Head of the Family

It's late June 1972 and I'm sitting in my car in a quiet, working-class neighborhood just a short distance from the Whitestone Bridge in Queens, New York, tracking down a Mafia Godfather. The Whitestone section is filled with cottages and bungalows whose uniformity give it the appearance almost of a Levittown. Trees that have grown past suburban adolescence umbrella over the roadway. A green belt of lawns runs down both sides of the street, shrubs against the houses are carefully barbered and flowers fill the borders.

So normal. And so jolting. As if a time/space warp has distorted my senses. I've come to check out the mansion of Carmine Tramunti, who is indeed one of the three remaining Mafia Godfathers in New York. (There had been five Godfathers here during the past few decades of local Mafia history, but a recent attrition by lead has buried one for all time and turned another into a mindless blob, and now there are three.) Gribbs, they call Tramunti. Or Gribbsy, if you're part of the inner circle, or a name dropper People in the Mob who delight in talking about such things call him a Godfather, while law-enforcement officials use the phrase "one of the most important crime overlords in the country." Tramunti was groomed for his role for about 20 years by his own Godfather. He paid his dues, learned what it takes to run a specialized business corporation and how to use fear to instill in his serfs the reverence that has always been demanded by the Mussolinis of the Mafia. When Tramunti's predecessor died one of those rare natural deaths a few years ago, Tramunti inherited the crown.

So where the hell's the manor house befitting a Mafia don?

I know I have the correct address, 145-79 Sixth Avenue, Queens. No mansion, though. Not for miles around. Mansion? Most salesmen, bricklayers and sanitation workers demand more than this of the American dream. The mansion I expected turns out to be a small two-story house almost shoehorned into a 60' x 100' plot. Terribly modest for a Mafia Godfather.

A couple of miles away, The Godfather, Mario Puzo's epic romance of modern American subculture heroes, is in its ninth record-breaking week at the neighborhood moviehouse. I just came from there, going through the three-hour catharsis once again, cheering along with the matinee audience of housewives when Michael Corleone put a bullet through the face of that dirty bastard police captain, McCluskey. The compound of homes and garden walls where Don Vito Corleone and his feudal Mafia knights lived and plotted was a fortress in modern dress, precisely the style we'd expect of our robber barons.

Has Puzo conned us all? Has his rich imagination created palaces out of cottages? Hell, no. From personal experience I know that the Castle Corleone was an understatement that didn't even come close to the regal style of a real don's home.

The Italian neighborhood in Brooklyn where I grew up in the Forties was typically lower middle class, similar in its own way to Tramunti's present turf--except for two houses not far from mine. One was on a dead-end street that was always the first to be plowed of snow in the winter and scrubbed pure the rest of the year by sanitation workers with their little handcarts, brooms and shovels. The house was indeed a mansion. Three stories of solid brick, at least 25 rooms, expensive canvas awnings at every window, a tall, spiked wrought-iron fence surrounding a huge plot of ground. It was the home of Joe Profaci, the Olive Oil King, at that time the most powerful mafioso in the country. And on the next street, sharing common back-yard gardens--protection at their backs and all that logistical stuff of which survival is made--was the equally impressive home of Joe Magliocco, Profaci's brother-in-law and the underboss of his Mafia family. Those homes, forming their own mall that surpassed the Corleones' as a Mafia show place, towered over everything else in the neighborhood.

Tramunti? It must be some sort of joke. A man of honor, as they still cali a mafioso in the old country, wouldn't be caught dead in---

Enough notes and memories; it's time to ring the bell and see if I can catch Tramunti or his wife at home. First, a quick look at my full-length photo of Tramunti. Not a very good one, it was snapped by a cop toiling away in the basement of police headquarters following Tramunti's most recent arrest, a year before. I've seen Gribbs a few times and know what he looks like, but I want to be certain in case I get lucky and he comes to the door. He's about 5'10", weighs 210 pounds, looks extremely muscular and street tough. The roll of fat beginning to show around his waist and the jowls that fill his cheeks in no way diminish his sinister aura--he can probably still match strong arms with the best bone crunchers in the business, though he's 62 years old.

Out of the car, cross the street and ring Tramunti's bell. The chimes go off. Chimes, for Chrissakes. A dog barks, loudly. No one comes to the door except the dog. He's banging against it from the inside and barking in a staccato style that sounds like a hoarse tommy gun in a Jimmy Cagney film. Obviously, no one's home. I try to get a glimpse of the living room through a small opening in the heavy silk drapes. There's a long couch, a coffee table, brass lamps on side tables. Italian Provincial style, what else? Tacky, but clearly expensive. The most costly tackiness available. Wander around back, to the garden, Just like any other suburban back yard. Not even a tomato patch like the one Don Corleone tended in his final years, the one in which he died a most natural death, whispering. "Life is so beautiful." A line left out of the film, unfortunately.

I was sorry there was no tomato patch, because it would have fit perfectly with the remarks of an old friend from the Brooklyn growing-up days. He's now a minor-league Mob man who chose loan-sharking as a profession when he was in his mid-20s, after a couple of years in reformatories and prisons for a variety of offenses that usually involved appropriating other people's property by force. As a loan shark, he almost naturally became a part of the Mob's money-making system. Just as young law school graduates are eager to join the most prestigious legal firms, those in the less acceptable business of supplying our illegal needs covet connections with the organization. But for the life of me, I don't know why. The Mafia soldiers, the lowliest men in the pecking order, take the largest risks, give most of the profits to their superiors and practically starve. Like my friend Frankie Bath Beach--a name sufficiently different from his actual nom de gang to protect his identity--who pretends to be a big-deal loan shark but looks like a bum and lives with his wife and three kids in a four-room railroad flat above a grocery store.

