A heap of trouble
On a warm summer night in 1981, under cover of darkness, a band of men slipped, commando-style, into the Publics Works garages near the Providence waterfront and spirited away a dozen city garbage trucks.
They drove the trucks across town to an empty used-car lot, where a small army was gathering. About a dozen other trucks were already parked in the back of the fenced lot, hidden in the darkness behind a blue school bus.
Inside the former showroom, about 55 men shuffled about nervously. A few minutes after 1 a.m., Buddy Cianci arrived. The mayor hurried inside. Someone closed the blinds. From the outside, the building appeared deserted in the half-light of a waning moon.
Cianci wore a short-sleeved blue shirt and no tie.
"We mean business, and we're not going to let anyone stop you from doing your job," he barked. "You will be protected physically. We're not going to stand for any abuse.
"One hundred policemen will be here shortly," Cianci said. "They will be carrying shotguns and they will be riding shotgun."
A few men laughed. There was a smattering of applause.
As if on cue, police cruisers suddenly filled the lot. Cianci urged the men outside, where they saw a squadron of Providence police officers forming in military ranks. Each officer carried a shotgun and wore a bandoleer of spare ammunition.
Cianci and city supervisors, one wearing National Guard fatigues, exhorted the men to mount their garbage trucks. The sound and smell of diesel engines filled the night. Each truck carried a Teamsters driver, two garbage pickers and a shotgun-toting policeman.
A supervisor shouted the command, "Go, go, go," and the first truck lurched from the parking lot. Others followed.
And so it went, as Buddy Cianci deployed his troops through the sleeping streets of Providence to collect the garbage.
'THIS IS WATERLOO... EITHER FOR HIM OR FOR ME'
BY THE SUMMER of 1981, the mayor's popularity was at an all-time low. He had been crushed in the 1980 race for governor, losing every city and town in Rhode Island, and every ward in Providence. The city was reeling from a budget crisis and a highly unpopular mid-year tax hike.
In the spring, several hundred angry taxpayers had chanted for Cianci's resignation as he pleaded with the City Council to approve the tax increase. Otherwise, he said, Providence might become another Cleveland -- a bankrupt city that had become the nation's poster child for urban despair when its polluted river burst into flames.
By July, the city's largest labor union was in open revolt. On a steamy Monday, members of Local 1033 of the Laborers' union walked off the job at the city's crumbling sewage plant to protest a cutback in overtime pay. The strike spread quickly to disgruntled workers in Parks and Public Works. The Roger Williams Park Zoo closed. After the trash workers went out, garbage started piling up on curbs in 95-degree heat.
Cianci faced down Local 1033 president Joseph Virgilio. He fired the striking garbage workers and hired a private company to collect the trash.
"This is Waterloo," Cianci said. "Either for him or for me, but it's Waterloo. Hopefully, for him."
The mayor, who had been sworn in for his second term protected by a bulletproof shield and rooftop snipers because of death threats, had round-the-clock police guards at his house.
Strikers outside City Hall showered him with curses and cries of "maggot" as police bodyguards escorted him through the gauntlet outside his private entrance.
Standing by Cianci were loyal lieutenants such as Joseph DiSanto, the Republican city chairman and head of Public Works; Edward F. "Buckles" Melise, the city highway superintendent; and Jake Kaplan, a flamboyant car dealer and businessman who had offered his lot as the staging area for the midnight ride of the garbage trucks.
DiSanto, Melise and Kaplan served on the mayor's campaign committee, which raised record amounts of money.
Danny and Jack Capuano, also Cianci supporters, owned United Sanitation of Cranston, which had done business in Providence for years. When the city's garbage men walked out, Cianci hired the Capuanos' company to fill the breach.
Then there was Buckles's pal Tommy Ricci, one of the commandos who had sneaked into the Public Works garage and taken the garbage trucks. Ricci was part of the crew who patrolled the city in cars and pickup trucks, watching for ambushes.
A gruff, heavyset, tattooed entrepreneur, Ricci was a man of many corporate identities. Several of his companies did contracting, painting and snowplowing for the city. One was called Busy Bee Construction Co.
This disparate group roamed Providence that turbulent summer, watching out for the mayor's interests, and their own.
BUCKLES, BOBO AND THE BLACKJACKS
BUCKLES MELISE grew up on Federal Hill, on Gesler Street, across the street from Tommy Ricci.
In 1967, Buckles became a $1.97-an-hour laborer for the city. Except for a brief hiatus in 1971, when he pleaded no contest to breaking & entering and possession of burglary tools, his bread and butter was the Providence Department of Public Works.
