But Michael "Mickey" Marcello did run his share of errands.

Like going to pay off the family of mob killer Nick Calabrese to buy his silence. Unfortunately for James Marcello, Calabrese flipped to help the feds.

Or providing payments to his brother's mistress.

But Michael Marcello had more important duties as well.

FBI agents witnessed the meeting at a suburban pancake between the men, in which they argued.

There was a dispute over lucrative video poker machines in the suburbs.

A little more than a week later, Chiaramonti was gunned down in south suburban Lyons.

On the body of the mobster was a list of stops where Marcello's company had video poker machines.

Chiaramonti also had a pager number for Mickey Marcello.

Defense attorneys for Michael Marcello introduced an innovative way to praise their client during his sentencing hearing on Tuesday.

At least he's not mob killer Frank Calabrese Sr.

Attorney Catharine O'Daniel noted that Calabrese Sr., convicted in the Family Secrets trial, tried to bring his two sons into Outfit business.

Michael Marcello wanted his son as far away as possible from that life, O'Daniel argued.

Marcello's son, Sam, made a heartfelt plea for father before U.S. District Judge James Zagel.

He said his father rarely missed any of his athletic events and helped turn his life around when he was having a tough time in his teens.

"I don't know many people who have shown that resolute dedication to their children," Sam Marcello said.

"He's a decent man. He's remorseful. Family is everything to this man."

“What are they going to do, give me two f------ years?” he asked, in a secret recording the FBI made of the visit.

Michael Marcello was off — by more than 6 years, he learned Tuesday.

Michael Marcello ran a lucrative video poker machine operation in the western suburbs and carried out his half-brother’s orders while James Marcello was in prison, authorities say.

“Jimmy is the kind of guy who puts targets of the backs of people,” the late federal prosecutor Mitch Mars said of James Marcello in 2005.

“Mickey is dangerous because he communicates Jimmy’s wishes.”

James Marcello was convicted at trial in September in the Family Secrets case. Michael Marcello pleaded guilty in June but did not cooperate against his brother.

Federal prosecutor T. Markus Funk conceded that Michael Marcello was not the worst of the worst Outfit members, but noted the comparison is relative.

“When you’re talking about the Chicago Outfit, you’re talking about a pretty grim and evil bunch,” Funk said.

Michael Marcello, who worked for the Chicago Sun-Times as a truck driver from 1986 to 1995, apologized for his crimes and said he had nobody to blame but himself.

“I embarrassed myself and my family,” he said.

U.S. District Judge James Zagel sentenced him to nearly the maximum under the advisory sentencing
guidelines.

Zagel suggested that Michael Marcello was maybe “too good of a brother” to James Marcello.

“I think the lesson that you can derive from this . . . is that even when you talk about friends and family, limits have to be drawn,” Zagel said.

More details to come.

Deputy U.S. Marshal John Ambrose has lost his bid to get his admissions to investigators kept out of his upcoming trial on charges he leaked secrets about a star federal witness to the Chicago Outfit.

Ambrose was arguing that any statements he made during a September 2006 interview with U.S. Attorney Patrick Fitzgerald and FBI Special Agent in Charge Robert Grant were coerced and shouldn't be used against him.

Ambrose is accused of leaking details of the witness statement of a man he was supposed to be guarding as part of the witness protection program - mob killer Nicholas Calabrese. Calabrese was the star witness in the Family Secrets trial last year.

U.S. District Judge John Grady found that Ambrose's attorney, Francis Lipuma, raised several good points but rule that prosecutors Markus Funk and Diane MacArthur offered rational explanations for each of Ambrose's complaints.

During the interview with Grant and Fitzgerald, Ambrose asked to go to the bathroom a few times. He was allowed to go, but was accompanied by several agents. The agents even came into the bathroom with him, but not into the stall.

Ambrose pointed to this as an example of over-the-top intimidation tactics. Law enforcement witnesses said they were worried Ambrose could harm himself after just being confronted with evidence of his alleged wrongdoing. And they argued that no visitor to the FBI office goes anywhere unaccompanied, even to the bathroom.

The judge suggested the FBI might have gone a little overboard but found the government's explanation plausible.

Despite losing his motion, Ambrose is still going to trial, his attorney said.

The government has three key pieces of evidence against Ambrose.

They have secret tape recordings of mob boss James Marcello talking with his half-brother, Michael, about "The Babysitter," a secret source the mobsters had inside the Family Secrets investigation. The Marcellos don't mention Ambrose by name, but reveal enough details about Ambrose to identify him, according to the feds.

