Supporting casts were strategically placed on either side of the courtroom and the stage was set for Vincent (Chin) Gigante’s grand finale in Brooklyn Federal Court. 

FBI agents Tom Krall, Joy Adam, Craig Donlon, Bob Vosler, and Michael Campi – and paralegal Kathryn Cintron – were in the first row on one side waiting for Gigante and Judge I. Leo Glasser to enter.

On the other side sat Gigante’s sons Vincent and Salvatore, daughters Carmela and Lucia, and his brother, Father Louis Gigante, who for years had walked arm-in-arm through Greenwich Village with pajama-clad Vincent as the straight man for the crazy-man act of the legendary Mafia boss.

The priest, who wore a white collar for those strolls, and when attending his brother’s racketeering and murder trial in 1997, was not wearing one this time – a hint that Father Gigante was there for moral support, not for an appearance before the television cameras stationed right outside the courthouse. There was no indication, however, that a final plot twist in the endless Gigante saga would place someone into the priest’s former role.

As the play began on Monday, it looked for a fleeting moment like Chin was going to put on his old mumbling, bumbling, Daffy Don routine, the one he used to fool shrinks for more than three decades.

His hair and prison duds were disheveled, and as courtroom

deputy Louise Schaillat began the pro forma reading of the “promise to tell the truth” oath that all defendants take before they plead guilty, Gigante started to raise his left hand.

But after a few seconds – old habits are often hard to break – Chin raised his right hand and followed the new script that prosecutors and defense lawyer Benjamin Brafman had crafted.

Gigante listened attentively as Glasser (right) told him that according to his plea bargain, any relatives who may have aided him obstruct justice would not be prosecuted. Pausing occasionally to confer with Brafman – who assured Glasser that his client understood what was going on – Gigante answered the Judge’s queries appropriately.

“No, your Honor,” said Gigante, shaking his head back and forth for emphasis, when asked if he had taken any prescription drugs that would have clouded his ability to comprehend or if anyone had forced him or threatened him to plead guilty.

“Yes, your Honor,” he said, nodding his head, when asked whether he had discussed the plea agreement with his attorney, whether he had obstructed justice by deceiving psychiatrists for seven years, whether he understood that he would receive three more years in prison and have to pay $100 in court costs.

His only ailments, said Brafman, were common for 75-year-old men. He was undergoing treatment for an eye infection, and suffered hearing loss, a condition that prompted Glasser, a notorious low talker, to speak loud enough for Gigante and the entire courtroom to hear his words – a rare treat for reporters.

Courtesy of Glasser, who allowed Gigante and his son Andrew (left) to say their good byes in the well 

of the courtroom – Andrew would plead guilty later – the proceeding featured a smiling, animated Gigante shaking hands with defense lawyers and blowing kisses to his children and his brother in the spectator section.

Though it played a lot like a 10-minute silent movie, a relaxed Gigante cracked jokes, smiled often, and looked alert. His actions, reinforced by the lucidity he displayed during his plea as well as Brafman’s assurances that his client was mentally competent to plead guilty, left no doubt in Gang Land’s estimation that he was.

Outside the courtroom, however, Brafman stood before the television cameras and sounded a lot like Father Gigante did six years ago, (right) not like the lawyer who had just stood next to Chin Gigante and guided him through a plea deal that he had worked out with prosecutors Paul Weinstein, Dan Dorsky and Joey Lipton.

While Gigante was competent enough to plead guilty to obstructing justice from 1990 through 1997 by deceiving doctors about his mental state, Brafman said, his client was “clearly suffering from dementia.”

He had “become too old and too sick and too tired to fight,” said Brafman, implying that if Gigante were younger and in better health, Brafman the hotshot lawyer could have engineered an acquittal despite the multitude of evidence prosecutors had amassed.

Even if true, and Gang Land thinks it’s not, it seems like poor form to blame a client who paid him a healthy legal fee for negotiating a guilty plea, while arguing that he could have won an acquittal.

More likely, however, as law enforcement and defense sources say, the aging and ailing gangster was doomed to be convicted again, and Brafman engineered a good plea deal for Gigante because he was able to convince his codefendants, some who had cases they could win, to plead guilty too.

During his heyday, when Gigante ran his crime family out of the Triangle Social Club on Sullivan Street, he was closely attended by four wiseguys named Dominick – Fat Dom Alongi, Baldy Dom Cantarino, Dom The Sailor DiQuarto and Quiet Dom Cirillo. (left)

Today, only Quiet Dom, 73, still survives, and sources on both sides of the law say Cirillo, like Gigante, a former professional boxer who was convicted of drug dealing in the 1950s, is the Genovese crime family’s go-to guy or “street boss.”

His name came up frequently during the three year probe that led to racketeering charges against three capos who served as an acting family boss – two who pleaded guilty the same day as Gigante, Liborio (Barney) Bellomo and Ernest Muscarella – and a third who died of cancer following his indictment, Frank (Farby) Serpico. (right)

But Quiet Dom, who never discusses family business on the telephone, preferring “walk talks” on city streets away from FBI bugs, remains an elusive target.

Mob Star: The Story of John Gotti

Mob Star: The Story of John Gotti – the book it took yours truly and Gene Mustain 17 years to do – tells the complete saga of John Gotti, from his treacherous rise to his defiant downfall. Although we didn't know it at the time, we began working on "Mob Star" in 1985, when we began covering the Gotti story as news reporters.

The first edition came out in 1988, and we finished this new edition three days before Gotti died in June 2002. We added a postscript, and Alpha Books has distributed it to the nation's bookstores.

With a 40,000-word update, the new edition contains the entire Gotti saga right up to his time in prison and his death from throat cancer.

The 378 page, full-size book uses eight additional chapters, a prologue and an epilogue to complete the story we began telling (better than any other reporters, we might add!) when we covered the Gotti-orchestrated, midtown Manhattan assassination of former Gambino boss Paul Castellano.

For the last and best words on Gotti, this is the book to have. It is specially priced at Amazon.com at $11.87, more than five bucks off the suggested retail price.

    Not Really For Idiots

Whether you're a Gang Land regular or an occasional visitor, you'll enjoy  "The Complete Idiot's Guide to The Mafia," a book I wrote for Alpha Books. It's filled with real stuff about real wiseguys and insight about the ways that mobsters make their money. It's 343 pages of true stories of life and death, honor and betrayal. Get it at your local book store, or at Gang Land's favorite, Amazon.com, where the powers that be have knocked the price down to $13.27, so low I am concerned that the Godfather of online booksellers has forgotten about my end.