Word: joey
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...none other than Salvatore (Good-Looking Sal) Vitale, Massino's alleged underboss, closest friend--and brother-in-law. They grew up together. They worked together. J&S Cake, the social club that was headquarters for their rackets in the '70s and '80s, was named for them. What must Big Joey think of this fraternal betrayal? Perhaps his emotions echo those famous words from The Godfather: Part II: "I know it was you, Fredo. You broke my heart. You broke my heart...
...might recognize it in Big Joey, who reintroduced the sternest Mafia traditions and insisted that his men honor them. Massino (who often used the alias Messina in his early days) was born in '43 and raised in Brooklyn, where he befriended Vitale and in his teens married Vitale's sister Josephine. The couple settled in Howard Beach, Queens, where they still live in a house decorated with white marble and crystal chandeliers...
...Colgan story illustrates the symbiotic relationship between mobster and fed. In '81 Colgan led a team of 40 agents who planted a microphone in the ceiling at J&S. "It lasted maybe 12, 24 hours, then it went quiet," the ex-agent recalls. "Joey repeatedly swept the place. We knew we were compromised." Colgan's boss wanted the pricey piece of equipment back. So when Colgan spotted a wiseguy entering the social club, he coattailed himself inside. The wiseguy took a swing at him, and several other men rushed him. "The next thing, I hear, I don't see, 'Relax...
Colgan acknowledges Massino's stolid charisma, his use of power as an instrument of fear. "If Joey said something, people jumped. They wanted to be endeared to Joey," he says. "If they didn't do what he said, he'd whack them. And if he even thought you were an informant, he'd have you killed." Colgan managed to persuade Ray Wean--a Bonanno man so huge that when Colgan once arrested him, he couldn't get the cuffs around Wean's thick wrists--to be an undercover informant and later testify for the prosecution at Massino's '87 trial...
What must Big Joey think of these singing bosses and their new partners, the celebrity feds? Sitting in his Brooklyn cell, awaiting a trial that could send him to prison for life or put him to death, he may be wondering if he chose the wrong line of work in an America where a man who keeps secrets can be worth less than a man who spills them. His one rueful consolation may be that much of the public thinks the Mafia is less dirty business than show business, and that a few will be rooting...