The Valachi Papers (12 page)

After the meeting was over, The Gap took me and Sally to the apartment which was picked out and furnished for us on the Bronx River Parkway.

Throughout the rest of 1930 and into 1931, the Castellammarese War raged on, and before die bloodletting was over, some sixty bodies would litter U.S. streets. Although nationwide in scope, the crucial battle was waged in New York City between the Maranzano and Masseria forces. Valachi's first call to action came, as he puts it, in the "wee hours" —around five o'clock one morning—when a spotter reported by telephone to the apartment that two Masseria men, Joseph Rao and Big Dick Amato, together with two girls, were at die Pompei Restaurant in Harlem.

Valachi could not have been more delighted. Rao, he had learned, had been the one behind the false charge that Valachi was the driver of the car for the Irish gang during the shooting incident years before that subsequently caused him so much grief. Valachi and Shillitani immethately drove to the restaurant. They arrived just as Rao was getting into a car with his lady friend. Valachi pulled alongside. "Take him," Valachi snapped, but Shillitani, after aiming his shotgun, "froze in his tracks." He had neglected to release the safety catch on his shotgun. Furious, Valachi yanked out a pistol and fired four shots at Rao, who by now was scampering down the street. "I'm so mad," Valachi recalls, "that I can't aim straight. I got him once, in the ass, but it wasn't enough to stop him." Then, with people pouring out of the restaurant, Valachi was forced to drive off hurriedly, still cursing the hapless Shillitani.

Even in the company of a more experienced hand named Steve Runnclli, Valachi's luck did not improve:

I
was taken out of the apartment on the Bronx River Parkway, and they put me right in Mr. Maranzano's headquarters, which is in Yonkers. We are told that we are supposed to go after the top people

with Masseria and not to fool around with the little guys. That is the way to get the war over fast.

So now one day Steve Runnelli and I were riding up in Harlem when Steve spots a man in a Lincoln coming the other way. He tells me to swing around fast. I said, "Who is that?" and he said, "He's a big boss with the others." "Oh," I said and swung the car around and pulled up to the Lincoln. When I was right alongside the Lincoln, Steve fired one shot at him, and I saw this man—I found out later that his name was Paul Gambino—go with the shot. I tried to tell Steve that I don't think we got him, but he was panicky after the first shot, and he started yelling, "Step on the gas! Step on the gas!" I was disappointed. These mob guys were always talking big, and then, when the action comes, they fold up. As I pulled away, my rear bumper got caught in his front bumper. So I was pulling and pulling for about half a block before I got loose, with Steve yelling all the time, "Get the hell out of here!"

I let Steve off someplace on Southern Boulevard, and I went back to Yonkers where Mr. Maranzano was. He was waiting for me. Boy, was he mad! He seemed to know already what happened, and he said, "What did you go after that guy for? What's the matter with you?"

I said, "Steve told me he was a big boss."

Mr. Maranzano started cursing. He said, "This guy is a nobody." I told him not to worry, I didn't think the guy was hit. With that, as I am telling him this, the phone rang. After he took the call, he said to me, "You are right. The bullet only clipped his ear. He got out of that Lincoln, I just heard, and walked away."

Well, everything turned out for the best. Paul Gambino wasn't nothing, but his brother Carlo was a big man with the Masseria group. When Carlo got word of the shooting, figuring he might be next, he brought all his people over with us.

Not all the contracts Valachi was involved in had such Keystone comedy aspects. Maranzano was particularly adamant about killing a Masseria lieutenant, Joseph (Joe Baker) Catania. Valachi was first told about it by Buster from Chicago. "You know this Joe Baker?" Buster asked.

"Yeah," Valachi replied. "I know him from the old neighborhood. I like him."

"Don't let die old man hear you say that," Buster advised Valachi. "He has a personal grudge against him. This Baker hijacked some of the old man's alcohol trucks, and now he has to go."

