That’s a 180-degree variation — in the form of an ultimate negation –of the ancient Scriptural passage telling us we will know Christians for they “love” one another.
Conversely, I say, you will know a Mafioso — unreconstructed or cooperating with authorities — because they hate one another. It must have something to do with the dark nature of their work. Obviously.
Boston Herald columnist Howie Carr noted in weekend editions that yesterday, June 9, was the 90th birthday of Stephen “The Rifleman” Flemmi who is serving a lengthy federal terms for murder, etc.. at an unspecified location in the nation. Wherever it is, it is far, far from his home of Boston. A true exile.
Carr quotes the late former Mafia capo Frank “Cadillac” Salemmi’s very hateful comments about Flemmi who was, after all, a close former business partner. He basically called him a crybaby. Others from that dark side of the tracks readily chime in when talking about Steve — and, of course, he has appeared in public rarely, and only to testify against former mob associates in an effort to lighten his own penal load. The last time was in 2018. This act, of course, is regarded as the ultimate violation of every criminal enterprise’s strict code of conduct (“ratting out” fellow members). But Steve is now on the ‘inside’ (of walls, chain link and concertina wire) looking ‘out’ (at nothing, including any prospect for freedom before the Angel of Death comes for him as he, an earthly ministering angel of murder, came for as many as fifty souls during his criminal career.) So –he probably cares little about what former associates think of him.
I wonder if he prays? I saw him, during one court apperance readily –and I dare say humbly — acknowledge his role in murders and even in the sexual exploitation of a stepdaughter. He seemed contrite — as much as any sociopath can be contrite, quietly admitting his “moral responsibility.” Does God hear the prayers of the spiritually and emotionally deformed who are genuinely sorry? Is he genuinely sorry? Even capable of genuine sorrow? God knows.
As a reporter, I once sat at a hearing in federal court in Boston in which Frank Salemmi, Steve Flemmi and Patriarca crime family soldier Bobby DeLuca sat side-by-side while a fellow Mafioso-turned-informant testified against them in a pre-trial hearing.
That informant was a strangely seemingly likeable character named Angelo “Sonny” Mecurio. In early images of him, he looks fierce, cold and hard — and overweight. In the dock, opposite his former compatriots, he seemed a paunchy, subued,even exhausted, strangely likeable old man with a wry turn of the eyes and lips. He could have been yours or my benign old uncle. He had gone so far in his effort to get leniency and break free of the mob as to wear a “wire” into a Mafia Induction Ceremony. Imagine the consequences if he’d been discovered! It was bad enough that, at the end of his criminal career, he’d been the one to lure Frank Salemmi to a mob meeting in Saugus at which there was an unsuccessful attempt on his life by fellow mobsters engaged with him in an underworld power struggle.
So, here were Flemmi and Salemmi, as I say, side-by-side — and already doubtless hating one another. Did they ever really like — or trust — one another? Is that possible in the Underworld?
Flemmi, like Mercurio, would go on, eventually, to testify against Salemmi, who, by the way, would in due course, loudly declare in open court that he was “done with the mob” only to be later implicated in the murder of a Boston nightclub owner and sent back to prison — along with Bobby DeLuca, who was forced to acknowedge his role in the same murder.
How did all these guys feel about one another? Mercurio gently upbraided one questioning attorney for referring to mob associates other than the ones sitting across from him, as “friends.”
“You keep call them ‘friends,'” Sonny complained. “At some point in time, they became EX-friends.” Subsequent to that, when asked by Federal Judge Mark Wolf if he liked the men across from him, Sonny said, “not really.” An understatement, no doubt. For some reason, Wolf decided to ask Sonny, “do you like me?”
“You’re alright,” Sonny said sheepishly.
Right answer — to a judge. But Judge Wolf was probably wondering if Mercurio, at this stage of his wayward life, liked anybody, much less loved them. Which gets to the point I’m making here about a defining mark of those who pledge their fealty, their very life to such darkness.
Did Sonny at least fear the men he’d worked among and was now betraying? At that question from somebody, Sonny shrugged and said, “look at the record. These are not Boy Scouts.”
