The Valachi Papers (26 page)

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apartment to see if she would be interested. He was about to go, after being told by the girl that she already had a job, when a news

broadcast summarized the killing. Valachi promptly stayed put in the apartment. "Even if it was all arranged and everything about
Willie,"
he says, "you must be careful. Willie was pretty well liked, and that's why Vito took so much time selling the idea to the old-timers. So you never know, there could be trouble."

He attempted to get in touch with Tony Bender to find out what the situation was. Unable to locate him, Valachi remained away from the Lido until nearly midnight, when he finally contacted his lieutenant. "Is it okay to be seen?" he asked.

"There's nothing to worry about," Bender replied. "Go about your business." Then when Valachi got to the restaurant, he learned that Robilotto had been there waiting for him:

He told the waiter to tell me he was there to celebrate. I understood what that meant. He knew Willie Moretti and I never got along. I'll explain why. Willie helped me out once in the numbers, but he was supposed to do that. I could have made a beef if he don't. But I understood that after Mr. Maranzano was hit and I had to hide out, it was Willie and his pal Ciro Terranova who was behind the idea of dumping me, and I had told Johnny about it.

Now there was a big investigation. It was in the papers about someone in the joint identifying Johnny Roberts and that there were a couple of hats in the joint they were tracing, and the next thing I hear is Johnny has been picked up. Then this detective in the Bronx—at the 204th Street Station—calls me and asks me will I come down, as these two detectives from Jersey want to see me. "Certainly," I say, "why not?"

I go down, and they ask me where I was on such-and-such a day— I don't remember the date, but it was the day Willie was shot—and I tell them. Then they show me pictures of Johnny Roberts and one of the other guys, and they want to know if I know them. I say, "No."

They bust out laughing. "Come on," they say. "We know you know Johnny."

"Listen," I say, "you asked a question. You got an answer. What else do you want to know?"

"We want you to come over to Jersey."

"What is this," I say, "a pinch?"

"No," they say. "We just want to talk some more."

I say, "I ain't going to Jersey. You want me in Jersey, talk to my lawyer." I told them I only come down because of the Bronx guy— meaning the detective—and enough is enough. They said they might want to get in touch with me again, and I said, "You know where to find me," and that's the last I ever seen of them.

A few days after this I saw Johnny. I forget if he was out on bail-it don't matter, as nothing ever came of it—and of course, I ain't going to talk to him in plain English about it. He ain't supposed to tell me nothing, and I got to curb what I say and not put him on the spot. I say, "I am sorry I missed you up at the restaurant that night."

And he says, "Yeah, we would have had a time."

Now there was still a lot of talk around about the hats they found in the joint fitting this one and that one, so I say, "How do you stand with the hats?"

"Don't worry," Johnny says, "it ain't my hat."

Well, Willie Moretti had a hell of a funeral, lots and lots of cars and flowers. Usually when a top guy is deserted—like Mr. Maranzano, or Albert Anastasia, I will get to him later—he is deserted all the way to the cemetery. But Willie was not deserted because it was sort of, as we put it, a mercy killing, as he was sick.

After it was over and done with, Vito Genovese even said, "Lord have mercy on his soul." Naturally I formed my own conclusions. There it is, I said to myself, Vito has found his opening and gone through, and now he's off and running.

(According to New Jersey police records, at approximately 11
A.M.
on October 4, 1951, Moretti was found dead, shot twice in the head, in Joe's Restaurant, 793 Palisades Avenue, in Cliffside Park. Three white, male patrons had been seated in the restaurant, one at the counter, two at a nearby table. The man at the counter, tentatively identified as John Robilotto, also known as Johnny Roberts, left the restaurant and returned immethately with Moretti, whom he introduced to the other two men. The only odier persons in the premises were the wife of the owner and a waitress. Both women retired to the kitchen. While there, they heard gunfire. Immethately upon coming outside, all the males had fled, with the exception of Moretti, who was lying on the floor. Tentative identification by the waitress was made of Robilotto, although she "could not be sure." Additionally, there were two men's felt hats left at the premises, one bearing a cleaning mark which was traced to a cleaning establishment in New York City on the Avenue of the Americas. This information, however, was prematurely released to the press, and by the time investigators arrived, the slip pertaining to this hat was missing. Robilotto was indicted for murder in June 1952. On October 14, one Joseph Valachi was contacted and questioned, among others, in connection with the slaying by detectives of the New Jersey State Police. Valachi denied ever seeing Robilotto or another suspect in the case, and charges against Robilotto were subsequently dismissed because of insufficient evidence.

