The Mob and the City

by C. Alexander Hortis

  Italian syndicates gradually surpassed Jewish gangsters as the dominant wholesalers in the 1930s. Both dealers and users witnessed this trend. “I was pushed out by the Italians about ’38, ’39, before the war,” remembered Charlie, an independent Italian-American dealer. “Before that—the Jews had the drugs.” Jack, a street dealer, saw Italian traffickers grow in influence in the ’30s. “But it wasn't overnight you know…infiltration was gradual,” said Jack. For Eddie, “Harlem was the main place. I'd buy from guys in the street. They were Italian, all Italian—the ones I knew anyhow,” he remembered. African-American dealers also report a takeover by Italian syndicates in the ’30s. “Who really controlled it was the bigger people on the East Side, the Sicilians…in the twenties the Jewish people had it,” recalled Curtis, a black dealer in Harlem. As a seller named Mel recounted, “When I started dealing I had Chinese and Jewish connections; later I had Italian connections.” Said Mel, “The transitions…all started between ’35 up until ’40 something, then the Italians got ahold to it.”24

  At the international smuggling level, Italian traffickers had established drug contacts throughout the Mediterranean by the 1930s. During this time, the State Department collected “Name Files of Suspected Narcotics Traffickers” on smugglers from around the world. Approximately 11 percent of the name files (65 of the 563 files) were of Italian Americans or Italian nationals.25 They include known Mafia traffickers such as Vincenzo Di Stefano, who in 1935 was convicted for smuggling nineteen kilos of gum opium he bought in Paris aboard the steamship Conte Grande. Mariano Marsalisi, a fifty-something Sicily-born mafioso and businessman, spent much of the 1930s traveling between his residences in Istanbul, Paris, and East Harlem. Marsalisi bought trunks of narcotics all over the Mediterranean for shipment back to New York. In the mid-1930s, his partners Luigi Alabiso and Frank Caruso were convicted on smuggling charges; Marsalisi himself was convicted in 1942.26

  The newly formed Federal Bureau of Narcotics (hereafter “FBN”) began tracking the Mafia as it grew in influence in the 1930s. FBN agent Max Roder and George White conducted surveillance in Italian East Harlem and Little Italy along Mulberry Street, tracking mafiosi like Eugene Tramaglino and Joe Marone.27 White and Elmer Gentry later oversaw nationwide investigations of Lucchese Family traffickers.28 The FBN's binder of “major violators of the narcotics laws now operating in New York City” reflects this trend as well. In its February 15, 1940, binder, out of a total of 193 major violators, 84 were Italian (44 percent), and 83 (43 percent) were Jewish.29 Along with labor racketeering, drug trafficking was the Mafia's second new source of revenues in the 1930s.

  Prominent mafiosi began getting picked up on narcotics violations in the 1930s as well. Steve Armone, a Gambino Family captain who engaged in “large scale narcotics smuggling and wholesale distribution for many years,” was convicted on narcotics charges in 1937.30 John Ormento, the Lucchese Family's top narcotics man, was first convicted in 1937. Lucky Luciano never stopped consorting with narcotics traffickers: two of Luciano's codefendants in his 1936 prostitution-ring trial were Thomas “The Bull” Pennochio, a notorious drug trafficker on Mott Street whose wife also pled guilty to selling heroin in 1938, and Ralph Liquori, who was convicted on narcotics charges in 1938. Anthony “Tony Ducks” Corallo, the future boss of the Lucchese Family, got his name for “ducking” convictions on thirteen arrests. Nevertheless, “Tony Ducks” was finally convicted on a state narcotics charge in 1941.31 Drug records did not impede their ascents in the Cosa Nostra.

