Frank Bari was nine years old when his father woke him one night in late September of 1959, told him to get dressed and took him on a ride to a remote field outside of La Guardia Airport.
When they stepped out of the car into the cold night air, Bari’s father guided him through the glare of lights from police cars on the scene toward a Cadillac he recognized as the one his grandfather, Anthony Carfano, owned.
Inside the car, his grandfather – a Genovese family capo also known as Little Augie Pisano – lay slumped against his girlfriend, Janice Drake, both dead from gunshot wounds.
“You see, that’s what happens when you’re not careful,” his father told him.
It was a life lesson that Bari, a 60-year-old attorney and Vietnam veteran who now lives in Mineola, has carried with him since that night.
Bari, a member of the Nassau County Bar Association, has lived in Mineola with his wife for the past eight years.
“I knew Mineola. It’s very convenient,” said Bari, who spends much of his time in city courtrooms.
Bari did not include the anecdote about seeing his grandfather dead in his memoir, “Under the Williamsburg Bridge, the story of an American family,” that he published two years ago.
But Bari’s book, written with the help of Mark Gribben, does includes details about growing up in a Mafia family and seeks to set the record straight about his grandfather’s death.
“It is important that history be written accurately, even if it is the history of a mob hit,” he says in the narrative told in the first person.
Bari seeks to debunk the story that Pisano was killed by Meyer Lansky ally Joey Adonis.
Pisano, a member of the Genovese crime family, had received a phone call while eating dinner that night from Lansky, who wanted a meeting to sort out a territorial struggle the two men were engaged in over gambling rights in Florida. Bari is sure that his grandfather was caught “temporarily off-guard” when he saw two of his Genovese associates approaching the car.
But then Pisano quickly realized that “his number was up.”
“He probably was not surprised that he knew the men who were going to kill him,” Bari continued. “After all, that’s always the way it happens.”
The unique insight Bari’s book offers into the underworld life he grew up with is at once disarming and refreshingly frank. It’s neither an apology for the life or a rationalization of the business his grandfather and his father engaged in. And Bari has maintained ties to that life as a lawyer who has frequently represented Mafia members over the years because of his family background.
“They want somebody who’s going to give them a fair fight in court,” he said, adding, “I was related and they trusted me.”
It was his representation of Mafiosi that provided some of the material for his book, perhaps most notably the real reason that the notorious Dutch Schultz was killed. The conventional story is that Schultz intended to hit New York City District Attorney Thomas Dewey and the syndicate of the five New York Mafia families knocked off Schultz to prevent that.
Bari said that Charlie “The Bug” Workman, a top hit man for Albert Anastasia’s Murder Inc., told him Schultz was whacked for moving in on the New Jersey rackets of Longy Zwillman. The job was given to a group of Jewish gunmen – including Workman, according to Bari – because Schultz would have been suspicious of Italian gangsters walking in on him.
Bari’s book is equally remarkable for some details it omits, including his father’s name. Although he knew his father was his grandfather’s son, his true identity eluded him because his father had several aliases.
He knew that his father had close relationships with Anastasia and Charles “Lucky” Luciano, among others. But when his father died from natural causes several years ago, Bari also discovered that he’d had seven birth certificates.
“It was a different time. They took any names,” Bari said. “Everybody knew who they were. They took care of the neighborhood.”
It was a neighborhood in south Brooklyn that was home to many Mafiosi. Growing up in that environment, and knowing what his family’s business was, Bari wasn’t surprised to see his grandfather in that car that night.
“I knew he was living that kind of life,” he said.
He remembers the day he was sitting in the OK Cafeteria on Church Street with his father when someone in a passing car dumped the jacket of Genovese hit man Joe “Jelly” Gioelli with a dead fish wrapped in it. It was Sicilian short-hand for saying Gioelli was sleeping with the fish, an incident Mario Puzo transmuted in “The Godfather,” according to Bari.
His father’s life was a mysterious one. Changing identities was a common underworld ploy, but it also enabled him to serve in the U.S. Marines, the U.S. Army Air Force and as a member of the legendary Merrill’s Marauders in Burma during World War II.
Bari served in the Vietnam War, although when he joined the U.S. Coast Guard under a draft-induced enlistment, he was expecting a soft ride.
“I thought I was going to Jones Beach” and getting the ladies, he recalled, laughing.
He was promptly shipped to Subic Bay in the Phillipines on his way to service on a Patrol Boat River craft in the Mekong Delta. The Viet Cong were using sampans to transport and stash arms on islands there and the heavily armored patrol boats, manned by Coast Guard crews, were tasked with stopping the arms traffic. The boats had double 50-millimeter machine guns mounted fore and aft with 60-millimeter guns mounted on each side. Another 50-millimeter gun mounted on the patrol boat bridge was topped by an 81-mm mortar launcher.
Bari said he used his .45 sidearm to shoot the first Vietnamese he killed at point-blank range when the man tried to attack him as he boarded a sampan for an inspection – one of 50 to 100 such inspections his patrol boat crew carried out daily.
The toughest part of that duty was laying in wait for Viet Cong to make anticipated river crossings at night, and engaging in firefights to stop them.
“It was terrifying,” he said.
He is a member of the Vietnam Veterans Association and the Coast Guard Combat Veterans Association. He is the assistant editor for Quarter Deck Log, the monthly journal of Coast Guard Combat organization.
Bari said he returned from Vietnam with post-traumatic stress syndrome and medical problems from exposure to Agency Orange, which, ironically, was intended to aid the patrol boat missions by defoliating the jungle along water routes in the country.
When he came back from the war, he learned his godfather had died – presumably killed – because he observes that the event prompted him to conclude that “Organized crime was a one-way ticket to oblivion.”
So he went back to school and eventually earned a law degree at St. John’s University. He became a public defender, and then an attorney for clients ineligible for clients ineligible to have representation by public defenders. He represented the criminally insane, indigents and members of Asian gangs.
His family background and his Vietnam experience informed his approach.
“I started fighting my cases as though I was fighting the war and for those who did not come back,” he wrote.
Today, he’s still fighting legal battles for the disenfranchised and for members of the Mafia. And he retains a sense of the code his father and grandfather lived by – the code of “omerta” that traditionally committed them to silence or death – and said he disrespects those who testify against their mob associates.
“I find it very hypocritical. Wear one hat, don’t wear two hats,” he said. “You never know who you’re talking to anymore. The world has changed.”
Reach reporter Richard Tedesco by e-mail at rtedesco@theislandnow.com or by phone at 516.307.1045 x204
