The Last Testament of Lucky Luciano: The Mafia Story in His Own Words (62 page)

Not one of those picked up would explain the reasons for his presence in such company at Apalachin, and so a number were tried, convicted, fined and sent to prison for conspiring to obstruct justice by their silence. All the convictions were upset on appeal.

For Genovese, the raid and resultant publicity were serious blows to his ambitions and his pride. For years he had been a shadowy figure about whom there were only rumors while attention was focused on more famous and colorful leaders like Luciano, Adonis, Costello and Anastasia. Now he was out in the open, the light full on him, where it would remain for the rest of his life. And, for him, even worse was the embarrassment he had suffered in the eyes of his colleagues.

“The way Vito organized the Apalachin thing only proves the worst part about him — that he was stupid. He never learned. He always put his greed in front of common sense. The last thing you wanna do is call attention to yourself. What the hell did Vito think would happen when a bunch of guys from all over the country,
dressed in fancy city clothes, come drivin’ up some country road in their big Cadillacs like it was a fuckin’ parade?

“I was sittin’ in Naples, waitin’ to hear the results of the meet that day. Mostly, I was wonderin’ how Vito would take it when the majority of the guys told him to go fuck himself. I felt like celebratin’ in advance, so I took Igea and Joe Di Giorgio out to dinner at the Transatlantico on the bay. I’d just finished a plate of good spaghetti with butter and cheese, just the way I liked it, when Cockeye comes rushin’ in. He takes me aside and says, all excited, ‘Charlie! Did you hear what happened?’ He tells me it’s all over the radio and the newspapers got it out on the streets already, and then he gives me the whole mishmash about what happened at Apalachin, about them overfed fat guys runnin’ through the woods for their lives. I’ll bet not one of ’em had been off the city streets before and I could just picture ’em, bein’ lost for days in the woods, maybe even starvin’ to death and probably freezin’ their balls off.

“Joe drove Igea and me home, and all the way up the hill to the Parco Comola I can only think about the outfit that I designed and made and built up from nothin’, and in less than an hour that dirty fuckin’ pig Genovese practically threw it down the shithouse. When I got back to the apartment, I went into the bathroom and vomited. Everything I had to eat and all the bile I’d been swallowin’ all through the years in Italy come up at the same time.”

Rage burned deep inside him, and so did despair over the spectacle of the underworld as the object of buffoonery after Apalachin. No one seemed able to penetrate his isolation as his mind dwelt only on the need for quick revenge against Genovese.

Within days, however, an outside event brought Luciano out of himself, forced him for the moment to dismiss Genovese from his
mind. He was alone in the penthouse one afternoon when he received a visit from the family physician, Professore Dottore Matteoli. Igea had done more than shopping that day. Dr. Matteoli had just given her a complete physical examination, the second within a matter of a few weeks. She had gone to him complaining of persistent fatigue, and of soreness around several small lumps in her left breast. On the first visit, the doctor said, he had tried to aspirate the lumps, but when Igea returned, the lumps and soreness had reappeared. It was essential, Dr. Matteoli told Luciano, that Igea have an immediate exploratory operation.

“The doc assured me there was no reason to believe them little bumps hadda be malignant. He said maybe they was just little tumors that could be taken out and that would be that. But the big problem, and the doctor knew this as well as me, was how we could get Igea to agree to an operation. Igea had tried to be everythin’ to me, all kinds of women, for more than ten years. She was so proud of her body and she gave herself to me with such openness that it was like glue for us and held us together closer than I could ever dream of bein’ with anybody. I knew the first thing she would think about was that havin’ an operation might give her some kinda physical defect and turn me away. The doctor tried to explain to me that this is a thing medical people call ‘preoperative trauma.’ I didn’t understand the fuckin’ words, but I got the idea, and in Igea’s case, he was two hundred per cent right. If only it could’ve been me. I had enough scars on me that another one would be like drinkin’ a cup of coffee. Dr. Matteoli told me to think about how we oughta go about it, but not to wait too long.”

