The Last Testament of Lucky Luciano: The Mafia Story in His Own Words (48 page)

“But back then,” Genovese said, “remember what you said? — that it would only make more trouble if he hit Dewey? So wouldn’t things be even worse now if he hit Anslinger?”

Luciano nodded. “Sure it would. So, I stop him.”

“You’ll have to, sooner than you think,” Genovese said. “He’s gonna bring up a hit on Anslinger at the meet and that’s why I thought I oughta talk to you about it ahead of time.”

“All right, so you talked to me about it. When he brings it up, I’ll just tell him no, and that’ll be the end of it.”

Genovese shook his head. “Maybe. But how do you know you can trust Albert any more? I tell you, he’s off his rocker. He could go out on his own and do it.”

“Vito, cut out all that shit; Albert don’t have no big interest in narcotics, the way you have. Whatever he does with junk is smalltime, and only because you pushed him into it, on account of tryin’ to move in on Brooklyn. What is it with you, Vito? Do you think I don’t know what’s goin’ on?”

Genovese persisted, “I’m tellin’ you, Charlie, he’s becomin’ a danger to the outfit — I mean, the outfit that I’m helpin’ to run for you. One of these days we’re gonna have to take care of him, or he’ll wreck the whole thing.”

“The first thing that come to me,” Luciano said years later, “was that the real danger from Albert was for Vito personally, and he wants the council to okay puttin’ him away. But I figure as long as Anastasia is alive, he’s one friend that I can count on, and his just bein’ alive will hold Vito back. So I said, ‘I don’t see it that way, Vito. I want to let it ride for a while. If Albert really starts makin’ trouble, I’ll always know about it in advance and be able to cut it off. Besides, you know goddamn fuckin’ well that Albert is gonna be here in a couple days. Since when does the Unione council have a ‘table’ on a guy in front of his face? To talk to him, yes — but not to make no decisions on a hit. Vito, when I made them rules back in 1932, everybody accepted ’em. Are you tryin’ to change ’em?’ ”

Genovese stood up, paced the lawn for a moment before returning to his chair. “That’s another thing I wanna talk to you about, Charlie, private, before the other guys get down here. Y’know, you been away for a long time. You don’t realize how much things are changin’.”

“You been away a long time too, Vito. What are you gettin’ at?”

“Well,” Genovese said, “I’m back now, right in the middle of it, in New York. But you’re still outa the country, Charlie. Things is changin’ every day, and you ain’t really in touch.”

“He didn’t really know how much I was in touch,” Luciano said later. “I knew everythin’. I could figure what Vito was comin’ to, but I wasn’t gonna help him get it out. I wanted him to do it all by himself. So I just sat there and waited. Finally, he springs it.”

“Let me tell you what I think, Charlie — it’s a good proposition. I think you oughta quit — I mean, retire. You’ll have all the dough you can ever need, and I give you my personal word on that. You won’t have to worry about what’s goin’ on. You won’t have to think up ideas how to get back to New York — which is gonna be tough. And you’ll still be the boss, the
capo di capi re
. Everybody’ll think of you as the guy who put it all together back in the old days, and they’ll still come to you when they need advice. It’s like you’ll be the head, but I’ll be runnin’ things on the spot. That’s all there is to it.”

“That guinea son of a bitch! But, I always knew he was a gutsy bastard, so I should’ve known that he’d have the nerve to stand up to me, to my face — just as long as nobody else was around. All
he really wanted was to take over and cut me out. His whole life he wanted to be boss. He was the same as Joe Masseria; he learned from Joe; he envied Maranzano; and he hated it that he wasn’t born in Sicily. I looked at Vito very calm, like talkin’ to a schoolboy, and I said, ‘You forgot what happened in Chicago when I set this thing up. There is no Boss of Bosses. I turned it down in front of everybody. If I ever change my mind, then I will take the title. But it won’t be up to you. Right now you work for me and I ain’t in the mood to retire. Don’t you ever let me hear this again, or I’ll lose my temper. Now — let’s talk about some pleasant things.’

