The World's Most Evil Gangs (3 page)

Lansky, the so-called ‘Mob’s accountant’, had become the main money manipulator for the Mafia barons from the early Thirties. His expertise was much needed. When Prohibition
was repealed in 1933, a principal source of income dried up and new forms of investment had to be found. Loan sharking, the numbers games, protection rackets and vice kept the money rolling in but new areas of exploitation were needed. The growing drugs market was one of the most potentially lucrative, and the Mafia built up European and Far Eastern connections to supply it. Another was legal gambling, with the golden boom in casino towns like Las Vegas, Reno and Atlantic City. The third main route away from the Mafia’s tawdry roots was into the labour movement. Trade unions were cynically milked for the funds that could be misappropriated and, more importantly, for the ‘muscle’ they could lend to any extortion situation where a strike could prove costly.

Despite being Jewish in a predominantly Italian society, Lansky, the wily diplomat, helped maintain peace within the crime Syndicate. He helped fuse the rival Mafia families scattered around the nation into a ‘federal’ unit. Autonomous in their own area, they nevertheless came together to seek agreement on major policy issues – and it was Lansky’s advice that they often accepted. He persuaded them of the logic of maintaining a low profile, that the days of street warfare were over. Any such ‘contracts’ could be left to Murder Inc. As he became increasingly trusted as an ‘independent’ Mafia advisor, more concerned with money-making than internal power struggles, his associates allowed him to invest their ill-gotten gains in respectable industries and in the gambling havens of Las Vegas, Cuba and the Bahamas.

Lansky looked after his known interests too, of course. Following Al Capone’s 1931 conviction for tax evasion, Lansky saw that he too was vulnerable and, to protect himself, transferred his illegal earnings to a Swiss bank account, the
anonymity of which was assured by the 1934 Swiss Banking Act. He eventually even bought an offshore Swiss bank, which he used to launder money through a network of shell and holding companies. Lansky made billions for the Mafia and an estimated personal fortune of $300 million.

An associate, Joseph Doc Stacher, once said of Lansky and his partner Luciano: ‘They were an unbeatable team. If they had become President and Vice-President of the United States, they would have run the place far better than the idiot politicians.’ Unluckily for ‘Lucky’ Luciano, the partnership was broken up in 1936 by government prosecutors. In June of that year, Luciano was convicted on 62 counts of prostitution and other vice offences and received a sentence of between 30 and 50 years in state prison.

Vito Genovese briefly became acting boss of Luciano’s gang but, after being indicted for a 1934 murder, he was forced to leave the country – Frank Costello now replaced him as acting boss of the Luciano crime family. Genovese fled to Naples in 1937, his expatriation cushioned by an estimated $2 million that he had salted away in secret Swiss bank accounts. A vociferous supporter of Mussolini, having contributed generously to fascist funds, he further helped out the Italian dictator’s family by becoming the main drug source for his son-in-law, Count Ciano. It is also said that, to impress Mussolini, he arranged the murder of a newspaper editor who was a fierce opponent.

Genovese switched sides hurriedly when the tide of war changed and offered his services to the occupying American forces. He pinpointed black-market operations in post-war Italy and helped close them down – but then quietly resurrected them with his own men in charge. His Italian Connection came to an end when he was extradited back to the
US in 1945 to face an old murder charge. It failed to stick after the principal witness was shot dead and Genovese returned to New York – with an ambition to take over the Luciano family and become the Mafia’s Capo di Tutti Capi.

As we shall see in the next chapter, things did not go entirely Vito Genovese’s way. Neither was organised crime a passport to a peaceful old age for fellow family members Albert Anastasia and ‘Bugsy’ Siegel. On the other hand, Meyer Lansky continued to live a charmed life. And ‘Lucky’ Luciano lived up to his name too.