"This Tramunti's a geek," Frankie complains. "A real geek. He doesn't have the respect of the other dons or even of some of his own family. You know why? Because he's got no finesse, no sophistication. He should grow tomatoes and get out of the rackets."

"Like Brando did in the movie?"

"Yeah, like in that New York spaghetti Western," Frankie says. "But that Godfather had respect, because he was always right. Or made you think he was always right. That's how it should be. Tramunti, though, he's another story. The guys laugh behind his back. Know why?"--Frankie's favorite phrase to alert you that an important statement is coming--"Know why? Because he's a buffone. A real meatball. Digging in the dirt like a peasant. What the hell kind of don is that? I've heard one of his own men laughing about him. This guy said, 'Let Gribbs dig in the fuckin' dirt. He's only a siciliano and he never got out of the dirt.' " (Tramunti was born in Naples, not Sicily. But to some younger Mob members, born and raised on the streets of New York, anyone showing peasant characteristics is Sicilian. The ultimate put-down. But don't say it in front of a real Sicilian.)

In certain quite deceptive ways, Tramunti does seem the perfect Sicilian peasant. Perhaps, like Puzo's Godfather, tending his garden brings back the joys of his childhood in the southern Italian hills more than half a century ago. Tramunti gets up around 11 every morning. After breakfast, he puts on a pair of shorts and sneakers and goes to work in his garden. Every day, weather permitting, you can see Gribbs out there watering his lawn, pulling weeds that threaten his flowers, spreading peat moss at the base of his shrubs, letting the earth blacken his hands and feeling great pleasure in the warmth of that soil.

If he knows that his Mafia associates laugh behind his back at his gardening, he doesn't let it change his habits. Each morning, and into the afternoon, he cares for his small plot of earth. I've seen films of Tramunti working in his garden. They were taken from a block away with a zoom lens by one of numerous investigators who keep tabs on him. Tramunti doesn't look so laughable. Peasant? No way. He's built like a bull, and even from a distance a hard quality (continued on page 140)Head of the Family(continued from page 126) in his eyes and a certain bearing mark him as a man who has made it in a world where the odds are against him.

When Tramunti's had enough of gardening, when he's certain he's done all he can to protect his lawn and shrubs, he retreats inside his house. His wife, Lillian, has lunch waiting for him. It's the sort of meal most of us would associate with dinner. Pasta, a meat course--his favorite is spring lamb--and plenty of bread and wine. Topped off with espresso laced with anisette. Then a nap, resting up for the hectic business day. Late in the afternoon, when most businessmen are cleaning things up and getting ready to break for the 5:07 to the suburbs, Tramunti comes out his front door and heads for his Cadillac. The Sicilian-peasant image has vanished. He's wearing a relatively conservative $300 suit, so perfectly tailored that it slims down his beefiness. He looks like a garment-center executive who refuses to go Mod. But on each hand is a diamond pinkie ring, symbols of his role in life. His hands are manicured, his dark wavy hair grows only slightly long in the back and has a hint of a Forties pompadour. "Subject," says an investigator's report, "is a steady client at Dawn Patrol barbershop, spending $25 to $35 a night for manicure, shave, hair trim."

Tramunti pulls away from the curb, driving his Cadillac himself, with no sign of a bodyguard. At least one car usually follows him, sometimes several cars, each filled with youngish clean-cut men in dark suits. They are employees of whatever Federal or local law-enforcement agency happens to be watching him; the perils of becoming a Mafia aristocrat include a complete loss of privacy.

He seems almost to enjoy the attention. It shows he has arrived. "Besides," says one sleuth who has spent much time stalking this Godfather, "nobody's gonna shoot at him with Federal agents or D. A.'s men 50 feet away." Behind Tramunti's gruff and hoody exterior and his frequent public displays of viciousness, there is a sense of humor. One afternoon he came out his front door as usual, but instead of getting into his car, he walked down the street to a car with two Government men who'd been assigned to him. Tramunti leaned over to the driver and said, "Listen, I'm tired of using the Triborough Bridge. Gonna go over the Whitestone and through the Bronx for a change. You don't mind, do you?" The startled agent assured Tramunti he didn't mind the change of route at all and the procession began on schedule. Another rare flash of humor, somewhat blacker: Tramunti was convicted in September 1969 of contempt of court for refusing to answer a grand jury's questions and was sentenced to a year in the pen that November. Bronx district attorney Burton Roberts ordered Tramunti to surrender for imprisonment a week or so before Christmas, and Tramunti showed up in the D. A.'s office with his attorney to plead for more time. His mouthpiece began to complain: "It's a rotten thing, putting him away just before Christmas. His family is crying about it."

The D. A. asked Tramunti, "Isn't it true your family would cry even if you surrendered after Christmas?"

In his sandpaper voice, Tramunti replied, "They always cry."

