The Valachi Papers (32 page)

Valachi was due in court for sentencing that day. On the phone he simply replied, "I'll think it over," but before going to bed, he told Agueci that he would not return. Less than an hour later Agueci was back again. "It's out of my hands," he said. "You got to go right back on a plane this morning. The junk agents are putting on too much heat."

His instructions, after landing, were to go straight to the home of the bail bondsman. Valachi did so, and was greeted by the bondsman's cousin, who said, "He's at the courthouse. He'll phone here for you." When the bondsman called, he told Valachi to have his cousin drive him to court. On the way, at a red light, Valachi suddenly jumped out of the car, grabbed a cab, and went to the Bronx. "I just didn't want to go in," he says.

For approximately a month Valachi moved from place to place in die Bronx and in New Jersey —"The people were friends of mine, not members, and I don't want to say dieir names" — before he learned that he was in deep difficulty with the Cosa Nostra for refusing to accept the five years. At that he called Bender, who insisted, "The fix was all set. It was only going to cost $5,000."

Finally Valachi gave himself up. He remembers sensing that the atmosphere was "all wrong" when he entered die courtroom. He was right. If indeed any deal had ever been arranged, it was no longer in effect, and he would wind up receiving fifteen years. "Naturally," he says, "the first thing I think about is my appeal.""' Sentencing was delayed two weeks. During this period, he says, he was questioned continually by Narcotics agents. In a last-ditch try for leniency, he admits that he did divulge some details about heroin traffic, but nothing about either Cosa Nostra members or the Cosa Nostra. Subsequently Ralph Wagner, who had suddenly elected to jump bail himself, was rearrested and given from eight to twelve years. The two men were then sent to the Atlanta Federal Penitentiary.

In Adanta, according to Valachi, there were about "ninety mob guys." There was a tangible sign of their presence in the prison yard; along with the usual recreational facilities—a baseball diamond, handball and basketball courts, etc.—a large section was reserved for
boccie.
Genovese was the absolute ruler of this little empire within the prison population, the arbiter of all disputes, the dispenser of all favors. One dared not address him unless permission was first granted. One backed away from him after speaking

"Valachi's plan was to change his plea to not guilty in an effort to obtain a new trial.

to him. Since he only deigned to come out of his cell two evenings a week, appointments had to be arranged through intermediaries far in advance."'

Thus Valachi had an immethate problem to contend with in Atlanta when Genovese exhibited an unexpectedly cold shoulder toward him from the day he arrived. He was especially concerned about it because all the other Cosa Nostra inmates took their cue from Genovese. At last Valachi was able to arrange a meeting. To his astonishment, it turned out that Genovese considered him to be "with" Tony Bender. Valachi knew that Bender had been downgraded —while in prison, Genovese had appointed Thomas (Tommy Ryan) Eboli and Gerardo (Gerry) Catena to run Family affairs—but he had not realized how "sore" Vito was. This gave Valachi the chance to deliver a few well-chosen words about Bender. "I'm in Atlanta because of Tony," he practically shouted. "Tony told me to come in and I will only get five years. I come in and I get fifteen!" In the ensuing weeks Genovese continued to question Valachi about Bender. It slowly began to dawn on Valachi—"You got to understand that Vito is always talking in curves; it's tough to figure out his real meaning" —that Genovese believed Bender had gone behind his back on several narcotics deals without giving him a cut of the profits. This was confirmed by Genovese's obvious rage, some three months after Valachi arrived in Atlanta, when Bender's "pet," Vincent Mauro, was arrested in a major heroin case.

Having apparently convinced Genovese that he had no part in

* While visiting Atlanta once on another story, I happened to be in the tower overlooking the
boccie
courts when a guard pointed Genovese out to me and said, "It's tough on those fellows with him." "How so?" I asked. "Well," the guard said, "he just plays so bad that it's hard for them to lose."

any of this, Valachi settled down to the routine of prison life. He had been assigned to mess-hall duty which meant awaking at 5
A.M.
every day. Since Valachi was slightly diabetic, and theoretically subject to, as he says, "dizzy spells," he managed to wangle his way into the more friendly surroundings of the prison greenhouse. Then he was abruptly pulled out of Atlanta in August 1961, and returned to New York for another narcotics conspiracy trial. This was die case which Valachi claims was a "frame job" and which later led to all his "trouble." Among his codefendants were all the people who had helped him go to Canada—Vincent Mauro, Frank Caruso, and Albert and Vito Agueci.

