COPS HOPE FOR MOB SEEN
Stake out SI funeral for Cali
The murdered boss of the Gambino crime family was laid to rest on Staten Island Tuesday with a stunningly low-key service attended by about a dozen mourners who were carefully watched and photographed by authorities armed with highpowered lenses.
Law enforcement was especially keen to get a potential who’s who of Gambinos on camera — because unlike former family boss John Gotti, Francesco “Franky Boy’’ Cali, who was killed last week, made it a point to try to keep himself and his associates off the radar, sources said.
“Not like the old days of John Gotti, where they were walking up and down Mulberry Street and [the feds] were getting everybody’s picture,’’ one source said.
Around 9:30 a.m., a handful of cars including two black Mercedes and a Chevy Suburban pulled up to the Scarpaci Funeral Home in Pleasant Plains and drove around back.
A pewter-gray Maserati Quattroporte remained in front of the funeral home as its male driver hopped out and went inside, leaving a woman dressed in black in the car.
Meanwhile, four black unmarked law-enforcement vehicles were parked across the street, each with a male driver armed with a handheld radio — and cameras with 500mm lenses about a foot wide.
As the cars drove by, the agents snapped away. At least two of them confirmed they were “law enforcement,’’ and a source separately said they were both FBI and NYPD.
“They want to know who shows up, who the players are, who’s going to possibly take over, who’s active, who‘s not. The pecking order,” the source said.
But the source added of the small turnout, “Unfortunately, it’s very limited. But they have to take what they can get.’’
The source noted that Cali, who was Sicilian, typically chose his closest associates direct from Sicily because he believed that they were more likely to adhere to omerta, the Mafia code of silence, making it hard for law enforcement to garner much intel about them.
Authorities “don’t know everyone’’ in the Gambino family these days, the source said.
“Under Cali, [the family] has been very low-key . . . Now [mobsters] don’t get together, they don’t talk as much as they used to. They’re just not as public as they were.
“That’s because of John Gotti,’’ the source said. “John Gotti set them back years making it too easy for law enforcement to identify them. That’s the whole reason [Cali and his cohorts] went to the Sicilians.
“They’re more old-school, they’re quiet. If they get caught, they don’t slip.’’
Cops say Cali, 53, was shot by construction worker Anthony Comello in front of the mob boss’ Staten Island home last Wednesday. Law-enforcement sources say Comello may have been mad at Cali for barring him from dating the don’s niece.
The mourners at Cali’s final farewell Tuesday spent an hour inside the funeral home before zooming off to the cemetery.
Cali’s bronze casket was carried out of the parlor on the shoulders of eight funeral-home workers who served as pallbearers. They loaded it into a hearse, covered with four bags of white long-stem roses, that headed to the Moravian Cemetery in New Dorp with a 123rd Precinct patrol car leading the way as an escort.
Two more cop cars were waiting inside the cemetery, and a cop was stationed on foot there.
A source said Cali’s relatives “put it out through channels that they wanted [the funeral] to be private. They didn’t want the whole Gambino crime family showing up there today. That’s like 200 guys alone, plus their families.”
Besides, “a lot of [Cali’s reputed Mafia pals] can’t go because they’re on parole and can’t associate with other mobsters. Like Gene Gotti and John Carneglia. So it’s a combination of the two,’’ the source added.