Honor Thy Father (26 page)

When Genovese left the United States hurriedly in 1934 after being linked to the murder of a hoodlum named Ferdinand Boccia, he had with him about $750,000 in cash that enabled him to buy favor with Fascist leaders in the region of his birth near Naples. Genovese contributed $250,000 to the construction of a municipal building in that area, bought a power plant, and soon he received from Mussolini the government’s highest civilian title of commendatore. Genovese was believed to have further ingratiated himself with Mussolini by arranging for the fatal shooting in January 1943, on Fifth Avenue and Fifteenth Street in New York, of Mussolini’s most vitriolic critic in the United States, an Italian-language newspaper editor named Carlo Tresca.

But Genovese’s charmed life in Italy seemed to be coming to an end in the spring of 1944 when an American agent in the army’s Criminal Investigation Division, while gathering information about the black market in the Foggia—Naples area, learned that Genovese was at the center of it, a situation that had somehow escaped the Allied officers Genovese had worked with so closely as a translator and liaison man. Then the agent was further surprised to discover, after urging that Genovese be brought to trial and exposed, that higher authorities were reluctant to do so. Genovese obviously had many friends in important places in the local Allied command, and he was possibly in a position to implicate a few of them as accomplices in black market operations if the investigation deepened. The agent did succeed, however, in arresting Vito Genovese and in informing the FBI of Genovese’s situation in Italy; and, to the relief of the Allied military, the FBI responded with little interest in Genovese’s black market dealings, preferring to focus attention on Genovese’s ties to the unsolved murder in 1934 of Ferdinand Boccia.

Genovese as a result was returned to the United States to stand trial, and the case against him seemed strong—until the chief corroborative witness against Genovese was fatally poisoned in a Brooklyn jail where he was being held in protective custody. The witness, a cigar store salesman with racket connections who had supposedly seen the Boccia murder, died suddenly after drinking a glass of water containing pain-relieving tablets he was accustomed to using for his gallstones—tablets that a New York toxicologist later claimed were sufficient “to kill eight horses.”

So the case against Genovese was dropped; he was a free man in America. And inasmuch as Lucky Luciano had just been deported to Italy—Luciano’s release from prison being more or less a reward for his war work, though he would never be allowed to reenter the United States—Genovese, as Luciano’s number two man, was now in line for the top job in the Luciano family. But securing it would not be easy, for during Genovese’s ten years of exile in Italy and Luciano’s seven years in jail, the family’s acting boss, Frank Costello, had earned the respect of the dons and had developed close relationships with certain captains and crews; he had also, through his own initiative, achieved political influence in New York through contributions to Tammany Hall and friendships with district leaders, judges, and a man who would become mayor of New York, William O’Dwyer.

While Genovese was welcomed back with cordiality by Costello and the other subordinate officers, it was soon apparent to Genovese that the lines of loyalty and the family’s management style had changed somewhat during his absence. Costello had ruled gently, had allowed maximum authority to the captains—Genovese wanted tight control under himself. Costello believed that power could be attained without violence, preferring bribes to bullets, while Genovese believed that when it came to gaining compliance, nothing worked faster than fear. Costello opposed members’ involvement in drug trafficking; Genovese endorsed this in principle, but he was not averse to sharing in narcotics profits if he felt that his connection was untraceable—indeed, Lucky Luciano himself, after his deportation from the United States, had a hand in the international smuggling ring that moved drugs through the Mediterranean from Turkey.

Given these and other differences between Genovese and Costello, it was inevitable that there would be conflict; and soon after Genovese had returned, he began to chip away, slowly and methodically, at the stature of Frank Costello. He began with a whispering campaign among his clique in the family that dwelled on Costello’s presumed failings, stressing that Costello, a millionaire, was no longer hungry, no longer eager to take risks in search of new fortunes in which the underlings might share. Genovese questioned Costello’s judgment in associating with such sidekicks as Willie Moretti who, while once competent, was now detrimental to the brotherhood. Genovese hinted that Moretti was suffering from brain damage resulting from advanced syphilis, a condition that drove Moretti to excessive verbalizing and boasting that might inadvertently reveal Mafia secrets to outsiders. In October 1951, after Costello had been subjected to the spotlight of the Kefauver hearings—the result of which he would receive an eighteen-month sentence for contempt of the Senate—Willie Moretti was shot to death in a New Jersey restaurant by men close to Genovese.

