The Valachi Papers (19 page)

When Bobby got me to go with Vito Genovese after Mr. Maranzano got killed, Vito was the underboss in Charley Lucky's Family. Vito put me and Bobby in the crew of Tony Bender. This made Tony Bender my lieutenant. His word is law now. Who is there for me to go to? There is Frank Costello, but I don't ever see him. All he is interested in is making money. I got nothing personal against Frank, but I must speak the truth. I curse the day I didn't go with Tommy Brown, right name Lucchese. He was a good friend of Mildred's father, and he would have looked out for me.

Right away I could see that Tony Bender was going to be trouble for me. It didn't take me long to see I was right about him. One day Bobby Doyle comes uptown from where he has been in the Village with Tony and tells me the Wacky brothers have cracked Eddie Starr's head open over a girl. Now Eddie Starr's real name was Eddie Capobianco. He picked up the name when he was going out with a dance-hall girl called

Mary Starr. Anyway Bobby said, "Do you know the Wacky brothers?"

"Yeah," I say, "they're in the numbers working for Vince Rao."

"Okay," Bobby says when I tell him I know the Wacky brothers, "Tony wants you to go after them."

Now the Wacky brothers and Vince Rao are in Tommy Brown's family, and I say, "Bobby, you know how I stand with Tommy. How come I'm picked? So hard feelings will come between us?"

"Relax," he says, "you're not going to kill them."

"What am I supposed to do?"

"Just work them over."

What could I do? I got to hope that Tony Bender knows what he is doing. So I say, "Okay, where are they?"

"I don't know," Bobby says, "you have to find them."

Well, I figure if I can't find them, I can't find them. But the next morning I get a call from Fat Tony Salerno. Fat Tony asks me if I am looking for the Wacky brothers. I say I am, and he says, "Which one?"

I say, "Who cares? I was just told the Wacky brothers."

Then Fat Tony says that he was going to meet one of them on business at 97th Street and Third Avenue at two o'clock in the afternoon. He says that he would be late, so I'll have a chance to get him. Now they have me, you see. I can't get out of it by saying I can't find the Wacky brothers. They must have put Fat Tony up to it.

They have already told me who I'm to use to help me. One was Johnny D. He is an enforcer for Tony Bender when anybody held out on him in the numbers. Johnny was as stupid as they come, even if I was the one who got him mobbed up. He had no teeth, and one day Vito Genovese said to him, "The next time I see you, I want to see you with some teeth." Afterwards Johnny tells me, "See, that shows he's interested in me." The other one was Tommy Rye. His real name is Eboli, and the bulls have him down as also Tommy Ryan, but I always knew him as Tommy Rye. He's a big shot now; in those days he was just a punk. Anyway, they each got a baseball bat. I don't have to have one, as I am in charge. We drive around for a while, and then we park the car on East 97th Street.

He shows up, just like Fat Tony said, but he is with another guy. We all jump out of the car. He sees us and freezes. Well, Tommy and Johnny D go to work on him while I hold back the other guy. I tell this guy, "Mind your business. This son of a bitch hit one of the boys over

the head last night."

Usually you just go for a guy's legs, but Tommy and Johnny were hitting him over the head and on every part of his body before I could stop them. If you want to know what the people in the street were doing, they were just going about as if nothing was happening.

I don't think he yelled once. He just tried to cover up as best he could. Then he fell down, and I called them off. He had enough. This was just a beating, not a killing. If he dies, it isn't because it was meant to be. I heard he was in the hospital for about six months.

Now I am in trouble with Tommy Brown because the Wacky brothers are under his protection like I explained, and Tony Bender ain't cleared nothing. Instead of me going after one of them the way Tony made me do, they should have been called "to the table," which is like a hearing before a real trial. If there was going to be any trouble, Tony Bender was making sure it would fall on me. I find this out when Bobby Doyle calls me and says I got to take the rap. "Why?" I say, and Bobby says that Tony is in up to his neck about it. I ain't sad about that, but it don't do me no good either.