Of die four only die Agueci brothers were at the Federal Detention House on West Street, Mauro and Caruso having fled. Valachi says he took an immethate dislike to Vito, but got along with Albert:

The first thing Albert says to me is, "Joe, I'm sorry you got involved in this." Well, it's too bad what happened to him. I tried to help him, but some guys just can't take being in the can, and I could see right away Albert Agueci wasn't going to last long. All he talked about was getting out on bail. He kept telling me his wife was raising the money to get him out and how he was going to declare himself if Steve Magaddino don't get his brother out, too—meaning he would tell everyone that Steve, his boss, was in on the deal, which he was.

I said, "Albert, how old are you?"

He said, "Thirty-eight."

I said, "You want my advice? You've been sending out too many messages. Take myself, when
I
got arrested the first time, I don't call no one. I got a bondsman, and I paid for the bond. Everyone does the same thing. Now you're sending out all these messages, and you ain't getting no response. It's bad sending messages out like that. You're going to get into trouble. You ought to be tickled to death they sent you a lawyer."

But Albert is stubborn. He says he don't care. Well, Albert went out on bail because the wife sold the house and put up $15,000. Well, it ain't but a couple of weeks and we hear on the radio that they found Albert's body in some field. He was burned up. They got a print off a finger, and that's how they identified him.

When Albert got killed, they raised his brother's bail to $50,000. But it don't make no difference. The last thing Vito Agueci wants now is to get out.

(Following Albert Agueci's release on a bail, a wiretap picked up a conversation in Buffalo between two lieutenants in the Magaddino Family, unfortunately inadmissible in court. The two lieutenants discussed how Agueci had gone to Magaddino and threatened him. They then began giggling over the prospect of cutting Agueci up and spoke of taking him to "Mary's farm" to work him over. The FBI, believing Mary's farm to be in the vicinity of Buffalo, concentrated the search there. Actually it was near Rochester, New York, where Albert Agueci's body was found in a field on November 23, 1961. His arms had been bound behind his back with wire, and he had been strangled widi a clodiesline. He was then doused with gasoline and set on fire. An autopsy report revealed that approximately thirty pounds of flesh had been sliced from Agueci's body while he was still alive.)

The trial finally began
with Mauro and Caruso still fugitives. "This," Valachi says, "made me die main guy." He admits knowing the government's chief witness, a "workman" for Mauro named Salvatore Rinaldo. He does not dispute the guilt of his codefendants, but he insists that he had nothing to do with this particular case. "This Rinaldo," he says, "just moved the dates around to fit me in." In December, at any rate, having remained silent throughout the trial, he was found guilty along with eleven others and in February 1962, received twenty years, to run concurrently with the term he was already serving.

Three weeks later Valachi was returned to Atlanta. On the way back he considered how to handle Genovese. "Of course," he told me, "I knew Vito would think Tony Bender was in on this deal and left him out of it, and I'm in the middle again." Valachi remained in the penitentiary for only three days before he was yanked back to New York for what he claims was the opening shot in a war of nerves launched by the Narcotics Bureau. During his brief stay in Atlanta Genovese stayed in his cell, and Valachi did not see him. Before he left, however, he was given an ominous message from Genovese expressing the "hope" that he would be back. There was also something else for him to brood about. By now Ralph Wagner had been transferred into Genovese's cell. "I don't know," he says, "if it's Ralph's idea or Vito's. It don't matter. Vito had to give his okay. Who knows what Ralph is telling him? Anything he thinks the old man wants to hear."

In New York, according to Valachi, he was again questioned intensively by narcotics agents in an effort to "break" him. But despite the threat of still another heroin case against him, he says he refused to talk. Then he received stunning news during one interrogation. An agent told him that Tony Bender had been murdered and that he was next on Genovese's list.

