Читать книгу Crime Incorporated - William Balsamo - Страница 13
ОглавлениеThe Godfather Is Thinking of Retirement—But Not Just Yet
A steamy, hot afternoon in August 1920.
Children playing stickball near the foot of downtown Brooklyn’s Hamilton Avenue were distracted from their game by the arrival of Patrolmen Arthur McConnel and James “Red” McNulty. The cops were hauling five teenaged boys into the nearby 76th Precinct police station.
“Get your asses inside!” the kids heard McNulty yell.
The redheaded cop swung his nightstick and landed well-aimed blows to the butts of the teens.
The kids were suspected of a shoplifting spree at Cheap, Cheap Sissler’s Dry Goods Store on Union Street the day before.
As McConnel and McNulty lined up the young suspects before the booking desk, manned by Sergeant Joseph Malveesy, one of them, fourteen-year-old Frankie “Squat” Savino, protested:
“We didn’t rob nuthin’, I swear.”
Suddenly young Frankie moaned. Patrolman McNulty had swung his nightstick on the kid’s behind again with the admonition, “Shut up, you lying little bastard!” Then he and McConnel turned to Malveesy and informed him of the purported shoplifting.
“Take them into the interrogation room and question them,” the desk sergeant directed the officers.
Once the teenaged “hoods” were inside the interrogation room, Patrolman McConnel took over the questioning.
“All right, you!” he shouted at Nick Delesperanzo, “where the hell were you yesterday at about three-thirty in the afternoon?”
“I was home…I was doing…my homework,” the terrified Nick responded. “I’m not kidding, sir. You could check if you want to, sir…”
Before the youngster could finish the sentence, he was clobbered anew by McConnel.
“Shut up you little sniveller,” the fifty-eight-year-old cop roared.
“And the same goes for you, snot-nose!” the policeman addressed Frankie DeMaio, who had tried to put a word in edgewise.
“I want you brats to shut up and listen to what we’re gonna ask,” McConnel ranted.
He turned to Nick Delesperanzo:
“By the way, Nickie, don’t think we won’t check your story out.”
McConnel refocussed his attention on young Delesperanzo and scowled, “You lying sonofabitch, you don’t even go to school no more—so why the fuck you giving me this horseshit line?”
“I don’t really understand what this is all about,” protested Nick Delesperanzo. “You ain’t told us nothing about what we were supposed to have done…”
Feeling that McConnel was being too abusive with the teenaged suspects, officer McNulty broke in.
“Someone pointed you guys out this morning and said that you did some shoplifting in Cheap, Cheap’s store.” The redheaded cop then reached into his pants pocket and pulled out a slip of paper with a list of stolen merchandise reported by the store’s owner, Nathan Sissler.
“Two dozen shirts, ten pairs of socks,” he started to read. “And fourteen pairs of women’s silk stockings…”
McNulty went down the roster of purported stolen items, then tossed the paper on the desk next to where the suspects were seated.
“Look at the list, boys,” he commanded. “You see it? All of you, you see it?”
Nick and Frankie glanced at the paper; both looked up at the cop. An air of innocence permeated the faces of the streetwise two.
“I swear it wasn’t us who stole that stuff,” Delesperanzo squealed meekly.
“Yeah,” piped up young DeMaio, the tallest of the five prisoners. “Maybe some kids who look like us did it. Don’t blame us…”
“I’m not the one who’s blaming you,” growled McNulty. “I’m just going by what a witness told us. He saw you fellas stealing the merchandise yesterday and fingered you. That says he saw your clique in action stealing the stuff, and he told the owner, Nat Sissler, about it—”
All at once the door of the interrogation room opened and the precinct commander, Captain Michael Conners, walked in.
“Excuse me, boys,” he said in a firm voice, “could I talk with you for a minute?”
The two patrolmen nodded. They had no choice.
“Bring these young men out of the room to the booking area,” Conners commanded.
“Sure, sure, Cap,” said McNulty. He turned to McConnel and whispered, “What the fuck’s goin’ on here…?”
“Beats the shit outta me,” McConnel responded. “Why the hell don’t we take these little bastards out there and find out what this jazz is all about?”
In mere seconds McNulty and McConnel knew what “this jazz” was all about. They knew when they spotted the familiar figure with the regal-like stance: the Black Hand’s godfather—Don Giuseppe “Battista” Balsamo.
The awesome Mafia overlord stood at the side of the booking desk, which was now manned by Sergeant Edward Mahar. As the young suspects stumbled into the main booking room, Balsamo, oblivious to the presence of the stationhouse’s commander, turned to the desk sergeant and gave his rubbery face a playful tug.
