Peter Maas's most recent number-one bestseller was Underboss. His other notable bestsellers include The Valachi
Papers, Serpico, Manhunt, and In a Child's Name.
Sample Chapter
Chapter One
They're bad people, but they're our bad people.
"Yeah, you could say i came from a pretty tough neighborhood," Salvatore (Sammy the Bull) Gravano said.
The neighborhood was Bensonhurst, roughly two miles square, in southwestern Brooklyn bordering Gravesend Bay and
the Atlantic Ocean.
Unlike the first Italian communities in New York, such as Manhattan's Little Italy, which was being swallowed up
by an aggressively expanding Chinatown, or East Harlem, clinging to a narrow strip along the East River against
the inroads of a booming Hispanic population, Bensonhurst remained vibrantly and definitively Italian-American.
Even today it is where recent arrivals from southern Italy and Sicily settle. In Roman Catholic churches, some
masses are sung in Italian.
As with other ethnic migrations in the city, the subway paved the way when in the early 1900s the first rapid transit
lines linking Brooklyn to Manhattan went into service, one of them going directly from the dark and crowded tenements
of Little Italy to the open spaces of Bensonhurst.
It has a small-town feel. Many of the cross streets lack traffic lights. Cruising taxis, common in most of the
city, are rare. Houses are mostly two-family dwellings of aluminum siding, stucco or brick with wrought-iron gates
painted white and porches with their ubiquitous steel awnings. Tiny front lawns feature potted flowers and statues
of the Virgin Mary and in backyards, more often than not, are vegetable gardens. Bensonhurst's main street, 18th
Avenue, also officially designated Cristoforo Colombo Boulevard, is lined with Italian delicatessens, bakeries,
fresh mozzarella shops, food markets overflowing with packaged products imported from Italy, pizza parlors boasting
traditional wood-burning ovens and espresso bars.
In Bensonhurst, everyone knows everyone else on every block. Its mainly blue-collar residents are insular, closemouthed
and suspicious of outsiders. Strangers are remarked on at once. As a result, the rate of common street crimes--rapes,
robberies, felony assaults--is low compared to other parts of the city, according to police statistics. Murder
is a third less than the citywide average.
But Bensonhurst was tough in a very special sense. A great number of these murders were mob related. It was a prime
spawning ground for Cosa Nostra--"Our Thing"--which filled its ranks from local youth street gangs that
hung out at candy stores and luncheonettes throughout the area. One of the original members of Cosa Nostra's national
commission, Joseph Profaci, the so-called Olive Oil King because of his monopoly on the importation of olive oil
from Italy, lived in Bensonhurst. So did his successor as a family boss, Joseph Colombo. One of the grandest underworld
funerals ever seen in New York, complete with thirty-eight carloads of flowers, took place in Bensonhurst following
the Prohibition-era slaying of a celebrated mobster named Frankie Yale, who had a falling out with Al Capone.
As in a Sicilian village, Cosa Nostra's shadow loomed large over Bensonhurst and was spoken of only in whispers.
"They just shoot themselves," a resident confided after two corpses were found in a car, gazing vacantly
into space, each with a bullet hole behind the ear. "The thing is, you mind your own business. You don't hear
nothing. You don't see nothing." Another said, "You got to admit the Mafia, whatever, keeps the neighborhood
safe. You don't see all them other people coming in to mug and burglarize here. So their presence is kind of good
is my opinion."
Salvatore Gravano was born in Bensonhurst on March 12, 1945. He had two older sisters. Another sister and a brother
had died before his arrival. His mother, Caterina, was born in Sicily and brought to America as a baby. His father,
Giorlando, also from Sicily, was on the crew of a freighter when he jumped ship in Canada and slipped into the
United States as an illegal alien.
For Sammy and for friends and neighbors, his parents were always Kay and Gerry. English was the language of the
house, except during visits from his grandmothers, who spoke a Sicilian dialect. Sammy was especially close to
his maternal grandmother and picked up enough to be able to converse with her, but forgot it all after she died.
He was called Sammy instead of Salvatore or Sal for as long as he can remember. Someone had said that he looked
just like Uncle Sammy, a brother of his mother's, and the name stuck. The uncle was Big Sammy and he was Little
Sammy. He grew up on 78th Street in the heart of Bensonhurst near 18th Avenue. His father owned the house, the
middle one of three identical brick row houses, each with a garage. Steps led up to the front porch. The basement
apartment was rented out, as well as an apartment on the second floor. The Gravanos lived in the middle apartment.
In a small plot behind the house, Sammy's father cultivated tomatoes and beans and tended to his prized fig tree.
Kay was an exceptionally skilled seamstress who worked for a Jewish dress manufacturer in Manhattan's garment center.
Gerry was a house painter until he was felled by lead poisoning and could no longer continue his trade. The dress
manufacturer then financed the Gravanos in a satellite factory of their own in Bensonhurst. Kay supervised the
filling of the orders he sent her and rode the subway to the garment center to sew the sample dress for a forthcoming
line, while Sammy's father took care of the business end. Things went so well that Gerry was able to afford the
purchase of a summer cottage for $8,000 near Lake Ronkonkoma in the middle of Long Island.
Review
"Underboss is fascinating for its anthropologically detailed portrait of a subculture some of us can't
get enough of."
-- Time
"Brilliantly constructed and grimly fascinating...The result is a terrific and important book...It's important
because it is a morality play on the subject of loyalty. To whom are you loyal, and from who should you be able
to expect loyalty?"
-- New York Times Book Review
"An absorbing, intimate, alluring tale of power, greed, and Mob intrigue."
-- People
"A riveting job of detailing real Mafia life...It's quick, exciting reading and Maas deserves full marks
for generally keeping the sharks of the mob from looking like dolphins. There's no chrome in the jalopy of Gravano's
life."
-- Detroit Press
"Breathtaking...Supremely stylish."
-- New York magazine
HarperCollins Publishers Web Site, December, 2000
Summary
Sammy the Bull Gravano is the highest-ranking member of the Mafia in America ever to defeat. In telling Gravano's
story, Peter Maas brings us as never before into the innermost sanctums of the Cosa Nostra as if we were there
ourselves--a secret underworld of power, lust, greed, betrayal, and deception, with the specter of violent death
always waiting in the wings.