19 Purchase Street (15 page)

That same Friday afternoon, Rosario Tarditi was at 130 West Twenty-ninth Street, a ten story building in the fur district. He had just lined things up with the wholesale furrier who would handle a shipment of Canadian pelts that had been hijacked earlier in the week. Tarditi was alone in the sixth floor corridor, his attention above on the arrow of the elevator indicator, when the .45 caliber piece of metal slammed into him, just above the nape of his neck.

There were two killings in each city. In New York, Philadelphia, Detroit, Chicago, Saint Louis, Miami, New Orleans and Los Angeles. Altogether, sixteen. They could not be accepted as coincidence. All sixteen were Syndicate men,
made
guys of about the same standing in their districts, experienced soldiers. All were shot in the back of the head with a single bullet of the same caliber. All were killed just after three-thirty.

The reflex of the district bosses was to blame one another. At once the points of old grudges were brought out and sharpened. Actually, the bosses did not know what to make of it.

Except Costello.

Costello found it hard to believe that he could have been so off the mark with Winship. He remembered clearly that three-thirty Friday had been Winship's deadline, and so it followed that the sixteen killings were the penalty for not having met that deadline.

What most concerned Costello, and convinced him, was the tidy, professional way the killings had been carried out. It meant Winship had an organization to deal with such matters, a formidable one. More efficient even than anything the Syndicate could call on. The typical Syndicate killer was not a marksman, never practiced. Which was why he used a shotgun or machine gun whenever he could. To make up for his poor aim.

Winship's gunmen, however, had used only sixteen shots to do away with sixteen guys in eight cities like clockwork. Such competence was to be respected—in another word, feared.

Costello decided it was past the point when he could lay it all out for Anastasia and the others. He was in too deep. It would be burying himself. His one possible advantage was from not telling them, staying ahead of them. Maybe he could cover himself, even come out of it with his Ruffco money.

He got together with Winship, saw Winship in a different light. No longer was he manipulatable or deranged, or a man with a cock for a brain. Winship was extremely intelligent, shrewd and remarkably lacking in conscience. He was, Costello thought, the most devious man he'd ever met.

Winship, answering before he was asked, said that he and his people had confiscated the Ruffco account.

All of it.

All but a fourth of Costello's share.

The opening was evident.

Costello put his life into it. He offered to be Winship's man within the Syndicate in return for that twenty-five percent, that hundred million, and any possible future considerations. It was, Costello pointed out, a perilous, straddling position, but fortunately the Syndicate and Winship's side were worlds apart.

Winship agreed. He set another deadline.

Costello was to deliver the ultimatum.

Costello did not. Partly because he wondered how strong Winship's next move would be, but mainly because he was afraid of the task and so procrastinated, could not get himself up to delivering those words that still at least
sounded
insane to him.

Eight
consigliero
were killed.

Eight of the right hands of the bosses, the well-known, counselling shadows of the bosses in those same eight cities from New York to Los Angeles … the victims died almost identically, same trademark, shot once in the base of the skull by a .45.

The funerals of the eight were not held with closed coffins. However, opaque linen squares had to be placed over their blown-away faces.

That was enough for Costello. He called for a convening of the bosses, explained that he had just been contacted to act as intermediary. He conveyed the terms of the High Board.

The bosses were shocked, stunned. Hated the idea of being forced to give anything to anyone, being on the other end of extortion. They were so enraged they couldn't speak English, and spat on themselves as they raved. It was almost as though they were competing to determine who could express the most fury. However, below the surface of all their angers lay their fears—the prospect of sudden death, as already demonstrated. That simmered them down to some reason.

Grudgingly, shaking their head, they gave in to the High Board.

The transition that followed took many months but was surprisingly tolerable for the bosses. They would never be obliged totally to adjust to being subservient because their arrangement with the High Board was so improbable, so invisible that their noses would never be publicly rubbed in it. As for the money, they wouldn't miss it except in their minds. Actually, there was too much money. Ten percent would still be more than enough. They were still the bosses. They would still stir up a current of fear and a wake of relief wherever they went.

