It began unnoticed on Monday, Feb. 4. Frank (Frankie Steel) Pontillo didn't touch his breakfast. Prison food being what it is, it takes a lot more than one rejected food tray to raise an eyebrow.

By Wednesday evening though, when he refused to touch his ninth consecutive meal, Pontillo passed the minimum threshold needed for a

The next day, when prison officials inquired, Pontillo (left) said he was protesting his lockdown and demanded to be indicted or transferred anywhere else in the country, even a maximum security prison, according to Pontillo, his attorney, and prison sources.

"What's happening here is insane and she thinks it's a big joke," Pontillo told Gang Land in a letter from the prison, (a facility that sits on a complex near a camp often likened to a country club.) Every Friday, he wrote, Gerlinski takes a tour of the solitary confinement block, where conditions are similar to those at Marion Federal Penitentiary, stops at his cell, smiles, and says, "Do you have any questions?"

Pontillo, 32, said Gerlinski has an anti-Italian bias and has abused her power by keeping him and other reputed wiseguys, also uncharged with any infractions, in a "24 hour lockup in the hole since Oct. 5, 2000."

That's when authorities charged correction officers with taking payoffs to help inmates smuggle their sperm to fertility clinics in the hope of starting families before they finished their sentences.

So far, three guards, three current and former inmates and the wife of one

Pontillo, who has been jailed since 1992 for conspiring to kill rival wiseguys in the bloody Colombo war, knows most of the players in the case. But he has never been charged in the bribery scheme and claims he has gone legit since landing in prison.

In 1998, he penned "Price of Blood," a screenplay based on his experiences growing up in Bensonhurst, Brooklyn hanging around with Colombo capo Greg Scarpa Sr. and other wiseguys at the Wimpy Boys Social Club.

"Since we been in 'the hole,'" Pontillo wrote, "she removed shampoo, vitamins, Q-tips, radios, batteries, lotion, toothpaste, the typewriter from 'the  hole' library. She (says she) removes this stuff for security reasons when in reality they're coercive tactics that crossed the line."

When lunch arrived on the fifth day, he ended his hunger strike, prison

officials and Pontillo's lawyer Richard Rehbock told Gang Land yesterday, with each putting a different spin on Pontillo's reason.

"The warden assured Frankie she would look into the case and would get back to him," said Rehbock.

"We talked to him and explained to him the health risks he faced by continuing," said spokesman William Smith, adding that Pontillo is still a suspect in a continuing investigation into corrupt activity at the prison.

Meanwhile, Frankie Steel, undoubtedly a few pounds  lighter, is still looking for a way out of the hole, before he maxes out on Jan. 11, 2004.

And tomorrow, like every other Friday, Susan Gerlinski, who has time on her side, will likely walk over to Pontillo and say, "Do you have any questions."