by Bruno, Joe
Then without another word, Connors would lead his crew out of the apartment to a Chinese restaurant, which would complete that particular tour. Meanwhile, George and Blond Lulu would tidy up and get ready for the next go-around, which took place in just a few hours.
Another duo of opium-smoking fakes, whom Connors employed was a prostitute named “Chinatown Gertie” and her partner (pimp?) Charlie Lee. Gertie's brothel was located at 12 Pell Street, right above “Nigger Mike's” Pelham Saloon. When Gertie was informed her apartment would be on Connors's tour that day, she immediately canceled any appointments with “customers,” and turned her brothel into a phony opium-smoking den. The only problem was, that instead of smoking opium, which would have been safer, they smoked molasses, which caused Charlie Lee's premature demise.
When Connors was at the height of his fame, he started the Chuck Connors Association, which was for the benefit of (you guessed it) Chuck Connors himself. The sole purpose of the Chuck Connors Association was to throw a yearly gala that was attended by all the local politicians, millionaires, and members of most of the city's illustrious clubs, including the Princeton Club and New York Athletic Club, and by anybody in New York City who was somebody.
In December 1903, Connors held his yearly gala in Tammany Hall on East 14th Street. The joint was jumping with such celebrities as pugilists John L. Sullivan, James J. Corbett and Jim Jeffries (who was accompanied by actress Anna Held), French actress Maxine Elliot, as well as millionaire industrialist George F. Train. The music was provided by two bands: Professor Wolf's Orchestra, and to throw a bone to Connors's Chinatown connections, Professor Yee Wah Lung's Chinese Orchestra.
At the time, Connors's main squeeze was a charming gal named “Pickles,” who was known as the “Belle of Chinatown.” While Connors was busy running the festivities, Pickles, a tall and buxom broad, arrived at the party around 11 p. m., accompanied by Ling Quong, the owner of a Chinatown opium den, who barely topped out at five feet tall. Both were a little high on something, liquid or otherwise.
Immediately, Pickles caused a stir at the ball, when she asked a passing older lady, who had her nose up in the air and was in the company of several gentlemen, “Hey sis, have you got any cigarettes?”
The lady stiffened and tried to barge past Pickles, but Pickles would have none of that.
Pickles grabbed the lady by the arm and pulled her back. “Go on and give me a pipe. Don't mind dem guys you wid. Give me the pipe!”
The lady sniffed at Pickles, “My poor girl, I don't smoke cigarettes.”
Pickles thought about giving the lady the back of her hand. But then she reconsidered and said, “Back to der woods for yours!”
The lady and her male crew scurried away.
Looking around, Pickles realized she was greatly under-dressed for the upcoming march, in which she was supposed to be accompanying Connors. So she conned a young girl, with some loose change no doubt, to lend her the skirt the girl was wearing.
While Pickles was in the dressing room changing and sprucing up a bit, Connors began asking around as to Pickles's whereabouts. A young girl in a pink dress told Connors, “My sister Mamie is lending her a blue skirt. Mamie will stay in the dressing room until the march is over.”
Minutes later, Pickles made her grand entrance, resplendent in the borrowed skirt which was about six inches too short. She sauntered over to Connors who was waiting not too patiently, flipped her cigarette to the floor, and then snapped at Connors, “Come on Chuck, yer needn't be ashamed of me. I'd be the best looking rag in the hall.”
Connors apparently agreed. He took Pickles by the arm and marched her around the hall, followed by 300 or so well-lit celebrants.
The joint was really jumping, when Carrie Nation made her unexpected and unwelcome appearance. Nation was a highly viable and quite loquacious member of the Ladies Temperance Movement, which opposed alcohol in pre-Prohibition America, as well as the notion of women smoking cigarettes. Nation was quite an imposing figure, standing over six-feet tall and weighing in the neighborhood of 175 pounds. If she were a boxer, male or female, Carrie Nation would certainly have been a heavyweight.
At first, Nation was stopped at the door by the bouncers, but Connors, obviously slightly in the bag himself, went to the door and said, “Sure she can come in. Der are udder automobiles upstairs with loose wheels. Jist step in and help yourself to a twist.”
That was a big mistake.
