Nick the Broker is chapter 4 of a crime novel I’m working on.
The story appeared originally in American Crime Magazine.
You can read the first three chapters via the links at the end of the story.
Nick the Broker
By Paul Davis
Over a second cup of coffee in the kitchen of his grandmother’s South Philadelphia rowhouse, former Cosa Nostra capo and government cooperating witness Salvatore “Salvie Shotgun” Stillitano launched into telling me stories about his life and his late father's life.
As a writer, I found his stories to be interesting, and my tape recorder was running to capture them. He spoke in a fast clip with a dramatic flair as he told me about his great-grandfather and namesake, Salvatore Stillitano, his grandfather Lorenzo and his father Nunzio.
While living and traveling
with his late father as a teenager, Nick Stillitano regaled his son with stories
of their Cosa Nostra tradition of crime.
According to his father, the elder Salvatore was a “Man of Honor” and boss in the Fortuna clan in the Province of Palermo in Sicily. Life was good for Stillitano and the clan, but the old mafioso was wise enough to know that America was the future for Cosa Nostra, so he sent his second oldest son Lorenzo to South Philadelphia where he had cousins. His oldest son remained with him in Sicily.
Lorenzo Stillitano grew up in South Philly and had charm and movie star good looks. He was outgoing, engaging and a good
earner for the Philadelphia Cosa Nostra organized crime family.
Lorenzo was a bootlegger and gambler, and with approval from the boss, Angelo Bruno, he used his Sicilian family contacts to foster overseas business. Bruno loaned Lorenzo Stillitano and his overseas connections to the Bonfiglio crime family, cementing Bruno’s relationship with Lupo Bonfiglio.
Lorenzo’s son Nunzio, known as Nick, was born and raised in South Philadelphia. He followed Lorenzo and became a soldier in The Philadelphia Cosa Nostra organized crime family. He dressed conservatively and he was a handsome man in a quiet way with dark wavey hair. He became a gambler, a local fixer and a good earner. Nick Stillitano was good with his fists and a knife, but he was also business-like, level-headed, reserved, organized, and very smart.
Nick Stillitano was a natural leader among his young, hot-tempered and violent cohorts. Angelo Bruno, the then-boss of the Philadelphia and South Jersey crime family, respected Lorenzo and saw Nick’s qualities.
In those early days Nick Stillitano shined as an organizer and negotiator, but he also still had a reputation of being a ruthless enforcer when he absolutely needed to be one, often using a knife, hence the early nickname “Nick Stiletto.” He later became a boxing manager and promoter and was involved in illegal gambling and numerous money-making schemes. He also used some of his former boxers to do his rough work, such as Anthony “Tony Ball-Peen” Gina.
Gina was Stillitano’s longtime number two. One might not expect that a thin, 5’5 man would be the crew’s chief enforcer, but Gina was a lean and muscular former welterweight boxer who loved to knock out bigger men.
He was called “Tony Ball-Peen” in his boxing days because he was said to hit like a ball-peen hammer, but Gina also used the real thing on a good number of people outside of the ring.
In the late 1960s Nick Stillitano and Tony Gina went to a South Philly bar to have a couple of drinks. Stillitano frowned when he saw Rocco Stucci, a fighter he once managed and then handed him over to another manager when Angelo Bruno ordered him to do so.
Stucci, an up-and-coming heavyweight, disliked Stillitano. Stucci drank and when he was drunk, he was mean and dirty. From the bar, Stucci began to insult Stillitano, calling him a crook and a faggot. Gina walked over and tried to calm down the drunken boxer, telling him that Stillitano was a made man, but Stucci brushed off Gina, calling him a “washed-up welterweight.”
Nick Stillitano did not respond to Stucci’s insults and got up calmly to leave the bar. Stucci rushed up to Stillitano and hit him in the face with a swift and hard left jab that sent Stillitano crashing into the table and chairs. Gina pulled out a short, leather-bound metal sap and began to slap the bigger boxer across the back of his head as Stucci tried to pull up Stillitano from the floor.
When Stucci got Stillitano to his feet, he felt a pain in his stomach, as Stillitano had pulled out his stiletto knife and plunged the sharp blade into Stucci’s middle. The boxer became enraged, and he tossed Stillitano across the room, all the while receiving numerous blows on his head from Gina’s sap.
Stucci shoved off the men who tried to restrain him and he threw a wild swing at Gina, who slipped the punch and stepped back. Finally, Stucci collapsed to the floor. The owner of the bar rushed Stillitano and Gina into the bar’s kitchen and out the back door before the police and an ambulance arrived.
Angelo Bruno was not happy. Although he respected Nick Stillitano and he
admired his late father Lorenzo, Stucci was a mob fighter, and he had made the
wiseguys in Philadelphia and New York a lot of money. He called in Stillitano
and Gina for a "sitdown" meeting.
Stillitano and Gina reported to a small bar after it was closed. Bruno sat alone at a table. Bruno motioned for Stillitano and Gina to sit across from him. He said he had heard about the bar altercation from others who were there that night.
“This is not like you, Nick,” Bruno said, shaking his head sadly.
Stillitano apologized and said he was afraid the drunken boxer was going to beat him to death.
Bruno said that they had
Stucci in a private room at a hospital in New Jersey and they put out the story
that that the fighter had been hit by a car. The fight he was scheduled for
that month had to be postponed.
