Playboy's History of Organized Crime Part X: Perils of Power

There is an old truism that nobody retires from the councils of organized crime; the only way out is in a box. But Frank Costello, fretting away months in prison in 1956 and well aware that his legal battles were far from over, knew that such truisms are not necessarily truths. While old racketeers are usually no more willing to relinquish power and position than their counterparts in big business, there are some who have stepped down gracefully to spend their old age in wealthy retirement. In the years before his death of a heart attack in Brooklyn in 1957, nobody questioned Johnny Torrio's right to life as a rich pensioner, nor did anyone try to put a bullet in Al Capone's head when, sick and dying, he left Alcatraz and retired to his Palm Island estate in Florida. All along the Florida Gold Coast, in fact, old-time bootleggers and racketeers took their ease in the warm sun, far from the wars of their youth.

So it was that Costello, the publicly proclaimed prime minister of the underworld, decided that he, too, would retire and settle down to a life of well-earned ease as an elder statesman. When he walked out of prison in March 1957, he announced his decision to his intimates, certain it would meet with their approval. After all, he was 64, a millionaire several times over, with few worlds to conquer. He was also mentally and physically exhausted from the decades of struggle and he knew that ahead lay still more struggle, particularly with the taxmen and with the Immigration and Naturalization Service (which claimed he had lied about his criminal record when naturalized in 1925 and was trying to deport him to Italy). Costello wanted only a little peace and leisure time to enjoy his rewards, one of which was just about to begin paying off--the Tropicana hotel and casino in Las Vegas, in which he and his old partner, Phil Kastel, had a major stake.

If the decision initially surprised some of Costello's old friends, they soon came to understand it. At a specially called meeting in November 1956, the leaders of the Syndicate--Meyer Lansky, Longy Zwillman, Tommy Lucchese, Albert Anastasia and others--were in agreement: Costello was a founding member, had long guided the Organization in the paths toward riches and respectability, had helped change the image of the racketeer from cheap thug to semirespectable businessman. Even in retirement, his counsel might still be needed. Thus, his request ought to be respected.

There were, of course, more selfish reasons. The continuing publicity that centered on Costello after the Kefauver hearings had made him a liability, bringing light and heat down on his associates. Further, Costello's empire was vast and lucrative. Much of it would go to old partners such as Lansky and Kastel, and some would go to Vito Genovese, who now would rule unchallenged as head of the old Luciano family; but there would be plenty left for others.

But there were objections. Genovese, for one, insisted that Costello would be too dangerous, even in retirement; but he was voted down, and when affirmative votes had been received from Joe Adonis and Lucky Luciano in their Italian exiles, the decision was binding: Costello could settle on his estate in Sands Point, Long Island, and concern himself mainly with clipping coupons and fighting the Government.

Despite that decision, Genovese had other ideas and other reasons for wanting Costello out of the way. By 1957, his ambition to become the new Salvatore Maranzano, the new boss of all bosses--capo di tutti capi--and not merely of the Italian underworld but of the entire criminal Syndicate, had become almost a mania. As long as Costello lived, he posed a threat to such plans: He had once been Genovese's superior in the Luciano family: after the war, they had been coequal regents when Luciano went into exile. But their ideas and methods were in sharp conflict. Costello's emphasis was on gambling of all sorts, on the infiltration of legitimate businesses, on making as few waves as possible, on cooperating with everyone, on benevolent rule. And he deeply abhorred narcotics, incessantly preaching and warning against involvement. By contrast, Genovese was abrasive, his rule dictatorial, and narcotics had long been one of his passions. He recognized the profit potential, scorned the risks and, under his guidance, the Luciano family became deeply enmeshed in dope traffic. So Costello's opposition to narcotics and his differing policies made him, even in retirement, the natural rallying point for those who objected to Genovese's ironfisted ride and his heavy emphasis on drugs. And Genovese, despite the Syndicate decision, was determined to eliminate that source of opposition.

On the evening of May 2, 1957, Costello had drinks with a couple of friends--gambler Frank Erickson and fellow racketeer Anthony "Little Augie Pisano" Carfano--at the Waldorf's Peacock Alley. Then he joined some friends for dinner at L'Aiglon, a fashionable East Side restaurant. About 11 in the evening, Costello left, explaining that he was expecting an important telephone call from his Washington lawyer, Edward Bennett Williams.

As Costello's cab stopped before the Majestic Apartments at 115 Central Park West, a long black Cadillac pulled up behind it. While Costello was paying the driver, a gargantuan man in a dark suit, his gray hat low on his forehead, got out of the Cadillac and hurried into the Majestic. Apparently, Costello did not even notice him. A few seconds later, Costello walked through the door, held open by the doorman, into the foyer and headed for the elevators. He had nearly reached them when the fat man stepped out behind him from the shelter of a pillar, pulled out a pistol and aimed. Perhaps giving a last-minute heed to the old rule that a leader deserves to get it from the front, he yelled, "This is for you, Frank." Then he snapped off a shot at Costello's head, fled to the waiting Cadillac and sped off into the night, probably believing that Costello was dead.

But the gunman's last-minute shout had saved Costello's life. At the sound of the voice, he had turned instinctively and the bullet only grazed him, ripping a gash along the right side of his head just behind his ear. Dazed and bleeding, Costello was rushed to nearby Roosevelt Hospital. While the doctors patched his head, Manhattan detectives went through his coat pockets, and what they discovered only spelled more trouble. There was $800 in cash and a slip of paper with some writing on it: "Gross casino win--$651,284. Casino win less markers--$434,695. Slot wins--$62,844. Markers--$153,745."