Buckles was short and rugged, with a full head of curly hair; Cianci referred to him as a "dese, dem and dose" guy. But Buckles was a valuable soldier in Buddy's army. He was well known on Federal Hill, where he served on the 13th Ward Democratic Committee.
In 1978, when Cianci ran for reelection, the 13th Ward committee supported the Republican mayor. After Cianci won, Buckles and other allies on the ward committee, including Anthony "Blackjack" DelSanto, were rewarded with promotions in Public Works.
Buckles was put in charge of vermin control. He was enthusiastic and bought rat poison in record quantities -- twice as much as the City of Cleveland, which was four times bigger than Providence.
His poison program wound up feeding the rats instead of killing them. Bristling at criticism that he was incompetent, Buckles said that he had studied up on how to control rats. He said he had even gone to the library and "breezed" through a book on the subject.
In 1980, Buckles stood by Cianci in a political battle for control of Public Works. The next year, he was promoted to highway superintendent, the number-two job in the department.
"The fellow is a hard worker and he goes to college nights. I like that," said Joe DiSanto, Cianci's Public Works chief. "He promised his personal loyalty to me."
Buckles's friend Tommy Ricci worked in construction, like his father, and struck out on his own when he was 17. While Joseph Doorley was mayor, Ricci started getting small jobs with the city, such as repairing school roofs. He learned the nuances -- how to bid on a job, and how to split a bigger job into two smaller jobs so that it wouldn't have to go out to bid. He learned that you could charge more when it was an "emergency contract."
Ricci also learned the value of attending political fundraisers and working for candidates. He bought sound equipment and put it in a used car for campaigns.
The city work poured in.
When Cianci challenged Doorley in 1974, Ricci publicly supported Doorley. But to cover his bets, he privately steered relatives, money and cars with sound equipment to the Cianci campaign. When Cianci won, Ricci jumped on the bandwagon. He and his friend, Caesar Brown, an electrician and chairman of the 7th Ward Republican Committee, threw fundraising parties for Cianci.
Ricci went to his pal Buckles, who was in charge of snowplowing. Buckles put him on the list of "standby crews" -- plowers who would be called in, and paid, when there was the threat of a storm. City officials were still sensitive to the disastrous Blizzard of '78.
Ricci's annual Christmas parties became larger and livelier. He moved them from his garage on Hartford Avenue to nice restaurants. He hired bands and a magician. One year, as the magician performed, one of Ricci's friends shouted: "Can you turn snow into money? Tommy can!"
Later that night, it started snowing. Party-goers rushed out to get their plows.
CIANCI WAS AMUSED by the characters in Public Works.
Buckles Melise and Blackjack DelSanto, wearing jeans and leather jackets, would saunter into the mayor's office on city business.
DelSanto, a big man who enjoyed clowning around, would joke with the mayor's secretaries. "Is the mayor bothering you? Should I break his legs?"
Cianci would laugh along.
Buckles was a fixture at meetings of the mayor's campaign tickets committee, parking his pink Cadillac outside City Hall.
Cianci sat at his desk while his department directors and city contractors reported on ticket sales. The room was heavy with large stomachs and gold jewelry. Cigarette smoke mingled with the scent of cologne.
Cianci's mother, Esther, sat at a card table, collecting the money that was turned in from ticket sales. Cash -- legal then -- was preferred.
Some city workers and vendors complained of the pressure to buy and sell fundraising tickets. Others saw it as the cost of doing business -- part of the political process. An internal fundraising memo pitched a birthday fundraiser for Cianci as a chance for "the people to pay homage."
Buckles was a good ticket salesman. He tapped into his Federal Hill network, and he had 180 guys working under him at Public Works, plus various private snowplowers and other vendors.
Politically, Cianci needed guys like Buckles. The mayor was losing his Republican base on the East Side. He counted more heavily on the Italian neighborhoods of Federal Hill, Silver Lake and the North End.
One day, Cianci aide Bruce Melucci began hearing rumors that Buckles was using city resources to pave private driveways. But whenever Melucci would ask Joseph DiSanto, the Public Works chief, or the mayor, "they'd brush me off and say it wasn't true, or that it was exaggerated."
Cianci did get angry when he learned that state police detectives were conducting surveillance of alleged no-show Public Works employees. Some of the workers had spotted the cops taking their pictures on Federal Hill, and alerted the mayor. Cianci called Col. Walter Stone, superintendent of the state police, and complained that he hadn't been clued in to the investigation.
