The Mob and the City (31 page)

Such were the lives of wiseguys.

I kept thinking of the mess I was in, and I couldn't help longing for the days when I was just a kid mouthpiece, making lots of money as a shyster in the magistrate's court.

—Mob lawyer J. Richard “Dixie” Davis (1939)

I have in mind that I was originally advised by Rosen that the Mafia or anything like it in character never existed in this country. I have been plagued ever since for having denied its existence.

—FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover (1970)

On the evening of Saturday, December 7, 1929, the Tepecanoe Democratic Club was throwing a dinner in honor of Magistrate Judge Albert H. Vitale at the Roman Gardens restaurant in the Bronx. Al Vitale had been a party hack before being appointed to the city magistrates’ court, which gave him jurisdiction over criminal proceedings. The fifty guests included not only an NYPD detective, criminal defense lawyers, and bail bondsmen, but also
mafiosi
Daniel Iamascia, Joseph “Joe the Baker” Catania, and his brother James Catania. It was just another evening among cronies in the Tammany Hall legal machine.
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Except on that night,
other
gangsters decided to crash the party. At 1:30 a.m., seven gunmen marched into the dining room and relieved the fifty guests of $5,000 in cash and jewelry.
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When news of the robbery—and Judge Vitale's sordid guests—hit the papers, the media frenzy forced a bar association inquiry
into his links to gangsters. Vitale acknowledged being acquainted with Ciro “The Artichoke King” Terranova, whom he “regarded as a successful business man.” He also admitted receiving a $19,000 “loan” from none other than Arnold Rothstein (over $250,000 in 2013 dollars). In all, Vitale made $165,000 during his four years on the bench (over $2.3 million in 2013 dollars), which he attributed to “fortunate investments.”
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Following a trial on judicial misconduct charges, on March 13, 1930, the State Appellate Division removed Vitale from the bench. Yet Vitale thrived in his career as a private lawyer. During a federal trial in 1931, a witness testified that a gangster had bragged, “Vitale is my friend and can reach any judge in New York, even though he is not on the bench.”
⁴

The Mafia families maintained their power by neutralizing law enforcement in New York. They started with payoffs to crooked cops and judges. When that did not work, mobsters turned to criminal defense lawyers, the so-called mouthpieces for the mob. The Cosa Nostra also flourished because the Federal Bureau of Investigation was on the sidelines during the mob's ascent. A recently discovered handwritten note by J. Edgar Hoover, along with accounts by FBI agents, may finally explain Hoover's position on the Mafia.

CROOKED COPS

As we have seen, the Mafia's first line of defense was corrupt cops. Not every cop was dishonest. But before the Mafia even existed, from the 1890s Lexow Committee hearings to the 1972 Knapp Commission report on police corruption, there was a tradition of bribe taking and extortion by the NYPD.
⁵
The Cosa Nostra attained quasi-immunity from local police. “Wiseguys like Paulie [Vario] have been paying off the cops for so many years they have probably sent more cops’ kids to college than anyone else,” explained Lucchese family associate Henry Hill.
⁶
When narcotics detective Robert Leuci tried to investigate Al “Sonny Red” Indelicato's crew, Leuci's sergeant came by with an ex-federal narcotics agents to warn: “These [Indelicatos] are good people, they've done the right thing before…. You better think about what you're doing.”
⁷

Wiseguys were so entrenched in Gotham that even honest police were largely resigned to them. “During his police career, my father had known his share of mobsters. With his Bronx squad commanded pals, he often went to Joe Cago's [Joe Valachi's] Lido restaurant,” recalled the son of an honest Irish cop. Absent a murder charge, or case requiring inside information, “even honest cops, for the most part, looked the other way.”
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When NYPD detective Frank Serpico tried to break up a numbers shop, a Genovese Family
caporegime
intervened: “What kind of guy are you? There're other honest cops, but at least they honor the contracts,” said the goodfella.
⁹

CORRUPTION IN THE COURTHOUSES

Even good cases against mobsters could die behind the scenes. In Chicago and Atlantic City, Al Capone and Enoch “Nucky” Johnson built ties to Republican political machines. In New York, the mob's links to labor unions and the Tammany Hall Democratic machine had a strong, if subtle influence on judges and the District Attorney's Office.
Mafiosi
Vince Mangano and Joe Bonanno had “political clubs” for a reason. “To be behind bars means one thing in his underworld society: You're in because you're stupid and you don't have any influence,” recounted James Horan, an investigator for prosecutors Thomas E. Dewey and Frank Hogan.
¹⁰
“In those days we were practically immune from prosecution,” confirms Henry Hill. “See, the local politicians needed the rank and file of our unions…[and] we hardly had to worry about the courts, since Paulie [Vario] made judges.”
¹¹

The Kings County (Brooklyn) courthouse in South Brooklyn was especially compromised by organized crime. In the 1940s, state special prosecutor John Harlan Amen obtained the removal of a Brooklyn magistrate judge for bribery, and the forced resignation of the District Attorney William Geoghan. (Geoghan's replacement William Dwyer himself fell under suspicion for failing to convict Albert Anastasia).
¹²
The Brooklyn courthouse's corruption continued through the 1960s. “Deals were made, cases sold—that courthouse was a marketplace, not a hall of justice,” said undercover detective Robert Leuci. “A defendant with money had a better than fifty-fifty chance of buying his way out
of any kind of case.”
¹³
Leuci built corruption cases for the United States attorney, including a bribery conviction of Edmund Rosner, a prominent defense attorney caught on tape paying cash for secret court documents.
¹⁴