(Anthony Strollo, alias Tony Bender, disappeared from his home on April 8, 1962. Mrs. Strollo said that the last words she spoke to her husband were, "You better put on your topcoat. It's chilly." He replied, "I'm only going out for a few minutes.

Besides, I'm wearing thermal underwear." Bender has never been seen again. His wife said that she was baffled by his strange absence. He was, she insisted, a "kind person who had no enemies; everybody loved him.")

When a radio news broadcast several days later confirmed that Bender was missing and presumed dead, Valachi privately recognized his own peril. But his fury at the Bureau of Narcotics was overwhelming, and he was determined to confront the future on his own. "I didn't want to give them, meaning the junk agents," he says, "the satisfaction that they were right."

Now a new element entered the picture. When he was told that he would be sent back to Atlanta, he discovered he had a traveling companion, Vito Agueci. At the time Valachi did not quite know what to make of it. He had heard during his stay at the detention house on West Street that Agueci, instead of being sent to a federal prison after his conviction, had been taken to the Westchester County Jail, where, as he puts it, they keep "all the rats." As if to confirm this, Agueci seemed extremely nervous to Valachi throughout the trip. "He was always asking me," he says, "what everybody thought of him."

But in Atlanta Agueci was placed in the usual thirty-day quarantine for new prisoners, and Valachi forgot about him. He was much more concerned about Genovese, and to his surprise his boss greeted him cordially and even asked if he wanted to move into his cell.* "I should have known about his tricks," Valachi recalls, "but I figured if he wanted to keep an eye on me, I would

The Bureau of Prisons says that in the interests of morale and harmony, its policy, whenever possible, is to grant inmate requests to be in the same cell unless there is some overriding reason against it.

be watching him, too. So naturally I said if you want me to come, I will come. How could I say no to him?"

There were six occupants in the eight-man cell. "Besides me and Vito," he says, "there was naturally Ralph Wagner, another guy who ain't a member and is friendly to Ralph; there is this cripple Angelo, who runs messages for Vito, and some Chink, a Chinaman, who don't know what the hell's going on." During this period there was one disquieting note. Vincent Mauro and Frank Caruso had been apprehended in Spain and brought back to New York just before Valachi had left."' "What did the other guys in the case tell you?" Genovese asked.

"Do you think them guys are going to tell me anything knowing I'm coming here with you? Now if you want to know what I think, not told — "

"No," Genovese snapped, "I don't want to know what you think; I want to know what you know." Then after a moment he said, "Do they know about Tony?"

"Of course they know. Everybody in West Street knows about lony.

"How do they feel about it?"

"They don't feel good, that's for sure."

"Well," Genovese said lazily, "it was the best thing that could have happened to Tony. He wouldn't be able to take it like you and I."

It seemed to Valachi that Genovese was about to tell him that Bender had been an informer. But suddenly Genovese cut the conversation short. "Let's forget about this," he said, "and get some sleep."

In the middle of May, Vito Agueci came out of quarantine and,
^:
!
They eventually pleaded guilty.

Valachi says, became a very busy man around the prison yard. First he saw him with John (Johnny Dio) Dioguardi, in Atlanta for income tax evasion. Next he saw him huddled with Joseph (Joe Beck) DiPalermo, who had been convicted in the same narcotics case as Genovese. Finally he learned from a source of his own that Agueci had had an extended conversation with Genovese himself. "Of course, I want to know what's going on," he says, "but I figure it's best to show I don't care."

It is his contention that Agueci, afraid of being tabbed an informer, told Genovese that Valachi not only was secretly involved in heroin, but was now working for the Bureau of Narcotics, and that the bureau knew perfectly well this was going to happen. The Bureau of Narcotics, while acknowledging that Agueci did talk, maintains that this occurred almost two years after the events described by Valachi.

In any event, the reality of Atlanta was that Genovese became increasingly distant, and other members of the Cosa Nostra began to shun him. Once Valachi found himself totally isolated in the section of the mess hall where "us New Yorkers" ate. "I knew something was in the air," he says, "and that it was very serious. It looks like they are trying to make me crack up, but I ain't going to let it happen. I went to Vito and said, 'How can you let them treat me like a dog?' and he said, Til take care of it,' but he never done nothing. He was behind it all.*