Brooklyn Noir 3: Nothing but the Truth by Tim McLoughlin Page B
Authors: Tim McLoughlin
Tags: Ebook
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Parole Board for the first time in the year 2069.
Jack Henry Abbott died in the Wende Correctional Facility in 2002. Unless Mad Dog Sullivan sees his 130th birthday, his fate is likewise sealed.
—And so there I was in the courtroom with Ramsey Clark and his toady from Legal Aid. I sat and listened with foreboding. With an inkling that Mad Dog might not have to go north after all.
As it happened, my instincts were correct.
Later on, out in the hallway, the D.A. approached me and said, “Ah, we didn’t have a case anyhow.” I didn’t bother pointing out that he’d said earlier we had a very solid case.
Then Ramsey and Mad Dog emerged from the courtroom. Mad Dog had the grace and style to ignore us cops. Ramsey, being a gentleman, came over to me with a look of compassion and said these words I will never forget:
“Officer, I think justice was done.”
To which I replied, “I doubt it, Ramsey.”
Well, Mad Dog has stayed with me all these years and I have followed his career as best I can. I have discovered both what he’d done before we met in January of ’77, and what he did after. Most of this I learned from Mad Dog’s autobiography, entitled Tears & Tiers , a seminal book self-published by Mad Dog and his wife, Gail Sullivan, and first released in 1997.
One thing I learned from the autobiography was that before we met in ’77, Mad Dog had been paroled from Attica in December 1975 despite a murder conviction and, as mentioned, his being the only escapee from Attica back in ’71.
An extraordinary guy, this Joseph Sullivan, and an inscrutable situation from a legal point of view.
Not long after his parole, in May of ’76, Mad Dog had a relapse. He hooked up with an old comrade—a made member of the Genovese crime family—who brokered gainful employment as a hit man. Mad Dog was to be under the direct supervision of Anthony “Fat Tony” Salerno, top boss of the Genovese organization.
On July 20, 1976, Mad Dog did his first job for the family by executing Tom Devaney, an enforcer for the Mickey Spillane mob, forerunner of the more famous Westies gang of Hell’s Kitchen.
Mad Dog put a bullet in Tom Devaney’s head as Tommy was drinking at a Hell’s Kitchen bar. After which, on a sunny day in August of ’76, he did the same to another Spillane enforcer, one Eddie “the Butcher” Cummiskey, in another saloon. In his autobiography, Mad Dog tells us that he also did three or four subsequent hits, but he doesn’t identify the bodies.
Then Mad Dog and I met, on January 29, 1977. A week prior to our evening meeting, in the daylight hours of January 22, Mad Dog gunned down Tom “the Greek” Kapatos on a Midtown Manhattan street, according to the autobiography and T.J. English, author of Paddy Whacked: The Untold Story of the Irish American Gangster (HarperCollins, 2005).
When he walked out of court a free man, thanks to Ramsey Clark, Mad Dog was given a new assignment by his handlers within the Genovese family: the cancellation of Carmine “Cigar” Galante, boss of the Bonanno crime family who, ironically, began his career as a hit man for the late patriarch Vito Genovese (1897–1969).
Up through the summer of ’78, Mad Dog was running all over the city trying to corner Carmine Galante and knock him off. He explained in his book that he regrettably was unable to do so on account of being called off the job by Fat Tony.
On July 12, 1979, however, Galante was sent to his maker at the hands of others: murdered by close-range shotgun blasts just as he finished eating lunch in the back garden of Joe &Mary’s restaurant at 205 Knickerbocker Avenue, Bushwick. He’d been dining with his cousin, Giuseppe Turano, and his bodyguard, Leonard Coppola.
Then along came the shooters—Anthony “Bruno” Indelicato, Dominic “Big Trin” Trinchera, Dominick “Sonny Black” Napolitano, Cesare “CJ” Bonventre, and Louis “Louie Gaeta” Giongetti—and the rest became pictorial history. The tabloids
Jack Henry Abbott died in the Wende Correctional Facility in 2002. Unless Mad Dog Sullivan sees his 130th birthday, his fate is likewise sealed.
—And so there I was in the courtroom with Ramsey Clark and his toady from Legal Aid. I sat and listened with foreboding. With an inkling that Mad Dog might not have to go north after all.
As it happened, my instincts were correct.
Later on, out in the hallway, the D.A. approached me and said, “Ah, we didn’t have a case anyhow.” I didn’t bother pointing out that he’d said earlier we had a very solid case.
Then Ramsey and Mad Dog emerged from the courtroom. Mad Dog had the grace and style to ignore us cops. Ramsey, being a gentleman, came over to me with a look of compassion and said these words I will never forget:
“Officer, I think justice was done.”
To which I replied, “I doubt it, Ramsey.”
Well, Mad Dog has stayed with me all these years and I have followed his career as best I can. I have discovered both what he’d done before we met in January of ’77, and what he did after. Most of this I learned from Mad Dog’s autobiography, entitled Tears & Tiers , a seminal book self-published by Mad Dog and his wife, Gail Sullivan, and first released in 1997.
One thing I learned from the autobiography was that before we met in ’77, Mad Dog had been paroled from Attica in December 1975 despite a murder conviction and, as mentioned, his being the only escapee from Attica back in ’71.
An extraordinary guy, this Joseph Sullivan, and an inscrutable situation from a legal point of view.
Not long after his parole, in May of ’76, Mad Dog had a relapse. He hooked up with an old comrade—a made member of the Genovese crime family—who brokered gainful employment as a hit man. Mad Dog was to be under the direct supervision of Anthony “Fat Tony” Salerno, top boss of the Genovese organization.
On July 20, 1976, Mad Dog did his first job for the family by executing Tom Devaney, an enforcer for the Mickey Spillane mob, forerunner of the more famous Westies gang of Hell’s Kitchen.
Mad Dog put a bullet in Tom Devaney’s head as Tommy was drinking at a Hell’s Kitchen bar. After which, on a sunny day in August of ’76, he did the same to another Spillane enforcer, one Eddie “the Butcher” Cummiskey, in another saloon. In his autobiography, Mad Dog tells us that he also did three or four subsequent hits, but he doesn’t identify the bodies.
Then Mad Dog and I met, on January 29, 1977. A week prior to our evening meeting, in the daylight hours of January 22, Mad Dog gunned down Tom “the Greek” Kapatos on a Midtown Manhattan street, according to the autobiography and T.J. English, author of Paddy Whacked: The Untold Story of the Irish American Gangster (HarperCollins, 2005).
When he walked out of court a free man, thanks to Ramsey Clark, Mad Dog was given a new assignment by his handlers within the Genovese family: the cancellation of Carmine “Cigar” Galante, boss of the Bonanno crime family who, ironically, began his career as a hit man for the late patriarch Vito Genovese (1897–1969).
Up through the summer of ’78, Mad Dog was running all over the city trying to corner Carmine Galante and knock him off. He explained in his book that he regrettably was unable to do so on account of being called off the job by Fat Tony.
On July 12, 1979, however, Galante was sent to his maker at the hands of others: murdered by close-range shotgun blasts just as he finished eating lunch in the back garden of Joe &Mary’s restaurant at 205 Knickerbocker Avenue, Bushwick. He’d been dining with his cousin, Giuseppe Turano, and his bodyguard, Leonard Coppola.
Then along came the shooters—Anthony “Bruno” Indelicato, Dominic “Big Trin” Trinchera, Dominick “Sonny Black” Napolitano, Cesare “CJ” Bonventre, and Louis “Louie Gaeta” Giongetti—and the rest became pictorial history. The tabloids
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