  Joey Rao was innovating another kind of drug smuggling at Welfare Island Penitentiary. The thirty-two-year-old head of the “Italian mob” ran the prison from his luxurious cell, where he donned silk clothes, ate lobster, and smoked cigars. He could stop fights just by walking into the ward. Rao's power derived from his fierce reputation and his “dope racket.” When the Department of Corrections raided Welfare Island in January 1934, it discovered that Rao was running “a systematic traffic in narcotics within the walls.” There were so many addicted inmates that they had to be segregated in the prison hospital.32

  5–1: Steve Armone, 1942. Armone, a caporegime in the Mangano/Anastasia Family, was a convicted narcotics trafficker. (Used by permission of the NYC Municipal Archives)

  Nicolo Gentile epitomizes the Mafia's hypocrisy on drugs. Born in Sicily in 1885, he entered the “honorable society” as a young man. Gentile became a fixer for Mafia leaders, developing contacts from Kansas City to Pittsburgh to New York. In his memoirs Vita di Capomafia (“Life of a Mafia Boss”), Gentile waxes eloquent about how the Mafia “claims for itself the right to defend honor, the weak, and to command respect for human justice through its affiliated members.”33

  So, naturally, Gentile became a drug trafficker. In 1937, Gentile conspired with Charles “Big Nose” La Gaipa to organize one of the largest narcotics distribution rings in America. Gentile used his connections to “organize all the drug trafficking groups and to assemble them in a syndicate, in order to have the distribution monopoly in our hands.” The ring involved more than seventy smugglers and dealers who imported narcotics from Europe to New York City, and then distributed them in Southern states. Financing, underworld reputations, connections to European suppliers—these were advantages enjoyed by the Cosa Nostra. The ring was doing a multimillion dollar business when it was busted. After Gentile was indicted, he skipped bail and slipped onto a ship to Italy.34

  THE DISRUPTION OF WAR, 1939–1945

  The Second World War cut off the United States from opium sources in Southwest Asia and Southeast Asia, causing severe shortages of narcotics in New York City. Purity levels plunged. “I couldn't deal during the war. I lost my connections. Everybody did,” recalled Jack.35

  The Cosa Nostra adapted by looking south for new sources. Although Mexican poppies produced weaker opiates, they would do in a shortage. Mafiosi from East Harlem contacted Helmuth Hartman, a trafficker with connections to Central America. In June 1940, Frank Livorsi, Dominick “The Gap” Petrilli, and Salvatore “Tom Mix” Santoro drove to a remote Texas town to sit down with Hartman: “The boys now have enough money to buy all the narcotics you can find in Mexico. Do a good job for us,” Livorsi told Hartman. They then drove to other towns along the border, striking deals with Mexican traffickers. To oversee the deals, Santoro and Petrilli regularly made road trips to Mexico in their Buick Coupe, and later even flew into Mexico City on Eastern Air Lines.36

  Eventually, they and other mafiosi from East Harlem established a reliable drug route whereby curriers smuggled Mexican opium gum into the country through Arizona and California, then across the country to New York City, where chemists in clandestine laboratories processed the opium into heroin. The rings sold the heroin at the wholesale level to dealers for up to $600 an ounce.37

  THE POSTWAR RESURGENCE IN DRUGS, 1946–1957

  When the sea lanes reopened, narcotics washed over the city. Between 1946 and 1950, New York's addiction rates spiked by 36 percent. By 1957, the US Attorney was calling New York “the illicit narcotics capital of the nation.”38 The Mafia was supplying the heroin.

  The Cosa Nostra's traffickers were now the dominant wholesalers due to their superior heroin. “After 1950, I switched over to the Italians in East Harlem because I got better quality stuff, and the prices were better,” recalled Arthur, a dealer.39 The mob's supply was indeed better: the heroin seized in the French Connection case was about 95 percent pure—an extraordinary level. A FBN report in 1949 found that heroin seized at its source in New York City was about 92 percent pure compared to the national average of 55 percent.40

  Another sign of the Mafia's market power was its ability to dilute or “cut” its pure heroin while simultaneously raising prices. “When the Jews gave up, I don't know what happened. When the wops come…they kept raising the price,” said Abe D., a Jewish dealer. “It was a beautiful thing when the Chinese and the Jews had it. But when the Italians had it—bah!—they messed it all up,” said Mel. “They started
diluting it to a weaker state.” A longtime user concurred: “The Italians stepped on the H much more than the Jews, and they charged more money. It happened before the war,” recounted Al.41

  The Mafia's superior supply was due to its overseas connections in the underworld. Members of the Cosa Nostra enjoyed close ties to the premier smugglers of the time: the Corsican crime families. Corsica is a large island situated between France and Italy with a long tradition of banditry. From their base in the port city of Marseilles, the Corsicans had extensive connections with smugglers throughout the Mediterranean. Though French citizens, Corsicans spoke an Italian dialect and were culturally similar to Sicilians.42 The Sicilian cosca and the Corsican crime families were cousins in crime, and they had built up decades of mutual trust. In 1934, the FBN found “a well-organized ring of narcotic traffickers and smugglers in Marseille, most of whom are of Corsican origin,” shipping large quantities of narcotics to Italian smugglers in New York.43

