The Last Testament of Lucky Luciano: The Mafia Story in His Own Words (47 page)

“But I wasn’t only buyin’ and sellin’; I actually became a fuckin’ banker, and I don’t mean a shylock but a real banker like the guys on Wall Street. I had a lotta cash dollars and I used ’em to buy lire cheap because the lira was worth practically nothin’.
Then I’d send Riccardo over to Tangier to change the lire back into dollars at a better price. It was kind of a merry-go-round and it paid off like nothin’ you ever seen; in less than six months, I almost doubled my bankroll.”

By June of 1946, Luciano had pulled enough strings to ease his way out of Sicily across the bay to Naples, where he moved into the luxurious Excelsior Hotel. During the war it had been expropriated by the Germans, who turned it into a rest and relaxation center for high Nazi officials; now it was back in Italian hands and providing, once more, de luxe service to travelers. “I had the most beautiful apartment you ever seen, overlookin’ the Bay of Naples.”

With hardly a moment’s pause, he took over the black market network that had been established by Genovese, picking up the contacts at the huge American naval base and the American colony and opening a pipeline through which passed American foods, canned goods and staples, and American home appliances available nowhere else. “Our men and their families was gettin’ everythin’, from Virginia hams to the finest refrigerators, electric toasters, irons, everythin’ under the sun. All the Americans, from the civilians workin’ at the consulate to the military, was up to their necks in things an Italian would give his eyeteeth for and couldn’t get legit. Of course, the Americans bought them goods for less than wholesale at the PX and the commissary; a bottle of booze, for example, was only two bucks and a pack of cigarettes was about twelve cents because it was sold without no U.S. tax.

“If you think we made big profits from bootleggin’ in the States in the twenties, it didn’t compare to the Italian black market. It was the old story that everybody’s got larceny in ’em, and practically the whole naval base in Naples was in the dry goods business, the appliance business, the food business on the black market. Now, a sergeant, for example, could buy an unlimited amount of stuff, but he wasn’t gonna peddle it himself on a Naples street corner. There hadda be a middleman, and I arranged to be the guy behind the guys in the middle. I never showed up in front of none of this.”

But there was one operation that Genovese had set up that Luciano rigorously shunned. “It didn’t take me long to discover
that regardless of my orders, that little bastard was dealin’ in junk all the time he was in Italy, practically to the day the U.S. Army sent him back to New York. But I never — and I mean never — had nothin’ to do with junk. I took over the rest of his operation, but not that.”

Luciano stayed in Naples only long enough to solidify his control over the black market. Then, his political contacts giving the okay, he moved to Rome, to the famous Excelsior Hotel on the Via Veneto, to an apartment even more luxurious than the one at the Excelsior in Naples. In Rome, he assiduously cultivated government officials, and, too, he began to cull the ranks of American deportees for experienced and reliable lieutenants to help in his black market operations.

“But it was like a temporary thing, like I was playin’ a game, because none of this was really serious to me. I didn’t figure I was gonna stay in Italy very long. All that black market crap was just somethin’ to keep my mind occupied. I was only waitin’ for the first word from Lansky, that’s all.”

Early in the fall, the message arrived, brought in a sealed envelope by a newly arrived deportee. The message was only three words: “December — Hotel Nacional.”

“This was very important to me, not just because it meant the arrangements was made, and it meant that everybody down the line was expectin’ me, but also because the messenger also brought me some very disturbin’ news. He said that Vito was beginnin’ to act like I wasn’t never comin’ back. He was outa jail and walkin’ around my territory in New York like he owned it. And then, right on top of that, I heard from Costello that the ‘California matter’ was bad. I knew right away what he meant, that Bugsy was probably tappin’ the till for even more dough than I knew about before I left Ellis Island. So I sent a message to Lansky that I would make my arrangements.”

In late September, Luciano obtained not one but two Italian passports made out in the name of Salvatore Lucanía, with visas for Mexico, Cuba and several South American nations. “The passports didn’t have to cost me a nickel. I went to the right people and I talked to ’em in the right way and they said, okay, that they didn’t have nothin’ against me, that I hadn’t broken no
Italian laws, so why shouldn’t I have a passport. While I was at it, I arranged to get a second one, just for insurance, and so I spread around a little dough.”

