The Valachi Papers (30 page)

Now Genovese discovered that Anastasia was secretly meeting with Costello. Valachi says the two racketeers had worked out a code for each rendezvous. Various hotels were assigned numbers. When they wanted to get together, the number of a particular hotel was relayed, along with the digits of the room.

Apprized of this, Genovese contacted an ambitious Anastasia lieutenant, Carlo Gambino, and convinced him that they would both benefit from Anastasia's death. "Without Vito backing him," says Valachi, "Carlo never would have went for it. But he had a good excuse after Albert broke his promise to Joe Scalice, as it made all the fellows look bad who told Joe it was okay to come in. Besides, Albert was losing heavy at the track, he was there every day, and he was abusing people worse than ever on account of that."

Gambino, according to Valachi, took one of his trusted sidekicks, Joseph (Joe Bandy) Biondo, into the conspiracy. And on October 25, 1957, while Anastasia was relaxing under a pile of hot towels in the barbershop of the Park-Sheraton Hotel in Manhattan, his bodyguard conveniently off on an errand, two gunmen walked in, drew pistols, and riddled him with bullets. Thus, with his flanks neatly covered, Genovese could sit back and watch benevolently as Gambino assumed Anastasia's place as a Cosa Nostra boss with Biondo as the Family's new second-in-command.

(The Justice Department had already been given pieces of this story from none other than Tony Anastasio, who, despite the slight difference in spelling, was a brother of the dead boss. Anastasia had put Tony, nominally a Cosa Nostra soldier, in charge of the huge Local 1814 of the International Longshoremen's Association. As a result, Tony was used to having his own way on die

Brooklyn waterfront. Then, with Gambino in the saddle, he abrupdy found himself reduced to figurehead status. The pain of his demotion loosened Tony's tongue, but before he could be fully developed as an informant, he died, of natural causes, in 1963.)

Anastasia's murder created a sensation in the press. But in the avalanche of theories about it that followed, no one in the Cosa Nostra was under any illusion about who was behind it. And it touched raw nerves everywhere. What was Vito Genovese up to? More to the point, when and where was he going to stop? All in all, 1957 had not been a vintage year for the brotherhood. It was going to be even less so before it was over.

On November 14,
three weeks after Albert Anastasia was laid to rest, the greatest Cosa Nostra conclave in history took place in a country house in die upstate New York hamlet of Apalachin. There had been other gatherings before, but nowhere near as big. Normally a meeting like this would not have entailed such an influx of mobsters—with more than 100 in attendance— but because of the unsettling atmosphere in which it was being held, each boss, wary about his own future, brought along a retinue of bodyguards.

Aldiough the Justice Department had begun to put together a mosaic of what this now famous underworld summit conference was all about, not until Valachi talked was a complete picture available. It was called together by Genovese. That so many chieftains came on such short notice was in itself an impressive demonstration of his authority.

Originally, Valachi says, Genovese wanted to have everyone convene in Chicago, which offered both a central location, since this was a national meeting, and the usual protective coloring of a big city. But Stefano Magaddino, the Buffalo boss, had a better idea. Why not the Apalachin home of one of his lieutenants, an old Castellammarese named Joseph Barbara? The rural setting, he argued, would be ideal to escape sophisticated metropolitan police surveillance, the peaceful country air ideal for soothing frayed feelings. Genovese finally acceded. Barbara, informed of his hostly duties, sent his son out to make hotel and motel reservations in the surrounding area and then placed a rush order for prime steaks from the local Armour Company meat outlet in die nearby city of Binghamton. But the cut and quality specified by Barbara were unavailable in Binghamton, with its population of 80,000, and a special shipment of the desired steaks had to be trucked in from the Armour plant in Chicago.*

The first order of business was to have the ruling council anoint Genovese as a Family boss. This was really going through the motions; since he had become so powerful, nobody was going to dispute him at this stage, but still a certain formality had to be observed to maintain the Cosa Nostra's intricate, if fragile, organizational structure.

Then Genovese had to deal with the charge that he had violated
Commissione
rules in the attempted assassination of Costello. His pitch was the same as before. Costello was planning, with the connivance of Anastasia, to do him in. Nobody was actu-

^:
The Cosa Nostra, if nothing else, likes to eat well. Recently I noticed a number of its members in a Manhattan restaurant where none had been in evidence before. When I mentioned this to the owner, he said, "Oh, I've got a new chef they like. He came out of retirement, and they all showed up. I had a really big party the other night." Curious about what dishes were preferred, I asked, and was told, "They just said to tell him they were here and to keep the food coming, and they would let him know when they had enough." The restaurateur was delighted with his new, well-behaved clientele. There was none of the bother of charge accounts favored by his chic trade: he was paid in crisp $100 bills.

ally prepared to believe this, but Genovese had a much more convincing brief, since the deed was now past history, that Costello's emphasis on his own enterprises, as opposed to general Family well-being, would inevitably destroy the Cosa Nostra as such and that something had to be done about it.

Genovese also wanted the blessing of his fellow chieftains for the murder of Anastasia. Again nobody really cared about the passing of the kill-crazy boss, but they were concerned about the indiscriminate killing of bosses, and they desired to hear personally, and on the record, from Genovese that there would be no more of this.

Next was the accusation that Anastasia shared with Frank Scalice in the proceeds from the sale of Cosa Nostra memberships and that the Scalice execution was simply a cover-up once word got out about what was going on.

This brought up two proposals for which a meeting would have been called in any event. One was to remove from membership, under the threat of immethate death if they ever talked, all new soldiers who had demonstrated their unworthiness. According to Valachi, they were to be declared "useless and unfit." A count of inept executions had been kept since the membership books were opened. "There were," he says, "twenty-seven contracts that ended in complete misses, slight wounds, and bodies being left around in the street." The other decision up for discussion was to stabilize the status quo of the various Families, thus heading off more trouble, by closing the books.

Finally, on the agenda, was what to do about the Bureau of Narcotics. There was some sentiment for murdering known agents. But the prevailing mood was to outlaw drug traffic for all Families, with death the penalty for disobedience; while realistically it would have much the same effect on some elements in the Cosa Nostra as Prohibition had for the nation, it was considered worth trying as a deterrent.

All of this was supposed to be hashed over at Apalachin. None of it, of course, was. As has been amply reported, far from being the ideal spot for such a conference, it proved to be just the opposite. An alert New York state trooper, Sergeant Edgar D. Crosswell, had noted the arrival in die neighborhood of an unusual number of black limousines full of suspicious passengers. Shortly after noon on November 14, he tracked them to the Barbara home, where the visiting underworld royalty had barely had time for brief, informal exchanges before stepping outside in the pleasant weather to the big barbecue pit and the steaks that would be consumed before getting down to work. Sergeant Crosswell, with initially only three men to help him, decided to set up a roadblock to see what would happen, and the Cosa Nostra panicked.

There are between twenty-five and thirty Cosa Nostra Families of varying sizes, with an estimated membership of 5,000 men, covering every section of the United States. The number of Families is inexact because of the difficulty in establishing the precise independence of smaller ones, which may have only 20 or 30 members. They all were represented, directly or indirectly, at Apalachin. When a Barbara underling burst in with the news of the roadblock minutes after it had been put up, some of those in attendance, among them Genovese, decided to try to brazen their way out by car. They were promptly stopped, taken in for questioning, and searched. Others, however, took to die woods in flight. Some of them, their silk suits a bit worse for wear after scampering through the brambles, were also picked up as state police reinforcements arrived. But many got away.

In all, sixty delegates to Apalachin were netted by Crosswell and his men. They were an affluent group; the cash they had widi them amounted to more than $300,000. The Justice Department believes that at least fifty of them escaped. A number of those apprehended were tried on a charge of conspiring to obstruct justice by refusing to explain their presence at Apalachin; they were found guilty, fined, and sentenced, but this was reversed in appeal on the ground that merely meeting as they had did not in itself constitute a crime.