In early September 1952,
Valachi was summoned by Tony Bender. It resulted in his most important Cosa Nostra contract. They met for dinner, he says, in a Greenwich Village restaurant on Thompson Street called Rocco's. After a few minutes of perfunctory chitchat, Bender got down to business. A soldier in the Thomas Lucchese Family, Eugenio Giannini, had turned out to be an informer for the Bureau of Narcotics. "Gene has been talking to the junk agents," Bender said. "The old man [Genovese] has got the word personally from Charley Lucky. Charley says Gene is the smartest stool pigeon that ever lived. He has been talking to the junk agents for years. He has got to be hit, him and anybody with him."

The news about Giannini was correct. He was a Narcotics Bureau informer. In 1942 he had been picked up on a heroin conspiracy charge and served fifteen months for it. Later, like many other informers used by the Bureau of Narcotics, the FBI, and so on, Giannini moved in a twilight zone, continuing his own underworld activities while passing on choice tidbits about his colleagues from time to time. Furthermore, as was the case widi every informant until Valachi, he discussed only specific individuals and crimes, never the Cosa Nostra itself. The idea, from his point of view, was that if he happened to be caught in one of his illegal operations, he could always claim that he was on an intelligence-gathering mission or, if need be, fall back on his previous cooperation—and future potential — to escape punishment. For the law enforcement agency involved, an informer like Giannini always represents a judgment decision: Is the intelligence he supplies worth overlooking what he might be engaged in at a given moment?

In 1950 Giannini had left for Europe with two projects in hand. One was smuggling U.S. medical supplies like sulfa and penicillin into Italy where diey were in high demand in an economy still struggling to recover from World War II. Another commodity in equally high demand at the time in both Italy and France was U.S. currency, and Giannini did his best to satisfy it, although his banknotes, of course, were counterfeit. He intended to use part of the proceeds from these enterprises to finance the purchase of heroin for distribution, and even bigger profits, back in America. Toward diis end, as he lived it up on the Continent with assorted mistresses, Giannini made contact with Luciano in Naples and on the side began tipping off the Narcotics Bureau about various aspects of the deported chieftain's traffic in drugs. Meanwhile, the head of the bureau's European office, Charles Siragusa, began putting togedier from odier sources a picture of Giannini's own elaborate smuggling plans, and the problem of what to do with the prize informant was going to have to be faced fairly soon.

Then there was an unexpected development. The Italian police suddenly arrested Giannini on charges of dealing in counterfeit dollars and tossed him in jail to await trial. He managed to sneak out a letter to Siragusa, graphically describing the filth, heat, flies, and bedbugs that featured his new surroundings, and demanded that the Narcotics Bureau arrange his release. At the same time it was learned that Giannini was still plotting from his cell to ship at least ten kilograms of heroin into the United States, so the bureau decided to let him cool his heels for a while. In desperation Giannini wrote another letter to Siragusa, specifically citing the information he had passed on regarding Charley Lucky. While Valachi does not know how Luciano discovered that Giannini was an informer, the Cosa Nostra has intelligence sources of its own, and it is likely that this letter did him in.

Eventually Giannini went on trial on the counterfeiting charges and, when the chief witness against him suddenly changed his testimony, was acquitted for lack of evidence. Giannini then flew back to New York, where the Bureau of Narcotics kept him under close surveillance.

It was not long after this that Valachi had his meeting with Bender. Ordinarily Giannini would have been a matter for the Lucchese Family to handle, but as part of Genovese's continuing campaign to assert himself, he was, as Bender told Valachi, "anxious to throw the first punch," and the fact that Luciano was the injured party gave him the opening he needed.

