The Valachi Papers (13 page)

"Whatever happened in the past is over," he says. "There is to be no more ill feeling among us. If you lost someone in this past war of ours, you must forgive and forget. If your own brother was killed, don't try to find out who did it to get even. If you do, you pay with your life."

The table of organization set forth by Maranzano was subsequently adopted by Cosa Nostra Families across the country. And out of this meeting came the five-Family structure in New York

City, which still exists. The five bosses initially named by Maranzano to head them were Luciano, Tom Gagliano, Joseph Profaci, Joseph Bonanno, and Vincent Mangano. Valachi can recall only three of the underbosses selected at that time—Vito Genovese in the Luciano Family, Albert Anastasia in the Mangano Family, and Thomas Lucchese in the Gagliano Family. Valachi himself elected to join Maranzano's personal palace guard even though he had entered the Cosa Nostra under the auspices of what was now the Gagliano Family.

The switch, he says, came on impulse. At the meeting Maranzano had announced, "As for those members who have been with me, there is going to be a split. Some of the group will go back to Tom Gagliano, and some will remain with me. If there is anybody who wants to remain with me, whether he was with me before or whether he was not, as long as he was with me during the war, he is entitled to come with me now if he wants to. The ones who want to come with me, just raise your hands."

Annoyed because Gagliano had made no effort to recruit him privately, Valachi, as he puts it, "unconsciously" raised his hand. Then he saw two other Gagliano men, Bobby Doyle and Steve Runnelli, also raise their hands. Almost at once he regretted his move because of his unhappy experience with Runnelli in the Gambino shooting. But when Thomas Lucchese immethately tried to persuade him to change his mind and remain with Gagliano, he felt that to do so now entailed too much loss of face. "Why did you do what you did?" Lucchese demanded.

"Well, you didn't tip me off. I figured I wasn't wanted."

"Let's go see the old man and tell him you made a mistake."

"No," Valachi replied. "It's too late. I won't do anything. I would be ashamed of myself."

On the plus side, however, he could comfort himself with the thought that he would be with Buster from Chicago and that he was at least rid of Salvatore Shillitani, who had decided to remain with Gagliano. Whatever other doubts Valachi might have had disappeared in the excitement of a huge banquet held in Brooklyn to honor Maranzano— in spirit and in cash. As a sign of their obeisance Cosa Nostra bosses throughout the United States purchased tickets to the affair. Even Al Capone sent $6,000. In all, according to Valachi, about $115,000 was collected. As representatives of various Families arrived at the banquet, each threw his contribution on a table. "I never saw such a pile of money in my life," Valachi recalls. Afterward he began rotating on duty with Maranzano as a chauffeur and bodyguard. But tranquillity in Maranzano's reign was short-lived:

Mr. Maranzano's legitimate front was a real estate company. The offices were in the Grand Central Building at 46th Street and Park Avenue. Around six months after Joe the Boss got his—that makes it around the first part of September—he ordered us not to go into the offices carrying guns, as he had been warned to expect a police raid.

I didn't like that order. One of the other fellows, I think it was Buster, said, "What do you mean?"

"I don't know," I said. "I just don't like the idea. If something happens, we are helpless."

He said, "Talk to the old man about it."

Well, I was biding my time to do it, but I was waiting for the right moment. Mr. Maranzano wasn't somebody you just started telling what to do. Anyway, a couple of days later I was in the office, and he told me to come by his house in Brooklyn that night. It was on Avenue J; I don't remember the number.

I got there about nine o'clock. When I went into the living room, he was bent over bandaging a cut on the foot of his youngest son. I'd say the kid was around eight. Mr. Maranzano got right to the point. "Joe," he said, "I hear you're wondering why you didn't get a bigger piece of the take from the banquet." He was right. All I was getting was my expenses and maybe $100 a week. To tell the truth, I was doing a little burglarizing on the side.

He goes on to say, "Don't worry. You'll get your share, and more. But we are holding onto the money right now because we have to go on the mattress again." In other words, he is telling me we have to go back to war. You see, during the Castellammarese trouble we had to take mattresses with us as we were moving from one apartment to another. Sometimes we only had a minute's notice, and so you needed a mattress to sleep on. That is our meaning of going on the mattress.