Consoling himself with the thought that Baker was the nephew of a bitter enemy of his own, Ciro Terranova, Valachi said, "Well, if he's got to go, what do I care?" On a January morning shortly after this exchange, Valachi was picked up by Buster and, along widi two other gunmen, was taken to an empty apartment in the Fordham section of the Bronx. The apartment was diagonally across the street from a bail bondsman's office, which Baker had apparently been using as a collection point for the money from his various rackets. He had been seen entering the office every morning for several days, staying five or ten minutes, and then leaving with a brown paper bag in his hand. "Today," Buster told Valachi, "we're just going to check the information out." At about
10
A.M.
a man rounded the corner, walked the eight feet or so to the entrance door, and went inside. "That's him," Valachi said to Buster. "That's Joe Baker, all right." About ten minutes later, as predicted, Baker emerged from the office carrying a paper bag and disappeared around the corner.

Throughout the rest of the week Baker continued his routine. His waiting killers, however, faced several problems. Baker always approached the office from the same direction, and the eight feet he walked after turning the corner did not give Buster time enough to shoot. The same situation prevailed when he exited. Worst of all, the apartment they were in was on die fifth floor, and Buster, with only seconds at his disposal, was afraid that the range was too great for an effective shot.

Valachi thought he had an answer to the problem. He had noticed a ground-floor apartment in the same building that seemed to be empty, and he suggested that they force their way into it the next morning before Baker arrived. Buster agreed at once. But when they did, the killers were momentarily dumbfounded. Three house painters were hard at work. While Buster headed for the window, Valachi and the other two men lined up the painters against the wall at gunpoint. Suddenly he heard Buster call to him, "Come here, Joe. Who's that woman with him?" Valachi rushed to the window just in time to see Baker's companion and said, "Jeez, that's his wife." Then he left the apartment to make sure that their car, parked around the block, was ready to go. A few minutes later he heard shots, and as soon as his pals arrived, they sped away. "How did it go?" Valachi asked.

"He came out of the office with his wife," Buster replied. "He kissed her in front of die office, and I was worried I wouldn't get a shot. But he turned and went for the corner. She was just standing there watching when I got him. I don't think I missed once. You could see the dust coming off his coat when the bullets hit."

"It's too bad the wife had to see him go," Valachi said.

"Yes, but would we have got another chance with those painters spreading the word around the neighborhood?"

Wife or not, Maranzano could not have been more delighted when die news came that afternoon that Baker died in a Bronx hospital. Later a Maranzano spy reported that Terranova had placed his hand on his nephew's coffin at the funeral parlor and swore he would avenge his death. Maranzano, enraged at this, sent the spy back to look into the possibility of cornering Terranova at die wake, but, as Valachi sadly recalls, "It was impossible to do anything there.''

(Case No. 122 of die 46di Squad, New York Police Department, states that on February 3,1931, at 11:45
A.M.
one Joseph Catania, alias Joe Baker, of 2319 Belmont Avenue, Bronx, male, white, twenty-nine years old, while walking in front of 647 Crescent Avenue, was shot six times in die head and body, causing his deadi in Fordham Hospital, to which he was removed. Before he died, in spite of his mortal wounds, he could not or would not identify the perpetrators of this crime.)'"'

In the weeks following the Baker killing, according to Valachi, the tide of battle swelled in Maranzano's favor. There had been so many defections to him, like that of Carlo Gambino, that his forces actually outnumbered die enemy. Moreover, for diose who still sided with Masseria there was an increasing economic problem because of die struggle, their well-fixed rackets were rapidly becoming a shambles. It was then that Valachi first heard that there was "talk of peace in the air." But Maranzano would enter into no negotiations as long as Masseria remained alive. Finally two of Masseria's most trusted sidekicks, Charley Lucky Luciano and Vito Genovese, secretly turned against him. In return for their promise to have Masseria killed, Maranzano agreed to halt the war.

""Catania's funeral was the most lavish held in the Bronx up to that time —and probably since. His coffin, solid bronze, cost $15,000. It was, according to one report, the "finest casket ever given a gunman in New York." Five funeral directors shared the honors. More than 10,000 people turned out to watch the cortege. Forty automobiles were required to carry the flowers alone. The most impressive floral decoration came from Ciro Terranova and other close associates: it was thirteen feet high, made up of red and white roses, and featured the inscription "Our Pal."

