Originally posted by dontomasso:
Turnbull great posts, as always
Thank you!
but I am not sure about the theory that the comment was for the bartender's benefit.
Neither am I. That's why I posted it as a theory.
the bartender probably was in some way connected to the Rosato brothers, so he may not have been a complete civilian. It is also likely that after this incident he lost his liquor license.
Agreed. Probably one or both of the Rosatos asked Richie to open his place up for a "little private meeting" without telling him what they were going to do. I think he was genuinely suprised when Frankie went down, and screamed "Carmine, no, not here," when it looked like the cop was going to be shot. And yes, he certainly would have lost his liquor license if he was unable to provide a satisfactory explanation to the police afterward. Talk about lose/lose: either he keeps quiet and loses his license, or talks, and loses his life.
I have always thought that Roth staged this in a way that Pentangeli would live (who knows...maybe the cop was dirty as well and he timed his entrance to make it apppear like he was inadvertently coming in to look around. Certainly the cop would have been among the first to see the half dead Pentangeli, and could well have taken measures to get him some medical help, at which point the FBI took him into custody.
Others have opined that the cop may have been in on it, but I really doubt it--he looked too surprised by the whole thing, and he certainly wouldn't have waltzed in there like Richie's big pal if he knew that he was going to encounter a garroting by well-known gangster. And brilliant as Roth was, there's no way he could have timed everything the way it went down. No way.
There is another thing at work here, which I don't think anyone has talked much about, and that's Willie Cicci. He is last seen in the street getting hit by a car. Obviously he survived because he was the first witness to testify ("yeah the family had a lot of buffers").
This means he was also in some kind of protective custody, and it means that Michael must have believed that he was also dead. I guess he didn't care much however, because there may not have been much that Cicci knew.