“Be nice to my kids, sarge,” Balsamo said softly. “Let them go home.”
“Gee, Don Giuseppe, I have no control over that—that’s up to Captain Conners,” Mahar pleaded. It was then that the sergeant spotted his commanding officer coming out of the interrogation room with the two arresting officers and their quarry of suspects.
“Signore Balsamo,” the sergeant said with a sigh of relief, “there is the captain—he surely has authority to release your little friends…”
“Grazie,” Balsamo smiled. “Now I know what I must do.”
Captain Conners and Battista Balsamo were no strangers to each other. Conners had been alerted ahead of time by one of the cops dispatched by Mahar, and he knew exactly how to handle the sticky situation.
“Mr. Balsamo,” Conners said as he went to the godfather and extended his hand. “Do you mean to tell me that these boys are your nephews?…I don’t believe it. How come they have different last names than you, sir…?”
Balsamo quickly straightened out the genealogical misplacements. “The two DiMaio boys are my sister Rosalie’s sons and the two Delesperanzo kids belong to my sister Catherine and Salvatore Labiase…” Balsamo then gave the captain a rundown on Frankie Savino which convinced Captain Conners that the next move was up to him—and it had to be a diplomatic one.
“I see what you’re saying, Mr. Balsamo,” the captain returned. “It’s clear to me that your interest in these young men is unmistakable—and genuine.”
“That’s exactly as I thought you’d see it, my capitano,” Balsamo responded. “So what you propose to do…?”
“Well, I’m thinking—” Conner’s started to say when Balsamo interrupted.
“Hey, Mike, for Chris’ sake, old friend,” Balsamo came back, “let them go. If you book these kids of mine, they’re gonna have police records—and that could be very bad. It could ruin their lives…So let them go…for my sake, good Mike…”
Captain Conners winked at Balsamo: “To tell you the truth, Mr. Balsamo, I don’t think we have enough evidence in hand to hold your kids any longer. So I am returning them into your custody since you are so closely related to them.”
The captain signalled to his officers and commanded: “Release his nephews to Mr. Balsamo. There cannot be any charge against them.”
As the five teenagers scurried out of the police station, their benefactor lingered to chat with the police commander.
“You’re a nice guy, Mike,” Godfather Balsamo praised the captain. “I like you because you’re understanding. I always say it’s very important to get along with police because you can always get more cooperation with people when you are nice…”
As Balsamo started to leave the police station, he said:
“My capitano, it’s very important to get along with the public…And I admire you for the way you conducted yourself today. And I want to say one last word to you—Stata Bono Capitano.”
“What does that mean?” the puzzled police captain wanted to know.
“It means stay well…This is how you say in Sicilian.”
A broad smile creased the Irish cop’s face.
“You, too, Mr. Balsamo,” the relieved Conners shook Don Giuseppe’s hand.
Balsamo made his way out of the stationhouse and towards the young men he had just bailed out.
He felt good that he had conned the precinct commander into reprieving the youngsters. He crossed the wide stretch of Hamilton Avenue and came face to face with the five young renegades he’d just sprung from the police station. He had fire in his eyes as he stared at them. The youngsters stood in silent respect.
“What’s the matter with you kids?” he almost shouted. “Are you stupid? Why the hell you pull stunt like that when you gonna get caught. Don’t you know no better? Eh? Answer me!”
Frankie Savino volunteered the response: “Don Giuseppe, I want to tell you for all of us that we are thankful to you for getting us off the hook—”
Balsamo looked into the face of the young man speaking to him, then into the faces of the others. “Just let me tell you something,” he scolded. “Don’t ever get caught doing something wrong with anyone or anything in your own neighborhood.”
Balsamo looked around at his audience.
“You know why?” he demanded.
None of them spoke.
“Because people in our neighborhood might recognize you. Some know your names. Other might know your faces…Bad, very bad!”
Then, with a sweeping swing of his hand that passed over the heads of the just-emancipated teenagers like a wand, Battista Balsamo counselled, “I would rather see you boys become doctors, lawyers, engineers—any profession that’ll bring joy to your parents’ hearts.”
The boys disappeared into the neighborhood. Balsamo strolled toward the Union Street market area where pushcarts were lined along the curb in front of flourishing markets dispensing meats, fruit, and vegetables.
The pushcarts were lined up one after another on Union from Hicks Street past Columbia Street and then to a spillover on Van Brunt Street. Hordes of people—mostly women—mulled about the pushcarts.
Battista Balsamo was one of the biggest entrepreneurs in that market. With two brothers and their four nephews, the Balsamo combine had corners on virtually the entire shopping center. Among them the Balsamo clan operated ten stores that sold a vast assortment of produce, meat, and fish—especially fish.
