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SCMP Reporter

LIFE has rarely imitated art as neatly as in the case of movies and the mafia. The 'swim with the fishes' lexicon and skewed values of the characters fleshed out on the big screen by Marlon Brando, Al Pacino and Robert De Niro have always tended to pop-up on FBI wire-taps with intriguing regularity.

 Mario Puzo's The Godfather, after-all, was many a capo's favourite film.

 But as Hollywood continues to dwell on tales rooted in the 1970s when Cosa Nostra was still a force that could not be ignored, life it seems is once again in the lead.

 Art has yet to show any interest in reflecting the sorry present, as Omerta - the legendary Sicilian code of silence - has been replaced with the much less dramatic plea bargain.

 John Gotti junior, the current alleged head of New York's Gambino crime family, was anything but Brandoesque as he bounced into a New York court on Friday.

 The Gambinos may have once been the toughest and most disciplined of New York's five mafia families, but Gotti junior insisted that he was ready to 'receive my punishment'.

 'I'm a man's man,' he declared before calmly pleading guilty and accepting a 6.5-year prison term on racketeering charges.

 'I have to accept my medicine,' he said.

 The lack of fear young Gotti inspires in his federal opponents was reflected in the fact that he was allowed to walk from the court under an agreement that he would surrender to custody next month. He promptly walked with a sister to get a pizza.

 The 35-year-old is son of John 'Teflon Don' Gotti, arguably the last major 'boss of bosses' whose brazen ambitions led to the collapse in the early 1990s of a vast network of influence stemming from concrete and clothing to drugs and pornography.

 The swaggering Gotti senior murdered his way to the top and is now expected to die in prison as he bitterly fights throat cancer and reportedly curses what has happened to a job that he once wanted to be bigger than the presidency.

 His son, by a variety of accounts, has been a most reluctant and feckless heir.

 Passionate about native American history, he had seemed fat and happy in the suburbs coaching baseball and turning up at parent-teacher evenings with bags of cup cakes under his arm.

 Despite his father's urgings, the organisation he inherited never amounted to much more than what Vanity Fair recently described as a 'mean and snarling street gang'.

 Under constant surveillance, Gotti junior eventually admitted to extortion from a construction company, bribing a Teamsters Union official, and lying on a home loan application. He also acknowledged gambling offences.

 Investigations were aided by the discovery of US$358,000 (HK$2.8 million) in cash in his basement.

 'I want to know which part of this was intelligent,' his father reportedly roared from his prison cell when he learned of this most elementary blunder.

 Federal prosecutors charged him with running mafia rackets in and around New York City from the mid-1980s to 1997, with illegal earnings amounting to $20 million - a far cry from his father's era.

 And old allies in Philadelphia are in equal disarray. Local boss Ralph Natale has now decided to co-operate with authorities as he sits in custody facing possible drug conspiracy charges, the Philadelphia Inquirer reported recently.

 Never before has such a senior figure sung, although many agree there is little left to tell.

 'More soap opera than Godfather,' the paper declared as it reported angry underlings sneering at Natale's obsession with a 28-year-old mistress which hastened his downfall.

 While he served time, she strolled around his old haunts lifting her shirt to reveal a most proprietary tattoo: of Natale.

 Given such tales, former prosecutors and federal agents do little to hide their satisfaction as they speculate about the future of the mob.

 'Their survival base has never been more threatened,' said former prosecutor Gil Childers, stopping short of completely writing them off after Gotti's sentencing.

 'It's very significant of course but you can obviously not rule them out. The Cosa Nostra has survived many greater prosecutions than this.'  The mafia is moving into new business (see page 12). But even the most simple legitimate business, though, is much more complex than it used to be and less susceptible to the intimidatory tactics of old.

 The Government, meanwhile, has greater knowledge and investigative and legal clout, while rival ethnic groups control other illegal markets. Then, in classic immigrant fashion, there is the generation gap. There are easier ways to make money. Many of the old ways and old codes are just that - old; and many now considered virtually extinct.

 For example, an insistence on staying out of the 'immoral' and highly divisive drugs trade has been rejected since the days of Gotti senior's predecessors.

 Even Puzo, the author and screen-writer of The Godfather, died recently, as did the older mobsters' favoured crooner, Frank Sinatra. 'This thing of ours' is not what it was.



Mafia finds old ways are dying