As for Nick, Bruno said he had to get out of South Philly as reporters and the local cops were asking questions.
Bruno said he arranged for Stillitano to be taken in by Bruno’s capo of the crew in Wildwood, New Jersey. He informed Stillitano that while he operated from the New Jersey shore resort town, he would still report directly to Bruno. And he would continue to promote fights for Bruno and Luigi “Lupo” Bonfiglio, the boss of the Bonfiglio Cosa Nostra organized crime family in New York, and Bruno’s friend on the commission.
The two mob bosses wanted Stillitano to continue to promote boxing matches and arrange crooked fights up and down the east coast, as well as out west. Stillitano was told to give the Wildwood capo a small taste of the profits.
“Take Tony with you to Wildwood,” Bruno said.
Stillitano and Gina, pleased not to have been “whacked,” thanked the boss.
As Stillitano and Gina were leaving the bar, Bruno told the two men that the Wildwood crew had a problem, and he wanted them to handle it.
“Washed up welterweight, am I?” Gina said to Stillitano as they stepped into the street. “I knocked out that big heavyweight bum, didn’t I?”
Stucci later died from his bar fight injuries.
Late that week, Stillitano
and Gina drove to Wildwood and met with the capo, “Johnny Rose,” Rosetti, who
was known locally as “Johnny Gavone” as he was a huge fat man, and he ate and dressed like a slob.
Rosetti welcomed Stillitano, as he knew his father and he heard that he was a big earner. But some in his Wildwood crew were resentful. Mob associates in the crew like Thomas “Tommy Tomatoes” Biondo disliked the two South Philly mobsters. Called “Tomatoes” due to his father owning a large tomato farm, he complained about the newcomers to his fellow mob associates.
The problem Bruno spoke of was the first order of business.
Rosetti instructed Stillitano and Gina to take care of Roman Santini, a former associate of Rosetti’s who was on a robbery spree and was knocking over dice and card games run by the Rosetti crew as well as games run by New York mobsters.
Santini, a slim, rat-faced 30-year-old, was a violent killer and a fearless and crazy gunman who killed a New York made guy in one of his robberies. The New Yorkers told Rosetti to take care of “business,” or they would come in and kill Santini themselves.
This was a great loss of face for Rosetti, whose men could not, or would not, take out the killer.
Stillitano and Gina quickly met with a former pal of Romeo Santini and asked the hood to pass on an offer. Stillitano told the friend to tell Santini that he would give the killer an all-expenses paid vacation to Sicily. Stillitano would then set Santini up in Sicily and he would become a Sicilian boss.
Santini’s greed and ego made him accept the offer. Stillitano and Gina flew to Las Vegas, where Santini was living it up with a beautiful blonde and gambling away the money he robbed.
Stillitano and Gina met Santini in a hotel room on the Strip. Santini said he liked the deal and would move to Sicily. Gina got up and said he had to go to the bathroom to take a piss. As Santini was refilling their glasses, Gina came up behind Santini and threw piano wire around the killer's neck. As Santini was being strangled brutally, Stillitano stepped in and stabbed Santini in the heart.
Stillitano then called the telephone number he had been given and asked that someone come get the body and dispose of it.
The murder gained Stillitano and Gina a lot of respect in Philadelphia and New York.
But the local Wildwood crew, who loved Santini, were angry with the two South Philly mobsters.
Stillitano later returned to South Philly and told Bruno that the Santini pal told him that Santini was doing the bidding of Carmine “Big Carmine” Polina, the boss of the New York Gambone Cosa Nostra crime family, and a crime commission member. Known derisively as “The Face” for his large head, nose and ears, the greedy and violent New York boss coveted Bruno’s gambling operations in New Jersey. He was using Santini to cause dissention in the crime families.
Bruno told Stillitano to keep the news under his hat.
New Jersey is the only state in America that has several different Cosa Nostra families operating there. There were the five New York families, the DeCavalcante New Jersey crime family, and the Philadelphia crime family.
Due to his diplomatic and business qualities, Bruno made Stillitano the capo of the Wildwood crew when Rosetti died of natural causes. Prior to Stillitano taking over, the crew members under Rosetti had numerous territorial disputes with the New York crime families. Bruno ordered Stillitano to resolve the disputes.
Stillitano met with the New York and DeCavalcante capos and worked out deals that satisfied
everyone, even Carmine Polino, although “The Face” secretly planned to outsmart
Stillitano and take over Bruno’s New Jersey operations.
Due to Stillitano’s skills, Bruno, who was a member of the national crime commission, often used Stillitano as a Commission representative with foreign crime organizations, government officials and businessmen. In addition to his boxing matches, “Nick the Broker” Stillitano also organized gambling junkets overseas and looked after Bruno’s overseas interests, as well as those of Lupo Bonfiglio and the other New York members of the national commission.
Stillitano was Bruno's representative of the Philadelphia and New York families’ interests in Las Vegas, the Caribbean, London, Italy, and other places around the world. Those interests included illegal gambling, extortion and murder.
All was well for Nick Stillitano until Angelo Bruno ordered him to travel to Palmero, Sicily and broker a deal between waring Sicilian Cosa Nostra clans over drug trafficking.
© 2025 Paul Davis
Note: You can read the first three chapters via the links below:
Paul Davis On Crime: My Crime Fiction: 'The Rigano Murders'
Paul Davis On Crime: My Crime Fiction: 'From South Philly To Sicily'
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