Tramunti's first stop is the East Harlem area where he grew up. An uptown Little Italy, it is still his family stronghold, although the Italian community has shrunk to a few dozen blocks as Spanish-speaking immigrants press in all around. Until fairly recently, his East Harlem business was usually conducted in the back of a pet shop at Second Avenue and 112th Street. The shop is owned by Big Sam Cavalieri, a childhood friend of Tramunti's, now the family underboss, second in command. Unfortunately, someone tossed a bomb into the shop in the middle of the night some time back and Sam is now in the process of rebuilding it. In the interim, Tramunti conducts his uptown business a few blocks from Sam's place in a florist shop he once owned. ("I just sold flowers, and there was a designer there," Tramunti said of his florist business at a December 1971 trial in which he was accused of a massive stock-fraud conspiracy. "I put sticks on roses and rolled them and everything like that to make flowers look good." No one asked him if he'd ever heard of Dion O'Banion, who was gunned down in his flower shop in Chicago by some of Capone's boys.)

Big Sam goes through a lot of strange little gyrations to impress Tramunti--he is the Godfather, after all--bowing and scraping and practically kissing his feet. The little monkey show is repeated by Vinny Rao, the family consigliere, or counselor, and by the bodyguards hanging around. And then down to business: consulting with Sam and Vinny on the day's events and picking up some of the loot that flows in--just $1000 or $2000 spending money--from the family's gambling ventures. Tramunti's income is said to be enormous, a word often used to describe the wealth of any Godfather. Through his caporegime and his soldati, Tramunti controls a good slice of all the gambling from Central Park North to the upper reaches of suburban Westchester--his family's allotted territory. That includes all the bookmaking and most of the numbers action: Italian action (which means white), Harlem action (which means black) and Latin action (which is Puerto Rican and Cuban). The Tramunti family runs the Italian action, and bank-rolls the two others for a large share of the take. By all accounts, from both inside and outside the Mob, the dividends from such investments come to a substantial fortune.

Mrs. Vito Genovese once testified to that. Back in 1953, the Lady Genovese decided that life with her husband, Don Vitone, the Mafia capo di tutti i capi, boss of all bosses, was a little too hectic. She complained to anyone who'd listen that Don Vitone carried his Godfather nonsense home, treating her like one of his serfs. "He beats me if I don't cook his dinner right," she told one friend in a phone conversation that was tapped. She asked for a separation and $350 a week support. Don Vitone wouldn't go along. The domestic battle ended up in court, where the Lady Genovese talked about her husband's interests in narcotics, liquor, extortion, night clubs and race tracks. And, she added, "I personally handled $20,000 or $30,000 a week from the Italian lottery he owns in New York. I know how much he made from it because I ran it myself." The Italian lottery, now said to be owned by Tramunti, is only one form of policy in the city. And it is far from being the biggest money-maker. Yet, according to his wife's testimony, Don Vitone got well over $1,000,000 a year out of it.

If Tramunti is knocking down that kind of income, as most law-enforcement people believe and their informers verify, nobody knows what's happening to it. Perhaps it's being funneled into secret bank accounts. But what good is all that bread hidden away? Tramunti lives like any $20,000-a-year garment-center executive, which is what he claims he's become since leaving the florist business. If he's stashing it away in Swiss numbered accounts, or giving it to cops and politicians for immunity, what's the percentage? Twenty grand a year against the constant possibility of a bullet in the skull? J. Paul Getty lives in a castle. Howard Hughes owns half of Nevada and a quarter of the Caribbean. Tramunti? A cottage in Queens, a month in Miami every winter, a Cadillac.

But at least there are some trappings of royalty, even if his realm is rather small and his life style restricted by tax agents who would pounce on him if he tried to live too lavishly. The don is treated with more reverence than her subjects give to Queen Elizabeth. I witnessed that reverential treatment once, during an earlier Mafia-hunting assignment. Tramunti had just been officially designated boss of his family by the other dons in the nation who make up a sort of Supreme Court that meets to (continued on page 302)Head of the Family(continued from page 140) settle important Mafia questions when they're not running around sticking knives in each other's backs. To celebrate his ascension to the throne, he attended an opening night at the Copa, a favorite watering hole of the mafiosi. Among Mafia men, there are two unbreakable rules about the Copa: Never conduct business on the premises, for Mafia business could threaten the liquor license; Christmas is wives' night out at the Copa, leave your girlfriends home. That night Tramunti was celebrating the debut of a young singer of Italian descent (definitely not Frank Sinatra). The singer was "managed" by a vicious Mob captain named Sonny Franzese, who was the mafioso of the entertainment industry; he had muscled into several record companies, owned a big slice of the jukebox trade and was beginning to move in on several artists.

Franzese, the singer he owned and a half-dozen high-ranking Mafia men from several families, with women obviously not their wives, were sitting at the table of honor near the stage. Don Carmine Tramunti entered with several of his troops and was escorted to the table. Franzese and the other Mafia Pooh-Bahs immediately leaped to their feet, tripping over themselves to offer Tramunti a seat next to the most stunning woman in the crowd. They bowed and fawned like a pack of headwaiters. Franzese kissed the don on his left cheek. Some of the others tried the same slobbering greeting but were waved away by Tramunti. They finally managed to demonstrate their reverence by bowing over his hand as they shook it and practically kissing his ring.

They never seem to learn that the guys on the other side of the cops-and-Mafia game--FBI men, narcotics agents, local fuzz--stay in business because of such public displays. If the dons didn't demand the ass kissing, the cops would never know who was the boss of a family and who was the chauffeur. One FBI man says he has a recurring nightmare. The dons are wising up and ordering their chauffeurs to act like Godfathers while the real family heads act like flunkies. And all over the country, Mafia watchers are jumping out of windows because they can't figure out how a loser like my friend Frankie Bath Beach suddenly made it to the top. But the FBI man knows his nightmare won't ever become reality; those displays of macho are needed by the dons to prove to themselves how important they are and to keep their families at least as civilized as a pack of baboons.

