The Enforcer: Spilotro--The Chicago Mob's Man Over Las Vegas

The FBI's longtime organized crime-stopper recounts the career of Tony "The Ant" Spilotro, who rose from hit man to the Chicago mob's boss in Las Vegas, until he was gunned down in 1986 before his trial

Roemer's knowledge of the Chicago and Vegas Mafia is encyclopedic; he not only knows where, but also how and by whose aegis the bodies were buried. An FBI agent for 30 years, Roemer ( War of the Godfathers ) spent much of his carer in Chicago but, because the Cosa Nostra there controlled Las Vegas as well, he became a specialist on both cities. His special target was Tony "The Ant" Spilotro, a vicious hit man who was sent to Nevada in 1971 because previous "representatives" had proved too unreliable and too eager to call attention to themselves. Howard Hughes's purchase of several casinos and the FBI's unrelenting warfare on the mob cut the gangsters' income from gambling. The Ant always managed to stay out of prison, but a new Mafia regime had him killed in 1986. Roemer leaves no doubt that he considers mob members evil people and ends his book with a warning about Americans' growing enthusiasm for gambling. Photos.
Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc.

The rise and fall of a top Chicago mobster, by ex-FBI agent Roemer (War of the Godfathers, 1990). Roemer traces the life of nasty, brutish, and short Tony ``The Ant'' Spilotro, who rose from humble beginnings on the west side of Chicago to rule the West (including Las Vegas) for the Chicago crime syndicate in the 1970s and early '80s. He describes Spilotro's apprenticeship with loan shark ``Mad Sam'' DeStefano (a man Roemer questionably dubs ``the worst torture-murderer in history''); his years as hit man and ``whiz-kid'' under Felix ``Milwaukee Phil'' Alderisio, boss of the Chicago mob; and his promotion in 1971 to ``representato'' in Las Vegas, a post that included overseeing the skimming operations at top casinos and running the ``Hole-in-the-Wall Gang,'' which preyed on hotel patrons, stores, and homes. Finally, in 1986, just as he faced yet another retrial for burglary and racketeering, Spilotro was gunned down by order of the new boss, Joe Ferriola. Roemer's book has its fascinations, including a ``primer on how to skim'' and lessons on how to insult mobsters (try ``slime'' and ``scum,'' he suggests; ``eleven- and twelve-letter names [don't] seem to faze them''). But the author professes an Ahab-like obsession with his subject that doesn't quite hold up: After all, Roemer was assigned to shadow a different mobster, and his own encounters with Spilotro were limited to infrequent exchanges of name-calling. As a result, Spilotro's character, such as it was, remains a cipher. Less forgivably, the author's prose sounds as if it were ad-libbed into a dictating machine (``So it was that Tony fled from Chicago. Fled is the wrong word''), and the dialogue, which he freely admits he has ``reconstructed,'' often rings false. Best for addicts of the genre. -- Copyright ©1994, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

Retired FBI agent Roemer (Roemer, Man Against the Mob, Donald I. Fine, 1989) uses his insider's fund of information and experience to tell the story of the diminutive Tony "The Ant" Spilotro, a Chicago hit man who became the controller of mob activities in Las Vegas before he was rubbed out. Spilotro's rise up the Mafia ladder, facilitated by his natural love of violence, is the main theme of the book, but it is embedded in a web of anecdotes about contemporary mob figures, such as "Mad Sam" Destatano, whose love of torture is graphically described; Frank Cullotta, Tony's top man in the Hole in the Wall Gang; Joey Aiuppe, boss of the Chicago Outfit; and a counterbalancing roster of shining cops and FBI agents. Roemer has an easygoing, informal style, sometimes self-congratulatory, sometimes self-denigrating. He seldom gets beneath the surface of the personalities he describes, but the barroom-like chatter will be diverting for those not already sated with mob stories. For popular true crime collections.
Ben Harrison, East Orange P.L., N.J.
Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc.