Adrian Humphreys /
National Post

Antonio Nicaso was an energetic man of 25, working the crime beat for Gazzetta del Sud, a daily newspaper in Messina, Sicily, when he arrived home late from work to
find his mother deep in fervent prayer. When he walked through the door
his mother's only words were: "Thank God, you are home and safe."

The fretting of Nicaso's mother became a nightly ritual in the late 1980s. And for good reason: It was a bloody time in Sicily.

A Mafia feud was punctuating the quiet evenings with the sound of exploding cars. The bodies of mobsters and those who had tried to stop them were piling up in morgues across the southernmost province of Italy, the heartland of the Mafia.

Nicaso was one of those brave enough to condemn both the violence and the conspiracy of silence that allowed the Mob to challenge the state.

His mother was not pleased.

"I was her only child and she was a widow in an area where you can see organized crime vividly on the evening news, where a bomb exploded every weekend," Nicaso says. "I developed the courage of fear -- that is when you know there is a problem and you know there is a dangerous organization behind it but you choose to cover it and not bury your head in the ground."

Never popular among Mafia bosses for his outspoken commentary, Nicaso then upped the ante.

In 1989, he published his second book, Alle Origini Della 'Ndrangheta, in which the Mafia code of honour was published. The hand-written script had been penned by an old Mafioso, who feared his faltering memory would rob him of his precious oral tradition, and had made its way to Nicaso.

"That was like a challenge because for the first time the code was exposed to the public," Nicaso says. "It also exposed me to many, many risks. Following publication, I received death threats and then two men tried to put a bomb under my car."

After discussing his situation with Giovanni Falcone, the famous Mob-busting magistrate who was killed a few years later by the Mafia, Nicaso decided to leave Italy to continue his research and writing.

Relocating to Canada, Nicaso found work at Corriere Canadese, a Toronto Italian-language newspaper, and continued investigating global organized crime, a mission that has led to six books in Italian and three in English, including the just published Bloodlines: The Rise & Fall of the Mafia's Royal Family, written with Lee Lamothe. Bloodlines is a sweeping exploration of the Caruana-Cuntrera clan, perhaps the richest and most powerful Mafia family in history.

In Canada, Nicaso found a few writers with a similar interest and similar fears. But while writing about the Mafia from the relative safety of Canada was easier on his blood pressure -- and on his mother -- it was not without its own frightful difficulties.

Jean-Pierre Charbonneau, who is now Speaker of the Quebec legislature, learned how vindictive the Mob could be when he published his French-language book La Filière Canadienne.

"There were people in the milieu who felt that I was saying too much, causing too much trouble. They decided to pay me back," says Charbonneau.

In 1973, a young man with ties to the Mafia walked into the newsroom of Le Devoir, the newspaper where Charbonneau worked. "Are you Charbonneau?" the man asked. Then he fired three shots, one of which struck Charbonneau's forearm, shattering a bone.

Charbonneau did not let the bloodletting stop his efforts, and the attack drew greater attention to his work, making the English-language edition of his book, The Canadian Connection, a hot commodity.

"It was a confirmation of the importance of the work I was doing. I realized my articles were hitting hard against the Mafia. I also realized for the first time that the danger was more real than I thought. When we see the danger from far, it's an abstraction -- we can see a fire from far, we know it's dangerous but we don't feel the heat."

Lamothe, who also co-authored a previous book with Nicaso, Global Mafia (1995), was well aware of the dangers when he started covering organized crime for the Toronto Sun in the 1980s.

Lamothe and Nicaso are a study in contrast.

Nicaso is a university-educated, Italian-born writer who is rarely seen without a tie, suit jacket and careful grooming. Lamothe is a barely educated, Montreal-born reporter rarely seen without his well-worn, denim jacket and his cigarettes. He only trimmed his hair and beard after his daughter saw him on television last month and lamented his dishevelled appearance.

"I liken it to Simon and Garfunkel," Lamothe says, about his relationship with Nicaso. "They sing in different harmonies, they hit the high notes at different times, but they're singing the same song and they sing it well."