One probing attorney asked him, “did it ever occur to you that you were acting as an agent of the government in this role as an informant (which is what Flemmi and late Irish Mob Boss James “Whitey” Bulger would offer as preposterous defenses for their efforts to undermine the Italian Mafia while carrying on their own criminal mischief. And it was Flemmi’s attorney, as I recall, who was asking the question.)
“Of course,” said Sonny. “I’m a stool pigeon.” When a barely supressed chuckling broke out across the sparsely populated courtroom, Sonny, in response, shrugged again. He seemed to be saying -wordlessly –that he was just calling a spade a spade. His candor almost seemed a form of contrition.
And, for that matter, entirely unrepentent-to-death James Whitey Bulger would never let anyone call him a “stool pigeon.” No, he insisted he was some new iteration of an Undergover Confidential Agent.
Yeah, right.
When that rationale collapsed as a defense strategy, he declared, “do with me what yooz want.”
And they did. They left him in prison far f rom home and were so careless about his incarceration — some would say deliberately so — that he became savagely and fatally naked to his hateful Mafia enemies.
Only God knows if James Bulger ever said anything like an Act of Contrition, though he insistently identified as a Catholic. Good thing God’s mercy is infinite.
Sonny Mercurio died in 2006, regretting — it was reported in his obituary — ever having taken on the role of mob informant, but resigned obviously to hating and being hated by his old crime cronies. Frank Salemmi, body scarred and punctured by the bullets of that assassination attempt (outside the Saugus, MA iHop), died in prison in 2022 at age 89. He, too, seemed resigned, at the time of sentencing to his imminent re-imprisonment; no it wouldn’t be his first tour of “the joint” and he had obviously lied when he said he was “done with the mob.”
He was, I believe, a family man, oddly enough, like a lot of these guys. But the mob came first. That was Frank’s family.
Bobby DeLuca, only 84 by my count and, so far as I know, still alive, had been serving a five-year sentence for lying about what he knew about the murder of that nightclub owner (who was, himself, a man who chose the wrong company in his life), but was released in 2022 on compassionate leave with a bad heart and kidney disease and, therefore, very susceptible (in the court’s eyes) to COVID.
All of which is to say…
Mobsters lead unhealthy lifestyles. Beyond fatty meats, pasta ,donuts, cigars and cigarettes, they also seem addicted to easy money, danger, and being feared and, ultimately, hated. Can you love hating people? We also know that it destroys the hater. So I believe. But that’s Christian psychology, currently being violated the world over.
Of course, much of what Mafiosos do to others and to one another is supposedly “strictly business” — or so the old trop goes. “Nothing personal.” Lethal amorality on steroids.
For the heck of it, I looked up an address in Boston’s Dorchester section (my old section) visible on early Flemmi crime records, and also visible as accompanying illustrations next to Howie Carr’s weekend column. It was Steve Flemmi’s address as of August, 1958 when he was just 24. I looked at the front porch. Someone had hung a rug over a second floor porch. No one’s going to put up a plaque by the chain link fence and llittle yard of shrubbery in Steve Flemmi’s honor. No one living there now, I’m sure, has any idea that, decades ago, a stone-cold murderer and mobster was being nurtered in that house along that quiet street off Washington Street. He was a Korean War veteran whose military MOS (Military Occupation Specialty) had been “Rifleman,” meaning a rifle-bearing member of a combat unit. From the time of his discharge, he entered into a life of crime. I heard him say so in court. Who knows why (Again, God knows.)
I don’t know if it was his long-ago criminal associates, impressed by the combat veteran in their midst, or Flemmi himself who decided to recycle and adopt his military specialty as the odious street nickname, “rifleman.” Reporters love to say it. It sounds so evil and so Godfather, so Sopranos. The glamour of evil.
But millions of American male soldiers and Marines, now and in times past, have borne that title through a time of war. Steve “The Rifleman” Flemmi decided to dishonorably deploy it, turn it on its head and keep it forever — wherever he is now.
How intimidating! (Once upon a time.)
How– hateful! (Now and forever.)
19 Cent Notebook 