a small tale about the "cartoon character'' who once roamed the streets of New York:
LATE ONE NIGHT MANY YEARS AGO I WALKED INTO A...
LATE ONE NIGHT MANY YEARS AGO I WALKED INTO A...
JAMMED MANHATTAN RESTAURANT ON RIVERSIDE DRIVE, a New York hangout favored by baseball players, actors, agents, reporters, and second-string hoodlums. I was having dinner with a female writer friend of mine, and on this particular night the place was filled with beautiful models and equally handsome men. The big corner table was filled by Lauren Bacall and two more beautiful women. Nobody paid attention. It was business as usual. Then John Gotti walked in with two very large associates. The room went silent.
Impeccably dressed, his body thick and powerful like a walking fireplug, a diamond ring glistening on the pinkie of his left hand, his small eyes played the room for friends, or danger while a thin smile played across his face. Gotti was pure Mob. In fact, at this moment in the long dark history of American organized crime, he was the Boss. There was only one table empty and Gotti and his friends are led there by the maitre d'. As the gangsters sat down, the hum of conversation returned, and Gotti's eyes drifted to the corner table. He gave a small smile to Lauren Bacall. She did not smile back.
Gotti, at 50, was the major Mob leader in the City of New York, but in the world he inhabited there was only one boss at a time, and on that evening in the big city, the time belonged to John Gotti. He was certainly making the most of it. Nobody since Al Capone had taken such pleasure in the role so ecstatically, by the media and the public. On the night he came out of the restaurant on Riverside Drive, the word of where he had been dining had reached the street. I found myself among a group of tourists, late-night diners, and neighborhood regulars. Gotti smiled, climbed into a Lincoln, and was driven away. It was hard to imagine Meyer Lansky, Frank Costello, or Carlo Gambino having that effect on people or appearing to welcome the attention so grandly.
Insofar as I as concerned, he looked like a cartoon character right out of Al Capp's Li'l Abner, a gangster buffoon with carefully manicured hands, his skin so closely shaven it seemed glossy, and the amused and foreboding eyes of what he thought an outlaw should look like, while the cameras recorded every detail. In short, he wanted to be a gangster who looked like a gangster. And that was the way Gotti apparently thought that a real gangster ought to look like. As I stared at him through the crowd in front restaurant on Riverside Drive that night, it was obvious to me that Gotti did not seem to be all that bright. He was just another swaggering kid from Brooklyn who one day wanted to be somebody.
Until December 16th in 1985, not many Americans even knew who Gotti was. At 5:16 that evening, a neatly dressed 70 year-old man named John Castellano arrived for a dinner with a companion at Sparks Steak House on East 46th Street. Castellano looked like he was a businessman, but in fact was the boss of the Gambino crime family, and his companion, Thomas Bilotti, was an underboss. Neither man made it through the door. Three gunmen suddenly appeared out of nowhere and blasted them into eternity. The next day, Gotti had become the boss, and the myth of John Gotti as The Teflon Don had begun.
After many trials and acquittals, the myth came to an abrupt end in the United States Penitentiary in Marion, Illinois in solitary confinement on the 10th day of June in 2002, when Gotti died of throat cancer at the age of 61, and we now had one less cartoon character roaming the streets of New York...
Impeccably dressed, his body thick and powerful like a walking fireplug, a diamond ring glistening on the pinkie of his left hand, his small eyes played the room for friends, or danger while a thin smile played across his face. Gotti was pure Mob. In fact, at this moment in the long dark history of American organized crime, he was the Boss. There was only one table empty and Gotti and his friends are led there by the maitre d'. As the gangsters sat down, the hum of conversation returned, and Gotti's eyes drifted to the corner table. He gave a small smile to Lauren Bacall. She did not smile back.
Gotti, at 50, was the major Mob leader in the City of New York, but in the world he inhabited there was only one boss at a time, and on that evening in the big city, the time belonged to John Gotti. He was certainly making the most of it. Nobody since Al Capone had taken such pleasure in the role so ecstatically, by the media and the public. On the night he came out of the restaurant on Riverside Drive, the word of where he had been dining had reached the street. I found myself among a group of tourists, late-night diners, and neighborhood regulars. Gotti smiled, climbed into a Lincoln, and was driven away. It was hard to imagine Meyer Lansky, Frank Costello, or Carlo Gambino having that effect on people or appearing to welcome the attention so grandly.
Insofar as I as concerned, he looked like a cartoon character right out of Al Capp's Li'l Abner, a gangster buffoon with carefully manicured hands, his skin so closely shaven it seemed glossy, and the amused and foreboding eyes of what he thought an outlaw should look like, while the cameras recorded every detail. In short, he wanted to be a gangster who looked like a gangster. And that was the way Gotti apparently thought that a real gangster ought to look like. As I stared at him through the crowd in front restaurant on Riverside Drive that night, it was obvious to me that Gotti did not seem to be all that bright. He was just another swaggering kid from Brooklyn who one day wanted to be somebody.
Until December 16th in 1985, not many Americans even knew who Gotti was. At 5:16 that evening, a neatly dressed 70 year-old man named John Castellano arrived for a dinner with a companion at Sparks Steak House on East 46th Street. Castellano looked like he was a businessman, but in fact was the boss of the Gambino crime family, and his companion, Thomas Bilotti, was an underboss. Neither man made it through the door. Three gunmen suddenly appeared out of nowhere and blasted them into eternity. The next day, Gotti had become the boss, and the myth of John Gotti as The Teflon Don had begun.
After many trials and acquittals, the myth came to an abrupt end in the United States Penitentiary in Marion, Illinois in solitary confinement on the 10th day of June in 2002, when Gotti died of throat cancer at the age of 61, and we now had one less cartoon character roaming the streets of New York...
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