When you say "ballsy," I think "daring" and "risky":

All of the hits were daring (as would be any attempt on a Don's life). But, careful planning and execution (no pun intended) mitigated some of the risks in Masseria and Galante (lured to relaxed lunches with trusted associates); Anastasia (few witnesses, victim's face covered with towels so he couldn't see shooters coming), and Castellano (four shooters wearing identical hats and coats and using identical weapons to keep onlookers from making positive IDs).

We've had many threads and discussions about the Colombo shooting. Only certainty is that Jerome Johnson didn't do it on his own initiative. Whoever put him up to it faced four huge risks: he gets through a crowd on 100k and a phalanx of cops and bodyguards; gets off one or at most two shots that kill or disable Colombo; is killed almost instantly so he can't rat out anyone; and no one is even arrested, much less tried and convicted, for the crime. Everything worked--that's really ballsy.