Joseph “Joe Dogs” Iannuzzi is considered one of the most significant Mafia informants in recent history. A small-time operator out of New York, where he was known as Joe Diner (due to his cooking skills), he became an associate of both the Gambino and Columbo crime families when he relocated to South Florida in the ’70s.

With a new tag, “Joe Dogs,” because of his two-fisted betting at the Palm Beach Kennel Club, he became heavily involved with loansharking, extortion, drugs and horse fixing.

He was living the good life until things took a turn in March 1981 at Don Ritz’s Pizzeria on Singer Island, where he was almost beaten to death by Gambino soldier Thomas “Tommy A” Agro for not coming up with his “juice money” on time. When Dogs got out of the hospital, he repaid $31,000 to get back in the mob’s good graces but – unbeknownst to them – it was government money. The Dog had turned.

He was the star of the FBI’s “Operation Home Run,” so named because Dogs was beaten with a baseball bat. Due to Dogs’ involvement and testimony, he brought about a chain of events that brought down several members of the Columbo and Gambino families, including Gambino consigliere Joe N. Gallo, and led to the assassination of the “Boss of Bosses,” Paul Castellano.

Dogs has since written two books, The Mafia Cookbook (Simon & Schuster, $15) and Joe Dogs: The Life and Crimes of a Mobster (Simon & Schuster, $23). He also has been thrown out of the witness protection program because of an incident involving a planned appearance a few months ago on David Letterman’s show.

He agreed to call us – collect – from “somewhere in ——wahoo land,” where he lives with two guns and a yorkie named Giuseppe.

They should of have killed you, huh?

“Yeah, ’cause I hurt them, crippled two Mafia families, the Gambinos and the Columbos. Well, I didn’t cripple them altogether but I set it all into motion.

If they wanted to make an example of me they shouldn’t have let me live. Big mistake.”

After the attack you managed to get back in the families’ good graces by coming up with the money, but why did they trust you? The beating you took was so monumental how did they think you could ever forget it?

“You know what got them? Greed. I was an earner. As soon as I stuck that money in their faces they took me right back in. Greed got ’em.”

In the hospital afterwards you tried to cover up who did this to you. You weren’t ready to point the finger.

“You have to understand, I worshipped Tommy A. He was my compare, so when this happened to me it was like my whole ——world fell apart, like the ground gave way. In the hospital I was semiconscious half the time, in and out. In the beginning I wouldn’t cooperate. I think in my sub-conscious I couldn’t be a rat. I couldn’t rat on my compare.”

You had to be wide awake to rat on him.

“Yeah, I had to come to my senses. In the hospital I thought I was dying and I sat there and thought and thought and I had that image of Tommy’s dainty alligator loafer kicking me in the ribs while I was down and I just said, ‘—me, I’m gonna die, I’m gonna take the —with me. That’s the honest truth. It was my decision.”

You say you never thought about making an honest living.

“When I was younger I was a hard working stiff, but my eyes were always on being a wiseguy, you know. I liked that notoriety, all the money, the broads flocked around it. The ladies got a thrill out of it – alotta money, alotta broads. No money, no broads. That’s the way it still is.”

What was it you called the ladies in the ’70s, not broads but …

“Oh, baby dolls.”

When you lived in neighborhoods like West Palm and you saw the guy next door, a working stiff, going to a regular job at 6 a.m. and coming home after dark, did he look like a schlep to you or what?

“Oh, sure. You know, ‘Look at that schmuck, I’d never do that.'”

Even when you operated legitimate businesses down here as a front or whatever things seemed to get out of hand, like when you had the drywall contract at Century Village in Deerfield, your brother was out there shooting at guys who refused to work on the higher floors.

“Eddy, yeah. Well, that’s how New Yorkers are. It was only a .22.”

When you started out, the rank and file of the Mafia kind of threw you?

“Yeah, this guy had orders and that guy had orders and he’s a Gambino and he’s a Columbo and I’d say ‘Well, he’s the top guy, right?’ and they’d say, ‘No, he’s the tall guy, that’s the top guy. Crazy. And I’d ask, ‘What family am I in?’ and they’d laugh. You see, to me, everybody looked like the boss, you know. I always thought whoever was talkin’ to me was the biggest hood in the world. I didn’t know a wiseguy from an associate. If they told me they killed people I listened to them.”

During “Operation Home Run” you seemed to enjoy spending the feds’ money. At one point you stopped in Boca and bought $900 worth of shoes.

“Yeah, and that was only three pair. Bally shoes are expensive shoes but I figured as long as the government was paying, right? I told them, ‘You wanna go through with this thing, make it successful, you gotta spend some money.”‘

You said you had to break the FBI guys in.

“I broke ’em in good, too. After the investigation was over, one agent, Larry Doss, he’s a sweetheart, said he was so sick of Italians he’d stopped eating pizza.”

You became so popular with both the Gambinos and the Columbos did you ever think they just wanted you around ’cause you were such a good cook? Did you get sick of everybody saying, “Hey, Joe, cook something for us will ya?”

“I love to cook and these guys loved to eat. It was the perfect match.”

At one point, you were feeding the same guys that tried to whack you and they thought you might poison them but they still couldn’t resist.

“Well, you have to know this dish, they knew I made this dish especially well – caponata. That’s with perciatelli macaroni, the round thick macaroni with the hole down the center, understand?”

Yeah.

“OK, then you take olives, prosciutto, bacon grease, alotta onions, alotta garlic, heavy cream, egg yolks, Parmesan cheese …”

And arsenic.

