King of the Godfathers Read online

  Because a substantial number of Italian immigrants settled in Brooklyn, the borough attracted its share of new arrivals—a trend that continued late into the twentieth century. When World War I ended, one Italian man became the top Mafia figure and lorded over an enterprise of young criminals who he ruled with an iron fist. Joe Masseria was known in the underworld as Joe the Boss. A fat, short man, Masseria was known for his prodigious appetite for food and drink. Dinner with Joe the Boss saw his underlings try in vain to keep up with his devouring of plates of pasta and meats, washed down with Chianti.

  Old mug shots show Masseria with a fat, round face and small piglike eyes. He was one of the “Moustache Petes,” though he was clean shaven, the derisive name given to the old-timers who rose to the upper levels of Italian organized crime and were known for keeping with their Old World mentality. A peasant in manners—Masseria was said to have spewed food as he talked with animation over dinner—he had a retinue of young, ambitious mob toughs who ensured that his orders would be followed. Their names should be very familiar. Among them was Al Capone, Salvatore Lucania, better known as Charles “Lucky” Luciano, Vito Genovese, and Frank Costello (Francesco Castiglia), men who in their own right became major Mafia leaders and legends of their time. Masseria recruited men like Luciano, Genovese, and the others to beef up the ranks of a Mafia organization that was actually run by Ignazia “Lupo” Saietta. Known as a sadistic Sicilian, Lupo emigrated from Sicily to avoid a murder prosecution, and as a Mafia member he took over the Unione Siciliane, a sort of fraternal organization and mutual-aid society of Italian immigrants.

  In 1910, Lupo was sentenced to thirty years in prison and Masseria was essentially the boss of the American Mafia in his absence. He consolidated his power and saw to it that fellow Sicilian immigrants had key positions of power under him as a way of ensuring fealty and obedience. It was after building an organization that owed its loyalty to him that Masseria is reported to have made a bold political maneuver that removed Lupo from the picture—without a shot being fired. According to Tony Sciacca in the book Luciano: The Man Who Modernized the American Mafia, Masseria convinced Lupo that even if he were to be paroled on the counterfeiting charge that he risked being arrested again for a parole violation.

  “Joe the Boss would run the American Mafia, with Lupo as an unofficial advisor, immune from reimprisonment by remaining in the shadows,” Sciacca states. “The legend in Little Italy has it that Lupo agreed to accept retirement.”

  Through the intercession of Harry Daugherty, the U.S. attorney general, Lupo was paroled in 1921 by President Warren G. Harding. Free from a prison cell, Lupo came to Little Italy, kissed Masseria on the cheeks, and then left for a year’s sabbatical to Sicily. He was never a factor again in the American Mafia.

  With the help of Luciano, Genovese, and others, Masseria became the undisputed boss of the Mafia in the United States. Under his leadership, the organization developed its own corner of the drug trade, bringing opium into New York City, bootlegging, and protection rackets in the Italian community. But it was not enough.

  The Italian immigrants were not all alike in that they brought with them to America old clannish ways and prejudices. A Sicilian might hold secret resentment of the Neapolitan and vice versa. Among the Sicilians, of which Masseria was one, suspicions developed as well. Some of those aligned with Masseria traced their origins to the area around the town of Castellammare del Golfo in western Sicily. This was not the area where Masseria traced his roots, and the various Castellammarese who took up residence in Brooklyn viewed another charismatic Sicilian named Salvatore Maranzano as their leader. Tall, lean, and sporting a thin moustache, Maranzano was the physical opposite of Masseria. He seemed like a banker, in sharp contrast to the short, burly, and voracious Masseria. Maranzano, who was something of an intellectual among the immigrants, kept in his apartment volumes about the Roman Empire under Julius Caesar, including his battle tactics.

