The elder Mr. Scarfo idolized Al Capone, a fellow transplanted Brooklynite, but hardly resembled him. Where Capone had wit and panache, Mr. Scarfo had neither. Capone supposedly said, “You can go a long way with a smile; you can go a lot farther with a smile and a gun.” Mr. Scarfo preferred just the gun.

“There was no sense of charisma; not even a hint of the old Mafia mystique,” Mr. Anastasia wrote. “Scarfo was a bully with a gun.”