and in the course of that trial mentioned the activities of Fat Tony Salerno.
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After that strange things happened. Gil Beckley and Joe Green, Zelmanowitz's partners who could have tied Salerno to any alleged conspiracy, passed into the world of the permanently missing. Salerno was brought to trial but eventually the charges had to be dropped. The guarantee seemed to have worked better for him than for the others.
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Another gullible buyer of a guarantee was a West Coast racketeer named Frank Borgia who enjoyed "protection'' from Los Angeles boss Jack Dragna. Then Borgia found himself being crossed by racketeer Gaspar Matranga who was shaking him down. Borgia came back to Dragna, demanding exercise of his guarantee. What he didn't realized was that Matranga and Dragna were in it together. Dragna was not satisfied with a paltry 6 percent and he and his partner planned to split whatever they got in the shakedown. When Dragna saw that Borgia was so steamed up that he couldn't be cooled, he had no choice but to have him killed, a mission carried out by Frank Bompensiero and Jimmy "the Weasel" Fratianno.
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A Mafia guarantee never comes in writing, and thus, the saying goes, "is not even worth the paper it isn't written on."
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Guglielmo, Joseph: See Dracula.
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Guzik, Jake "Greasy Thumb" (18871956): Capone financial brain
The loyalty between Al Capone and Moscow-born Jake "Greasy Thumb" Guzik was one they still talk about in mob circles.
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Starting under Capone, Guzik was the trusted treasurer and financial wizard of the mob, and in the years after Capone's fall, he was considered the real brains of the organization, along with Paul "the Waiter" Ricca and to a slightly lesser degree Tony Accardo. Because Guzik was incapable of using a gun or killing anyone, Capone protected Guzik, and once killed a man for him out of pure friendship. Such friendship was not forgotten, and Jake Guzik to his dying day a quarter century after Capone's removal from the scene, continued to be one of the most honored chiefs of the Chicago Outfit, and some say virtually its boss.
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During the 1940s and 1950s, when the national syndicate was dominated by what was called the Big Six, it was Guzik and Tony Accardo who flew east weekly to meet with the other heads of the organization: Joe Adonis, Frank Costello, Meyer Lansky and Longy Zwillman. It was an interesting ethnic division of three Italians and three Jews and told precisely what the Mafia's role in organized crime was at the time.
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Guzik, a childhood pimp, had come into the Capone organization early on when, without even knowing the Big Fellow, he had saved Capone from an ambush, having overheard two gunmen from a rival gang planning the hit. Once a man did him a good turn, Capone embraced him and would never turn on himunless that man later first betrayed that trust.
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In May 1924, Guzik got into an argument with a freelance hijacker named Joe Howard, who slapped and kicked him around. Incapable of physical resistance, the rotund little Guzik waddled back to Capone to tell him what had happened. Capone charged out in search of Howard and ran him down in Heinie Jacobs's saloon on South Wabash Avenue, bragging about the way he had "made the little Jew whine." When Howard saw Capone, he held out his hand and chimed, "Hello, Al." Capone instead grabbed his shoulders and shook him violently, demanding to know why Howard had mistreated his friend. "Go back to your girls, you dago pimp," Howard replied. Capone wordlessly drew a revolver and jammed it against Howard's head. The bully hoodlum started to snivel. Capone waited several seconds and then emptied the revolver into Howard's head.
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After the Howard killingwhich required a certain amount of fixingGuzik was Capone's faithful dog, ready to do anything for him. Years later when Capone was in fading health, it was Guzik who saw to it that Capone and his family never wanted for anything.
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Capone quickly came to depend on Guzik's advice in the various gang wars that developed as he tried to organize Chicago. Jake also served as the mob's principal bagman in payoffs to police and politicos, hence the origin of the nickname Greasy Thumb. Actually, the name was applied years earlier to Jake's older brother Harry, a procurer of whom it was said "his fingers are always greasy from the money he counts out for protection." Later, the title was transferred to Jake, whose thumb was much more greasy since he handled much more money. One of his chores was to sit several nights a week at a table in St. Huberts Old English Grill and Chop House, where district police captains and sergeants who collected graft for themselves and their superiors could pick up their payoffs. Also calling at Guzik's table were bagmen sent over from City Hall.
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The only serious legal problems that Guzik ever had were with tax men, and he eventually did a few years behind bars. He handled incarceration with aplomb and afterward returned to mob money duties. At the Kefauver Committee hearings, he made an interesting if uncommunicative witness, pleading the Fifth Amend-
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