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Carmine Galante’s Last Lunch
A hot day in New York City feels like no place else.
The heaviness of the air weighs on you as you trudge down the blinding bright streets crisscrossing Gotham. It could be the concrete everywhere–sidewalks below, buildings above–and the smell of garbage that seems to grow in strength whenever the thermometer climbs above 85 degrees.
What doesn’t help is that construction picks up in the summer, and the screech of jackhammers and drills penetrates deep into your brain.
The 1966 song “Summer in the City” by Lovin’ Spoonful captures it perfectly: “Hot town, summer in the city/Back of my neck turning dirty and gritty/Been down, isn’t it a pity/Doesn’t seem to be a shadow in the city.”
There are refuges to be found–an air-conditioned home, store, movie theater, even a subway car. Jones Beach, Coney Island, and Far Rockaway beckon. Or a patch of shade in Central Park in Manhattan, Prospect Park in Brooklyn, or one of the city’s other treasured nature preserves.
It’s safe to say that Joe & Mary’s Italian American Restaurant on 205 Knickerbocker Avenue in Bushwick, Brooklyn, was not one of those hot-weather refuges on July 12, 1979.
It was 87 degrees when Carmine Galante, 69, showed up for lunch at Joe & Mary’s with his entourage. However, he led his group to a spot not inside but at a table in the quiet patio garden out in back.
Galante, the head of the Bonanno crime family for some five years, was in the middle of a vicious period of power plays in the Five Families of the mafia.
A popular-with-the-mob Brooklyn restaurant might not seem the most secure place for lunch. This stretch of Knickerbocker Avenue was a place where first- and second-generation Sicilian-Americans came to hang out.
However, Galante appeared to thrive in the tense atmosphere and was famous for saying, “No one will ever kill me, they wouldn’t dare.”
It turns out, they would.
Galante was nicknamed “the Cigar” because one was perpetually jammed into his mouth. He had a cigar going when he…
