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.