The First Family: Terror, Extortion, Revenge, Murder and the Birth of the American Mafia (24 page)

“Then how do you manage to live?” I asked, remembering my struggle for work in New York.

“You are too new among us to know certain things,” he replied in a mysterious way. “When you have become so deeply interested in the affairs of our society that you cannot stop, you will then know how to live without work.”

“Then you belong to some society?” I asked. “That gives you money?”

“Yes, but it is not like your Foresters or Sons of Italy. Nor is the money given to me in the way you think.”

“How then?” I asked.

“When you know of our [society] and its powers and wonderful workings, how it protects its members at all times, and the many other things that make it so valuable, you will forget all about these others you call societies now.”

“And what is the price of initiation?”

“Nothing.”

“No money?” I asked, astonished.

“No,” he replied, “no money, but there is a price.”

“And what is it?”

“A courageous deed will be given you to do.”

“For instance what?”

“Well, Don Antonio, you have heard of tyrannical people who oppress and make laws, of rich men who have so much wealth they cannot spend it, of children of such people or of traitors?”

“Yes,” I replied, wondering what this had to do with courageous deeds.

“Well, it might be necessary to punish them for their greed or arrogance. … Perhaps they may have done something to hurt this society or one of its members, and you would be picked to punish them in secret.”

“And what is this society called?”

“It has no name.”

“Is it a mutual aid society?” I asked.

“No.”

“Where are its headquarters?”

“There is no one place. In all parts of the world except Japan.”

“In Italy?”

“Yes, in Italy.”

“But the president and other officers, who are they?”

“Few of the members really know themselves. But that there are heads is certain. [Just] question an order once. [You] will be heard and punishment follows. Then too, when we are in sore need of funds, should the police become active, it is never hard to find money to protect the members.”

“Perhaps,” I ventured, “it is the Masons?”

“No, it is a society with no end to its power. It is bigger than the Masons and will last as long as man.”

This talk of living without working plainly appealed to Comito, who said: “I must enter soon, for all here are members but me, is that not so?” Zu Vincenzo assured him that they were—”Yes, and all trusted members too, powerful in this country”—and explained that new members of the society could not be admitted until they had met its bosses and shown them “respect.” Only then, he said, would they “christen you.”

“Christen me?” [Comito] cried. “I have already been baptized in the Roman Catholic religion, and now you would baptize me again?”

“Certainly, but this would not be a matter of religion. That amounts to nothing. This is more serious. Something you shall never forget.”

“More serious than religion?” I gasped. “That cannot be.”

“Is that so?” he asked laughingly. “That is what you think.”

Initiation into the mysterious society, Uncle Vincent went on, took time. First a prospective member would be tested. Next came the bestowal of “a title from us which you will bear in secret.” But Comito was left in little doubt that the “test” of which Vincenzo spoke was murder:

It is so arranged that if you succeed in doing what we [set] as a test, that you cannot afford to do other than stick with us for the rest of your lifetime. It is protection for us and [means] an easy life. That is why there are so few traitors. All over the world you will find our work flourishes, and it is because of the way in which we christen you that it is so. Some fools who know nothing say there is no such organization, and they cannot be blamed. They know so little. There is one, and a big one, stronger than countries and police. Some day, Don Antonio, after this work at hand is done, you will be given a test. Then you can learn much. None of we members ever do know it all.

Comito was transfixed by these accounts, and Zu Vincenzo seemed inclined to explain further, but at that point in the conversation Katrina called out from the kitchen and the Mafioso fell silent. “I had heard enough,” Comito concluded his recollection. “The papers are full every day of such tests and deeds, [though] they do not read as such.” And, frightened though he was, the printer began to think that he should seek acceptance by the nameless society. He was terrified—at least, so he explained it later—that he and Katrina would be murdered when the work was finished if the Sicilians decided they could not be trusted.

ORDERS FOR THE COUNTERFEITS
were coming in from all over the country. A Brooklyn banker wanted to purchase fifty thousand dollars’ worth of currency, and Mafia families elsewhere in the United States had been advised that they could buy two-and five-dollar notes at the rate of fifty cents on the dollar. This was a substantial increase on the price that Morello’s forgeries had commanded eight years earlier, and one that reflected the increasing professionalism of his counterfeiting operation. The gang now planned to run off twenty thousand of the Canadian bills and fifty thousand two-dollar notes in all—a total of two hundred thousand dollars in bad currency.

They printed the Canadian notes first. The zinc plates engraved by Antonio Milone for the five-dollar bills consisted of five pieces, corresponding to the colors needed for each bill: dark and light green, violet, red, and black. For all the forger’s efforts, they were far from perfect; even with practice, Comito found it all but impossible to stop ink blotching between the finer lines. The first three thousand bills were run off, nonetheless—a long and tedious process, since each one had to pass through the press five times, after which the sheets were separated from their fellows and spread out on the floor to dry, a process that took longer in the cold. All in all, the job took Comito and his companions in the old stone house a month to finish, and by the time the last of the five-dollar notes had been cut, counted, and stacked in an empty macaroni box, it was the end of January.

Cecala appeared and took away the counterfeits a few days later. “There were seventeen thousand five hundred and forty five dollars,” Comito remembered, “[and] I understood that [he] was to take them to the people with whom he had arranged for their distribution throughout the entire country. I heard it said also that their distribution had been so arranged that the whole lot would be put out on the public within an hour of a certain day to be set and arranged for beforehand”—a highly implausible suggestion, but one that certainly illustrated the soaring confidence within the Morello family.

