There are about 25 Famiglia or crime families in America, the five largest and most powerful based in New York. These have branches in other parts of the country or, in some cases, affiliated families tied to them by blood.
The head of each family is the ‘Godfather’ or ‘Don’. An honorary title that the top Godfathers bestow upon one of their number is ‘Capo di Tutti Capi’, Godfather of Godfathers, or Boss of all the Bosses. Some, who feel powerful enough to ward off any challenge, seize the title. They usually die.
Next comes the ‘under-boss’, who is usually the tough-guy, the disciplinarian. The ‘Consigliere’ or counsellor is third in line. He is effectively a family’s chief-of-staff. Beneath them are the ‘Capos’, some of whom, specialising in arranging murders, are known as ‘Enforcers’. Some Enforcers are also under-bosses.
Soldiers have specialities too. A hitman will be known as a ‘Torpedo’ or ‘Buttonman’ (as in ‘pressing the button’ on someone). The chief hitman (or sometimes bodyguard) will be known as a ‘Caporegima’.
Police make no distinction, calling them all Hoodlums, ‘Hoods’ for short, or ‘Goons’.
Godfathers of most of the Mafia families make up a kind of criminal board of directors, which is known as ‘The Commission’. The existence of this body was denied for decades and was only noticed by accident in 1957. Members of the Commission have since been tried in court, charged with the very offence of being members of it.
There is also a group of Mafia bosses known as ‘The Club’, and this one involves those who participate in trade union racketeering in the construction industry.
Other descriptions of wider groupings of gangsters can be confusing. The word ‘Mob’ is often used synonymously with ‘Mafia’. But the Mob is a looser description of a group of gangsters. During the formative years of US organised crime between the world wars, ‘the Mob’ was usually taken to mean Jewish-dominated racketeers, while ‘the Mafia’ admitted only Sicilians. When ‘Lucky’ Luciano forged his way to ultimate power in New York, however, his Syndicate included such nefarious non-Sicilians as Frank Costello, ‘Dutch’ Shultz, Joe Adonis, Louis Lepke, and Meyer Lansky. Luciano even toyed with the idea of dropping the Syndicate’s Mafia affiliation. He was dissuaded by Lansky, who felt that the spectre of the Mafia would help them keep people in line, even though at one point the Jewish members outnumbered the Sicilians.
The activities the gangs got up to in those early days had their own vernacular too. ‘Bootlegging’ referred to illicit booze, a boot being best hiding place for a bottle. ‘Hijack’ was literally the phrase ‘Hi Jack’, the supposed greeting in a bootleg booze hold-up. And a ‘Speakeasy’ was an illegal bar, not to be spoken of loudly. All very logical.
Not so explicable is ‘Vigorish’, a very important word in the Mafia language. The hoods call it ‘vig’ and it stands for the exorbitant interest the thugs collect every week on a loan. Which leads us to ‘loan-sharking’. This is a commonly used word that describes the business of illegal lending, at murderous rates, in which every branch of the Mafia is engaged.
Murder has many names in the Mob – to waste, blow away, hit, terminate, retire, rub out, take care of, remove, or (Jimmy The Weasel’s favourite) to ‘clip’. Ordering a hit, a Mafioso will still utter the old Sicilian phrase: ‘Livarsi na petra di la scapa’ – Take the stone out of my shoe.
Carlos ‘Little Man’ Marcello, head of the Mafia’s New Orleans branch, shouted this curse at the Kennedy brothers, John and Robert. They were both gunned down. But a Godfather will often say nothing to snuff out a life – a nod or a motion of the hand is enough.
When a rubout is ‘sanctioned’, or approved at the top, the killing is quite often sub-contracted to a third party, perhaps even someone from a different crime family. A friendly Mafia clan in another town will provide the killers, making it more difficult for police to trace them. This practice, which dates back to the Twenties, is known as ‘importing’. Alternatively, a ‘contract’ is put out on someone. This can take two courses – a trusted man can be handed the contract specifically, or it can be posted generally, like a bounty, for anyone to fill.
They don’t talk about ‘concrete overcoats’ any more for encasing a victim’s corpse in a cement block; they just call it ‘dressing’. Nor are words like ‘drill’ and ‘plug’ used for killing. They just ‘take care of business’.
