Oh, the headaches of being a boss.

According to a corrupt Bronx lawyer who served as a mob errand boy for top officials of the Bonanno family, even the wives of wannabe wiseguys were a sore spot for the crime family’s imprisoned godfather.

The wife of one proposed mobster would often show up “yelling and screaming” at her husband at a mob social club, actions that caused Joseph Massino to question the candidate’s credentials, according to the testimony of turncoat mob lawyer Thomas Lee at the federal murder trial of acting boss Vincent “Vinny Gorgeous” Basciano.

Massino grumbled that “a guy who couldn’t control his wife couldn’t be a member,” Lee testified.

There were other nagging problems for the beleaguered mob boss. Another proposed mobster was a drug user. A newly promoted capo “was a drunk and he feared his abuse of alcohol would affect his leadership abilities,” Lee told the court.

On the witness stand last week, Lee provided an up-close and personal view of the violent, duplicitous, greedy – but often humorous – dealings of Bonanno leaders.

The humor, however, was lost on Basciano, who was reprimanded by the judge for an expletive-laden outburst during dramatic testimony by Lee, his former attorney and friend.

Testifying under tight security – Basciano awaits a second trial for plotting to whack a federal prosecutor – Lee recalled the exact moment Vinny Gorgeous learned that imprisoned Mafia chief Massino had chosen him as the family’s acting boss.

It was January 2004, and the lawyer was delivering his first illegal message between the Bonanno leaders. Lee told Vinny Gorgeous that Massino, then detained on murder and racketeering charges, wanted him to “take the reins of the Bonanno crime family.” The lawyer said he remembered Basciano’s reaction very well.

“He was excited. He asked me to repeat several times the exact words that were used by Mr. Massino,” said Lee, adding that Basciano expressed no reservations about assuming the “acting role as boss of the Bonanno crime family.”

“I don’t remember the exact words,” said Lee, but they were “something to the effect, ‘I love him. I won’t let him down. Things aren’t going to skip a beat with me out here.'”

Lee did not implicate Basciano in the only murder charge in the case, a 2001 slaying in which Vinny Gorgeous allegedly shot-gunned a mob associate to death outside his Bronx home.

Under questioning by Assistant U.S. Attorney Winston Chan, though, the disgraced attorney did link Vinny Gorgeous, 46, to a plot to kill co-defendant Patrick “Patty From the Bronx” DeFilippo, 67, and other charges in the racketeering indictment. Each Bronx hoodlum is charged with one murder, an attempted murder, gambling, and loansharking.

Lee recounted that he alerted Basciano that Massino warned him “to watch out” for DeFilippo if the aging mobster should be released on bail. Vinny Gorgeous “told Joe that he shouldn’t have to worry about him, he could handle Patty DeFilippo,” Lee testified.

“He indicated that Patty, if ever released from jail, would have to go through St. Raymond’s – a cemetery in the Bronx – to get back to the Bronx,” Lee testified.

Early in his testimony, Vinny Gorgeous exploded in anger, calling Lee’s account “lies.” During a break in the action, Brooklyn federal Judge Nicholas Garaufis, noting that Basciano “has a tendency to mouth off,” warned the volatile gangster that he would be forced to watch the trial on a monitor in another room if he failed to restrain himself.

His outburst came as Lee described difficulties Basciano had with the Gambinos over that family’s efforts to get around rules designed to restrict each family’s size and strength. One rule mandates that new mobsters can only replace wiseguys who have died. Another precludes any inductee with a drug conviction in the past five years.

Gambino consigliere Joseph Corozzo “was giving him a real hard time,” flouting both rules and “trying to sneak guys in, extra guys.” Basciano instructed the lawyer to tell Massino about the hassles he was having, Lee testified.

Massino chuckled about that, the lawyer testified: “He found it humorous. He tried that trick all the time.”

Invariably, Massino – who was convicted of seven mob murders that July and officially began cooperating with the feds following Basciano’s arrest that November – found fault with just about everything his hand picked acting boss did, Lee testified.

The lawyer said that many of Massino’s gripes about Basciano and others focused on the single most important item to the mob boss: making sure he got a fair share of the spoils.

Massino was “annoyed” that Basciano had brought in a third partner to share the extortion proceeds from the San Gennaro festival, the lawyer testified. Lee said he relayed to Vinny Gorgeous that Massino thought a “50/50 split between him and Basciano was just fine.”

“He indicated he was the boss of the family and he couldn’t get his own people to pay him back his money,” said Lee, recalling that a gangster nicknamed Peter Rabbit owed him $200,000; another with the moniker Cardboard Box was in for $50,000, and a third who went by the name of Joe Saunders owed Massino an undisclosed amount.

Lee testified that Basciano’s own leadership and management style also left a lot to be desired, and caused Massino to send him a message to “slow down, take it easy.”

From other inmates, Lee explained, Massino heard that Basciano had a “heavy handed approach, forcing people to come to the Bronx,” including two men who were ordered to show up in the wee hours of the morning, Lee testified.

The consummate loyalist, Vinny Gorgeous would usually defer to his boss and agree to alter his ways to please him, but justify his actions in a return message relayed by Lee. Regarding the early morning calls, Lee said, “Basciano indicated that if he called them to a meeting at 3 in the morning and they showed up, that was a good test that they were willing to show up and do what was required of them.”

Basciano’s attorney, Barry Levin, diminished Lee’s testimony about a plot to kill DeFilippo by getting the mob lawyer to say that during the period he was carrying messages to and from Massino and his client, Lee never believed that Basciano “intended to kill Mr. DeFilippo.”

Lee also agreed that a dominant theme during the early months that Lee was a messenger, a primary Massino concern was money, whether it was “Christmas money” or a debt he was owed: “Mr. Massino was very interested in collecting his money, yes.”

But Mr. Levin pushed the envelope a little too far after he got Lee to admit seeing Basciano at a construction site. “Mr. Basciano was in work boots and he’d be working?” the defense lawyer asked.

“The first part, yes. The second part, no,” Lee replied. “I saw him in work boots, but I never saw him working.”

This column and other news of organized crime will appear later today at www.ganglandnews.com.