Leaders of New York’s Five Families often worry about getting caught in a squeeze play between competing federal prosecutors on either side of the East River. 

Take the case of acting Luchese boss Louis (Louie Crossbay) Daidone. 

Facing trial in Manhattan for murders that took place in Brooklyn 13 and 14 years ago, Daidone, 57, was recently hit with racketeering charges in Brooklyn for ordering wiseguys to slap around a Brooklyn landlord last year because one of his tenants played music much too loud to suit a special friend of Louie Crossbay’s.

It seems to make little sense to make Daidone face the music for an assault over loud music in Brooklyn when he goes to trial in three months in Manhattan on murder charges that would mean a life sentence. Why not wait until the trial is over, and indict him in the assault case if he is acquitted of the murders. If he is convicted, the Brooklyn case becomes too little and too late to matter.

At first glance, it looks like federal prosecutors in Brooklyn (officially the Eastern District of New York) need to get a life. But beneath the surface, it’s their Manhattan counterparts (the Southern District of New York) who seem to have taken the lower road in the quest for something the feds in Brooklyn have been achieving pretty regularly in recent years – indictments and convictions of New York Mafia bosses.

No one wants to say it out loud – an attorney for Daidone comes close – but

court files in both districts and interviews with various sources tell the tale.

Here’s the way it went down:

On Dec. 10, 2002, after a yearlong probe, the feds in Brooklyn nabbed 22 Luchese wiseguys and associates on a variety of racketeering charges stemming from a takeover of a Freeport, L.I. nightclub that poured up to $10,000 a night into the family’s coffers.

Two days later, Gang Land dutifully reported the story, noting that before long Daidone, who had been overheard on wiretaps during the investigation, was likely to be snared in the case too.

On Dec 19, as Brooklyn prosecutors were developing their Luchese case, Daidone was indicted in Manhattan for allegedly engaging in a loansharking conspiracy from 1990 to 1999. It was based entirely on testimony of onetime acting bosses, Alphonse (Little Al) D’Arco (left) and Joseph (Little Joe) Defede. (right)

At the time, the office had taken down virtually the entire Newark-based DeCavalcante family but hadn’t nailed a top New York gangster since 1996. During that same period, their Brooklyn counterparts had indicted six top mobsters – ultimately convicting them all – and would soon

indict two more, Bonanno boss Joseph Massino (right) and Colombo acting boss Joel (Joe Waverly) Cacace, (left) who await trial. 

Three months later, on March 19, 2003, the Manhattan case was expanded to include a 1989 murder and another in 1990, killings for which Daidone had been implicated in 1991 but never charged.

The timing and nature of events strongly suggests Manhattan wanted very much to keep a Daidone case out of Brooklyn. “The Southern District obtained the indictment rather hastily, seemingly because of other circumstances they were looking to head off,” is how Daidone lawyer Christopher Chang diplomatically puts it. 

“They decided to arrest him for whatever reason, thinking they would be able to put the case together after the arrest. And that’s what they did. They have been trying to put the case together since December of 2002.”

Last month, Manhattan prosecutors Karl Metzner and Diane Gujarati, who have no tape recordings or physical evidence tying Daidone to the murders or the loansharking conspiracy, beefed up their witness list with four additional Luchese turncoats. 

“We will be ready for trial in January,” said Chang.

Meanwhile, Brooklyn federal prosecutors Thomas Seigel and Nicolas Bourtin wait their turn, armed with tape recordings of Louie Crossbay giving directions to the home of the Brooklyn landlord he wanted threatened, and later beaten, and the testimony of one of the wiseguys who carried his tune.

Daidone took a vow of omerta  (silence) when he was made in 1982; he lets his lawyers speak about the doubleteaming he’s getting from the feds. Meanwhile, his daughter Lori is looking to take marriage vows; she has asked a judge to help get her fiancé to the altar.

The love of her life, John Micali – (right) whom Lori concedes has not “been a model citizen his entire life” but who is now reformed – has been detained as a danger to the community since Sept. 17, when he was indicted on racketeering and bank burglary charges.