Though Costello professed ignorance of the paper with the numbers, said he didn't even know how it had gotten into his pocket, the Nevada Gaming Control Board heard about it and did a little investigating. It discovered that the figures matched the gambling revenues for a 24-day period at the newly opened Tropicana. Costello turned sullen and, when summoned before a grand jury to explain, refused to talk. The result: another jail term for contempt of court and then another indictment for income-tax evasion.

Just who had shot Costello was no secret to either the underworld or the police. The gunman was a onetime prize fighter and Genovese thug named Vincent "The Chin" Gigante, a hulking man gone to more than 300 pounds of blubber. Though Costello refused to give police any information about his assailant, claiming he had never seen him and so could not possibly identify him, the Majestic's doorman had gotten a good look. On the basis of his description, police instituted a search for Gigante. But the gunman was nowhere to be found. According to Mafia informant Joe Valachi years later, "The Chin was just taken somewhere up in the country to lose some weight." When Gigante eventually walked into a Manhattan police station and ingenuously insisted he had just learned the cops were looking for him, he was back in fighting trim. It was a relatively slim and trim Gigante who went on trial for attempted murder. He was acquitted when Costello still refused to identify him and the doorman either couldn't or wouldn't.

The bungled assassination of Costello seemed certain to bring trouble to Genovese, for he had unilaterally disobeyed a council decision. A dead Costello could not have protested and, besides, the commission rarely intervened in internal family disputes. But a live Costello was a different matter. Not only was there now the possibility of a council action but Costello had plenty of friends who might, if he prodded them, decide to mete out fitting punishment on their own.

To counter this threat, Genovese desperately needed a strong show of support from his own lieutenants. He holed up in his mansion in Atlantic Highlands, New Jersey, and summoned all the leaders to appear, to join with him in presenting a united front. Fearful, all but one, Augie Carfano, answered the call, and at this single defection Genovese was enraged. He ordered one of his aides, Anthony Strollo, better known as Tony Bender, to bring Carfano in, and told him that if he failed, he "would be wearing a black (continued on page 108)Perils of Power(continued from page 104) tie"--decked out for his own funeral. The reluctant Carfano finally arrived (his contrariness was repaid two years later, when he and his companion, former beauty queen Janice Drake, were shot to death in their car near New York's La Guardia Airport). To the full gathering of his lieutenants, Genovese stated flatly that he had ordered the shooting of Costello because Costello was plotting against him, that anyone seen even talking to Costello thereafter would be dealt with summarily, that the family now belonged to Genovese and nobody else, and that the new underboss would be Gerardo "Gerry" Catena. No one said nay.

Even with the solid backing of his own organization, Genovese realized that he still faced trouble if Costello decided to press the issue with the commission. But he did not, at least not formally. According to an underworld source, Genovese and Costello met secretly on neutral ground shortly after the shooting and reached an accord: Costello would not charge Genovese before the commission and would withdraw completely (as he had previously said he would do) from all family affairs; Genovese, in return, would stop shooting at Costello and would let him retire gracefully to enjoy the returns from his real-estate and gambling investments.

But the attack on Costello and the monomaniacal ambition of Genovese, now out in the open, signaled the end of the uncertain underworld peace that had existed for so many years, almost since the end of the Castellammarese war. The underworld was about to enter a decade and more of bloodletting that would equal or surpass the conflict of the Thirties.

Even the usually nonbelligerent Costello was caught up in the new era of violence. For, despite his surface timidity, he did not intend that the attack on him should go unavenged nor that Genovese should assume control unchallenged over the Combination he had labored to create. Costello, however, was wise enough to know that some of his old friends were no longer quite so reliable as they had once been. Lansky, for instance, obviously had personal ambitions and was standing aloof from the developing struggle within the Italian underworld, convinced that the battle would so decimate each side that he would emerge undisputed master of the Syndicate. Costello, then, could not depend upon Lansky unless Lansky saw some advantage in it for himself. Zwillman, too, might once have proved a valuable ally, but his fortunes had taken a decided downward turn since his appearance before the Kefauver committee--the taxmen were swarming around him and so were other legal officials, and it was taking all his energy to fight them off.

But Costello did have two formidable allies who shared his contempt for Genovese. One was Luciano, who even in Italian exile had immense power and influence; the other was Anastasia, perhaps the most violent and feared leader in the underworld.

Genovese, of course, was not blind to these threats. He was not particularly worried about a Costello in semiretirement, detached from the day-to-day affairs of the underworld and preoccupied with fighting to stay out of prison and avoid deportation. But he was very worried about Costello's friends, particularly Anastasia. The onetime lord high executioner of Murder, Inc., was the key. Luciano might come to Costello's aid, true, but despite the steady parade of couriers taking money and messages to him in Italy and returning with orders and advice, Luciano was essentially boxed in. By himself, he could do little from 5000 miles away; he would have to give orders to somebody on the scene he could trust implicitly, and that someone would necessarily be Anastasia.

In the late spring of 1957, danger to Genovese began to appear imminent. Word reached him that Costello had surreptitiously sent messages, contents unknown, to Luciano, and that Costello and Anastasia had been meeting secretly. Lacking the forces to mount a frontal attack on Anastasia, he set out first to cripple him, to isolate him from his associates and allies.