The Balsamos had the fish business truly locked up. They ran ten stores that specialized in catches that ranged from calamari, octopus, porgy, snails, and lobsters to whiting, codfish, crabs, mackerel, bluefish, and tuna.
Battista held sway over the fish business. And every pushcart peddler and every storeowner in the neighborhood paid commorra (protection money) to him to operate in that marketplace. The going rate was $10 for a space at the curb for a pushcart, $30 a week for the stores.
As Giuseppe Balsamo strolled along Union and Columbia, he was the focus of total attention. Children and grownups alike sidled up to him and greeted the godfather.
Balsamo loved that sort of attention—summer, fall, winter, spring—anytime he could get it. But he was especially enthralled at the large response he received that particular day in August 1920.
It was, of course, not Balsamo’s favorite season of the year. He felt most at home on his turf during the dead of winter. He especially liked wearing camel’s-haired Chesterfield-cut coats that were best worn in the worst of December’s weather. Such a coat also provided concealment for the gun he always carried with him, a .32-caliber five-shot double-action nickel-plated break-open revolver manufactured by Empire State Arms Co. It was Balsamos’s favorite piece, accurate up to a distance of forty feet. For what more could he ask?
The velvet-collared coat he wore over his shoulders served the Don well. It gave an edge over a potential opponent, for he could either draw the .32 tucked in his waistband or, if he had to ditch the firearm before a frisk, he could let the weapon slip out of his right hand and fall to the ground almost unseen.
It would be nothing more than a pistol lying on the cold cement pavement. Of course, a witness might hear a clank or two when the gun hit the deck. But no one could ever prove Giuseppi unloaded it there, so Balsamo could never be arrested or convicted of violating New York’s recently-enacted Sullivan Law, which forbade all citizens to bear arms without a permit.
A few days after Balsamo had sprung the five teenagers, he made his way along Columbia Street to check on the pushcart business when he sighted a familiar figure. He was Vince Mangano.
“Hey, Vince! Vince!” Balsamo shouted at the top of his lungs.
Mangano turned in surprise. “Don Giuseppe” he shouted. “How good to see you,” Mangano pointed his finger in the direction of Paolo’s Sicilian Restaurant around the corner on Union Street, indicating they should have their rendezvous there.
Battista reached the restaurant first. Paolo Mancino, owner of Paolo’s, made a fuss over him and seated him at a large round table with chairs made of twisted wrought-iron backs shaped like hearts. Paolo placed Balsamo with his back to the wall—as he always had—and asked who else he expected to join him for lunch.
“Any minute,” Balsamo responded, “my good friend Vincento Mangano will join me.”
At five-foot-five, with a rapidly receding hairline, Mancini was noted for his delicious chi-chi beans crushed and matted together like a fillet. Deep fried, they made a delectable sandwich.
Mancini also could whip up his so-called vestedi sandwiches, which comprised ricotta cheese and chopped lungs, a mouth-watering delicacy. For the record, Paolo’s was strictly a Palermitano cuisine that served many customers what they believed were the best Sicilian meals in all of New York State.
The main door to the street suddenly opened and Vince Mangano walked in. He didn’t wait for the head captain to greet him, but simply looked around for Godfather Balsamo, spotted him, and walked to the table unescorted.
Battista rose to his feet when Mangano arrived and the two men greeted each other with the customary kiss on the cheek.
“Seta, seta” (sit, sit) Balsamo invited. “I got to talk to you.”
“All right, all right,” responded Mangano and he sat next to the godfather at the table.
“It’s very important I talk to you,” Balsamo said.
“I’m honored that you want to talk to me,” Mangano returned. “I am most anxious to hear what you have to say…”
Balsamo inhaled deeply.
“You see, good friend, I am forty-nine years old and I feel I am getting old and tired.” Then he interrupted himself.
“Hey, Vincenzo, we haven’t ordered yet,” Battista turned and clicked his fingers to the nearest waiter.
“We want to eat,” Balsamo said. “No menu. Just tell Paul we want something special.”
The waiter understood and headed straight to Paul Marinaci, the head waiter who would be sure that the godfather’s wish turned out to be Paolo’s command.
Even as Paul rushed into the kitchen to place the order, Balsamo turned to Mangano and continued his spiel as though it hadn’t been interrupted.
“You see, paisano,” the godfather said slowly, “someone has to take over the day-to-day operations. I am getting very tired and I want to see some younger blood running what we have going…”
Mangano looked stunned.
“Don Giuseppe, what are you telling me…that you don’t want to be the boss no more? Are you kidding…?
