The Last Testament of Lucky Luciano: The Mafia Story in His Own Words (23 page)

Luciano ordered Lansky to accelerate the training of the murder team, to have the men ready to move at any moment. But Genovese complained that waiting was ridiculous; he demanded immediate steps and that he take on the Maranzano assignment personally.

“No, Vito, we got time. We’ll wait for the old man to call and we’ll stick to the plan,” Luciano told him.

On September 9, 1931, the call came from Maranzano. He had not seen Charlie Lucky in several days, he said, and a number of pressing matters had to be discussed. He would like Luciano and Genovese to call at his office the next day at two o’clock, and they could spend the afternoon in conference.

As soon as Luciano hung up, he called Lansky with the news. That night, final preparations were made. The details were rehearsed again and again, each man running through his part of the planned assassination. When Luciano was satisfied, he left the room and returned in a moment with a muscular, fashionably dressed man of medium height in his early thirties. Without identifying him, Luciano told the killers the man would be in Maranzano’s office when they arrived. If necessary, he would finger Maranzano.

Just before two in the afternoon of September 10, Maranzano was in his outer reception room waiting for Coll, and for the arrival of Luciano and Genovese. With him were his secretary, Grace Samuels, and five armed bodyguards. The door opened and
Tommy Lucchese entered, an unexpected visit that, Lucchese later told Luciano, apparently distressed Maranzano. The outer office was normally filled with hangers-on; that day, however, none were present. Lucchese was too important to be denied, particularly when he took Maranzano’s arm and started to lead him toward the inner office, saying he had a vital matter to discuss at Tom Gagliano’s behest.

Before Maranzano could react, the door opened again and four men entered, identified themselves as federal agents, and demanded to know who was Salvatore Maranzano. No one thought to ask what bureau they were connected with, for Maranzano was under investigation at the time for bootlegging, alien-smuggling, tax evasion and a variety of other matters. His lawyers had assured him he had no worries, but that agents might make a surprise visit, and if they did, he should be cooperative. Maranzano readily identified himself to the four “agents.”

One of them noticed a quick, almost imperceptible nod from Lucchese, the man they had seen the night before. They pulled out their guns. One locked the door. Maranzano, Lucchese, Miss Samuels and the five bodyguards were lined up against the wall and frisked; the bodyguards were disarmed.

Two of the agents then shoved their guns into Maranzano’s back and ordered him into his private office for questioning. Once the door was closed behind them, they pulled out knives — the weapon chosen so the murder could be committed in silence — and began to slash at Maranzano. Despite his age and girth, Maranzano fought back, crying out, striking with his arms. The battle became almost desperate and the two killers finally pulled out their guns and began to pump bullets into him. He collapsed across his desk, dead — stabbed six times in the chest and body, his throat cut, and with four bullet wounds in his head and body.

The killers dashed out, were joined by the other two in the outer office, and then all four raced out the door, down eight flights to the street where they vanished. As they disappeared, Maranzano’s bodyguards followed, not to give chase but in fear of being found in the office with Maranzano’s corpse.

Lucchese remained behind momentarily, looking into the inner office to make certain Maranzano was dead. As he was making a
cursory examination, Girolamo Santucci, better known as Bobby Doyle, rushed in. A onetime prizefighter, he was supposedly a loyal Maranzano aide and bodyguard, but his true allegiance was to Luciano, for whom he had driven on a number of hijackings, and for whom he had committed murder. “He was a fearless guy,” and he had been planted in Maranzano’s midst by Charlie Lucky. On September 10 his job was to back up Lucchese, if needed. He had arrived late. Lucchese looked up from Maranzano’s body and snapped at him, “Get out of here.” Doyle raced out and down the stairs to the street, just as a squad of police was arriving. The cops picked up Doyle, questioned him briefly at headquarters, and then released him. Lucchese, meanwhile, calmly rode the elevator to the ground floor and faded into the crowd on Park Avenue.

Vincent “Mad Dog” Coll had been on his way up the stairs to Maranzano’s office when Maranzano’s bodyguards came tearing down. One of them told him what had happened. With Maranzano’s twenty-five thousand dollars in his pocket and now no job to do and no one to refund the advance to, Coll turned and left. (Five months later, Coll himself fell in a Manhattan telephone booth, a victim of his own war with Dutch Schultz.)

