The Last Testament of Lucky Luciano: The Mafia Story in His Own Words (35 page)

“We all met at my apartment a little later, for dinner that I had sent up from Jack and Charlie’s. I knew I was gonna get convicted, that I didn’t have a chance. The only thing was, I figured that maybe Polakoff and Levy could work out somethin’ on an appeal, so that if I got a year or so, the appeal maybe could wash it out and I wouldn’t have to go to the can at all. It’s a funny thing how when you hope for somethin’ very hard, you sorta talk yourself into believin’ it’s gonna happen. Then I looked at George Levy’s face and I got the same shivers inside that I had in court.

“Everybody left early and Gay Orlova come up about eleven. She’d been in the courtroom, and the minute she walked in, she started to cry. Well, that did it. I figured if Gay already had me convicted, there was no point in hopin’. Durin’ all the weeks of the trial, she spent a lot of time with me, but we never did nothing — y’know what I mean. Either I’d get home too tired, too upset — anyway, who the hell could get in the mood. But that night, she made love to me. She was so kind and understandin’, I almost asked her to marry me. Of course, the minute that idea occurred to me, I forgot it. How can you ask anybody to marry you if you don’t know whether the next day you’re gonna be in jail? Anyway, that was probably the best night I ever had with a girl to that minute, and I’ll never forget it.”

When court reconvened, George Levy made his final attempt to win freedom for Luciano, though even Luciano sensed he had no chance to prevail. “I’m not accusing Tom Dewey of suborning perjury,” Levy began his closing argument, “but I say his assistants,
anxious for a pat on the back and a bit of glory, have collected a group of actors who had constructed a drama which Mr. Dewey accepted as true.

“There is no evidence on which Tom Dewey can hope to convict Lucania. He hopes to do it with prejudice, hysteria, through what you have read and by what the public has been taught to believe by this master showman. He hopes to do it by crimes Lucania committed years ago; because he was taken for a ride; because he lied to get a pistol permit. He hopes to railroad him because Lucania lied when he said he was a chauffeur in obtaining an automobile license, when he was nothing but a bootlegger and a gambler.”

Levy went through Dewey’s witnesses. Joe Bendix he categorized as a convicted felon and a liar who had come to court hoping to perjure his way out of a life sentence. As for Cokey Flo Brown, “If anybody told you such a cock-and-bull story in your own business, you would tell him to get out of the place because the story was so ridiculous.” There was no doubt in his mind, Levy closed, that when the jurors examined all the evidence they would return a verdict of not guilty.

Then it was time for Dewey to have the final say. Admitting that many of his key witnesses were simple prostitutes, he told the jury it “could not hold that a prostitute is unworthy of belief. You must give her story the same weight as you would to that of a respectable person. If you believe what she says, then the story stands and the fact that she is a prostitute is of no moment.”

Staring intently at the jury, he asserted, “We did not offer a witness we didn’t believe.” There were some who might discredit his witnesses because they had been granted immunity. But, he said, how else could the state have gotten them on the stand to talk about crimes they had committed? Justice had been served by the testimony of Cokey Flo Brown, Mildred Balitzer and the others.

Then there was Nancy Presser. “For two hours I sat with her, trying to persuade her to testify, and that she would not be murdered. If you want to know what responsibility is, try to persuade a witness trembling with terror to go up on the stand. The defense did everything to blast her. They resorted to every device known
to corruption to break down her story. Why did they try to destroy her by all their evil means, except that they didn’t dare face the truth?”

Coming to the end, he turned to stare directly at Luciano. With rage coloring his words, he pointed at Luciano, who, he said, had committed “a shocking, disgusting display of sanctimonious perjury — at the end of which I am sure not one of you had a doubt that before you stood not a gambler, not a bookmaker, but the greatest gangster in America.” For seven hours Dewey transfixed the jury.

“I knew I was done for when that little son of a bitch finally sat down. I took one look at the jury and there was no question about it — the twelve people looked like they all wanted to stand up and applaud.”