“I think I hear you say you want to live retired life,” Mangano said. “Why, boss, you are so young yet….?”
“I may be young, but I don’t kid about this thing,” Balsamo came back. “I have had a long life in this thing and I want to give up my interest in the easy money.
“Twenty years is a long time in this business. I think it’s about time to call it quits and maybe just keep the fish store going…”
Mangano frowned at Balsamo.
“Why are you telling me all this?” he asked.
Don Guiseppe reached out and put a hand on the outstretched palm of Mangano’s right hand.
“Vincenzo,” the Godfather said in a solemn voice, “I want you to take over this operation for me…”
Astonishment came over Mangano’s face.
“You really mean what you say?” he asked in a trembling voice.
“If I did not intend to retire, I would not have brought you here to tell you all this,” Battista snapped. “Of course I mean what I say…But I no go tomorrow. What I say to you is that one of these days—could be next month, next year, I don’t know…But I am tired. So that is why I wanna have this talk with you. I want you know where you stand…”
Mangano shook his head. “I don’t believe what you are telling me, Don Giuseppe. I have not been honored so much in all my life. I am overwhelmed…”
“I appreciate how you feel,” Balsamo said as the waiter came to the table with the salad.
“I want you to come with me tomorrow night. We will meet under the clock at nine o’clock and go to eat at Cafiero’s Restaurant around the corner.”
But Balsamo had a condition in arranging for the succession of leadership that would go to Vincenzo Mangano.
“You bring your brother Phillipo with you tomorrow night, capish?” the godfather ordered.
“Why, Don Giuseppe?” Mangano asked surprised.
“Because the two of you make a great team,” Battista replied. “I think you and Phillipo, who I think has a big set of steel balls, can’t miss when you work together. The two of you gonna make some team.
“You, Vince, are very, very smart. And Phillipo…well I told you how tough I think he is…You two, together, cannot miss to be the big boss that our thing needs here…”
Balsamo loved any man who used his brain and had the highest respect for him. But he also appreciated a man with muscle—only, of course, as a last resort after all else had failed to convince a recalcitrant antagonist.
This had been Don Giuseppe’s credo since his earliest days as the godfather of the Black Hand. And even in very recent times, such underworld bosses as Charles “Lucky” Luciano and Joe “The Boss” Masseria, who had been nurtured by Balsamo, had been counselled to follow the golden rule he preached about maintaining power and control over subordinates.
Balsamo was no ordinary mob kingpin. He had a special magnetism that drew the respect not only of the Mafiosi under his command but that of all the people with whom he made contact. Don Giuseppe spoke three languages: his native Italian, English, and Spanish. That stood him in good stead in the neighborhood when he’d sit in the shade on a hot summer’s day outside his tenement and welcome the residents to his side. They were, most of them, either Italian or Puerto Rican immigrants, many newly arrived.
They could neither read nor write the language of their adopted country. When they received letters written in English, they knew that they could have an immediate translation simply by going to Don Giuseppe for this favor. He was all too willing to perform it.
So grateful were many of these immigrants that they treated Balsamo as though he were royalty. Some even kissed his hand out of gratitude for the favors he performed for them.
Away from his residence, strutting along the sidewalk of Union Street for a rendezvous under the clock with his enforcers, Don Giuseppe set the standard for the way an early twentieth century mob boss should look. And in the weeks and months leading up to his decision to pass the reins of leadership to Vincenzo Mangano, Battista envisioned how his hand-picked suecessor would look in his Chesterfield. Satisfied, Don Giuseppe was then convinced Mangano was perfectly suited to be his successor.
Before he entered retirement, Balsamo also envisioned still another leadership role—one that had not been previously played. He decided someone should serve as “peacemaker.” This Black Hander would have the specific mission of stepping in when disputes arose in the ranks and mediating the differences before violent means were taken to settle the conflict.
In the wisdom that came with his long experience as head of the original Black Hand gang, Balsamo wanted to avoid the needless rubouts that grew out of an “uncivil act” committed by one card-carrying Mafioso against another. In the past, the animosity often led to the murder of a rival. Don Giuseppe felt such killings were a total waste of worthy members who could better serve the Black Hand alive than dead.
The appointment of “The Prince of Peace” went to James “Jimmy” Crissali, a trusted, loyal member of Balsamo’s waterfront enforcers. Quick-witted and cool-headed, his qualities made him an excellent choice to be the first mob consigliere of Kings County— indeed, the first anywhere.
In time, consiglieres would be appointed in Mafia families all over New York and then in every part of the country where the Black Hand operated.
