Free King of the Godfathers by Anthony Destefano Page B

fur district rip-offs in Manhattan. The commodities stolen ranged from coffee to air conditioners to tennis rackets. Sometimes Vitale and Massino would become very daring and inventive. In one episode later recounted to investigators, Vitale remembered how he rented a storage vault under a fake name in Manhattan’s fur district just south of Thirty-fourth Street. During summer nights in August, Vitale said, he would get the locks off other storage vaults, remove furs, and store them in his locker. Another time, he, Massino, and a Colombo crime family member made about $34,000 in the theft of watches from a store in Livingston, New Jersey. For that job, Vitale said, they cut some telephone lines.
    Inevitably, Rastelli, by virtue of his leadership role, was a high-profile target for law enforcement, and he made it easy for the cops. In July 1970, Rastelli was indicted by a Suffolk County grand jury. The secret panel met in such secrecy and with such concern for witnesses that the windows of the district attorney’s office were covered with paper and some of the hallways were closed to the public and patrolled by armed guards. Rastelli was among five men charged with usury. The indictment stated that Rastelli’s loan sharks charged interest up to 300 percent a year (25 percent was the legal limit) and terrorized nearly two dozen customers. One customer was a local Suffolk County bail bondsman who got so far into debt that he was forced to bring in extra customers to Rastelli and his crew.
    Rastelli was convicted in December 1972 on loan-sharking charges and was sentenced to prison. His incarceration deprived the crime family of one part of the leadership troika, but Rastelli was still able to participate and get information through the visits of his brothers, Carmine and Marty, as well as through associates like Massino. This kept Rastelli in the loop at a time when—unbeknown to many—Natale Evola was in serious trouble.
    In 1972, federal officials began a series of ambitious undercover operations in Manhattan’s garment district. Long a stronghold for the Mafia, the garment area surrounding Seventh Avenue was honeycombed with factories, cutting rooms, showrooms, and innumerable small businesses that supplied the clothing companies with everything from bolts of cloth to zippers. The mob had gained its influence over the industry through labor racketeering in which the unions used the services of mob toughs to go along with the union demands. On the other side, employers used Mafia associates to help set up shadow companies and operations that were nonunion to avoid paying workers contract wages and benefits.
    Garment manufacturers also worked on extremely tight profit margins and had to be able to change their production operations to meet the shifting fashion styles and the sudden rush of orders from department stores. It was a tough business and when banks and factors (companies that lend money against a firm’s accounts receivables) were reluctant to come up with cash, Seventh Avenue executives turned to Mafia loan sharks for quick infusions of financial help. Never mind that interest rates could go over 300 percent a year. Manufacturers hoped that the orders they would be able to fill after getting mob financial help would bring in enough quick payment from retailers to have the mob debts paid off quickly. Sometimes it worked. Other times a financially stressed manufacturer had to take on the mob as a silent partner.
    The trucking companies were vital to the industry because cut goods, the separate pieces that made each item of apparel, had to be shipped to contracting firms where the clothing was actually assembled. Once that was done, the finished goods had to be sent back to the manufacturer for shipment to warehouses and retailers. It was all done by trucks and it was the truckers who provided the lifeline for so much of the industry. As such, truckers like Evola had inordinate power over the garment industry