The Short Sweet Dream of Eduardo Gutierrez by Jimmy Breslin

hopelessness were beyond anybody’s capacity to repel, Governor Nelson Rockefeller sent his housing administrator, EdwardLogue, to visit Gigante at his parish, St. Athanasius. “Is there some way you could build up here, or are the threats and violence too much?” he asked Gigante.
    “We do not tolerate violence. We do not accept threats,” Gigante said.
    With state subsidies, Gigante took empty buildings and turned them into new apartments. Over three thousand people lined up for a day and a half to apply for his first apartments.
    “God bless Father Gigante forever,” Logue announced.
    Logue then wrote a famous memo to Rockefeller: “Suppliers and sub-contractors and vandals tend to hesitate before bothering Father Gigante.”
    Father Lou often could be found in the 115th Street clubhouse of Anthony (Fat Tony) Salerno, who was the second in charge of Vincent Gigante’s gang. Tony was the Tip O’Neill of the underworld and would reside forever in Rudy Giuliani’s mind. Rudy had to know Tony from early years just by walking the street with his father and Carbonetti. Fat Tony was twelve when he drove a truck for Dutch Schultz. Later, Fat Tony’s club, the Palma Boy Club—there is no s because there is no s—on 115th was around the corner from Lou Carbonetti’s Democratic district clubhouse.
    The man from around the corner from Fat Tony’s old headquarters, Louis Carbonetti, now became the first Carbonetti to work in City Hall. When Abe Beame was the mayor and Father Gigante’s friend, and Stanley Friedman was his chief assistant, Father Gigante took Carbonetti down to City Hall and as much as put him in an office and said, “Here’s where you work.”
    He had a son, Lou Carbonetti Jr., who would be the first to follow him onto the city payroll.
    Rudy Giuliani went on to become the United States attorney for New York. He made sure he became famous as the zealot who broke the Mafia. Familiarity. At the same time he had a fascination with mafiosi and even imitated Fat Tony Salerno’s speech. A Giulianiindictment brought Fat Tony into federal court in a trial of Mafia bosses. Giuliani did not prosecute Fat Tony himself, but it was his indictment. At a break one day, Fat Tony got up and brushed past guards who were supposed to stop him and went to the railing in front of the spectators’ rows. A man waiting at the rail handed Fat Tony a cigar. Fat Tony inspected it. The day before, when the same man had brought Fat Tony a cigar, the mobster had exclaimed, “Bring me a thing like this!” and broke the cigar in half and threw it on the floor. This time, the man said, “It’s Cuban, Tony.”
    Salerno grunted and put the cigar in the breast pocket of his suit.
    Now he said, loudly enough for the large room to hear, “Did you bring me a gun?” He pointed at the prosecutor. “I want to shoot this prick.”
    Then he motioned to the judge. “I’d like to fuckin’ shoot her, too.”
    Later in the trial, they played a wiretap of Mafia capital punishment jury deliberations. Fat Tony put on a large yellow headset to listen. It also could be heard on speakers in the courtroom. The tape played for about a half hour, and every voice in crime except Fat Tony’s was on it voting to have someone killed. In the spectators’ front row, Fat Tony’s man brightened. He gave a satisfied nod to Fat Tony. Listening through the earphones in the front of the room, Fat Tony made a face that said, all right.
    At this moment there came over the tape the one decisive vote of the mob. It was the unmistakable voice of Fat Tony Salerno calling out, “Hit!”
    Fat Tony shrugged. What are you going to do? “Good night, Irene,” he muttered to the guys at the defense table,
    The Carbonettis—father, son, and eventually grandson and wife—worked in the two mayoral campaigns of Harold Giuliani’s son, Rudy. When Giuliani won, he had Lou Carbonetti Jr. helping to hand out city patronage jobs. Then Lou junior had a private copying