I'm still listening as he explains why. He said, "I can't get along with those two guys"—he was talking about Charley Lucky and Vito Genovese—"and we got to get rid of them before we can control anything." He talked about some others who had to go too—like Al Capone, Frank Costello, Willie Moretti from Fort Lee, New Jersey, Joe Adonis, and Charley Lucky's friend from outside the Cosa Nostra, Dutch Schultz.

By controlling things, he meant the Italian lottery, which was very big then, the building unions, bootlegging, bookmaking, all that kind of stuff. Dutch Schultz, who was a Jew boss, had the biggest numbers bank in New York, and Charley Lucky ran the downtown lottery.

Gee, I wanted to say, who wants to control everything? You got to remember it's just a few months since we are at peace. All I wanted was to make a good living. But naturally, I dared not say anything.

Then Mr. Maranzano tells me that he is having one last meeting the next day at two o'clock with Charley Lucky and Vito. This is my chance to bring up the thing about no guns. "Gee," I said, "this is no time to be putting yourself in jeopardy. Suppose those guys know something's in the wind?" Well, he's talking so much about what we are going to do and how big we are going to be, that he don't pay much attention, but finally he tells me, "All right, call the office at a quarter to two to see if I need you."

I went home and spent the night tossing and turning. I got all kinds of reasons to worry. If something happens to Mr. Maranzano, I'm finished, too. I ain't happy, but I got to go along. All I can do is wait to check in. That afternoon I called the office and this guy Charlie Buffalo, who is one of the members with us, answered the phone and said that everything was fine and that I don't have to go down there. Right after that The Gap comes by—he had stayed with Gagliano, which is another reason why I should have—and says, "Hey, I've been looking for you. I got a couple of new girls over in Brooklyn. Let's go over and spend some time with them."

I said, "Good idea. I have nothing to do." So we went over to Brooklyn and fooled around with the girls until about midnight, and the four of us decided to come back to Manhattan to eat. We went to this restaurant Charley Jones had on Third Avenue and 14th Street. When we are in the restaurant, I notice something funny is going on. First one guy, and then another, is walking in and looking us over. I said to The Gap, "Do you see what I see?" He says, "Yes, I don't know what it's about." Now I go over to Charley Jones. He is no mob guy, but he has connections and knows a lot. He whispers, "Joe, go home."

That's all I have to hear. I said to The Gap, "What do you think?" and he says, "We'll break it up." So we gave the girls money to get back to Brooklyn. The Gap stayed with Charley, and I drove home alone. On the way up Lexington Avenue I stopped for a newspaper. I just put it down beside me on the seat. I was driving very slow and thinking. I just could not figure out what was going on. It's hard to explain—I was worried, and
I
did not know what I was worried about. When
I
got home, I sent my kid brother out to put the car in the garage. Then I sat down in a chair and opened up the paper, and there it was. All about how the old man had been killed in his Park Avenue office that afternoon.

The story had said that some men pretending to be detectives walked into Mr. Maranzano's outer office—it was kind of a waiting room—and lined up everyone who was there against the wall. Then two of the fake detectives went inside, where they shot him and cut his throat. The first thing I remembered was Mr. Maranzano telling us not to carry guns in the office as there might be a police raid. Then I read that when the real bulls came, they found Bobby Doyle kneeling by the old man and had pulled him in as a material witness.

Now I tell myself no wonder. The Gap took me to Brooklyn. He must have known all about it and kept me out of the neighborhood. You can imagine how I felt.

The Murder Of Maranzano
was part of an intricate, painstakingly executed mass extermination engineered by the same dapper, soft-spoken, cold-eyed Charley Lucky Luciano who had so neatly arranged die removal of Masseria just months before. On the day Maranzano died, some forty Cosa Nostra leaders allied with him were slain across the country, practically all of them Italian-born old-timers eliminated by a younger generation making its bid for power.

Valachi immethately went into hiding when he learned that three men he had recruited for Maranzano —Stephen (Buck Jones) Casertano, Peter (Petey Muggins) Mione, and John (Johnny D) DeBellis—had narrowly escaped being gunned down while walking along Lexington Avenue. "If they want them," Valachi recalls, "I got to figure they want me, too." He first turned to Nick

Padovano, with whom he had been initiated into the Cosa Nostra. A reluctant Padovano let him stay overnight but tearfully begged him to depart in the morning. "I'm supposed to let diem know if I see you," Padovano said. "So for Christ's sake, don't tell anybody you was here."