If anyone at that moment had any doubts about the outcome, Judge McCook quickly dispelled them. In a charge lasting two hours and forty-one minutes, he made little attempt to hide his own predisposition. He dwelt at length on Luciano’s use of aliases as an indication of his lack of character and believability. He explained to the jury that it did not need to find that Luciano directly received money or had direct contact with prostitutes. “If anyone received money which was the proceeds of prostitution, even though not directly received from the women, if it was in furtherance of a scheme to carry on prostitution, that person is guilty of an unlawful act.”

In his final words, he voiced his own personal view: “The crimes of which these men are accused are vicious and low, and those who would aid and abet such crimes are not to be met in polite society.”

At 10:53 on Saturday evening, June 6, 1936, the jury retired. Later, some of the jurors would say that after listening to George Morton Levy’s summation, there were doubts and some were leaning toward acquittal. But those doubts had been dispelled by Dewey’s stinging, stirring rebuttal. After only ten minutes in the jury room a vote was taken; the count stood at eleven to one — for conviction. Then the jurors went over exhibits and documents before taking a second vote in the predawn hours of Sunday. At 4:30 in the morning, they sent word to Justice McCook, who was waiting for the news in his chambers, that they were ready.

Nearly an hour later, at 5:25 on Sunday morning, June 7, the courtroom was called to order. McCook ordered the defendants to rise and face the jury. Foreman Edwin Aderer read the verdicts. The first name was Luciano’s. In a strained voice, Aderer read: “Guilty on all counts.”

Luciano’s expression did not change from unemotional stoicism. But, he said later, “Inside, my stomach was turnin’ over. But I wasn’t gonna give those bastards a chance to see it.”

The rest was anticlimax. Guilty verdicts were read for all the other defendants, McCook scheduled sentencing for June 18, the defendants, manacled, were quickly led to a waiting security van and driven to the Tombs, the first stop on the way to prison.

They were back in court eleven days later. Justice McCook peremptorily denied a series of defense motions to set aside the verdicts for lack of evidence, to delay sentencing until the appeals process had been concluded, to release the defendants on bond while they made appeals. Sentencing, he said, would take place immediately and the defendants would begin serving those sentences as soon as they were announced.

Then into the record was read a parole report on Luciano, prepared by Irving W. Halpern, chief probation officer of the Court of General Sessions, a report drawn largely from information supplied by Dewey’s aide Sol Gelb. “The defendant has a controlling interest in almost every racket to which this city is subjected. . . . His freedom from conscience springs from his admitted philosophy: ‘I never was a “crumb,” and if I have to be a “crumb,” I’d rather be dead.’ He explains this by stating that a ‘crumb’ is a person who works and saves and lays his money aside, who indulges in no extravagances. His description of a ‘crumb’ would fit the average man. . . . As he achieved a measure of success, his attitude toward his antisocial activities became one of an entrepreneur. His ideals of life resolved themselves into money to spend, beautiful women to enjoy, silk underclothes and places to go in style.”

Then McCook began the ritual of sentencing:

David Betillo: twenty-five to forty years in the penitentiary.

Thomas Pennochio: twenty-five years as a third offender.

James Frederico: twenty-five years as a third offender.

Abe Wahrman: fifteen to thirty years.

Ralph Liguori: seven and one half to fifteen years.

Jesse Jacobs, Benny Spiller, Meyer Berkman: sentencing postponed at the request of Dewey, who hoped to persuade them to testify at future trials in exchange for light sentences. (They were eventually given minor terms.)

The defendants who pleaded guilty: Jack Ellenstein: four to eight years; Peter Balitzer and Al Weiner: two to four years; David Marcus: three to six years.