  When the war ended, mafiosi revived their prewar contacts with the Corsicans. Upwards of 80 percent of the heroin smuggled into the United States originated in the rich opium fields and port cities of Turkey and Lebanon, where the Corsican smugglers held sway. “The Italian domination really set in with the old French connection, when the predominance of heroin came from Turkey, Lebanon through Italy to Marseilles, following World War II,” explained Ralph Salerno of the New York Police Department's intelligence unit. “Who had the bona fides to sit down with these six Corsican families? Only the Italians, and a few Jews who lingered in the field,” said Salerno.44

  Black gangsters by comparison could not establish direct connections to suppliers. The State Department files on international traffickers record no Africans or African Americans.45 “I don't believe there was a black man who could bring into the United States from the outside two kilos of heroin up to 1960,” said Salerno. “You could have had forty million dollars, and if you were a black man, you couldn't even get to sit down with that Corsican.”46 It was not until the 1970s that Frank Lucas, frustrated by the Mafia's dominance, became the first black trafficker to establish a connection to heroin suppliers in Southeast Asia.47

  Mafia traffickers further benefitted from belonging to the strongest organized crime syndicates in the underworld. Large-scale, international drug trafficking was a logistical nightmare. A customs officer explained the essential role of organized crime:

  You need someone in Europe, you need couriers, you need financing people, you need somebody that knows something about traveling, how to get United States documentation, who the buyers would be in the United States. Only this can be known by someone, and not by some clown who decides all of a sudden to do it in some European capital…. It requires a lot of people, a lot of effort, and it is criminal, so it is organized.48

  As FBN agent Maurice Helbrant explained, “Touch dope and you will run into other branches of organized crime. Touch organized crime and sooner or later you will run into dope.”49

  THE 107TH STREET MOB

  Mafiosi sheltered their wholesaling and distribution operations in Italian East Harlem. These densely populated streets were impenetrable to outsiders. “Since everyone knew everyone else, a narcotics agent found it impossible to maintain surveillance in this neighborhood,” said FBN agent Charles Siragusa. “Life on the narrow sidestreets would come to a standstill. Every eye would fix on the agent.”50

  Law enforcement dubbed the Lucchese Family's traffickers the “107th Street Mob.”51 Mafiosi financed, manufactured, and moved heroin through Italian East Harlem. It became an industry cluster for narcotics similar to alcohol wholesaling on the Curb Exchange during Prohibition. Although various Mafia drug traffickers operated in East Harlem, the Luccheses clearly lead the postwar resurgence in drugs. In spring 1947, Charles “Little Bullets” Albero and Joseph “Pip the Blind” Gagliano were convicted of running “an East Harlem narcotics peddling combine said to be the biggest in the East.”52 They were quickly replaced by other Lucchese traffickers.

  5–2: John “Big John” Ormento (center) and Nicholas “Big Nose” Tolentino (in glasses) being booked in 1958. The New York Mafia's drug traffickers dominated heroin wholesaling in the United States starting in the mid-1930s. (Used by permission of the Associated Press)

  On the surface, John Ormento looked like any other American success story. Born in East Harlem, he rose from his humble origins to live in the fashionable section of Lido Beach on Long Island. By night, Mr. Ormento frequented the Copacabana, his 240-pound frame draped in finely tailored suits. But by day, “Big John” Ormento ran narcotics operations from East 107th Street with his smuggling partner Salvatore “Tom Mix” Santoro. The FBN accurately identified Ormento as a “top figure in the NYC underworld” who knew many “narcotic sources in Mexico, Canada and Europe.”53 By the age of forty, he had three separate convictions under the Harrison Act. Nevertheless, Ormento was a longtime caporegime in the Lucchese Family, and he attended the 1957 Apalachin conference of top mobsters.54

  THE DRUG DISTRIBUTION NETWORK

  The Cosa Nostra's influence was magnified by New York's pivotal spot in the wholesaling network. As drug historian Eric Schneider explains, “New York served as the central place that established the hierarchical structures of the market, with virtually the entire country as its hinterland and other cities serving as its regional or local distribution centers.”55

