The Last Testament of Lucky Luciano: The Mafia Story in His Own Words (67 page)

During the next several days, Luciano tried to relax and assume an optimistic front while his sister was visiting. Once she and her family returned to the United States, he sent for his friend and adviser Chinky Vitaliti, who had been informed of all Luciano’s moves. He told Vitaliti that while it was obvious that his plans to organize the narcotics traffic in Europe were on the verge of success, it was just as obvious that these plans were going to boomerang, and he was convinced that his health could not stand up under the pressures and anxieties.

“Charlie,” Vitaliti told him, “give up the junk. It’s nothing you ever wanted and you must stop it, now, today. Tell them immediately. As far as Vito is concerned, I think you are right and we must watch carefully.”

Once more, Luciano sent a message to his associates in New York. He was abandoning his plans for narcotics, he said, returning once more to a life of retirement. He would devote some of his energies, he said, to a new opportunity that had been presented to him to help develop the Portuguese Algarve.

Luciano had become, almost without comprehending it, an old man losing his grip. A few years before, he would have met the demands and challenges from his old friends in the States — if they would even have dared issue dictates and threats then — without hesitation. Then, as he had done so often, he would have conceived a devious plan to defeat them and gone on to accomplish his aim. But now he was isolated, weakened by age and personal afflictions — the loss of Igea Lissoni, his heart attacks and more. The power that had once been his over organized crime had vanished, and now he knew it. The self-confidence that had once radiated from him, the conviction that nobody and nothing could stand up before him — they, too, were gone. And he began to realize that he no longer even had the ambition that had once driven him and carried him so far. He seemed governed by whim, sometimes idle, drifting from one plan to another, one project to the next, never able to see any through to the end.

His message reached New York early in September. About ten days later, a courier arrived in Naples with an envelope filled with cash. It was not back up to the old twenty-five thousand dollars, but close to it. Through the ensuing weeks of the year, the flow of funds continued, and even improved. Just before Christmas, extra money was sent and Luciano used some of it to buy Adriana a fur coat for the holidays.

But it was never quite enough to meet all his needs. There were all those people in Naples, Rome and Sicily who were still dependent on his generosity. The furniture business was going under rapidly, taking with it nearly a hundred thousand dollars of Luciano’s money.

What worried him most, however, was the potential fallout from his move into European narcotics. His agents may have been reliable, but he had no way to control anyone they might have talked with. Sooner or later, he was certain, the Italian authorities would learn of his intentions without necessarily realizing that he had abandoned them. This would send them down on him once again.

Then, during the fall, he received news that portended major trouble. Two New York gangsters, Vincent Mauro and Frankie “The Bug” Caruso, once part of the Luciano family but latterly
tied closely to Genovese, had been arrested and indicted in New York on narcotics charges. They had been released on $100,000 bail — and promptly vanished.

“When the hell is this ever gonna end? Now I’m gonna be blamed for that.” He was right. He was summoned to the headquarters of the Guardia di Finanza in Naples and questioned closely about the disappearance of Mauro and Caruso. It was even suggested by Italian narcotics authorities that his money had been used to finance their bail and flight.

Though the matter was not pressed, Luciano was once more under suspicion. The surveillance on him was resumed and so were the telephone taps. And there were increasing demands from Henry Manfredi and American narcotics officials in Rome that the Italians do something drastic about Luciano.

In the midst of this mounting trouble, Father Scarpato arrived from Mount Vesuvius with problems of his own that needed Luciano’s help. As his clinic neared completion, there was need for a great deal more capital to buy all the necessary technical equipment. The priest had discovered a possible way to get that money. He had made some inquiries and learned that a municipal law permitted the importation and use of slot machines for charitable purposes. What could be more charitable, he asked, than helping to complete and equip his new hospital? Indeed, he had learned that Naples authorities would grant him an import license if the machines were used solely for that purpose.

