They were two very different godfathers, separated by thousands of kilometers of ocean. John Gotti was the “Teflon Don,” a New York mobster who adored public attention and defied lawmen to get him. Toto Riina was a peasant from rural Sicily, a boss who operated in the shadows. In the late 80s and early 90s, it required two very different approaches to bring them to justice. In the US, crime fighters were unflagging in their pursuit of Gotti. In Sicily, it would take a revolution by the people of Palermo to put Riina behind bars.
兩位截然不同的教父，他們中間隔著數千公里的海洋。約翰•高提綽號「不沾鍋老大」，這位紐約黑手黨員喜歡招搖，執法者卻拿他莫可奈何。托托•雷依納則出身西西里鄉間，他是躲在暗處操作的老大。一九八０年代末一九九０年代初，將他們繩之以法的，是兩種截然不同的方式。在美國，執法人員持續追捕高提；在西西里，雷依納則是因為巴勒摩人民的革命而入獄。
John Gotti was a violent and reckless hoodlum from his earliest days. A young gangster called Henry Hill was drinking in a bar when he first came across the teenage Gotti. All of a sudden John Gotti came in, and without speaking to anybody, went over to the card table and started whacking a guy with a bat, almost beating the guy to death. Gotti had broken an unwritten rule of the mob — violence should only be used when there are no witnesses around. It was clear Gotti feared no one. To Henry Hill, it marked Gotti as a man destined for the top. But one man stood in the way of Gotti’s rise — Paul Castellano. He was the head of the Gambino crime family — the most powerful of all the mafia families in the US.
高提一開始是個殘暴鹵莽的混混。年輕幫派分子亨利•西爾在酒吧喝酒時，首次遇見十幾歲的他。高提突然衝進來，不發一語，直接走向牌桌用球棒開始揍人，那人差點沒命。他違反黑手黨一項不成文的規定──只能在無目擊證人時使用暴力，顯然他誰都不怕。這點讓西爾認為他是當老大的料。但有個人卻成了高提的絆腳石，他叫保羅•卡斯特拉諾，是甘比諾家族的頭子。甘比諾是全美最有勢力的黑手黨家族。
Castellano was an old-style hood, a mafioso who disguised his crimes behind a veneer of respectability. He wore two hats. He could mingle with lawyers, real estate agents, businessmen and doctors. He could talk their language. Then he wore his Gambino family hat. Gotti would have to eliminate Castellano to become boss. But Gotti was not the only one who wanted him out of the way. In 1983 president Ronald Reagan declared war on organized crime. The target was the mafia’s ruling body — known as the Commission. On it sat Paul Castellano. Under America’s tough anti-mafia Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations legislation (RICO), crime fighters could prosecute Castellano and the other bosses for running a criminal enterprise — if they could prove the Commission was meeting.
卡斯特拉諾是個舊派流氓，這位黑手黨員用威望掩飾罪行。保羅有兩種身分，他能跟律師、地產仲介、商人及醫師往來，跟他們打成一片，而他也管理甘比諾家族。高提想成為老大，就得除掉卡斯特拉諾。不過不只高提想這麼做。一九八三年，雷根總統向組織犯罪宣戰，他的目標是黑手黨的管理階層，即所謂的紀律委員會，卡斯特拉諾是其中一員。有了打擊黑手黨的「反犯罪組織侵蝕合法組織法」，執法者可以以經營犯罪企業的罪名起訴卡斯特拉諾與其他老大，但他們得先證明紀律委員會真有其事。
In February 1985, the FBI seized all five members of the Commission. Agents O’Brien and Kurins arrested Castellano and drove him to FBI headquarters in Manhattan. It was the beginning of the end of Castellano’s reign. A power vacuum had been created at the heart of the Gambino family. The situation was ripe for war. If the New York mob wanted to know what a mafia war was like, they needed look no further than Sicily. Here, the mafia’s boss was Toto Riina, an elusive, psychopathic killer from the town of Corleone. Corleone was a mafia stronghold, set high in the mountains of central Sicily. It was the place that gave its name to Marlon Brando’s character in the film The Godfather. Corleone had an unenviable reputation as a place where only the toughest Mafiosi were born and bred.
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