The strategy of the High Board was to keep itself as removed as possible. It would remain where it was, innocent and dignified, while it pushed the criminal element even further out into the limelight.

A perverse public relations campaign.

Its purpose was to instill the public with the idea that there was such a thing as the Mafia. Believe in it like a faith. A perfect diversionary front.

The campaign got underway in 1950 with the Special Senate Committee to Investigate Organized Crime. Senator Estes Kefauver led the committee, but it was the High Board that set it up.

There had never been anything like it. Television cameras captured everyone, banks of lights increased the sweat. There in black and white, in the actual moving flesh, was crime. Costello, Anastasia, Profaci, Scalice, Adonis, and whoever else might play well.

The senators knew a certain line they were not to exceed.

The witnesses testified with self-incriminating vagueness.

The audience was convinced that crime was indeed organized in some intricate, evil way called the Mafia and that these men were head and heart of it.

It never occurred to anyone that they were really the foot.

Those hearings were also used by the High Board to shake up the bosses, show them the sort of pressure that could be brought to bear.

There were six hundred subpoenas.

Over a year of probing.

But not one conviction.

The bosses were made to understand they could thank those on the High Board (whoever they were) for that.

From then on the campaign to promote the Mafia fed itself with nearly every crime that was committed. There seemed always to be some piece of Mafia melodrama for newspapers and television to make the most of it. If things got quiet, the High Board saw that they were stirred up.

On June 17, 1957, the High Board had Frank Scalice murdered.

The blame went to Albert Anastasia.

On October 25, same year, it had Albert Anastasia murdered.

Who would believe Carlo Gambino when he said he'd had nothing to do with it.

The bosses realized who was in truth responsible. It made them very nervous. They decided to try to help themselves with a conference. They took extreme care to keep their meeting secret, passed the word only from privileged mouth to privileged ear and chose the most unlikely out of the way place for it. A little hill town in northern New York State called Appalachin, at the remote home of Joseph Barbara, who was suitably a remote fellow.

All the bosses showed up, from every part of the country. Although they arrived in thirty-four black limousines, when just one in that rural area would have been out of place, it appeared as though they had pulled it off. Possibly they could combine their intimidations, transform them into resistance. They were fed up with having a knee on their necks.

They had hardly had a chance to light a cigar when the hand of the High Board descended on them. In the persons of a dozen New York State Troopers. The High Board had known of the meeting from the start, had only allowed such conniving so it could take advantage of it.

The bosses reacted like naughty children caught.

They ran.

Mainly for the woods, which was, of course, out of their element. Branches switched them, poked at their faces, seemed to be trying for their eyes. Fallen leaves tricked them, made the footing appear solid while the humus beneath was so damp and giving they went in over the tops of their delicate shoes, soiling their silk socks. The woods multiplied their desperation. They lost hats, sunglasses, jacket buttons and one another as they ran.

It was humiliating for the bosses. They felt less effective than ever. Self-consciously they retreated to their respective territories and let it be known they did not want to hear a word about it, not another word.

N
EWSPAPERS
and television made as much as they could of the Appalachin meeting. It would go down as a milestone. However, no one dug into it enough to question whether or not the State Police were really what had caused all those top Italian tough guys to run as though for their lives. Many of them had stood up to grand juries without a qualm. They weren't breaking any law by just being there, nor were they wanted men trying to avoid capture. So, why hadn't they stayed in place, thanked the police for looking in and gotten on with business? Obvious questions, but never asked. Instead, the angle that got played up was these men had gathered at Appalachin to take part in secret Mafia rituals. And to accept Don Vitrone Genovese as the
capo di tutti capi
, boss of all bosses.

Those reasons for the Appalachin meeting were verified a few years later by Joseph Valacchi.

The informer, Valacchi.

He wasn't created from scratch by the High Board, but he was its product. The moment Valacchi let it be known that he was suffering with loose mouth, the High Board saw that he was properly used.

