The Last Testament of Lucky Luciano: The Mafia Story in His Own Words (18 page)

For Meyer Lansky, his honeymoon had been both successful and disturbing. He had enjoyed his marital pleasures, despite being the focus of constant ribaldry from his friends. But Anna’s deep religious commitment distressed him, as did her constant complaints about his “gangster friends” and her demands that he abandon them and go into her father’s produce business full-time. Lansky carried his concern to Lucania, comparing Anna’s complaints with what he had noticed in the wives of his Italian friends — that Italian girls devoted themselves to their homes and never intruded on their husband’s business. Perhaps, he told Lucania, once Anna became pregnant, she would turn her mind to domestic matters and leave him alone.

But with Anna came a dividend — her father, Moses Citron. Lansky was certain he could use his father-in-law’s position, and his own as a fifty-dollar-a-week employee of Kreig, Spector & Citron, as the lever to an independent empire. “Meyer didn’t realize it, but I could read right into his head. He always thought he could wear a mask that nobody could see through. But I knew just what was goin’ on. He was lookin’ forward to the day when he could be his own number one guy. In my own mind, I thought down there in Atlantic City that when it came to matchin’ up a Jew and a Sicilian, the odds would have to be six to five, take your choice. I was choosin’ me.”

In the scope of all that he had accomplished and all that he was doing, it was only a minor problem, but it was one that constantly nettled Charlie Lucania. He had become, by the end of the Atlantic City meeting, one of the most important underworld figures in the nation — but only Italians seemed able to pronounce his name correctly. The family name was Lucania, with the accent on the penultimate syllable; but when his new, legitimate friends introduced him around at their golf clubs or at their private parties, and even when some of his new non-Italian underworld friends greeted him, they invariably called him Charlie Lu
cay
nia.

The change to a more easily pronounced, and thus more easily remembered, name was a simple one. In the late fall of 1928, when he, Levine and Mineo were arrested for the payroll robbery, he gave his name to the desk sergeant as he was being booked as “Charles Luciano.” It was just another alias, but he noticed that no one in the police station had any trouble pronouncing it and later he was hailed as Luciano by several cops on the street. The name had a nice feel and soon he was using it to the exclusion of his real name. It did not take long for his friends to follow suit, and so Charlie Lucania vanished and Charlie Luciano came into being.

Along with a new name, he changed his style of living. As his importance grew, so too did the number of people calling at his door for favors. He decided to seek the anonymity of a hotel, with its staff of buffers — room clerks, telephone operators, friendly bellboys. His first thought was of the Park Central, where Arnold Rothstein had lived. “But after Rothstein went, I didn’t think that place was good luck. Besides, I wanted to have some kind of view. All through the twenties, when I started to get into the big dough, I still couldn’t look out the window of any place where I lived and
see a tree. If I was gonna move, that was one thing I was gonna have plenty of — trees.”

So he wandered along Central Park South between Sixth and Seventh avenues, with its ranks of residential hotels, and finally settled on the Barbizon Plaza. There he rented an apartment on a high floor with the panorama of Central Park spread out beneath him. His name on the register was “Charles Lane.” “When I moved in, it was winter and the Central Park Lake was frozen. Lots of times, it looked like half the city of New York was out there ice-skatin’ on it. Whenever I had a tough problem, I could stand at my window and look out and watch the skaters — the little kids and their mothers — and it made me feel very peaceful; it cleared my head.

“Walter Winchell had an apartment across the street, at the St. Moritz Hotel, and somehow or other he found out I was movin’ into his neighborhood and I heard he didn’t like it too much. I said to myself, ‘Fuck him.’ Sometimes I’d take a walk down Central Park South and once in a while I’d see Winchell. I’d wave to him and say, ‘Hi, neighbor.’ It burnt him to a crisp.”

