Five Families: The Rise, Decline, and Resurgence of America's Most Powerful Mafia Empires (3 page)

Usually present at induction ceremonies were the “underboss,” the second-in-command, who assisted in running the family’s day-to-day business, and the
consigliere
, the counselor and adviser on family matters and on relations and disputes with other Mafia groups.

At Lucchese inductions, the identities of the bosses of New York’s four other large Mafia families (Genovese, Gambino, Bonanno, and Colombo) and a smaller one (DeCavalcante) based in New Jersey were disclosed to the new soldier. This confidential information came with the admonition that if another family boss was encountered he should be accorded the utmost respect.

Finally, several New York families concluded their ceremony with a
ticada
, Italian for “tie-in” or a “tack-up.” To demonstrate the internal solidarity of their secret organization, all witnesses and the new member clasped hands to unite in what the boss declared “the unbreakable knot of brotherhood.”

Alphonso D’Arco’s big day in the Lucchese family was August 23, 1982. He was instructed to “get dressed, you’re going somewhere” by his capo, picked up at a street corner in Manhattan’s Little Italy section, and like Tony Accetturo driven to a modest home in the Bronx. Four other candidates sat in the parlor, waiting to be summoned into another room, a kitchen. When D’Arco’s turn came, he was introduced to Tony Ducks Corallo and other members of the administration seated around a table.

“Do you know why you’re here?” one of the men asked, and D’Arco dutifully replied, “No.”

“You’re going to be part of this family,” the man continued. “If you’re asked to kill somebody, would you do it?”

D’Arco nodded his assent and then his trigger finger was pricked and the saint’s picture burned. One of the men surrounding the table removed a towel that covered a gun and a knife lying on the table. “You live by the gun and the knife and you die by the gun and knife if you betray anyone in this room,” the speaker said somberly. Finally, D’Arco repeated a version of the Mafia’s holy oath: “If I betray my friends and my family, may my soul burn in hell like this saint.”

Later, when the ceremony for all of the recruits was completed, Ducks Corallo rose and asked everyone to
attaccata
, to tack or tie up by holding hands.
“La fata di questa famiglia sono aperti”
Corallo announced, meaning the affairs of this family are open. He then lectured his new soldiers on basic principles, precepts etched in D’Arco’s memory.

“We were told not to deal in narcotics, counterfeit money, or stolen stocks
and bonds, to respect the families or other members and not to fool around with other members’ wives or daughters. If any disputes arise that you and members cannot resolve, you must go to your captain. You do not put your hands on other family members. You are to maintain yourself with respect at all times. When your captain calls, no matter what time or day or night, you must respond immediately. This family comes before your own family. Above all, you do not discuss anything about this family with members of other families. If you do not abide by these rules, you will be killed.”

Another unbreakable rule was imposed by Corallo: police and other law-enforcement agents could never be “whacked,” killed.

“Whatever happened here tonight is never to be talked about,” Corallo warned. Instructing the group to once more tack up, he finished in Italian:
“La fata di questa famiglia sono chiuso”
(“The affairs of this family are now closed.”)

The afternoon event ended on a nonalcoholic, sober note with coffee, simple snacks, and pastry offered the men before the old hands and freshly minted mobsters dispersed in small groups.

D’Arco would learn that Corallo banned involvement in narcotics and counterfeiting and stealing stocks and bonds because these were federal offenses and meant heavy prison time. Corallo, like other Mob leaders, had good reasons to prevent hits on law-enforcement personnel. Murdering a cop, an investigator, or a prosecutor would unleash the fury of the law against the Mob and make normal business hazardous. Furthermore, the rule was aimed at maintaining strict discipline and preventing rash, unauthorized acts by hotheaded troops.

The day after the induction ceremony, D’Arco was the guest of honor at a select dinner with other crew members, given by his capo. It was an occasion for him and the twenty-odd members of his crew to be introduced to one another as equals. D’Arco’s new companions laughingly explained to him what would have occurred if he had refused at the Bronx ceremony to accept membership in the borgata: He would have been killed on the spot. His refusal would have been proof that he was an agent or an informer trying to infiltrate the family.

In the early days of his membership, more Cosa Nostra customs and rules were passed on to him by older soldiers. Some shibboleths were strange, particularly those concerning grooming and wardrobe. New York’s Mob leaders frowned on soldiers growing mustaches or wearing fabrics containing the color red. Mustaches were considered ostentatious and red was looked upon as too
flashy by the conservatively dressed hierarchs. Inexplicably, some Mob big shots also believed that red garments were favored by “rats,” squealers.

Although they were always under the thumb of a capo and the administration’s kingpins, there were enormous potential benefits for loyal, ambitious soldiers like Al D’Arco and Tony Accetturo. A made man automatically had greater respect, prestige, and money-making opportunities. For starters, he was entitled to a larger share of the loot from his criminal activities than had been doled out to him as a wannabe or an “associate,” someone who works or cooperates with the family. And the newcomer became eligible for a cut of the profits from other family-controlled rackets.

Another gift to a soldier was the authority to organize and exploit his own wannabes in illegal activities. Most associates aspired to become made men, but only those of Sicilian or Italian ancestry were eligible. At one time, nearly all the families would induct only men whose mother and father were Italian. Eventually, the requirement was eased: as long as the father’s roots were Italian an applicant was eligible. Regardless of his value to the borgata, an associate without Italian heritage—even if he served as a hit man committing murders on demand or was a major earner—could never gain admission. A non-Italian might be highly respected but would never be acknowledged as equal to the lowest-ranking mafioso.

Equally important, as long as a soldier complied with the Mafia’s code of conduct, the family’s financial and legal connections were available. If he got into a jam and was arrested, the family paid for expensive legal talent. If a made man wound up in prison, the borgata’s family administration or his capo were expected to support his wife and children.