Valacchi was never anything more than a knock-around guy, satisfied to be doing just this and that. His name had never once come from the mouth of any boss. So it was no wonder that when in 1963 he was transferred from Atlanta Federal Penitentiary to comfortable private quarters in the Westchester County Jail he felt immediately bigger.

Valacchi enjoyed every minute of his importance. What the newspapers said he said made him sound as though he really knew, as though he had really been up there, and he liked making that impression. He would never admit words were put in his mouth. They were his words. He'd swear to it.

When he testified in Washington before the Senate Rackets Investigating Committee and its chairman, Senator John McClellan of Arkansas (another in the continuing series of such dramas the High Board cooked up), it was Valacchi's peak moment. For the occasion, he was dressed in a suit that was at least a hundred dollars better than any he'd ever had on. A pure silk tie that he knotted badly. He wanted a manicure but that was too much bother. A girl would have had to be brought in to do it, so they just promised the manicure to him right up to when there wasn't time enough.

There couldn't have been anyone more convincing than Valacchi. He refused to see that all the time they had spent on him was rehearsal. Like a greedy actor, he took possession of the dialogue and the stage.

A number of charts had been prepared for him. Like cue cards. Huge charts mounted with full face FBI and police photographs of the bosses and underbosses and everyone all the way down to the lowest soldier. The way Valacchi told it to the McClellan Committee, he knew them all, top to bottom, personally. Knew their records, habits, criminal specialties. He was a veritable archive of the Mafia. And, of course, it was all up there on the charts.

No one doubted Valacchi. Because no one wanted to doubt Valacchi. There were no convictions as a result of him and the bosses never really offered to pay a hundred and fifty thousand to whoever killed him, as the newspapers reported. The bosses just squirmed some, soaked up the notoriety and truth be known, did not entirely dislike it.

Valacchi was promised that he'd be kept in custody only as long as it took the commotion he'd caused to settle and smooth over. He would be given a new identity and, in other ways, be provided for. Meanwhile, he spent much of his time thinking up luxuries for his future. His keepers agreed to everything.

On the morning of April 14, 1968, in his private quarters in the Federal Correctional Institute in LaMesa, Texas, Valacchi rolled up his shirt sleeve and received his weekly intravenous injection of vitamin B complex, which he believed he needed. The 50cc syringe contained vitamins and also live liver cancer cells. Within three months Valacchi was dead.

Costello also died.

But of a natural cause, out of the limelight and far wealthier than any of his confederates knew.

Winship had 16mm motion pictures made of Costello's funeral. He viewed them alone in his study, his way of attending.

All the old bosses were dead and gone.

The underbosses stepped up, already conditioned, aware of what they should fear most and their accountability to the High Board. Not one of them had ever seen Winship, and the few who knew the name did not really believe it.

The High Board never let up on them. Disobedient Carmine Galante met death sitting in the sun on July 1979 on the rear terrace of Jo and Mary's Italian-American Restaurant in Brooklyn. Frank Tieri, at age seventy-six and suffering, had to endure being wheeled by two registered nurses into Federal District Court in November 1980 so, although too feeble to zip his own fly, he could be charged with being the most powerful of all. Tieri sat there in his sallow, age-spotted skin, his old dog eyes seeming to ask, “Why now?” The district attorneys chewed on him and fed him to the press day by day. Innocence was never a question. Actually, the proceedings were like a premature eulogy, reviewing the crimes of Tieri's years as though they were accomplishments. Funzuola Tieri, age seventy-seven, IQ seventy-nine, died six months later. Attention was immediately shifted to one Aladena Frattiano, who claimed to have been forty years in the organization, an acting boss out west. According to Frattiano he chose to be a born again informant because he found out he was about to die. His deal with the government was that he receive suspended sentences for two confessed murders, thirty-five thousand dollars every year and all the other amenities of the federal witness protection program. However, if that was truly the arrangement why was Frattiano allowed to appear on television talk shows with such forthright brashness. Would he, trying for a safe profile, really flaunt his face while naming such names as Dragna, Buffaleno, Persico?