Corruption at Public Works had long been a problem for Cianci. While he was running for governor, a grand jury indicted seven men in a no-show jobs scam at Public Works. Several had mob ties. Cianci had been called to testify before the grand jury about a meeting he had called with department heads to discuss the investigation.
One of the officials indicted, the city's night highway superintendent, was also charged with kidnapping and participating in the beating of a suspected mob informant with a wooden ax handle. He joined with Buckles and Blackjack in calling the charges a frame-up designed to discredit the mayor.
Afterward, Cianci was bitter toward the state police.
One day, as the mayor rode in a parade, his horse defecated on the street. Cianci looked at a nearby state trooper and said, "Tell Stone that when I'm governor, he'll be cleaning this up."
BUCKLES MELISE was a busy man.
As the Great Garbage Strike of 1981 wore on, he was on the front lines, rallying the troops, conferring with the mayor and joining in union negotiating sessions with Public Works chief Joe DiSanto.
He was also moonlighting, he would later testify, as a bagman.
With the city changing over to a private garbage contractor -- at a considerable savings to taxpayers, Cianci boasted -- it no longer had need of 28 used garbage trucks.
Jake Kaplan, the car dealer and Cianci supporter, helped broker a deal to sell the trucks to Ralph's Truck World in New Hampshire.
According to a subsequent federal court indictment, Kaplan and DiSanto extorted a $15,000 kickback from the buyers. Buckles would later testify that in August 1981, he picked up $10,000 in cash from Kaplan, who had received it from the buyer, and brought it to DiSanto, who gave him half.
Kaplan said that he received a legitimate broker's fee, not a bribe. DiSanto denied receiving any money. The two men were acquitted after a trial in 1985. Kaplan's lawyer argued that Buckles was acting on his own, to help his friends, the Capuanos, dispose of the city trucks they had inherited as part of their contract.
Meanwhile, while Cianci was holding the line against the union, his former top aide says that he was taking bribes from the Capuanos, according to court records.
Ronald Glantz, who was Cianci's top aide from 1975 until early 1981, alleged in court records earlier this year in Cianci's corruption case that the mayor received cash payoffs totaling $350,000 from the Capuanos, who received millions of dollars worth of business from Providence in the 1970s and 1980s. Cianci and the Capuanos, who have never been charged in connection with Glantz's allegations, deny them.
(Glantz, one of Cianci's closest aides, was later convicted with the Democratic city chairman of extorting kickbacks for the purchase of city garbage trucks, and of perjury for lying to a grand jury investigating some of his other personal business dealings.)
(Similar allegations against the Capuanos surfaced in the corruption investigation of former Gov. Edward D. DiPrete; according to court records, DiPrete's chief fundraiser alleged that the Capuanos bribed DiPrete when he was mayor of Cranston, in the early 1980s, and even took him on a junket to Atlantic City, in exchange for trash contracts there. The Capuanos acknowledged the Atlantic City junket, but denied it was a payoff, as the garbage contract had already been signed.)
Buckles Melise had other deals cooking at Public Works, one allegedly with his friend, Tommy Ricci. Court testimony would later allege that Buckles was a partner in Ricci's Busy Bee Construction Co., even though his name didn't appear on incorporation papers. Ricci says that was a misunderstanding, that Melise had merely recommended him for a construction job, but that he was never a partner.
From 1981 to 1984, the Busy Bee billed the city for $122,000 worth of snowplowing, including $59,000 that a 1984 indictment accused him of never doing. Ricci says that he did the work, noting that the charges were dismissed in 1990 for lack of speedy prosecution.
To boost his snowplowing fleet, Ricci was also accused of scheming with Public Works officials to receive city trucks and equipment that had been falsely declared "junk." According to an informant's affidavit, one dump truck went into the Public Works garage with a "City of Providence" seal on the door, and came out with another seal that said, "Busy Bee."
Those charges, too, were thrown out. Ricci, who would later pursue a quixotic quest to recover the equipment that authorities had confiscated, says that it truly was junk.
In the early 1980s, the FBI took note of the fact that the city's snowplowing costs had gone from $385,000 one winter to $1.2 million the next, despite a mild season.
They discovered that Buckles was taking kickbacks from contractors who were billing the city for work they never did; one contractor didn't even own any plows. Melise also threatened another contractor, who actually did plow, that he would lose his city business if he didn't come up with some cash. The contractor paid up.
THEN THERE WAS Bobo, and the two Blackjacks.