“That’s what I made them think. I was in Don Ritz’s and Don was talkin’ to me in the kitchen. Don stutters and he says to me, ‘ Ah-hh joeee hoo-oow can you cook for these guys aa-aa-fter what they did to you?’ I said, ‘I’m gonna ——‘ poison them, give me some arsenic.”And Don’s, ‘Nnn-o, I ju-u-st paid a lot of money for this joint.’ Anyway, they were afraid to eat but as soon as they saw me pilin’ it on they jumped in. I still remember Bobby Desimone going on and on about how good it was.”‘

You’ve said that killing people made it hard to eat dessert.

“Some of these guys really could kill a person and then sit on his body and eat a —–‘ plate of spaghetti.”

You guys have your own sense of humor, don’t you?

“Yeah, people look at us like we’re just dull ——killers but there’s a lot of humor amongst us.”

Could you tell that story about when your wife, Bunny, caught you with another woman?

“Oh, that was Little Dom [Cataldo) giving me advice. He told me that when his wife caught him with another broad or found lipstick on his underwear or whatever and she started in he’d just say, ‘Hey Claire, behave or I’ll kill your ——parents.’ I said, ‘Dom, I couldn’t do something like that. … Bunny’s parents are already dead.”

In the old days mob guys were always wrapped up with the big entertainers, like Sinatra, but you guys coming up in the ’70s had to take what you could get. Is it true they once lured you up to the Diplomat for a meeting by saying, ‘Come on, Air Supply is playing the big room.”‘

“Oh, yeah, Air Supply. Hey, one night – and this is how powerful Tommy A. was – one night they held up Rich Little’s show for over an hour until we got there.”

You did also see Sinatra at the Diplomat.

“My wife touched Sinatra. That’s how ——close we were. And I had Jiggs Forlano, a Columbo captain, sitting at the table. Sinatra recognized him so he sang to our table, paid tribute to our table the whole evening. He even asked me for some ice, he said, ‘Excuse me, sir, could I have some ice for my wine? It’s very warm.’ I said, ‘Sure, Frank, and I reached in the bucket with my hands and put it in his glass and I smiled and said, ‘Scuzati mana,’ and he smiled back, you know, ’cause that means ‘excuse my hands.”‘

Do guys usually dress nice in case they get whacked? There’s this picture of Paul Castellano covered in blood, sprawled out in the street in New York right after he got hit, and he has the nicest socks on.

“Paulie was always a very well dressed guy. Guys like him are not millionaires, they’re ——billionaires, money coming in from all over, notorious people. That’s the Mafia.”

You still dress nice, even though you’re out in Wahoo land? “Oh yeah, when I got a check form Simon & Schuster I went out and spent $12,000 on clothes. Silk shirts, silk suits. Twelve thousand, and that doesn’t include shoes. I got no place to wear the ——things, but I bought ’em.”

Is it true all the guys you came up with only had one goal? All anyone ever wanted was to be accepted as an official soldier in a family?

“Everybody’s ambition was to have that button, to be a ‘made guy.’ Even myself, I wanted it so bad. You wouldn’t tell people you wanted it, I mean, ‘Who the hell needs it?’ you’d say. But deep down you wanted it bad – the notoriety, the respect. People would fear you, I mean, they’d fear you anyway but I mean within the mob itself the people would fear you. Say I didn’t like Joe Schmo and he belonged to another mob guy, the correct thing to do is have a sit down with the guy he belongs to, right? To straighten it out, but if ‘his guy’ is a ‘made guy’ you can’t talk to him. You’re not at his level. So you got to eat the ——thing. But if you’re a made guy you can talk to him and he’s got to respect you like you respect him or if you go ——kill him and say, ‘Geee, I didn’t know, I made a mistake. I didn’t know he was with that guy,’ then you get away with it. …’cause you’re a made guy.”

You spent almost 10 years testifying at trials. Years ago, could you ever have seen yourself doing something like that?

“The only guy I ever wanted to get was Tommy A. This thing should have never happened, never happened. If it didn’t happen I’d either be a captain today with the Gambino’s or in jail or dead. Those are the three choices, that’s it.”

Since what’s become known as the “Letterman incident” you’re no longer in the witness protection program.

“No, the marshals threw me out. It was around a time when they were gonna move me, anyway. They had said, ‘Joe, you’ve been recognized where you are and we have to move you.’ So, in the meantime I get the Letterman gig for the cookbook so I figure, what’s the difference, and took it on my own to fly to New York. I wasn’t supposed to do it but nobody said, ‘Don’t fly to New York.’ I knew I wasn’t supposed to fly to New York, yeah, but nobody told me. You know what I mean?”

Then, you never even appeared on the show.

“No, they didn’t realize who I was. They should have never booked me in the first place, but hell, I like the show, I wanted to go on. But by the time I got up there they were scared. I was [mad) at first. I started chasing that little producer around … I told them to tell Letterman if he was worried about that woman who’s always showing up in his house wait till he flicks on the light one night and I’m sittin’ there.”

So once the papers picked up on the Letterman incident and the Feds found out they cut you loose?

“They dropped me and I’m still where people know who I am. I keep as low a profile as possible. I stay in the house most of the ——time, there’s no decent places to eat around here anyway. And when I go out I walk around with two ——guns. If anybody approaches me, I’ll blow their brains out, citizen or not.”

Somebody just looks funny at you.

“——A. And everybody looks funny to me at this point.”