Given his Irish heritage, Gambino associate Edmund “Eddie” Boyle always knew he could never become a powerful “made guy.”

That hasn’t stopped him from earning a reputation in mob circles as a clever, resourceful moneymaker who won’t buckle under pressure.

Boyle’s rap sheet – along with other alleged crimes – makes him a contender to become another Jimmy “The Gent” Burke, the legendary gangster played by Robert De Niro in “Goodfellas,” the classic Mafia film about the $6 million Lufthansa Airlines robbery that Burke, a Luchese family associate, masterminded in 1979.

“He’s intelligent, cool under pressure, and most important, a standup guy,” said one law enforcement source, pointing to Boyle’s status as a “trusted and capable” member of a Brooklyn based mob crew headed by Gambino soldier Thomas “Huck” Carbonaro.

From 1986 through 1999, Boyle skated through a life of crime with just five relatively minor convictions, serving a total of two years in prison. A year ago, however, things turned sour.

Boyle, now 39, was indicted last September as a “principal organizer” of the Night Drop Crew, a gang of mob associates – including a Carbonaro nephew – who netted nearly $2 million robbing and burglarizing banks from New York to Las Vegas. Between 1993 and last year, according to a 33-count racketeering indictment, Boyle took part in one robbery, five burglaries, and four failed bank jobs.

According to the indictment, Boyle led his crew to a $900,000 payday in a 1994 armed robbery of a Bay Ridge, Brooklyn, bank. He and a cohort entered the vault through an adjoining boiler room and overpowered two guards, escaping with the help of others who served as lookouts and getaway drivers, according to court papers.

The feds claim he has committed a much worse crime. At a detention hearing, Assistant U.S. Attorney Joseph Lipton alleged that on April 28, 1998, Boyle was the gunman who shot suspected informer Frank Hydell to death outside a Staten Island nightclub. The prosecutor insisted Boyle was a danger to society who should be jailed while awaiting trial.

A Brooklyn federal judge, Sterling Johnson, disagreed, ruling that strict home detention and a $2.5 million bond secured by properties belonging to his mother, sister, and two friends would suffice.

Last month, however, his bail was revoked when Mr. Lipton told Judge Johnson that lawyer Richard Rehbock, an attorney for Boyle co-defendant Thomas Dono, had boasted to John A. “Junior” Gotti in a tape-recorded jailhouse discussion that Boyle had been helping his own cause through some questionable activities.

In a taped segment played for Judge Johnson, Mr. Rehbock was heard telling Gotti: Boyle “calls up the state of Florida and gets motor vehicle records” while posing as “an investigator for an insurance company,” adding, “I told him. ‘You beat this case, I’ll hire you to work” on Gotti’s case. (Soon after the proceeding, Dono fired Mr. Rehbock and retained a new lawyer.)

As if going to prison because of words from Dono’s lawyer wasn’t bad enough, Boyle last week lost the services of his lawyer, Martin Geduldig, in a bizarre, seemingly vindictive, ruling by Judge Johnson.

As often happens in cases that drag out – trial is scheduled to begin in February – Boyle claimed he ran out of money. He filled out the appropriate forms and asked that the court pay Mr. Geduldig’s remaining fees – normally a pro forma request, even when the attorney is not a member of the court’s “CJA panel,” one set up to represent indigent defendants under the federal judiciary’s Criminal Justice Act.

Without explanation, however, Judge Johnson refused, appointing a new attorney from the CJA panel, even though Mr. Geduldig is also on the panel and often takes assigned cases and was willing to accept the going $90 an hour rate.

Before he was bounced, however, Mr. Geduldig was called on to respond to another blast from the government, this one directed at Boyle’s mother, sister, and the friends who had posted their homes as security for a $2.5 million bond. Citing Boyle’s bail revocation, Mr. Lipton asked Judge Johnson to forfeit their properties to the government.

Mr. Geduldig countered that except for the “bluster and bragging” by Mr. Rehbock about matters he knew nothing about, the feds had submitted no evidence that Boyle had done anything wrong. He urged the forfeiture issue be put off until Monday to give the suretors – Boyle’s family and friends – time to obtain an attorney, a request that was granted.

Yesterday, their attorney, Mark Fernich, said that even though the law allowed forfeiture, he felt “virtually certain that the judge can exercise his discretion and prevent the disproportionate hardship to the innocent suretors, especially since the purpose of the bond was to assure Boyle’s appearance and he has never failed to be there.”

Boyle’s new lawyer, Paul Gamble, told Gang Land he had not yet met with Boyle, and declined to discuss recent hardball tactics by prosecutor Lipton and Judge Johnson in the case.

The feds’ tactics seem designed to convince Eddie Boyle that rather than live out his days like Jimmy Burke – who died in prison – he might want to follow the lead of Burke’s former righthand-man-in-crime,Henry Hill,(played by Ray Liotta in “Goodfellas”). After turning on the mob and testifying against Burke and other Luchese associates, Hill, through personal appearances, books, and, most recently, his own Web site, has set himself up as a cottage industry.

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Christopher Colombo, a son of late Mafia boss Joe Colombo who is awaiting trial for gambling-related racketeering charges, was a consummate tough guy when playing Don John Testosteroni in a 1989 spoof about the mob, “Godfather III, The Unauthorized Sequel.”

Colombo, 42, was also good at threatening real people who owed him money, according to government tapes. In January 2001, for example, Colombo screamed at a debtor named Randy: “What cause are you going to die for? Here lies Randy. He can’t tell the…truth. Here lies Randy. He thinks he’s smarter than everyone.”

It was a different story, however, when Colombo ran into a real gangster, DeCavalcante capo Vincent “Vinny Ocean” Palermo,at a Chinese restaurant in Manhattan. According to an FBI report about the encounter, Palermo roughly grabbed Colombo by the arm and asked about $25,000 he and his brother Anthony owed a Palermo associate.

“Please don’t hit me,” said Colombo.

“If I ever hit you, you’ll know it,” responded Vinny Ocean.