(Almost to a man, they explained they were visiting Barbara to cheer him up because he had a bad heart condition. All other queries brought quick invocation of the Fifth Amendment against self-incrimination. There was one notable exception to this. Apalachin was especially embarrassing to John C. Montana, a lieutenant in the Magaddino Family and one of those nabbed while roaming around the countryside. In 1956 Montana, who had a virtual monopoly over the Buffalo taxicab business, was named Man of the Year by the Erie Club, the official social organization of the Buffalo Police Department. So instead of taking the Fifth, Montana's story was that he was driving to New York City when his brakes failed, and he went to Barbara's house to see if he could get them fixed. After Apalachin, according to Valachi, "lie asked his boys to stay away from him as they were making him hot." But when Magaddino heard about this, Montana was finished as a lieutenant. "If you ain't got time for your soldiers," Valachi quotes Magaddino as saying, "step down!")

At die time there were observers who bought die idea that it was all just a friendly get-together of old friends widi some fancy police records. Even before Valachi, this seems incredible. It certainly made the hitherto-obscure Barbara one of the most popular figures of the day. Distance seemed to be no object. All die way from Southern California came Frank DeSimone, the Los Angeles Cosa Nostra boss. One can't be sure if Barbara enjoyed the company of San Francisco boss James Lanza; Lanza was not arrested at Apalachin, but he was registered the night before in a hotel fifty miles away. While little more than half the delegates were rounded up, they included James Civello, the Dallas boss, and on hand, representing as unlikely a territory as Colorado, was James Collctti. At Apalachin from the South one found Louis Trafficante, Jr., the Florida boss and the overlord of Cosa Nostra gambling interests in pre-Castro Cuba. Among the few from the Midwest who failed to escape was Frank Zito, a Cosa Nostra power in downstate Illinois. The Detroit Cosa Nostra, headed by Joseph Zerilli, was not in evidence, but no matter; it was well represented by Brooklyn boss Joseph Profaci, whose two daughters had married high in the Zerilli organization. Another Brooklyn boss, Joseph Bonanno, who had a thriving secondary operation in Arizona, was also collared; besides Genovese, so was Cleveland boss John Scalish and then Philadelphia boss Joseph Ida. Chicago boss Sam Giancana was believed to have fled successfully through the timberland.

In the world of the Cosa Nostra, which sets such high store on dignity and respect, the sheer humiliation of it all was the worst part. Til tell you the reaction of all us soldiers when we heard about the raid," Valachi said. "If soldiers got arrested in a meet like that, you can imagine what the bosses would have done. There they are, running through the woods like rabbits, throwing away money so they won't be caught with a lot of cash, and some of them throwing away guns. So who are they kidding when they say we got to respect them?"

The Justice Department's
Organized Crime and Racketeering Section learned that a series of smaller gatherings were subsequently held around the country to put through the Apalachin agenda, including the confirmation of Carlo Gambino as Anastasia's successor. It was all for naught, however, as far as Vito Genovese was concerned. Within a year, as Cosa Nostra jaws dropped, he was indicted, convicted, and sentenced to fifteen years, which he is currently serving, in a narcotics conspiracy case, the first boss since Luciano to be put away.

If 1957 was bad
for the Cosa Nostra, it was worse for Valachi. About the only bright spot in his life that year was the reversal of his narcotics conviction. But even this symbolized his woes.

As early as 1954, Tony Bender had told him that the Narcotics Bureau was pressuring the New York State Liquor Authority to revoke the Lido's license, which was still in the name of Frank Luciano's son. Valachi says that Bender had a "connection" which enabled him to block this until a major shake-up in the authority changed everything. Young Luciano was summoned for a hearing, and the Lido's license was revoked because of "undisclosed ownership." Confident that he would not be convicted on the narcotics charge, Valachi kept the Lido open as a pizza parlor and put all his available cash into the construction of another restaurant in Yonkers. Then, when he was convicted, he had to give up the new project and sell the Lido—"Without the license," he recalls bitterly, "it wasn't worth nothing" — in order to finance his appeal.

He had already milked his loanshark operation to launch the Yonkers restaurant. "I figured," he says, "that I would just concentrate on it and stay away from the mob." Then Matty, his partner in the dress factory, died, and another dependable source of income went by the boards. Any idea of acquiring a new partner disappeared when Valachi discovered that Matty had not been paying their employee widiholding taxes, and all the machinery had to be sold at auction to satisfy a government lien. "I was lucky," he told me, "there wasn't a piece of paper around with my name on it. They call us racketeers, and look what a legitimate guy like Matty was doing."