The Valachi Papers (10 page)

So naturally I go to The Gap and tell him I don't like the setup. I'm thinking of everything Alessandro Vollero was telling me in Sing Sing about the Sicilians and the Neapolitans, and Bobby Doyle is Sicilian. But The Gap tells me, "You are crazy. Things aren't like they used to be. The feelings between Sicilians and Neapolitans is all past!" In other words, he is saying that everyone is mixed up now.

Well, Alessandro was right in his way, but I didn't know it at the time. Actually, in their hearts it was still the same, but it didn't show right out. They favored one another, but it wasn't broad, out in the open so you could see it, like in the days of Alessandro. Anyway, I said to The Gap, "I don't know what I'm getting into. It seems like every time I pick a side I end up the fall guy. Remember the Irish? Look at all the trouble I got into with them." The Gap says, "If I was around at that time, you wouldn't have been in no trouble. So take it easy. Bobby Doyle and me are vouching for you. That's all you have to know."

Well, who knows what the hell's going on? Some more time passes, and all of a sudden Bobby tells me to go see Tom Gagliano. I know he is a big shot, but just what or how I don't know. He is a big tall guy, a little bald. He looked like a businessman, and he was in construction work, for one thing. I first met him through the bouncer at this place on 116th Street. Me and Nicky Padovano, who was burglarizing with me, had worked over a couple of guys in one of the building unions for giving him some trouble. He liked me because I wouldn't take any pay for it. The reason I wouldn't take money is because I wanted to be recognized as a friend. I'm looking to meet people to get out of stealing, and you're not going to meet people by getting paid off. The thing is to be known as a man.

This day I see Tom Gagliano he says, "There's some trouble in the air, and I'm sure it's with people you don't like." I say, "Who's the trouble with?" And he mentions guys like Ciro Terranova. That's all I have to know, so I say, "Count me in." He said it was a million to one shot we don't make it, but if we make it, we're all right. He asked me point-blank if I would shoot somebody if they asked me to. I say, "Would your guys do the same for me?" He says, "Yes," and I say, "Yes," and that was all that was said.

Well, I'm in something, I still don't know what. But I got to get out of stealing. It's getting tougher all the time. They were talking about bringing radios in the police cars, and the traffic lights, which used to go out at three o'clock in the morning, are on all night, so that's against me, too. After all, if I'm being chased by one cop's car and I go through these lights, I will draw attention and have a hundred cars chasing me. Jesus!

Naturally, if I'm against Ciro Terranova, I got to be against my friend Frank Livorsi, too. So sure enough, a couple of days later the first contract I get from Bobby Doyle is to kill Frank. I said, "No, I won't do it." I run over to The Gap's house. I told The Gap how I pulled with Frank and Frank pulled with me. The Gap said he would straighten out everything with Bobby. The three of us meet at the Rainbow Gardens, and The Gap explains my feelings about Frank Livorsi and that I'm not going to take the contract. After a while Bobby Doyle says he understands, but then he takes The Gap aside and talks to him so
I
can't hear. I don't like the looks of this, and when The Gap comes back, I tell him so. The Gap says, "Don't worry. Bobby is just afraid you're going to run and tell Frank. I told him I would be responsible for you."

But I got to let Frank know something. So I told him if I ever move from the Bronx apartment, it will mean I've been approached. He knew what this meant, and after The Gap fixed everything about Frank, I did move out. If we saw each other on the street during all the trouble that followed, we would just wave and go the other way.

I wasn't going to dump no friend.

All the "trouble in the air,"
as Valachi would subsequently discover, was an enormous convulsion in the Italian underworld in 1930 called the Castellammarese War. While law enforcement officials were aware of its historical importance, they by no means had a complete picture of what actually was at stake. Valachi furnished the details at long last. It is a fascinating glimpse into all the savagery, avarice, and torturous double-dealing that still pervades the Cosa Nostra today despite its increasing sophistication and vaunted togetherness.

Organized Italian racketeering really did not begin to be a national force until the 1920s. Prohibition, of course, was the catalyst. In addition to those old stand by s —prostitution and gambling— there was now a new illicit commodity that millions of Americans craved: alcohol. And it brought the racketeer riches and respectability beyond his wildest dreams; in effect most of the nation became his accomplice. The entire underworld, then monopolized by the Irish, Jews, and, to a lesser extent, Poles, cashed in on die Prohibition bonanza. But for Italian racketeers, especially, it was a chance at last to move into the big time. Bootlegging was something they knew about. For years, Prohibition or not, thousands of home distilleries had been operating in the ghettolike neighborhoods that Italian immigrants, like other ethnic groups before them, tended to crowd into after landing in this country. Thus they had a running start in the huge—and thirsty— market that had opened up, and from then on they bowed to no one.