The apelike tribal rites are all part of the game. And although Tramunti insists on the reverence, he doesn't always behave the way a don is expected to. According to Mafia mythology--a vague mystique that helps control the men in the ranks--the Godfather's office must be respected, just as the President's office endows its inhabitant with a respect he may not have been able to command as an ordinary politician. Of course, the tradition that requires automatic respect of the office also demands that the officeholder behave within the bounds of that tradition. The Godfather must be just what the name implies: a surrogate father, filling both the physical and the psychic needs of the son. He must be a man of wisdom and tact; a Solomon, settling disputes among his subjects, establishing détentes with other dons so there is no conflict over territorial rights and, hopefully, no bullet in the head from a rival. Perhaps most important, the don must never display emotion, never fly off the handle, never show what he is thinking or feeling. Constipated, in other words. That's it: Marlon Brando looked like a man suffering from constipation.

Understand, the Mafia is both myth and reality. There surely is a Mafia. It's an amalgam of 6000 or 7000 hoods working in some 28 families that control a nice piece of all the illicit rackets in the major industrial centers of the country. They own legitimate businesses acquired through muscle or bought with dollars earned in more sleazy rackets. They have corrupted politicians and police forces. But the Mafia is by no means the far-flung invisible government (as the catch-phrase artists like to call it) that is a single step away from taking over our entire economy.

The myth works because the people believe it. Tino DeAngelis, the soybean-oil swindler, admits he was able to con an American Express subsidiary out of more than $87,000,000 by implying that a fortune in Mafia cash was behind him. The myth also works because the men of the Mafia believe their own press clippings. Cops and writers romanticize bums, usually without meaning to, and the bums strut around like heroes out of a romantic film. It is all badly imitated American folklore (and if there's one thing clear about the Mafia, it is that the present organization is made up of men who were born or raised on the streets of America's urban centers). Billy the Kid, Bonnie and Clyde, and so on--popular heroes destroyed by a perverse system that wouldn't give them a chance. It's a load of crap. The heroes were actually psychotic little bastards who usually gunned down their victims from behind and probably had an orgasm doing it. The Mafia men are cut from the same drab cloth. Most of them are beetle-browed kindergarten dropouts who can hardly read or write. The myth becomes reality and the surrogate father is cloaked in the robes of the Mafia Church because the soldiers are superstitious dolts and psychopaths who need a mythical-religious crutch to disguise their own inadequacies. You have to be pretty stupid to fall for the whole Godfather routine: taking to the mattress (a typical adolescent-jock ritual), earning 50 or 100 bucks a week while the don salts away millions, putting your life and soul in the hands of a father who doesn't promise much reward but does swear instant and lethal punishment should you sin. The hoods take all of that, and more, and everybody is impressed with the fact that they are members of the established outlaw religion.

It's not only Tramunti's siciliano dirt digging that disturbs other mafiosi. What bothers Frankie and other members of this secularized religion is that Don Tramunti doesn't behave like a traditional Mafia bishop: quiet, reserved, a benign smile, utter secretiveness and never a display of emotion. He doesn't seem to know, nor care, that a man of respect never lets the outside world know what is going on in his mind.

Tramunti permitted his mask to slip in an inexcusable fashion one afternoon during the 1971 trial. (He beat the rap, but some of his soldati were convicted.) During the lunch recess, a Securities and Exchange Commission agent tried to hand Tramunti a subpoena. The don began to berate the SEC agent and appeared ready to throw punches. Assistant United States Attorney John Wing, who was prosecuting the case, interceded.

"Take it easy," he told Tramunti. "The agent is only doing his job."

Tramunti turned to Wing and croaked, "Mr. Wing, you smile too much."

Wing, who hadn't had much experience with Mafia code language, simply walked away. The SEC agent, more savvy in the ways of the myth, later told Wing: "You've just been threatened. When a don says you smile too much, it means you're going to lose your teeth so you'll never feel like smiling again. At the very least, your teeth have been threatened." Wing smiled at the foolishness of it all.

The next morning, before the day's session began, Tramunti walked over to the prosecutor's table and told Wing, "Forget what I said yesterday. I didn't mean anything by it." Tramunti's tone made it clear that a threat had actually been made.

Don Vito Corleone never would have committed such a sacrilege. Nor would the real-life dons on whom Corleone's character was based: Profaci, Genovese and Tommy Lucchese, Tramunti's predecessor. None of them would ever breach the Mafia code the way Tramunti does time and again. He seems to possess an almost childish need for instant revenge when he is wronged, and his notion of a wrong sometimes approaches sheer childishness.

On one occasion, Tramunti was presiding at a business meeting of several Mafia hoods in a midtown Manhattan bar. A round of drinks was ordered. The waiter neglected to put a coaster under the don's drink and his jacket sleeve sopped up some moisture from the table. When Tramunti felt it, he shouted, "Waiter! Come here!" The waiter hustled over as commanded. Without a word. Tramunti belted him, knocking him to the floor, and began kicking him. The don's stunned associates pulled him off the poor guy.