Well, I am lucky that Tommy Brown was the best friend of my wife's father, God rest his soul, because now I'm at the table for what happened. But it's almost Christmas, and everything is put off until after the holidays. Tommy used to have us over at his house for a party every Christmas, and

I am amazed when Mildred tells me that Tommy's wife, Kitty, called up and invited us again. Naturally I report this to Tony. I still remember his number. It was Cliffside 6-7835 or 3578, one or the other.* Tony says it's a good sign and to go, as if I need him to tell me that.

When we got there, I have a couple of drinks, and then Tommy calls me upstairs and asks me who ordered the beating. What could I say? Tony Bender was my own lieutenant, and if I talk, I would be in a lot more trouble. Maybe it would even start another war. So I say, "Tommy, I did it on my own. Where will I land if I tell you otherwise?"

He says, "Listen, I can break Tony Bender."

"Tommy," I say, "I'll tell you something. I understand what you're trying to say; but let's put it that I did it on my own."

Then he just made a motion with his hands which meant okay. After the holidays they had the table. It was at the restaurant Charley Jones had on 14th Street. Tommy was there, and so was Vince Rao. For me there was Tony Bender and the Family counsel, Sandino. Sandino was a greaseball, but he had a wise head. Whenever there was a table, he sat with Tony to make sure Tony don't make no mistakes.

I'm sitting off to one side while they talk over my case. Bobby Doyle was keeping me company, and he whispers, "Don't worry if things don't go our way." For once I think he was telling the truth, so I am twice as glad I didn't get Tommy Brown steamed up. Well, Tommy don't press the matter, but I must say his boys were always cold to me after that. Then everyone gets up and says good-bye, and Tony Bender comes over and says, "Everything is all right"—meaning the thing won't go no further.

It wasn't the last time Tony would cause me trouble.

^:!
"According to the Bureau of Narcotics, Bender's unlisted home telephone number in New Jersey was Cliffside 6-3578.

For a time after this Valachi continued a shaky partnership with Bobby Doyle in the policy game. He began to branch out, however, into other areas. The first of these was "shylocking," or the loan shark racket—the lending of money at high interest rates to borrowers who are unable or unwilling to obtain it through legitimate channels:

I'm fed up with Bobby, but I ain't going to give up the numbers just because of him. I figure I'll just see what happens and start looking around for other things. With Vito gone and Tony around, I can see I'm going to have to depend on myself. I'm not saying Vito was any prize, but at least he had some sense then. One thing is sure. I am going to stay away from Tony Bender. As he hangs out in Greenwich Village, naturally I stick to Harlem. The only time I go downtown is when I'm called.

Now I take some of my profits from the numbers and go into shylocking. The loans went for
20
percent interest, which is what we call vigorish. Take an example. You loan out
$1,000
and the guy is supposed to pay back
$100
a week for twelve weeks. The
$200
you make is the vigorish. Figure it another way. For every
$5
you lend out a week, you get back
$6.

How did I start? Well, you make one or two loans, and everybody wants a loan. Jesus, if you gave to everybody who wanted money, you'd have to be the Bank of Rome. The word gets around the neighborhood. I am known in the Bronx, where I live, and I am known in Harlem because of the numbers, so that's where I dealt. Naturally you give the ones you feel are more solid.

Sometimes I'm stuck, I don't have enough cash, and I go to a shylock myself. He would charge me
10
percent, while I am charging my people
20
percent, because he knows it is a solid loan. He knows he is going to get his money back from me. He ain't taking a risk.

There has been a lot of stuff in the papers and whatnot about shylocking, meaning all the rough stuff. All I can tell you is how
I
worked it. Some guys did it their way. I did it mine. I tried to run it as a business. I'm not looking to beat up somebody.
I
want to make money, and the idea is to keep it circulating. What good is it laying on the ground? If you don't believe me, ask around. The truth is that I never got picked up for shylocking, and I was in it for years, not always steady, but I made a living out of it.
I
wasn't too big. After all, as you will see, it was a thing
I
had going on the side. In other words, it wasn't my main business.