By the end of the decade, despite the latter-day publicity given to Alphonse (Scarface Al) Capone, a vain, chunky little man named Giuseppe (Joe the Boss) Masseria had emerged as the most powerful single figure in Italian crime. Allied with him, besides Capone, was an awesome collection of mobsters of future note, including Charley (Lucky) Luciano, Vito (Don Vito) Genovese, William (Willie Moore) Moretti, Joseph (Joe Adonis) Doto, and Francesco (Frank Costello) Castiglia.

As strong as Masseria was, however, there were still a number of feudal aspects to what would evolve into the Cosa Nostra, and on top of the traditional tensions that existed between Sicilians and Neapolitans, the organization was fragmented by those who grouped themselves according to the particular village or region in Sicily or southern Italy from which they had emigrated. None was larger or more clannish than the Castellammarese, a contingent of men from in and around the Sicilian town of Castellammare del Golfo, who had settled in America as far west as Chicago. Even though dispersed, they remained closely knit under their chief in New York City, Salvatore Maranzano.

In 1930, bidding for absolute supremacy in the Italian underworld, Joe the Boss set out to eliminate Maranzano, as well as such other Castellammarese powers as Joseph (Joe Bananas) Bonanno and Joseph Profaci in Brooklyn, Buffalo's Stefano Magaddino, and Joseph Aiello in Chicago. And in all likelihood he would have succeeded had he not committed a fatal error in tactics.

But at the same time he was moving against die Castellammarese, Masseria tried to muscle in on one of his own gang leaders, Gaetano Reina, whose daughter Valachi would eventually marry and who dien controlled most of the ice distribution in New York City—an enormously lucrative racket in the days before electric refrigeration. When Reina resisted, Masseria had him killed.

(New York City police records show that on February 26, 1930, at 8:10
p.m.
one Gaetano [Tom] Reina, male, white, forty, of 3183 Rochambeau Avenue, Bronx, while leaving the premises of 1522 Sheridan Avenue, was shot and killed by an unknown male who fired both barrels of a sawed-off shotgun into Reina's body, causing death.)

Reina's murder would eventually unite his gang with the Maranzano forces against Joe the Boss Masseria. It also led directly to Valachi's recruitment into the Cosa Nostra. Masseria had replaced Reina with a man subservient to him named Joseph Pinzolo. While Reina's old lieutenants—among them Tom Gagliano, Thomas Lucchcse, and Dominick (The Gap) Pctrilli — outwardly accepted the appointment of Pinzolo, they were secretly plotting his overthrow.

"At the time," Valachi says, "I don't know nothing about all this, but the idea was to bring in new members like me that they could count on to help them. All I know is one day The Gap comes to me and says I got to meet this Joe Pinzolo, who is the new guy in charge of die mob. The Gap says he wants to look me over."

Valachi took an instant dislike to Pinzolo. He describes him as an ugly "greaseball" — the common Cosa Nostra term for older members not born in the United States —with a fat belly, a flowing handlebar mustache, and a distinct aroma of garlic about him. Matters did not improve much when Pinzolo said to him, "Hey, I hear you know all the girls up at the Rainbow Gardens. Call a couple of them."

Valachi, furious at being given what he considered was the role of a pimp, went to a telephone booth and pretended to make the call. After a minute or so The Gap came over and asked, "Are you getting the girls?"

"Are you out of your mind?" Valachi shot back. "Are you crazy? I have respect for those girls. If they come down here and see a guy like that, they'll faint. If these are the kind of people we are dealing with, I'm stopping right now."

"Shut up," The Gap whispered. "This guy is going to die. Fie is like a lot of other guys we are going to get rid of." Valachi returned to Pinzolo and explained that things were so busy at the Rainbow Gardens that none of the hostesses could leave. Then Pinzolo told Valachi to drive him to a midtown hotel. It was the last time Valachi ever saw him.

(According to New York police records, at about 9
P.M.
on September 9, 1930, the body of Joseph Pinzolo was found lying on the floor of the interoffice of Suite 1007 in the Brokaw Building, 1487 Broadway, New York City. Suite 1007 was occupied by the California Dry Fruit Importers, leased to one Thomas Lucchese. Cause of death: gunshot wounds of left chest and neck.)

