Fairly new to these ranks is Sam Roberts, a veteran reporter for the NYT who lately finds himself at the obituary desk. My suspicion is he either survived a layoff, turned down a buy-out, or did something that allowed his career to progress to writing obituaries--the new form that carries the information of an encyclopedia entry and the personal descriptive nuances of a character in a novel. His transition, for whatever reason, is our gain.
Where but in an obituary entry can you get to use an Al Capone quote that you've probably been keeping locked in your memory for decades? The death of the South Jersey mobster Nicky Scarfo Sr. has allowed Mr. Roberts the opportunity to show us what he's probably been saving up for years.
By all descriptions, Nicolas Scarfo was an unpleasant character. He seems to have acquired a combative personality that came to the notice of adults at least as early as his high school graduation, when his yearbook entry included the phrase "out to lick the world." Before he learned to use a firearm, he was probably tested for rabies, Likely more than once.
To say he was a career criminal makes it sound like he entered the life because he liked the benefits, rather than when he was genetically conceived he was destined for the life he led. He was born in Brooklyn into an Italian immigrant family, that despite having a father who was considered free of mob tires, the rest of the family was considered to have strong ties to the Italian mafia. His family was from Naples and Calabiria, with Calabria being a Italian town immediately across from Sicily that might be considered the West Point of organized crime. Italian magistrates in that town have taken to placing children of mob parents in foster homes in the hope of keeping them from graduating into the Black Hole of the Black Hand. Supposedly, there's been some progress.
Consider some of the highlights of Nicky Scarfo's resume as summarized by Sam Roberts, in his NYT obituary of "a mob boss for the 80s."
Mr. Scarfo died at 87 in a Federal prison where he was serving 55 years for "racketeering and participation in a criminal enterprise that sold drugs, murdered nine people, attempted to kill four others, and engaged in loan-sharking, extortion and gambling." It was considered a death sentence since he was not scheduled for release until 2033.
After high school, Mr. Scarfo was an amateur boxer with a mean streak, who quickly became mob-connected in Philadelphia under Don Angelo Bruno, nicknamed the Gentle Don, or Docile Don. Rising in the organization after a stint for murdering a longshoreman and becoming indicted in a Federal racketeering case involving the death of a uncompromising local judge, the South Jersey-Philadelphia mob was labeled the Bruno-Scarfo crime family.
A biographer, George Anastasia, described Mr. Scarfo as a "mob boss for the 80s, a greedy, ruthless despot whose family coat of arms could have been a pair of crossed .357 magnums, mounted on a blood-red shield embossed with the words ' Kill or Be Killed.'"
Scarfo had a hair-trigger temper that made him so disliked, even amongst his associates, that his nephew, Crazy Phil, himself a member of the gang and second in command, turned state's evidence and helped convict him, placing himself in the Witness Protection Program, where he is today.
The psychological source of Mr. Scarfo's anger is not described. What made him Mr. Grumpy Pants? Was it is derived from his being only 5'5"? Apparently, as described by Mr. Roberts, Nicky Scarfo idolized Al Capone, perhaps the most famous gangster there was, who was born in Brooklyn, like, Nicky, but later moved elsewhere. In Capone's case, famously to Chicago, in Scarfo's case, to South Jersey and Atlantic City.
But their personalities differed widely. Capone was considered charismatic, who had a wit about himself that lead him to say, "You can go a long way with a smile: you can go a lot further with a smile and a gun." (The quote is not in my hard copy edition of Bartlett's, the 15th edition.)
Mr. Roberts deftly points out Nicky Scarfo only carried the gun.
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