Five Families: The Rise, Decline, and Resurgence of America's Most Powerful Mafia Empires by Selwyn Raab Page A
Authors: Selwyn Raab
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money from bootlegging and protection shakedowns, Masseria brushed off Luciano’s proposals to cash in on new ventures.
Luciano’s business ideas included streamlining international bootlegging by cooperating with other Italian and with non-Italian gangs to bring in greater quantities of booze and eliminate hijackings. He knew that such cooperation would also prevent interference from the law by guaranteeing that more law-enforcement personnel would be adequately bribed.
Additionally, Luciano wanted to expand the areas of labor racketeering, gambling, and prostitution. Many of these activities would require temporary or permanent partnerships with Jewish and Irish gangsters. The distrustful Masseria, reluctant to accept alliances even with rival Sicilian and Italian mobsters whom he knew, vetoed any deals with Jewish or Irish hoods.
Representing an emerging generation of English-speaking mafiosi who had been raised in America, Luciano grew increasingly contemptuous of the erratic, archaic methods of Masseria and his older immigrant counterparts. Luciano and his closest confederates referred disparagingly to Masseria and his ilk as “Mustache Petes” and “greasers.”
After eighteen months of combat and with no end in sight to the Castellammarese War, Luciano intervened by double-crossing Masseria. According to Joe Bonanno, who served as Maranzano’s wartime chief of staff, at a clandestine meeting with Maranzano, Luciano offered to halt the hostilities by eliminating Masseria and assuming control of the dead boss’s gang. In exchange, Maranzano would call off his hit men, recognize Luciano as an equivalent boss, and peace would reign between the two factions.
Armed with the secret pact, Luciano moved swiftly. He set up Masseria, inviting him to Coney Island for a lavish lobster lunch, a card game, and a conference at one of Joe the Boss’s favorite trattorias, the Nuovo Villa Tammaro, where he would feel safe.
The meeting on April 15, 1931, was ostensibly to find a way to ambush Maranzano. Masseria drove to the luncheon date in his personal armored car with one-inch-thick bulletproof windows, and with three bodyguards. Before dessert arrived, Luciano left for the toilet. Mysteriously, Masseria’s bodyguards vanished from the restaurant as four of Luciano’s killers suddenly appeared and riddled Joe the Boss with a volley of gunfire. The
New York Daily News
reported (with melodramatic exaggeration) that Masseria died “with the ace of spades, the death card, clutched in a bejeweled paw.”
Picked up for questioning by detectives, Luciano could offer no theory about a motive for the murder. Unfortunately, he added, he had no clue about the gunmen because he was washing his hands and had seen nothing.
With Masseria out of the way, Maranzano was hailed as a conquering hero by the surviving Castellammarese clan. Luciano got his reward by taking over Masseria’s large gang and Maranzano gave his blessings to new leaders of three smaller borgatas whom he considered trustworthy allies.
Maranzano, however, had a surprise in store for Luciano. Signaling his presumed dominance, Maranzano summoned Chicago’s Al Capone and Mafia leaders from the rest of the country to a meeting in a resort hotel in tiny Wappingers Falls, seventy-five miles from Times Square, to inform them of New York’s new power lineup. The major implication of the meeting was clear: Maranzano had crowned himself as the highest-ranked leader in New York, and because of the city’s prominence as the Mafia’s emerging American polestar, he expected to be recognized as superior to all other bosses in the country.
Maranzano, in effect, had declared himself
“capo di tutti capi,”
boss of bosses.
In New York he began issuing organizational decrees to the Castellammarese mafiosi and to the other borgatas. Recalling his admiration for Caesar, he wanted the families modeled loosely on the military chain of command of a Roman legion. Towering above
Luciano’s business ideas included streamlining international bootlegging by cooperating with other Italian and with non-Italian gangs to bring in greater quantities of booze and eliminate hijackings. He knew that such cooperation would also prevent interference from the law by guaranteeing that more law-enforcement personnel would be adequately bribed.
Additionally, Luciano wanted to expand the areas of labor racketeering, gambling, and prostitution. Many of these activities would require temporary or permanent partnerships with Jewish and Irish gangsters. The distrustful Masseria, reluctant to accept alliances even with rival Sicilian and Italian mobsters whom he knew, vetoed any deals with Jewish or Irish hoods.
Representing an emerging generation of English-speaking mafiosi who had been raised in America, Luciano grew increasingly contemptuous of the erratic, archaic methods of Masseria and his older immigrant counterparts. Luciano and his closest confederates referred disparagingly to Masseria and his ilk as “Mustache Petes” and “greasers.”
After eighteen months of combat and with no end in sight to the Castellammarese War, Luciano intervened by double-crossing Masseria. According to Joe Bonanno, who served as Maranzano’s wartime chief of staff, at a clandestine meeting with Maranzano, Luciano offered to halt the hostilities by eliminating Masseria and assuming control of the dead boss’s gang. In exchange, Maranzano would call off his hit men, recognize Luciano as an equivalent boss, and peace would reign between the two factions.
Armed with the secret pact, Luciano moved swiftly. He set up Masseria, inviting him to Coney Island for a lavish lobster lunch, a card game, and a conference at one of Joe the Boss’s favorite trattorias, the Nuovo Villa Tammaro, where he would feel safe.
The meeting on April 15, 1931, was ostensibly to find a way to ambush Maranzano. Masseria drove to the luncheon date in his personal armored car with one-inch-thick bulletproof windows, and with three bodyguards. Before dessert arrived, Luciano left for the toilet. Mysteriously, Masseria’s bodyguards vanished from the restaurant as four of Luciano’s killers suddenly appeared and riddled Joe the Boss with a volley of gunfire. The
New York Daily News
reported (with melodramatic exaggeration) that Masseria died “with the ace of spades, the death card, clutched in a bejeweled paw.”
Picked up for questioning by detectives, Luciano could offer no theory about a motive for the murder. Unfortunately, he added, he had no clue about the gunmen because he was washing his hands and had seen nothing.
With Masseria out of the way, Maranzano was hailed as a conquering hero by the surviving Castellammarese clan. Luciano got his reward by taking over Masseria’s large gang and Maranzano gave his blessings to new leaders of three smaller borgatas whom he considered trustworthy allies.
Maranzano, however, had a surprise in store for Luciano. Signaling his presumed dominance, Maranzano summoned Chicago’s Al Capone and Mafia leaders from the rest of the country to a meeting in a resort hotel in tiny Wappingers Falls, seventy-five miles from Times Square, to inform them of New York’s new power lineup. The major implication of the meeting was clear: Maranzano had crowned himself as the highest-ranked leader in New York, and because of the city’s prominence as the Mafia’s emerging American polestar, he expected to be recognized as superior to all other bosses in the country.
Maranzano, in effect, had declared himself
“capo di tutti capi,”
boss of bosses.
In New York he began issuing organizational decrees to the Castellammarese mafiosi and to the other borgatas. Recalling his admiration for Caesar, he wanted the families modeled loosely on the military chain of command of a Roman legion. Towering above
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