This is how Battista Balsamo planned to bring his many years of rule over the Black Hand to an end. He was itching to sit back and relax and watch his successors carry on the “good works” he had started and developed for the Black Hand. But he simply couldn’t abdicate the throne immediately.
At this stage the Black Hand was in the opening round of its war with the White Hand for domination of the rackets in Brooklyn and parts of Manhattan. Much blood had been spilled already; yet much, much more would flow in the months and years ahead in the great struggle for gangland supremacy.
A quarter century had passed by the time Don Giuseppe Balsamo introduced Sicilian mobsterism as a deadly art form to the United States.
The year was 1895 and Giuseppe Balsamo, then a vibrant twenty-four, landed in New York after an Atlantic crossing in steerage from Palermo and was processed through Ellis Island with the hundreds of emigrants arriving daily.
Because he had had a high ranking in the Mafia in Sicily, Giuseppe was catapulted almost immediately into a significant role of leadership in what then was a fledgling branch of Black Handers seeking to plant their roots in the United States for the purpose of exacting tribute from their fellow Italian immigrants.
Balsamo soon came to be known as Don Giuseppe and his counsel was sought by other Mafiosi in areas other than Downtown Brooklyn, where Battista had set up his operation.
One of those who wanted Balsamo’s guidance was Giuseppi Morello, a tough, ruthless Black Hand leader in East Harlem. Morello was being challenged for a piece of the action in his territory by an upstart Mafiosi, Benedetto Madonia, who was seeking to expand his realm as boss of a gang that was into counterfeiting and operating on Manhattan’s Lower East Side and looking to take over Morelli’s turf and use it as a clearing house for his funny money. He planned to enlist Italian shopkeepers, under the threat of bodily harm or even death, to dispense the bogus bills to their customers—and trade off their legitimate tender to Morelli for a profit of twenty-five cents on the dollar.
Morello was supported in his leadership of the East Harlem Black Hand by his equally menacing brother-in-law Ignazio “Lupo the Wolf” Sietta. But neither knew how to handle the challenge they now faced from Madonia.
“What do you think, Don Giuseppe?” Morello asked on that Sunday evening of April 12, 1903, when he and Sietta had journeyed to Balsamo’s headquarters in Brooklyn. The Harlem mobster was begging advice on how to handle the threat from the upstart counterfeiter.
“This is no good to let happen for you,” Don Guiseppi counselled. “Before you wink, you will have Treasury Department agents in your neighborhood and they will make things very hot for your other business…”
“What do you say we do, my good friend?” Morello wanted to know.
Battista made a slicing motion with his hand across his own throat.
Morello turned to his brother-in-law with raised eyebrows. Lupo the Wolf smiled and nodded his head knowingly.
Battista Balsamo’s message had gotten over loud and clear.
“Thank you very much for your advice,” Morelli turned back to Balsamo. “I appreciate…”
Two days later, the afternoon of April 14th, a Tuesday, New York City police had one of the turn of the century’s most baffling slayings to investigate, soon labelled by big black newspaper headlines as “The Barrel Murder Case.”
The unidentified man was clearly the victim of a horrific mutilation. His corpse was stuffed into a barrel of sawdust and only his head and neck stuck out above the wood shavings. The face was covered with so much blood and grime that it was impossible to distinguish the features.
Yet the eyes were chillingly visible. They were wide open, froze in a gruesome death stare. Even more gruesome was that the victim’s penis had been cut off and shoved into his mouth!
As Dr. Albert T. Weston, the city’s chief medical examiner, reported after an autopsy at the morgue, the man was stabbed and sliced no fewer than thirteen times. His throat was slashed from ear to ear, which in itself was enough to cause instant death, for the jugular was severed completely. But his killer or killers went on to insure his death by inflicting deep stab wounds on the face, neck, and upper torso.
The case went unsolved and without any visible progress toward solution for twenty days—until it was placed in the hands of NYPD Lieutenant Joseph Petrosino, the department’s specialist in organized crime matters. He knew immediately that there was only one way to solve the crime: get the victim identified, then hope that a motive for the killing might surface, from which may come a focus on the probable killer.
Petrosino wasn’t aware of the one factor that had handicapped the other detectives in those long and unrewarding days of their probe. The body had lain on a mortuary slab on ice with the face still muddied with blood and grit. No one had cleaned it off to enable the sleuths to get an accurate view of the victim’s features.
Petrosino’s first order of business was in going to the morgue and viewing the corpse. When he saw the condition of the face, he asked the medical examiner to clean it. Once this was done, the lieutenant called a police photographer to take a picture of it.
