His Way_ The Unauthorized Biography of Frank Sinatra - Kitty Kelley [284]
Frank did not respond, and Mickey Rudin said that he did not know Mr. Pacella well enough to answer for him. The chairman then moved on to the chummy photograph of Frank. Carlo Gambino, and the other chieftains of Cosa Nostra.
Snapping with impatience, Frank said, “I was asked by one of the members of the theater—who he was doesn’t come to me; I don’t think it is that important—he told me Mr. Gambino had arrived with his granddaughter, whose name happened to be Sinatra, a doctor in New York, not related at all, and they’d like to take a picture. I said, ‘Fine.’ They came in and they took a picture of the little girl, and before I realized what happened, there were approximately eight or nine men standing around me and several other snapshots were made. That is the whole incident that took place.”
Q: Did you have any information about any of the people that were in that photograph with you? Did you know any of them by sight?
A: Well, Mr. Marson, I think, was in the picture, whom I knew. He was one of the owners of the club, and I knew him. I later found out that I was introduced to somebody named Jimmy, and I found out later it was this fink, The Weasel.
Q: Subsequently, did you have an opportunity after this picture received some degree of notoriety to learn the background of some of those people?
A: No.
Q: When you were there?
A: No.
Q: As of today, you do not know what some of the background is?
A: I didn’t even know their names, let alone their backgrounds. I didn’t even know most of their names.
When Jimmy Fratianno, who had been accepted as “a very credible witness” in courtrooms across the country, heard Sinatra’s account of the picture-taking session, he laughed.
“He said he was gonna take a picture with somebody’s niece and he says all of a sudden eight men were around him. Well that’s a lot of baloney. He wanted to take a picture with Gambino and he offered Gambino to come in the back, he wanted to meet him. And he goes to the Gaming Board and he just lied about these things. He said he didn’t know who was there. He knows me, he knows Gambino, Tommy Marson, Paul Castellano. He [Frank] knows who they are. He knows just as much about this as I do.… He likes ‘made’ guys. He likes to be around them. He likes to have pictures taken with them. Look at all the publicity: Giancana, Lucky Luciano, the Fischettis, Gambino, myself! He thrives on the stuff, I’m telling you. Of course, he ain’t gonna tell that to the President. I don’t know how he covers that up.”
Pearl Similly, a former politician from Staten Island, was not surprised to see the photograph of Frank standing near Paul Castellano and with his arm around Carlo Gambino. Castellano later succeeded Gambino as chief of the nation’s most powerful Mafia family, and he and his top aide, Thomas Bilotti, ran the crime organization until they were gunned down gangland style outside a New York steak house.
“Tommy’s brother, Jimmy Bilotti, told me he worked for Frank Sinatra for several years [70s and 80s],” said Pearl Similly. “Jimmy was a big gambler and the Bilottis and the Castellanos were very close with Sinatra, so I think Sinatra was doing them a favor to try to keep Jimmy a little busy so he wouldn’t gamble so much. Jimmy told me that he traveled with Sinatra and made all his arrangements and when they went out to dinner he’d call and make the reservations at