‘What’s doin’?’ is a typical greeting in the densely populated districts of New York, where crime is big. The stock Mafia answer is ‘What can I tell y’? Nuthin’.’ Because the actual meaning of that retort is: ‘I can’t tell you anything that makes sense because it could cost me my life.’
‘D-and-D’ is what you stay if you’re smart, whoever you are. It means ‘deaf and dumb’ or plain silent. Squealers, known in the trade as ‘canaries’ because they ‘sing’ or ‘chirp’ to the authorities, usually have a general contract out on them. This keeps them terrified because they never know where the hit might be coming from. The assassin could be their closest buddy. And quite often he is; many of the major victims were at least lured to their execution, if not actually hit, by a trusted friend.
‘Omertà’ is the code of silence to which every member is sworn. Penalty for breaking it is death. ‘Capish?’ Do you understand? Bacio del Morte is the ‘kiss of death’, the traditional light brush on the cheek of the victim-to-be. It’s a ritual, now dying out. Some still use it for effect; most don’t believe any more in signalling their intentions.
To be ‘connected’ means to have a link in some way with the Mafia. Even those who don’t have that link pretend they do, especially people with Italian names. It brings instant respect. Nobody is allowed to mention the name of the person to whom he is connected. Penalty: death. Those on the outside who use a Mafia name are also killed. Anyone who actually gives a name is almost certainly unconnected!
The Mafiosi used to call themselves ‘The Untouchables’ because they considered themselves able to operate their various activities totally out of reach of the law. This is reflected in some of the nicknames today’s mobsters have.
Aladena Fratianno became ‘Jimmy The Weasel’ but not because the Los Angeles mobster turned informer on his partners-in-crime. He earned that name long before because of his ability to avoid being brought to justice. This knack of ducking the law turned Antonio Corallo into ‘Tony Ducks’.
Matty ‘The Horse’ Ianiello, of the Genovese family, got his name through his enormous bulk: 29 stone of it. Colombo boss Carmine Persico was known to police and many in the Mafia as ‘The Snake’, although he had tried to foster another nickname, ‘Junior’.
Sometimes nicknames are wordplays. Joseph Bonanno would be ‘Joe Bananas’. Enforcer Aniello Dellacroce’s parents had given him an Italian name that meant ‘Little Lamb of the Cross’. Aniello turned into ‘Mr. O’Neil’. Joe Stracci, scourge of the Garment District, became ‘Joe Stretch’. Anthony Provenzano was ‘Tony Pro’. Phillip Testa, who headed the Philadelphia family for a year until he was blown to bits, was called ‘Chicken Man’, not because he was a coward, but because he once ran a chicken farm.
The nicknames often make perfect sense. Benjamin Siegel became ‘Bugsy’ because he acted like a crazy man, as in Bugs Bunny. Hulking Frank Bompensiero in Los Angeles was affectionately known, until his murder, as ‘The Bomp’.
From the inventiveness of their nicknames and the success of their villainy, it might seem the Mafia is made up of pretty wise ‘Wise Guys’. This is not at all the case. ‘We must remind ourselves that we’re not talking about brain surgeons here,’ warned New York organised crime specialist Tom Luce. And yet sometimes the Mafiosi will come up with a good line or two.
Al Capone himself had a simple philosophy: ‘You can get much further with a kind word and a gun than you can with a kind word alone.’ Here are some of his other recorded quotes: ‘You can go a long way with a smile. You can go a lot farther with a smile and a gun.’ ‘Once in the racket you’re always in it
.’ ‘Vote early and vote often.’ ‘I am like any other man. All I do is supply a demand.’ ‘I don’t even know what street Canada is on.’ ‘Capitalism is the legitimate racket of the ruling class.’ ‘I have built my organisation upon fear.’ ‘My rackets are run on strictly American lines and they’re going to stay that way.’ ‘Now I know why tigers eat their young.’ ‘Prohibition has made nothing but trouble.’ ‘When I sell liquor, it’s called bootlegging; when my patrons serve it on Lake Shore Drive, it’s called hospitality.’ ‘I am going to St. Petersburg, Florida, tomorrow. Let the worthy citizens of Chicago get their liquor the best they can. I’m sick of the job – it’s a thankless one and full of grief. I’ve been spending the best years of my life as a public benefactor.’ And finally: ‘This American system of ours, call it Americanism, call it capitalism, call it what you will, gives each and every one of us a great opportunity if we only seize it with both hands and make the most of it.’