As soon as the negative was developed. Petrosino hurried to Police Headquarters at 240 Centre Street in Manhattan and directed the photo lab to make thirty prints. He had them distributed to every detective under his command, which covered seven precinct homicide squads in Manhattan. The admonition to each of his sleuths was:
“Hit the pavement and show this picture around. We’ve got to get an I.D. on this man who was found murdered in a barrel. Send all your findings to my office after you’ve cleared it with your sergeants. This is imperative. Act on this at once.”
Another investigation relating to this murder was underway at the same time—unbeknown to the NYPD and Lieutenant Petrosino. Treasury Department Agent William Flynn and a team of his investigators had been on the trail of a gang of counterfeiters who were pushing their phony money in various sections of New York City.
Flynn had one leg up on Petrosino in his search for the killer of the murdered man in the barrel only because the federal officer had a bead on the known operator of the counterfeiting ring. He also knew where the suspect met with the pushers of his funny money.
So Flynn and his men made it a part of their routine to eat lunch and dinner in The Star Of Italy Cafe on Elizabeth Street on Manhattan’s Lower East Side. They became fairly regular customers in the hope that they’d pick up bits and pieces of information about the counterfeiters.
After a while Flynn and his Treasury Department agents just about gave up hope that the man they suspected of being the counterfeit ring’s leader would ever show up at The Star of Italy. Twenty days had passed during the stakeout and the federal sleuths still hadn’t seen the suspect they were out to collar.
But on the twenty-second day they had a picture of the man they’d been hunting. It was brought to them by Lieutenant Petrosino and a team of his sleuths who had come with the photo of the murdered man in the barrel. Once the blood and grime had been washed from his face and its photo taken, police went to their files, matched the features with their rogue’s gallery of prisoners and wanted men, and established that no one could fit the portrait of the wanted counterfeiting boss more than one particular picture from the rogue’s gallery.
How did Petrosino make contact with Flynn, the Treasury agent?
Through some simple reasoning. When the lieutenant read the victim’s rap sheet and saw his involvement in counterfeiting, he knew that Treasury must have had some awareness about the dead man, now positivly identified as Benedetto Madonia.
At this gathering of city and federal investigators came a meeting of minds and a decision of how to proceed in solving the murder. Flynn told Petrosino that the slain counterfeiter had a brother-in-law in Sing Sing doing a three-year stretch.
“Go and see Giuseppe DiPrimo,” Flynn advised. “I’ll bet he can give you a lead. “We also know him as ‘Benny the Convict.’”
Petrosino, who could never be mistaken in a crowd for anyone else because he always wore a black derby, even when behind his desk, journeyed to Ossining, some sixty miles up the Hudson, and had a chat with DiPrimo.
Early in the conversation Petrosini showed DiPrimo the full-faced photo of Madonia taken on the mortuary slab and asked, “Do you know this man?”
DiPrimo’s eyes opened wide in recognition.
“Yeah…yeah…” he replied hesitantly, “that…that’s my brother-in-law…that’s Benedetto Madonia…”
Benny the Convict looked up bewildered.
“What did he do…and why does he look so sick in this picture?” the Mafia hood rasped. “You know…he’s married to my sister who lives in Buffalo…”
“No kidding? I didn’t know that,” Petrosino said. Then in the next breath: “And why was he in New York City last April 14th? What business did he have there?”
DiPrimo froze for a second or two. The question seemed to stun him. Then he seemed to pull himself together:
“I sent him to New York to see Giuseppe Morello to get something that belongs to me…”
From all that Petrosino knew about Morello’s East Harlem operations, coupled with what he had learned from Flynn about Madonia’s workings as a high-flying counterfeiter, the response from Benny the Convict made no sense at all.
Madonia was trying to muscle in on Morello’s territory by recruiting storekeepers to make their shops clearing houses for his bogus greenery. What dealings could the brother-in-law of the murdered counterfeiter from another part of town have with the leader of the turf Madonia was trying to muscle in on?
“Hey, you make no sense,” Petrosino barked. “Your brother-in-law was looking to boot Madonia the hell out of Harlem. So I can’t believe there was anything that Morello could have which belonged to you…”
Don Guiseppe – “Battista” – Balsamo, the first godfather
The clock on Columbia Street
Frankie Yale in 1918
William “Wild Bill” Lovett, leader of the White Hand gang
The Adonis Club, meeting place of the Black Hand gang. Inserts: Richard “Pegleg” Lonergan (L); “Needles” Ferry (R)
John Scalise (L) and Albert Anselmi (R), triggermen of the ambush of Sagaman’s Hall
Frankie Yale’s death, July 1, 1928
Vincenzo Gibaldi, who became “Machine Gun McGurn,” and his wife, Louise Rolfe
Al Capone
UPI/Bettmann Newsphotos
The St. Valentine’s Day massacre, 1929
DiPrimo was nonplussed. He shook his head and quickly changed the subject. Taking a closer look at the photo of his brother-in-law, he asked, “Tell me something…Why does Benedetto look sick in this picture… Is he sick?”
