a brainlock that older bosses would have found unthinkable.

Even his father apparently realizes “Junior” is lacking in wisdom. When Gotti was jailed in 1992, a triumvirate of reputed capos advised his son. Two were older than the now 56-year-old dapper dad; one, 57-year-old Nicholas “Little Nicky” Corozzo, is now headed to jail for racketeering conspiracy.

The story is the same in New York’s four other families.

When Genovese boss Gigante, 69, was convicted in July, his reputed replacement was 67-year-old “Quiet Dom” Cirillo. The family underboss, authorities say, is Michele “Mickey Domino” Generoso--and he’s 79.

The reputed godfathers of the Colombo and Lucchese families are both sixtysomething grandfathers. Reputed Bonanno family boss Joseph Massino, at 54, is the baby of the current crop of bosses; he was born when Mayor Fiorello LaGuardia could still watch the Dodgers at Ebbets Field.

For a variety of reasons, the mob is no longer finding quality replacements:

* A Gigante-ordered moratorium on new members, aimed at maintaining his family’s superiority, held numbers down for most of the ‘90s, authorities say. None of the families added members this decade; the Luccheses and Colombos may have declined in numbers.

* The turnover caused by relentless government trials--10 bosses jailed in the last decade, many with decades of mob service--shattered family stability. Alfonse “Little Al” D’Arco, the acting Lucchese boss turned federal witness, complained that new recruits went from soldiers to capos in a matter of months--often with disastrous results.

* The reluctance of most mobsters to involve their families in the “family” business hurts. Gigante and slain Gambino boss “Big Paul” Castellano, to name two, kept their sons out of “The Life.” Gravano, in his book “Underboss,” recounts Gigante’s surprising response to “Junior” Gotti’s initiation: “Jeez, I’m sorry to hear that.”

More important, the mob’s once-lucrative farm system--the garbage-carting business, the concrete business, the Garment District, the Fulton Fish Market, the Javits Center--is no longer under its control. Once-plentiful entry-level mob jobs have dried up as authorities have taken away their usual rackets.

“If you remove their financial base, you’re attacking the foundation of organized crime,” said Lewis Schiliro, FBI special agent in charge of the criminal division in Manhattan.

The problem of finding new Mafiosi has plagued the families throughout this decade. Gotti, in late 1990, bemoaned the difficulty of recruiting new “talent.”

“I want guys that done more than killing,” he told Gravano on a government tape. “. . . And where are we gonna find ‘em, these kind of guys? I’m not being a pessimist. It’s getting tougher, not easier!”

Philadelphia mobster Thomas DelGiorno, a killer turned witness, agreed. He described the up-and-coming Mafiosi this year as “young kids . . . with no training, looking to make a name for themselves.” They fire weapons indiscriminately “like Al Capone in the movies,” he said disapprovingly.

The old guard has its problems too: a steady stream of defections to the government. The loss of these management-level mobsters, combined with the dozens of convictions they produced, has left the Mafia of the ‘90s with no good role models for its new troops.

“Youngsters today are copying John Gotti. He ain’t Carlo Gambino,” says Abadinsky, citing the Dapper Don’s penchant for publicity and reckless disregard for government eavesdroppers. “He’s the worst role model they could have.”

Gigante’s trial offered a perfect example. Venero “Benny Eggs” Mangano, a 76-year-old contemporary of the “Chin,” sneered in court after he was subpoenaed from prison this summer by prosecutors.

“Shoot me,” the convicted racketeer challenged, his voice hard and dismissive. “But I’m not going to answer any questions.”

But in a Brooklyn courtroom in 1997, Benny Eggs’ snarl of defiance meant nothing. A half-dozen turncoat mobsters, most two decades younger, took the witness stand to detail the Oddfather’s criminal history and feigned medical woes.

The informants “cut to the very heart of Cosa Nostra,” Schiliro says. “Their impact was devastating. The notion that the underboss of the Gambino family or an acting boss of the Lucchese family would turn? It’s devastating.”

None of the mob’s Generation Xers other than young Gotti have registered too prominently on the government’s radar screen. One oft-mentioned candidate, Genovese family street boss Liborio “Barney” Bellomo, 40, was just sentenced to 10 years for extortion and murder conspiracy.

Goldstock, the former head of the Organized Task Force, now with the security firm Kroll Associates, says the mob has suffered a slow, steady decline in quality that shows no signs of abating. He cites the Gambino family’s leadership.

“You start out with Carlo Gambino, who was able to run the family, increase its wealth, stay out of trouble,” Goldstock says. “Then Paul Castellano, one step down, able to make money but less able at avoiding law enforcement.

“Then John Gotti, who was a disaster, and his son, who is a joke. It doesn’t take a great deal of imagination to see how bad the next boss would be.”