Joe Bruno's Mobsters - Six Volume Set

by Bruno, Joe

  First, Workman was dismayed to discover Schultz was dead broke. Then when Workman finally rushed outside, Weiss, Piggy, and the getaway car were nowhere in sight.

  With the sound of police sirens piercing the air, Workman hurried into the swamp behind the chophouse. He ditched his bloodstained overcoat and then stomped in the general direction of New York City.

  After a few hours of sloshing through mud, Workman came upon a set of railroad tracks. He followed these tracks all night long, until he passed under the Hudson River and found himself in downtown Manhattan on the other wide of the Holland Tunnel.

  Workman rushed to a downtown mob-run coffee shop, where he was horrified to discover that Schultz’s murder was the main topic of discussion, and that Weiss was being credited as the lone killer.

  This ticked off Workman to no end, and he plotted his revenge.

  In the meantime, Schultz was found by the police and rushed to a local hospital. He lay there for two days; spouting inanities like: “Oh Duckie, see we skipped again.” And, “Please mother, crack down on the Chinaman's friends and Hitler's commander.” And, “Louie, didn't I give you my doorbell?”

  Schultz’s temperature rose to 106 degrees before he lapsed into a coma.

  On Oct. 25, before he expired, Schultz received a telegram, saying, “As ye sow, so shall you reap.”

  The telegram was signed “Stephanie St. Clair,” the woman he had muscled out of the Harlem numbers business.

  After leaving the coffee shop, Workman absconded to a safe house to get some sleep. After he sawed off a few z’s, Workman phoned Lepke and demanded a meeting over the disappearance of Weiss from the scene of the crime.

  The meeting took place a few days later at Weiss’s house at 400 Ocean Avenue in Brooklyn. First, Workman laid out the reasons why he thought Weiss should be disciplined; death being the punishment.

  When it was Weiss’s turn to speak, he said, “I claim hitting the Dutchman was mob business. And I stayed until hitting the Dutchman was over. But then the Bug went back in the toilet to give the Dutchman a heist. I claim that was not mob business anymore. It was personal business.”

  Lepke agreed with Weiss’s assessment, and Workman was not too happy.

  Lepke suggested to Workman that it might be a good idea for him to travel down to sunny Florida for a cooling-off period; otherwise the air up north might be hazardous to Workman’s health.

  Workman did as he was told, and while “vacationing” in Miami, Workman met with Lucky Luciano to receive funds for his “lamsky” trip. Right off the bat, Workman started pleading his case to Luciano about Weiss leaving the scene of the Schultz hit. But Luciano would have none of that.

  Luciano shoved a stack of bills into Workman’s hands, and said, “Here's the money. Now stop talking about that other thing.”

  Workman, finally using his head, took the money, and then he took the hint; forgetting all about Weiss, Schultz, and the entire Palace Chop House incident.

  *****

  With Schultz now no longer a factor on the New York City crime scene, Dewey set his sights on Lucky Luciano. The only problem was - Luciano had insulated himself from the everyday crimes his men were committing on the streets. As a result, Dewey didn’t have any concrete evidence to indict Luciano on anything; except maybe spitting on the sidewalk.

  That’s when Dewey came up with the bright idea of framing Luciano, and that’s exactly what Dewey did.

  Luciano was living the high life in New York City; residing at the plush Waldorf Astoria Hotel (room 39 D) under the name “Mr. Ross.” Luciano was also seen prancing nightly at the top nightclubs in town with a beautiful broad on each arm. This irked Dewey to no end, so Dewey decided to do something about it.

  Knowing he had nothing on Luciano as far as the rackets were concerned - and no proof that the murders being committed by Murder Inc. were at Luciano’s bequest - Dewey decided to crack down on prostitution, something Luciano had absolutely nothing to do with.

  On Jan. 31, 1936, Dewey ordered his task force to raid more than 80 brothels, pick up every prostitute in sight (even ones walking the streets), arrest pimps of all colors and nationalities, and bring them one-by-one to his offices in the Woolworth Building.

  The arrested broads were hardened hookers with colorful names like Sadie the Chink, Jennie the Factory, and Polack Francis. The pimps were low-level street hustlers who kicked up their money to mobsters, who in turn kicked it up the ladder, until (they claimed) some of it made its way into the hands of a “Mr. Ross.”

  All of the arrestees had one thing in common: they did not want to go to jail.

