Free King of the Godfathers by Anthony Destefano Page A

when he met the twenty-something Massino, but their relationship would take its own fortuitous turn. Duane Leisenheimer, whose fair hair earned him the nickname “Goldie,” was really up to no good and going nowhere when he met Massino. A student at Brooklyn’s Automotive High School on Bedford Avenue in Williamsburg, Leisenheimer was on his way to becoming an auto mechanic but could only make it through his sophomore year before dropping out. Still, he liked cars and noticed that Massino’s Oldsmobile had cracked windows, which was odd since an auto glass business where the youngster worked was around the corner from Massino’s coffee stand.
    Leisenheimer liked cars so much he started stealing them. He said he was sixteen years old when he stole his first vehicle and started doing some work in a local chop shop. For those unfamiliar with the term chop shop, it is a place where stolen cars are stripped for parts that can then be resold at double or even triple the value of the complete vehicle. Leisenheimer made $150 for each stolen car. In no time, he was stealing them at the rate of fifteen vehicles a week—not bad money for a high school dropout. But it could be bad for the neighborhood to have a budding car thief hanging around, so Massino told Leisenheimer not to steal cars from the area or park them around the stand.
    “I don’t want your heat,” Massino told him.
    Massino also didn’t want his own heat, his own troubles, to burn the youngster. Of course, Massino had plenty of heat to worry about. Though he had a nice business with the coffee and sandwich stands he acquired, he sold more than food out of the lunch truck. The neighborhood workers who came for a bite to eat were also able to play the numbers with Massino, who used the trucks as a small gambling location. For them it was the poor man’s lottery. He undoubtedly was kicking up some of the proceeds to Rastelli.
    Massino had another side job that was a natural for Maspeth. The area around Grand and Metropolitan avenues was riddled with factories, warehouses, and trucking depots. It was New York City’s loading dock. Trucks were all over the place and they were laden with consumer goods that everybody wanted and would pay good money for. Apparently, with Rastelli’s blessing Massino started hijacking trucks and needed help. He asked around about the young car thief in the neighborhood.
    “He is a stand-up guy,” said one of the local toughs about Leisenheimer. In plain English that meant the kid from Brooklyn wouldn’t rat anybody out.
    It was all Massino needed to hear. So even though he couldn’t steal cars from the neighborhood, Duane Leisenheimer could be a hijacker, courtesy of Joe Massino and Philip Rastelli. In just one night the car kid from Brooklyn could make up to $2,000 helping Massino move truckloads of stolen television sets, men’s suits, Huckapoo shirts, and Farberware. That was more money than Leisenheimer might make in a week of stealing cars. Maspeth was turning into a nice place for the Brooklyn high school dropout.
    Leisenheimer wasn’t the only young man who gravitated to Massino. Salvatore Vitale, the younger brother of Massino’s wife, Josephine, had bonded at an early age to the budding lunch wagon entrepreneur who was five years his senior. In 1968, Vitale ended a short tour of duty in the army as a paratrooper. He tried going straight and spent two years serving as what he would later say was a job as a “narcotics correction officer,” which was ironic considering the involvement over the years of some of the Bonanno family in narcotics. When he left that job, Vitale approached Massino for work. There was plenty to do with the hijacking business, as well as with part-time work as a burglar, and Vitale was a willing recruit for both types of work.
    “If you are going to do scores, do them with me,” Vitale remembered Massino telling him. It would lead him into another world of big-time break-ins, hijacks, and