"He's an animal, not a don," exclaims Frankie. "Like, one night he was in an East Harlem restaurant owned by one of the important Mob guys. He was having a drink with a guy who owed him some money. The guy said he couldn't pay him. Gribbs didn't say much, just finished his drink and left. He went right downtown to an East Side joint he owns, and right out in the middle of the place, in front of everybody, he told two of the enforcers he always keeps hanging around for emergencies to go beat up the guy who owed him. I mean, a don's supposed to tell his underboss to handle it, and the underboss passes it on to the soldiers. But not Tramunti. Anyway, the muscle men hopped up there, right into the restaurant owned by a friend, a Mafia guy. And they just beat the shit out of the dead beat. They did such a great job on him they damaged the place and brought the cops. Which caused the owner a lot of trouble, a lot of heat. Everybody was pissed at Gribbs, because you don't ever bring trouble to a friend like that. You gotta have somebody messed up, do it in an alley. Not in a friend's place."

• • •

Most despots rule through a commingling of fear and a respect for the robes of office, and it is no different in the Mafia. In the majority of Mob families there is an intangible, mythical respect for the don as a protector, a patronage dispenser, a man with the experience, wisdom and authority to keep his family operating smoothly. If he functions well in those roles, respect is usually automatic; fear is secondary. But in Don Tramunti's family, the fear is overwhelming. You never know when this family head is going to explode. It can take a number of forms: a crack across the mouth, the withdrawal of protection or summary execution. Discussing the difference between his old don, Lucchese, and his new, Tramunti, one mafioso told a Federal agent, "I loved Lucchese like a father. I respected him all the way. Gribbs, I'm just scared to my bones of him."

It may be that Tramunti has little respect because men of the Mafia have been seduced by the stylish culture heroes described by Puzo, Gay Talese, newspapers and films. But I don't think so, not as far as Tramunti is concerned. Back in 1968, the year before Puzo's book was published and primed a flood of Mafia documents, the year that Tramunti was inducted as acting head of his family, I wrote one of my annual series of Mafia articles for a New York newspaper. Because he was a new face in the ranks of power, I bird-dogged Gribbs for a while. And all my sources back then pictured him as a man who lacked respect and ruled by fear. That was almost five years ago, before Puzo, and it was clear that the mafiosi were seeking a man with the character of a Don Corleone to lead them; which, incidentally, is one demonstration of the accuracy of Puzo's perceptions. And it was also clear, with a few exceptions, that the men of the Mafia felt an enormous amount of respect for their dons, a respect that overshadowed the fear.

But Tramunti is not completely alone in what can only be described as his punkishness. Albert Anastasia comes immediately to mind as a parallel. Head of Murder, Inc., ruler of the Brooklyn waterfront, undoubtedly psychotic, he once had one of his soldati strangled because the unfortunate guy made the mistake of squeezing the thigh of a woman Albert wanted but hadn't gotten around to putting the make on. While watching a TV interview with Brooklyn salesman Arnold Schuster, who had become one of the temporarily famous because he had recognized bank robber Willie Sutton and had called the police, Anastasia went into a rage about "squealers" and ordered Schuster murdered.

It is possible, of course, that Tramunti knows precisely what he is doing. This is, after all, a changing world, and change is coming even to that antique organization called the Mafia. Young upstarts like Crazy Joey Gallo refuse to play by the rules anymore. Some ten years ago, Gallo and his small army of loyal followers within the Profaci family decided to demonstrate for a larger share from old Joe Profaci. They kidnaped Profaci's brother, his brother-in-law and several other high-ranking members of the family. Gallo sent word to Profaci that he would kill the prisoners if Profaci did not give his solemn vow to improve the lot of the soldiers. Profaci agreed to discuss Gallo's complaints and Crazy Joey made the dreadful mistake of releasing his prisoners. Most of the Gallos were slaughtered in the ensuing war. Joey survived only because he was hustled off to prison on an extortion charge.

If a don isn't careful, a Gallo in the Profaci family could inspire a Gallo in the Tramunti family. So you terrorize your troops so badly that they won't have the guts to even consider a revolution.

Besides, Tramunti is facing even more serious danger. A greedy old man in Brooklyn, Don Carlo Gambino, wants to become the capo di tutti i capi. Gambino heads the largest family in the country, about 700 members, compared with Tramunti's roster of fewer than 100, and he is pushing for the big crown. According to those who keep up with Mob gossip, Gambino promised Gallo, on his parole from prison early in 1971, big rewards if he would remove Joe Colombo, the head of the old Profaci family in which Gallo had been so unhappy. A couple of Gallo men did so, not quite killing Colombo but destroying his brain and leaving him a paralyzed shell. Gambino became caretaker of the Colombo family and rewarded Gallo by having him executed in a restaurant in Little Italy. Add one family to Gambino's sphere of influence and subtract one irritating revolutionary. Then, say the boys in the Mob, Gambino ordered the killing of Thomas (Tommy Ryan) Eboli, who had taken over the Genovese family after the death of the old boss and who objected to the sudden growth in Gambino's strength. Exit Tommy Ryan, last July. With those two dons out of the way, Gambino controls three of the five New York families. The fourth, the old Bonanno family, has shrunk from internal stresses and many of its members have flocked under Gambino's umbrella.

And that leaves Tramunti. Whether he's formed an alliance with Gambino, which would be tantamount to surrender, or remained aloof and is hoping the old man will die of the heart disease that plagues him, Tramunti needs as much loyalty as he can get out of his troops. To him, loyalty comes only from fear and the elimination of anyone who might be a threat to his leadership.