When the doctor left, Luciano waited anxiously for Igea’s return, wondering what he would say to her. But when she came through the door, she was laden with packages from a pre-Christmas shopping trip and she was radiant, all the pallor and listlessness gone. Luciano watched her carefully, but the radical change continued for the next months and she seemed to be herself once again. But Luciano wanted to be reassured. He called on Dr. Matteoli and the doctor told him that another examination of Igea had revealed a diminishing of the lumps. But, the doctor warned, this was not uncommon and Igea should be watched constantly for any change, though perhaps the operation could wait.

“This was some load off my mind, because just then I had plenty of troubles. Father Scarpato was workin’ like an animal up at his clinic and he needed help almost every day. And on top of everythin’ else, that was when we started tryin’ to collect some of the bills for the furniture we sold to church schools and found out it was impossible. I began to feel like I was behind one great big eight ball. But as long as Igea was well, there was only one problem that really ate into my guts — how to take care of my dear friend, Don Vitone.

“Then I got a terrific idea. Why should I put out a hit on Vito, even though he deserved it? It could only put me in danger, and besides, I’d been away from the States a little too long to be a hundred per cent sure of the guys who might get the job done exactly right. The idea I got really appealed to me. For a long time, Vito had been tryin’ to set me up, tryin’ to prove to me he could frame me as easy as rollin’ off a log. Well, I decided the best and easiest way to get Genovese out of everybody’s hair without knockin’ him off was to let the U.S. government do the job. All we hadda do was frame the evidence and we could hand Vito over on a silver platter. If we could work it right, we could get him tied in with narcotics on a personal basis, and that meant a federal rap good for fifteen years minimum. When he got out, nobody’d even think twice about him. But we hadda send him to a federal prison, because in a state pen that little bastard would be runnin’ things in a week.

“First, I worked out the details with Costello and Lansky, and after it was all put together, I asked my new-old friend Carlo Gambino to meet me at Santa Marinella.”

Gambino arrived early in 1958. Before leaving New York, he had discussed the plan fully with Costello and Lansky and had developed ideas of his own for its expedition. He agreed that letting the American government take care of Genovese was the only sensible approach; to kill him would be a mistake, bringing down a great deal of unwanted publicity on the organization. But, Gambino said, Genovese should not be the only fish thrown into the government’s net; some of his aides should go with him.

Gambino then began to explore his approach with Luciano. He suggested that the services of Longie Zwillman and Tony Bender
be utilized by the plotters. At the name of Bender, Luciano balked, until Gambino explained that he had very recently had a private meeting with Bender, who apparently had become convinced that Gambino was the man of the future and so had sworn loyalty to him. As for Zwillman, he had no love for Genovese. The Internal Revenue Service was after Zwillman, claiming he owed more than seven hundred thousand dollars in back taxes. Seeking financial help, Zwillman had turned to Genovese, whose estimated thirty-million-dollar fortune in bonds, mortgages, negotiable securities and cash was no little the result of operations developed by his partnership with Zwillman and Luciano during the twenties and thirties. Genovese, however, was notoriously parsimonious, his only extravagance the money he spent on his ex-wife, Anna. (She had told the full details of Genovese’s life, business and financial dealings a few years before in her petition for separate maintenance. To the surprise of every one of his associates, Genovese had not dealt with her in the usual manner prescribed for stool pigeons; he had only ordered the murder in 1953 of Steve Franse, her constant escort and cover for her bisexual activities.) So Genovese spurned Zwillman’s plea and in so doing earned his bitter enmity.

“Carlo’d been pretty clever. He had all the actors ready to play their parts and it looked like it couldn’t miss. The deal was this: Vito knows that Longie don’t have nothin’ to do with junk, so Longie tells him that he has a guy who come to him lookin’ for a way to get rid of some pure heroin for a hundred grand that’s worth a million on the street. The pusher is just as hard up as Zwillman, so he’s willin’ to sell it to Longie or any guy Longie puts him in touch with for sixty or seventy grand. Longie tells Vito all he wants for himself is a commission, ten or fifteen thousand, to tide him over for a while.”