Although Lucchese was indicted for the murder, the charge was eventually dropped. The actual killer, according to Valachi, was Bobby Doyle. "I got the break of my life," he quotes Doyle as saying. "I caught him alone in the office."

Salvatore Maranzano
and his Castellammarese were also striking back at Masseria. Their target was a vicious Masseria enforcer, Peter Morello, alias The Clutching Hand. His killer, Valachi learned later, was a Chicago-based gunman, whom Valachi knew only as "Buster from Chicago"; he looked like "a college boy" and carried, in the grand tradition, a machine gun in a violin case. "Buster told me," Valachi says, "that this Morello was tough. He said he kept running around the office, and Buster had to give him a couple of more shots before he went down. He said there was some other guy in the office, so he took him, too."

(Case No. 1226 of the 23d Precinct of New York City states that about 3:30
P.M.
on August 15, 1930, Pietro Morello, 1115 Arcadian Way, Palisades, New Jersey, age fifty, was shot and killed in his office at 362 East 116th Street, by persons unknown. Cause of deadi: multiple gunshot wounds. Also killed was a visitor to the office, one Giuseppe Pariano.)

The two assassinations —by Maranzano's men and by the Reina loyalists now led by Tom Gagliano —were carried out independently of each other. "The way they explained it to me," says Valachi, "is that when Morello got his, the Gagliano people knew they didn't do it. So naturally they figure somebody else is in trouble with Joe the Boss. Then they found out that it was Salvatore Maranzano's doing." This brought the two dissident groups together under Maranzano's overall command. To seal their pact against Masseria, still unaware of the alliance, they agreed to kill a top Masseria henchman together. It was the first time Valachi was involved in a contract, and he vividly recalls the details:

At the time I'm just "proposed"—meaning I'm in line to be a member, but I ain't one yet. In other words, they are looking me over to see how I do. They tell me to rent this apartment up on Pelham Parkway because they found out this was the address of one of the guys under Masseria. His name was a hard one to say—Ferrigno. They wanted me to get the apartment because these other guys don't know who I was. Now the first thing I want to know is are they going to shoot this Ferrigno from the apartment. They tell me no, it's just to spot him, that they'll get him outside from a car, and I'll be driving the car.

Well, I move out of the place May and me have. I take the furniture except for one of the bedroom sets—we have two bedrooms there— which I give to May on account of I know she don't like the stuff she has in the bedroom at her mother's.

Now I'm in this apartment on Pelham Parkway. It's on the second floor. It's over a court, and on the other side of the court is the entrance to the apartment of Ferrigno. This way we can see him coming and going. One of the guys who stays on and off in my apartment is Joe Profaci, and he explains a lot of the history of what has been going on. He tells me how Maranzano and Gagliano have put up $150,000 each for the war against Joe the Boss. Besides that he says we got $5,000 a week coming in from Steve Magaddino in Buffalo and $5,000 from Joe Aiello in Chicago and I forget what else. Then one day he comes in with a sad face and says, "We're out that money from Chicago. Capone got Aiello."

(An entry in the Chicago police files dated October 23, 1930, states that Joseph Aiello, age thirty-nine, Italian, married, gang leader, was riddled with machine-gun bullets in front of 205 Kol-mar Avenue when he left die home of Pasquale Prestigiocomo, alias Presto, to enter a cab. The fire was opened up on him from a "machine-gun nest" in a flat across the street, 202 Kolmar Avenue, and when he attempted to escape to the rear of the Presto home, he was felled by fire from a second nest in a window at 4518 West End Avenue.)

We're in this apartment for I'd say a month, and there's no Ferrigno. I'm beginning to wonder where the hell he is, but they explain that this is only one of the addresses he has and we got to wait. Sure enough, maybe a week later, I am sitting in the apartment with Buster from Chicago. These two guys rush in and say that Ferrigno is out in front of the building sitting on a bench in sort of a little park that runs along the parkway. They say this is the time, and I've got to drive the car. So we all go and get in it. But I don't like the setup. We got to pass right in front of the doorman, and he knows me on account of I'm always in and out of the building. "Okay," I tell Buster, "I'll drive the car, but if you see the doorman wave at me, take your gun down. If you don't, I will jerk the car. I ain't going to jail for this thing."