The Last Testament of Lucky Luciano: The Mafia Story in His Own Words (14 page)

“Dutch ran across the room and grabbed Joe’s head in a hammerlock and breathed right in his face, sayin’, ‘Now, you
fuckin’ star, you have my goims.’ Joe actually did catch Dutch’s flu and for a solid week he was callin’ me up on the phone from bed with a voice like a hoarse frog, tellin’ me to warn the Dutchman to stay outa his way.”

The approaches to the upper echelon of the police department by Costello and Lucania were slow, cautious and effective, and after a series of private negotiations, a payment schedule was worked out that would tie the office of the police commissioner to the Lucania organization. The first of the weekly payments began to flow from Lucania’s headquarters to the police commissioner’s office late in 1925. The sum agreed upon was ten thousand dollars a week; within a couple of years, during the term of police commissioners Joseph A. Warren and Grover A. Whalen, the grease, Luciano would later say, rose to twenty thousand dollars a week.

The job of carrying the money to police headquarters was entrusted to an underling in the Lucania mob named Joe Cooney, sometimes called “Joe the Coon,” a nickname that never failed to enrage him since he maintained a fierce antipathy toward Negroes. Cooney was given the job both because of his loyalty and his Irishness. Carrying money into City Hall was a job that required an Irishman, like the red-haired, freckle-faced Cooney, who, dressed as a building maintenance man, could blend into the scenery.

It was one thing to hand over cash to liaison men for lower-level police and politicians at some agreed-upon site, and another thing entirely to walk into police headquarters in downtown Manhattan with ten thousand dollars in small bills, and carry them directly to the commissioner’s office, as the agreement worked out by Lucania and Costello demanded.

“How the hell am I gonna deliver ten big ones in little bills right in the middle of all them cops?” Cooney asked Lucania.

“Goddammit, Cooney, just give it to him. Hand it over.”

“In what? What do you want me to carry it in?”

“For chrissake, shove it into a brown paper bag, like it’s your lunch, a sandwich or somethin’.”

Cooney did just that, becoming the prototype of the “bagman.” Dressed in his work clothes and carrying his lunch with him, he arrived at police headquarters once a week at noon, went to the
commissioner’s office, and handed over his cash-filled brown bag. “I told Cooney that once in a while, to make things look legit, he should change a light bulb.”

The payoffs bought what they were intended to buy. The Lucania operations now ran smoothly, almost as though under the aegis of the police department. As long as innocent civilians were not harmed (and sometimes even if they were), Lucania and his men were free to do almost as they pleased. If there was need of a token raid, because “some politician couldn’t fuck his wife, so he tried to have a good time fuckin’ me and my guys,” a police official would call or come personally to see Lucania with a warning and to work out the details to limit the damage. Charlie Lucania was even called by police when one of his cars was ticketed for illegal parking; he laughed off the tickets, but refused to have them fixed and paid them promptly, because “it was the least I could do to show I was a law-abidin’ citizen.”

It was about this time, at the end of 1925, that an old friend reappeared briefly in New York. Fifteen years Lucania’s senior, Johnny “The Fox” Torrio was on his way for a long vacation to the town near Naples where he had been born. The underworld peace he had labored for so tirelessly in Chicago, after the murder of Big Jim Colosimo, had fallen apart amid the bullets that ripped through Cicero and in the war between Torrio’s forces and those of Dion O’Banion. Torrio had dealt with O’Banion with dispatch, summoning once again his old friend Frankie Yale to murder the little florist. But in the aftermath, Torrio himself had been ambushed and nearly killed. The story has always been that the attempt was staged by George “Bugs” Moran, Hymie Weiss and other heirs of O’Banion in revenge. And, indeed, Al Capone, Torrio’s chief aide, wept copious tears when news of the attack was brought to him and swore revenge on the O’Banion mob. “But I know that Al was behind the try at Torrio, even though he always said he didn’t have nothin’ to do with it. He tried to eliminate Johnny the same way Johnny done with Colosimo.”