Valachi had known Giannini for years. As a matter of fact, Giannini owed him money borrowed just before he had gone to Europe. It was precisely because of this debt, as it turned out, that Valachi was picked for the contract. When Bender told him that Giannini had to be eliminated, Valachi replied, "Well, there goes a couple of thousand that he owes me."

"Yes," Bender said. "I heard it was something like that. You know, Gene is just back from Italy, and he is moving around, and we can't seem to find him. If you hear anything, call me. Don't start thinking about trying to save that money."

The inference was clear, although Valachi went on with the game. "Can't find him?" he echoed.

"That's right. It could be Gene is on to something."

"Well, I'll find him. Does that satisfy you?"

"I will have to talk to the old man about that."

The next night Bender informed him that Genovese was quite pleased with the offer. "Finding" Giannini, in the euphemistic exchange that had taken place, meant killing him. As Valachi explained to me, "I got no choice. I have to volunteer for the contract. If I don't and something goes wrong, they can blame me because he owes me money and they can accuse me of tipping Gene off. That's why I answered Tony the way I did. If they can't find him, I will. Now you know how this Cosa Nostra is."

Valachi's next step was to locate Giannini. As he suspected, it was not very difficult. He simply telephoned him at home at about 10
P.M.
Working on the assumption that Giannini would think he was calling about the loan, he spoke just long enough for his quarry to identify his voice and then said, "Meet me on the corner."

The "corner" he referred to was the intersection of Castle Hill and Westchester Avenues in the Bronx near the Lido. Apparently these directions were sufficient for Giannini. He replied, "I'll be over in twenty minutes."

Valachi waited in a doorway in the dark and watched Giannini drive up. Then he saw another car stop down the block. When Giannini started to say something about paying him back as soon as he had some cash, Valachi silenced him and hustled him into a bar on the corner. "Forget about the money," he said. "I think you got a tail. What do you have, agents following you?"

"Jeez, they must be watching you."

"Maybe they are," Valachi said diplomatically. "Let's pass it up for now. I'll give you a ring in a couple of days."

Giannini left the bar the way they had come in. Valachi waited for a moment and then used a side door. Standing in the shadow, he saw his suspicions confirmed; as Giannini drove off, the second car pulled out as well.

The Giannini contract was a classic instance of how the Cosa Nostra power structure removes itself from the actual commission of a crime. The impetus for the murder came from Luciano, who would be, of course, in Italy all the time. Genovese ordered it, but he would be nowhere near the scene when it happened. Nor would Tony Bender, who transmitted the command. Even Valachi, who was responsible for carrying out the contract, would not be physically present. How it was to be done and whom he used was entirely up to him, and he selected three East Harlem "kids," as he called them, rising hoodlums who were in line for membership in the Genovese Family, for the actual execution. Two were brothers, Joseph and Pasquale (Pat) Pagano; the third was Valachi's own nephew, Fiore (Fury) Siano, the son of one of his sisters.

Always painstaking in an affair of this sort, the presence of agents from the Bureau of Narcotics made him infinitely more cautious. A few days after his abortive meeting with Giannini, he called him again and set up a rendezvous at another bar near the Lido, called the Casbah. Valachi brought along one of his three recruits for the job, Joseph Pagano, to, as he says, "kill two birds with one stone." The first reason was to enable Pagano to get a good look at his victim; die second to put Giannini at ease the next time he saw Pagano. There was also a third reason for the meeting. Valachi had purposely not suggested the Lido because he wanted to find out if Giannini was still being followed. Thus he and Pagano waited across the street as Giannini entered the bar, and once more he spotted a tail. Then Valachi and Pagano entered the bar separately. Fie introduced Pagano to Giannini and said, "Gee, Gene, every time I call you, you got somebody covering you."

Giannini expressed astonishment. "I'm glad you tipped me," he said. "I can't understand it."

"Ah, forget it. Let's have a drink."

The two men chatted on for a few minutes, Valachi asking him about his sojourn in Europe, when Giannini suddenly said, "Jesus, I had die creeps last night."