One of the most loyal lieutenants in the Anastasia family, the underboss and heir apparent, was 63-year-old Frank "Don Cheech" Scalise; he had been in the Organization since Prohibition, was a close friend of Luciano's, whom he visited several times in Italy, and was a power in his own right as a result of his control over the construction racket in the Bronx. Any plot against Anastasia would have to include Scalise in order to forestall his assumption of power in the family. The rumor was quietly spread (and it was one that Valachi would hear from Genovese himself) that Scalise had started a racket to sell memberships in the American Mafia for prices up to $50,000 to aspiring young thugs. This was something even Anastasia could not stomach and he reportedly flew into a violent rage when the rumor reached him. A second rumor quickly followed: that Scalise, long deeply involved in the narcotics traffic, had welched on his responsibility to reimburse some underworld partners when narcotics agents seized a shipment of heroin. Scalise was marked for death. On June 17, 1957, as he picked through some fruit at a favorite stand in the Bronx, two gunmen walked up behind him and put four slugs into the back of his head and neck.

Anastasia said nothing, but Scalise's brother, Joe, vowed revenge. When Anastasia continued to maintain his silence, Joe realized that maybe he had been a little precipitous and went into hiding. Soon, though, word reached him that all was forgiven and by early September, Joe was back at his old haunts in New York. Then, on September seventh, he disappeared and was never seen again. According to Valachi, Scalise unwisely accepted an invitation to a party at the home of Jimmy "Jerome" Squillante, boss of the New York garbage-collection racket and a very good friend to Bender and to Genovese. Scalise was greeted by butcher knives and left as part of the garbage collection in one of Squillante's trash trucks. (Squillante himself did not remain on the scene long, either. In 1960, he was indicted on Long Island for extortion but disappeared before his case came to trial. According to underworld rumors, a bullet was put through his head, his body was loaded into the trunk of a car and the car put into a crusher that compacted it into a cube of scrap for melting down in a blast furnace.)

With the murder of the Scalise brothers, Carlo Gambino emerged as the number-two man in the Anastasia family. Genovese knew that Gambino had his eye on the Anastasia throne and was sure that anyone who helped him get there would earn his complete loyalty. An approach was made, and after several private meetings in late summer and early fall of 1957, Genovese and Gambino struck a bargain. Gambino would assist Genovese in the elimination of Anastasia and would make sure that nobody sought retribution. In return, Genovese would throw all his strength behind Gambino to ensure his easy assumption of rule in the Anastasia family and would even cut him in on some of the more profitable Genovese rackets.

Then, unexpectedly, the plot won a new ally--Lansky. Ordinarily, if Lansky had moved from his firm neutrality, it should have been against Genovese; from the earliest days, the two had barely tolerated each other, but Lansky detested Anastasia even more than he did Genovese. Almost from their first meeting, Lansky and Anastasia had despised each other, and not cordially. Lansky viewed Anastasia as an ignorant, impulsive, violence-prone thug who could never be civilized; Anastasia viewed Lansky as a moneygrubbing Jew, a condescending and devious intellectual always looking for the angles instead of direct action. It was, then, seemingly in Lansky's interest to let Genovese and Anastasia destroy each other.

But Anastasia had committed an unforgivable sin in Lansky's light. By 1957, Lansky was firmly entrenched in Cuba, (continued on page 186)Perils of Power(continued from page 108) his partnership with the island's president, Fulgencio Batista, stronger than ever. New casinos and hotels were springing up almost overnight to dominate the Havana skyline and the country's economic life. With his instinct for self-protection and self-aggrandizement, and for putting his associates firmly in his debt, Lansky had cut a number of longtime associates, including Santo Trafficante, Moe Dalitz and several Italian mobsters, in on shares in some of the casinos (and had even helped some old entertainers who were down on their luck: George Raft, for example, was hired to greet the folks at the Capri; later he would do the same thing in London at Mob-ruled casinos until he was thrown out of England). Genovese had made no moves in the direction of Cuba, which suited Lansky just fine. But Anastasia wanted in, and Lansky gave a firm no that was backed by Batista. Anastasia was unwilling to accept that response. He tried to move in secretly through some Cuban businessmen, even sought to circumvent Lansky by dealing with Lansky allies such as Trafficante. The word, of course, got back to Lansky, who decided to dispose of the troublesome Brooklyn gangster. When he learned of the germinating Genovese-Gambino plot, he sent word that he would back it, mainly by permitting some of his Cuban friends and gambling partners to string Anastasia along, to disarm him with false hopes and optimism.

The intricate plotting against Anastasia--to end his life and, simultaneously, deny Costello the gun that might endanger Genovese--accelerated. Gambino and Genovese decided not to use their own killers but to give the contract to fellow ganglord Joe Profaci, who was a good and close friend of Lansky's and of Trafficante's. Profaci turned the job of Anastasia's execution over to a young thug named "Crazy Joe" Gallo, one of three brothers who relished such work.

Early on the morning of October 25, 1957, Anastasia was driven from his walled estate in Fort Lee, New Jersey, to the Park Sheraton Hotel on Seventh Avenue at 55th Street in Manhattan (as the Park Central, it had been home three decades before to Arnold Rothstein and it was there that he was murdered in 1928). At 10:15, while his chauffeur-body-guard, Anthony Coppola, parked his new Oldsmobile in a nearby garage and then conveniently went for a short stroll, Anastasia entered the hotel barbershop, hung up his coat and sat down in chair number four, telling barber Joseph Bocchino, "Haircut." Then he settled back, closing his eyes as Bocchino draped a cloth around his neck, took a pair of clippers and went to work on the shaggy hair that apparently had not been cut in several weeks.