• • •

The police have not officially connected Tramunti to the murder of Jimmy Doyle, a caporegime in the family, and it isn't likely they ever will. Doyle, whose real name was James Plumeri, was a capo when Lucchese inherited the family in the mid-Thirties. He was already wealthy and powerful from his gambling interests and his control of unions whose leaders were paid well not to strike. Around that time, Tramunti, a young street punk, was taken into the family as a strong-arm man, head-buster and, it is still whispered around the streets of East Harlem, a man who dispatched the family's enemies with rare skill. By the time Lucchese died of cancer in 1967, Tramunti had also become a capo and was one of Doyle's rivals for the family leadership. Doyle, with greater wealth, power and respect, was one of several men who clearly had a better chance than Tramunti of becoming the don. Unfortunately for Doyle, the Feds caught up with him and he was imprisoned on tax-evasion charges around the time Lucchese died. Doyle was out of circulation during the infighting over Lucchese's succession and was helpless as Tramunti, assisted by outside influences, knocked all the other rivals out of the running. Tramunti had become acting family head by the time Doyle returned to the streets. With the reins in his hands, he began a war of nerves that helped turn Doyle into an alcoholic.

For example, Doyle had been barred from a favored Mob eating place in Manhattan because of his nasty habit of spitting noisily on the floor. Tramunti began eating there practically every day, making it clear that Doyle had been weak enough to be pushed around but that he, Tramunti, was more manly than that. Also, Doyle had a piece of one of the crap games in the city, worth a few thousand a week in profits. When the heat was put on the game, Tramunti ordered it closed down. After the police problem had been taken care of and the game opened again, Tramunti owned it all. He let everyone know it and Doyle suffered a further loss of face.

Doyle began drinking more than is proper for a Mafia gentleman. The word went around that he couldn't be trusted, that he was getting like Willie Moretti, who was assassinated back in the Fifties because he drank too much and shot off his mouth at the wrong times. A caporegime who talks too much is a threat to everyone in the family. In 1970, Doyle was charged with extortion, copped a plea and received a suspended sentence, because, said the judge, he had heart trouble. Judges don't usually believe Mafia heart ailments. There was more whispering now: Was Doyle an informer? A drunken flap mouth?

On a rainy Friday morning in September 1971, Doyle's body was discovered in an industrial park in Queens, some half-dozen miles from Tramunti's little bungalow. He had been strangled with his silk necktie. No member of the family turned out for his funeral.

• • •

When Tramunti completes his business in East Harlem, he climbs back into his Cadillac. This time he is joined by several other men, sometimes Big Sam, sometimes one or two of his caporegimi. There is a bodyguard at the wheel and another strong-arm type in the front passenger seat; both have been standing in the street to guard against intruders. Tramunti requires the retinue because he is heading for the garment center, where his more important investments are located. One of them is minor league financially but is absolutely essential because it provides Tramunti with a source of legal income. It's called Eiffel Classics, a coat-manufacturing business at 263 West 38th Street. Tramunti and two nephews are each one-third partners in the place. During his trial in 1971, Tramunti testified that he made $20,000 a year as both boss and lowly employee: "I sort out coats according to size and put stamps on them little round tags made out of heavy composition paper." Federal agents sitting in the courtroom were barely able to suppress their giggles.

Tramunti stops off at Eiffel briefly once or twice a week, but most of the time he simply goes straight to one of the restaurants that dot the garment area. He uses several of them as his conference rooms, moving around to confuse agents and, perhaps, plotters. Management and waiters, respecting Tramunti's need for privacy, give him a corner table in the back and keep other customers out of the area. He is a good tipper and it is said he is a hidden owner of many of these places. You can't really be certain of that, because a man with the don's police record is legally barred from owning any place with a beer or liquor license. But informers can name the dozens of bars, clubs and restaurants in the city that Tramunti secretly owns. A Tramunti associate, Tommy ("Tea Balls") Mancuso, is a major loan shark, they'll tell you. His job is to lend the don's money to needy applicants who can't qualify for credit from the customary banking sources, usually because they are heavy gamblers. If the borrower can't repay the interest rate of four to six percent a week, Tea Balls simply moves in to protect his don's investment. Eventually, the original owner is out on the street. The don picks up a great number of businesses that way. In the liquor business, because neither Tramunti nor Tea Balls can appear as owners of record, a Tramunti associate named Jack L. is the official owner. It's all rather well known, but nothing much ever happens.

Loan-sharking is a vital part of the city's economy. Thousands of people borrow from loan sharks every year and pay back, never losing their businesses nor having their heads broken for failing to repay. To a businessman, the choice is between going out of business and borrowing from a loan shark. If a loan shark's money helps him survive, the businessman considers himself lucky. One wealthy garment-center figure told me, "Five years ago my business was dead and I was practically broke. I borrowed 30 thou from Tea Balls and everything came together. Without him I'd never have 50 guys working for me. I'd be on welfare."

The beauty of loan-sharking, to the don, is that it is all so easy. In gambling there is a need for expertise, for an office, for an organization with many dozens of employees and for contacts with other gamblers who handle layoff bets. All it takes to be a loan shark is a good starting bank roll. There is plenty of Mafia money around. The top-level Mob bosses are said to have millions of dollars "on the streets" as loans. The money is given to trusted lieutenants, who pay one percent a week interest--vigorish, or vig, the loan sharks and the borrowers call it. The lieutenants are loan sharks' loan sharks--they lend the money to the sharks who actually make the loans and they get between two and three percent interest a week. The ultimate customer pays around five percent a week, 260 percent a year.