During the following year, Genovese ordered the murder of a narcotics peddler who was believed to be a federal informer. Nine months later, feeling betrayed by a man with whom he had once been in partnership in nightclubs, Genovese had him strangled to death. Genovese continued his tactics of terror and intrigue through that year and the next, while Costello—named the “number one racketeer in this country” by a Senate committee report in November 1953—remained preoccupied by court cases that threatened him with deportation and charges of income tax evasion.

Costello was convicted of a tax evasion charge in 1954 as investigators dug deeply into his past spending—the $18,000 in cash for his parents’ mausoleum, the charge accounts of his wife at Saks Fifth Avenue and Lord & Taylor—and determined that he was living above the $39,000 annual income he reported he earned from real estate investments and partnerships in such businesses as the Beverly Club in Louisiana. Costello was accused of evading $28,000 in taxes during a two-year period, for which he was sentenced to five years in prison. After various appeals had failed, he went to jail in May 1956 but was released on $25,000 bail in March 1957 when his lawyers convincingly contended that his conviction was based on illegal wiretap evidence.

One night two months later, as Costello returned in a cab to his apartment building at 115 Central Park West, after having dined at a restaurant, a black limousine pulled up behind him and a large man with a pistol followed him into the lobby, then said, “This is for you, Frank.” Turning as the gunman pulled the trigger, the bullet grazed Costello’s scalp—there was bleeding but no serious injury. Costello fell back into a leather couch. The gunman turned and rushed toward the street, got into the car and his driver sped away.

Costello later told the police that he had seen nothing and could not imagine why anyone would wish to shoot him, but the doorman on duty that night admitted to having witnessed the scene and, with the aid of police photographs, he identified the gunman as Vincent (The Chin) Gigante, a former prizefighter who was one of Genovese’s men. But when the doorman testified in court, he seemed nervous and uncertain, and Gigante’s lawyer easily shattered his credibility. Gigante went free, although he was immediately rearrested on scofflaw charges and he pleaded guilty to ten traffic tickets. The doorman, who had received wide publicity in newspapers and whose wife had received threatening phone calls during the trial, returned timidly to his post and often had the smell of liquor on his breath; soon after, he was fired from his job, his wife gained a separation, and he drifted away and was not seen again by the tenants.

Vito Genovese had of course anticipated Costello’s revenge; and when Genovese was informed that Costello had been meeting privately with Albert Anastasia, one of the most feared men in the syndicate, and was presumably arranging details for Genovese’s murder, Genovese made his move quickly, after first gaining the support of other dons, which in this case was not difficult. Anastasia was a controversial figure in 1957. Volatile and violent, identified with many murders, he lived in a large home in Fort Lee, New Jersey, that overlooked the Hudson River and was protected by walls and vicious dogs. He controlled, among other things, the Brooklyn waterfront, and at this point he was one of the five dons in New York City. He had seized that position after the mysterious disappearance in 1951 of Vincent Mangano, one of the original family leaders selected in 1931 after the Castellammarese War. The persistent rumor in the underworld was that Anastasia, after much bickering with Mangano, had had him quietly assassinated and buried in a concrete foundation of a housing project in Nassau County, Long Island.

The Mangano murder, as despicable as it may have been to other leaders in the national syndicate, was nonetheless a family affair and did not easily justify outside interference. But other acts by Anastasia since then had clearly violated the jurisdiction of other families or had ignored national policy, and it was for these reasons that Anastasia was in a precarious position in 1957. He had mistakenly assumed that he could move his men into the gambling casino business and related lucrative enterprises in Florida, Cuba, and other Caribbean resorts—areas under the province of Meyer Lansky, Luciano’s friend, and Santo Trafficante, Jr., who with his Sicilian father had been for many years on intimate terms with leading Mafia figures both in the United States and abroad. Anastasia was also charged with ignoring the commission’s policy against initiating new members without commission clearance, a policy designed to maintain the balance of power among the larger families.