Nation immediately stampeded past Connors, and she hustled to the bar area, where she saw several girls smoking cigarettes. Nation smacked the cigarettes from the girls' hands and did the same thing to their male counterparts.
“I came here to stop this ball!” Nation bellowed to the crowd. “I received a letter from a heartbroken mother about it, and she said her son lost his job by attending it last year. I'm going to break it up!”
Her face beet red, Nation approached a table where ladies were sitting with alcoholic drinks in front of them. Nation brushed the drinks off the table, and she told the startled ladies, “You ought to be arrested for drinking!”
Then Nation hurried to the main stage, climbed the steps, and proceeded to read a letter she had received, begging her to stop the Chuck Connors Association Ball.
Connors ordered the band to drown her out by playing a popular song named Bedilia. The crowd started singing, “Bedilia, I'd like ter steal yer.”
Nation stood on the main stage, dumbfounded, as another segment of the crowd started chanting, “Put her out! Rats! Rats! Shut her up! Hey! Hey! Hey!”
By this time, Connors knew he had to do something, so he went to the main stage and induced Nation to leave the stage. Connors walked Nation toward the back door, and he told her, “I'd like to introduce you to a little girl who ought to be home in bed.”
Outside, waiting under the steps leading to the back exit, was none other than Pickles, who screamed up at Nation, “If yer don't git down the stairs in a minute, I'll push your nose through the back of yer neck!”
Pickles hurried up the steps, and she grabbed Nation by the throat. Connor grabbed both women in a bear hug, and with the help of three bouncers, Carrie Nation was evicted from the premises.
After Nation was safely outside, Connors snapped at her, “The street is all yours!”
On May 10, 1913, Chuck Connors returned to his room at 6 Doyers Street, not feeling too chipper. He told Mrs. Chin, who had cared for him the past few years, “I'm not good for several more days.”
Mrs. Chin immediately summoned Connors's pals from the Chatham Club. When they arrived at Connors's room, Connors told them, “If I am going to cash it in, let it be here in Chinatown.”
Cooler heads prevailed, and Dr. Shields, from the Hudson Street Hospital, was immediately summoned. When he arrived at Connors's bedside, Dr. Shields discovered that Connors had a severe case of pneumonia. Connors was rushed to the nearby “House of Relief,” where he died a few hours later at the age of 61.
Connors's funeral procession was one of the finest in Chinatown history. The procession started in front of Connors's residence at 6 Doyers Street. It consisted of 63 coaches filled with Connors's mourning friends and an additional six coaches stuffed with floral arrangements.
The mourners were a veritable who's who in the political world, the sporting world, and even the underworld. The only relatives in attendance were Connors's brother, Philip O'Connor, and Connors’s sister, Mrs. Elizabeth (O'Connor) Miller.
The procession snaked through the streets of Chinatown, and then it stopped at Transfiguration Church at 29 Mott Street, for Connors's funeral mass, which was said by Father McCann. After the mass, the procession again wound around the streets of Chinatown and the Bowery. As Connors's coffin moved past each establishment, Chinese merchants set off their traditional funeral firework displays, in honor of a white man they considered one of their own.
The funeral procession continued over the newly-built Manhattan Bridge, and it ended at Calvary Cemetery in Queens, wh
ere Connors was finally interred.
Costello, Frank – The Prime Minister of the Underworld
In 1891, Frank Costello was born Francesco Castiglia in Lauropoli, a mountain village in Calabria, Italy. In 1893, Costello's father moved alone to New York City, where he opened a small grocery in East Harlem. In 1900, the elder Castiglia had saved up enough money to send for his wife, Frank, and Frank's older brother Edward. It was Edward, 10 years Frank's senior, who first got Frank involved in petty crimes.
At the age of 14, Costello, wearing a black handkerchief over his face, robbed the landlady of the tenement house in which he and his parents were living. The landlady recognized Costello, but Costello concocted an alibi, which satisfied the police, and he was never arrested. In 1908, and again in 1912, Costello was arrested for assault and robbery, and again, he somehow beat both raps.
