Dapper Don Took Secrets to His Grave

Friends of ours: John Gotti, Junior Gotti

As doctors tried to ease the pain from his cancer, John Gotti had one request.

"No truth serum," he wrote on a chalkboard to his youngest son, Peter, who was at his father's bedside in the final days of the mob boss' life.

Gotti, who died in prison in 2002, was loyal to the end to the Mafia code of silence, his other son, John "Junior" Gotti told the Daily News for an interview in Wednesday's editions. "I'm proud of my father, right down to his last breath," Gotti said.

The elder Gotti kept famously mum about the mob, never publicly acknowledging his role in the organization or even its existence. Before his 1992 sentencing for murder and racketeering, Gotti instructed his lawyer to "get it over with without anybody making any speeches."

"Junior" Gotti, 42, is scheduled to go on trial again in August after two previous juries deadlocked on charges alleging he arranged the beating of Guardian Angels founder and radio host Curtis Sliwa.

His lawyers have argued that he gave up all mob activities after he pleaded guilty in another racketeering case in 1999, serving five years in prison. Last month a federal grand jury charged that Gotti never gave up that life, accusing him in a written indictment of committing a series of mob-related crimes in the last year.