Through the early afternoon, Luciano, Genovese and the others waited anxiously for news of their plan. That news came just before three, with a telephone call to Costello from the Fifty-third Street Precinct. More confirmation quickly arrived from Levine, Lucchese and the radio.

Then Luciano sent out the word to allies around the country that the Maranzano assassination had come off as planned. But in these hurried calls, it was agreed that the second phase of the planned attack was not necessary. “Plenty of people got eliminated before the day Maranzano got his, and it was all done as part of the plan. But all that stuff them writers always printed about what they called the ‘Night of the Sicilian Vespers’ was mostly pure imagination. Every time somebody else writes about that day, the list of guys who was supposed to have got bumped off gets bigger and bigger. The last count I read was somewhere around fifty. But the funny thing is, nobody could ever tell the names of the guys who got knocked off the night Maranzano got his. I,
personally, don’t know the name of one top guy in the Maranzano group in New York or Chicago or Detroit or Cleveland or nowhere who got rubbed out to clear the decks. It just wasn’t necessary, because what we did was to tell ’em the truth — that the real and only reason Maranzano got his was so that we could stop the killin’. That it was all over.”

The only known victim, in fact, of that Night of the Sicilian Vespers was Gerardo Scarpato, the owner of the Nuova Villa Tammaro at Coney Island. During that night, he was murdered.

The old ways and the old leaders were finally dead and Charlie Lucky Luciano was at last a king. The fallen ruler, Salvatore Maranzano, was given a send-off befitting his status — Luciano insisted on that — with the ritual long train of black limousines, flowers, tears and eulogies. And when Maranzano had been laid to rest, Luciano announced that the old Don’s autocratic ideas had been buried with him. The day of the absolute monarchy was over; henceforth there would be a constitutional government with respect for the rights of each group. Luciano was determined neither to alienate nor antagonize anyone; all should and would be treated as equals and allies.

From his experiences of the past decade, Luciano knew that he could remain at the top only if he eschewed fear and intimidation; he could not, as Masseria and Maranzano had tried to do, force into submission such men as Profaci, Bonanno, Mangano, Scalise, Gagliano, Capone and the rest of his friends who had supported him and who gave him the respect that they wanted in return. He sensed, then, that if he rejected the offered throne in name, he would soon have it in fact. This was the Sicilian-Italian paradox that he understood — the yearning for leadership but the rejection of the autocratic leader.

“I learned a long time before that Meyer Lansky understood the Italian brain almost better than I did. That’s why I picked him to be my
consigliere
, to talk over the best way to handle things, how to get my ideas across to a bunch of big shots who was tired of livin’ under one guy’s thumb. I used to tell Lansky that he may’ve had a Jewish mother, but someplace he must’ve been wet-nursed by a Sicilian.”

From all over the country, word was sent to Luciano approving his actions against Maranzano, but with the cautionary word that a fuller explanation of his future plans was much desired. “I decided not to make the same mistake that Maranzano did. Instead of callin’ everybody to me, I went to them. A few weeks later, we had a meet in Chicago, and Capone acted like he was throwin’ a party for me.”

Despite his trial for tax evasion, Capone was a lavish host. He invited the leaders of the American underworld to the celebration, some to meet Charlie Lucky for the first time, but all, apparently, to anoint him in the old ritual. But the guest list was not restricted to Sicilians and Italians. There were Jews like Lansky, Siegel, Dalitz, Rosen, Dutch Schultz, Abe Reles; there were Irish and what would be called today Wasps. Capone took over the Congress Hotel and part of the Blackstone (he was rumored to own controlling interests in both), assigning floors to each city and group, with the best suites reserved for the chieftains. His own troops, augmented by his hirelings on the Chicago police force, ringed the hotel, keeping away the curious. Noticing the preparations and hearing stories of the perils of the city’s streets, Luciano noted later, “It ain’t safe to walk alone in Chicago.”