  Dewey asked the right questions, and sometimes he even gave the pimps and the hookers the right answers. As a result, Dewey figured he had enough information on Luciano’s “involvement” in the prostitution rackets to obtain an arrest warrant for Luciano. The charge was that Luciano was the top man in a $10 million-a-year New York City prostitution ring.

  Luciano, incredulous and quite outraged at the charges, bolted town and took refuge in a spa/hotel in Hot Springs, Ark., run by his old pal: bootlegger Owney Madden.

  However, Dewey was relentless.

  It took Dewey four months to locate Luciano and to obtain the proper out-of-state arrest warrants.

  On April 17, 1936, Luciano, after fighting for 10 days to be released from Arkansas prison on a writ of habeas corpus, was shackled and escorted on a train to New York City by three New York City detectives who had been dispatched by Dewey.

  The trial itself was a slam dunk for Dewey. He paraded onto the witness stand pimp after pimp and prostitute after prostitute; all with the same story: “Mr. Ross” a.k.a Lucky Luciano, a man none of them had ever met, was the top man in the prostitution ring.

  Luciano, disgusted with all the lies, decided to take the stand himself. This turned out to be a disaster for Luciano.

  Dewey was erudite and a wonderful public speaker; Luciano was a crass street thug, and his coarse manner stood in stark contrast to Dewey’s “Mr. Cool” demeanor. Luciano, even though he admitted to committing just about every crime known to man, steadfastly refused to concede he ever had anything to do with the vile racket of prostitution.

  On June 7, 1936, after a four-week trial, Luciano and eight co-defendants were found guilty of 62 counts each of “suborning prostitution.” As Dewey gloated, Luciano was sentenced to 30-50 years in prison; at that time, the longest prison sentence ever rendered for a prostitution conviction.

  In 1962, just before he died of a heart attack in a Naples airport, Luciano wrote in his autobiography The Last Testament, “After sittin' in court and listenin' to myself being plastered to the wall, and tarred and feathered by a bunch of whores who sold themselves for a quarter, and hearin' that no-good McCook [the judge] hand me what added to a life term, I still get madder at Dewey's crap than anythin' else.

  “That little shit with the mustache comes right out in the open and admits he's got me on everythin' else but what he charged me with. I knew he knew I didn't have a fuckin' thing to do with prostitution; not with none of those broads. But Dewey was such a goddamn racketeer himself, in a legal way, that he crawled up my back with a frame and stabbed me.”

  *****

  With Luciano in jail for potentially the rest of his life, Dewey set his sights on Louie “Lepke” Buchalter. Dewey initially went after Lepke for his bakery extortion rackets. But Dewey came down harder with the hammer when he got the Federal Narcotics Bureau to build a case involving Lepke in a massive drug-smuggling operation.

  Figuring he was facing big time in the slammer, Lepke went on the lam. He was concealed in several Brooklyn hideouts by Anastasia, while his rackets were tended to by other members of the Commission.

  Even though Lepke was in hiding, he sent orders to his Murder Inc. operatives, through intermediaries, of course, to kill whomever the Commission bosses said needed to be killed. But even the contract murders grounded to a halt, when Lepke realized his best killers could be the
most effective witnesses against him in a court of law.

  His paranoia increasing by the minute, Lepke ordered several of his top operatives to go on the lam, or be whacked themselves. Blue Jaw Magoon and Buggsy Goldstein, the original members of the Boys from Brownsville, took Lepke’s advice and went on a cross-country trip which lasted more than nine months. Their journey took them through Canada, Kansas City, California, Mexico, then back east, until they settled in a known mob hideaway in Newburgh, N. Y., where they were finally arrested for “vagrancy.”

  Harry “Big Greenie” Greenberg was not one of Lepke’s Murder Inc. killers. Still, Greenberg knew enough about Lepke’s rackets, especially those in the Garment Center, to give Lepke a massive headache. Through Mendy Weiss, Lepke sent word to Greenberg to get out of town fast or suffer the consequences.

  Greenberg holed up in Canada for a while, but then he got to thinking. Since he was in hiding, Greenberg’s cash flow had stopped to a dead halt.

  As a result, Greenburg sent a letter to Weiss, which said, “I hope you guys aren’t forgetting about me. You better not.”

  Then Greenburg asked Weiss for a reported $5,000 to help him fight the cold weather in Canada.

