The Nation: THE MAFIA Big, Bad and Booming

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message. Since becoming boss, Galante has pushed his underlings deeper into drug importing and distribution, long one of the family's most profitable enterprises. He has begun re-establishing the family's Southeast Asian connection, broken by federal narcotics agents six years ago. One sign of his success is the white Asian heroin that has begun reaching New York to compete with the more common Mexican brown.

> Graying, grandfatherly Aniello Dellacroce (translation: "little lamb of the Cross"), who has spent only six of his 62 years in prison, for attempted burglary, assault and tax evasion. He was long Gambino's underboss and chief peacemaker. As befits an ex-assassin for Albert Anastasia's Murder, Inc., Dellacroce settled disputes between rival clans by a direct method: having troublemakers eradicated. He took over the Gambino family soon after his release from prison last December after serving 4½ years for tax evasion and contempt of court.

Fond of disguises, Dellacroce sometimes dons a priest's cassock and goes about as Father O'Neill (a play on his often mispronounced first name). Father O'Neill will commiserate with policemen on the beat about their hard lot. Dellacroce enjoys tormenting the authorities. Once he arranged to have the bodies of two murder victims dumped in the parking lot of a Manhattan police station. When he and his bodyguards discovered two policemen tapping his phone, they forced the wiretappers, at gunpoint, to chew and swallow some of their tapes. When Dellacroce learned that his line was again being tapped, he ordered his men to make false comments on the phone about "the mayor's end" and "the greedy chief." The eavesdroppers soon disconnected the tap.

Dellacroce makes his money from loan-sharking and gambling. He is now moving his aides and muscle into Atlantic City, where legal casino gambling is expected to be the salvation of the moribund resort and possibly the source of a bonanza for the Mob. By legalizing casino gambling in Atlantic City, New Jersey has given New York and Pennsylvania a strong incentive to follow suit —a situation the Mob relishes.

In Atlantic City, Gambino family members are scouting hotels that are up for sale and have invested in some bars and pizza parlors. U.S. Attorney Jonathan Goldstein expects increased Mob involvement in Atlantic City service industries: linen supply, liquor distribution and the like. The Gambino men are pushing aside local gangsters who work for Angelo Bruno, Philadelphia's ailing and unimposing Mafia don. Had Bruno been stronger, the invasion might not have occurred. To mollify Bruno, the New Yorkers are willing to toss his people some Atlantic City scraps—services like garbage hauling, vending machines and pest control.

When the Godfather contest was joined after Gambino's death, Galante and Dellacroce adopted sharply contrasting tactics. Galante roams the country openly, accompanied by bodyguards and sometimes by his attractive daughter Nina, 21. A few weeks ago, two federal agents lost him at New York's Kennedy Airport. As the agents frantically scanned the crowd, one of them nudged his companion and whispered: "Wow! Get a load of that chick!" The other agent recognized Nina, and they were soon on Galante's trail again. Agents have followed Galante to Disneyland