The Devil and Sonny Liston (15 page)

On the ride to police headquarters, Palermo made an unsuccessful attempt to shove a bottle of pills and a box of capsules behind the seat cushion of a police car [reported the
St. Louis Post-Dispatch
]. On reaching headquarters, the prisoner was reluctant to be photographed or fingerprinted. Sgt. Frank J. Burns said in his report
"armlocks" were applied to obtain the prisoner's co-operation. The report added that Palermo threatened to "have you cops fired."

Sgt. Burns said Palermo threw himself to the floor and demanded to be taken to a hospital. Later he laughed and said:
"
All I want is to get out of town." He admitted knowing Vitale, whom he described as "a nice guy." He was suspected of gambling, although denying that he made any bets on the fight.

Sands
,
who said he is a salesman, also denied betting on the
fight.

Later, Abe Sands would be identified as a bagman for Carbo and Palermo, in which role he was often known only as "Mike." Blinky was held overnight in lockup. A sausage pinch, a night
on the steel. But it was for him the first of many dark nights to
follow.

Among the items found on Blinky's person at the time of his arrest were "receipts for a hotel bill and telephone numbers indi
c
ating he is closely connected with Charles (Sonny) Liston, heavy
w
eight boxer, who recently transferred headquarters from St.
L
ouis to Philadelphia." The newspapers failed to mention that the telephone numbers indicated that he was closely connected to George Raft as well.

On the night of his arrest, Blinky denied any official connection with Sonny. As Sonny himself would later say regarding the hotel
bill, Blinky explained that he had taken care of the boxer's simply because Sonny's manager "was ill in a hospital" in town.

Investigators in the boxing inquiry [concluded the
St. Louis Post. Dispatch
], have expressed interest in communications last March between Vitale, who attends most of the important fights
,
and Palermo. The communications included a long-distance telephone call from Vitale to Philadelphia in which the St. Louis hoodlum warned against any attempt "to gyp me." This was followed by arrangements for a meeting in Chicago.

It was on March
11
that Liston had signed his contract with Pep Barone; and it was also in March, two weeks later, that Vitale and Millie Allen had traveled to Chicago in the company of Frank Mitchell and Liston.

The New York grand jury investigation led to the formal indictment of Frank Carbo on July 24. With the kind of headlines he had been pulling down, or Hogan's press lackeys had been pulling down for him -
"The Mystery of Frankie Carbo -Will New Hogan Probe Solve It?" -
it was inevitable.

In the indictment against him, Carbo was charged with conspiracy, multiple counts of undercover management of prize fighters, and unlicensed matchmaking in fights whose official matchmaker was the International Boxing Club of New York.

Ever the fugitive, Carbo went south. This shit had been going on for over ten years.
That's how long Hogan had been after him. The
New York Sun
,
June 3
,
1947:

District Attorney Frank S. Hogan announced today that Frankie Carbo, former fight promoter, sought for questioning in the investigation here of alleged gangster influence in the boxing world
,
has
been located in New Haven, Conn., and will be brought here for a
Grand Jury examination set for June
10
.

According to the District Attorney, Carbo, who is said to be a secret power in the prizefight world and the undercover manager of several well-known fighters, was located after a two
week search in which detectives traced him from Maine to Maryland.

Hogan said that Carbo disappeared around the end of January when the Grand Jury heard middleweight Rocky Graziano state that he had been offered a bribe of
$
100
,
000
to throw his championship fight with Tony Zale.

That was Hogan's first investigation into boxing, back in '47. Charged with no offense, but sought only as a witness, Carbo was brought to the Criminal Courts Building on November 20, the second day of the investigation. Six days earlier, twenty-six
year old Jacob LaMotta, going down in the fourth, had thrown a fight to Billy Fox at Madison Square Garden in exchange for a shot at the middleweight title. Jake's performance was such that reporters had voiced suspicions of a fix.
This, Hogan figured, was a godsend, a blessing: an instance of corruption, a controversy, fresh in the public eye and mind, upon which to center the inquiry anew. LaMotta was called by the grand jury to testify on the same day that Carbo testified. What Hogan failed to consider was the importance to LaMotta of that promise of a chance to win the title.
If LaMotta was willing to go down in ignominy for that chance, why should he not be willing to prevaricate to protect that chance?

Speaking from Philadelphia on November 18, Blinky Palermo
had said that he welcomed an investigation because Fox had won an honest fight on his own merits. Now, two days later, Jake said that he had fought his best
,
and that was that. Carbo said he could not comment because he had not seen the fight, and that was that.