Then he suddenly vanished from the Italian scene.

The new guest checking into the Hotel Nacional in Havana in late October of 1946 attracted little attention among all the other tourists flocking to the island that fall. He signed the register with the name on his Italian passport — Salvatore Lucanía — and was shown to a suite that had been reserved for him by a prominent American businessman with wide Cuban holdings — Meyer Lansky.

“When I got to the room the bellhop opened up the curtains on them big windows and I looked out. I could see almost the whole city. I think it was the palm trees that got me. Everyplace you looked there was palm trees and it made me feel like I was back in Miami. All of a sudden, I realized for the first time in over ten years that there was no handcuffs on me and nobody was breathin’ over my shoulder, which was the way I used to feel even while I was wanderin’ around Italy. When I looked down over the Caribbean from my window, I realized somethin’ else; the water was just as pretty as the Bay of Naples, but it was only ninety miles from the United States. That meant I was practically back in America.”

It had been a long and circuitous voyage. Luciano had left Italy in early October, on a freighter bound for South America. He landed in Caracas, Venezuela, the ship’s first port, remained there a few days, and then flew to Mexico City, where he stayed a few days more. Then he chartered a private plane for the last leg, to Havana. He had gone this long way for definite reasons. “I wanted to establish a beachhead in a few cities besides Havana under the
name of Salvatore Lucanía, and besides I wanted to make sure I wasn’t tailed. I spread enough dough around Naples, too, before I got on the ship so there wouldn’t be no publicity about my leavin’, and there wasn’t. And when I got to Havana, it was on the far side of the airport in the private plane, and Lansky was there to pick me up in a car. We breezed right through customs and nobody looked at me twice. I was sure I managed to get to Cuba without Asslinger or Dewey or none of the American officials knowin’ about it. I knew they’d find out sooner or later, but I wanted to stall it.”

As soon as Luciano was settled at the Nacional, Lansky returned to the United States, leaving him with the word that the scheduled underworld conference would begin on December 22 and everyone summoned would be there. Within a week, Luciano, luxuriating in his new freedom, moved out of the hotel and into a spacious house in the exclusive Miramar suburb, among the estates and yacht clubs of wealthy Cubans and resident Americans. In his Spanish-style mansion on Quinta Avenida, Luciano had everything he desired; a crew of gardeners daily manicured the lavishly planted grounds and a staff of servants, selected with the assistance of Lansky’s aides, provided for his every need. In these peaceful surroundings Luciano made a decision, to take what had once been offered and refused.

“I thought about this for a long time. I remembered back to the time in Chicago, when they wanted me to become the Boss of Bosses, and I turned it down, like a stupid jerk, because I thought it was all a lotta shit. But I had plenty of chances to think back over that mistake, and I had no intention of lettin’ the title slip away this time. The guys was comin’ to Havana, not because I asked them to; I ordered it. So I was gonna plow right into ’em and take the top spot because I knew what them guys really respected was a leader with a title. In fact, I started to laugh at myself when I was makin’ plans for what I was gonna say and I thought maybe I oughta have a crown made. I’ll bet that would’ve made ’em sit up.

“Anyway, I took it easy for the next few weeks. I had breakfast in bed and then I’d put on a pair of slacks and walk around my estate and supervise the four gardeners and we would discuss the
kind of flowers I wanted ’em to plant. The house was furnished with fantastic antiques and there must’ve been a thousand yards of all kinds of silk, from curtains to sheets. It was one helluva change from Dannemora and Great Meadow. The place was owned by a rich sugar planter, but it was the time when things was very low and I only paid eight hundred bucks a month for the whole joint, includin’ all the servants and the gardeners.”

