The Mob and the City (21 page)

Nicolo Gentile epitomizes the Mafia's hypocrisy on drugs. Born in Sicily in 1885, he entered the “honorable society” as a young man. Gentile became a fixer for Mafia leaders, developing contacts from Kansas City to Pittsburgh to New York. In his memoirs
Vita di Capomafia
(“Life of a Mafia Boss”), Gentile waxes eloquent about how the Mafia “claims for itself the right to defend honor, the weak, and to command respect for human justice through its affiliated members.”
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So, naturally, Gentile became a drug trafficker. In 1937, Gentile conspired with Charles “Big Nose” La Gaipa to organize one of the largest narcotics distribution rings in America. Gentile used his connections to “organize all the drug trafficking groups and to assemble them in a syndicate, in order to have the distribution monopoly in our hands.” The ring involved more than seventy smugglers and dealers who imported narcotics from Europe to New York City, and then distributed them in Southern states. Financing, underworld reputations, connections to European suppliers—these were advantages enjoyed by the Cosa Nostra. The ring was doing a multimillion dollar business when it was busted. After Gentile was indicted, he skipped bail and slipped onto a ship to Italy.
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THE DISRUPTION OF WAR, 1939–1945

The Second World War cut off the United States from opium sources in Southwest Asia and Southeast Asia, causing severe shortages of narcotics in New York City. Purity levels plunged. “I couldn't deal during the war. I lost my connections. Everybody did,” recalled Jack.
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The Cosa Nostra adapted by looking south for new sources. Although Mexican poppies produced weaker opiates, they would do in a shortage.
Mafiosi
from East Harlem contacted Helmuth Hartman, a trafficker with connections to Central America. In June 1940, Frank Livorsi, Dominick “The Gap” Petrilli, and Salvatore “Tom Mix” Santoro drove to a remote Texas town to sit down with Hartman: “The boys now have enough money to buy all the narcotics you can find in Mexico. Do a good job for us,” Livorsi told Hartman. They then drove to other towns along the border, striking deals with Mexican traffickers. To oversee the deals, Santoro and Petrilli regularly made road trips to Mexico in their Buick Coupe, and later even flew into Mexico City on Eastern Air Lines.
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Eventually, they and other
mafiosi
from East Harlem established a reliable drug route whereby curriers smuggled Mexican opium gum into the country through Arizona and California, then across the country to New York City, where chemists in clandestine laboratories processed the opium into heroin. The rings sold the heroin at the wholesale level to dealers for up to $600 an ounce.
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THE POSTWAR RESURGENCE IN DRUGS, 1946–1957

When the sea lanes reopened, narcotics washed over the city. Between 1946 and 1950, New York's addiction rates spiked by 36 percent. By 1957, the US Attorney was calling New York “the illicit narcotics capital of the nation.”
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The Mafia was supplying the heroin.

The Cosa Nostra's traffickers were now the dominant wholesalers due to their superior heroin. “After 1950, I switched over to the Italians in East Harlem because I got better quality stuff, and the prices were better,” recalled Arthur, a dealer.
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The mob's supply was indeed better: the heroin seized in the French Connection case was about 95 percent pure—an extraordinary level. A FBN report in 1949 found that heroin seized at its source in New York City was about 92 percent pure compared to the national average of 55 percent.
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Another sign of the Mafia's market power was its ability to dilute or “cut” its pure heroin while simultaneously raising prices. “When the Jews gave up, I don't know what happened. When the wops come…they kept raising the price,” said Abe D., a Jewish dealer. “It was a beautiful thing when the Chinese and the Jews had it. But when the Italians had it—bah!—they messed it all up,” said Mel. “They started diluting it to a weaker state.” A longtime user concurred: “The Italians stepped on the H much more than the Jews, and they charged more money. It happened before the war,” recounted Al.
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The Mafia's superior supply was due to its overseas connections in the underworld. Members of the Cosa Nostra enjoyed close ties to the premier smugglers of the time: the Corsican crime families. Corsica is a large island situated between France and Italy with a long tradition of banditry. From their base in the port city of Marseilles, the Corsicans had extensive connections with smugglers throughout the Mediterranean. Though French citizens, Corsicans spoke an Italian dialect and were culturally similar to Sicilians.
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The Sicilian
cosca
and the Corsican crime families were cousins in crime, and they had built up decades of mutual trust. In 1934, the FBN found “a well-organized ring of narcotic traffickers and smugglers in Marseille, most of whom are of Corsican origin,” shipping large quantities of narcotics to Italian smugglers in New York.
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When the war ended,
mafiosi
revived their prewar contacts with the Corsicans. Upwards of 80 percent of the heroin smuggled into the United States originated in the rich opium fields and port cities of Turkey and Lebanon, where the Corsican smugglers held sway. “The Italian domination really set in with the old French connection, when the predominance of heroin came from Turkey, Lebanon through Italy to Marseilles, following World War II,” explained Ralph Salerno of the New York Police Department's intelligence unit. “Who had the bona fides to sit down with these six Corsican families? Only the Italians, and a few Jews who lingered in the field,” said Salerno.
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Black gangsters by comparison could not establish direct connections to suppliers. The State Department files on international traffickers record
no
Africans or African Americans.
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“I don't believe there was a black man who could bring into the United States from the outside two kilos of heroin up to 1960,” said Salerno. “You could have had forty million dollars, and if you were a black man, you couldn't even get to sit down with that Corsican.”
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It was not until the 1970s that Frank Lucas, frustrated by the Mafia's dominance, became the first black trafficker to establish a connection to heroin suppliers in Southeast Asia.
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Mafia traffickers further benefitted from belonging to the strongest organized crime syndicates in the underworld. Large-scale, international drug trafficking was a logistical nightmare. A customs officer explained the essential role of organized crime:

You need someone in Europe, you need couriers, you need financing people, you need somebody that knows something about traveling, how to get United States documentation, who the buyers would be in the United States. Only this can be known by someone, and not by some clown who decides all of a sudden to do it in some European capital…. It requires a lot of people, a lot of effort, and it is criminal, so it is organized.
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As FBN agent Maurice Helbrant explained, “Touch dope and you will run into other branches of organized crime. Touch organized crime and sooner or later you will run into dope.”
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THE 107
TH
STREET MOB

Mafiosi
sheltered their wholesaling and distribution operations in Italian East Harlem. These densely populated streets were impenetrable to outsiders. “Since everyone knew everyone else, a narcotics agent found it impossible to maintain surveillance in this neighborhood,” said FBN agent Charles Siragusa. “Life on the narrow sidestreets would come to a standstill. Every eye would fix on the agent.”
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Law enforcement dubbed the Lucchese Family's traffickers the “107th Street Mob.”
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Mafiosi
financed, manufactured, and moved heroin through Italian East Harlem. It became an industry cluster for narcotics similar to alcohol wholesaling on the Curb Exchange during Prohibition. Although various Mafia drug traffickers operated in East Harlem, the Luccheses clearly lead the postwar resurgence in drugs. In spring 1947, Charles “Little Bullets” Albero and Joseph “Pip the Blind” Gagliano were convicted of running “an East Harlem narcotics peddling combine said to be the biggest in the East.”
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They were quickly replaced by other Lucchese traffickers.

5–2: John “Big John” Ormento (center) and Nicholas “Big Nose” Tolentino (in glasses) being booked in 1958. The New York Mafia's drug traffickers dominated heroin wholesaling in the United States starting in the mid-1930s. (Used by permission of the Associated Press)

On the surface, John Ormento looked like any other American success story. Born in East Harlem, he rose from his humble origins to live in the fashionable section of Lido Beach on Long Island. By night, Mr. Ormento frequented the
Copacabana, his 240-pound frame draped in finely tailored suits. But by day, “Big John” Ormento ran narcotics operations from East 107th Street with his smuggling partner Salvatore “Tom Mix” Santoro. The FBN accurately identified Ormento as a “top figure in the NYC underworld” who knew many “narcotic sources in Mexico, Canada and Europe.”
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By the age of forty, he had three separate convictions under the Harrison Act. Nevertheless, Ormento was a longtime
caporegime
in the Lucchese Family, and he attended the 1957 Apalachin conference of top mobsters.
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THE DRUG DISTRIBUTION NETWORK

The Cosa Nostra's influence was magnified by New York's pivotal spot in the wholesaling network. As drug historian Eric Schneider explains, “New York served as the central place that established the hierarchical structures of the market, with virtually the entire country as its hinterland and other cities serving as its regional or local distribution centers.”
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Mafia traffickers in New York City financed, diluted, and wholesaled drugs nationwide. Dealers from Philadelphia, Baltimore, and Washington, DC, traveled to New York to buy drugs. In 1924, federal agents discovered that Cincinnati peddlers were getting their narcotics from New York wholesalers. New York
mafiosi
became the primary suppliers for Chicago, which in turn supplied smaller Midwestern cities. In one major case, traffickers smuggled heroin into New York, cut the heroin in clandestine laboratories, and then redistributed kilo packages to Chicago, Cleveland, Las Vegas, and Los Angeles.
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For the vast market of addicts in New York City, Mafia wholesalers relied on local gangsters for retail street distribution. “The black people handled the largest quantity of drugs after it left the big connections, when it came to the country,” explained Curtis, a black dealer with Sicilian suppliers.
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“The Italians were the ones who brought the dope in, but they didn't have the connects to peddle it,” remembered Bumpy Johnson's widow.
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“The lowest level the Italians would get to was when they sold a quarter kilo to a black—he's the only guy that can successfully sell it in Harlem,” agrees Salerno.
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This move away from retail street distribution and toward wholesaling insulated the Mafia. “The key figures
in the Italian heroin establishment never touched heroin,” confirmed David Durk, a narcotics officer.
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The Cosa Nostra established links to major African-American gangsters like Nat Pettigrew and Freddie Parsons to distribute heroin to dealers in black neighborhoods. The FBN discovered that George Anderson “was one of the chief links between the negro dealers in Harlem and the Italian wholesalers in the upper east side of New York City.” Herbert Drumgold bought narcotics “in large quantities from Italian dealers in the Upper East Side of New York City” to resell “to dealers, who in turn sell direct to addicts.”
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Ellsworth “Bumpy” Johnson oversaw much of the retail heroin distribution in Harlem. “Anyone living in Harlem knew the name Bumpy Johnson. He was a
boss
,” recalled Frank Lucas.
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Johnson cultivated a façade as a businessman, churchgoer, and benefactor. Behind the scenes, he collected kickbacks from dealers and financed drug operations. Convicted three times on narcotics charges, he helped inundate Harlem with drugs supplied by the Cosa Nostra.
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