The boxing shit came up again six days before Christmas 195
2
, during the New York State Crime Commission investigation into waterfront racketeering. The ltalian born overlord of the waterfront, deadly Umberto Anastasio, better known as Albert Anastasia, "the man generally considered the most feared figure in the underworld"(the
New York Times
of December 20, 1952), was a defiant and angry witness who refused to answer ninety seven of the questions put to him in the hour of his time that he gave:
"The witness' sinister reputation as the man who reputedly had given the orders for possibly sixty three murders kept the hearingroom audience in New York County Courthouse spellbound. His demeanor on the stand had the deceptive languor of a jungle cat." The hearing veered into an examination of Anastasia's ties to boxing and of the influence he was said to have in so
called Jacobs
Beach, the area around Broadway and Forty
Ninth Street, which
was the gathering place of fight managers both known and covert. In this context, Frank Carbo was called to the stand. Described by the commission as an associate of Anastasia, Carbo sat mute in a fine blue suit and tie through most of the questioning. His response to the opening request to state his name was, "I refuse to answer the question. I rely on my constitutional rights." Later he refused to answer one question as to whether he refused to answer.

The hearing was recessed until the new year. At two o'clock on the morning of January 17, 1953
,
two detectives of District Attorney Frank S. Hogan's squad arrested Carbo in the Jacobs Beach area above Times Square. After questioning at the district attorney's office, he was brought downtown to the Elizabeth Street station and booked on charges of violating the Executive Law
,
an obscure, thirty year old statute that rendered it a misdemeanor offense to refuse without reasonable cause to answer questions in
a
public inquiry.

He smiled once again his beautiful smile for the photo
graphers
-
che faccia, serena e molto vivace, come quella dello
zio
gentile e amato
."His record," noted the
New York Times
of next day, "shows a facility in beating murder charges."

Three Special Sessions justices acquitted him of all charges, agreeing that he did indeed have grounds for silence, as he "could have reasonably sensed the peril of prosecution" had he answered.

He seemed above the law, jurisprudence proof as well as bullet
proof. His image, power, and sovereignty -
and his mystery - were the stuff of headlines. "Boxing and the Mobs: Who Is Frankie Carbo?" asked the
New York Post
in bold white display set from black. "Paul John Carbo had a constant companion as a youth," the article began. "It was a gun." The second paragraph blossoms into dire metaphor in true
Post
fashion:
"Today, some 30 years later, Carbo is still the man behind the firearms in the shotgun marriage of underworld mobs and prize ring."

Winds changed and things turned bad for his friends from the good old days. Frank Costello got his retirement notice, a close range scalp grazing bullet, on May 2, 1957. Less than six months later, on the morning of October 25, Anastasia was assassinated while relaxing in a barber's chair. But Carbo continued to flourish. The bullets served on Costello and Anastasia were Genovese bullets: Carbo's old partner in the management of Babe Risko was Gabe Genovese, a cousin of Vito Genovese and now, according to Assistant District Attorney John G. Bonomi, "a chief lieutenant of
Frankie Carbo."

After Anastasia's murder, while the police, to no avail, sought him for questioning, newspapers reported front page warnings that "Frankie C." was next. The
World
Telegram
described him
as "known far and wide as the underworld's commissioner of boxing"
;
the
Times
as "a man with wide but shadowy associations in the prizefight field."

After Carbo's flight from indictment in the summer of 1958,
District Attorney Hogan sent out a nationwide alarm for his arrest. "Warrant issued. Will extradite,''
declared the wanted notices that were broadcast to every police agency in America.

Despite all attempts to track him down, Carbo remained at large until late the following spring, when he was finally captured, living in a house in a quiet suburban township near Camden, New Jersey, directly across the Delaware River from Philadelphia and from his good man Blinky. Upon his seizure, a few minutes past midnight on May 30
,
1959
,
he casually told his captors that he
had been planning to surrender "in a couple of days" anyway. On
June
5,
he was sent to Camden County Jail, where he awaited the outcome of an application filed by his attorneys for a writ of habeas
corpus to test the validity of extradition proceedings. In voicing opposition to any possibility of bail
,
Alfred J. Scotti, chief assistant district attorney for New York County and head of the Rackets
Bureau, called Carbo "the most corrupt, corrosive and degrading influence in the sport of
boxing."

Carbo's trial opened, in New York, before General Sessions Judge
John A. Mullen, on October
5,
1959. Several weeks later, on October 30, after a conference among defense and prosecution attorneys
,
Carbo brought the trial to an unexpected close by withdrawing his plea of not guilty and entering a plea of guilty to
three representative counts of the ten count indictment: one each of conspiracy, undercover managing, and undercover matchmaking. These counts were taken to "cover the indictment," meaning that he could not be prosecuted for the other seven counts.