  Lepke gave the order, through Weiss again, for Allie Tannenbaum to travel north across the border to take out Big Greenie. But when Tannenbaum arrived in Canada, Greenberg had already flown the coop; first to Detroit, then as far west as he could go without swimming: Los Angeles.

  Another big mistake for Big Greenie.

  National Crime Commission member Bugsy Siegel had set down stakes in Los Angeles and was lording over the Commission’s West Coast interests. Without much trouble, Siegel located Greenberg, and with the help of Allie Tannenbaum, who had flown in from the East Coast, and Frankie Carbo, another Murder Inc. killer, Siegel orchestrated Big Greenie’s demise.

  On Oct. 22, 1939, in front of Greenberg’s rented Hollywood house at 1804 N. Vista De Mar Drive, Carbo put several bullets in Big Greenie’s head, making Harry “Big Greenie” Greenberg the first victim of a mob hit in the sunny state of California.

  However, although Louie “Lepke” Buchalter had always insulated himself from the men who actually performed his requested hits, Lepke made one huge mistake, and he made it before he went on the lam.

  Joe Rosen was a hard-working trucker, who, through his own initiative, had started a very successful trucking business which catered to non-union, tailoring-contract customers in the Wilkes-Barre, P.A. area. Since his business was so flush, Rosen was taken in as a partner in the New York & New Jersey Trucking Company; a non-union organization. The only problem was - Lepke and his sometimes-partner Max Rubin controlled the Amalgamated Clothing Worker's Union and were incensed that Rubin, a non-union man, was doing business without the benefit of the union’s protection.

  In 1932, Rubin and Lepke approached Rosen and demanded that he stop delivering to non-union tailor shops in Pennsylvania.

  “But if I lose the Pennsylvania business, I lose everything,” Rosen told them. “I've been in the clothing business all my life, and now I'm being pushed out of it.”

  However Lepke, with his Murder Inc. men backing him up, could be every persuasive.

  Lepke forced Rosen out of business, and he threw Rosen a bone by giving him a job as a lowly truck driver at Garfield Express, a trucking company in which Lepke owned 50 percent interest with his partner, Louis Cooper. Eight months later, Cooper fired Rosen, and Rosen was out of work for 18 months. Rosen used borrowed funds to open a small candy store in Brownsville, but Rosen was a loud and unhappy camper.

  Special Prosecutor Thomas E. Dewey was making noise about Lepke's involvement with the Amalgamated Clothing Worker's Union, and Rosen was also making noise, saying to anyone who would listen, that maybe he and Dewey should sit down and have a little talk about Lepke’s stranglehold on the unions.

  Max Rubin told Lepke, “This is bad. Joe (Rosen) is going around complaining he's got a family, and he doesn't have anything to eat. We’ve got a desperate man on our hands.”

  At first, Lepke figured he’d give Rosen a few bucks and tell Rosen to get out of town, or else. And that Lepke did, through Rubin, who made a trip to Rosen’s candy store.

  Rubin told Rosen, “Here's $200. Lepke wants you to go away and cool down. You better do what he says.”

  Figuring he didn’t have a choice, Rosen closed his candy store and absconded to Reading, P. A., where his son worked as a coal miner. But after an unpleasant week slaving in the coal mines, Rosen defied Lepke and headed back to Brooklyn, where he reopened his candy store. Rosen also began running his mouth again about having a little chat with Dewey. This infuriated Lepke, and in Lepke’s midtown office, Lepke voiced his rage to Rubin.

  Lepke thought he and Rubin were alone in Lepke’s office, but Allie Tannenbaum, fresh off the successful murder of renegade taxi-business owner, Irv Ashkenaz, in the Catskills, was in an adjoining room, and the door to Lepke’s office was open.

  Tannenbaum heard Lepke say to Rubin, “I've seen enough of this crap. That (expletive) Rosen, he's going around shooting his mouth off about seeing Dewey. He and nobody else is going any place and doing any talking. I'll take care of him.”

  On Sept. 13, 1936, Joe Rosen opened his candy store at approximately 7:30 a.m. Waiting in a car across the street from the candy store were a group of Murder Inc. hitmen led by Harry “Pittsburgh Phil” Strauss and Happy Maione. As soon as Rosen walked into the candy store, Strauss and Maione busted in and emptied 17 bullets into Rosen’s body. Four of the shots were fired by Strauss after Rosen was already dead.