It was about this time, too, that Luciano met Gay Orlova, a featured dancer at the Hollywood, one of Broadway’s leading nightclubs. They were brought together initially by the Hollywood’s master of ceremonies and one of the rising radio celebrities of the day, Nils T. Granlund, more familiarly called by his initials, NTG. The tall, slim, dark-haired and dark-eyed dancer and the slightly sinister-looking gangster soon became almost inseparable. “There was nothin’ cheap about her and she understood that I was always tryin’ to improve myself. I could let my hair down with her and we got along great. She was meant for good times and that’s all I was lookin’ for in them days. I didn’t have to go with a whole bunch of other broads because she was able to keep me interested all the time. Lots of people told me I oughta marry this girl, but she wasn’t always naggin’ at me to get married and besides I had too many plans to think about that. And to tell the truth, I never knew too much about her, except that she’d traveled around Europe a lot and spoke French and Russian. I never even knew her real name; Gay Orlova was a nickname somebody once give
her when she was about sixteen; if you pronounced it different, it could sound like Gay All Over, which she really was.”

But such moments of relaxation, pleasure and contemplation were not many. Masseria, resentful from the start of Luciano’s independent realm in bootlegging, was demanding more and more of his time, putting him to work masterminding and supervising the plans and proposals of other lieutenants. The ordinary soldiers in Masseria’s family continued to ply their old criminal trades assiduously; Masseria demanded, and Luciano was not averse to giving, all possible assistance. When plans were brought to him, he would sit, sometimes with his eyes closed as though sleeping, and listen, then ask questions: What kind of research had been done? Had, say, the watchman’s schedule been clocked? Did they know where the goods were? Did they have enough people and cars, a good route in and out? Always he would make changes, simplify, or correct obvious and sometimes subtle miscalculations.

Then he would wait for results. If everything went right, the right fence for the furs or other merchandise at the right price would be found. This was a service Luciano performed not just for Masseria’s men but for his own friends, too, like Adonis. Joe A. had early established a reputation for jewel thefts, and his penchant for dealing in stolen gems would stay with him until he died in lonely exile in Italy in 1971.

Luciano was, then, an executive concerned only with overall planning, not the direct operations — which, he would claim, removed him from direct complicity. “It was like, if you’re the head of a big company, you don’t have every guy who works on every machine comin’ up to you and askin’, ‘Hey, boss, what colors should I use on the cars next year?’ ”

But like any good executive, Luciano would not tolerate failure. When a job about which he had not been consulted, at least on the major details, failed, or when a job misfired because his planning had not been followed scrupulously, he would exact penalties. Not firing. “Some guys got their fingers broke or their knuckles cracked or maybe had their heads busted. They hadda learn how to do it the right way the next time.”

But still the demands from Masseria for more and more of his time increased, until, in the late summer of 1929, a major crisis
developed in their relationship. A large shipment of Scotch, worth nearly a million dollars when finally cut and retailed, was due to land one night along the Jersey coast between Atlantic City and Cape May. The successful delivery was vital to the Seven Group, which once again had overextended itself in taking orders. Wanting to make certain there would be no slipups, Luciano decided to oversee the landing personally, and to insure absolute secrecy, he did not even tell Masseria that he would be absent from Manhattan. He left the Barbizon Plaza surreptitiously about midday, driving down to the Jersey shore with Adonis and Genovese, and followed a short time later by Lansky, Siegel and Costello.

That night, they supervised the unloadings from two Scottish freighters riding at anchor just outside the three-mile limit, then accompanied a five-truck convoy of Scotch to Philadelphia, to make certain that the warehouse division under Nig Rosen’s aegis was correct.

It was long after dawn before Luciano arrived back at his hotel. He had hardly gotten into bed when his private phone rang; few people had that number and no one usually dared call him at that hour.

Masseria was on the line and he was raging. He had been trying to get Luciano all night, he said, and demanded to know where the hell his lieutenant had been when he needed him.

Luciano told him he had been out, and besides, what was so urgent that he had to call at that hour of the morning?

“A couple of punks,” Masseria shouted. “They got themselves picked up on West End Avenue last night and they’re in the can. I want them out — loose — right now. I need them.” It seemed that Abraham “Bo” Weinberg and Charley “The Bug” Workman were being held at the East Fifty-third Street Precinct and, Masseria said, “It’s your district and you’re the one who usin’ my money to pay off the cops there. When I need your muscle, you ain’t around no more. You ain’t never around lately. You’re always off to your own fuckin’ business. That’s gotta stop, and it’s gotta stop right now. I wanna see ya, right now — and we’re gonna get this thing settled, you unnerstan’, Mister Salvatore Lucania.”