In 1915, Costello, then 24 years old, was sentenced to a year in prison for carrying an illegal firearm. Despite the fact, in the decades to come, Costello was actively involved in scores of criminal activities, he would not see the inside of a jail cell again for 37 years. Costello swore at that time, that when he got out of jail, he would never carry a gun again. And he ever did.
Upon his release from jail, Costello met and married a Jewish woman named Loretta Geigerman. It was unusual at the time for an Italian to marry outside his Catholic faith. However, Costello saw things differently, and he eventually forged relationships with many Jewish gangsters, including Meyer Lansky, Louie “Lepke” Buchalter, and Bugsy Siegel.
Soon after he was married, Costello began working for the murderous Joe “The Clutch Hand” Morello, who along with his sidekick, Ignazio “Lupo the Wolf” Saietta, were responsible for the treacherous Black Hand extortion racket.
While he was working for Morello, Costello met Charles “Lucky” Luciano, a Sicilian who ran the rackets in Little Italy on the Lower East Side of Manhattan. Through Luciano, Costello became tight with such mobsters as Vito Genovese, Tommy “Three-Finger Brown” Lucchese, as well as with Lansky and Siegel. Together, these men became heavily involved in armed robbery, burglaries, extortion, gambling, and drug dealing. In 1920, when The Volstead Act became law, starting the era of prohibition, Costello and his pals cashed in big, bringing in illegal alcohol from Canada and as far away as England. Their partner was Arnold “The Brain” Rothstein, who initially financed the entire operation.
Costello, Luciano, Lansky, and Siegel were raking in so much dough, they were able to pay off crooked politicians and police officials an estimated $100,000 a week for protection. These payments went all the way up to the office of the New York City Police Commissioner: Grover Whalen. In 1929, right after the stock market crashed, Costello told Luciano that he had to advance Whalen $30,000 so that Whalen could cover the margin calls from his stockbroker.
“What could I do?” Costello told Luciano. “I had to give it to him. We own him.”
Even after all the hefty graft payments they had to dole out, there was still about $4 million in yearly profits from all their rackets, to be split equally amongst Costello, Luciano, Lansky, and Siegel.
It was during this period of time that Luciano convinced Costello (a name of Irish decent) that he should change his name from Castiglia.
Luciano later said, “When we got up into our ears in New York politics, it didn't hurt us at all that we had an Italian guy with a name like Costello.”
In the late 1920's, both Luciano and Costello joined the Mafia gang headed by Joe “The Boss” Masseria. At the same time, Costello saw that it was advantageous to form alliances with other ethnic groups. Besides Jews like Lansky, Siegel, and Rothstein, Costello became tight with Irish gangsters on the West Side of Manhattan, specifically Owney "The Killer" Madden and William "Big Bill" Dwyer. With the Irish, Costello became a big part of a rum-running operation called “The Combine.” Of course, Costello shared all his profits from the rum running racket with Luciano, Lansky, and Siegel.
However, Masseria frowned on members of his gang dealing with anyone other than Sicilians. The fact that Costello was Calabrese didn't please Masseria too much, either.
Seeing the handwriting on the wall, Luciano and Costello, along with Tommy Lucchese and Vito Genovese, switched sides in the “Castellammarese War,” in which Masseria was actively engaged with bitter rival Salvatore Maranzano.
On Sunday, April 15, 1931, Luciano took Masseria out to lunch to the Nuova Villa Tammaro in Coney Island. After Masseria finished a sumptuous lunch, the two men engaged in a game of cards. During the card game, Luciano excused himself and went into the men's room. While Luciano was in the men's room, four gunmen, led by Bugsy Siegel, burst through the front door and filled Masseria with enough lead to render him dead.
When the police arrived minutes later, Luciano claimed no knowledge of what had transpired, because he had been indisposed at the time of the shooting. The police scoffed at Luciano's story, but they had no proof of Luciano's involvement (or maybe they were bribed), so they let him go.
In just a few months, Costello and Luciano became disenchanted with Maranzano's old world ways. Considering himself an aristocrat and of a higher calling than his men, Maranzano appointed himself “Capo de Tuti Capo (Boss of All Bosses).” To make matters worse, Maranzano extracted a larger share of his underlings’ profits than even the greedy Masseria had demanded.