Carbo was sentenced on the last day of November.
Chief Assistant District Attorney Alfred J. Scotti read from an eighteen-page
prepared statement: "The evil influence of this man has for ma
ny
years permeated virtually the entire professional sport of box
in
g
,
"
Scotti declaimed. "I believe it is fair to say that the name of Frank
Carbo
today symbolizes the degeneration of professional boxing
into
a racket.

"This man is beyond redemption."

Judge Mullen spoke at less length and with less melodrama, addressing his words directly to Carbo: "In boxing, your wish was tantamount to a command performance. You had terrific, improper
,
and illegal influence in the fight game. You enriched yourself to a degree I can't contemplate."

Mullen observed that the medical reports he had seen on Carbo were not "happy." (The Gray was diabetic, had liver and kidney trouble, and also allegedly suffered from racket syndrome, the all but-inevitable heart ailment of those prone to prosecution and sentencing.) It was only because of Carbo's poor health, said Mullen, that the maximum sentence of three years was being reduced to a term of two.

"Thank you, Judge," Carbo whispered to Mullen as he was led past the bench.

Carbo, gentleman and killer, had reason to be grateful. From the Prohibition days of bullets and teenage redheads to his present breath, he had led a chosen and charmed existence, getting away with murder, in every sense of that phrase, for more than thirty years.

From the New York State Crime Commission of 1952-1953 to Hogan's grand jury investigation of 1958
;
from his fugitive months underground in 1958-1959 to this magic moment before Judge Mullen in General Session Court, Carbo had operated with im
pun
ity and his dominion had been inviolable. He and his man
B
linky had taken control of Sonny Liston beneath the approach
in
g storm of Hogan's investigation; and neither that investigation
n
or Carbo's flight from it, neither law nor so called justice itself
sh
ook that control
,
which was absolute and which Carbo exercised
fr
eely, in and beneath the light of day, in hiding or in the open.

Throughout 1958 and 1959
,
Sonny fought a dozen fights
under
that control. Eight of them were in 1958: Billy
H
unter in J
anuary;
Ben Wise in March; Bert Whitehurst in April; Julio Mederos
in
May; Wayne Bethea in August; Frankie Daniels and again Whitehurst in October; Ernie Cab in November. All but the first two of these were fought while Carbo was in hiding.

Carbo was still at large for the first two fights of 1959
,
with Mike De John in February and with Cleveland Williams in April. Carbo was awaiting trial for the third
,
with Nino Valdez in August
,
and he was in Riker's Island Prison for the last
,
with Will
i
Besmanoff in December.

The Daniels fight in October and the Cab fight in November
took place in Miami Beach
,
where Sonny had never before fought. The first fights of 1959
,
with De John in February and Williams in April, were also fought in Miami Beach, as was Sonny's first fight of 1960
,
an eight round knockout of the Reno
,
Nevada
,
heavyweight Howard King.

Carbo, who kept a Manhattan residence at 400 East Fifty
Ninth Street, also kept a home in Hollywood, Florida
,
at 2637
Taft Street, less than twenty miles north of Miami Beach. His associate and "chief lieutenant" Gabriel Genovese lived at
1
668 A
l
ton Road in Miami Beach. James Norris
,
the former head of the IBC
,
had moved from Chicago to Coral Gables, which lay just
south of Miami.

While the nationwide alarm for his arrest intensified
,
Carbo continued with business as usual
,
summoning Blinky and others to several secret meetings in Florida
,
at the Coral Gables home of James Norris and elsewhere. Later
,
in early 1959
,
after Carbo had moved in stealth from Florida to the quiet New Jersey communit
y
that lay just a few miles across the river from where Blinky and Liston lived, Blinky would deliver those summoned by Carbo t
o
his new hideout at 357 Crystal Lake Terrace
,
Hayden Township.

One of the Miami meetings
,
on January 5
,
1959
,
involved a forty
three year old
Los Angeles promoter known as Jackie Leonard, an whose real name was Leonard Blakely but who retained
the
ring name under which he had fought. Leonard was an associ
ate
of Donald Paul Nesseth
,
a thirty two year old used car dealer
who
managed a promising Los Angeles welterweight named Don Jordan. Nesseth was unable to arrange nationally televised matches for Jordan; and Leonard
,
interceding
,
had called upon Truman Gibson. Three nationally televised bouts suddenly followed, and Don Jordan just as suddenly was a contender for the world welterweight title that Virgil Akins had held since the night before the grand jury indictments were announced.