In a plea to Brooklyn Federal Judge Sterling Johnson, Lori reports that the happy couple has already paid for the entire wedding, including the cost of a church, catering hall, flowers, gowns, tuxedos and videographer – now set for Dec. 21.

“This is a terrible turn of events for a bride-to-be,” she wrote, begging that Micali be released on $3 million bail from Dec. 15 to Jan. 1, 2004, time enough to prepare, exchange vows, and spend a few days on a house arrest honeymoon.

Assistant U.S. attorney Joey Lipton won’t be sending a wedding gift. He’s opposed the request. If they really want to tie the knot, Lipton wrote, Federal Bureau of Prisons permit defendants to "get married while in custody."

Salvatore (Sammy Bull) Gravano was a defense witness for former crew member Thomas (Huck) Carbonaro, but The Bull (right) testified he would have killed Huck (left) on the spot if he had spied him in Arizona, where Gravano went to live after helping to sink John Gotti.

Luckily for Huck – he was convicted last week of plotting to kill Gravano – he managed to avoid Sammy Bull on his trips to check out the area three years ago. 

But the pint-sized turncoat knew that not every New Yorker snooping around in his new hometown posed a threat. One crack investigative reporter found him in 1999. No, not Gang Land – it was television newsman Eric Shawn.

“He came down from Fox News,” said Gravano. “(Shawn) came down with some pastries from Ferrara’s. I missed New York and some of the stuff that was there. So he brought some stuff, some goodies, down for me. He didn’t get the interview, but I got the pastries.”

Shawn confirmed Gravano’s account, with one exception: The pastries came from Alba’s, a legendary Bensonhurst, Brooklyn bakery on 18^th Ave., not far from Tali’s Bar, Sammy Bull’s old headquarters during sweeter times.

In 1972, Vincent (Buddy) Cianci listened incredulously as a Catholic priest testified that he was with Raymond L.S. Patriarca on Palm Sunday in 1968 at the exact time the New England Mafia boss had allegedly ordered an underling to whack an unsuspecting bookie. 

Within 24 hours, the savvy prosecutor, who had been merely a spectator at the trial, had established that the priest had been in Maryland that day. A day later, Cianci had the priest back in the Providence County Courthouse explaining to the jury that his prior testimony had been mistaken.

Today, Buddy Cianci, who rose from mob prosecutor to Mayor, works in the library at the low security federal prison in Fort Dix, NJ serving five years for racketeering conspiracy. For a while, he enjoyed celebrity status, but he was soon treated like an ogre after bragging about his prosecutor days and his friendship with another prosecutor-turned Mayor, Rudy Giuliani.

In The Prince of Providence: The True Story of Buddy Cianci, America’s Most Notorious Mayor, Some Wiseguys, and The Feds, Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter Mike Stanton provides a gripping, gritty account of the rises and falls of Buddy Cianci, a colorful rogue who dominated Providence for nearly 25 years.

Stanton looks inside two corruption-plagued Cianci administrations – the first ended in 1984 when he pleaded guilty to assault for torturing a man he

There was Buckles Melise, a city highway superintendent from Federal Hill who drove a pink Cadillac, had a gambling problem and was Buddy’s bagman. In one Buckles scam, he sold city asphalt to a mobster whom Buddy had once prosecuted, Bobo Marrapese.

And "Billy Black" Del Santo, a Patriarca capo who had a no-show job as a “sidewalk inspector,” and Eddie Voccola, (left) a mob associate who ran an auto body shop that doubled as a registration center for schoolchildren, earning a cool $1 million in rent from the city.

And Anthony “The Saint” St. Laurent, a Providence loanshark who once tried to avoid prison by claiming he required 40 enemas a day – earning a new nickname, “Public Enema Number One.”

In a world filled with stories of mob-linked corrupt politicians, the saga of Buddy Cianci is special, and in The Prince of Providence, Stanton is up to the task.