Petrosino felt now was the time to hit Benny the Convict with the whole load of bricks. Perhaps the shock of hearing that Madonia was dead would stir him into a confession that might finger the killer or killers.
“Your brother-in-law,” the lieutenant said slowly, each word measured for effect, “is no longer with us.…He is morto…”
DiPrimo paled. His eyes became glassy. His lips suddenly began trembling.
“You know something, you no good son-of-a-bitch, you boutan! I want you should pick up your fuckin’ ass and get out of here. I’m not talking to you no more…”
DiPrimo jumped to his feet and shouted to the jail guard standing outside the small lawyer conference room in which he was holed up with Petrosino. “Hey, screw, get me the fuck back to my cell. I don’t want to talk to this bum no more.”
As the guard opened the door and began leading him away, Di Primo shouted over his shoulder to Petrosino:
“Hey, I will take care of this when I get out of this fuckin’ hole. It’ll be on my own terms, you hear? On my own terms!”
Lieutenant Petrosino left Sing Sing with those words echoing in his ears. He had no more of a lead to Madonia’s killer or killers after his talk with DiPrimo than he had before he encountered him.
Where to go from here?
On the New York Central commuter train ride back to Grand Central Terminal, Petrosino decided to launch a bold frontal attack on the Mafiosi in an ultimate push to solve Madonia’s gruesome murder.
He called the homicide squad commanders to his office and passed out a typewritten list of fifteen names, all belonging to members of Morello’s gang.
“Have your men round up these guys and bring them to headquarters,” he ordered. “We’re gonna give them a going-over so we can get to the bottom of who knocked off Madonia.”
By 4:30 p.m.—four hours after detectives were dispatched on the mission—fifteen snivelling Mafiosi from Morello’s ranks were bunched together in a small ninth-floor interrogation room of the NYPD’s headquarters building. Petrosino and a team of detectives took them one at a time to another interrogation room next door and grilled them endlessly. The room’s lights had been doused and only the bulb from a goose-necked desk lamp shone directly on the face of the man being bombarded with rapid-fire questions:
“Where were you on that Tuesday when Madonia was killed, eh?”
“You know something, we know you love your leader…You have given Giuseppi Morello a blood oath…You would do anything he says to do—even kill, just like that! Didja?”
“Okay, you fuck, if you talk and tell us who did it, we’ll go real easy on you…”
On and on the questioning droned. But the mobsters’ lips were sealed. True to the oath of omerta, silence prevailed through all fifteen grillings.
Finally, frustrated, Petrosino sat at his desk and pencilled eight of the fifteen names on a pad. He tore the sheet out and handed it to Sergeant Michael Kearns.
“Hey, Mike,” he said sharply. “Throw these guys in the lockup. I want them to cool their heels. Maybe then we can get some answers from them…The others you can let go. I don’t think they can help us none.”
Giuseppi Morello, Ignazio Lupo the Wolf Sieta, Pepino Fontana, Gaetano “The Bull” Petto, Vito Cascio, Tony “Horns” Genoa, Giuseppi Favaro, and Vito LoBaido, whose alias was “Deaf Vito” because of his hearing loss since birth, were tossed into the slammer.
Only one of the top-ranked members of Morelli’s gang eluded the dragnet Petrosino put out for the roundup. He was Don Vito Ferro, who was the overlord of all Mafia activities in Manhattan and ruled in much the same way as Balsamo did in Brooklyn—although on a much smaller scale, since he was underboss to Don Giuseppi.
He may not have been clairvoyant, yet one could say that Ferro may have had a sixth sense. Perhaps he had gotten word from one of the cops on his pad about the impending roundup of Morelli’s gang—even that he was a target for arrest—and did the only thing that made sense. He high-tailed it to Brooklyn for an audience with Balsamo.
“What shall I do, Don Giuseppi?”
Balsamo could sense the man had lost his cool. He was playing scared cards. When a Mafiosi leader—indeed anyone in the ranks down to the lowliest bootlicker—exhibits fear, indeed even apprehension, about being taken up in a police sweep, then it’s best to have the guy hit the road.
“My advice to you, signore,” the godfather said firmly, “is to get out of town.”
Ferro tensed, hearing himself addressed as “signore.” It was an unmistakable signal: a man of Balsamo’s high estate would never address a Mafioso of lesser rank by that title. Unless he was being kissed off.
