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had great power—and was an admirer of the military system developed by Julius Caesar—imposed on each Family a highly organized structure. The boss would be aided by an underboss and assisted by captains who would command individual crews of soldiers. Each Family also would retain a counselor, a kind of in-house lawyer. The spoils would flow upward from the soldiers.
    The system was designed to insulate the boss and protect him from prosecution. For a long time, in the Gambino Family, it did.
    The Pope alienated some followers right at the start. In succeeding his brother-in-law, who also was his cousin, he vaulted over Aniello Dellacroce, the Gambino Family underboss since 1965. Castellano’s solution to this potentially fatal situation was to relinquish to Dellacroce near total authority over some Gambino Family crews, including one led by a Dellacroce protégé, an ambitious former hijacker and degenerate gambler, John Gotti. Over the next several years, an aberrant situation arose: a Family within a Family.
    The styles and deeds of the Family branches overlapped, but distinct identities did emerge. The Castellano wing was more white collar, because of its labor racketeering and bid-rigging in the construction, cartage, meat, and garment industries. The Dellacroce wing was more blue collar, because of its preoccupation with gambling, loan-sharking, and hijacking.
    Until Neil Dellacroce’s death in December 1985, there was peace if not harmony.
     
     
    On December 16, two weeks after Dellacroce died of cancer and other illnesses, the Pope rose early and padded around his house. He was a large, bespectacled, seventy-year-old man with a big hawk nose, weary jowls, and thinning hair combed straight back. The last two years had been difficult. Caesar’s system had finally failed the Gambino Family. The Pope was a defendant in two federal racketeering cases. The trial in one case—in which he stood accused of being the puppeteer of a murderous gang of international car thieves—was underway.
    Beset by his own worries, Castellano had not gone to Dellacroce’s wake, a serious lapse of judgment for a man who already had enough trouble with the Family within the Family.
    Today, he was savoring a twenty-four-hour break in his trial. He wouldn’t have to fight rush-hour traffic to get to the United States Court House in the borough of Manhattan by 9:30 A.M., his daily duty for the last two months. For him, the worst part of the trial—the testimony of the only witness directly linking him to the stolen-car ring—was over. In three days, the trial would recess for two weeks, and the judge had given him permission to take a holiday at his condominium in Pompano Beach, Florida.
    Today was to be leisurely. He had a meeting at noon near his house with the boss of another Family and with one of his loyal captains, James Failla. Then he intended to drop by unannounced at his lawyer’s office, on Madison Avenue in Manhattan, and present Christmas envelopes to the secretaries. He was going to be in Manhattan later anyway. He was to meet Failla and another Gambino captain—Frank DeCicco, who was a Failla protégé—and two other men for dinner.
    “Sparks, 5 P.M.,” read the entry in his diary.
    Sparks Steak House is located at 210 East Forty-sixth Street, just east of Third Avenue in midtown Manhattan, one of the world’s most pedestrian-congested areas, especially at that going-home hour. Grand Central Station, with its ribbons of steel to the suburbs, is at East Forty-second Street, one block west of Third.
    That week the restaurant had been named the city’s best steak-house by New York magazine. A woodsy, manly place, it was popular with businessmen from the surrounding office towers and with diplomats from the United Nations complex, two blocks east on First Avenue. Castellano, the owner of the Meat Palace, a supplier of fine cuts, was an occasional customer; he knew the Sparks beef was top quality.
    The Pope had helped