The feds also have Ambrose's thumb print inside the witness protection folder for Nicholas Calabrese, showing Ambrose looked inside. There was information in the file discussing what Calabrese told investigators about who was involved in various mob hits.

And after winning the court hearing last week, the feds still have Ambrose's statements to them, in which he allegedly admits to many of the allegations.

After his court victories against the Outfit, and there were many, he had to be pushed to attend news conferences.

But the bad guys sure knew who he was.

Take for instance, a fascinating conversation from February 1999 between mob killer Frank Calabrese Sr. and two crooked cops who were trying to help him figure out if the government was building a case against him.

Calabrese Sr. and Doyle were convicted in the recent Family Secrets trial, in which Mars was the lead prosecutor. Ricci died before the trial started and was never convicted.

Much of the conversation between the men is in code.

Calabrese Sr. was worried that someone would overhear him and the two cops chatting in the prison visiting room at Milan, Mich., where Calabrese Sr. was serving a stretch on a loan-sharking case.

Calabrese Sr. was right to be paranoid. The feds were secretly listening in and recording the conversation. They used it against Calabrese Sr. and Doyle at the Family Secrets trial.

In the conversation, Doyle is speculating on who's behind a certain federal investigation, according to a government transcript.

"I'll bet you once it comes to light," Doyle says, "I'll bet you it's that f------ Mitch Mars that's what I think I said."

Visitation will be held 3 p.m. to 9 p.m. Friday at the Damar-Kaminski Funeral Home & Crematorium, 7861 S. 88th Ave., in Justice, IL.

A funeral is scheduled for 9 a.m. Saturday at Damar and 10 a.m. Mass at St. Cletus Church in LaGrange. In lieu of flowers, donations can be sent to St. Jude Children’s Hospital or Make-A-Wish Foundation.

Mars, 55, prosecuted some of the most high profile organized crime cases in Chicago history, including Family Secrets and former Cicero President Betty Loren-Maltese.

"Mitch's impact on organized crime in this city cannot be overstated," U.S. Attorney Patrick Fitzgerald said in a statement.

Here is the full statement from the U.S. Attorney's office:

“We lost a very dear friend and a treasured colleague today,” Mr. Fitzgerald said.

Mr. Mars, 55, a Chicago native known to all as “Mitch,” had a remarkable career in government service during which his many accomplishments were often hidden by his modest demeanor and sharp sense of humor. Following graduation from Georgetown University Law Center, Mitch started working for the government in 1977, when he joined the staff of the U.S. House of Representatives. He was later appointed to work for the House select committee that investigated the John F. Kennedy, Robert F. Kennedy and Martin Luther King, Jr., assassinations. Mitch joined the Criminal Division of the Department of Justice in 1978 and then headed to the Organized Crime Strike Force in Chicago in 1980.

“Little could anyone have known then what an impact his arrival would make upon this city,” Mr. Fitzgerald said.

Mitch formally joined the U.S. Attorney’s Office in 1990 when the Justice Department Strike Force merged with the office. Mitch became the Organized Crime Chief in 1992 and led the section for the next 15 years, during which he tried some of the most significant organized crime cases in the country, including U.S. v. Tocco, U.S. v. Sarsinelli, U.S. v. Infelice, and more recently U.S. v. Spano, the Cicero case involving former town President Betty Loren-Maltese. Most recently, he led the investigation and prosecution of U.S. v. Calabrese, the Family Secrets case, an historic prosecution that resulted in convictions involving 18 previously unsolved organized crime murders since 1970, and which Mitch completed shortly before learning that he had cancer.

“Mitch’s impact on organized crime in this city cannot be overstated,” Mr. Fitzgerald said.

“The Chicago legal community will note that it lost a great and accomplished trial lawyer. The world of law enforcement will note that it lost a committed and savvy investigator of organized crime, who every few years accomplished time and again what others would hope to accomplish in a lifetime – with Mitch, of course, giving 100 percent of the credit to the agents and trial partners he worked with and none to himself,” Mr. Fitzgerald added.

“But we would do a disservice to remember Mitch only by what he accomplished as a prosecutor in the courtroom. Mitch personified the word ‘public servant.’ He came to work every day and served the citizens. He worked extremely hard and was quite talented and sought nothing in return except the feeling that he was part of doing something good. We will best remember Mitch as the most decent of persons: honest, to a fault; committed, beyond a doubt, to his wife, his friends and his country; and a team player who assumed all responsibility but took no credit. Anyone who knew Mitch as a person knew that he was also quite funny, laughing as often about himself as about others, and all too happy to enlist others to join in as well,” Mr. Fitzgerald said.