In desperation Valachi called the son of Gaetano Reina and reminded him how he had fought to avenge his father's death at the hands of Masseria. Young Reina, himself a member of the Gagliano Family, recognized the debt and agreed to sequester Valachi in the attic of his house. Once there, Valachi, again gambling on his past service, called Thomas Lucchese. "Stay put," Lucchese told him. "You're safe where you are. I'll see what I can do."

Two days later Lucchese called back and said that he and Gagliano wanted to see him. When he arrived, he recalls that Lucchese did most of the talking. Lucchese began by asking Valachi if he knew that Maranzano had been hijacking liquor trucks belonging to Luciano. "Tommy," Valachi replied, "I don't know nothing, so help me God."

Lucchese continued to press him. Had he seen large amounts of cash being split up in Maranzano's office? "Yes," Valachi said, "but I never asked any questions. You know how it was with the old man." Was he aware of the fact that Maranzano had hired a freelance killer outside the Cosa Nostra, Vincent (Mad Dog) Coll, to rub out Luciano and Vito Genovese? "No," Valachi insisted, "I didn't know, believe mc! I never heard any of these things. What's it all about?"

"Joe," Valachi quotes Lucchese as saying, "I think you are in the clear, but I had to judge you to your face. I must tell you that the old man went crazy and was going to start another war. He couldn't leave well enough alone." On this point Valachi remained understandably discreet as Lucchese continued, "Now Tom Gagliano wants you to come back with us, providing you are telling the truth. But we are only interested in you, not Bobby Doyle or those three guys you brought to the old man. Think it over for a few days while we consider your story. Until then you got nothing to worry about."

At least able to vacate the Reina attic, Valachi returned to the East Harlem apartment he maintained for his mother, younger brother, and sisters. But almost at once there were new complications when Buster from Chicago, who had vanished after the Maranzano killing, paid him a visit late one night. "What are we going to do?" Buster said. "Are we going to fight? If we don't, they'll just take us anyway, one by one."

"I don't know what to think," Valachi said. "Maybe you're right. Let's wait for Bobby Doyle. Stay out of sight, and don't get into any arguments." Buster apparently disregarded the advice. Within a week, according to Valachi, he was killed on the orders of Luciano and Genovese on Manhattan's Lower East Side. The disposal of his body remains a mystery; it is the one such gangland slaying cited by Valachi for which there are no police records. Meanwhile, Doyle was finally released from custody after the Maranzano murder:

All this time
I
am waiting for Bobby to come out, and now I find out what happened in the Park Avenue office. He explained to me that they were all sitting around in the outer office when these four Jews walk in and flash badges. I think one was with Dutch Schultz, but the others were really Meyer Lansky's boys. Charley Lucky could use them because his Family had sided with Lansky in his Jew war with Waxy

Gordon. Anyway, Bobby said that what with all the yelling, the old man stuck his head out of the inner office to see what was going on, and one of the fake bulls says, "Who can we talk to?" and the old man says, "You can talk to me." So two of them go in with him, and the other two keep an eye on the crowd.

A long time after this I met one of the boys who went in with the old man. I met him at a racetrack. His name was Red Levine. I said, "I heard you were up there." Levine said, "Yes, I was there. He was tough." He told me the idea was to use a knife, so there wasn't any noise, but the old man started fighting back, and they had to use a gun first.

Naturally Bobby Doyle don't know nothing about this as he was in the waiting room. All he knows is he hears a couple of shots, and this Levine and the other Jew boy come running out and tell everybody to beat it. But Bobby says he ran in to see if the old man still had a chance. That's how come the cops picked him up.

(New York City police records show that at 2:50
P.M.
on September 10, 1931, one Salvatore Maranzano, male, white, of 2706 Avenue J, Brooklyn, was shot and stabbed to death in the office of the Eagle Building Corporation, rooms 925 and 926, at 230 Park Avenue. Perpetrators were four unknown men posing as police officers. Cause of death: four gunshot wounds and six stab wounds.)