The Last Testament of Lucky Luciano: The Mafia Story in His Own Words (17 page)

“It’s a funny thing about the Sicilians. There just ain’t no secrets. There’s always somebody that’ll sell out one of his own. Lots of guys got fingered just for the prospect that somethin’ might happen. So, naturally, Masseria got word about Reina
meetin’ with Maranzano. Reina was no little potato. He was a boss. And under the old-time rules, a boss don’t get hit — pop, just like that. But in the case of Tommy Lucchese, that was different. It was all I could do to convince Joe that Tommy went with Reina to find out what was goin’ on and report to me. If Joe hadn’t bought the story, Tommy was as good as dead. But the whole situation seemed to turn Masseria into a ravin’ lunatic. He used to call me from all over New York a half a dozen times a day with a new name of a guy he wanted to bump off. He was drivin’ me crazy.”

The demands by Masseria for demonstrations of absolute loyalty reached a climax in November of 1928. Lucania and Masseria were together in the back seat of a car, with Adonis acting as chauffeur. “That fat bastard pulls out a thirty-eight from his coat pocket and hands it to me and says, ‘You’re gonna carry this tonight on the payroll job. It ain’t got no numbers.’

“I thought he was out of his fuckin’ head, because he was talkin’ about a payroll heist he wanted me to plan for some of our guys maybe four or five months before, and nothin’ ever come of it. So I said, ‘Listen, for chrissake, I thought I was supposed to be runnin’ things; since when do I go back on the street with a
pistola?
’

“Joe grabbed the gun outa my hand and held it right against my belly. ‘Listen to me, you son of a bitch, you either pull that job or I’ll give it to you right here in the car. You made the plan for that job, and you gotta do it — because I say so.’

“Up front, I see Adonis noddin’ his head, meanin’ for me to go along; he could see the same thing I could, that the old mustache was just crazy enough to pull the trigger right in broad daylight. What the hell could I do? I took the gun back and I said to Masseria, ‘Joe, take my word, this is one of your biggest mistakes.’ ”

Lucania was dropped off in the garment district, on Seventh Avenue, and he found waiting for him in a car Red Levine and a new recruit in the organization, Paul Mineo. The three drove to the Corn Exchange Bank at Thirty-seventh Street, parked, and left the motor running. It was nearly bank closing time, and a payroll messenger for a large textile company was just leaving with the payroll in a canvas bag. “Paulie jumped outa the car and knocked the old geezer down and grabbed the bag. One of the bank guards
was lockin’ the door and he sees what’s happenin’.” The guard fired a shot and hit Mineo, who fell to the pavement. Lucania jumped from the car, grabbed Mineo, who was bleeding heavily, picked up the canvas bag, and pulled both into the car. Levine gunned the motor and sped away. They got only a couple of blocks before police caught up with them and arrested them with an eight-thousand-dollar payroll in their possession.

“It took every bit of political muscle that Costello and me had to get the whole thing squared away. Costello managed to get the charges squashed and the record fixed up so it was listed as an error. But we hadda go to the police commissioner’s office to squash things, and that error cost us a helluva lot more than eight grand. But in a way, I was almost glad the heist failed. My first thought was that it’d gimme a chance to tell Masseria off for bein’ such a stubborn prick, and I swore that’d be the last time Masseria or anyone else would put me in that kind of situation.”

For a short time thereafter, Masseria eased the pressure on Lucania a little. This gave Lucania a chance to turn his attention to his own business, and to the impending underworld conference. The response from around the country to the proposal had been favorable. The convention would be held in Atlantic City, where Nucky Johnson ruled supreme and the delegates could come and go as they pleased without attracting attention or suspicion, and where Johnson could insure that nothing would be lacking to cater to all their pleasures and tastes.

The only remaining question was a date, and that was easily resolved. Meyer Lansky was getting married early in May 1929, and his friends concluded that Atlantic City would be an ideal place for a honeymoon, so that pleasure could be mixed with business.