  Mafia traffickers in New York City financed, diluted, and wholesaled drugs nationwide. Dealers from Philadelphia, Baltimore, and Washington, DC, traveled to New York to buy drugs. In 1924, federal agents discovered that Cincinnati peddlers were getting their narcotics from New York wholesalers. New York mafiosi became the primary suppliers for Chicago, which in turn supplied smaller Midwestern cities. In one major case, traffickers smuggled heroin into New York, cut the heroin in clandestine laboratories, and then redistributed kilo packages to Chicago, Cleveland, Las Vegas, and Los Angeles.56

  For the vast market of addicts in New York City, Mafia wholesalers relied on local gangsters for retail street distribution. “The black people handled the largest quantity of drugs after it left the big connections, when it came to the country,” explained Curtis, a black dealer with Sicilian suppliers.57 “The Italians were the ones who brought the dope in, but they didn't have the connects to peddle it,” remembered Bumpy Johnson's widow.58 “The lowest level the Italians would get to was when they sold a quarter kilo to a black—he's the only guy that can successfully sell it in Harlem,” agrees Salerno.59 This move away from retail street distribution and toward wholesaling insulated the Mafia. “The key figures in the Italian heroin establishment never touched heroin,” confirmed David Durk, a narcotics officer.60

  The Cosa Nostra established links to major African-American gangsters like Nat Pettigrew and Freddie Parsons to distribute heroin to dealers in black neighborhoods. The FBN discovered that George Anderson “was one of the chief links between the negro dealers in Harlem and the Italian wholesalers in the upper east side of New York City.” Herbert Drumgold bought narcotics “in large quantities from Italian dealers in the Upper East Side of New York City” to resell “to dealers, who in turn sell direct to addicts.”61

  Ellsworth “Bumpy” Johnson oversaw much of the retail heroin distribution in Harlem. “Anyone living in Harlem knew the name Bumpy Johnson. He was a boss,” recalled Frank Lucas.62 Johnson cultivated a façade as a businessman, churchgoer, and benefactor. Behind the scenes, he collected kickbacks from dealers and financed drug operations. Convicted three times on narcotics charges, he helped inundate Harlem with drugs supplied by the Cosa Nostra.63

  Once drugs reached the streets, the Mafia had no real control over who bought them. The postwar heroin spike devastated poor teenagers in black and Puerto Rican neighborhoods. “Every time I went uptown, somebody else was hooked, somebody else was strung out,” remembered Claude Browne. “Drugs were killing just about everybody off in one way or another.”64 Low said the addicts were increasing
ly “Spanish boys in the eighteen, nineteen bracket. I used to see them turning into bums, being all dirty.”65 Piri Thomas grew up on 104th Street (blocks from the mob's trafficking center), and he mainlined heroin as a teenager. “It becomes your whole life once you allow it to sink its white teeth in your blood stream,” Thomas said.66

  The Mafia cultivated an image for shielding Italian neighborhoods from drug pushing. “During the 1950s on Mulberry Street, in the lower part of Manhattan, the Italian gangsters’ image was ‘We keep the drug pushers out of the neighborhood.’ And they did,” said Salerno. “But it wouldn't stop them from selling a kilo of heroin to someone, as long as they knew he wasn't going to try to trickle it back into their neighborhood.”67

  The notion that the Mafia could build moats around Italian neighborhoods proved illusory. Salvatore Mondello, who grew up in East Harlem during the 1930s and ’40s, recalls:

  Some of my friends tried reefers. The racketeers never distributed reefers on the street. It would have been dangerous to sell that stuff on their home turf. Their honest neighbors would have strongly disapproved. But reefers, I imagine, could be bought elsewhere. Some of my friends could have bought them on other streets in East Harlem.68

  Though less prevalent, some inner-city Italian youths got hooked on heroin from East Harlem. Dom Abruzzi started snorting heroin “because it was so cheap—a dollar and a half apiece to split a three-dollar bag—and everybody was getting so high and seemed so happy.”69 Eddie became addicted from breathing in the dust from a Mafia cutting operation where he worked. East Harlem was slowly undermined by drugs smuggled into the country by the Mafia.70