CLENCHED FIST
It was early evening on December 16, 1985. The sidewalks were jammed with people who
had just flooded out of the many office buildings around East 46th Street between Second
and Third Avenue. Some rushed home from work, eager to get out of the wintry gloom; others
were lured by the strings of brightly colored lights into the stores for some Christmas
shopping.
There in the midst of the mid-town bustle on 46th was an elegant steakhouse called
Sparks whose clientele were businessmen and diplomats from the United Nations buildings a
few blocks away.
In the vicinity of the restaurant, several men dressed alike in fur cossack hats and
trench coats loitered on both sides of the street. Several other men also positioned
themselves around the restaurant carefully, so they would not be noticed in the throngs of
rush-hour pedestrians.
Soon a big Lincoln with two men inside pulled up in front of the restaurant. The driver
shut off the engine and hurried around the side of the car to open the door for the older
man, but the older man was in too much of a hurry and opened the door himself. The older
man, after all, was Paul Castellano, the Boss of the famous Gambino family. His driver was
his newly appointed under boss and favorite, Tommy Bilotti.
The two Cosa Nostra executives were a bit late for an important dinner meeting with
some of the other under bosses and Tommy Gambino, the wealthy son of the late Carlo
Gambino and nephew of Carlo's successor, Paul Castellano. Inside the restaurant three of
the guests were already waiting for Castellano and Bilotti.
Once the two men in the Lincoln had cleared the car, the shooting began. Two of the men
in fur hats and raincoats rushed at Castellano with revolvers in their hands. Castellano
immediately took several bullets in the head and one in the chest. Blood oozed out of him
and he slumped to the ground.
Bilotti got four bullets in the head and another four in the chest. He too slumped to
the ground, already dead. One of the shooters came around to the fallen Castellano and
exploded a bullet at close range in the Boss's skull.
Terrified pedestrians scattered every which way, while the shooters escaped along their
pre-arranged routes. In moments, another Lincoln carrying two men passed by Sparks to
survey the results of the carefully executed plan. John Gotti and his colleague Sammy the
Bull Gravano and the conspiratorial group of ten men called the Fist had pulled off the
first major gangland assassination since Albert Anastasia had been hit in 1957. In the
next few days all New Yorkers and much of the rest of the world would know the name John
Gotti as he skyrocketed to fame as the daring new head of the Gambino crime family.
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Paul Castellano |
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