The masterful ‘Lucky’ Luciano averred: ‘There’s no such thing as good money or bad money. There’s just money.’ ‘If you have a lot of what people want and can’t get, then you can supply the demand and shovel in the dough.’ ‘The world is changing and there are new opportunities for those who are ready to join forces with those who are stronger and more experienced.’ ‘Ever since we was kids, we always knew that people can be bought. It was only a question of who did the buying and for how much.’ ‘Behind every great fortune, there is a crime.’
The ‘Mob Accountant’ Meyer Lansky boasted: ‘We’re bigger than US Steel.’ His other advice: ‘Don’t lie. Tell one lie, then you gotta tell another lie to compound on the first.’ ‘Don’t worry, don’t worry. Look at the Astors and the Vanderbilts, all those big society people. They were the worst thieves and now look at them. It’s just a matter of time.’ And some advice he ignored himself: ‘Always overpay your taxes. That way you’ll get a refund.’
Hitman ‘Crazy’ Joe Gallo once prodded an accomplice and said: ‘You like federal judges? I’ll buy you one for Christmas!’ Carlo Gambino famously said: ‘Judges, lawyers and politicians have a license to steal. We don’t need one.’ His son Thomas Gambino reflected: ‘Me I never had the chance to say, “Well I’m going to do something I want to do.” I always did it for my family, for my children, for my father, for my mother.’
Carlo Gambino’s successor Paul Castellano, sometimes known as the ‘Howard Hughes of the Mob’, was more reflective: ‘This life of ours, this is a wonderful life. If you can get through life like this and get away with it, hey, that’s great. But it’s very unpredictable. There’s so many ways you can screw it up.’
Castellano also explained a Mafioso’s sense of duty: ‘There are certain promises you make that are more sacred than anything that happens in a court of law, I don’t care how many Bibles you put your hand on. Some of the promises, it’s true, you make too young, before you really have an understanding of what they mean. But once you’ve made those first promises, other promises are called for. And the thing is you can’t deny the new ones without betraying the old ones. The promises get bigger; there are more people to be hurt and disappointed if you don’t live up to them. Then, at some point, you’re called upon to make a promise to a dying man.’
But Castellano also exposed his sense of cynicism: ‘We’re not children here. The law is – how should I put it? A convenience. Or a convenience for some people, and an inconvenience for other people. Like, take the law that says you can’t go into someone else’s house. I have a house, so, hey, I like that law. The guy without a house – what’s he think of it? Stay out in the rain, schnook. That’s what the law means to him.’ And on political influence: ‘If the President of the United States, if he’s smart, if he needs help, he’d come. I could do a favour for the President.’
Thomas DiBella, who was briefly the Colombo family boss in the 1970s, expressed the Mafia philosophy: ‘You are no better or worse than anyone else in La Cosa Nostra. You are your own man. You and your father are now equals. Your father, sons, and brothers have no priority. We are all as one, united in blood. Once you become part of this, there is no greater bond.’
Joe Bonanno, who became boss of one of America’s most enduring crime families, waxed almost lyrical when he said: ‘Mafia is a process, not a thing. Mafia is a form of clan-cooperation to which its individual members pledge lifelong loyalty. Friendship, connections, family ties, trust, loyalty, obedience – this was the glue that held us together.’
Gambino under-boss Aniello Dellacroce was less eloquent: ‘You don’t understand Cosa Nostra. Cosa Nostra means the boss is your boss. Boss is the boss is the boss. What I’m trying to say is a boss is a boss. What does a boss mean in this fuckin’ thing? You might as well make anybody off the street.’ ‘Things change now because there’s too much conflict. People do whatever they feel like. They don’t train their people no more. There’s no more respect.’