Marriage was the second major step that Lansky, with a certain calculation growing from his secure financial position and his desire for outward respectability, had decided to take in a period of just over six months. In October 1928, he became an American citizen, and, as they would at his wedding, his friends danced at his naturalization, though this time without invitation. Lansky’s desire then, as through his life, was only to fade into the background unobtrusively. But his friends showed up at the Brooklyn Federal
Courthouse. “We walked into this big room and there’s a whole bunch of people there. The smell of garlic could’ve knocked you over, on account of at least half the would-be citizens was Italian and they was dressed to kill, some of ’em even wearin’ tuxedos to show they’d made a few bucks. Frank, Benny, Joe, Vito and me spotted Lansky standin’ in the back, tryin’ to look nonchalant and superior, wearin’ a blue serge suit and tryin’ to make out like he’s a banker from Moscow, and he stood out like a sore thumb among all those weird costumes and fancy clothes. We sneaked up behind Meyer and Benny Siegel whispers in his ear, ‘Hey, Lansky, I can fix ya up with that broad — the blonde one over there. I hear her old man owns half of Delancey Street,’ and he points at this blonde girl standin’ over near the window with her father and mother. She was about eighteen, but she weighed about three hundred pounds, which is about three times as much as Meyer weighed soakin’ wet.

“I’ve seen Lansky pretty mad in my lifetime, but even when he was knockin’ a guy off, he was never as sore as that minute. With just one move, he kicked Bugsy right in the balls and then grabbed his mouth so he wouldn’t yell and make too much noise. A couple minutes later, Meyer walked out holdin’ his naturalization papers and Benny was holdin’ his balls.”

Then, in May of 1929, Lansky married Anna Citron, a devout, old-fashioned Jewish girl whose father was a moderately successful produce dealer in Hoboken, New Jersey (and who, as a wedding present, put his new son-in-law on the payroll, thereby giving Lansky a respectable front and an opportunity he would later turn to his own end). In the second week of May, they journeyed for their honeymoon to Atlantic City.

They were not the only arrivals along the Boardwalk. The big black limousines carrying sinister passengers arrived from all over the country. Capone arrived from Chicago, bringing with him his close ally, Jake “Greasy Thumb” Guzik (the nickname coming from Guzik’s astonishing speed in flipping through a stack of bills with a wet thumb and never losing count); King Solomon drove down from Boston; Boo-Boo Hoff, Waxey Gordon and Nig Rosen came up from Philadelphia; from Cleveland came Moe Dalitz and his allies, Lou Rothkopf and Charles Polizzi (real name, Leo Berkowitz, the adopted son of the Mafia-affiliated Polizzi family); a
whole delegation of the Purple Gang came from Detroit, doing the bidding of its leader, Abe Bernstein; Boss Tom Pendergast of Kansas City sent a surrogate, John Lazia; Longie Zwillman and Willie Moretti represented New York’s Nassau County and northern New Jersey. The largest delegation was from New York City. Led by Lucania, it numbered among its members Torrio, Lansky and his bride (who was unaware of the real reason for the choice of Atlantic City for a honeymoon), Costello, Lepke, Adonis, Frank Erickson (still in mourning for Arnold Rothstein) and Dutch Schultz; from Brooklyn there were Albert Anastasia, Vince Mangano and Frank Scalise.

Absent were the old Dons, Maranzano and Masseria. As Masseria’s second-in-command, Lucania had debated whether to invite Joe the Boss and had finally decided against doing so not only because he regarded liquor as his private domain, despite Masseria’s grumbling, but mainly because he had no intention of giving up his leadership position at Atlantic City, which Masseria’s presence would have required him to do.

Originally, Johnson had reserved suites for his guests at the Breakers, then one of the most exclusive hotels along the Boardwalk. It was a mistake and caused Johnson considerable embarrassment (and the owners of the Breakers some trouble later). The hotel was restricted to white Protestants, and Johnson had made all the reservations in Anglo-Saxon aliases. But one look at Capone, Rosen and the rest was enough; they were refused rooms on the spot, and not with polite words. It was apparent that the manager did not know to whom he was refusing service.

A hurried call to Nucky Johnson, a quick call by him, and then the fleet of limousines pulled out of the Breakers’s driveway and headed for the President Hotel. Before they arrived, Nucky Johnson, resplendent as usual with a red carnation in his lapel, joined the cavalcade. When Capone spotted him, he brought the parade to a halt in the middle of the street. “Nucky and Al had it out right there in the open. Johnson was about a foot taller than Capone and both of ’em had voices like foghorns. I think you could’ve heard ’em in Philadelphia, and there wasn’t a decent word passed between ’em. Johnson had a rep for four-letter words that wasn’t even invented, and Capone is screamin’ at me that I
made bad arrangements. So Nucky picks Al up under one arm and throws him into his car and yells out, ‘All you fuckers follow me!’ ”

The motorcade wound up at the Ritz, behind which loomed Johnson’s own mansion, and the Ambassador next door. Capone was still enraged. He stormed into the small, quiet Ritz lobby and began ripping pictures off the wall and throwing them at Johnson. “So everybody got over bein’ mad and concentrated on keepin’ Al quiet. That’s the way our convention started.”

