By Caleb McClain
When I first heard about a Gambino Family hangout called the Bergin Hunt and Fish Club, I had to know more. As a guy who likes chasing whitetails and watching way too many Al Pacino and De Niro movies, the thought of the Mafia having a secret headquarters where they went and shot bucks, caught trout, and planned their takeover of New York captivated me like no other. I could just picture Carlo Gambino and John Gotti taking off their custom-tailored suits and donning flannel to have a picture taken with them and the 10-point buck they just bagged on the hood of some badass Cadillac, fat cigars hanging from their mouths. Much to my chagrin, the only killing that happened at Bergin was probably just people breaking omertà.
The Bergin Hunt and Fish Club was created in the 1960s by Gambino capo Carmine Fatico when he chose to move his operations from Brooklyn to Queens. Queens? That’s a weird place to go hunting… unless you’re looking for sewer rats. It turns out that the “Hunt and Fish” designation might as well have said “Social” or anything else, because it was just a simple place to drink and talk business. Fatico used the unassuming and unmarked brick building to run his operations while mentoring a young John Gotti.
In 1977, Fatico was arrested for stealing fur coats—a bit of a lame charge for a mob boss—leaving the then-street-level thug Gotti in charge of his operations at Bergin. Fortunately for Gotti, the books had recently been opened, and he was soon a made man, quickly becoming the capo of Fatico’s crew. Gotti utilized the strategic residential location to throw annual 4th of July parties for the neighborhood’s residents, hoping they would tip him off if police were snooping around his headquarters. It turns out that people must really like free hamburgers and sparklers, because the plan worked, and the Ozone Park residents regularly informed Gotti and his crew about law enforcement activity observed in the area.
This community buffer led Gotti to believe that the club was a completely untouchable fortress, away from the prying eyes of the feds, and he was known to speak freely about his illegal dealings there. He was wrong, and the club was bugged by the FBI many times, with much of this coming out in his frequent trials.
The club remained Gotti’s headquarters until after the assassination of Paul Castellano, at which point he took over the Ravenite Social Club in Little Italy. After Gotti’s arrest, the Gambino Family continued using Bergin as one of their headquarters until 2005, when it was finally closed down.
Today, the building that was once the Bergin Hunt and Fish Club is nothing more than a bubble tea shop. While I was never able to find the picture of Sammy “The Bull” with a shotgun and a limit of ducks, who’s to say it doesn’t exist somewhere? If it does, I know damn well that they weren’t shot at Bergin.