For loyalty and service to the family in a violent, dangerous environment, there was yet another vital bequest: a life insurance policy. A made man could be killed only on the orders of his boss and only for a serious infraction of a Mafia rule. Others who worked for a borgata or who were involved in deals with mafiosi lacked comparable protection. They could be whacked or maimed at the whim of a made man if a conflict arose between them. A soldier had the added security of knowing that other criminals who suspected or were aware of his connections feared injuring or insulting him; the lethal retaliatory power of the organization was well known in the underworld.

Joining the Mafia in the mid and late twentieth century was arduous and hazardous, but there was no shortage of applicants; and for recruits like Tony Accetturo, full membership glittered as a prize with outstanding financial rewards.

Tumac’s Tale

A
nthony Accetturo’s attachment to the Mafia’s code of honor was a passport to underworld glory and respect. It eventually brought him a high rank in the Mob’s upper echelons and turned him into a multimillionaire.

His early life, however, did not augur success in any field. One of six children born to immigrant Sicilian parents, Accetturo grew up in the 1940s and early ‘50s in Orange, a scruffy blue-collar suburb of Newark, New Jersey. His father, Angelo, a butcher and the owner of Accetturo’s Meat Market, tried unsuccessfully to interest Tony in his legitimate trade. The youngster preferred perfecting his talents in pool halls.

He had no interest in education, becoming a chronic truant after the sixth grade, and his parents, who placed little value on traditional education, consented to an early departure from school when he was sixteen. Barely out of his teens, the boy was sent to live with relatives in Newark, where he established himself as a fearsome scrapper in an Italian-American street gang of fifty to sixty young roughnecks. At sixteen, his reputation was enshrined when he brandished a crutch to batter an opponent unconscious, earning him the nickname “Tumac.” The name, based on the rugged caveman hero played by Victor Mature in a 1940 movie,
One Million
B.C., delighted the young Accetturo, and he adopted it as a lifelong sobriquet.

When not brawling, Accetturo largely supported himself by “popping,” breaking open and stealing coins from jukeboxes and cigarette-vending machines, unleashing a small-time crime wave that disturbed neighborhood merchants, and more important, a local big shot, Anthony “Ham” Delasco. A former professional boxer, Delasco summoned the teenager for a disciplinary lecture. From street talk and from his own observations of the deep respect accorded Delasco in the neighborhood, Accetturo knew he was encountering a substantial made man. “Those machines belong to me,” Delasco said menacingly. “I want this bullshit to stop.”

Delasco also saw potential in the aggressive seventeen-year-old and gave him a $75-a-week job. The teenager’s duties were to assist in running Delasco’s “numbers,” an illegal lottery gambling game, and using his brawn to collect debts and payments in his “shylocking,” loan-sharking operations.

Accetturo readily signed on and the wily mobster soon curbed his acolyte’s independent streak while teaching him an elementary Mafia lesson. “Go get me an ice cream,” Delasco one day ordered Accetturo as the young man stood with a group of admiring friends on a street corner. The embarrassed Accetturo knew he would be demeaned in front of his pals if he acted as an errand boy. But understanding that Delasco was testing his obedience, he bought his boss the ice cream.

“I knew that if I wanted to stay with Ham and learn from him, he had to have absolute control over me,” Accetturo explained. “He had to break me and I took the bit in my mouth.”

Accetturo became a prize pupil for Delasco and later for other mafiosi who replaced Delasco after his death. Tumac’s only slip-up as a wannabe occurred when he delivered a package stuffed with cash to Joe Abate, the austere capo. It was Abate’s monthly share of the proceeds from the Lucchese family’s Newark branch, and he was sitting alone in a parked car awaiting his payoff.

Eager to ingratiate himself with Abate, whom he had not previously met, young Accetturo remarked how honored he was to be in his presence. Abate icily ordered him out of the car and sped off. Three hours later, Accetturo was blisteringly reprimanded by an older mobster, Lenny Pizzolata, whom Abate had called.

“Who the fuck are you to start a conversation with Joe Abate?” Pizzolata barked. “If you want to stay alive, never mention his name and speak only when you are spoken to.”

Except for that single mistake, during the 1950s and ‘60s Accetturo advanced
smoothly in the borgata. He dramatically proved his mettle in the late ‘60s when Newark’s African-American population increased sharply and black criminals began forcefully taking over numbers territories from white bookies. Bolstered by Accetturo and his handpicked gang of armed goons, the Lucchese faction held on to its stake in the numbers games. Police intelligence officials determined that Accetturo had smashed attempted incursions into Lucchese domains by a gang of militant Black Panthers. Although no homicide charges were brought, the police suspected that Accetturo’s unit was responsible for several murders committed to maintain Mafia dominance.

In 1979 the seventy-seven-year-old Abate was slowing down and went into semiretirement. Ducks Corallo did not hesitate to anoint Accetturo as his New Jersey capo, promoting Tumac over older soldiers who earlier had been his tutors. Accetturo quickly demonstrated his administrative skills. He enlarged the family’s traditional gambling, loan-sharking, and narcotics-trafficking schemes and began dabbling in labor racketeering. Through strong-arm tactics, the New Jersey crew gained control of corrupt union officials, clearing the way for the milking of employee welfare funds and threatening companies with Mob-enforced work stoppages unless payoffs were supplied for labor peace.

The new capo expanded the family’s operations to Florida, where he nurtured similar criminal ventures in the Miami area and, as a sideline, fixed horse races. Accetturo’s underworld successes allowed him to invest and become a partner in seemingly legitimate real estate, insurance, equipment rental, and other enterprises in New Jersey, Florida, and North Carolina. He maintained homes in each of the three states and planned to retire in North Carolina, where he posed as a respectable businessman.