Cantalupo was like a son to crime leader Joseph Colombo. He became personal notary to "chairman of the board" Carlo Gambino. He did business in partnership with Genovese crime-family boss Frank "Funzi" Tieri.
Cantalupo was a young guy on his way up, a hustler confidant of top value to the Mafia—and to the FBI.
For six years Cantalupo wore a body mike in compromising situations and recorded incriminating conversations in secret late-night drives in his bugged Lincoln.
In an unsparing expose, Joe Cantalupo takes you deep into real life and death in the world of organized crime. He saw it all and tells all: the gang rubouts, real estate scams, loansharking, heists, Mafia weddings and funerals.
A marked man, Cantalupo writes about the unsettling, often terrifying life of the informer, about living under the Witness Protection Program after his testimony and about his frustrated attempts to lead a normal life undercover. Never has there been a Mafia book so vivid, so revealing and so totally human a disclosure as Body Mike.