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Pappa found out that Tommy was looking at him for a couple of those hits he figured he could end the investigation by killing him. Nobody ever claimed he had brains. Somehow Pappa managed to get Tommy’s address. And according to Hydell, Pappa then spent several days sitting in his red car in front of Tommy’s house on Staten Island, waiting for Tommy to come home. Waiting to kill him.
    A few weeks later a second CI confirmed Hydell’s information.
    Dades’s wife, Roseann, took the news that some lowlife had been waiting patiently in front of her house to kill her husband pretty matter-of-factly. This wasn’t the first death threat Tommy had received. A year earlier there’d been a series of letters warning him that he and Galletta were going to be machine-gunned to death. But this threat was as real as the red car parked in front of the house. No one doubted Pappa was serious. And no one knew if he had been working alone. Tommy told Ro what to look for, how to be careful, how to get help fast. The department stationed a squad car in front of the house twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week, for the next six months.
    Ironically, about a month before getting this information, Tommy had arrested Pappa. The investigation that Pappa had tried to stop had resulted in his indictment for multiple murders. “We got word that Pappa was going to be a member of the bridal party at a friend’s wedding on Staten Island,” Tommy recalls. “There was only one thing the groom didn’t know: Pappa had been one of the guys who’d killed his brother. So we were going to arrest Pappa when he showed up at church for the wedding rehearsal.
    “I was sitting in the car across the street when he showed up. We waited until he started climbing the steps to the church and then I jumped out of the car and started screaming. ‘Police, John! Hold it right there.’ I hadmy gun in my hand. I was maybe ten feet away from him when he pulled a nine-millimeter out of his waistband; at that distance that gun looked about as big as a basketball.
    “I screamed at him, ‘Dump the gun, John! Dump it now!’
    “Instead he took off running. Just as he opened the door to the church he turned around and aimed right at me.
    “In those situations you don’t think, you react. ‘Don’t do it!’ I screamed at him. I aimed my gun at him and started to squeeze the trigger—and just as I did the church door opened and I saw a whole bunch of people inside the church. I didn’t fire.
    “Pappa ran inside. I grabbed the door before it closed and raced inside right after him. I wasn’t more than ten steps behind him, but I didn’t see him throw away his nine-millimeter. Instead I heard it hit the floor over to my right. I never saw the gun, but I heard it. In situations like that every one of your instincts is pumping. You see things, you hear things, you feel things that otherwise it’s impossible. But I heard that gun hit the floor and slide.
    “The whole wedding party was screaming, trying to scramble out of the way. They didn’t have any idea what was going on. There were people diving into the pews. About halfway down the aisle I took a flying leap at Pappa and tackled him. As we hit the floor I slammed my knee into the side of his head to keep him down, then I pointed my gun at him and I started screaming loud as I could, ‘Don’t anybody fucking move! Don’t move! I’ll kill anyone that moves!’ I didn’t know who any of these people were. All I knew is that they weren’t friends of mine. ‘Everybody get down,’ I yelled. I ended up putting the priest on the floor.
    “John Pappa wasn’t done. He started getting wild on me. I grabbed him around the throat with one hand and warned him, ‘Try me and I’ll break your fucking neck.’ As the backup raced into the church I was shouting to them, ‘Get the gun! Get the gun! It’s under the pews over there on the right.’ Pappa’s nine-millimeter had fourteen bullets in the clip—and