The Valachi Papers (29 page)

Well, the stuff gets off okay. Now I have to explain that the deal with Tony Bender is fifty-fifty after he gets his $9,000 back, and we pay the rest of what we owe to Dominique. We owe him $29,500, but who cares, as the market for the stuff here runs to $165,000?

This is where that dog Tony comes in. When the stuff was on the way, he was all peaches and cream. After he gets his hands on it, everything changes. He sends for me and says, first of all, that Vito Genovese is in to Frank Costello for $20,000. He don't say what for, it was a loan, and he says, "You know, we will look good with the old man if we take it off the top and pay the debt for him." Then he says that he has brought in some other guys so they can make some money, and he mentions Vinnie Mauro, who is his pet, and Sandino, who is his counselor, and John the Bug, right name Stoppelli, and naturally Patty Moccio, and I don't remember who else. It don't matter, as I will explain later.

In other words, I find I got eight partners counting Pat Pagano. What can I do when he hits me with this? He is my own lieutenant, and that is bad enough. But I can't explain even to Pat, who ain't a member yet—just proposed—that Tony has us because we ain't supposed to be fooling around with junk, and I can't make a beef.

Now with all the deductions, including the $20,000 for Vito, there is $91,500 left. I look at Tony, and I said, "Just give me what's due to me and Pat," and he sends Patty Moccio around to ask do we want it in goods or cash. Well, I talk it over with Pat Pagano, and as the two kids—meaning his brother Joe and my nephew Fiore, we called them the kids—were bothering us for some stuff, I said we would take it in goods, and we got two kilos.

Maybe a couple of months after that, I get a call to go to a certain house in Yonkers. It was Dom the Sailor's house, right name DeQuatro. I went, and who do you think was there? It was Vito Genovese. He said to me, "Did you ever deal in junk?"

I said, "Yes."

He said, "You know you ain't supposed to fool with it." Vito looked at me and said, "Well, don't do it again." "Okay," I said.

Of course, I don't pay any attention to this. That is how Vito was. He was just letting me know what a big favor he done me.

Now here's the payoff. A while later I am speaking to John the Bug, and I said, "How did you make out with the money?" and he said, "What money?" I said, "You didn't get any money? You were down as a partner."

He said, "I am down for what, what partner?"

When I realized he didn't know anything about it, I didn't go no further. I didn't want it going back to Tony Bender, as Tony would say, "What are you doing, investigating me?" So I dropped the subject.

A long time after that, in 1956 which is the junk case I beat, I am with Patty Moccio in West Street.* As I never figured Patty got nothing out of the deal, the subject comes up about John the Bug, and to my amazement Patty said, "At least you got the two kilos."

I said, "Are you trying to tell me you got no money?" and he just threw up his right hand, meaning he didn't.

"Oh, my God!" I said. I nearly died.

He said, "Tony was using the oil on me. They need the money for this, they need the money for that, and by the time I went to get my money, there was none left."

I said, "Are you kidding?"

He threw up his hand again and said nothing.

So now you know what happened. There wasn't no nine partners. Mr. Tony Bender and Mr. Vito Genovese just split up the money among themselves.

*The Federal House of Detention, 427 West Street, New York City.

On the evening of May 2, 1957, Francesco Castiglia, better known as Frank Costello, dined at the fashionable Manhattan restaurant L'Aiglon. At about 11
P.M.
Costello arrived by cab at the apartment building he lived in on Central Park West. As he walked across the lobby, a voice said, "This is for you, Frank." Costello turned just as a shot was fired. Shortly afterward, he arrived at nearby Roosevelt Hospital, blood streaming down his face. He was not, however, seriously wounded. The gunman in his haste had aimed badly, and the bullet only creased Costello's skull.

It was the culmination of Genovese's drive against Costello that had been launched with the murder of Willie Moretti, and it signaled the start of a period of turmoil inside the Cosa Nostra that had not been experienced since the Castellammarese War. While Genovese had already shouldered Costello aside as Family boss, he wanted to consolidate his power, and beyond that he yearned for something more—the mantle of
Capo di tutti Capi,
or Boss of all Bosses, which had gone unworn since the heyday of Charley Lucky Luciano. Symbolically, if not in fact, Costello stood in the way, the czar of a huge gambling empire independent of the Family, his reputation intact, his counsel constantly sought, still held, in that ultimate Cosa Nostra accolade, in high "respect." For Genovese the situation was intolerable; Costello had to be got rid of once and for all.

