Vincent “Chin” Gigante
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Sometime during 1976, a few weeks after his uncle disappeared, my acquaintance Xavier Eboli paid Vincent “Chin” Gigante a visit. He had known The Chin all his life. More than friends, they were famiglia. An Eboli had married a Gigante, a Gigante had christened an Eboli baby, and the two families took turns sponsoring confirmations. Which is why Xavier was taken aback when The Chin gave him a chilling response when he asked what had happened to his uncle. 

“Be glad you have a grave to visit.” 

Several times a year before 1976, whenever Xavier was in The Village, he’d stop by the Triangle Social Club on Sullivan Street, between Bleecker Street and West 3rd, and have coffee with The Chin. Espresso was the drink of choice, and Gigante had a huge espresso machine in his office. 

Today, at the former site of the club, there’s a store with brightly colored walls and a painted tin ceiling. Employees with long hair and tattooed arms sell organic tea and spices in biodegradable bags. When Xavier used to frequent the club, it was a dilapidated space with large round tables often occupied by men playing cards. One of Xavier’s earliest memories is when, at age five, he went to Sullivan Street to visit his father at the club. When he opened the door to the private office, he saw his father seated behind a “desk” made entirely of stacks of money, piled so high and wide that the surface was, at least on that day, being used to conduct business. 

Xavier’s father was Thomas Eboli, also known as Tommy Ryan. His father, along with The Chin, were leaders in the Genovese crime family. Thomas Eboli had originally wanted to be a boxer and took the name Tommy Ryan after the middleweight champion from the early 1900’s. When Thomas Eboli’s father found out about the boxing, he asked him to stop fighting and instead work as a gangster for Charles “Lucky” Luciano. After suffering his first loss in the ring, he followed his father’s advice. 

By the 1940’s, Thomas Eboli was a boss under Vito Genovese. He had also become a boxing manager. “I believe he was at his happiest when he was a fight manager,” Xavier, who is now 85 years old, told me. Getting his start under Vito’s cousin, Gabe Genovese, who was managing middleweight champion Babe Risko, Thomas eventually built up his own stable of excellent fighters. 

One of his early pupils was Tony Pellone, who grew up on the same block, Sullivan Street, as The Chin. Pellone and Chin had gone to school together and later, along with younger brother Ralph Gigante, the three became professional boxers under Thomas Eboli. Neither of the Gigante brothers could match the success of Pellone in the ring. They turned instead to organized crime. A third Gigante brother, Louis, became a priest and later was a City Councilman representing the South Bronx.

Though Xavier knew all his father’s associates, his father tried to keep him away from the life of organized crime. But as Xavier told me, “By virtue of birth, I was adjacent to organized crime.” He played golf with Fat Dom Alongi, part of the Genovese Family’s Greenwich Village Crew, and when Xavier joined the Marines and was stationed in Italy in 1960, his father made him go see “Charlie.” 

Charlie, of course, was Lucky Luciano, considered by many to be the father of the American mafia. He had been deported in 1946. In Italy, Charlie and Xavier went to the theater, the racetrack, and out to eat. Sometimes Xavier even stayed in Luciano’s apartment where he enjoyed the view of Mount Vesuvius. Lucky Luciano was an excellent host. Just like The Chin. 

Vincent “Chin” Gigante had a great sense of humor, Xavier says. And he was a perfect gentleman whenever Xavier stopped by with his sister and her friends. As Xavier got older, he began hearing rumors and reading things in the newspapers about his father and The Chin. Still, he enjoyed spending time with them at the Triangle Club and in Greenwich Village. 

Though he never witnessed any crimes, he did see his share of bizarre behavior. One day, while visiting Chin in his apartment, Xavier saw him step into the shower fully dressed, with an opened umbrella, and take a shower.

The Chin stuttered when he got mad and would eat until his anger subsided. His weight ballooned. But it wasn’t until Xavier’s father, Thomas Eboli, was killed on a quiet street a few blocks from Prospect Park in 1972 that he began to fully understand what that life was about. 

Rumors spread that the gangland execution was over a drug deal gone bad with rival boss Carlo Gambino. Xavier believes his father had nothing to do with drugs. Maybe it had to do with Eboli’s differences with a mobster named Jerry Catena. There were a lot of questions, but no answers. 

After his father’s death, Xavier’s uncle, Patsy, told him to avoid going to the social club. 

Then in 1976, Patsy went missing without a trace. Xavier felt he could ask The Chin, his lifelong friend, what might have happened. For the first time in four years, he paid Vincent Gigante a visit. 

“Why did you stop coming around?” the Chin asked. 

“I was told it was best to lay low.” Chin shrugged off Xavier’s reply. He was welcome at any time, he told him. 

Then Xavier asked what happened to his father and to his uncle. 

“Be glad you have a grave to visit, not like your aunt and cousins.” He was fortunate, Chin told him. Xavier still doesn’t know what happened to either his father or his uncle. The famiglia had turned their backs on the Eboli family.  

“Who killed Tommy Ryan?” I once asked our mutual friend, Tony Pellone, back in the 1980s. 

“What difference does it make?” he replied. “If not Chin, it woulda been someone else – that’s the life they chose. That’s how it ends for them – all of dem.” 

Xavier never went back to Sullivan Street after that. I passed by the other day and entered the tea and spice store, looking through the jars of New Jersey honey. I asked the young woman helping me if she knew this location used to be a mafia headquarters. 

“Oh yeah, I heard. That was a long time ago.” 

“Not that long ago,” I told her. “There’s still people around who used to come here when it was a club.”  But they wouldn’t recognize it today. The tables are gone and so are the stacked-up piles of cash. And the coffee is gone too, which I heard wasn’t all that good.

***

Jose Corpas is from Flatbush and writes about boxing and New York City, among other subjects. His books can be found on Amazon.