Mr. Mars had been on leave for the past few months after learning that he had cancer, following the Family Secrets trial.

“Mitch was determined to deal with his struggle privately with his wife and his family with his quiet resolve and strong sense of humor,” Mr. Fitzgerald said in a personal message to the 300 employees of the U.S. Attorney’s Office. Funeral arrangements are pending.

Calabrese faces much of the rest of his life in prison, and authorities hope to use that leverage to get him to reveal who hired him to kill top mobster Anthony Chiaramonti in 2001 and a Naperville woman in 1997. The mobster died, but the woman survived.

More details to come.

Jurors were transfixed as prosecutors played a recording of Calabrese and his righthand man allegedly beating up a man they believed was a snitch.

Jurors heard the man yelp, squeal and beg for mercy.

Calabrese is charged with three armed robberies that under federal sentencing rules could send him to prison for the rest of his life.

That's the kind of leverage the feds want to use to convince Calabrese to rat out the people who hired him allegedly to kill a high-ranking Chicago mobster in 2001 and a Naperville woman in 1997. The mobster died, but the woman survived.

Calabrese has long been the main suspect in both crimes but has not been charged.

In the trial, which could wrap up this week, prosecutors Joel Hammerman and Markus Funk have essentially put on everyone besides Calabrese who took part in the armed robberies.

Those include Robert Cooper, who has pleaded guilty in the 2001 mob murder, and Frank.

In addition to the criminals who were allegedly part of Calabrese's crew, the victims of the armed robberies are testifying too, telling jurors about the horrors of getting robbed at gunpoint.

In one 2001 robbery, one witness, Gabriel Perez, a railroad engineer, told jurors that he was having the DaVinci's Last Supper tattooed on his lower back at a Lockport tattoo parlor, as his girlfriend watched, when three men burst in.

They tied up Perez and hogtied his girlfriend with zip ties. Their main focus was one of the parlor's owners, who allegedly had tattooed the daughter of a mobster, according to a court filing. They took the owner in the back and began hitting his hands with a hammer.

Anthony Calabrese, a friend of the mobster, planned the raid, according to testimony and court records.

Calabrese's defense attorney, Steven Hunter, has attacked the credibility of the prosecution's witnesess, noting that many of them are criminals who gained time off lengthy prison sentences by making up stories about Calabrese pleasing to the prosecution.

Jurors, though, aren't hearing anything regarding Calabrese's alleged connection to organized crime or his other crimes. The judge has barred any mention of the mob.

Calabrese is currently in jail, but when jurors see him at trial, he's dressed in a dark suit, not an orange jumpsuit.

Joseph "The Shark" Lopez, the attorney for mob killer Frank Calabrese Sr., recently got some national press from the American Bar Association magazine for his blogging during the trial.

Near the start of the trial, Lopez took a few shots at witnesses and the prosecution in his entries on the blog Chicago Syndicate, until the judge told him to knock it off.

The on-line version of the ABA story shows a photo of Lopez resplendent in one of his usual courtroom color combinations, black and hot pink.

Click here for the story on trial blogging, which also mentions the excellent blog that K.C. Johnson, a Brooklyn College history professor, wrote on the Duke lacrosse rape case: http://www.abajournal.com/magazine/full_court_coverage

Reputed mob hitman Anthony Calabrese was suspicious of where his alleged partner in crime, Edmond Frank, had been keeping himself.

Frank told Calabrese he had been in jail.

In fact, Frank had been with the FBI and was wearing a secret recording device for the feds.

You can check out the entire conversation here:

http://media1.suntimes.com/multimedia/010708mob2.pdf_20080106_16_32_33_17.imageContent

Calabrese starts peppering Frank with a series of questions about his arrest to see if Frank is telling the truth.

Calabrese asks what Frank was charged with, where he was held, what his bond was and the details of the crime.

Later, Calabrese has Frank strip searched and allegedly starts beating him when Frank won't cough up what motel he's staying at.

It makes for chilling reading.

The feds want the conversation admitted at Calabrese's upcoming trial. They argue it shows Calabrese's guilty state of mind since he is trying to silence a witness.

Calabrese's attorney, Steven Hunter, argues the conversation has nothing to do with the charges against his client - three armed robberies - and will only prejudice the jury against him.