In the shock waves that followed, the identity of Costello's would-be killer became known not only to just about every member of the Cosa Nostra, but also to the New York Police Department. He was Vincente (The Chin) Gigante, a hulking ex-fighter, now a soldier in the Genovese Family. In commenting professionally on the bungled assassination, Valachi dryly observed, "The Chin wasted a whole month practicing."

With Costello still alive, Genovese had to face the likelihood of a "comeback." His main fear was Albert Anastasia. The "Mad Hatter" and the "Prime Minister," as Costello was sometimes called, were an odd but, nonetheless, close couple. Thus the day after the shooting, according to Valachi, key members of Tony Bender's
regime,
or crew, were called to a hotel on Manhattan's West Side. Approximately thirty soldiers, they were assigned various areas of die city to cover in the event of retaliation. "We were told," Valachi says, "we got to get ready. There could be war over this." Valachi himself was put in charge of East Harlem with five men under him.

Genovese, meanwhile, took to his Atlantic Highlands home with some forty men around him for protection. There he also summoned all the Family lieutenants for a show of loyalty. Only one failed to appear, the aging Anthony (Little Augie Pisano) Carfano, and he would live to rue it. For the moment, however, Genovese wanted a demonstration of complete unity. Tony Bender, who knew Carfano best, was sent to bring him in. "Vito," says Valachi, "told Tony to get him, or else he, Tony, would be wearing a black tie. Well, he did. It wasn't that Little Augie was going to go with Frank. He was just scared. He went back a long ways with Frank, and he thought he was going to get dumped on account of that."

Word of what occurred at the meeting of lieutenants gradually filtered through the Family ranks. Genovese blandly declared that he had been forced to take such drastic action because Costello was actually plotting to kill
him.
He also stated that Costello could no longer be allowed to wield any influence because of his total disinterest in the welfare of Family members and from that point on, anyone caught contacting Costello would have to answer personally to him. Finally he officially confirmed himself head of the Family, in case there were any doubts, and appointed New Jersey-based Gerardo (Jerry) Catena, who had succeeded Willie Moretti, as his underboss. "Who," Valachi notes, "was going to argue?"

While this was happening, the New York police quickly established that Gigante was the probable gunman. He had vanished, however, and at first it was believed that he had been eliminated for botching his assignment. But no. "The Chin was just taken somewhere up in the country to lose some weight," Valachi told me. "Td say he was around 300 pounds, and you couldn't miss him. They found out that the doorman at Frank's place was half-blind, and they wanted to slim The Chin down, so he, the doorman, won't recognize him."

The retaliation Genovese feared never materialized, and Gigante eventually gave himself up, claiming he had no idea that he had been wanted. Costello, called by the prosecution, maintained that he had not seen the man who shot him and could not imagine who might want to do him harm. This left the elderly doorman as the lone witness, and Gigante's defense attorney had little trouble demonstrating his faulty eyesight.

Costello's docile reaction settled the matter, and even though he had survived the shooting, he was effectively removed as a Genovese rival. It also brought him back into the limelight when he least needed it. At the time he was appealing an income tax evasion conviction, and a slip of paper found in his coat pocket by a detective while Costello was being treated for his wound at Roosevelt Hospital triggered some embarrassing headlines. The slip indicated cash "wins" of $661,284 for an indeterminate period from his gambling casino interests outside New Orleans and in Las Vegas. He refused to answer any questions about this money,

wound up in jail with a contempt of court citation, and ultimately went to prison as well on the tax evasion charges."*

Within weeks after the Costello incident, another upper-echelon shooting, this one successful, set the Cosa Nostra on its ear for entirely different reasons.

There has been a great deal of speculative nonsense written about the "ritualistic" aspects of a Cosa Nostra execution of one of its members: that no matter what the offense is, die victim must be killed suddenly and unexpectedly; that he must be wined and dined lavishly before he is disposed of; and that, adhering to an old Sicilian tradition, a shotgun must be used whenever possible. "Naturally," Valachi told me, "you don't want to let the guy know that he's going to be hit, or he might hit you. I never heard of them other things. You just try to be careful and do the best you can."