Luciano was horrified. “I told him that he was just askin’ for trouble. I pointed out that guy Montoni who had been fightin’ with him for years had been made a judge because the Communist Party put a lotta pressure on to get him the job. If Don Cheech got himself mixed up with slot machines, Montoni would probably try to come down on him like a ton of bricks. But he gave me a good argument. He said that with me bein’ sick and with money bein’ so short, there was no other way to raise the dough to get the hospital open. So I finally said okay, that I would arrange for him to get money to bring in the slots, and for him to go and get his licenses for the import and the right to run ’em as a benefit for the church and the hospital, like they do in the States with bingo games. I arranged for a whole bunch of slot machines to be
trucked down from Germany and over to Mount Vesuvius and he stored ’em in the basement of his church, all crated up just the way they was delivered. How the hell did I know that he was gonna be insane enough to put them slots into the bars and nightclubs and stores all over the slope of Vesuvius, figurin’ the license would permit that, and he’d make a quick killin’ to get the hospital opened right away?”

After Luciano’s death, Father Scarpato was arrested for operating the slot machines illegally and sentenced to a prison term by his old enemy, Judge Ivan Montoni. The people of his parish held public demonstrations in his behalf and the Vatican eventually intervened. After six months, he was released and permitted to return to his parish. But during his incarceration, his clinic was declared bankrupt and was seized by creditors who would later operate it without his assistance. And upon his return, Don Cheech discovered that vandals had destroyed his home and desecrated his church.

Early in December, Luciano suffered severe heart failure. For a few minutes, he was sure he was going to die, the attack catching him at the base of the throat and blocking his ability to breathe. He was rushed to the hospital, where it was discovered that the attack, though nearly fatal, had not been a coronary and had done no further damage to his heart. Within a week, he was home. But almost overnight, it seemed, he had aged. His once-black hair was almost completely gray. He stooped a little when he walked, and behind his steel-rimmed glasses his face was deeply lined and almost benign. He looked like a retired clerk or schoolteacher, and he looked his age, sixty-four.

He had not been home long before he received two visitors from New York, Henry and Theresa Rubino. Luciano had known Rubino for some years, as a member of the Genovese outfit back in New York and as an occasional courier to Naples. He was, too, often involved in deals with Mauro and Caruso. In 1957, Rubino had approached Luciano with a narcotics proposition and had been abruptly spurned. Nevertheless, he had kept up his contacts with the exiled racketeer whenever he was in Italy. In the late fall of 1961, Rubino and his wife arrived in Rome again and
telephoned Luciano at his Naples apartment, using the private number reserved strictly for friends. Luciano ordered him not to use it again. But Rubino explained that he and Theresa were in Europe only for a vacation, not for business, and they would like to pay Luciano a visit. Christmas was approaching and they had no other friends with whom to spend the holidays. After some hesitation, Luciano invited the Rubinos to accompany him and Adriana to Taormina.

On New Year’s Eve, Luciano and Adriana gave a small party at La Giarra nightclub in Taormina and were joined by the Rubinos, Vitaliti and the club’s owner, Francesco Scimone and his wife. As Adriana remembers that party, “It was a pleasant, quiet evening to see the New Year in. The only bad thing was when I overheard Rubino trying to persuade Charlie not to retire. He wanted him to keep on with his plans. But I heard Charlie tell Rubino that he was too old and didn’t want to fight any more. I leaned over and I said to this Henry, ‘Please leave my Charlie alone.’ Chinky heard it, too, and he told Rubino to shut his mouth.”

The next morning, Luciano told Vitaliti that he had a feeling Mauro and Caruso had not jumped bail in New York just to stay out of jail. His instinct told him that it was part of Genovese’s vendetta. He had mentioned Mauro and Caruso to Rubino, he said; Rubino had flushed and denied instantly any knowledge of their activities or whereabouts. “It don’t add up,” Luciano said. “We better be careful.”

After the holidays, Luciano and Adriana returned to Naples while the Rubinos went on to Rome. On January 17, Pat Eboli arrived. It was a sorrowful Eboli this time; he had come as a friend and not as a courier, though he had messages from New York. Luciano, he said, had been the subject of council discussions and the feeling was that he had become a danger to the organization he had founded. He was no longer considered trustworthy and there was a strong belief that as long as he lived, nobody was safe. Luciano’s execution, Eboli told him, was imminent.