  Many of the Castellammarese who settled in Brooklyn did so in the area around Roebling and Havermeyer streets, near Metropolitan Avenue. It is a part of Brooklyn known as Willliamburg and it was in this area, close to the waterfront, that Maranzano held court with fellow Sicilians. Among them were many who would come to hold their own place in the genealogy of the Mafia: Thomas Lucchese, Joseph Profaci, Stefano Magliocco, and Stefano Magaddino, a mafioso from Buffalo. There was also a young, handsome Castellammarese who at the age of nineteen had arrived in New York in 1924 after taking a circuitous smuggling route that led from Sicily, Tunisia, Marseille, Paris, Cuba, and then by a small motorboat to Tampa, Florida. He had fled Sicily at a time when the government was trying to crack down on the Mafia. His name was Joseph Bonanno.

  Living with relatives in Brooklyn, Bonanno passed up opportunities to toil in the decent obscurity of lawful occupations and instead saw his destiny in the world of crime. It was of course a calculated choice of Bonanno’s to seek his fortune in ways the vast majority of his fellow immigrants shunned. In his classic biography of Bonanno, Honor Thy Father, author Gay Talese says Bonanno sought respect and saw himself as a leader of men. He was prepared to do what he needed to pursue his goals.

  “He did believe that the ruling classes of America as in Sicily had great respect for two things—power and money—and he was determined to get both one way or the other,” Talese states. “So in his first year in Brooklyn, Bonanno affiliated himself with the neighborhood Mafiosi, who were obviously doing well; they were driving new cars and wearing finer clothes than their humble countrymen who got up each day at dawn to toil in factories or work in construction gangs.”

  Aligned with Maranzano, Bonanno made a name for himself in the rackets of the time. There was bootlegging, gambling, and smuggling of weapons. The Brooklyn Italian lottery was also controlled by Bonanno, and it was his organizational ability, as well as his polished, diplomatic manner that earned him respect. Wise enough not to squander his earnings, Bonanno invested in other legitimate businesses such as garment factories, cheese producers, and even a funeral parlor.

  Success of Castellammarese men like Bonanno served to make Masseria suspicious of the growing strength of Maranzano and his followers. Historians of the Mafia are unanimous in saying that Masseria, concerned about the independence being shown by Maranzano and his men, planned to strike against them to eliminate their rivalry. Larger tribute payments were demanded by Masseria. These were rebuffed by Maranzano’s allies and Masseria knew by 1930 that he had to annihilate the competition.

  But just as he was preparing to go to war against the Castellammarese, Masseria’s hunger for money and power led him to make a big tactical mistake. Masseria attempted to extort the ice-making business of one of his own crime captains, Gaetano Reina. When Reina resisted, Masseria had him killed in February 1930, just as the ice merchant was leaving a building on Sheridan Avenue in the Bronx. The killing of Reina prompted his gang members to ally with Maranzano and a period of Mafia assassinations and gunfights known as the Castellammarese War broke out in New York. It was a time of bloodshed that would ultimately go a long way to shaping the modern Mafia in the United States.

  The killings went on for over a year as Masseria struck against the bootlegging businesses of the Maranzano crowd. With allies like Thomas Lucchese, Carlo Gambino, Vito Genovese, and of course, Lucky Luciano, Masseria seemed in a stronger position. But Maranzano had important alliances as well, including the help of a young mob associate known as Joseph Valachi, who would eventually marry the daughter of the assassinated Reina. There was intense mob bloodshed in the war, with some estimates saying over fifty men died on both sides. Whatever the body count, the war proved bad for business and the costs were troubling Luciano and Genovese. They reached out to Maranzano in an effort to stop the fighting.

  In return for setting up Masseria for the kill, Maranzano agreed with Luciano and Genovese that the war would stop and that they would be safe. Masseria had escaped death a number of times, so he would not be an easy tar
get. It was Luciano who rose to the task of setting the old man up for the kill. What happened next was reminiscent of a scene right out of The Godfather. Convincing Masseria that it was safe to have dinner outside of his Manhattan apartment, Luciano accompanied his boss on the afternoon of April 15, 1931, to Coney Island. The restaurant was a well-known Italian eatery run by Geraldo Scarpato. Masseria’s prodigious appetite was on display as he consumed plates of pasta and drank Chianti. After lunch Luciano convinced Masseria to play some cards and then excused himself to go the bathroom.

