They were the perfect match: the well-read, even studious Lansky, who could survey all the angles of a given situation, and the less-than-erudite Luciano (he could make out the
New York Daily News
or
Daily Mirror
but he freely admitted the
New York Times
threw him), who made up for his limitations with a brilliant flair for organization and the brutal character to set any plan in motion.
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Through the years Lansky built an image of being alien to violence, but it was a myth. In the 1920s he and Bugsy Siegel organized the Bug and Meyer Gang, which some described as the most violent of the Prohibition mobs in the East. They worked alternately as liquor hijackers and protectors of booze shipments for bootleggers willing to meet their prices, which were so exorbitant that it amounted to extortion.
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Bug and Meyer muscle was also available for "slammings" and rubouts for a fee and was the forerunner of Murder, Inc., the enforcement troop of the national syndicate. Many Bug and Meyer graduates, in fact, moved into Murder, Inc., in the 1930s; Lansky had as much to do with the forming of that outfit as anyone. He proposed the enforcers be put under the command of a triumvirate composed of Louis Lepke, Albert Anastasia and Bugsy Siegel. Other leaders of the emerging national crime syndicate objected to the kill-happy Siegel, feeling he would be too loyal to Lansky and would give Lansky too powerful a hold on the apparatus of the extermination crew should the confederation fall apart in a war of extermination. Lansky agreed to drop Siegel from the murder troop, but his influence was not dented. It was said that no major assignment for Murder, Inc., ever went forward without Lansky being consulted. That was true even in the elimination of Siegel in 1947 for spending or stealing too much of the syndicate's money in his Las Vegas hotel operation. "I had no choice," Lansky was quoted as telling friends, but others insisted he had pushed hard for the vote to kill his close friend. He did suggest the mob hold off execution for a time, though, while pressure was exerted on Siegel to produce profits from his Las Vegas ventures. It was Lansky's way.
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Both Luciano and Lansky independently said that they had planned the formation of a new syndicate as early as 1920, when Luciano was in his early 20s and Lansky was only 18. They were greatly influenced in this by the older Arnold Rothstein, the great gambler, criminal "brain" and mentor who, acting on his own plan for a national syndicate, nurtured Lansky's and Luciano's development. Rothstein's murder in 1928 shortened what the pair may have considered too long an apprenticeship. Lansky and Luciano together survived the crime wars of the 1920s by cunning alliances, eliminating one foe after another, even though they lacked the manpower and firepower of other gangs. When they effected the assassinations first of Masseria and then Maranzano, they stood at the pinnacle of power in the underworld. Even Al Capone realized they were more powerful than he.
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In remarks attributed to Luciano, he once explained, "I learned a long time before that Meyer Lansky understood the Italian brain almost better than I did.... I used to tell Lansky that he may've had a Jewish mother, but someplace he must've been wet-nursed by a Sicilian." Luciano often said Lansky "could look around corners," or anticipate what would happen next in underworld intrigues, and that "the barrel of his gun was curved," meaning he knew how to keep himself out of the line of fire. Through the years that was Lansky's way.
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Lansky never begrudged Luciano his top role, realizing that the title brought the clear dangers of notoriety and, no matter how many payoffs were made, the hazard of being the target of the law. It was also necessary to sell Luciano as the top man in order to win the support of the Italian mobsters. Lansky had fewer difficulties selling Jewish mobsters like Zwillman or Moe Dalitz, or even the often unpredictable Dutch Schultz, on the value of syndication; they understood the profits involved. The Italian mafiosi were different, many cut adrift by the war of survival that had just been concluded. Lansky told Luciano: "A lot of these guys need something to believe in." He urged Luciano to keep some of the old-style Mafia trappings used by the Mustache Petes. Luciano had no patience for the nonsense of "made men" and blood oaths but agreed to let those who wanted such rituals have them. He did eliminate the position of "boss of bosses"and immediately, as Lansky anticipated, gained that position de facto. At Lansky's suggestion the organization took the name of Unione Siciliano, a corruption in spelling of the old fraternal organization. Eventually Luciano just called it the "outfit" or the ''combination." Luciano imbued in his men that all the traditions really meant little, that the important thing was money-making. (In time, though, Luciano saw the merits of the structure of the Italian wing; it gave him a power base and cemented that power. Even when imprisoned for a decade, his support never eroded and he could issue orders and have his revenues set aside for him.)
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As late as 1951, when his name surfaced during the investigation of bookmaking czar Frank Erickson, the
New York Times
, with one of the most reliable news libraries in the world, did not know exactly who Meyer Lansky was. The newspaper identified him as "Meyer (Socks) Lansky," evidently mistaking him for Joseph (Socks) Lanza, the waterfront racketeer. During the Kefauver investigation (19501951) into
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