The barbershop door swung open. Two men, scarves across their faces, stepped quickly inside and pulled out pistols. "Keep your mouth shut if you don't want your head blown off," one of them snapped at the shop's owner, Arthur Grasso. Then they strode calmly down the aisle, stopped behind Anastasia's chair, raised their guns and began to fire. With the first shots, a wounded Anastasia leaped out of the chair. Disoriented, he lunged at the images of the two gunmen in the mirror in front of him. A second volley sent him reeling against the glass shelf under the mirror, crashing to the floor amid a litter of broken bottles of hair tonic. As Anastasia lay on the floor, one of the gunmen took careful aim and shot him in the back of the head. Then the two hurried out of the shop onto Seventh Avenue and disappeared down the B.M.T. subway entrance at the corner. As they fled, they dropped their guns--one was found later in the vestibule of the shop, the other in a trash barrel on the subway platform. It had all taken less than two minutes. The gunmen had done their work and escaped. But despite their reputations, their efficiency and marksmanship left something to be desired. They had stood directly behind Anastasia, within a few feet of their target; they had fired ten shots; they had missed with half of them; of the five shots that found Anastasia, one hit him in his left hand, a second in his left wrist, a third in his right hip, a fourth in his back. Only the final head shot, as he lay on the floor, was fatal.

In the confusion that followed the murder of Anastasia, Genovese moved quickly to consolidate his gains and to assume the crown of capo di tutti capi. (With no fanfare at all, Gambino quietly assumed the leadership of the Anastasia family.) Then he summoned the leaders of organized crime throughout the United States to the first major underworld conference since the one in Havana in 1946. At the suggestion of Buffalo boss Stefano Magaddino, Genovese altered his original idea of holding the meeting in Chicago and scheduled the session for November 14, three weeks after the fall of Anastasia, in the sleepy Upstate New York hamlet of Apalachin, at the country estate of a Magaddino lieutenant named Joseph Barbara.

On the agenda were a number of pressing items: an official justification by Genovese to his peers of his attacks on Costello and Anastasia; a demand by Genovese that he be named boss of all bosses and receive, as tribute, cash-filled envelopes from the delegates; authorization of a massive purge to eliminate unreliable members of the Combination; the closing of books on the admittance of new members until the purge had created a tightly knit and loyal Organization; the formulation of an Organization policy on narcotics (for there was a growing belief that the massive antidrug drive by authorities was making narcotics too hot to handle).

What decisions the delegates might have made on any of these subjects is unknown; they never got a chance to vote or even to discuss the agenda. For one of the biggest blunders in the history of the Syndicate was to assume that 100 or more major racketeers could drive along a country road in an isolated area in their big limousines, many with license plates from distant states, all heading for the same place, and attract no attention.

In the days just prior to the conclave, Barbara went on a meat-buying and motel-room-reserving spree, and this sudden spurt of activity, signaling the arrival of a throng, aroused the curiosity of New York State Police Sergeant Edgar D. Crosswell. And when the Cadillacs and Continentals began driving up to the Barbara estate, Crosswell was more than intrigued. With his force of three state troopers, he set up roadblocks around the property, called for additional help and waited to see what would develop.

Hardly were the roadblocks in place, hardly had the racketeering galaxy begun to settle in, when a minor hoodlum taking a stroll along the Barbara driveway spotted the roadblocks and rushed back to the house to spread the alarm. Then ensued one of the most comic, and degrading, scenes in the annals of the American underworld. Scores of middle-aged and elderly gangsters, dressed in their hand-tailored suits, dived out windows, fled through doors and went crashing through the woods and underbrush in a desperate attempt to escape. Many did escape, including a lucky few who, instead of risking the wilds, sought shelter for several days in a cellar of the house, emerging only when the authorities had cleared out. But Crosswell, reinforced with additional troopers, managed to round up 60. It was a bag that stunned even the most sophisticated Syndicate watcher. In that haul were Genovese, Barbara, Magaddino, Trafficante, Profaci, "Joe Bananas" Bonanno, Cleveland boss John Scalish, Los Angeles boss Frank DeSimone, Downstate Illinois mobster Frankie Zito, Philadelphia's Joe Ida, Colorado's Jimmy Colletti, Dallas leader Jimmy Civello and many more. In their possession was more than $300,000; it was to have been put in envelopes for Genovese; he would never get it now. (Among those known to have been in attendance who somehow managed to elude the police were Sam Giancana of Chicago, Joe Zerilli of Detroit and James Lanza of San Francisco.)

The result, in a number of ways, was devastating. Those who even tried to explain what they were doing at Apalachin said they were good friends of Barbara's, that they had heard he was recuperating from a severe heart attack and had dropped by to cheer him up. Others wouldn't talk at all, citing the Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination. Such responses didn't satisfy authorities and a number of those picked up in the raid were charged with obstructing justice, tried and found guilty, fined and sentenced to prison, though all the convictions were later overturned on the grounds that a meeting in itself doesn't constitute a crime.

The Apalachin debacle was shattering for Genovese. His dream of absolute rule came tumbling down in the ruins. Who among his fellow leaders would award unquestioning fealty to a man who had led them to such disaster? But more than just the dreams of kingdom were collapsing. Genovese's legendary ability to survive untouched was about to end, as well. His enemies--his estranged wife, his underworld foes, the Federal Government--were closing in upon him.

Anna Genovese had already provided an opening through which the Government could take a hard look at Genovese. Suing for separate maintenance, she had gone to court to tell why she thought Vito could pay any amount of alimony she desired. Their house in Atlantic Highlands, she said, had originally cost $75,000, but Vito had plowed an additional $100,000 into it for renovations and $250,000 for furnishings--things like marble fireplaces and staircases, Oriental vases, Chinese teak furniture, Italian statuary, gold and platinum dishes. Anna had a closet full of gowns that cost between $350 and $900 each and another closet full of furs. Genovese, said she, "never paid less than $250 for a suit. He pays $350 for coats, $35 for shirts and $60 for shoes.... We lived very high ... money was no object." Indeed, there never was a worry about funds. According to Anna, she kept the books all the years Genovese was in Italy, and from all his rackets, such as the Italian lottery, he was earning at least $40,000 a week (the Federal Government would later estimate the Genovese fortune in excess of $30,000,000). But life with the gangster, despite all the money, was no fun. Genovese, she said, made no secret of his bevy of mistresses and, worse, he often beat her brutally.