As he holds court in the garment center, Tramunti gets reports about his loan-shark investments, collects some money, disburses some, discusses a wide range of business problems with an assortment of gruff Mafia men and, occasionally, a legitimate businessman. He has gambling interests in the garment center. Through a number of his capos and soldiers, he exerts control over garment-center unions, especially in the extraordinarily vital trucking industry; a manufacturer threatened with a freeze-out of delivery trucks will be amenable to any offer of assistance.

• • •

Tramunti was born October 1, 1910, in Naples, the son of a laborer. His parents emigrated to the States when he was seven or eight, settling in the East Harlem Italian community. It was during his first years there, some half century ago, that Tramunti acquired his nickname, Gribbs. It happened in a street fight, when another boy was giving him a bad beating, smashing him in the stomach and ribs. Tramunti shrieked in heavily accented English, "My gribs, you're hurting my gribs!" The name stuck.

His first recorded brush with the law came when he was 12, a rough-and-tumble kid who preferred hustling a few bucks on the streets to a formal education. He was picked up for truancy and sentenced to a short spell in a reform school. At 16 he was charged as a juvenile delinquent--some little difference with a shopkeeper who objected to Tramunti's attempt to shake him down Black Hand style--and spent a little more time in the reformatory. By his late teens, he was performing minor chores for neighborhood mafiosi, and during the late Twenties and early Thirties was arrested a half-dozen times on charges of robbery and assault, the head-busting violence all potential Mob members are assigned as tests. Most of the charges were dismissed, but in 1932 Tramunti was given a 15-year term for assault with a deadly weapon.

By then the old-style Mafia of the Mustache Petes had been purged in a blood bath engineered by Lucky Luciano, and a new Mafia was created on its bones. The East Harlem family, a very powerful one, was taken over by Lucchese. Among the soldiers of that family was a young kid named John Dioguardi. Known as Johnny Dio, he was a member of Mafia royalty because his uncle, Jimmy Doyle, was a capo under Luc-chese. Tramunti had known Dio casually. Tramunti's jail term was a stroke of luck, for Dio was locked up in the same prison. They became close friends. "Look me up when you get out," Dio told him. "I got something for you."

Tramunti was released on probation in 1937 and contacted Dio. The something Dio had promised was induction into the Mafia. It's called being "made" in Mafia parlance. Some informants, such as Joe Valachi, have said that being made involved taking a blood oath, actually cutting your arm and mingling your blood with the don's, in a secret room lit only by a candle. There's no way of knowing whether or not Tramunti was put through that mystical sort of jazz, but informer Valachi was inducted at about the same time and into the same family, so it's possible. As a newly made soldier, Tramunti quickly learned that he was expected to subordinate his own criminal activities to the needs of the capos and the don, that he had to be prepared to go through endless suffering to achieve, improbably, a big prize at the end of it all--not entry into heaven, as in other religions, but the title of don.

Tramunti became Dio's chauffeur, a rather lowly position in the family if not for the fact that Dio was close to the throne. Tramunti was a superb wheelman, "a real hot-rodder," a friend recalls. Within a half-dozen years, after a few more short stretches in the penitentiary and, presumably, some very skillful work for his family, Tramunti was tapped by Don Lucchese to be his chauffeur. It's the kind of appointment eagerly sought by young mafiosi. In the Mob, a don's chauffeur is often the second most important man in the organization. He is the bodyguard, and the boss's safety depends on his chauffeur's cunning. A chauffeur acts as a buffer, keeping more lowly Mob soldiers from disturbing the boss and insulating him from any direct criminal acts that could lead to legal embarrassments. He is with the boss a great deal of the time and is privy to some of the don's most well-guarded secrets.

It is still difficult to understand why Lucchese, a quiet man, gentle and friendly on the surface, able to pass for many years as a legitimate garment-center manufacturer and a churchgoer, selected Tramunti to drive him around: "Gribbs is a maniac behind the wheel," one member of the family has said.

Obviously, Tramunti's ability as a buffer was more important than his flashy driving. Lucchese seemed very fond of him, giving him more authority and pieces of a growing number of businesses and rackets over the years. Tramunti built up a large bank roll of his own and, after he was appointed a capo in the late Forties, an army of loyal soldiers in the family. He also built up valuable contacts with dons across the nation. Because Lucchese trusted him completely, he occasionally appointed Tramunti to represent the family at important meetings of the Mafia board of directors, the commission.

Tramunti learned a great deal as Lucchese's chauffeur and later as a capo who reported directly to the don. Undoubtedly the most valuable insight Lucchese gave him was the need for political power. Lucchese was a man who named judges and a mayor or two. Today, Tramunti is known to "control" several judges, political leaders of both parties and a couple of state assemblymen and senators.

When Lucchese died, Tramunti was in an unassailable position. His chief rivals all happened to be out of the running at the same time. Doyle was in prison and later became an alcoholic. Dio was also in prison and faced charges in several other cases the moment he was released. Antonio (Tony Ducks) Corallo, who seems to have had the soundest claim to the throne, was eliminated after his indictment in one of the major political scandals of John Lindsay's administration--the bribing of Lindsay's water commissioner, James Marcus, to award lucrative contracts to companies Corallo favored. (One side light on Tramunti's machinations in his fight to become head of the family: In order to diminish Corallo's respect in the eyes of the troops, Tramunti began to play around with a young waitress who had been Corallo's bedmate. Corallo had to lie low while under indictment and couldn't make it to the East Side night spots favored by the Mafia's swingers, so Tramunti escorted Corallo's chick everywhere the Mob gathered. It was a direct slap in Corallo's face.)