  With Luciano out of the room, several armed men suddenly arrived outside Scarpato’s at around 3:30 P.M. in a car driven by Ciro Terranova, the mafioso known as the “Artichoke King” because of the way he extorted the myriad pushcart peddlers in East Harlem. With Terranova remaining behind the wheel, a handful of gangsters—no one is certain just who took part—entered the restaurant and blasted away at Masseria, who died as soon as he hit the floor. When police arrived, Luciano told them he had been in the bathroom, a fact corroborated by the restaurant staff. Apart from a commotion when the shooting started, Luciano said he saw and heard nothing.

  With Masseria out of the picture, Maranzano moved quickly to consolidate his power and bring the other mobsters under his control. It was at a meeting in a Bronx social hall that Maranzano threw a big dinner attended by hundreds of Mafia members and associates. It was an event that for all practical purposes marked the formal organization of Italian organized crime in the United States as it would be known for decades. Though powerful mobsters like Capone in Chicago and Luciano were said to be against the idea of a big boss lording over the crime families, Maranzano pushed the idea of himself being anointed the Caesar of organized crime. According to the recollection of mob turncoat Joseph Valachi, Maranazano spelled out an organization of criminals that was modeled on the legions of ancient Rome.

  “Mr. Maranzano started off the meeting by explaining how Joe the Boss was always shaking down members, right and left,” Valachi said in his memoirs, the Valachi Papers, which were written by Peter Maas. “He told how he had sentenced all the Castellammarese to death without cause.”

  “He was speaking in Italian,” Valachi recalled, “and he said, ‘Now it is going to be different.’ In the new setup he was going to be the Capo di tutti Capi, meaning the ‘Boss of All Bosses.’ He said that from here on we were going to be divided up into new Families. Each Family would have a boss and an underboss.”

  Beneath the top echelon of bosses were to be lieutenants or capodecini under which were the regular members or soldiers. Instilling a military-style structure to the crime families, Maranzano set up a chain of command that required soldiers to talk about problems with their lieutenant who might then go higher up the chain to the underboss or boss.

  Surrounded by a large crucifix and religious pictures, Maranzano talked continuously to the multitude of gangsters about the code of conduct that mafiosi must live by. The Mafia came before everything, and its members who violated the secrecy of the organization and talked to outsiders about its business would be killed, Maranzano said.

  As a result of the Bronx meeting, bosses for five Mafia families emerged with Maranzano’s blessing. They were Luciano, Thomas Gagliano, Joseph Profaci, Vincent Mangano, and Frank Scalise. By his own account, Joseph Bonanno was part of Maranzano’s family and was an aide-de-camp to the crime boss. But while Luciano and the others should have felt comfortable with the power they now had and the relative peace in their world, they saw Maranzano as a power-hungry despot who threatened their rackets. Maranzano proceeded to shake down other mobsters under the guise of requiring them to buy tickets for banquets in his honor, affairs that netted him more than $100,000, a princely sum in 1931. Luciano in particular thought that the rule of a supreme boss lording over the crime families was an anachronism. Maranzano had turned out to be as much of a destructive force as Masseria had been. If Valachi was accurate in his recollection, Maranzano saw Luciano, Capone, and Genovese as threats and wanted them killed.

  Maranzano’s plan was to summon Luciano and Genovese to his office at 230 Park Avenue for a meeting and then have an Irish gangster by the name of Vincent Coll kill the both of them. But in a classic double cross, one of Maranzano’s associates tipped off the intended victims. Luciano then moved quickly and turned to his Jewish cronies from the East Side of Manhattan to set up a counterattack to take place the day of the meeting. Meyer Lansky, who would become the fabled financial wizard of the mob, hired four other Jewish gangsters who dressed as policemen, and on September 10, 1931, they confronted Maranzano in his Park Avenue office. The crime boss had been expecting Luciano and Genovese, but when two of the fake cops said they wanted to talk business, Maranzano went with them into an inner office. Using knives and guns, the assailants killed Maranzano.

