Another Phone Intercept reveals Mafia life from the Inside
Franky Vicari and Vito Rappa are not happy
My advice to the Mafia, not that they have asked, is to get off those phones and stay off them forever. Be like don Calogero di Rienzi and never use a phone, don’t ever send an email, and have no computer, and certainly no social media. Stop, in short, telling your enemies your business.
The latest revelations come from phone tapping in New York, dating from December 2020, which reveal, surprise, surprise, that all is not well in the Sicilian Mafia transplanted to America. It is the usual story: old people complaining about the young, and lamenting that they simply do not have respect or the right idea about how things should be done.
The garrulous Mafiosi are Vito Gabriele Rappa, son of don Ciccio, the old boss of Borgetto, who is much respected by the heads of the New York families, and Franky Vicari, another Mafioso who has emigrated to the USA. What they say is very revealing, sort of.
The former invites the latter to a party (‘Tu devi salire Frà, quando facciamo questa mangiata’) during which an unnamed person will be present with whom Franky has not been on good terms. ‘But don’t you want to see him?’ (Ma tu non è che vai da lui?), asks Rappa junior, when Vicari refuses, saying he does not want to see anyone at all apart from Franky and another unnamed man. And the reason for this? These people have no respect, and Franky can’t respect them either. (‘Non hanno rispetto. Se non hanno rispetto né per me e né per te, io non ho rispetto per questi cristiani.’)
As for the American Mafiosi, Franky does not like them either: he is sixty years old and they use him as a delivery boy (‘A sessant’anni, mi vogliono far fare il delivery’). He was sitting down with the best of the Mafia before they were born, he laments.
As well as complaints the two men discuss il pizzo, the price that businesses pay for Mafia protection in New York. The going rate is six thousand dollars a month. The two men speak in a sort of rather obvious code. Vicari says to Rappa: ‘I have got to buy a car and he has to pay for it; he knows how much and so do I. I know what I have to say to him, and he knows what he has to say to me.’ (Una macchina mi devo andare a comprare e me la deve pagare lui. Quello che gli devo dire io lo so. Ma quello che mi deve dire lui lo so pure.) Franky replies: ‘I have given him the insurance because I had to and we shook hands and that is that’ (la sicuranza io gliel’ho data, perché gliela dovevo dare e mi ha stretto la mano e la cosa è rimasta così.)
Talking of picking up the money, it seems that extortion in New York is a well oiled business. Vicari says: ‘He called me, I did not call him. He was very polite, and I politely went to see him. Thanks a lot, that was all. It was like finding a sweet that one had lost.’ (Mi ha chiamato lui, non è che l’ho chiamato io. Mi ha chiamato con tanta educazione e sono andato a trovarlo con tanta educazione. Grazie e basta, non ti dico più niente. Questa è stata una caramella che era persa.)
Vicari and Rappa are now both under arrest in New York, and charged with multiple crimes. It seems that these and other Mafiosi were trying to take over the entire demolition and haulage industries in New York and New Jersey. When one owner of a construction firm did not want to play ball, they smashed his hands with a hammer, photographed it, and sent the pictures to other interested parties as a warning. A campaign of terror against the owner of a haulage company, which involved threatening his mother-in-law, ended with the Mafiosi being paid $4,000,000, which the latter celebrated with a bottle of champagne. It seems that New York is just like Palermo.
The head of the Palermo police, Maurizio Calvino, has no doubt about it: the ties between Palermo and New York are very strong and getting stronger. This means, of course, that the struggle against organised crime is an international one.
So what does all this tell us? It tells us that the Mafia is a business like any other, apart from the inherent violence that goes with extortion. In any business you always get older members who complain (‘They treat me like a delivery boy’) and who presumably have to be kept happy somehow or another. And in every business too there are rivals and exterior annoyances: other companies, the police, the tax man. Being a Mafia boss must be a headache, having to deal with threats both external and internal.
It also tells us this, that the Mafiosi are human beings like the rest of us, and they complain to their friends and colleagues just like the rest of us, for they too can find life boring. The conversation between the two Mafiosi sounds almost like two priests complaining about their bishop. And in this is the seed of fiction: business is business, and quite dull, but it is the human feelings of those involved that make for interesting reading. Poor Rappa Junior and poor Franky; now that they are in the hands of American law enforcement they are probably going to have lots of time for reflection and complaint.