• • •

After Tramunti's business day in garment-center restaurants has been completed, he makes the rounds of the better Italian restaurants in the midtown area, then the East Side clubs. Accompanied by his retinue of bodyguards and capos and occasionally by Big Sam, he journeys from restaurant to restaurant like some feudal king bestowing patronage on his people, eating as many as three full meals in one night. "He eats like two pigs," one undercover agent assigned to keep tabs on Tramunti says, suppressing a belch. In each restaurant, obsequious waiters and chefs prepare special gourmet delights for the Mafia gourmand, begging him to try a new specialty of the house or a meal that has been prepared specifically for his pleasure. Tramunti seldom pays the bill. "Why should I pay? They invited me to try their dish." But he never forgets to tip the waiters lavishly, usually $15 or S20 each. Some of the restaurant owners grow furious when Tramunti comes in and stuffs himself. Still, they know their place and they hide in their offices and lock their anger inside with them. Other "owners" don't give a damn, because Tramunti is a hidden partner. "The pig is eating up his own profits," one of them was once heard to say.

Between meals, Tramunti makes the scene at the East Side clubs, favoring a half-dozen spots where middle-aged Mafia lords are always able to make contact with the hundreds of women in town who find a sinister glamor in the mafiosi. Among Tramunti's favorite water holes was the Bachelors III, the place that got Joe Namath into so much difficulty with the National Football League because of all the hoods who were congregating there. Usually, the don has a woman on his arm, bleached-blonde beauty-parlor type, draped in a mink, like something out of the Fifties. At one time he was dating two young waitresses who had recently emigrated from Ireland and couldn't resist the guy who spent more money on them in a single night than their families earned in a year.

• • •

It's fine to talk to Frankie and a couple of other guys in and around the Mob, plus a lot of fuzz. But I must meet Tramunti. Where the hell is he? A few more trips to his home, but no answer. Knocks on neighbors' doors get a standard response: "He's probably at work. A hard-working man. Sorry, don't know anything about him." Several calls to his lawyer; his lawyer is never in and doesn't call back.

Well, time to take a chance. Get in a cab, hop over to the East Side, visit the clubs on my list of Tramunti hangouts. No sign of the don. I ask for him and get blank looks, shrugs, an occasional "Eh?"--like I was in Peking, trying to get up a ping-pong game with Mao.

Finally, pay dirt in a Second' Avenue pub loaded with dark-suited types who all resemble Gallo or Dio--the tough-guy image came back strong after The Godfather opened--and crawling with women who appear to be very expensive hookers, except that almost everyone gives it away free on the East Side if you have the proper credentials.

"Has Gribbs been around?" I ask a waitress. "I have to talk to him."

A blank look, of course. And into her next obvious step: She goes to chat with the goon employed as bouncer. He stares at me, then trudges over to a white-haired gent near the cash register and whispers in his ear, pointing my way rather rudely. The old guy comes over. He doesn't sit down, just stands there with his belt buckle practically bumping against my nose and grunts in a heavily accented English: "What you want in here?"

"I'm looking for Gribbs, Mr. Tramunti," I respond.

"Never heard of him. What you want with Mr. Tramunti?"

A good question. How do you answer it? I want to join the Mafia? I'd like to invest in the Italian lottery? Just as absurd. All I can do is level with the guy. I flash an old police-department press card. Should have surrendered it two years before, when I left newspaper journalism, but no one ever asked for it and I felt it would someday open doors, the kind that close in your face if you don't have something to back you up. But not this night. I can see the doors close over his eyes.

"Giornalista," he says, with the kind of scorn only an old-country grandfather can pull off. "Get out of here," he adds.

"Scusa, signore," I respond, establishing my Sicilian/southern Italian heritage with what I hope is the perfect accent. Usually, it works--we're paisans trying to survive in this crazy American world and we have to stick together. "Scusa, I have no quarrel with you. I have business with Mr. Tramunti."

He smiles, tight-lipped, the way Richard Widmark does when he slaps a broad across the face. Widmark is a favorite of a lot of mafiosi. "Newspaper business," he says. He curses with the most elaborate Italian invective I've ever heard. Then: "Get out of here or I'll call the boys."

The boys? And the paranoia descends. Would the boys use a gun, some ice picks from back in the old days or a silk tie? I get out, fast. Into a cab, down to the safety of the Lion's Head in the Village, filled with journalists, poets and other characters who are as nutty as the men of the Mafia but a lot less dangerous.

Right to the phone, to call a friend who works in one of those law-enforcement offices that keep bulging files on Don Carmine Tramunti. "Hey, I can't find Tramunti anywhere. What's happened to him?"

"He's still alive, if that's what you're afraid of," the sleuth responds. "The boys haven't messed up your magazine article."

"So where is he?"

"He took a little vacation with his wife, we hear. Up in the mountains somewhere. Left no forwarding address. There's so much heat in this town with Gambino knocking everybody off that any mafioso with his wits about him has gone off on vacation. I don't think Gribbs will be back until Gambino goes on vacation."