Here's a little excerpt from the Chin book.....
Gigante arrived for a short stay on March 9, 1982. The next year he checked himself in on April 20. He stopped back in, yet again, on May 7, 1983. In each case Gigante showed the same symptoms, received the usual treatment and headed back to the Village. There was one difference: The FBI was now waiting outside, along with the Chin’s driver. Within hours of his departure on May 23, 1983, Gigante was back in the company of Dominick “Baldy Dom” Canterino, Frank Condo, Vito Palmieri (the Chin’s driver) and other Genovese associates. It was like a trip to Lourdes, and then it was business as usual. As was a 1983 meeting with an up-and-coming Colombo capo who became a moneymaking Mob machine before his thirty-fifth birthday.
The 1980s
In 2014, on a fall weekend morning in New Jersey, Michael Franzese shook hands with a steady stream of guests inside an industrial park in tiny Totowa, a town where the dead (one hundred thousand in five cemeteries) outnumbered the living (ten thousand residents). Franzese was dressed casually but neatly, with a fashionable hint of stubble.
He was here to show his new movie, From Godfather to God The Father, a tale of redemption that the born-again Colombo capo hoped would save a few souls.
Things were far different three decades earlier, in the 1980s, when Franzese, conspiring with the Russian Mob, conjured a massive scam to circumvent federal and state taxes by peddling bootleg gasoline in several states. His personal take in the rip-off was estimated at somewhere in the area of $ 2 million a week, and his rise through the family ranks was meteoric. By one account, he became the Mafia’s most prolific earner since Al Capone. Franzese drove a Cadillac El Dorado, took to the seas in a yacht and flew through the skies on a private jet. He even opened a Florida moviemaking business, Miami Gold. A 1986 Fortune magazine piece ranked Franzese at number eighteen on its list of the nation’s fifty biggest Mafia bosses.
On the other hand, they listed the long-deposed Salerno at number one, while slotting the Chin one spot behind Franzese at number nineteen. Franzese came with an impeccable Mob pedigree: The gangster’s dad was the legendary Sonny Franzese, who adopted the boy as an infant and raised the child as his own.
In an oft-repeated bit of lore, Sonny was behind bars in 1974 when he heard that a Colombo soldier was hitting on his wife. The body of suitor Carmine Scialo was found buried in a cellar, a garrote around his neck and his severed genitals stuffed in his mouth.
The elder Franzese, who was a pal of Roulette Records’ McCalla, hoped his boy would become a doctor. Instead, Michael followed him directly into the family business. His skills at making huge amounts of cash soon earned the younger Franzese a true 1980s nickname: “the Yuppie Don.”
His dad was an old-school guy, with a standing reservation at the Copacabana in Manhattan. Guests at his table included Sammy Davis Jr. and Bobby Darin. Michael became a made man in the 1970s, and he quickly ascended through the ranks to become a captain.
It was the gasoline scam that led Gigante to reach out for Franzese. Genovese capo Fritzy Giovanelli, one of the Chin’s most trusted capos, was dispatched to arrange the sit-down. “Every family wanted a piece of the gas business,” Franzese recounted. “When I first realized what I had in 1978, 1979, I told [Colombo boss] ‘Junior’ Persico that I would show him more money than he had ever seen before.” Other families, including the Gambinos and the Luccheses, made efforts to muscle their way into the illicit gas operation, so Franzese was unsure what to make of this summons to Sullivan Street.
“The word among all of us was that no one—made guy or not—was allowed to meet with Chin, unless he sent for you, or someone who he trusted very much would first vouch for you, qualify the reason for you to meet, and then be there when you met,” said Franzese.
“In my case Chin asked to meet with me. Fritzy told me Chin wanted to meet with me about the gas business.” From the rip-off’s inception, Franzese was insistent that the profits should remain for the Colombos only. He braced himself for an overture from the Chin, angling for a slice of the lucrative petroleum pie.
He was instead pleasantly surprised. Gigante, as befitting an elder statesman, wanted only to meet with the rising star and offer any needed assistance for the operation. He was more father figure than cutthroat boss to the up-and-coming gangster.
“Chin did not try to grab a piece from me,” Franzese recounted. “In fact, he told me if anyone bothered me, to let him know and he would help. I believe we would have done business eventually, but we were both having issues at the time and it was best not for us to be seen together.
(I feel compelled to point out, this is kinda consistent with Chin not really being that heavy handed with money, and letting Capos actually BE CAPOS...)
” Franzese recalled several subsequent meetings, all at the Chin’s request and all down in the Village. Whenever Gigante called, he always found time to answer.
“My father told me early on that Chin was the real power behind the Genovese family,” he recounted. “In general, that was the word on the street. My dad was happy when Chin asked me to meet with and told me to stay close to him.
(Maybe the kid, didn't listen to his dad enough??? Something to think about....)
“My personal conversations with Chin were all good. I know he commanded a load of respect on the street. I knew he was feared. I know how he treated me. I believed him to be a very good boss.” Franzese also knew the Genovese boss to be absolutely lucid and deeply involved with his family’s business, although he couldn’t help but notice Gigante’s robe and slippers.
“A dapper dresser, he was not,” said an admiring Franzese. “However, I always said that in order to play crazy so well for so long, and at the same time run a very powerful operation with pretty much of an iron fist, you had to be a bit crazy—no other way to pull that off, in my view. I know I couldn’t have done it.”
Franzese insisted that he never knew Chin or the Genovese family to handle any of the drug trade. The Colombo capo also knew enough to make sure he kept his mouth shut about any dealings with Gigante—or even mentioned his name. “For sure,” said Franzese. “We knew he was serious about it. To me, that was very smart. More guys got into trouble, with names being dropped on surveillance equipment, than you can imagine. Chin was smart in that regard.”
Franzese left the Mob behind in 1989, signing a cooperation agreement with the feds. With the help of his wife, he improbably turned to God and launched a new career, where he often referred to his old one as a tale of redemption. His name would later surface as a potential witness against the Chin, although he never took the stand against Gigante.
