Transition Is Tough

Ellis Henican: June 14, 2002

His brother's wake was still two hours off.

But Richard Gotti, well ensconced in the family business, stepped out of the car on 72nd Place yesterday with his son Richie Jr. right behind him.

Richard was always the reluctant Gotti brother. You can see it on all the surveillance tapes. John up front, prancing in Brioni and pompadour. Peter whispering into John's ear. And wait a second, look, there's Richard, moving out of the shadows 20 paces back.

With John away so long - and John's son, Junior, a proven imbecile - the family obviously had to adjust. Peter got to be the boss, reputedly. And bashful Richard forced himself to step out of the shadows - not exactly into the high-wattage spotlight that John always sought but into a genuine identity of his own.

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It was barely a week ago that Richard and Peter and seven other alleged members of the Gambino crime family were indicted in a waterfront-racketeering case. It was a rite of passage almost. Their names were on the court papers and not John's. If history is any guide, all of them will soon be doing long stretches in federal prison. And of the three famous Gotti brothers, all of them will either be dead or behind bars.

Think of yesterday as a crucial moment of transition.

Richard lingered on the sidewalk for the tiniest second before heading inside the Papavero Funeral Home. He turned his head and shot a half-smile to the cameramen assembled across 72nd Place.

"Hey," he barked, lifting the index finger of his right hand into a tiny wag.

"Behave yourselves."

It was almost an imitation of John from 10 years ago, perhaps the last John Gotti moment we'll ever see.

A little crumb for the eager audience.

A real-life alleged mobster acting like a mobster from TV.

A fleeting glimpse of the charming, gruff, winking, nudging, lovable thug.

"Behave yourselves," indeed.

The problem with lovable thugs, of course, is that they are, well, thugs. They kill people. They rob. They steal. They take things that don't belong to them. They talk about family in exaggerated tones of reverence, then they ruin other people's families without a second thought. They speak of honor and promptly act dishonorably. They pretend allegiance to ancient codes, then sell drugs out on the street. They respond with ruthlessness to anyone who stands in their way.

John Gotti is dead, and really that's all we need to know.

He was lying in a wood box yesterday at this funeral home in Maspeth. Not to be unkind, but the crowd was actually kind of sparse.

The ones who did show up, besides the family, were mostly creaky-looking and old. The men had giant bellies, most of them. The women looked prematurely hard.

And still - out of habit? out of hopefulness? - the street was a full-press surveillance zone.

Two FBI guys were in the tan Ford Explorer with black-tinted windows, parked across Grand Avenue. Two city cops sat in a blue, family-style Chevrolet minivan on 72nd Road.

Yes, the feds still get the better cars.

Two men stood on the roof of a construction site across Grand Avenue, staring intently at the mourners getting out of the cars.

"Do they have cameras?" joked Ralph La Frazza, a plumber on the job. "I've never seen those two on the job."

But all these years later, the old gangster thrill was mostly gone.

When the long black limousines pulled up out front, the neighbors strained to see. But recognizing no one famous, they quickly returned to speaking among themselves.

But give John Gotti this much credit. He was here, and some people still came.

The family said they wanted something quiet and dignified. Then they put on this elaborate three-day affair.

Friends and associates responded with these giant, grotesque floral arrangements, 6 and 7 and 8 feet tall, many of them constructed around symbolic themes.

Boxing gloves. A giant horseshoe. My favorite, the royal flush.

The coffin was gold-colored. Of course. Two candles flickered behind red glass.

A collection of family pictures rested on a nearby table. One of them showed the dearly departed with a big grin on his face. Had he just been to a family baptism or a First Communion? Or had he just shot someone?

Before the cancer ate away at his head and neck and shoulders, before his hair was gone, before he was made half-crazy from 23 hours a day in solitary, John Gotti was the last celebrity mobster New York may ever know.

But there was nothing very dapper about yesterday. And as far as anyone can figure, the man upstairs doesn't know from Teflon.

"The public is invited inside," Joe Corozzo, a Gotti family attorney, said before the wake began.

"But show some respect, OK?"