  *****

  By the late 1930s, with Lepke still on the lam, one by one Murder Inc. killers were arrested by the police. Most clammed up, but some began singing to save their own skins. Happy Maione, Dasher Abbandando, and Mendy Weiss refused to admit anything. Yet, Blue Jaw Magoon and Allie Tannenbaum were only too eager to cut deals in order to avoid the Sing Sing electric chair.

  However, the key for any conviction was corroboration, and this corroboration was provided by the most unlikely of individuals: Abe “Kid Twist” Reles.

  On Jan. 24, 1940, with Lepke still on the lam, Reles was picked up for the murder of a small-time crook named Red Alpert. Reles was smug about the pinch, figuring there was no independent corroboration of his involvement in Alpert’s murder which had taken place way back in 1933.

  However, Reles was wrong.

  Two men had come forward and implicated Reles in Alpert’s murder: small-time thug Harry Rudolph, who had witnessed the killing, and Murder Inc. flunky Dukey Maffetore. These two men also implicated Happy Maione in the Alpert hit.

  Both Maione, who had been nabbed on vagrancy charge and not yet charged with the Alpert murder, and Reles were housed together in the Tombs prison.

  Knowing the spit was about to hit the fan, Reles told Maione, “Don’t worry Hap. Everything’s okay.”

  On March 21, after a visit from his lawyer in prison, Reles sat down and wrote a letter to his wife, Rose.

  The letter said: “Dear Rose, Go and see (New York District Attorney) O’Dwyer and tell him I want to talk with him.”

  The next day Rose Reles paid a visit to the District Attorney’s office. There she met Brooklyn assistant District Attorney Burton Turkus.

  Rose Reles told Turkus, “I want to talk to O’Dwyer personally. I want to save my husband from the electric chair. My baby is coming in June.”

  Turkus nearly broke a leg rushing to tell O’Dwyer about their good fortune. In hours, Abe Reles had signed a “Consent to Be Interviewed” form, and the ball was rolling to put Murder Inc. out of business for good.

  *****

  While his world was crumbling around him, Louie “Lepke” Buchalter was in limbo; moving from place to place in Brooklyn and in Manhattan, still hiding from the law, with a $50,000 bounty on his head. Things were so bad for Lepke, FBI director J. Edgar Hoover, ignoring Adolph Hitler’s existence, called Lepke “The Most Dangerous Man on Eart
h.” New York City Mayor Fiorello La Guardia added to Lepke’s angst when he ordered his police commissioner, Lewis J. Valentine, to wage a “war on hoodlums.”

  The National Crime Commission was in trouble because of Lepke, and they knew it. Word was sent to Luciano, who was still in prison, for advice as to how to handle the Lepke situation. Luciano knew the only way for the heat to die down was for Lepke to surrender.

  However, convincing Lepke to do so would take some serious conniving.

  “Dimples” Wolensky was a long-time pal of Lepke’s, whom Lepke trusted without question. The Commission sent Wolensky to meet Lepke in hiding and to convince the fugitive that the fix was in. Wolensky told Lepke that if Lepke surrendered he would be tried only on the narcotics charge, netting him five years in prison, at most. Wolensky also told Lepke that if Lepke surrendered directly to Hoover, Dewey would then be completely out of the picture.

  Lepke was skeptical and he said he’d think it over. Lepke conferred with his closest pal in Murder Inc.: Albert Anastasia. Anastasia told Lepke the whole plan sounded goofy.

  Big Al said, “As long as they can’t get you, they can’t hurt you.”

  However, the pressure was on from the law and Lepke knew, quite correctly, that if he didn’t turn himself in, his pals on the National Crime Commission would do him in instead.

  On Aug. 5, 1940, gossip columnist and radio host Walter Winchell received a phone call at his nightly headquarters: the Stork Club, at 3 East 53rd Street. Although he didn’t know it at the time, the voice on the phone was that of Albert Anastasia.

  Anastasia told Winchell, “Don't ask who I am, but Lepke wants to come in. Contact Hoover and tell him Lepke wants a guarantee he will not be harmed if he surrenders to Hoover.”

  The following day, Winchell said on his national syndicated radio show, “Your reporter is reliably informed that Lepke, the fugitive, is on the verge of surrender, possibly this week. If Lepke can find someone he can trust, I am told, he will come in. I am authorized by the G-men that Lepke is assured of safe delivery.”