Lamothe moved to Toronto as a young boy, left home at an early age and abandoned school after Grade 8. "I was a bad kid in a bad neighbourhood from a poor family. I grew up with a lot of tough guys and went to reform school with a lot of tough guys -- and it is all paying off now," he says.

He started going into the office two hours before his night shift to read the old files, from A to Z, on murders, rapes and organized crime.

"What was going on in Toronto at the time in terms of organized crime was mainly Italian, Asian and Caribbean gangs. It was a stupid reason, I admit now, but I chose to focus on the Italian Mafia because I like Italian food.

"Reporting on organized crime is particularly tough. It's not like covering politics, where they are fighting for sound bites, or business men who fight to get their spin in the papers. These are guys who really don't want to talk, don't want their picture taken, don't want their name to be printed."

Lamothe was once invited by a mobster to a meeting. The enticement was considerable -- the gangster promised to turn over detailed information about a rival mobster. An hour before Lamothe left for the meeting at an out-of-the-way bar, he received another call from a different mobster warning him that the meeting was a trap.

Lamothe phoned a police officer, who drove to the bar -- which was empty but for three tough-looking men, one carrying a baseball bat.

James Dubro, author of Mob Rule (1985), a pioneering book on the Mafia in Canada, and four other organized crime books, understands well the danger Nicaso and Lamothe face publishing their research.

Dubro had his first encounter with the Mob in 1959 when, at the age of 12, he was living in Boston. His mother had run up gambling losses and his father, desperate to clear her debts, borrowed money from a member of the Patriarca family, a notorious New England Mafia clan.

When he had trouble repaying, the Mob's retribution was swift. One day, as the family fretted over his father's late arrival from work, Dubro's mother received a telephone call with an ominous message: "He's hanging in the basement."

"I'll never forget that day," says Dubro. "My mother led the way, my older brother in front of me and I was third in line going down the stairs to the basement. Thank God he wasn't there but we never heard from him again."

Dubro later found out that friends of his father had caught wind of the Mob's plans to kill him and had hustled him out of the city.

"He was made to disappear," Dubro says.

Much later, Dubro heard his father died of natural causes in San Diego in 1970. Although he says the encounter did not directly steer him towards exposing gangsters, he admits it was likely a subconscious influence.

"Once I got into it, it probably was a factor of getting back at the bastards."

Nicaso, Lamothe, Charbonneau, Dubro, and a few others -- notably Peter Edwards, a Toronto Star reporter who revealed the fascinating story of the Montreal Mafia in Blood Brothers (1990) and co-wrote Deadly Silence with Nicaso in 1993 -- have been shining a spotlight on to some shadowy faces in the Mafia for years.

And, as the books trickle out, the Mafia itself changes, fuelling the need for more investigation.

"That is my main goal with Bloodlines," says Nicaso. "This book gave us an opportunity to portray a different face of the Mafia, a Mafia less violent and more business-oriented, a Mafia fostering contact with politicians and financial institutions."

Bloodlines is also unusual because the main players in its pages are still alive.

Most Mob biographies are only published once the main subject has died, making it a safer venture, both legally and personally.

While the bosses of the Caruana-Cuntrera family have been imprisoned in Canada and elsewhere, some of those arrested in the case are already out on parole and many others featured in the book are freely walking the streets, carrying on their business.

Says Nicaso: "This is probably one of the first Mafia books written about people who have lives that still pose a threat -- not only to us but to society at large."

THE MAFIA IN CANADA, A SELECTED READING LIST:

- Bloodlines by Lee Lamothe and Antonio Nicaso (2001)

- The Enforcer by Adrian Humphreys (1999)

- Global Mafia by Antonio Nicaso and Lee Lamothe (1995)

- Deadly Silence by Peter Edwards and Antonio Nicaso (1993)

- Blood Brothers by Peter Edwards (1990)

- Mob Mistress by James Dubro (1988)

- The Nephew by Réal Simard and Michel Vastel (1988)

- King of the Mob by James Dubro (1987)

- Mafia Assassin by Cecil Kirby and Thomas C. Renner (1986)

- Mob Rule by James Dubro (1985)

- The Canadian Connection by Jean-Pierre Charbonneau (1976)

 June 2, 2001.