Anthony Casso, a homicidal maniac who ran the Lucchese crime family, nevertheless felt the need to show his sensitive side. ‘I truly feel sorry for the younger generation that wants to belong to that life. It’s sad for them. There is absolutely no honour and respect today. Little do the newcomers know that there are many made members in the Mafia that wish not to be there and would like nothing better than to walk away from it. So they do the next best thing: stay low-key if possible. The young newcomers will never see the kind of big money that was once made. That’s long gone. They don’t realise what it means to be free and to have peace of mind until it’s taken from them.’ Casso also declared his domestic loyalty. ‘Most all men in my life, everyone I know, had girlfriends. It goes with the territory. Women are drawn to us, the power, the money, and we’re drawn to them. But only in passing. Some guys treated their mistresses better than their wife but that’s outrage. No class. Only a cafone [ill-mannered peasant] does that. I never loved any woman but Lillian. She and my family always came first.’
But Frank Costello, who was known as the ‘Prime Minister of the Underworld’, did not think so highly of his family: ‘Other kids are brought up nice and sent to Harvard and Yale. Me? I was brought up like a mushroom.’
Family business meant something completely different to Antonio ‘Tony Ducks’ Corallo, a union racketeer at the head of the Lucchese family, who said: ‘Let’s take a son-in-law, somebody, put them into the (union) office; they got a job. Let’s take somebody’s daughter, whatever, she’s the secretary. Let’s staff it with our people. And when we say go break this guy’s balls, they’re there, seven o’clock in the morning, to break the guy’s balls.’
Jimmy Hoffa, the most infamous union leader of them all, obviously agreed. ‘Everybody has a price,’ he said – shortly before he was murdered by Mafia hitmen. Talking of which, Los Angeles gang boss Mickey Cohen passed off his murderous ways with the excuse: ‘I never killed a guy who didn’t deserve it.’ But Chicago hitman Joseph ‘Joe Batters’ Accardo once freed a victim with the words: ‘Let him go. He cheated me fair and square.’ This was somewhat out of character for the killer hired by Al Capone to attend one of his dinners and publicly beat to death two of the guests with a baseball bat.
Some of the most revelatory quotations from a Mafia leader are those of John Gotti, labelled the ‘Teflon Don’ because of the number of charges that failed to stick. When he was finally convicted, however, it was partly because of an FBI bug that recorded him describing his criminal activities. On one tape he described his organisational ambitions thus: ‘This is gonna be a Cosa Nostra ’til I die. Be it an hour from now, or be it tonight, or a hundred years from now when I’m in jail. It’s gonna be a Cosa Nostra.’
Other memorable quotes from the opinionated Gambino family godfather include: ‘If they don’t put us away for one year or two, that’s all we need. But if I can get a year run without being interrupted … put this thing together where they could never break it, never destroy it. Even if we die, be a good thing.’
‘When I think of the America
n Indian I think of their courage, strength, pride, their respect and loyalty toward their brothers. I honour the reverence they share for tradition and life. These traits are hungered for in a society that is unfortunately plagued by those whose only values are self-centered and directed at others’ expense.’
‘I never lie to any man because I don’t fear anyone. The only time you lie is when you are afraid.’ ‘If you think your boss is stupid, remember: you wouldn’t have a job if he was any smarter.’ ‘I know where my mistakes are, where I made my mistakes. They’re too late to remedy, you know what I mean?’
‘Don’t carry a gun. It’s nice to have them close by, but don’t carry them. You might get arrested.’ ‘You will put the garbage in the cans and make certain that the cans are covered. We got to keep our own backyard clean.’ ‘Be nice to bankers. Always be nice to pension fund managers. Always be nice to the media. In that order.’ ‘I would be a billionaire if I was looking to be a selfish boss. That’s not me.’ ‘I’m in the Gotti family; my wife’s the Boss.’ ‘All I wanted was to be what I became to be.’
A prophecy that would have been more likely if Gotti hadn’t talked so much: ‘He who is deaf, blind and silent lives a thousand years in peace.’ And a final wrong call before he was sent to jail in 1992: ‘Three-to-one odds I beat this.’
CHAPTER 4
THE SYNDICATE SUMMIT THAT SHOOK AMERICA
The American Mafia’s ‘coming of age’ – its transformation from a high-profile killing machine into an invisible corporate entity – had begun with the first man to claim the title Capo di Tutti Capi, Salvatore Maranzano. But he was ahead of his time. Within months of his 1931 peace conference to end blood feuds between the major families, he and 40 of his men were dead. Gang warfare on such a scale had alerted Americans to the magnitude of the crime problem in their midst. It had also alerted the Mafiosi themselves to the dangers of advertising their power in blood.
The World's Most Evil Gangs Page 4