For the first days, there was a constant round of parties, with plenty of liquor, food and girls. For those who had brought wives or girl friends, Johnson had presents of fur capes. Lansky, the bridegroom, was given the Presidential Suite at the Ritz, with a constant supply of French champagne. “I don’t know where Johnson got all that bubbly, because the son of a bitch didn’t get it from my outfit, on account of we never handled it. Meyer and Anna was really livin’ it up, but durin’ the next few days I could see that some of our friends from out of town made her a little nervous.”

Each morning, the delegates would breakfast in their suites and then wander out to the Boardwalk, climb into the canopied promenade roller-chairs, each accommodating two passengers and pushed by attendants, and roll at a measured pace along the ocean-front, talking about the weather. “How the hell could we talk about anythin’ else with them niggers breathin’ down our necks?”

Near the end of the Boardwalk, where Atlantic City adjoined the suburb of Chelsea, the men would alight from their roller-chairs, remove their shoes and socks, roll their pants legs up to the knees, step onto the sand, and then, strolling at the water’s edge, discuss their business in complete privacy.

All the decisions at the Atlantic City meeting were made out in the open, on the sand, during those daily walks toward Chelsea. Arrangements were struck to put an end to the cutthroat bidding for liquor abroad; henceforth there would be cooperation and allocations, and nobody would be disappointed, prices would drop, and all would be winners. It was the start of an organization, not with one man in control, but a group of organizations operating jointly, with decisions made by equals at the top, to develop a national monopoly in the liquor business.

There were discussions of what to do if Prohibition ended, and there was much talk of going legitimate when that day came. “After all, who knew more about the business than us?” Since liquor was basic to all their empires, they decided that some of their money should be set aside to buy breweries, distilleries and liquor import franchises as a hedge against possible repeal.

And there were discussions of moving in on gambling as a cooperative venture wherever local areas would permit. No decision was reached on this, for almost every delegate was jealous of his own sovereignty, chary of becoming totally dependent on any cartel other than bootlegging.

“But more important than all the whiskey deals and the gamblin’ decisions was what happened when Capone ran into a guy by the name of Moses Annenberg on the Boardwalk. Annenberg was also from Chicago, and he controlled the mob that enforced distribution of William Randolph Hearst’s newspapers in Chicago, which was no easy job because Chicago was a rough town with plenty of competition for the best corners and it took plenty of Annenberg’s muscle to keep Hearst on top. When Capone and Annenberg met, that’s when the talk got started about tyin’ in the national wire service for horseplayers with the
Daily Racin’ Form
. And it was right there, in Atlantic City, when most of the big deals was made for the system of layin’ off bets throughout the United States. Frank Erickson was called in to work out the details of the organization, and that’s how the Annenberg family really started to build its fortune, outa muscle in Chicago and its bettin’ ties with us.”

There was one more decision, and that dealt with Capone personally. The bloodletting in Chicago had brought a public outcry and pressure on the underworld all over the country. A sacrificial lamb was needed to ease the heat. Capone was to be the lamb. With Torrio taking the lead, and Lucania and others backing him, Capone was persuaded that for the good of the organization of the underworld, he had to let himself be arrested on a minor charge and sent away for a short time. Capone eventually heeded the dictate and went up to Philadelphia, where friendly cops picked him up for carrying a gun and he was sent off to a prison farm for several months.

Then the delegates packed up and went home. For Charlie
Lucania, it had been a highly successful few days. Some decisions, necessary ones, had been reached. The ideas for future development had been sowed. And, perhaps, most significant, other underworld leaders had seen him in operation, had listened to his views, had developed an increased respect for him. When the day came for him to make his final push to the top, he knew he could depend on their cooperation. Neither Masseria nor Maranzano, with their unconcealed views of non-Italians, could claim such support. Indeed, neither would have thought to seek it.