Luciano must have thought his luck had finally run out when he was jailed for up to 50 years for vice offences. But six years later, in November 1942, he got a visit from his old friend Lansky. The arch fixer told him that he had done a deal with US naval intelligence officers who were concerned that information about Allied convoys was being leaked by pro-Mussolini Italian immigrants working on the New York waterfront. The fears seemed to have been confirmed by the burning of the French liner
Normandie
at its moorings in New York. So many fires had broken out at the same time within the ship that the US Navy, which was due to use
Normandie
to carry troops and supplies to Europe, was certain Italian saboteurs were to blame.

Naval chiefs were willing to offer Luciano a move to a better prison if, from his cell, he would cooperate with a special intelligence unit to flush out Italian spies and saboteurs. The jailbird, through Lansky, improved the deal to win the promise of early parole and possibly complete freedom after the war. At least one other Mafia man was immediately freed from jail at Luciano’s request. He was Johnny ‘Cockeye’ Dunn, who was responsible for the no-questions-asked removal of two suspected German spies. Apart from keeping peace on the
waterfront, the team was also credited with locating an enemy submarine off Long Island. Four German spies were captured as they came ashore and, under interrogation, revealed a North American network of Nazi agents.

Even more valuable to the Allied cause were Luciano’s contacts with his homeland. Before the invasion of Sicily by British, Canadian and US forces in 1944, Luciano sent emissaries to local Mafia leaders urging that all help be given to the Americans. Four Italian-speaking US naval intelligence officers joined up with the Sicilian Mafia and successfully raided German and Italian bases for secret defence blueprints. Later, in Rome, the Mafia foiled an assassination attempt against Britain’s General Sir Harold Alexander and, as a footnote to history, seized Mussolini’s entire personal archives.

The American authorities kept their part of the bargain and in 1945, within a few months of the war in Europe ending, Luciano was freed from jail. New York’s Governor Thomas Dewey, a former special prosecutor of organised crime who got Luciano jailed in the first place, granted commutation of sentence and had him deported to Italy. His comrade in crime, Lansky, was there to bid him farewell, with a contribution of half a million dollars to help him start his new life. From an ocean’s distance away, Luciano continued to hold sway over his American Syndicate until – like Lansky and Genovese, his two principal partners in a lifetime of corruption, torture and murder – he died of natural causes.

‘
M
afia-speak’ has slyly insinuated itself into American culture. ‘I’m gonna make him an offer he can’t refuse’ is the instantly recognisable saying of Don Corleone, as portrayed by Marlon Brando, in
The Godfather.
But there are many other titles, words and phrases that are less well-known outside the Italian underworld. Since the street talk of the Mafia is a language unto itself, here are some of the favourite expressions, plus an explanation of the organisation’s hierarchy, followed by some of its leaders’ pithier language.

When a young hopeful is accepted into the Mafia, he becomes a ‘Wise Guy’ or he has become ‘straightened out’. Later, after he is appointed a fully-fledged or ‘made’ member of his particular Mafia ‘family’, he could become a ‘Capo’ (captain) heading a crew of ‘Soldiers’, the lowliest rank. Hundreds of criminals who have not been invited by families
to join their inner ranks of ‘made’ members are nevertheless linked with the Mafia as ‘Associates’. Some are in influential or powerful positions with companies and government agencies.

The Mafiosi themselves refer to their crime family as ‘La Cosa Nostra’, which means ‘our thing’ or ‘this business of ours’. Collectively, they like to refer to themselves as ‘Men of Honour’.

There are about 25 Famiglia or crime families in America, the five largest and most powerful based in New York. These have branches in other parts of the country or, in some cases, affiliated families tied to them by blood.

The head of each family is the ‘Godfather’ or ‘Don’. An honorary title that the top Godfathers bestow upon one of their number is ‘Capo di Tutti Capi’, Godfather of Godfathers, or Boss of all the Bosses. Some, who feel powerful enough to ward off any challenge, seize the title. They usually die.

