Daily News' Bronx Tale: Reputed Mob-Tied Duo Made Out Big in 911 Deal

The Daily News' Juan Gonzalez (pictured) has part two on the city's bungled effort to create new offices in Brooklyn and the Bronx for the 911 emergency call center and today's episode is a whopper: City officials agreed to pay $46 million for ten acres in the north Bronx to a real estate partnership that included a duo once charged with running a mob-tied construction business.

Hutch Realty Partners LLC, which includes alleged mob-tied builders Michael Contillo and Joseph Deglomini, made an old-fashioned real estate killing on the deal, writes Gonzalez: They paid a total of some $5.5 million for the site along the Hutchinson River Parkway when they bought it from the state in January, 2005.

The land was being offered at an apparent fire sale by the Pataki administration which was selling off old public hospital land around the state, including several acres at the old Bronx Psychiatric Center.

In 1994, Deglomini and Contillo were charged in a mob construction racketeering case brought by Manhattan D.A. Robert Morgenthau. Back then, Contillo and Deglomini owned a plumbing outfit called De-Con Mechanical Contractors. They were also partners in several building ventures with a Genovese soldier named Gerald Fiorino whose brother Anthony - a world champion paddle ball player -- at the time was overseeing union carpenters at the Javits Center (now that was a story with legs!).

But what really caught investigators' attention was that a brilliant Luchese crime family operative named Stevie Crea was keeping his pigeons on the roof of Deglomini and Contillo's plumbing company on Brush Avenue. A secret wire planted there picked up much cooing - and some juicy mob talk.