Then it was Luciano’s turn. McCook asked whether he had anything to say before sentence was pronounced. Luciano leaned over and talked briefly with George Morton Levy. “I asked him if I should say anythin’, and he said it was up to me. So I got up and looked right straight at McCook. I said, ‘Your Honor, I have nothin’ to say outside the fact that I need to say again, I am innocent.’ ”

McCook shook his head, stared at Luciano, and then began: “The evidence upon the trial and reliable information since received have convinced the court that these defendants will be responsible for any injury which the people’s witnesses might hereafter, by reason of their testimony, suffer. Let the record show that should any witness for the people be injured or harassed, the court will request the parole authorities to retain in prison the defendants against whom such witness testified for the maximum terms of the sentences imposed.”

Looking down at Luciano, Judge McCook declared: “An intelligent, courageous and discriminating jury has found you guilty of heading a conspiracy or combination to commit these crimes, which operated widely in New York and extended into neighboring counties. This makes you responsible, in law and morals, for every foul and cruel deed, with accompanying elements of extortion, performed by the band of codefendants. . . . I am not here to reproach you but, since there appears no excuse for your conduct or hope for your rehabilitation, to extend adequate punishment.”

The court, McCook then declared in a solemn voice, sentenced Luciano to “a total of from thirty to fifty years in state’s prison.” It was the longest sentence ever meted out for compulsory prostitution.

Luciano trembled slightly, then regained control of himself. “They told me I’d get a stiff sentence, but I didn’t think they’d throw the book at me. I figured there was plenty of grounds for appeal and that Polakoff would get me off pretty soon. Still, it ain’t easy to stand there and hear that. It was like gettin’ a life sentence. Even with good behavior I’d be an old man before I got out — or maybe I’d be dead.”

The court adjourned for the last time and Luciano was led away quickly, with no ceremony, handcuffed for the ride to Sing Sing, the first stop on the road to Dannemora in far upstate New York. It was there that it appeared that he would spend the next thirty to fifty years.

Afterwards, Dewey stood on the courtroom steps and talked to newsmen about his victory. “This, of course,” he said, “was not a vice trial. It was a racket prosecution. The control of all organized prostitution in New York by the convicted defendants was one of their lesser rackets. The prostitution racket was merely the vehicle by which these men were convicted. It is my understanding that certain of the top-ranking defendants in this case, together with other criminals under Lucania, have gradually absorbed control of the narcotics, policy, loan-shark and Italian lottery syndicates, the receipt of stolen goods and certain industrial rackets.” Unable to trap or convict Luciano for his control of these major rackets, Dewey admitted that he had nailed him for a minor one.

“Naturally, I read Dewey’s whole statement. After sittin’ in court and listenin’ to myself bein’ plastered to the wall and tarred and feathered by a bunch of whores who sold themselves for a quarter, and hearin’ that no-good McCook hand me what added up to a life term, I still got madder at Dewey’s crap than anythin’ else. That little shit with the mustache comes right out in the open and admits he got me for everythin’ else but what he charged me with. I knew he knew I didn’t have a fuckin’ thing to do with prostitution, not with none of them broads. But Dewey was such a goddamn racketeer himself, in a legal way, that he crawled up my back with a frame and stabbed me. If he’d hauled me into court to stand trial for anythin’ I done, includin’ conspiracy to commit murder, I’d’ve taken it like a man. But this was somethin’ that was like a boil startin’ to grow inside me from the minute I
heard what Dewey said outside the court. Someday that boil was gonna break open and somehow, in some way, I was gonna get even.”

So, on June 18, 1936, Luciano’s prison years began. The next day, as he was being processed through the system as a convicted long-term felon, forty-five thousand people, including many of his old friends, gathered in New York’s Yankee Stadium to watch a long-awaited heavyweight prizefight. The young and supposedly invincible Brown Bomber from Detroit, Joe Louis, was meeting the former champion, Germany’s Max Schmeling, in what was supposed to be Louis’s final hurdle on the way to the title. He tripped over that hurdle. Schmeling found a weakness and knocked him out in the twelfth round.

“I thought I’d be there. It was a fight I really wanted to see. I even bought a whole block of tickets right down in front. Instead, I was sittin’ in a cell that night, half listenin’ to the radio, wonderin’ what the hell was next for me — and not even givin’ a shit who was gonna win the fight.”