Next comes the ‘under-boss’, who is usually the tough-guy, the disciplinarian. The ‘Consigliere’ or counsellor is third in line. He is effectively a family’s chief-of-staff. Beneath them are the ‘Capos’, some of whom, specialising in arranging murders, are known as ‘Enforcers’. Some Enforcers are also under-bosses.

Soldiers have specialities too. A hitman will be known as a ‘Torpedo’ or ‘Buttonman’ (as in ‘pressing the button’ on someone). The chief hitman (or sometimes bodyguard) will be known as a ‘Caporegima’.

Police make no distinction, calling them all Hoodlums, ‘Hoods’ for short, or ‘Goons’.

Godfathers of most of the Mafia families make up a kind of criminal board of directors, which is known as ‘The Commission’. The existence of this body was denied for decades and was only noticed by accident in 1957. Members of
the Commission have since been tried in court, charged with the very offence of being members of it.

There is also a group of Mafia bosses known as ‘The Club’, and this one involves those who participate in trade union racketeering in the construction industry.

Other descriptions of wider groupings of gangsters can be confusing. The word ‘Mob’ is often used synonymously with ‘Mafia’. But the Mob is a looser description of a group of gangsters. During the formative years of US organised crime between the world wars, ‘the Mob’ was usually taken to mean Jewish-dominated racketeers, while ‘the Mafia’ admitted only Sicilians. When ‘Lucky’ Luciano forged his way to ultimate power in New York, however, his Syndicate included such nefarious non-Sicilians as Frank Costello, ‘Dutch’ Shultz, Joe Adonis, Louis Lepke, and Meyer Lansky. Luciano even toyed with the idea of dropping the Syndicate’s Mafia affiliation. He was dissuaded by Lansky, who felt that the spectre of the Mafia would help them keep people in line, even though at one point the Jewish members outnumbered the Sicilians.

The activities the gangs got up to in those early days had their own vernacular too. ‘Bootlegging’ referred to illicit booze, a boot being best hiding place for a bottle. ‘Hijack’ was literally the phrase ‘Hi Jack’, the supposed greeting in a bootleg booze hold-up. And a ‘Speakeasy’ was an illegal bar, not to be spoken of loudly. All very logical.

Not so explicable is ‘Vigorish’, a very important word in the Mafia language. The hoods call it ‘vig’ and it stands for the exorbitant interest the thugs collect every week on a loan. Which leads us to ‘loan-sharking’. This is a commonly used word that describes the business of illegal lending, at murderous rates, in which every branch of the Mafia is engaged.

Murder has many names in the Mob – to waste, blow away, hit, terminate, retire, rub out, take care of, remove, or (Jimmy The Weasel’s favourite) to ‘clip’. Ordering a hit, a Mafioso will still utter the old Sicilian phrase:
‘Livarsi na petra di la scapa’
– Take the stone out of my shoe.

Carlos ‘Little Man’ Marcello, head of the Mafia’s New Orleans branch, shouted this curse at the Kennedy brothers, John and Robert. They were both gunned down. But a Godfather will often say nothing to snuff out a life – a nod or a motion of the hand is enough.

When a rubout is ‘sanctioned’, or approved at the top, the killing is quite often sub-contracted to a third party, perhaps even someone from a different crime family. A friendly Mafia clan in another town will provide the killers, making it more difficult for police to trace them. This practice, which dates back to the Twenties, is known as ‘importing’. Alternatively, a ‘contract’ is put out on someone. This can take two courses – a trusted man can be handed the contract specifically, or it can be posted generally, like a bounty, for anyone to fill.

They don’t talk about ‘concrete overcoats’ any more for encasing a victim’s corpse in a cement block; they just call it ‘dressing’. Nor are words like ‘drill’ and ‘plug’ used for killing. They just ‘take care of business’.

‘What’s doin’?’ is a typical greeting in the densely populated districts of New York, where crime is big. The stock Mafia answer is ‘What can I tell y’? Nuthin’.’ Because the actual meaning of that retort is: ‘I can’t tell you anything that makes sense because it could cost me my life.’