“Okay, okay. Take it easy. Maybe you better come over here, Joe.” Luciano was both tired and angry, else he might never have
made that suggestion. It was something he had never done, telling Joe the Boss to come to him; it had always been the other way. But when Masseria agreed without argument, Luciano took a further step. “Come alone,” he said. Masseria agreed.

This turn alerted Luciano, and he realized that a major showdown was at hand. Weinberg and Workman, hardly punks — though Jews, they were top gunmen in the Masseria outfit — had only provided Masseria with the excuse. Luciano immediately called Costello and asked him to get over to the Barbizon. Then he called Siegel, told him to get Torrio and Adonis and bring them to the Barbizon where they were to wait, unobserved, in the lobby until Masseria’s departure, then were to come up to the apartment.

When Masseria arrived, alone, Luciano and Costello were waiting in the living room. Luciano did not even have time to greet him, offer him a drink or something to eat. Before the door had closed behind him, Masseria was bellowing. “Who the hell do you think you are?” he shouted. “I cut you in on my business, I make you my number one and when I need you, you’re off runnin’ your own fuckin’ stuff. You know what you are, you’re just a rotten punk; you ain’t no better than them Jews, Weinberg and Workman. Maybe you’re even worse; at least, I can trust them.” Then, almost for the first time, Masseria noticed Costello. His rage magnified. “What the hell is he doin’ here? You tell me, Joe the Boss, to come here alone and then you have the nerve to have that guy, Costello, waitin’ for me. What do you think you’re doin’, tryin’ to take over, to become the boss yourself? You son of a bitch, I’ll show you who’s the boss; when I get through with you, they’ll have to get a sponge to mop up the pieces.” Masseria became almost inarticulate, screaming in Italian that he would have Luciano torn apart, his eyes gouged out, his tongue ripped from his mouth. “They’ll find you with your prick in your mouth, which is all you deserve.”

When Masseria finally paused for a breath, Luciano tried to calm him. “You got me wrong, Joe,” he said. “I know you’re the boss and I wouldn’t do nothin’ to change that. You ain’t got a thing to worry about with me; if you just think a minute, you’ll see that everythin’ I done since we come together has been to help you.” He used all his guile to placate Masseria, and when he
thought he had calmed him sufficiently, he said, “The reason I got Costello here is because he’s the guy with the real connections with the cops. All he’s gotta do is pick up the phone, make a couple of calls, pull a couple of strings and Workman and Weinberg’ll be out on the street in ten minutes.”

That was not enough for Masseria. Now he made his demand. “Stop the horseshit. I don’t buy this crap from you any more. From now on you work for me twenty-four hours a day. And everythin’ you get goes into my pot. You don’t like it? That’s too fuckin’ bad.”

“Joe, we got a deal. We shook hands. You’re not in the whiskey. We shook hands.” The repetition was to remind Masseria of the inviolate Sicilian code of the handshake.

“The whiskey belongs to me,” Masseria shouted as he turned and strode to the door. “And if I want to, I drink it all myself. I break the handshake.”

Within minutes after Masseria had departed, Siegel, Torrio and Adonis had joined Luciano and Costello. Lansky and Genovese were summoned, and within a half-hour, the seven sat down to a council of war.

To agree to Masseria’s demand did not even merit discussion. Masseria was enraged at the moment, but given a little time, Luciano was certain, he would ease up, at least partially and at least from this open hostility. But Masseria had thrown down a challenge to Luciano and his independence, one he could not completely back away from. Luciano might be able to stall Masseria, but only for a time.

Could Luciano afford an open conflict with Joe the Boss? He was not, at that moment, strong enough, not even in combination with his partners in the Seven Group. They could count on a hundred soldiers; Masseria had perhaps five hundred.

“I noticed that Lansky was pretty quiet. We was like Mutt and Jeff by this time, and I could almost read his mind. So I said to him, ‘What’re ya thinkin’ about, Little Man — Maranzano?’ ”