As Balsamo spoke the next sentence, Ferro knew for certain that he had indeed been written out of New York City’s Mafia.
“I want you should go right away to New Orleans,” Don Giuseppe said. “It will be nice and cool for you to be with Nick Favia. He is just beginning to set up an operation there, and I know he will appreciate to get help from a paisan with such knowledge and experience you can offer…”
Don Vito Ferro went into his fadeout from the New York scene shortly afterwards, and the Mafiosi he left behind went on to live another day. None of the nine “suspects” Lieutenant Petrosino held against their wills ever helped put a finger on the killer or killers.
Research has disclosed that there was only one torpedo who did the number on Benedetto Madonia: Gaetano The Bull Petto, one of the nine incarcerated gangsters who’d been under Lieutenant Petrosino’s nose for the whole month that the nine mobsters were held in custody.
Ironically, a few days after the nine were released, Petrosino developed evidence that Petto was the killer. When he sent his bulls out to arrest The Bull, a funny thing happened.
They took into custody Giovanni Pecoraro, a spitting image of Gaetano Petto. By now, The Bull was into the wind, because no sooner had Morello’s boys gotten drift that Petrosino’s marauders were to come down hard on Petto, the big guy called him in for a talk.
“I want you to get your ass the hell out of town right now!” Morello directed. Petto shuffled off to Buffalo without a moment’s delay and joined the Mafia family of the late Benedetto Madonia.
Why would Madonia’s family welcome a member of the downstate family who put Madonia in a barrel with his throat slit and his penis between his lips like a cigar?
Because that’s what life in the Mafia was like at the turn of the century—and what it is like today: they always kill a brother who gets out of line!
Now that Madonia was laid to rest, all was forgiven. He had paid for his incursion on Morello’s perlieus, and the message was on display for all to savor:
Don’t try anything like this because this is what’s gonna happen to you.
So The Bull, a fugitive on the run from a murder rap, joined the underworld fraternity in New York’s second-largest city, 750 miles northwest, hard by the roar of one of nature’s mightiest beauties, Niagara Falls.
Back in the big town, Petto’s double, Giovanni Pecoraro, languished in the slammer only so long as it took him to convince a sitting judge in Manhattan Magistrate’s Court that he was not Gaetano Petto.
The case was thrown out and Pecoraro was free to continue his pursuits as a member of the Morelli mob.
Ironically, while Morello had wanted nothing to do with counterfeit currency in 1903 when Madonia tried to plant his funny money roots in East Harlem, the time came when Don Giuseppi decided that it wasn’t such a bad idea.
He and Ignazio Sieta made a deal with Madonia’s successor in the counterfeit operation and were given the distributorship in their territory. They set up candy stores, groceries, meat markets, furniture and hardware stores, restaurants, saloons, in addition to a string of other retailers, to launder their dirty money.
It worked well for about eight years—until 1913. Then Treasury agents moved in and arrested Morelli and Sieta. They were convicted and sent to the federal penitentiary in Atlanta to do ten years.
Meanwhile, Don Vito Ferro performed so well in New Orleans that his expertise enabled the Mafia to expand rapidly into one of the nation’s most effective and productive regions for organized crime. Unlike the landlocked cities in which the Mafia operated, the Louisiana capital had a waterfront, and it was becoming one of the country’s busiest ports. As they would soon do in Brooklyn, the Black Handers were edging into the shipping lanes with their lucrative protection rackets over cargo loading and unloading operations.
Ferro played a large part in putting New Orleans on the Mafia’s map as one of its biggest income-bearing territories. The Sicilian Maffia summoned him to Palermo and gave him a significant post in the hierarchy there. The year was 1908.
He remained as a top don in Palermo for twenty-five years—until dictator Benito Mussolini ordered a crackdown on the Maffia.
With Mussolini’s commandment, Mafiosi from all parts of the country were seized, placed in cages, and carted through the streets to be stoned by a cheering populace which had all too long suffered paying tribute to the killer-leeches.
The legend handed down through the years about Ferro is that he admitted to only one killing in his entire career as a Black Hander. That rubout took place at the Piazza Marina in Palermo on the night of March 12, 1909.
That was the night Lieutenant Joseph Petrosino, who had journeyed to Sicily to pursue evidence on the New York Mafiosi’s ties with the bosses in Palermo, wandered into the marina to question a would-be informer.
The lieutenant was shot to death in what became one of the early century’s most electifying murder cases. His assassination was widely viewed as a warning to law enforcement authorities to lay off the Mafia.
Joseph Petrosino was the first lawman to die trying to bring down the Mafia.
He was not the last.