When Anna got through complaining, the court granted her a meager $300 a week alimony and attorney's fees. Genovese loudly proclaimed that this was too much, for he was just a poor workingman who owned a few small businesses. As though to prove the contention, he sold his mansion and moved into a five-room clapboard bungalow on a quiet street in Atlantic Highlands, renting the house for $100 a month.

Genovese's friends were stunned when, despite her revelations, nothing happened to Anna; the underworld had fully expected Genovese to deal with her in a manner befitting an informant. But, for some inexplicable reason, he could not bring himself to harm the woman he had won years before by ordering the murder of her first husband. Some action, though, was necessary, if only to show that he had not turned soft and, perhaps, to warn Anna that her singing days had better end. The victim would be Genovese's onetime friend and Anna's constant companion, Steve Franse, in whose care he had left her while in Europe during World War Two (and who had served, it appeared, merely as a cover for her dalliances with lovers of both sexes). As Valachi would later testify, Bender informed him that Franse was to be killed and the murder performed in a restaurant Valachi owned. Franse was lured there. Two Genovese killers were waiting. Franse was garroted and brutally beaten to death, then his body was dumped into the rear of his car, which was abandoned on the Grand Concourse in the Bronx.

This was an oblique revenge that did not save Genovese from the plots swirling around him. Anna's testimony had sent Federal authorities scouring his books and records, hoping to pin, at the very least, a tax-evasion rap on him. What they wanted most though, was evidence of involvement in major crimes, hopefully narcotics, that could send Genovese to prison for a good long time and then lead to his deportation. This thought also intrigued the growing ranks of Genovese's enemies in the underworld hierarchy.

In mid-1958, only six months after the Apalachin fiasco, a two-bit heroin pusher named Nelson Cantellops, serving a five-year drug rap in Sing Sing, suddenly asked for an interview with Federal narcotics agents. That Cantellops, a Puerto Rican nabbed for pushing junk on a Manhattan street corner, should have anything of major importance to say seemed unlikely; that he knew about high figures in the Mafia chain of command, that his contacts would reach as high as Genovese himself seemed impossible. But that was just what Cantellops claimed, and he told a good story--had it down so firmly in every detail that no amount of grilling was able to shake him or make him stumble. Either it was the truth, illogical as that may have seemed, or--as a number of persons in both law enforcement and the underworld firmly believe--he had been primed and re hearsed so thoroughly that he could no be broken. To the Government, it didn't matter which, as long as Cantellops could help put Genovese in jail.

According to Cantellops, after a period as a lowly pusher, he had begun to meet some of the bigger, more important people and to do errands for them. Soon he was making heroin deliveries for "Big John" Ormento, an important Genovese lieutenant, and for Gigante, Costello's would-be assassin. He handled these deliveries with such dispatch that soon he was meeting even bigger men, including Natale Evola and Rocco Mazzie, two trusted Genovese aides, and finally Genovese himself. Then came Cantellops' crusher: He had been in a car with Evola, Mazzie, Ormento and Gigante when Genovese personally gave the orders for his men to move in and take over narcotics distribution in the East Bronx.

On the basis of that testimony, 24 men, including Genovese, were indicted for narcotics conspiracy in July 1958. In the spring of 1959, 15 were brought to trial (the others had become fugitives and the objects of major manhunts). The star and only witness against Genovese was Cantellops. But his testimony was good enough for the jury, especially when the defense was unable to make him backtrack a step during intense cross-examination. All the defendants were found guilty. Genovese was sent to Federal prison for 15 years. Gigante drew a lighter term. And Costello took time out from his own troubles to smile.

There is little doubt that Genovese, in the months between his arrest and his conviction, began to suspect that the Federal authorities were getting at least covert assistance from his enemies in the Syndicate. If so, Costello would be deeply involved; but it was no easy thing then to reach Costello. He was in and out of prison as though caught in a revolving door, he was battling denaturalization moves (which climaxed in 1961 with revocation of his American citizenship) and, when free, he was usually sequestered well out of harm's way.

But other enemies, such as Zwillman and Bender, were not so well protected. There are stories in the underworld that Zwillman, as his troubles with the Federal taxmen deepened, as liens were placed against his property, became so financially desperate that he approached Genovese for help--and was spurned. Zwillman made some angry noises to friends. Soon thereafter, Cantellops surfaced. There are some who saw a connection. One, perhaps, was Genovese. For on February 27, 1959, Zwillman was found dead in his West Orange, New Jersey, mansion. The official verdict: suicide by hanging. Which was surprising, in light of some of the details that later, unofficially, leaked out. Zwillman had been discovered hanging with wire around his neck under a rope, his body was heavily bruised, his hands were tied with wire. Say some in the underworld, the contract on Zwillman had been let by Gerry Catena, the underboss in the Genovese family.

Suspicions about Bender's trustworthiness also began to mount, for it was no secret in the councils of the underworld that his loyalty too often had been for sale to the highest bidder; Bender had survived the purges and the wars of the decades usually by switching to the winning side after the troubles started. On April 8, 1962, his luck ran out. That morning, as he left home, his wife said to him, "You better put on your topcoat. It's chilly."