Masseria literally never knew what hit him. He was invited by Luciano to dine one afternoon in a Coney Island restaurant called Scarpato's. From all accounts Joe the Boss, surrounded by trusted aides, had a fine time during the meal— the last one he ever ate.

(Case No. 133 of the 60th Squad, New York Police Department, notes that at about 3:30
P.M.
on April 15, 1931, Giuseppe Masseria, also known as Joe the Boss, last known residence, 65 Second Avenue, New York City, while sitting in a restaurant at 2715 West 15di Street, in the Coney Island section of Brooklyn, was shot in die back and head by unknown persons who escaped.)

Luciano was still at the restaurant when the police arrived. Luciano explained that he was unable to be of much help. After the meal, he said, he had suggested a game of cards. He and Masseria played for approximately forty-five minutes while the restaurant emptied. Then Luciano excused himself for a trip to the men's room. As he was washing his hands, he heard some "noise," hurried out to see what was going on, and found Masseria slumped over the table.

None of the restaurant staff could identify any of the others in attendance at Masseria's execution. But besides Luciano and Vito Genovese, Valachi says, diey included his old friend Frank Livorsi and Joseph Stracci, alias Joe Stretch.

Thus Salavatore Maranzano,
always a shadowy figure as far as the police were concerned, became the undisputed chieftain of the Italian underworld in America. His ascension to power also marked the organization of the modern Cosa Nostra:

Mr. Maranzano called a meeting. I was just notified. I don't remember how, but I was notified. It was held in the Bronx in a big hall around

Washington Avenue. The place was packed. There was at least four or five hundred of us jammed in. There were members there I never saw before. I only knew the ones that I was affiliated with during the war. Now there were so many people, so many faces, that I didn't know where they came from.

We were all standing. There wasn't any room to sit. Religious pictures had been put up on the walls, and there was a crucifix over the platform at one end of the hall where Mr. Maranzano was sitting. He had done this so that if outsiders wondered what the meeting was about, they would think we belonged to some kind of a holy society. He was just hanging around, waiting to speak, while the members were still coming in.

Joe Profaci had given me Mr. Maranzano's pedigree. He was born in the village of Castellammare and had come over here right after the First World War. He was an educated man. He had studied for the priesthood in the old country, and I understand he spoke seven languages. I didn't know until later that he was a nut about Julius Caesar and even had a room in the house full of nothing but books about him. That's where he got the idea for the new organization.

Mr. Maranzano started off the meeting by explaining how Joe the Boss was always shaking down members, right and left. He told how he had sentenced all the Castellammarese to death without cause, and he mentioned the names of a half a dozen other members and bosses who had suffered the same thing.

Well, some of these names I didn't know or never even heard of, but everybody gave him a big hand. He was speaking in Italian, and he said, "Now it's going to be different." In the new setup he was going to be the
Capo di tutti Capi,
meaning the "Boss of all Bosses." He said that from here on we were going to be divided up into new Families. Each Family would have a boss and an underboss. Beneath them there would also be lieutenants, or
caporegimes.
To us regular members, which were soldiers, he said, "You will each be assigned to a lieutenant. When you learn who he is, you will meet all the other men in your crew."

Then he tells us how we are going to operate, like if a soldier has the need to see his boss, he has to go first to his lieutenant. If it is important enough, the lieutenant will arrange the appointment. In other words, a soldier ain't allowed to go running all the time to his boss. The idea is to keep everything businesslike and in line.

Next he goes over the other rules. The organization, this Cosa Nostra, comes first, above everything no matter what. Of course we already know that death is the penalty for talking about the Cosa Nostra or violating another member's wife, but he goes over it again anyway. He tells us now that death is the penalty for telling wives anything about the outfit and also that an order going from a boss to a lieutenant to a soldier must be obeyed or you die.

Now there are other rules where death ain't the penalty. Instead, you are "on the carpet"—meaning you have done wrong and there is a hearing to decide your case. The most important one is that you can't put your hands in anger on another member. This is to keep one thing from leading to another. Remember, we are just getting over our trouble, and that's what Mr. Maranzano talked about next.