The investigation of no-show jobs intensified in Public Works. The grand jury indicted William "Blackjack" DelSanto. He was also known as "Billy Black," to distinguish him from his brother, Anthony "Blackjack" DelSanto, another Cianci Public Works loyalist who served with Buckles on the 13th Ward Democratic Committee.
"Billy Black" was on the payroll as a "sidewalk inspector" -- a job that left him plenty of time for his duties as a capo regime in the Patriarca crime family.
He could often be found talking with other wiseguys on the sidewalk outside Tony's Colonial Market on Atwells Avenue. Early in 1979, the Rhode Island State Police tailed "Billy Black" DelSanto and Raymond "Junior" Patriarca to the Boston headquarters of underboss Gennaro "Jerry" Angiulo.
"Billy Black" was close to another mobster, Frank "Bobo" Marrapese, whom Buddy Cianci had once prosecuted for conspiracy to steal a camper.
Bobo had come far in the decade since Cianci sent him to prison. He ran a sizable gambling and loan-sharking operation, and his rap sheet included arrests for threatening to kill someone, assault, possession of stolen goods, breaking and entering, larceny and possession of a machine gun. He could usually be found around the corner from Tony's Colonial Market, at the Acorn Social Club.
Bobo also owned a paving company, which is where Buckles came in.
In the summer and fall of 1982, Cianci presented the citizens of Providence with a $2.9-million street and sidewalk paving blitz -- just in time for the November election. His Democratic critics blasted the program as a transparent attempt to buy the election with taxpayers' money -- doing what the Department of Public Works should have been doing all along if it wasn't so corrupt and inept.
The upshot was that streets and sidewalks got redone. Cianci won reelection, by 1,074 votes. And Bobo made out like a bandit. During the program, Buckles steered 7,000 tons of city asphalt to Bobo's paving company, worth $150,000. Bobo's company used the asphalt to pave private driveways, including one at the home of a Mafia porn king.
Buckles would send an emissary to Coventry Sand and Gravel. The man would flash his belt buckle, the signal that Buckles Melise had sent him, and then cart off a truck-load of Providence asphalt. Later, Buckles would meet Bobo at the Acorn Social Club to close the deal and receive his commission. This was the same bar where Bobo had killed mobster Dickie Callei in 1975, shooting him five times in the back.
One night in August, at the height of the asphalt scheme, Bobo was driving down Westminster Street when a Volkswagen cut off his sedan. Bobo would later be accused of beating the offending driver, a 20-year-old East Providence man, to death with a baseball bat. After agreeing to plead no contest, Marrapese later changed his mind at a court hearing and withdrew his plea. He was acquitted at trial.
Besides asphalt, Buckles also gave Bobo city snowplowing work. When that became a source of public controversy, Buckles explained that his friendship with Bobo and "the Marrapese family" dated back to their childhood on Federal Hill.
"Mr. Marrapese always did his work and he did a good job," Buckles told a radio interviewer. "What bothers me in the story, reading it, is using the word 'organized crime.' I don't ever see anybody belonging to organized crime that worked for the City of Providence."
OPERATION GARBAGE TRUCK went off without a hitch.
As the trucks rumbled through the city, collecting trash, Cianci rode around in a car, getting updates from the front.
"We caught them with their pants down," gloated one Public Works supervisor.
Tommy Ricci and his crew also patrolled the streets that night. On Branch Avenue, a union man rammed his green pickup truck into a garbage truck. Ricci and his men pushed the pickup out of the way and called a rescue for the injured man.
But their fears that the union was going to commandeer tractor-trailer trucks and ram the garbage trucks never materialized.
Buddy's blitzkrieg caught the public's imagination. He was the steely eyed mayor standing up to the unions. His sagging popularity soared. A few days later, he went horseback riding in Roger Williams Park.
Sixteen days after it began, the bitter garbage strike ended. The union won some concessions, but Cianci came out on top. The city garbage collection remained with the Capuanos.
"It's a crossroads for this city," declared Cianci. "All that mob can do what they want, but now they know one thing: They don't run this city, and they never will."
Early in 1982, several months after the strike, a conservative anti-labor group flew Cianci to London for a conference about the growing influence of public-employee unions. They wanted to hear how the mayor had broken the garbage strike.
When Cianci returned to Providence, he told a councilman how he had regaled his audience with tales of sending Buckles Melise out to break some heads.
"He talked about how he had sent Buckles down to the line to beat the [expletive] out of guys," says Malcolm Farmer III, a former Republican councilman from the East Side. "He said how Buckles sledge-hammered one guy and stuck his thumb in another guy's eye."
Cianci roared with laughter as he told the story. Using Buckles, he said, was "great public policy."
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