Bender shrugged off the advice. "I'm only going out for a few minutes," he said. "Besides, I'm wearing thermal underwear." Then he disappeared down the sidewalk and disappeared from the society of crime. No trace of him has ever been found. But, according to underworld stories, Genovese had ordered his death and the contract was handed to a Jewish killer, a onetime boxer turned loan shark and killer by contract. When he got through with Bender, the body was dumped into a cement mixer and is now part of a Manhattan skyscraper.

No one is certain what ended Bender's career, but some have speculated that it grew from the failure of another devious plot, part of the Genovese revenge against those he believed had railroaded him to prison.

With Luciano dead, the victim of a heart attack in Naples in 1962, the imprisonment of Genovese left an opening at the top of the Italian underworld, at least in New York. The problem--and it would become ever more crucial over the next decade--was a lack of men truly capable of rule, men who had earned the respect and loyalty of their fellows. Age, death and double-dealing, especially the machinations of Genovese, had taken their toll.

Certainly, the regents of the Genovese family--Catena, Tommy Eboli and Mike Miranda--whatever their secret ambitions, had neither the stature nor the power to command others. They had enough trouble trying to keep order in their own organization and trying to placate a bitter Genovese, raging in Federal prison. Until he finally sickened and died in 1969, and then was brought home to be buried in a Queens cemetery only a few hundred feet from the tomb of Luciano, they had to keep their ambitions in check.

One man who, had he tried, might have restored order and peace and assumed some kind of leadership was Tommy Lucchese, the most secret of the rulers of the five major crime families in New York. His credentials were impeccable. Since the Twenties, he had been high in the councils of the Organization; he had been a close and constant friend to Luciano, in death an even greater legend than in life; and through the years, he had run his family with considerable efficiency and little or no internal friction.

But Lucchese had never had such ambitions and, in his 60s, seemed to lack the stomach for the kind of fight that might be necessary to expand his power. He was content to run his own family and his own legitimate businesses, to tend to his widening interests in Florida in cooperation with his friend Lansky and to sit on the ruling board as one of the most respected voices of the Syndicate--partly because of his refusal to compete with others. He was preoccupied with fighting Federal tax-evasion charges and Government efforts to deport him to his native Sicily. Then, too, his health was deteriorating. Like many others who had risen high in the Organization, he was afflicted with progressively debilitating heart ailment and, on top of that, he began to suffer dizzy spells. (In 1965, he would enter the hospital for surgery on a brain tumor, would never fully recover and within 18 months would die in his own bed at the age of 64.)

If Lucchese was not interested in more power, he did have a man to whom he was willing to throw his support. That was Gambino, whose son was married to Lucchese's daughter. But Gambino was a relatively new member of the national commission, anointed only with the murder of Anastasia, and he wisely chose not to push himself ahead too rapidly. Besides himself, there were only two obvious candidates to become de facto ruler, and looking at both Profaci and Bonanno, Gambino realized that within both were the seeds of their own destruction. Then it would be his time.

Profaci might have stepped forward; indeed, he was ruthless, powerful and experienced enough to have made the bid and perhaps won it. But he had too many troubles within his own family to be concerned about expanding his power outside. Rebellion was erupting and it would take all his efforts to put it down.

Joe Gallo, his older brother, Larry, and his younger brother, Albert "Kid Blast," had been ordinary soldiers and prime hit men in the Profaci army and, as such, they had done yeoman service. It was they, or at least Crazy Joe, who had fulfilled the contract on Anastasia. And it was they who, in the fall of 1959, had meted out Profaci's form of justice--bullets in the head--to Frank "Frankie Shots" Abbatemarco, a Profaci policy banker suspected of holding back some of the take for himself. The Gallos thought their good work should earn them some tangible rewards, such as control of gambling, loan-sharking and narcotics in Brooklyn's East New York section. Profaci, however, was anything but a generous man. He believed that sharing meant sharing with him; he demanded a cut of every racket his men were involved in, plus $25 a month dues from every member of his family. With hardly a nod, he turned down the Gallo request.

This did not make Joe very happy. "Any man who is strong enough to take something and hold it, he owns it," he was fond of saying, so the Gallos decided to do some taking and holding. What they took in February 1961 were Joseph "The Fat Man" Magliocco, Profaci's brother-in-law and underboss; Frank Profaci, the boss's brother; and two powerful aides and bodyguards, Salvatore "Sally the Sheik" Mussachia and John Scimone. They also tried to take Profaci himself, but the ruler was tipped off and took a plane to Florida for sanctuary. The four hostages were secreted in separate Manhattan hotel rooms while the Gallos presented Profaci with their demands for a cut of the empire.

With an unusual shrug of surrender, Profaci acceded and promised no retribution. The hostages were released unharmed and the Gallos waited for their rewards. The payoffs that came, however, were in keeping with Profaci's reputation. In August of 1961, a top Gallo enforcer named Joseph "Joe Jelly" Gioelli went deep-sea fishing, an abiding passion of his. What returned from the trip was Gioelli's coat wrapped around a dead fish, dumped from a car near a favorite Gallo hangout in Brooklyn.

This was Profaci's first answer. Simultaneously, Larry Gallo got an invitation to meet Scimone at the Sahara Lounge in Brooklyn to hear some good news and get the first payment over a couple of drinks. The payment and the good news were a $100 bill and a noose around Larry's neck as he sipped his whiskey. The only thing that saved him was the unexpected appearance in the bar's doorway of a cop making his rounds. When the cop inquired politely what was going on, a couple of shots were fired at him, one hitting his partner.