The first afternoon, Luciano had a series of private meetings with the underworld leaders. “I knew they wanted to hear from me direct, face to face, not in a big auditorium. I explained to ’em that all the war horseshit was out, that every outfit in every city could be independent but there would be a kind of national organization to hold it all together. I told ’em we was in a business that hadda keep movin’ without explosions every two minutes; knockin’ guys off just because they come from a different part of Sicily, that kind of crap, was givin’ us a bad name and we couldn’t operate until it stopped. Masseria and Maranzano had been our
real enemies, was the way I put it, not the Law; we could handle the Law, we was doin’ it everywhere. But how can you handle crazy people?”

The basic concepts for the future of organized crime had long been maturing in Luciano’s mind, and now, at these sessions, he pulled them out; each local and regional group would have considerable autonomy within its own jurisdiction; at the top there would be a national commission, like the board of directors of a legitimate corporation, to establish major policy for the underworld, and the leaders of all the larger outfits would sit on that panel, with each man an equal. Though Luciano would be the chairman — the unanimous decision of his peers — his vote and voice would be no stronger or more powerful than anyone else’s.

But no matter how often in these conversations Luciano flatly disavowed any pretensions to the old title of Boss of Bosses,
Capo di Tutti Capi
, there were still many, particularly those of Sicilian origin, who seemed unable to comprehend this. It all seemed “too American” to them.

During a break late in the afternoon, Lansky took Luciano aside. He was worried. “We missed something, Charlie. Unless you straighten it out before tonight, you could blow the whole thing. There are lots of these guys who ain’t able to give up all the old ways so fast. You gotta feed ’em some sugar that they’ll understand. You’ve got to give the new setup a name; after all, what the fuck is any business or company without a name? A guy don’t walk into an automobile showroom and say, I’ll take that car over there, the one without a name.’ ”

The more Luciano thought about Lansky’s statement, the more he agreed. “But the name has to be simple, somethin’ that’ll have a real meaning for these particular guys,” he said.

“That’s right,” Lansky said. “And I’d like to suggest you call it the Unione Siciliano.”

“For chrissake, that’s been around for years; they been fightin’ since I was a kid over who was gonna run it. If we’re throwin’ out all the old crap, what’s so good about keepin’ that one?”

“Don’t you understand, Charlie, that there are too many of these guys who can’t get away from the old traditions? If everybody comes into this kind of operation that’s called by a Sicilian
name, then the old vendettas would stop right now. It’s as simple as that. Didn’t you always say that to understand a Sicilian you hadda crawl into his head?”

Lansky’s logic was compelling to Luciano. Immediately he began to advocate the use of Unione Siciliano as the formal name for the national organization, if anyone needed a formal name, though he himself always called it simply “the outfit.”

That evening, Capone was the host at a lavish banquet, with Luciano seated next to him on the dais. It became apparent at once that despite Luciano’s fine words and phrases, most of the guests had come expecting to pay obeisance to a new king in the same manner as the old. They brought envelopes stuffed with cash to Luciano as tribute. Luciano refused each offer. “I don’t need the money. I got plenty, and besides, why should you be payin’ anythin’ to me when we’re all equals?”

The would-be donors walked away, amazed. But Capone was shocked. He turned to Luciano. “Don’t be a horse’s ass, Charlie. Maybe it’s all right to break down them old traditions, but why do you have to break that kind of tradition?”

“I told you, I got enough dough.”

“That don’t mean a thing. That ain’t the point. All these guys are used to payin’ up, so why get rid of a good thing?”

“That’s exactly why. It ain’t a good thing. Also, it makes them feel like I’m the boss and I don’t want that. There ain’t gonna be no more gifts, no more envelopes, nothin’ like that.”

Later, Luciano would reminisce, “I think I really made Capone sick. His face turned green, and I’m sure it wasn’t from too much
vino
.”

And Luciano revealed one further dictum. In the past, he said, the bosses had been too powerful, while the ordinary soldiers had been too powerless, unable to dispute a decision they were sure was ill conceived. He proposed the establishment of a layer of appeals between the bosses at the top and the soldiers at the bottom, a kind of subconsul to whom the ranks could submit their complaints. This
consigliere
would have multiple roles, not merely acting as the soldier’s voice at court but as the intermediary adviser to the leaders, able to speak without fear of reprisal.