The first proofs of the two-dollar bill were struck on the first of February. The American note was easier to print, at least in theory, since it had only three colors, but Comito soon discovered that the job was harder than it looked. The greens of the genuine note were particularly difficult to match. The next morning, after an entire night of fruitless experiment, the Sicilians conceded defeat. They needed the help of a specialist in printing inks, Cecala said, and Comito should go to New York to find one.

The counterfeiters had, it seems, correctly judged the shift in their companion’s mood; Comito could now be trusted not to run straight to the police. Presented with five dollars to pay the fare, and driven to the nearest railway station two days later, the printer stepped off his train in Manhattan at noon. He was unaccompanied and could have gone directly to the nearest station house. Instead he took the El, the elevated railway, north to a rendezvous with Cecala at 630 East 138th Street. This building, though Comito did not know it, was one of the tenements erected by the Ignatz Florio Co-Operative. It had been built by Giuseppe Morello.

Two and a half months had passed since Comito had left New York, and he had been given little reason, in that time, to suppose that Cecala was not the leader of the counterfeiting gang. Now, though, he found his adversary waiting on the first floor of the building, flustered and considerably concerned. There was someone else that he must meet, Cecala said, as he ushered the printer up a second flight of stairs.

Comito had no idea who the man who stood waiting in the upstairs room might be, nor what he wanted, but he was instantly struck by the stranger’s air of effortless authority. “He was wrapped up in a shawl of brown color,” the printer recalled, “oval face, high forehead, dark eyes, aquiline nose, dark hair and mustache, about forty years old.” The first thing that Comito noticed “was that he had but one arm visible.” The second was Cecala’s trembling deference as “with a great amount of ceremony and much display of importance,” he introduced the printer to Morello.

“I was surprised in the change in Cecala’s manner when listening or talking to this man,” Comito said.

He seemed to take the part of receiving orders from one with whom he was friendly but tremendously impressed with. He at times acted as though he feared at any moment he might cause the dislike of Morello. … The very air seemed charged with suppressed excitement. I saw from the way in which Morello acted and was treated that he was a leader, and the deference shown to him at all times was convincing of his high standing among these men.

The meeting was brief and to the point. Morello’s interest, it transpired, lay solely in resolving the problems with the two-dollar notes. He asked a number of searching questions about Comito’s expertise, and though he was plainly not impressed by all the answers—there was “a bit of distrust” in his eyes, the printer realized with a jolt—he agreed that they should find an expert in the art of mixing inks. Nothing seemed to disconcert him. When Comito said that he was frightened of discovery, the Clutch Hand promised to send arms and ammunition. “The first stranger who is suspected will be killed before he is asked questions and be buried in the wood where he will never be found,” he added. “It is simple.” Comito thought he spoke of murder “as though he were talking of lighting a cigar.”

Morello seemed less than pleased with Cecala’s performance. “Nino,” he murmured as the meeting ended, “I wish that you would not have the professor come here any more. You know that I am followed night and day by the detectives, and when they see a new face they arrest him. They think much of me, but can prove nothing. So to be safe we had best have no one connect with me who might be picked up.”

“I know that,” Cecala said, stung by the reprimand. “But what suspicions can they have of Don Antonio? We certainly have taken him with us nicely.”

“These detectives are very smart,” Morello snapped. “Do I not take much time to plan to outwit them?” And with that he left the room through a rear exit and, with a piercing parting glance back at Comito, vanished in the direction of the 138th Street El.

WORK ON THE TWO-DOLLAR
bills resumed on February 6 and continued for several weeks. The correct shade of green ink was obtained, after a good deal of experiment, by Antonio Milone, who added several chemicals to the inks and sent a technician up to Highland to explain the technique. The new arrival, Giuseppe Calicchio, was a sad-eyed man from the southern region of Puglia who was in his early fifties and had once been a manufacturer of counterfeits in Italy. Calicchio had worked before with the Morellos, who respectfully referred to him as “Don Giuseppe,” but he had little to show for the association. “He was dressed poorly,” Comito thought, “and had a suit that made him appear as a mechanic.”

The counterfeiters settled back into an unvarying routine. Comito and Calicchio prepared the plates and mixed the inks; Giglio and Zu Vincenzo took the printed sheets from the press and dried them; the guards who still wandered through the woods outside would come indoors every few hours to clap and stamp their freezing hands and feet. To Comito’s relief, Cecala and Cina were absent most of the time. The two Sicilians had set to work to sell Morello’s five-dollar bills and spent several weeks traveling by rail throughout much of the United States to show samples to likely customers. The two men visited Chicago, Cleveland, Pittsburgh, Boston, and Kansas City, returning occasionally to inspect the two-dollar notes that Comito was producing. Cecala complained occasionally about their progress—the U.S. bills were still not difficult to spot as fakes. But aside from their infrequent appearances, the work proceeded without alarm or incident for some weeks, until February 12 or 13, when the occupants of the stone house were startled to be woken at two in the morning by a brisk knocking at the door.

No one was expected, and the counterfeiters feared the worst. Zu Vincenzo seized his rifle and Giglio a revolver, which he cocked as he stood waiting at the top of the stairs. It was Comito, still clad only in his underwear, who was sent downstairs to answer the knock—which he did very nervously, half expecting the door to be smashed down by the police. But the men waiting on the doorstep were friends: Ignazio Lupo, clad in a thick fur coat and radiating bonhomie, accompanied by Cecala and Cina, who dragged behind them a large bag crammed with the firearms and ammunition promised by Morello.