explain in his longest complete sentence of the day that he was not dissing Perrone, but merely following an order he had just received from Matty the Horse, who was wintering in Florida.

“A message came in from Florida to stay away,” said Hot Dogs.

As Battaglia held on, the bug in Yannucci’s phone overheard him discussing the dilemma with Perrone. Finally, Yannucci (right) told Battaglia to inform Bernstein to meet Perrone “somewhere, anywhere,” a directive that Hot Dogs agreed to do the following day.

“Okay,” said Battaglia. “He’s sick. He’s home. He’ll be in tomorrow.”

In addition to Battaglia’s own words, the feds also plan to use tape-recordings of a dead cohort, as well as the live testimony of four school bus company owners to paint Hot Dogs as a corrupt union official who took thousands of dollars in bribes from 2002 to 2005.

The dead man, Spike Bernstein died at 86 in October, a year

after he began cooperating with the feds.

Bernstein, according to his own description, helped rule the roost at the union local. When Perrone (left) and Yannucci asked whether the local’s executive board had voted to deny a raise for a union business agent, Spike was heard to scoff.

Wrong, said Bernstein: “Only two guys in charge are me and Sal.”

As Gang Land has disclosed in recent weeks, four owners of school bus companies whom Bernstein fingered, including student transportation magnate Domenic Gatto, have told the feds they paid thousands of dollars a year in bribes to union officials for more than 20 years, and have agreed to testify against Battaglia.

Companies owned by Gatto (right) and the others – Ray Fouche, Joseph Fazzia and Robert Dimino – have a total of 2427 school bus routes, and have earned $240 million during the current school year. As he has for weeks, Schools Chancellor Joel Klein declined to comment on the bribery allegations, or if they will have any impact on the companies’ current school bus contracts, which expire in June 2010.

Battaglia, 61, is the last of 20 defendants in the case. Two were acquitted at trial. Charges against a third were dropped. Hot Dogs faces 20 years and $2.7 million in restitution and fines if convicted of racketeering. He is also charged with bribery, extortion, accepting illegal gratuities, obstruction of justice and witness tampering.

Jurors will learn that Bernstein (left) was a world-class schemer – Perrone glowingly called him “one of the best thieves I ever met in my life” – and hear him link Battaglia to union shenanigans. But they won’t be told that Spike fingered Hot Dogs and the bribe-paying school bus owners to the feds.

Chief Judge Kimba Wood agreed with prosecutors Benjamin Gruenstein and Elie Honig that the deceased turncoat’s decision to cooperate and avoid prison was “not relevant to the issue of whether defendant committed the crimes charged.” 

Wood dismissed as “purely speculative” arguments by the defense that Spike’s role as a cooperator might have influenced school bus owners who paid him bribes to go along with Bernstein’s claims against his client to please the government and earn immunity from prosecution for their crimes.

Wood held in abeyance a government move to preclude evidence that Battaglia was a “good and honest union president.” The judge invited his attorneys, Joseph Benfante and Joseph DiBenedetto, to submit sealed papers with “specific examples” of the evidence and how it is “relevant to his defense.”

The judge will hold a final pre-trial conference tomorrow to iron out all last-minute issues before trial commences on Tuesday.

Until the FBI planted a bug at the big round table in Don Peppe’s, an Ozone Park, Queens eatery where Perrone (right) held court for years, he and Bernstein – both were 84 at the time – had enjoyed amazingly unfettered careers as criminals.

On February 17, 2005, a month after they learned that the FBI had targeted them, Bernstein, who had kidney disease, joked about his discussion with an FBI agent who subpoenaed him, and Perrone waxed poetically about his fate, no matter the outcome.

“The agent says to me, ‘We’re looking to help you.’ I said, ‘You want to help me, get me a kidney.’ A kidney,” said Bernstein, who ultimately caved in and became what he and Perrone both said they despised, “a rat.”

“Spike, I swear on God is my judge,” declared Perrone. “I won’t give a fuck. I’m 84 years old. Wherever I may go, I have more fucking friends over there than I got on the outside because who’s ever in the fucking jailhouse today? Can’t be no fucking rats.”

“That’s right,” said Bernstein, whose heart was apparently still pure at the time.

“So I stay over there,” said Perrone. “What the fuck can I live? Another year? Two years? Who knows how long I live. Who gives a fuck? Let them go fuck themselves.”

In the end, the cagey old gangster – who came two votes short of beating the case when a jury voted 10-2 for acquittal 14 months ago – has been behind bars since last June, and stands a good chance of living the rest of his life where there “can’t be no fucking rats.”

Found guilty of racketeering at a retrial last year, Perrone, now 87, faces about six years in prison. He is scheduled to be sentenced next month.

If you use a certain reputable car service that provides a superior ride, worldwide, you just might have the uh, distinction of being driven where you want to go by a former mob lawyer and onetime best friend of former FBI Director Louis Freeh.

That would be former hotshot criminal defense attorney Larry Bronson, (left) who is looking to make an honest living.

Before that happens, however, Bronson will have to convince Brooklyn Federal Judge Nicholas Garaufis to lift the disgraced lawyer’s home detention confinement while he awaits sentencing in April.

And to do that, Bronson, 61, will have to obtain a livery cab driver’s license from the Taxi and Limousine Commission and obtain a letter of employment from that reputable car service company that Bronson says is willing to hire him.

But Bronson, who copped a plea deal last week that obliterated 30-month old racketeering and money laundering charges and faces a likely sentence of between 10 to 16 months for illegally structuring cash deposits of more than $10,000, shouldn’t have too much difficulty satisfying the necessary requirements.

It should take “a couple of weeks to a month,” said a TLC spokesman.

Most importantly, he seems to have the backing of Judge Garaufis. (right)

Last week, after Bronson asked to have his restrictions lifted so he could “put some money on the table for my wife” before he goes to prison, prosecutor Roger Burlingame questioned Bronson’s decision to drive a cab.

“You don’t want him to go back and practice law, do you?” said Garaufis.