Everyone knew that banning smoking in all New York City public buildings, including bars and restaurants, was a volatile issue that would spark controversy and opposition. But who would’ve thought it would lead to a violent slugfest between two of the city’s five families?

A case that’s playing out in Manhattan Supreme Court shows that the city’s tough Smoke-Free Air Act did just that.

A nasty dispute last year over the smoking act resulted in the indictment of a Bonanno soldier and an associate on first-degree assault charges for the horrific beating of a Genovese associate who suffered permanent brain damage, Gang Land has learned.

Also slapped around in the early-morning fisticuffs was a nephew of legendary Genovese capo Matthew “Matty the Horse” Ianniello, Robert Ianniello. The street brawl took place in Little Italy, around the corner from the storied Umberto’s Clam House, the successor to the eatery a few blocks away where Crazy Joe Gallo was whacked in 1972.

Bonanno wiseguy Nicholas “P.J.” Pisciotti and an associate, Louis Ventafredda, were seen “kicking, punching and stomping on an unconscious individual’s body and head while he was lying motionless on the street/sidewalk” at about 2:30 a.m. on September 18, 2005, arresting police officer Reinaldo Glaze said.

The evening had begun innocently enough hours earlier, when Pisciotti, who was with his mother and more than two dozen other relatives and close friends at an uptown nightclub, celebrated the 30th birthday of a cousin.

Trouble started after many of the partygoers stopped for a nightcap at the Odea Bar and Restaurant, a small establishment at 391 Broome St., diagonally across the street from the reincarnated Umberto’s at 178 Mulberry St. Robert Ianniello, who had taken part in the grand reopening of Umberto’s in 2000, was a part-owner of Odea, which has since closed.

By all accounts, tempers flared when Joseph “Joe Clams” Caruso, a manager and part-owner of Odea, cited the antismoking law and reprimanded several members of the Pisciotti party for jeopardizing the place’s license to operate by lighting up.

Who disrespected whom is in dispute. So is whether the establishment or its customers were mostly to blame for the angry, heated words. But it’s pretty clear, according to security videos obtained by police, that Pisciotti, 36, missed the beginning of the dispute as he walked his mother to her nearby home.

When he returned, however, Pisciotti joined in the chest-thumping, finger-pointing, expletive-laden discourse. But he quickly left and took his entire party with him, according to his lawyer, Jeremy Schneider, who said his client acted in self-defense.

“Luckily,” Mr. Schneider said, “there’s a videotape showing that the victim and others followed him [Pisciotti], pursued him, and that at least one person hit him first.”

A spokeswoman for the Manhattan district attorney’s office declined to discuss the specifics of the case, noting that Pisciotti is slated for trial next month. He faces up to 15 years if convicted of the most serious charge, first-degree assault.

Last month, Ventafredda, 24, pleaded guilty to a lesser count that carries a maximum of seven years. But according to a plea deal worked out by prosecutor David Hammer and defense lawyer Joseph Benfante, if Ventafredda stays out of trouble for a year, he will be entitled to withdraw it and plead to a misdemeanor charge and a likely sentence of probation.

The anti-nicotine legislation is said to have reduced the number of smokers. But defense attorneys wouldn’t say whether the affair had changed their clients’ smoking habits.

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At the bail hearing last week of a wiseguy who was detained as a danger to the community, a federal prosecutor cited Gang Land’s exclusive report that disclosed the ascension of low-key gangster Daniel Leo to the top of the powerful Genovese family.

Holding up a copy of The New York Sun for emphasis, Assistant U.S. Attorney Eric Snyder argued that FBI tape recordings showed mobster Charles “Fat Charlie” Salzano to be a violent thug who was proposed for induction into the family by Leo, the family’s new acting boss.

“This is a man who is extraordinarily violent, and the right hand to the man who is widely believed to be the boss of the Genovese crime family,” Mr. Snyder said, adding: “Just today it was reported in the Sun in the widely read Gang Land column about organized crime.”

Mr. Snyder told a Manhattan federal judge, Lewis Kaplan, that his office had been preparing to add Salzano to an existing 34-defendant indictment later. However, he said, FBI agents moved early to arrest Salzano when they learned he planned to assault a taxi company owner last Saturday. The burly 370-pound gangster was tape-recorded twice in October threatening the businessman in a $250,000 extortion effort.

If the agents hadn’t apprehended Salzano, “The next thing you know, we could have a dead witness,” the prosecutor said.

In one October conversation, Mr. Snyder told the judge, Salzano threatened to put his victim in a wheelchair. In another, Salzano threatened to kill him, invoking the name of the family’s new boss: “I’m gonna shoot you by Danny. Cause I told you, you never seen him and you never seen me.”

Salzano also extorted $25,000 from two East Harlem bookmakers, James Pisacano, 80, and Joseph Pisacano, 63, according to a complaint that cited numerous tape-recorded conversations that turncoat mob associate-lawyer Peter Peluso had with the bookies and with Genovese mobsters John Ardito, 87, and Ralph Balsamo, 35.

Judge Kaplan found that Salzano, 58, was a violence-prone gangster with “extreme access to the top levels of the Genovese family” and ordered him detained as “a threat to public safety.”

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Balsamo, who operates funeral homes in the Bronx and Westchester and is charged with racketeering as well as heading a large cocaine trafficking operation, seems able to focus on the lighter side of things, no matter what the situation.

According to a complaint by FBI agent Jon Jennings, while Balsamo was discussing Salzano’s efforts to increase his extortion of the Pisacano brothers, whom he had been shaking down for years, to $25,000 from $10,000, Balsamo laughed and said, “F—ing Charlie, he doesn’t know when to stop.”

Early this year, when he was indicted for crimes that could keep him jailed for life, Balsamo also joked with Westchester County investigators who were part of the task force that arrested him, pointing out that a photo of him used in an FBI chart that he saw during his processing was old, taken when he used to part his hair.

Told that the feds used an old surveillance photo because Balsamo didn’t have a driver’s license, he said that made sense because he didn’t drive, according to a report filed by detective Dennis Gallego. When Detective Gallego replied that he had been spotted driving a black vehicle registered to his funeral home, Balsamo responded: “Oh, this is all about me driving without a license?”

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