“I only said that just to see whether Vito would have that last ounce of guts to keep on goin’. But he didn’t. He shut up like a clam. In a few minutes he said he wanted to go back to the hotel; I had a car with a driver and I sent him back. Naturally, I realized that he went away plenty unhappy, but I didn’t give a fuck. I knew there was enough guys on my side to keep him in line, so all that fat little bastard could do was to dream. I’ll tell you one thing, though — it wasn’t easy to keep my hands off his fat throat. He’ll never know how close he come to it.”

The next day the delegates began arriving. The upper four floors of the Hotel Nacional had been set aside exclusively for their use. Unlike the Atlantic City convention, which many had attended accompanied by wives and girl friends, this event was, for the first days, strictly male. From New York and New Jersey came Joe Adonis, Albert Anastasia, “Joe Bananas” Bonanno, Frank Costello, Tommy Lucchese, Joe Profaci and his heir apparent, Giuseppe Magliocco, Willie Moretti, Augie Pisano and Mike Miranda. From Buffalo there was Steve Magaddino. Chicago sent its council chief, Tony Accardo, and the brothers Fischetti, Charlie and Rocco, cousins and heirs of Al Capone (who was then out of prison and dying of syphilis of the brain in his mansion on Palm Island off Miami Beach). Carlos Marcello arrived from New Orleans and Santo Trafficante from Florida. (“This is a guy who always managed to hug the background, but he was tough and reliable. In fact, he’s one of the few guys in the whole country that Meyer would never tangle with.”) And there were two high-ranking delegates who had no vote, because they were Jewish: Meyer Lansky and the New Orleans partner of the outfit, “Dandy Phil” Kastel.

If anyone had asked, there was an outward reason for such a gathering. It was to honor an Italian boy from New Jersey named Frank Sinatra, the crooner who had become the idol of the nation’s bobby-sox set. He had flown to Havana with his friends the Fischettis to meet his friend Charlie Luciano, and during the holiday week a gala party would be given in his honor.

“Frank was a good kid and we was all proud of him, the way he made it to the top. When I was in Dannemora, the fellas who come to see me told me about him. They said he was a skinny kid from around Hoboken with a terrific voice and one hundred per cent Italian. He used to sing around the joints there and all the guys liked him. When the time come when some dough was needed to put Frank across with the public, they put it up. He had a job workin’ for Tommy Dorsey’s band and he was gettin’ about a hundred and fifty bucks a week, but he needed publicity, clothes, different kinds of special music things, and they all cost quite a bit of money — I think it was about fifty or sixty grand. I okayed the money and it come out of the fund, even though some guys put up a little extra on a personal basis. It all helped him become a big star and he was just showin’ his appreciation by comin’ down to Havana to say hello to me.

“I don’t wanna give the idea that he was ever asked to do somethin’ illegal — by me or anybody else that I know about. He give out a few presents to different guys, like a gold cigarette case, a watch, that kind of thing, but that was it. As for me, the guy was always Number One Okay.”

The mezzanine was strictly out of bounds for other guests at the Hotel Nacional that week; it was reserved for the meetings, banquets and parties of the underworld organization. As each delegate arrived in Havana, his first call after checking into the hotel was to the Miramar villa of Luciano, to greet the leader, reaffirm loyalty, and acknowledge him as the chairman of the board, still ruler of his own organization and the man from whom overall guidance and final judgments could be expected. A dinner that night, hosted by Lansky, Costello and Adonis, was a public show of the private affirmations, and everyone came forward with envelopes stuffed with cash.

“I was a little embarrassed about takin’ the money so soon after the
Laura Keene
farewell party, but Meyer put out the word that it was for a legit business, and I figured what the hell, they owe me a lot more, so why not let ’em do it? I took a hundred and fifty grand and let Meyer have it for my points in the Casino, and he handed me stock in the business.”

The next morning, in a sealed-off and tightly guarded conference room on the mezzanine floor, the first general meeting of the council of the Unione Siciliano in more than a decade was called to order. Luciano sat at the head of the huge rectangular table, flanked by Lansky, Costello, Genovese and Adonis. There was no protocol beyond that. The other leaders made their own selections of seating places.

