A Dirty, Rotten, Double Crossing (True) Story of What Happened to the Italian American Mob

Everyone knows the tales. In the crucible of modernity that was 20th-century America, no one commanded more attention from writers, filmmakers and law makers than the Sicilian mafia. Sure, crimes change – rackets, extortion and hit men fell from the headlines, replaced by hackers, dark web drug runners and data fraud – but the goodfellas stuck around. With the death of Francesco ‘Franky Boy’ Cali in March said to be the first killing of a Five Families boss since 1985, GQ flew to New York to find out what they’ve been doing in the shadows.

Anthony Arillotta swapped out his black Ford Expedition SUV for his mother’s Nissan Maxima – less conspicuous, he thought – then started out on the two-hour journey to New York City. It was 11 August, early in the morning, but the sun was shining and it was already warm.

He’d been instructed to meet at a restaurant called Nebraska Steakhouse near Arthur Avenue, better known as Little Italy, in the heart of the Bronx. Arillotta, a small, good-looking man with thinning hair and piercing eyes, stepped out of the car into the sunshine wearing black trousers, a black dress shirt and smart black shoes. Although he didn’t wear it every day, he’d also put on his platinum Rolex, the one with diamonds around the dial that was given to him as a gift by his boss.

The restaurant was closed when Arillotta arrived, but the door was unlocked. Inside, he recognised the four men at the table, all of them captains, a senior rank in the club he was about to join. They offered him a coffee. He took a shot of espresso and the men waited for three more people to arrive.

Then, it was time.

‘I will never break this oath. If I do, it’ll be death on me. I will be destroyed.’

Under instructions from one of the captains, Arillotta and the three other initiates began to remove their jewellery and place it on the table. They took their mobile phones from their jacket pockets and placed them alongside. Arillotta took off his watch and the gold chain with a cross which hung round his neck. Then they climbed into a black Cadillac Fleetwood parked outside.

The journey was short, just a few city blocks. The Cadillac pulled up in front of an old Bronx apartment building and the men, some in suits, others in smart trousers and shirts, began to walk up a narrow set of concrete stairs to the third floor.

The inside of the apartment looked more like a social club. Dimly lit, with old wooden tables and chairs, it reminded Arillotta of a Twenties gambling den. One of the captains, Stevie, told him to get undressed in the tiny bathroom down the hallway and put on a white bath robe. Then he was led into a back room where the other three captains were waiting. There was another man in the room too, someone Arillotta knew well. Arthur Nigro (pronounced Ny-row) who went by “Artie”. He was the acting boss of this club and he stood there wearing a grey suit and button-up dress shirt. 

“Do you know why you’re here?” Nigro asked Arillotta.

“No. I don’t know why I’m here,” he said. He knew the responses expected of him. It was an age-old script.

“We are part of a secret, honoured society. It’s exclusive and the reason you’re here today is because we’d like you to be part of this brotherhood of ours. Is that something you would want to be part of?”

“Yes,” replied Arillotta.

“If your wife was giving birth to your child and the boss called for you, would you leave her bedside and come?” This resonated particularly strongly with Arillotta. His daughter would be born the next day.

“Yes,” he said. 

On the small wooden table beside Nigro there was a .38 revolver and a marble-handled knife with a six-inch blade. “You see this gun and knife,” Nigro asked him. “Would you use the knife that’s on this table to kill someone if your bosses asked you to do it?”

“Yes,” said Arillotta.
 
“If your brother did something to harm a member of our family and we asked you to take this gun and kill him, would you do that?”

He asked Arillotta to point to his trigger finger and Nigro took the knife and made a small incision. A bead of blood appeared. Nigro took a small piece of cloth, wiped the blood away and placed the cloth in the palm of Arillotta’s hand. He then struck a match, lit the corner of the cotton and Arillotta tossed the burning linen from one hand to the other.

“Non romperò mai questo giuramento,” Nigro said, then asked Arillotta to repeat in English: “I will never break this oath. If I do, it’ll be death on me. I will be destroyed like this cloth in my hand.”

Nigro kissed him on both cheeks then shook his hand. “Hello, friend,” he said.

What looked like a scene from The Godfather or a snapshot from the annals of American crime history, was in fact happening in present-day America. Arillotta had just been “made”, inducted into the Genovese crime family, the largest and most powerful of New York’s infamous Italian-American mafia dynasties.

The modern mob was looking a hell of a lot like the old mob.