‘D-and-D’ is what you stay if you’re smart, whoever you are. It means ‘deaf and dumb’ or plain silent. Squealers, known in the trade as ‘canaries’ because they ‘sing’ or ‘chirp’
to the authorities, usually have a general contract out on them. This keeps them terrified because they never know where the hit might be coming from. The assassin could be their closest buddy. And quite often he is; many of the major victims were at least lured to their execution, if not actually hit, by a trusted friend.

‘Omertà’ is the code of silence to which every member is sworn. Penalty for breaking it is death. ‘Capish?’ Do you understand? Bacio del Morte is the ‘kiss of death’, the traditional light brush on the cheek of the victim-to-be. It’s a ritual, now dying out. Some still use it for effect; most don’t believe any more in signalling their intentions.

To be ‘connected’ means to have a link in some way with the Mafia. Even those who don’t have that link pretend they do, especially people with Italian names. It brings instant respect. Nobody is allowed to mention the name of the person to whom he is connected. Penalty: death. Those on the outside who use a Mafia name are also killed. Anyone who actually gives a name is almost certainly unconnected!

The Mafiosi used to call themselves ‘The Untouchables’ because they considered themselves able to operate their various activities totally out of reach of the law. This is reflected in some of the nicknames today’s mobsters have.

Aladena Fratianno became ‘Jimmy The Weasel’ but not because the Los Angeles mobster turned informer on his partners-in-crime. He earned that name long before because of his ability to avoid being brought to justice. This knack of ducking the law turned Antonio Corallo into ‘Tony Ducks’.

Matty ‘The Horse’ Ianiello, of the Genovese family, got his name through his enormous bulk: 29 stone of it. Colombo boss Carmine Persico was known to police and many in the
Mafia as ‘The Snake’, although he had tried to foster another nickname, ‘Junior’.

Sometimes nicknames are wordplays. Joseph Bonanno would be ‘Joe Bananas’. Enforcer Aniello Dellacroce’s parents had given him an Italian name that meant ‘Little Lamb of the Cross’. Aniello turned into ‘Mr. O’Neil’. Joe Stracci, scourge of the Garment District, became ‘Joe Stretch’. Anthony Provenzano was ‘Tony Pro’. Phillip Testa, who headed the Philadelphia family for a year until he was blown to bits, was called ‘Chicken Man’, not because he was a coward, but because he once ran a chicken farm.

The nicknames often make perfect sense. Benjamin Siegel became ‘Bugsy’ because he acted like a crazy man, as in Bugs Bunny. Hulking Frank Bompensiero in Los Angeles was affectionately known, until his murder, as ‘The Bomp’.

From the inventiveness of their nicknames and the success of their villainy, it might seem the Mafia is made up of pretty wise ‘Wise Guys’. This is not at all the case. ‘We must remind ourselves that we’re not talking about brain surgeons here,’ warned New York organised crime specialist Tom Luce. And yet sometimes the Mafiosi will come up with a good line or two.

Al Capone himself had a simple philosophy: ‘You can get much further with a kind word and a gun than you can with a kind word alone.’ Here are some of his other recorded quotes: ‘You can go a long way with a smile. You can go a lot farther with a smile and a gun.’ ‘Once in the racket you’re always in it.’ ‘Vote early and vote often.’ ‘I am like any other man. All I do is supply a demand.’ ‘I don’t even know what street Canada is on.’ ‘Capitalism is the legitimate racket of the ruling class.’ ‘I have built my organisation upon fear.’ ‘My rackets are run on
strictly American lines and they’re going to stay that way.’ ‘Now I know why tigers eat their young.’ ‘Prohibition has made nothing but trouble.’ ‘When I sell liquor, it’s called bootlegging; when my patrons serve it on Lake Shore Drive, it’s called hospitality.’ ‘I am going to St. Petersburg, Florida, tomorrow. Let the worthy citizens of Chicago get their liquor the best they can. I’m sick of the job – it’s a thankless one and full of grief. I’ve been spending the best years of my life as a public benefactor.’ And finally: ‘This American system of ours, call it Americanism, call it capitalism, call it what you will, gives each and every one of us a great opportunity if we only seize it with both hands and make the most of it.’