And so erupted the Gallo-Profaci war. Faced with far stronger and better equipped troops, the Gallos and about 25 of their allies holed up on the second floor of a brick-front building at 49-51 President Street in Brooklyn, soon nicknamed The Dormitory. There, surrounded by mattresses, an arsenal of weapons and a hoard of food, and lulled by the strains of Larry Gallo's favorite Verdi operas pouring from a phonograph, they prepared to do battle. However, most of the casualties were the Gallo soldiers who made forays into the city; about the only real action on President Street occurred when a house nearby burst into flames and the Gallos raced up the tenement stairs to rescue a family trapped on the third floor. "We only done what any red-blooded American boys would do," Albert Gallo told reporters modestly, though he added, "With our crummy luck, I suppose we'll get arrested for putting out the fire without a license."

There were, however, two major casualties, though neither was a direct result of the war itself. The first was Joe Gallo. In December 1961, the cops arrived on President Street to remove him from his fortress to jail. Gallo had a big mouth and a penchant for wisecracks, and one day, while trying to shake down a café owner, who wanted time to think it over, he said, "Sure, take three months in the hospital on me." Unfortunately for him, three detectives were sitting at the next table. That wisecrack cost Crazy Joe a seven-to-14-year prison sentence.

The second victim was Profaci himself. Early in 1962, the boss fell ill. He was taken to the hospital and operated on for a massive cancer. It was too late. On June sixth, Profaci was dead. His successor as head of the family was his brother-in-law, Magliocco, a weak and vacillating man incapable of commanding an army or maintaining the allegiance of his troops.

So the Gallo-Profaci war ground to an indecisive halt, with both sides claiming victory. For the regulars, the war, at least, was over, with the Gallos back in the fold, proclaiming loyalty. For the Gallos, there were the spoils that they had long demanded. They were given control of the rackets in East New York and for the next few years, under Larry's leadership, their power in the Profaci organization grew. But in 1968, Larry died of cancer and Albert proved incapable of running things with dispatch. The Gallo mob deteriorated, the remnants hoping for a renaissance when Joe walked the streets again.

The Gallos may have gotten their spoils, but the man who emerged with the real power in the Profaci family was a young and obscure capo, considered merely a minor gambler. His name was Joseph Colombo. At the start of the war, he had been considered so loyal to Profaci that the Gallos marked him for death. The plot failed, but Joe Gallo, for one, never considered him other than an enemy, even after he had done the Gallos a good turn: When Profaci died, it was Colombo who negotiated the peace and wrote the terms that gave the Gallos what they had fought for.

Colombo's most successful ploy, though, was yet to come. It was one that would bring him the blessings of Gambino and the mantle of leadership in the Profaci family. For it undid the only remaining rival to Gambino for leadership in the Italian underworld and, at the same time, deposed Magliocco as Profaci's successor.

Bonanno's ambitions had been waxing mightily, especially as all the old mafiosi died away. With the death of Profaci, he began to see himself as the boss of all bosses. Though the ruler of the smallest of New York's five families, his interests were wide and varied, running all the way from narcotics to legitimate garment manufacturing, and spreading from Brooklyn all the way to Tucson, Arizona, and into Long Island, the Midwest, Canada and the Caribbean. Bonanno decided the time had come to act on his ambitions, to eliminate in one move all who might stand in his way: Lucchese, Gambino, Buffalo's Magaddino and even the Los Angeles boss, DeSimone. Not certain he had the power to do this all by himself, Bonanno sought allies, and he turned particularly to Magliocco, an old and dear friend. Swayed by Bonanno's arguments, and by promises of a share in the spoils, Magliocco joined the plot and even agreed to assume the contracts for the murders in New York. He called Colombo and turned them over to him.

This was Colombo's opportunity. He saw that Magliocco was a sure loser; instead of fulfilling the contracts, he hurried to Gambino with a complete report. Now Gambino saw his own opportunity. He called an emergency session of the underworld commission, which included himself, Lucchese, Chicago's Giancana, Philadelphia's Angelo Bruno, Magaddino and a couple of others--with Lansky, in particular, kept constantly advised of the discussions and decisions. News of the treachery was very upsetting to the Italian overlords, bringing back unpleasant memories of the early Thirties and of the Genovese-inspired violence of the recent past. Magliocco and Bonanno were summoned to appear and explain. A quivering Magliocco arrived, quickly confessed the whole plot and pleaded for his life. Convinced that Magliocco lacked the guts to have conceived the plot on his own, had been swayed by Bonanno and was so ill that he wasn't going to live long anyway, the commission opted for mercy. Magliocco was fined $50,000 and stripped of his position. Within a few months, he was dead of a heart attack.

Colombo got the reward he had hoped for. With the blessings of Gambino, he was named to head the Profaci family, at just over 40 years of age, the youngest Syndicate leader and council member in the country.

"Joe Colombo? Where's a guy like that belong in the commission? What experience has he got? He was a bust-out guy [smalltime gambler] all his life," gasped Sam "The Plumber" DeCavalcante, leader of a small New Jersey family, to his underboss, Frank Majuri, when he heard the news. (The FBI was listening in: It had bugged DeCavalcante's telephone, office and other hangouts.)

"This is ridiculous," Majuri agreed.

Then DeCavalcante added. "This guy sits like a baby next to Carl all the time. He'd do anything Carl wants him to do."

Still, Bonanno had to be dealt with. He was no quaking Magliocco. Instead of heeding the commission's summons, he vanished, hiding out first in California and then in Canada. He was spotted there and a second and stronger order for his appearance before the commission was issued. Once again, Bonanno ignored it.

