"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 Sammy the Bull Gravano is the highest-ranking member of the Mafia in America ever to defect. 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. "A riveting job of detailing real Mafia life. . . . It's a 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 Free Press "An absorbing, intimate, alluring tale of power, greed, and Mob intrigue." - People "Breathtaking...Supremely stylish." - New York magazine "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 "A page turner that Maas writes in Gravano's voice. It's one readers will hear in their heads for a long while." - Booklist " Underboss is fascinating for its anthropologically detailed portrait of a subculture some of us can't get enough of." - Time In March of 1992, the highest-ranking member of the Mafia in America ever to defect broke his blood oath of silence and testified against his boss, John Gotti. He is Salvatore (Sammy the Bull) Gravano, second-in-command of the Gambino organized-crime family, the most powerful in the nation. Today, Gotti is serving life in prison without parole. And as a direct consequence of Gravano's testimony, Cosa Nostra - the Mafia's true name - is in shambles. In Underboss, based on dozens of hours of interviews with Gravano, much of it written in Sammy the Bull's own voice, we are ushered as never before into the uppermost secret inner sanctums of Cosa Nostra - an underworld of power, lust, greed, betrayal, deception, sometimes even honor, with the specter of violent death always poised in the wings. Gravano's is a story about starting out on the street, about killing and being killed, revealing the truth behind a quarter-century of shocking headlines. It is also a tragic story of a wasted life, of unalterable choices and the web of lies, weakness, and treachery that underlie the so-called Honored Society. Peter Maas's is the author of the number one New York Times bestseller Underboss. His other notable bestsellers include The Valachi Papers, Serpico, Manhunt, and In a Child's Name. He lives in New York City. Underboss Sammy the Bull Gravano's Story of Life in the Mafia By Maas, Peter Perennial Copyright © 2004 Peter Maas All right reserved. ISBN: 0060930969 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,