As soon as Torrio was sufficiently recovered, he had sought safety in an Illinois prison, surrendering to serve a nine-month sentence on a bootleg conviction. While in jail, he turned his entire Chicago empire over to Capone and in return Capone provided
him with a three-car safe-conduct motorcade from the prison gates to the railroad station for his trip East. Before he boarded the train, Torrio called Lucania and arranged a meeting when he reached New York before sailing for Italy.

“Johnny was a guy who could always look around corners, just like Meyer Lansky. One time, I even told him that the barrel of his gun was curved, and he laughed at that, but he didn’t deny it. When we met, he told me he was gonna take a vacation in Italy; he’d gotten his naturalization papers, so he didn’t have nothin’ to worry about, and he had millions stashed away. He told me he wanted to talk over a plan. He thought booze was gonna become legal again and he wanted to become my agent in Europe, to start buyin’ up legal options on the best Scotch to get ready for the end of the Volstead Act. This was seven long years before Repeal, and it was almost impossible to believe. Here was a guy predictin’ that my whole fuckin’ bootleg business, and everybody else’s for that matter, was gonna wind up in the shithouse.”

The next day, Lucania and Torrio met in secret with Costello, Lansky and the other partners. When they heard Torrio’s prediction, everyone was shocked, except Lansky. “He agreed, and then he said, ‘The only way to get legitimate is to move in with legitimate people.’ And Johnny made the biggest point; he said, ‘You’ve gotta get into the big politics; you can buy the top politicians the same way you bought the law.’ ”

And then Torrio set sail. His Italian sojourn would not be as long as he thought. Mussolini’s Fascists were in the middle of a bitter campaign to eliminate the Sicilian Mafia and to get rid of American gangsters of Italian descent who were returning home. Labeled an undesirable visitor, Torrio was soon back in the United States and working closely with Lucania and his other friends in New York.

But while he was gone, Charlie Lucania, Frank Costello and their top associates were making their moves into high-level politics, particularly in New York City and state. “I made it a policy from the beginnin’ that we wouldn’t just line up with Tammany Hall and the Democrats. To me, that would look like we was takin’ sides, and the truth of it was, I couldn’t’ve cared less. We
went with the Republicans, too. In my book, it was a three-party system — them two and us.”

They had plenty to offer the politicians who helped them, those candidates for the public’s vote and trust. They had the money to finance any campaign, to make any tractable politician a wealthy man; they had the contacts and the knowledge to turn a willing politician on to lucrative deals in road-building, construction and more — the list is endless — and they had the strong-arm forces to terrorize any of their candidates’ opponents and to incline voters to cast their ballots the “right way.”

Just as they had little trouble buying the police, so they had little trouble buying the politicians they wanted, like Tammany leaders Jimmy Hines and Albert C. Marinelli. And often they did not even have to seek out the politicians, who came to them seeking assistance. “We wanted good guys — winners. Even though we played both sides of the political line, and that way we couldn’t lose, still it was a good thing to have a guy elected who could do a nice job and get reelected easier. That way, the second time, the campaign didn’t cost us so much. It got so I could pick political winners better than I could ever pick horses.”

In the early morning hours of these years, Lucania would go home, get into bed, and read the
Daily News
and the
Mirror
(“I didn’t know enough words to read the New York
Times
”), read about what his assemblymen, aldermen, congressmen and senators were doing, and the realization would grow that these were people he had made. “I’d lay there and read that stuff and it all looked so legit I couldn’t even believe I done it, that it was my muscle that put them ‘very respectable’ guys where they was. Talk about muscle; there’s muscle, and muscle. There was people on the streets with muscle to make things go the way I wanted, and I had them. Then there was the other kind of muscle, to get the laws passed the right way, to get things done smooth and legal. I had that kind of muscle, too. I personally helped elect more than eighty guys over a short time, all votin’ my way, aldermen, councilmen, mayors, congressmen, even senators. They was mine. I picked ’em. I elected ’em. They belonged to me, lock, stock and barrel.”