Genovese’s greed, and his conviction of his supremacy in the underworld despite Apalachin, overcame any suspicions he might have had, and he agreed to make the buy at a stipulated spot along a back road in New Jersey. According to Luciano, Bender was supplied with the package of narcotics and sent out to meet Genovese at the appointed time and place and collect one hundred thousand dollars on the spot. Federal narcotics agents were tipped
off and were supposed to be waiting to arrest Genovese once the transfer had been made.

“Would you believe it? The federal idiots blew it. They was supposed to be waitin’ down the road, only nobody was there and that little prick Vito got away with it. I heard he made over seven hundred grand out of that buy, net. When I heard about it two days after, I damn near went through the ceiling. I sent word to Carlo that he was responsible for the fuckup; it was his play and he muffed it. So, no matter what it cost him, he hadda make good. And I told him I still didn’t trust Bender, that he was always for sale to the highest bidder, so I wanted Bender on ice until Carlo put Vito away.”

Gambino had a secondary plan, already rehearsed and prepared, in case the original one failed. Serving a narcotics sentence in Sing Sing was a minor Puerto Rican hoodlum named Nelson Cantellops. At various times during his career, Cantellops had worked for Sam Giancana in Chicago and as a messenger for Meyer Lansky. It was Gambino’s idea to use Cantellops to get Genovese. “Of course, we hadda grease him pretty good. He got a hundred grand stashed away for him in cash, half from Gambino and half from me, which Lansky paid into the kitty, plus the best legal service. Of course, Costello put up half of my end, just to have fat Gigante nailed tight along with Vito.”

The Narcotics Bureau Strike Force in New York received an anonymous tip that Cantellops was willing to make a trade: information about the narcotics racket and Genovese in return for a suspended sentence from Sing Sing. John Ray Enright, head of the Task Force under the chief of the federal Narcotics Bureau’s New York office, George Gaffney, interviewed Cantellops and came away with what he had long sought.

“Cantellops told Enright and his boys that he had been an eyewitness to Vito’s makin’ buys, and he also ties in Carmine Galante and Big John Ormento, two of Vito’s best guns, and a few other guys, includin’, of course, Gigante, who was all handlin’ junk for him. Ray Enright had it handed to him on a plate, because as far as I know, Cantellops never set eyes on Vito until they got into the courtroom almost a year later. I don’t know whether the Narcotics Bureau really knew that Genovese was a gift, and I don’t give
a shit. The point is, we helped ’em land a big fish and they helped us by puttin’ the little rat away. Carlo wanted Cantellops to put the finger on Tommy Eboli, too, because the whole idea was to try and break up Vito’s personal muscle and Gambino was sure Tommy would cause trouble sooner or later, especially when Vito got sent up. I blocked that. I was sore at Tommy all right, but I couldn’t do that to his brother Pat.”

In mid-1959, Cantellops was the star witness for the government against Genovese and twenty-four others, including Gigante, for narcotics conspiracy. On the basis of his testimony, all were convicted. Genovese was sentenced to fifteen years in federal prison. He served the first years in Atlanta, was then transferred to Leavenworth, and, in 1969, died of heart failure at the federal medical facility in Missouri.

But there was retribution for some of those involved in the plot against him. Nelson Cantellops was released from Sing Sing, and for a time enjoyed freedom and his hundred-thousand-dollar payoff. In 1965, he was slain in a nightclub brawl.

In 1959, soon after Genovese was sentenced, Abner “Longie” Zwillman was found hanging by a wire in the cellar of his New Jersey mansion. The official verdict was suicide; the reason: Zwillman’s almost insoluble tax problems with the federal government. “That’s bullshit. They murdered Longie. He tried to put the arm on Carlo after Vito got his sentence; what the hell, the poor guy was part of us for a long time and there was enough money around to give him a hand. But the guys in Brooklyn was afraid he’d do a Reles. So they beat him up and trussed him up like a pig and hung him in his own cellar.

“It was when Longie got it that I began to get a feelin’ inside about Lansky. Why didn’t Meyer put up for him? The question started to nag at me and I began to watch out for things that didn’t fit together where he and I was concerned. Money makes people do strange things that sometimes you can’t predict, and of all the fellas from way back, the one guy who loved dough more than anybody else was the little walkin’ addin’ machine.