  Mob folklore has it that the day Maranzano died there was an orgy of blood in which as many as sixty of Maranzano’s men in New York and other cities died. Even Bonanno subscribed to the story in his autobiography. The murders became known as the Night of the Sicilian Vespers and while that label has a certain grandiose ring harkening back to Sicilian history, the factual basis for the bloody legend appears way more modest. One historian checked police records in thirteen major cities for the days around the killing of Maranzano and found no indication of a large Mafia bloodbath—only three other mob homicides. Those three victims were Maranzano associates who author Peter Mass, in his book The Valachi Papers, identifies through police records as James LePore, Samuel Monaco, and Louis Russo. LePore was shot dead at an Arthur Avenue barber shop in the Bronx the same day as Maranzano, while the bodies of Monaco and Russo were pulled out of Newark Bay in New Jersey on September 13, 1931, three days after the Maranzano assassination.

  With Maranzano out of the picture, Luciano was the top mobster in New York City, but unlike his now deceased rival he was smart enough to realize that the old ways of having one big boss were outmoded and unworkable. There was too much money to be made in the rackets and everybody could have a cut, if only they worked together. Bonanno, who had been part of Maranzano’s inner circle, was the strongest man in his particular crime family and was elected the new boss by acclamation.

  “I had the choice of rejecting Luciano’s olive branch or of accepting it in good faith. If told to fight, the men in my Family would have fought,” Bonanno later said. “But what good would it have done to fight Luciano? He had claimed self-defense in the killing of Maranzano. Now he mainly wanted to be left alone to run his enterprises. He was not trying to impose himself on us as had Masseria. Lucky demanded nothing from us.”

  At first, Luciano wanted to carve up territory in the garment district with Bonanno, a move that the latter rejected. According to Bonanno’s son, Salvatore or “Bill,” who later wrote his own book Bound by Honor, his father and Luciano worked out a system of consensus and settlement of disputes that involved a so-called Commizioni del Pace, or Committee of Peace. This later became known as the Commission, the governing body of the mob.

  The idea was for the five Mafia families to have a representative on the Commission and eventually over time this encompassed the heads of the families. Bill Bonanno, who anointed his father with the grandiose title “Angel of Peace” because of the way he brokered the idea of a commission, said the setup kept things relatively quiet between the crime families for decades.

  “The heart of it was live and let live,” Bill Bonanno explained. “Let each Family run its own business in its own way, don’t interfere, and if any disputes arise, mediate them through the Commission. When a matter came up in one Family that might have a spillover effect for all, mediation, not warfare, was the ruling word.”

  There wasn’t total peace, even with the Commission set up, as mobsters got caught in disputes within the families and occasionally paid for it with their lives. However, beginning in 1931, there was relative peace and prosperity among the Mafia families in the United States, a period that lasted nearly three
decades. It was during this period that Joseph Bonanno ran his family the way he saw fit, remaining one of the premier crime bosses of his time.

  It was also a time when Bonanno got married. In a wedding at which many of the Mafia leaders were invited and attended, Joseph Bonanno married Fay Labruzzo on November 15, 1931. The reception was at the Knights of Columbus Hall in Prospect Park, Brooklyn. Just before the ceremony there was a bit of consternation as the ring Bonanno was to give to his bride went missing. It later turned up in the pants cuff of Natale Evola, one of Bonanno’s wedding ushers. From that day forward, Evola, a garment trucker who lived in Brooklyn, was known by the moniker of “Joe Diamond.”

  Though Bonanno got married during the Depression, things were good for his businesses, both legal and illegal. Talese reports that a cash cushion, acquired during the earlier years, allowed Bonanno to buy up real estate at bargain prices. He had homes in Arizona and New York and by all accounts was a respected member of whatever community he called home. While Vito Genovese had to flee the country in 1934 to escape murder charges and Lucky Luciano was convicted in 1936 for running a prostitution business, Bonanno seemed to adroitly avoid trouble. The only rub with the law came in the late 1930s when a Brooklyn clothing factory he was a partner in was hit with a federal wage and hour violation. Bonanno was fined $50.

  Despite the troubles confronting some top mafiosi in America, the period before and after World War II in New York was one of prosperity and power for the mob. It was the start of the mob’s Golden Age, when gangsters in New York held sway with politicians, judges, and prosecutors in a way that would become unthinkable—and impossible—in the twenty-first century. Bonanno, the consummate Castellammarese who combined a business acumen with a political shrewdness, did well in this halcyon time, even though he kept out of the limelight.