There was a finality to Eboli’s statement. But then he added that during the council meeting, there had been considerable discussion of the motion picture about Luciano’s life. Eboli suggested that if Luciano could obtain the original copy of the script, which
he had signed and approved, and send it back to New York, it might serve as a sign of goodwill on Luciano’s part and might save his life. As long as that signed script was in existence, the council’s theory went, there was a danger that the movie might yet be made.

Luciano agreed. Knowing that Gosch had the original script, he placed a call to Madrid on Wednesday evening, January 24, to ask Gosch to bring the script to Naples immediately.

It is one of the ironic coincidences of these final days that only a few days earlier, Gosch had written to Luciano to sound him out about reconsidering the decision to back out of the film. Cameron Mitchell, the actor, had been a visitor in Gosch’s home shortly before. He had recently arrived in Spain from Naples, where he had met Luciano and had come away with a determination to portray him on the screen.

“This accidental meeting with Cam Mitchell,” Gosch wrote, “now brings us back to life again — if you give the word. If you give me the word that circumstances are such that we can go forward, I will come to Rome to meet with you. It is entirely up to you and I would appreciate your writing to me at once with the answer. I know how you hate to put a pencil to paper, but please, Charlie, take an extra pill and write to me as soon as you receive this.”

When Gosch had not received a reply after five days, he picked up the phone in his home in Madrid to call Luciano in Naples. The two calls crossed. For the first several minutes, neither Luciano nor Gosch could hear each other — their conversation, though they did not know it, was being monitored at both ends, by the Guardia di Finanza in Naples and the Brigada Criminal in Madrid.

Finally, with both men shouting, their voices became intelligible. “Marty,” Luciano said, “could you come here?”

Hearing those words — the same words that had brought him from London to Naples nearly a year before — Gosch realized that Luciano was calling him. “Why, Charlie?” he shouted. “What’s wrong?”

Luciano ignored the questions. “Could you come here and bring the script?”

“Why in the world do you want the script?”

Luciano was insistent. “If you can’t come here, I’ll send somebody around to your house to pick it up.”

Luciano’s tone was hard, almost menacing to Gosch, the first time in their relationship that the producer had felt even an implied threat. “Don’t bother, Charlie,” he said quickly. “I’ll come to Italy. Besides, there’s something I want to talk to you about anyway.”

“Okay, that’s good. When are you gonna come?”

“I’ll see if I can get a flight tomorrow. I’ll send you a cablegram tonight.”

Gosch checked the airline schedules and found that he could make a flight from Madrid via Iberia to Rome that connected with an interior Alitalia flight to Naples, so he sent Luciano an overnight cable giving him the flight information, adding, “Bringing script.”

What Gosch did not know was that the flight schedules had been revised by Iberia and the Thursday flight to Rome now departed on Friday. As soon as he discovered this, he sent a second cable to Luciano advising of the twenty-four-hour delay.

But that initial cable had been intercepted in Naples by the police, and it set off the final scenes in Luciano’s life. Luciano was under closer surveillance than ever before. The telephone conversation with Gosch had been monitored, and it was thought to have hidden meanings; the words “bringing script” in the cable were assumed to be a code involving narcotics. The separate strands of Luciano’s life and works were merging at the end.

Over the years, Luciano had given explicit instructions to all his associates, from the United States and in Italy, that no business calls of any nature were ever to be made to his home. Taps on his phones had always disappointed listeners, for his orders had always
been obeyed and the calls into and out of the apartment were invariably innocent, innocuous and personal.

But in January 1962, after his return from Taormina, those orders were ignored, and ignored repeatedly. Rubino called several times from his hotel in Rome and argued openly about Luciano’s decision to retire. Despite heated injunctions from Luciano not to call again, Rubino persisted. Luciano became convinced that behind Rubino’s open disobedience lay Genovese’s plan to ensnare him in a narcotics conspiracy.