The masterful ‘Lucky’ Luciano averred: ‘There’s no such thing as good money or bad money. There’s just money.’ ‘If you have a lot of what people want and can’t get, then you can supply the demand and shovel in the dough.’ ‘The world is changing and there are new opportunities for those who are ready to join forces with those who are stronger and more experienced.’ ‘Ever since we was kids, we always knew that people can be bought. It was only a question of who did the buying and for how much.’ ‘Behind every great fortune, there is a crime.’

The ‘Mob Accountant’ Meyer Lansky boasted: ‘We’re bigger than US Steel.’ His other advice: ‘Don’t lie. Tell one lie, then you gotta tell another lie to compound on the first.’ ‘Don’t worry, don’t worry. Look at the Astors and the Vanderbilts, all those big society people. They were the worst thieves and now look at them. It’s just a matter of time.’ And some advice he ignored himself: ‘Always overpay your taxes. That way you’ll get a refund.’

Hitman ‘Crazy’ Joe Gallo once prodded an accomplice and
said: ‘You like federal judges? I’ll buy you one for Christmas!’ Carlo Gambino famously said: ‘Judges, lawyers and politicians have a license to steal. We don’t need one.’ His son Thomas Gambino reflected: ‘Me I never had the chance to say, “Well I’m going to do something I want to do.” I always did it for my family, for my children, for my father, for my mother.’

Carlo Gambino’s successor Paul Castellano, sometimes known as the ‘Howard Hughes of the Mob’, was more reflective: ‘This life of ours, this is a wonderful life. If you can get through life like this and get away with it, hey, that’s great. But it’s very unpredictable. There’s so many ways you can screw it up.’

Castellano also explained a Mafioso’s sense of duty: ‘There are certain promises you make that are more sacred than anything that happens in a court of law, I don’t care how many Bibles you put your hand on. Some of the promises, it’s true, you make too young, before you really have an understanding of what they mean. But once you’ve made those first promises, other promises are called for. And the thing is you can’t deny the new ones without betraying the old ones. The promises get bigger; there are more people to be hurt and disappointed if you don’t live up to them. Then, at some point, you’re called upon to make a promise to a dying man.’

But Castellano also exposed his sense of cynicism: ‘We’re not children here. The law is – how should I put it? A convenience. Or a convenience for some people, and an inconvenience for other people. Like, take the law that says you can’t go into someone else’s house. I have a house, so, hey, I like that law. The guy without a house – what’s he think of it? Stay out in the rain, schnook. That’s what the law means to him.’ And on political influence: ‘If the President of the
United States, if he’s smart, if he needs help, he’d come. I could do a favour for the President.’

Thomas DiBella, who was briefly the Colombo family boss in the 1970s, expressed the Mafia philosophy: ‘You are no better or worse than anyone else in La Cosa Nostra. You are your own man. You and your father are now equals. Your father, sons, and brothers have no priority. We are all as one, united in blood. Once you become part of this, there is no greater bond.’

Joe Bonanno, who became boss of one of America’s most enduring crime families, waxed almost lyrical when he said: ‘Mafia is a process, not a thing. Mafia is a form of
clan-cooperation
to which its individual members pledge lifelong loyalty. Friendship, connections, family ties, trust, loyalty, obedience – this was the glue that held us together.’

Gambino under-boss Aniello Dellacroce was less eloquent: ‘You don’t understand Cosa Nostra. Cosa Nostra means the boss is your boss. Boss is the boss is the boss. What I’m trying to say is a boss is a boss. What does a boss mean in this fuckin’ thing? You might as well make anybody off the street.’ ‘Things change now because there’s too much conflict. People do whatever they feel like. They don’t train their people no more. There’s no more respect.’