Meanwhile, preparations were under way for the first full-scale meeting of American underworld leaders since the Chicago conclave of 1932. Lansky made several trips from his home in the Miami area to fill Luciano in on events within the outfit throughout the country, and together they made plans for Luciano’s extended stay in Cuba. A legitimate front would be necessary to insure this, and so Lansky proposed that Luciano purchase an interest in the casino at the Hotel Nacional. Since the casino was controlled jointly by Lansky and Batista (then living in Florida while preparing to make a Cuban comeback, but still the power behind the government of President Ramón Grau San Martín), that interest could not be a gift but would have to be paid for at a realistic price. The figure of $150,000 was set for a small percentage.

“The only question was how I could avoid shellin’ out the dough myself. I had plenty of money with me and I could’ve bought the stock outright. But Meyer suggested another way to handle it. He said that if all our guys was happy to bring envelopes to my bon voyage party on the
Laura Keene
, they’d be more’n happy to bring envelopes to welcome me back again across the Atlantic. So that’s the way we worked it. All the fellas brought me ‘Christmas presents’ and the envelopes come to over two hundred grand; that’s how I bought the interest in the casino.”

Staying in Havana, of course, was to be only temporary. Luciano still hoped to return legally to the United States, but he thought it would take two years before that could happen. He and his friends were certain that Thomas E. Dewey would be the Republican candidate for President in 1948, and that Dewey would win the election. They were also certain that Dewey would welcome secret financial support for his campaign from the underworld and as reciprocity, once in the White House, would arrange for an end to
Luciano’s exile. The first necessity, though, was to make certain that Luciano remained close at hand in Cuba. Lansky initiated negotiations with his friend, Cuban Minister of the Interior Alfredo Pequeno, for automatic six-month extensions of Luciano’s visa as long as necessary, and as a further courtesy, a permit for Luciano to bring an American automobile to Cuba for his personal use without the customary import tax that often trebled the original price of the car.

The first of the American underworld leaders to arrive for the convention was Vito Genovese. He was installed in a penthouse suite at the Hotel Nacional, the conference center for the week, where all the guests would stay and where the meetings would be held.

“It was a couple days before I was expectin’ anybody, around the twentieth of December, when Vito called me at my house. It was a private number and he got it from Lansky. He tells me he come down a little beforehand to get a couple days’ rest on the beach. Now, I knew that little prick well enough to know he didn’t come to Havana to get a suntan. That wasn’t the way he operated. I knew he had somethin’ in mind, because I had been hearin’ from Lansky that he was makin’ moves into Anastasia’s territory in Brooklyn. I guessed that was what he wanted to talk about in private, so I told him to come over to my house for lunch.

“I hadn’t seen Vito for almost ten years, but when he walked in, I could see he hadn’t changed at all — he was still the same short, pudgy son of a bitch that I always remembered. And he was wearin’ the same kind of wrinkled-up suit that he always wore, with the same cigar ashes all over the front of it. We greeted each other like brothers — y’know, the old Italian crap. We threw our arms around each other and said how much we missed each other, and that the last ten years felt like a thousand.

“Then, we have a lunch in the formal dinin’ room, and he don’t even have the courtesy to say how fancy my joint is. He didn’t notice nothin’; he’s the kind of a guy who could walk through John Jacob Astor’s mansion in Newport like it was a Brooklyn subway station. Then we go out to the patio, all alone, and sit in the sun, in our shorts. That’s when Vito decides it’s time
to get down to business. He says to me, ‘Charlie, I’m worried about Albert.’ And I say to myself, ‘Sure you’re worried about Albert, because if you keep tryin’ to move in on him he’ll blow your head off.’ I pretend I don’t know nothin’ and I ask him, ‘What’s about Albert?’ ”

Genovese looked surprised. He said, “You know as well as me that Albert’s goin’ off his rocker. All he talks about is hittin’ people. Before I came down here, Albert and some of the guys had dinner with me, and all he talked about was hittin’ that guy Anslinger in Washington, because he’s makin’ so much trouble about junk. Remember, Charlie? — that was just what he was sayin’ about Dewey ten years ago when you was havin’ all the trouble.”

“Yeah, I remember, but I wasn’t the only one who was havin’ trouble with Dewey. He was after your ass, too, Vito, for the Boccia thing — which was about the dumbest caper you ever pulled in your whole fuckin’ life. That’s why you hadda take it on the lam to Italy.”