“I opened the meeting by expressin’ my thanks that everybody I asked for accepted the invitations. And I thanked ’em for the envelopes, too. That’s when I explained that I was now back on the American side of the Atlantic — legitimate — and that I had used the envelopes to buy points in the Casino at the Nacional, and that arrangements had been fixed up with the government for me to stay in Cuba for as long as would be necessary. I told ’em I would be runnin’ things from Havana under my right name of Salvatore Lucanía. I asked ’em to please remember to call me that, and not use the name Luciano, or Charlie Lucky — because it was important that we have as little noise as possible about my bein’ out of Italy, until everythin’ cooled off in New York and Washington.

“Even though I told Vito that I didn’t want the title of Boss of Bosses — I really didn’t, except I knew it was necessary — I sort of mentioned it casually. The minute I used that expression, Anastasia got up and said, ‘Charlie, pardon me if I interrupt. I want to say this in front, before this here meeting goes any further. For me, you are the Big Boss, whether you like it or not. That’s the way I look at it, and I would like to hear from anybody who don’t feel the same way.’

“Albert was sittin’ right across from Vito, and he looked him square in the eye as he stood up. Everybody noticed it, and everybody knew what it meant. There was a big silence. Nobody said a word, and that was all I was after — first, to teach Vito a lesson in public without him losin’ face, and also to get the title without
havin’ to fight for it. So I won my first point, and frankly, I didn’t give a shit what happened after that.

“Actually, that’s not really true. Somethin’ did happen that bothered me, because I didn’t exactly win the next order of business. I figured I might as well beat Vito to the punch. I told the meetin’ that when I was in Italy, I heard about the trouble between Vito and Albert. I said I also heard some news about other guys who was tryin’ to move in on brothers, and I explained that every one of ’em was good friends of mine, and that they hadda make an effort to get along better with each other.

“I laughed when I said I didn’t expect ’em to love each other, because I knew that was impossible. I reminded ’em of things that they liked to forget about — about the old Mustache Petes, about Masseria and Maranzano, and so forth. I told ’em that jealousy was our biggest enemy, jealousy of what some other guy in another outfit had. I told ’em about their own figures, their own takes, and their own profits, and I said unless any one of us was a greedy pig — I didn’t look at Vito when I said it — that in our kind of business there was so much money to be made that nobody had the right to be jealous of nobody else.

“I must’ve talked for an hour, maybe more. When I felt that I had ’em goin’ along with me complete, I got around to the subject of narcotics. That sorta made everybody sit up. I could see that they was all lookin’ back and forth, from me to Vito, and it was very clear that he was gettin’ real upset, because he knew what I was gonna say. I told ’em I wanted ’em to get the hell outa that business, to stop it right then and there, and to forget it. I said that they knew when I was a young punk, only nineteen, I had trouble with the stuff and it sent me to stir. And I reminded ’em about the other time in 1923, when it cost me a fortune.

“I told ’em it had become clear to me that there was so much dough to be made in everythin’ else we had, why ruin it with the dangers of playin’ around with junk that would only bring the federal guys down on us and the Interpol people that was startin’ up in Paris. I tried to make ’em understand that everythin’ was different now that the war was over; we was businessmen runnin’ businesses and givin’ people what they wanted in a way that didn’t hurt nobody. People wanted to gamble, we helped ’em gamble;
they needed booze, cigarettes and meat durin’ the war, we took care of that. Sure, here and there we would squeeze some guys, but on the other hand, look at all the money we was puttin’ in circulation just from other good businessmen buyin’ our protection. I said there wasn’t a politician or a cop who could hold on to none of the money we paid him off with, that they spent it as soon as they got it, and that was very good for the American economy — to put money in circulation.

“When I said that, I looked right at Meyer Lansky and we both couldn’t hold back laughin’. Then everybody else chimed in and it sorta eased up the tension.

“But it didn’t mean a fuckin’ thing. On the subject of narcotics, I could see I wasn’t gettin’ through. All the time I was talkin’, most of ’em had stone in their faces. Then Steve Magaddino got up on my side. He told the story about Vito writin’ him from Italy and what I said when he come to see me in stir. He made a very strong point by sayin’ that jealousy was our number two enemy; junk was number one.

“That kinda opened up the discussion and I was a little shocked to see that almost all the guys didn’t wanna go along with me. Frank Costello had the same feelin’ and he leaned over and whispered to me, ‘Charlie, don’t hit your head against the wall. Vito rigged it before the meet started. Try to get out of it as soon as you can. Someday, they’ll all be sorry.’