It was time for drastic steps. On October 21, 1964, Bonanno was back in Manhattan, prepared to answer to a grand-jury summons. He had dinner that night with his lawyers, then accompanied one of them, William Power Maloney, back to the lawyer's Park Avenue apartment house. As they were saying good night, two men suddenly confronted Bonanno, shoved him into a car, saying, "Come on, Joe, my boss wants to see you," and sped away.

When news of the Bonanno kidnaping broke, it was generally assumed he was dead. Only Luciano had ever returned from a ride. But somehow, and no one is certain just how, he persuaded the commission to spare him. Held for some time at a hide-out in the Catskills, Bonanno tried to strike a deal. He would retire completely from the commission, from the rackets, from his family, would settle down to a quiet life far removed from the underworld at his home in Tucson. In his stead, he proposed that his son, Salvatore "Bill" Bonanno, assume the leadership of the family. The commission rejected that proposal out of hand and told Bonanno that his family would pass into the hands of Gaspar DiGregorio, a relative of Magaddino's who was known to be loyal to both Magaddino and Gambino and who had the advantage of having no criminal record.

Bonanno had little choice but to accept the council's decision. Then he was released. But instead of heading home or heading for retirement in Tucson, Bonanno faded from sight, not to reappear for 19 months. During that time, according to rumors, he was in Haiti, deeply involved in the burgeoning gambling business and working closely with the Duvalier dictatorship.

But Bonanno was doing more than that. He was gathering strength and preparing to challenge and overturn the council's dictum, to launch what would become known as the Banana war. That conflict erupted even before Bonanno's dramatic reappearance. The council's imposition of DiGregorio had not gone down well with the loyalists in the Bonanno family. If they couldn't have Joe himself, they were determined to be led by his son, Bill, until Joe showed up again to reassume control. The family split sharply, both sides arming and preparing for battle. It appeared that unless something radical was done, the Organization might be shattered beyond repair.

That radical step was taken in January 1966. Emissaries from DiGregorio approached Bill with a request for a peace conference. Bonanno agreed and the meeting was set for late in the evening of January 28 at the home of one of Bill's relatives on Troutman Street in Brooklyn. As Bill and several of his men approached the house, shotguns and rifles opened up on them. They returned the fire and for several minutes, until both sides withdrew, a battle raged, though in the dark, marksmanship was poor and there were no casualties.

Bill's escape from the trap meant that the war would continue, but the shooting set off police and grand-jury investigations that kept the war cold through the winter and into the spring. About the only casualty was DiGregorio. His failure to eliminate the loyalist Bonanno faction did not make Gambino or other council members happy. He was booted out of the leadership (two years later, he died of a heart attack) and replaced by a tougher leader, Paul Sciacca.

Then Joe Bonanno was back. On May 17, 1966, wearing the same clothes he had on the night he disappeared 19 months earlier, he walked into Federal Court-house in Manhattan. "Your Honor," he said to Judge Marvin E. Frankel, "I am Joseph Bonanno. I understand that the Government would like to talk to me."

The Government did, indeed, want to talk to Bonanno. He was formally charged with obstruction of justice and freed on $150,000 bail while authorities prepared cases against him. He walked out of court and began his war to take back control of his family. The leader of the ambush on Bill was the first victim, ambushed himself; he escaped death but was seriously wounded. Soon there after, a Bonanno killer walked into the Cypress Gardens Restaurant in Queens, pulled a submachine gun from under his black raincoat and, in full view of more than 20 diners, blasted away at three DiGregorio-Sciacca henchmen sitting at the table in the middle of the room. The gunman killed all three and then disappeared through the kitchen and out the back door.

The casualties mounted. Soldiers on both sides were taken for rides, gunned down as they walked the streets of New York or otherwise disposed of. Rumors spread that the war was about to reach a climax, that both Joe and Bill Bonanno would soon be hit. Twice the council had granted Joe his life--at the time of his kidnaping and again in September 1966, at La Stella Restaurant in Queens, where a gathering of Gambino, Trafficante, Colombo, Eboli, Miranda, Carlos Marcello, and seven other major underworld leaders was interrupted by police, who called it the Little Apalachin meeting. Now the council rescinded the clemency and ordered Bonanno's execution.

With the forces mounting against him, Bonanno removed himself from the scene of battle, flying off to his home in Tucson. There nature intervened. Early in 1968, he suffered a mild heart attack. It was enough to persuade him that perhaps the time had come really to retire, and he sent back that word to the council. But his peers had heard that story before, and this time they weren't so credulous. Bombs were planted in a garage and in cars at the home of Bonanno's neighbor and close friend in Tucson, Pete Licavoli, the Syndicate's Detroit leader; another bomb was exploded on the patio of Bonanno's home; another was delivered in a box to the house and failed to explode only because it had been poorly packaged. Evidence turned up later that the bombs had been planted by an overzealous FBI agent trying to foment an internal gang war; but Bonanno, in any case, had had enough. He really retired, though surrounded constantly by bodyguards determined to protect him from further attempts by the Organization. The rule of his family fell to Sciacca, and then, a little later, to an old friend of Genovese's and Gambino's, a man with a long narcotics history named Natale Evola.

It seemed that the last obstacles to Gambino's ascension had been eliminated. But the wars that marked the years since Genovese made his grab for leadership had brought Gambino into the open; now he was visible, a target of the authorities, of his enemies and of some he had considered his allies. Meanwhile, in those same years when attention had been riveted on the Italian underworld, Lansky had been carving out new empires.

Part X: Perils of Power

October 25, 1957

This is the tenth in a series of articles on organized crime in the United States.