There was no letup of the pressure from both Maranzano and Masseria for Lucania to make a decision and join forces with one or the other, to put an end to his hesitation and delays. The more important he became in the underworld, the more intense the wooing, though behind the soft words there began to creep in a hint of threat, a sense of ultimatum, particularly from Masseria. Whenever they met, Masseria’s comments became more pointed. “Then in 1927, Red Levine — he was the best driver and hit man I had — told me that Masseria sent a message he wanted to see me and a couple of my guys right away, that we was to come to a room at the Hotel Manger on Seventh Avenue at four o’clock in the afternoon.”

In the tone of the message there was more of a demand than an invitation, and Lucania quickly called a meeting of his closest friends — Lansky, Costello, Adonis, Siegel, Genovese and Frank Scalise, summoned from Brooklyn. (“That was my board of directors, you might say.”) They met at the back of Moe Ducore’s drugstore on Seventh Avenue; Lucania owned a piece of it, it had become a favorite hangout, and it was almost directly across the street from the Manger. “I sent Nick Gentile and Red Levine over to case the hotel while I had a session with my guys. Lansky started it off, and that kinda surprised me, because most of the time he would wait and let everybody else talk first.”

Lansky was certain he knew the reason for Masseria’s summons. “Let’s not sit here jerkin’ off,” he said. “This is the showdown. It’s gotta be yes or no, either Charlie goes with Joe the Boss or there’s gonna be a lot of blood spilled.”

Jumping to his feet and pacing the floor, Siegel, as usual, was all for violent action. “Masseria’s a fat old bastard, and we don’t need him. If Charlie throws in with him, he knows we’ll stick
with Charlie and so he’ll get Meyer and me and then he’ll have enough guns to steal every goddamn thing we’ve all been buildin’. Charlie, I say we oughta pile through that door at four o’clock and knock him right off.” (“Bugsy was the only nut I ever knew who had real ice water and absolutely no fear in them days.”)

The argument that followed was strident, with everyone shouting and taking differing views. Finally, Genovese took one of the pharmacist’s brass mortars and threw it on the floor. Into the sudden silence, he said, “For chrissake, what the hell are you all yellin’ about? You know goddamn well that Charlie has to make the decision, and that he’s gonna do it. So why don’t we give him a chance to hear himself think.”

“That was typical of Vito. That little prick used to kiss my ass every time he had the chance. He was always tryin’ to show his loyalty. Anyway, I did make the decision, and everybody went along with it. This was the day for me to join us up with Joe Masseria. I had already made up my mind that I couldn’t go with Maranzano; I couldn’t get over the feelin’ that used to stick in my throat, that Don Salvatore was my enemy. He was always tryin’ to prove that he was superior, that nobody could be his equal. I didn’t wanna put myself in a position where I hadda kiss his ring at nine o’clock every mornin’. As far as Masseria was concerned, I thought he was a big fat bundle of shit. I figured I could handle him and work out a deal to join him without havin’ to give up all our whiskey business, which was really fantastic by that time.” And there was another logic that dictated the move to Masseria; his territory included midtown and upper Manhattan, while Maranzano operated mainly downtown and around Wall Street. In combination with Masseria, Lucania would have a lock on the wealth of midtown and above, and with Masseria to boost him, he was sure he could muscle Maranzano out of the Wall Street district.

And, too, there was another consideration. “I was sure that sooner or later, more sooner than later, Maranzano and Masseria would have a war. Them two fuckin’ Sicilians would never be happy until one of ’em got rubbed out. To me, the whole thing was a matter of organizin’ a business; for them, it was the pride that came first — who was gonna be the Boss of Bosses. I figured
— and this was one time I was dead wrong — that Masseria would wind up on top.”