Thus on the afternoon of June 17, 1957, as he paused for a moment in front of a Bronx fruit store, the end came for sixty-three-year-old Frank (Don Cheech) Scalice, identified by Valachi as the number two man in the Albert Anastasia Family. Four bullets smashed through his neck and head, the New York police report reads, "fired by two unknown white males who fled in an automobile." As usual, nobody could be found who saw anything. The Narcotics Bureau theorized that Scalice, who, among other things, controlled the Bronx construction rackets with an iron hand, had been condemned for failing to deliver on a shipment of heroin allegedly financed by some of his associates.

^:!
The casino receipts, of course, would not have been discovered if Costello had refrained from going to the hospital. Since the bullet barely nicked him, I asked Costello once during a magazine interview why he had done so. "Well," he replied, "I put my hand up to my head, and I saw all that blood, and I figured it was still in there."

The reason for his murder, as revealed by Valachi, was infinitely more grave. The Cosa Nostra membership "books" —"We call them books," Valachi says, "but there ain't no real books; it's just the expression we use"—had been closed since the early 1930s. After World War II there were a number of "proposed" members, but the books were not officially opened again until 1954.*

Scalice became one of the most active recruiters. Then it was discovered why. He had actually been selling memberships for amounts up to $50,000, and Anastasia ordered his death forthwith. "We were all stunned when the word got out," Valachi says. "None of that kind of stuff was ever pulled in the thirties. Frank Scalice was the one who started commercializing this thing of ours, and there are others doing it now, believe me. They are making a money deal out of it, rather than the way it used to be. Guys will pay because they want the recognition of being mobbed up. In the old days a man had to prove himself to get it. Today if you give a contract to half them guys, they are liable to drop dead, too."

There was a postscript to Scalice's murder. A brother, Joseph Scalice, made rash vows of vengeance, realized his mistake, and

*Among those brought in by Valachi were his nephew, Fiore Siano, the Pagano brothers, and Vincent Mauro. Mauro was his favorite. "He used to come around to this poolroom where we hung out on 108th Street and First Avenue," Valachi recalls. "He looked like a nice kid, quiet and all that, so I got close to him, and I used to take him downtown to the Village Inn and the Hollywood, and Tony Bender took a liking to him. Tony called me one night and said, 'Don't poison his mind.' But I tried to wise him up that my outfit stank and that he should go with another crew. Naturally, he don't listen. He never got nothing from Tony, and now he's doing fifteen years for being in the junk business."

went into hiding. Then he made a bigger mistake. Anastasia spread the word that all would be forgiven, and he returned. On September 7, 1957, Joseph Scalice was reported missing by his son and has not since been seen. Valachi says he was slain in the home of an Anastasia lieutenant, Vincent (Jimmy Jerome) Squillante, and his body butchered into disposable sections. Squillante could call on the perfect vehicle to carry off the remains. He controlled the collection of garbage from New York hotels, restaurants, and nightclubs.

As it turned out,
it was the last killing that Anastasia would ever decree. Although Frank Costello had seemingly accepted his forced retirement as a Cosa Nostra power, "Albert A." began to talk out loud about leading a fight to reinstate his old friends. An angry Anastasia was enough to make even Genovese nervous. Save for the fact that Genovese usually had a reason for his savagery and Anastasia often did not, the two men had much in common.

Both flouted all the elaborate rules of order set up in the Cosa Nostra whenever it suited their purpose. In 1951, about the time Genovese was carefully plotting die deadi of Willie Moretti, Anastasia struck more directly. For years he had been underboss in the Family of Vincent Mangano, one of the original bosses named by Maranzano following the Castellammarese War. But Anastasia got tired of his secondary role. Mangano promptly disappeared and eventually was declared legally dead. Just to tic up loose ends, Mangano's brother Philip was removed from the scene, although his body did turn up in a vacant lot in Brooklyn. Despite such an untidy succession, the Cosa Nostra
Commissioner
or ruling council, meekly approved Anastasia as the new Family head.