I didn't lose a penny. I always collected on every loan. The reason is
I
was careful who I dealt with. I didn't do much business with businessmen, you know, legitimate guys. A businessman after a while starts to think about all the interest he's paying. After one loan he comes for another, and he gets in deeper and deeper. The next thing you know he's running to the bulls or the DA's office. It's the same with working people. Those are the ones you got to use force with, so I don't bother with them.

At one time I had around 150 regular customers. I got rid of the ones that were headaches and kept the ones that were no trouble— bookmakers, numbers runners, guys in illegal stuff, maybe some saloonkeepers, that line of people. Truthfully, I did not use any muscle with them. That's why I was known as the best shylocker all around. I was smart. What's the difference if I let somebody skip for a week? My other money is circulating, so I am not going to worry about this particular person that has gotten in trouble, maybe a bookmaker who has got hit hard. Who can say what it might be? I figured the wisest thing to do was to make it for his convenience. That is the way I operated.

Let's say a guy needs $1,000, but he can't make the $100 a week. If he has a good record, I'll cut him down to say, $80, and I won't charge him any extra. Naturally, as soon as the money comes in, I

would give it to somebody else. It circulates. By the time it circulates around, I never could figure out what the percentage is I'm getting on it. It would be impossible for me. You would need an accountant to figure that out.

A steady clientele, without the necessity of beating up any debtors, was especially desirable because, as Valachi notes, "You find, as you go along, that most of these people get in the habit of reborrowing before they pay up." For a loan shark like Valachi this was where the real windfall lay — in a reloan, or, as it is called in shylocking circles, the "sweet" loan. When a borrower already in debt wants more money, the loan shark simply deducts what is still owed him, but charges for the entire amount that has been requested. This has die practical effect of doubling the interest rate:

I'll give you an example. There is this guy Hugo who is a bookmaker. One day he's hit hard, and he's still into me for $300 on a $500 loan. Now I go over to see him to make my regular collection. He is paying me $50 a week, but now he's in trouble, and he wants a reloan of $500. He already owes me $300, so all I have to do is hand him $200 more. But I charge him $100 as though he had just borrowed it all because that's the vigorish on $500. This is why the cream is in the reloaning. All I'm really doing is giving him $200 in cash to get back $100. Giving him a break is wise. The idea is not to bust a guy's head. Anybody can do that. The idea is to keep the money moving all the time.

Operating on his own in this fashion, Valachi soon had about $10,000 "out on the street," which was bringing in an average

$1,500
a week. "But I got," he is quick to add, "a lot of expenses, too. It seems like somebody is getting married every other day, and that alone is costing me
$50
to
$100
for the envelope, as I don't want to look cheap." Then his shylocking expanded considerably with the acquisition of a partner, John (Johnny Roberts) Robilotto, who financed him. In return Valachi was responsible for developing new customers and managing the racket:

Johnny was the best in the land. He was heavyset, about five foot eight, and believe me, he was the kind of guy who couldn't say no. He was partners with Tony Bender in these clubs. Some of them were the Hollywood, the Village Inn, the 19th Hole, and the Black Cat. Whatever Johnny used to do, it seemed Tony was partners with him. Don't ask me why a nice guy like Johnny would want to get mixed up with Tony. Who can explain those things? Certainly you ain't going to ask him.

Johnny wasn't a member then. He was with Tony Bender, but Tony was never able to get him in because Johnny had a brother who was a cop. In other words, even Tony didn't have enough weight to get him past that. Later, a lot later, Johnny started hanging around with Albert Anastasia, and Albert got him in his Family. You understand what I mean when
I
say "in." He got him in the organization, this Cosa Nostra. It happened all of a sudden. How or why I don't know except, as I will explain when the right moment comes, you never fucked around with Albert Anastasia. Naturally I didn't question it. I was just happy to hear Johnny was a member.

Valachi first met Robilotto in one of his clubs. He had heard that Robilotto was running a large still near the Hudson River waterfront. "Of course," he notes, "Prohibition is over for a long time, but this don't mean there ain't a market for alcohol." Valachi