So in the summer and fall of 1957, various secret meetings were held to discuss the Anastasia situation, and the police became aware of some of these through wiretapping and electronic bugging. Genovese was known to have communicated with one of Anastasia’s lieutenants, Carlo Gambino, and also with Thomas Lucchese, who became a New York don in place of Gaetano Gagliano, who died of natural causes in 1953. The police also became aware of Joseph Bonanno’s trip to Sicily in 1957, where, beginning on October 12, there were alleged hotel conferences in Palermo attended by Lucky Luciano, Bonanno, and such Bonanno associates as Garofalo, Bonventre, and Carmine Galante. Bonanno was also observed during that week in Castellammare receiving a hero’s welcome from his townsmen, and later conferring with some of the top-ranking
amici
of western Sicily at a hillside café.

On October 25, as Albert Anastasia reclined under hot towels in the Park-Sheraton Hotel barbershop on Seventh Avenue and Fifty-sixth Street in Manhattan—his bodyguards were paying little attention—two gunmen walked in and riddled Anastasia’s body with bullets, which killed him instantly.

Three weeks later on November 14, at Genovese’s suggestion, the Apalachin conference was held. Genovese preferred having it in Chicago, but Stefano Magaddino, citing the fact that a secret meeting had been held in Apalachin the year before without interruption, thought it was better to hold it there again. The upstate New York community was also more convenient for the senior commissioner, who at sixty-six did not like to travel great distances, and there was ample room on the large estate of Magaddino’s fellow Castellammarese, Joseph Barbara, to accommodate the many visitors.

Most of the delegates represented families in the Northeast, the center of many of the current problems. Twenty-three men were from New York City or New Jersey, nineteen were from other parts of New York State, only eight had come from the Midwest, three from the West, two from the South, and three from overseas—two from Cuba, one from Sicily. Among the major items on the agenda was the reaffirmation of Genovese’s position as the head of his family, with the assurance that Costello and his friends had nothing to fear so long as they did not challenge Genovese; the reiteration of the commission’s policy against drugs and new memberships; and the clarification of any questions with regard to the Anastasia family, which would now be headed by Carlo Gambino.

But before the sessions could begin, the New York State Police launched their surprise raid that would prove to be disastrous to the national syndicate and would terminate the many years of relative tranquillity enjoyed by such dons as Joseph Bonanno. For Vito Genovese, the Apalachin meeting was merely a precursor of other bad news.

Federal narcotics agents had just arrested a Puerto Rican dope peddler on the West Side of Manhattan who, after being sentenced to a four-to-five-year term and feeling double-crossed because the organization had not fixed the case in court, decided to turn informer. One man that he informed against was Vito Genovese. It did not seem possible at first that the testimony of the informer, Nelson Cantellops, could lead to convictions; but like so many racketeers who have trained themselves to put nothing in writing, Cantellops had almost total recall, and he recited names, places, and incidents that linked the Genovese family with narcotics, and he also described a time when he had personally overheard Genovese discussing a narcotics deal with other men in the Bronx.

In 1958 a federal grand jury in New York returned an indictment against twenty-four individuals who Cantellops swore were involved in narcotics trafficking, and among the names on the list were Carmine Galante of the Bonanno family, John Ormento of the Lucchese family, Joseph Valachi of the Genovese family, and Genovese himself. Genovese and fourteen others were brought to trial in the spring of 1959, and by 1960 he was in the Atlanta Penitentiary beginning a fifteen-year sentence for narcotics smuggling.

Even in jail, where his mere presence instilled fear in the other prisoners who did not address him unless he spoke first, Genovese dictated orders to his captains beyond the walls and fomented tension in the underworld. Suspecting one of his officers, Anthony Strollo, of double-dealing and cheating him of money, Genovese is supposed to have ordered his death in 1962. Genovese at this time also suspected, incorrectly, that his fellow prisoner in Atlanta, Joseph Valachi, a veteran associate, had become a government informer; and when Valachi himself sensed that he was marked for extinction, he wildly bludgeoned to death with a pipe an innocent inmate who he thought was his potential assassin.