The final straw was when, through moles planted close to Maranzano, Costello and Luciano discovered that Maranzano was plotting to kill them both, because he feared their ambitions. Not liking the idea of soon being dead men, Luciano and Costello quickly sent four Jewish killers, led by the very capable Red Levine, to Maranzano's midtown office. Disguised as police detectives, the four men quickly disarmed Maranzano's bodyguards, and then shot and stabbed Maranzano to death.
With their two former bosses now six feet under, Costello along with Luciano, Siegel, and Lansky formed a National Crime Commission. Whereas Luciano's job as boss of the family was running the day-to-day operations of whatever swindles they were involved in, Costello, Luciano's consigliere, was the man behind the scenes, greasing the wheels for their protection by getting chummy with the top politicians and police officials in New York City. Of course, this meant Costello had to pay and pay plenty. But he knew when he needed a political favor, that favor would always be granted. Costello bragged he owned all of the top Tammany Hall politicians, including Mike Kennedy, Christie Sullivan, Frank Rossetti, Carmine DeSapio, and Hugo Rogers.
Costello used his “in” with Tammany Hall to basically make any political appointments he wanted. Rogers even admitted, “If Costello wants me, he sends for me.”
In the mid 1930's, Costello, now one of the Luciano families biggest earners, went into the slot machine business with Phil “Dandy Phil” Kastel. Costello placed over 25,000 slot machines in New York City restaurants, bars, drugstores, bus stops, and gas stations. This went very well for a while, until reformist New York City Mayor Fiorello LaGuardia went on a rampage against the illegal slot machine business. LaGuardia made a big show of personally confiscating thousands of Costello's slot machines. LaGuardia, aided by local law enforcement, loaded the slot machines onto barges, and then LaGuardia pushed the slot machines into the water himself. Photos of LaGuardia's antics appeared in all the local newspapers, as well as in the movie house news reels.
His New York City slot machine business in ruins, Costello, along with Kastel, moved the operations to New Orleans, Louisiana. There, with the aid of New Orleans mob boss Carlos Marcello, they were able to place their machines wherever they wanted. Their whole operation was under the protection of Senator Hughie Long, himself a bastion of corruption.
In 1936, Luciano began being hounded by Special Prosecutor Thomas E. Dewey. Despite the flimsy evidence and the perjured testimony of prostitutes and pimps, Dewey prosecuted and convicted Luciano on a trumped-up prostitution charge. Luciano later claimed that it was Dewey himself who had framed Luciano.
With Luc
iano locked away in prison, Luciano appointed his underboss, Vito Genovese, as head of the Luciano Crime Family. However in 1937, Genovese was indicted for murder, and to avoid prosecution he fled to Italy. To replace Genovese, Luciano appointed Costello as the boss of the Luciano Crime Family.
Costello did very well as the new boss. Working with men of various nationalities, Costello increased the family's profitability across the board. Costello controlled the gambling, horse-race fixing, policy rackets, and the illegal race wires throughout the country. Of course, to keep his enterprises running smoothly, Costello contributed millions of dollars to the retirement funds of hundreds of crooked politicians and law enforcement officials. By doing so, Costello assured that when he needed a favor, he indeed got that favor, without question.
In 1943, Costello called in one of his political chits, when he demanded that Thomas Aurelio be appointed a state judge. The only problem was, Manhattan District Attorney Frank Hogan, one of the few politicians not on Costello's payroll, had obtained a wiretap on Aurelio's phone.
The date was August 23, 1943, and the man Aurelio was speaking to on the phone was none other than Frank Costello, confirming that Aurelio would soon be a judge.
The conversation went like this: “How are you, and thanks for everything,” Aurelio said.
“Congratulations,” Costello said. “It all went perfect. When I tell you something is in the bag, you can rest assured.”
“It was perfect,” Aurelio said. “It was fine.”
“Well, we will all have to get together and have dinner some night real soon,” Costello said.
“That would be fine,” Aurelio said. “But right now I want to assure you of my loyalty for all you have done. It is unwavering.”
Amazingly, Costello had his clutches so deep into New York City politicians and law enforcement officials, despite the conversation between him and Aurelio being made public, Aurelio still got the judgeship, right after he beat a disbarment proceeding.