“Whaddya want?” Santucci asked the four men.
They flashed gold badges. “Internal Revenue,” one said. “We got some questions for Mr. Maranzano.”
“You got an appointment? You need an appointment.”
“Hey, Bobby,” Lucchese called. “What you getting so hot for? You know the boss always brags about paying the right taxes.” He nodded to the four men. “He’s inside the office there. It’s a good time to ask him questions. He’s alone now.”
The first revenue agent nodded, and they started across the room to Maranzano’s inner office. Just then, Maranzano opened his door.
“Who are you?”
“Internal Revenue.”
“You people don’t ever stop, do you?” Maranzano said with a smile. “Well, come on in, but let’s make it fast.”
* * *
“BUT I’M NOT GOING TO KILL YOU,” Tommy said. “Not now. I’ve had a lot of time to think. If I killed you, I’d be just like you. You always laughed at justice. But justice is important. It separates the men from the beasts. It separates me from you. So I’m not going to kill you. I’m going to bring you down. From now on, every time you turn around, I’m going to be there. Everywhere you go, I’ll be there. Make one mistake and I’ll nail you with it. You’re finished, Nilo.”
Nilo smiled and looked at his watch. “Right about now,” he said, “I am on my way to becoming the boss of New York. You’re going to get me? Don’t make me laugh. You won’t get within a hundred feet of me.”
* * *
TWO “AGENTS” FOLLOWED MARANZANO into his office and closed the door behind them. The other two men remained outside, then suddenly pulled guns and ordered Lucchese and the bodyguards up against the wall and disarmed them.
Inside, when Maranzano turned, he saw guns in the two agents’ hands.
“You bastards,” he yelled. He dove for his desk, trying to reach a pistol in the top drawer. But the assassins were quicker. While Maranzano lay sprawled across the desk, fumbling for the drawer, Red Levine pulled a knife from his pocket and stabbed Maranzano six times.
But Maranzano struggled, throwing wild punches. One connected with the head of the man holding the knife. Levine grunted and then lunged atop Maranzano, driving the knife into his throat.
When he yanked the knife loose and stood up, Maranzano lay on the desk, twitching, bubbling from the mouth. Levine watched him writhe for a full thirty seconds, then nodded to the other man, Bo Weinberg. The two men stood over Maranzano and each put two bullets into the body of the capo di tutti capi.
Then they ran from the office. The other two assassins who had subdued the bodyguards outside followed them. They split up and used separate stairways out of the building. Weinberg got lost, wound up hiding in a ladies’ bathroom, and finally found his way to the Grand Central concourse, where he slid his gun into the jacket of a commuter waiting for a train.
As Red Levine approached the main exit, Mad Dog Coll came into the building, holding a leather briefcase in one hand.
Coll recognized Levine. “Maranzano?” he said.
“Dead,” Levine said as he brushed by Coll and pushed through the door. “Better beat it, Vince. The cops are coming.”
Coll turned around and walked back out onto the street, whistling. He had never made an easier twenty-five thousand dollars in his life.
Luciano and Genovese did not show up for their three-o’clock appointment.
* * *
“SO I WON’T KILL YOU. But nothing says I can’t beat the hell out of you.”
Tommy dropped the gun on the floor and rushed across the room and punched Nilo in the face. Nilo dropped to one knee and Tommy punched him again, knocking him flat on his back.
He straddled Nilo’s body, punching him back and forth, left and right, punch after punch, until Nilo’s once-beautiful face was broken and bloody.
Tommy stood up. “This is just the down payment, Nilo. It gets worse from now on. Look for me. I’ll always be there.”
He went back across the room, picked up his gun, and stuck it back into his belt, then left the apartment.
After Tommy left, Nilo lay on the floor a long time, gathering the strength to rise, and finally he got to his feet. Tommy had made a mistake, he thought. He should have killed me when he had the chance. But he was too weak to do it, and now he’ll die for it.
I will run this city. Luciano’s dead and all that’s left now is Maranzano and me. And Maranzano goes next.
The telephone rang. When Nilo picked it up, he heard a wheezing voice. “This is Bobby Doyle. The boss is killed.”
Nilo squeezed his eyes shut in pain. “What about Luciano?” he asked.
“He never showed up. It must have been his guys what did it. Be careful.”
Nilo hung up the telephone. He had to get away. They might be coming for him next.
He ran downstairs to the street and saw a taxicab parked down the block.
“Cabbie!” he shouted. “Cabbie!”
The vehicle pulled up to him and, without looking, Nilo jumped through the open rear door.
Sitting, facing him, was Joe Adonis. He pointed a gun at Nilo’s chest.
“Surprise,” Adonis said.
Nilo felt a crack across the back of his head and sank into the blackness on the floor of the car. Adonis pulled the curtains closed.
“Don’t rush,” he told the driver. “I want to have time to enjoy this.”
• There is a legend that on the day Maranzano was killed, Luciano directed a nationwide massacre of more than fifty of Maranzano’s strongest supporters in a vicious bloodletting poetically called “The Night of the Sicilian Vespers.” But some crime historians dispute this. It is known that Jimmy Marino, a Maranzano henchman, was shot six times that same day in the doorway of a Bronx barbershop. And three days later, the butchered, brutalized bodies of Maranzano faithfuls Louis Russo and Sam Monaco washed ashore in Newark Bay. Gerardo Scarpato, the restaurant owner who served Joe Masseria’s last meal, was also murdered. And the mutilated body of Nilo Sesta, partly eaten by fish, was found tied to a piling under a West Side pier. Those are the only authenticated deaths of that day, but the rivers and landfills and lime pits may still hold many secrets.
* * *
IN THE END TOMMY FALCONE decided he had done more harm than good. He had thought to emulate his father, seeking justice, but justice had proven too elusive. His father was dead; his wife was dead. The lives of the Falcones had been tortured by tragedy. The criminals had won and Luciano had survived to become the undisputed king of New York crime. His father had predicted that the good would triumph, but his father had been wrong. The blood of the evil had been stronger than the blood of the lawful. It was time to forget about it all.
Tommy resigned from the police department and applied to take the bar examination. While he waited for the test to be called, he found a job checking mortgage applications for a bank. It was brainless, useless, dead-end work, and it gave Tommy time to think, but every thought came back to Tony’s last words as he died in his son’s arms: “Never surrender,” he had said. “Never surrender.” The words rang in his mind like an echoing accusation.
Never surrender. And all I ever did was surrender.
He had been at the mortgage company only a month when someone breezed into his tiny cubbyhole of an office and slammed the door behind him.
“Hello, copper,” Tom Dewey said. He still looked as young as he had when he and Tommy had shared an apartment.
“Your mustache looks better than it used to,” Tommy said. “It looks like a misplaced eyebrow now.”
“It’ll grow on you. Aren’t you ashamed of yourself?”
“What for?”
“Sitting in this dismal countinghouse, doing nonsensical paper-shuffling. Do you know if you took that pile of papers on your desk and threw them all out the window, no one would ever notice?”
“This is only a way station on my road to fame and fortune,” Tommy said.
; “Oh?”
“Yeah. I’m waiting to take the bar exam.”
“While you’re waiting, you can work for me,” Dewey said.
“And what kind of papers are you shuffling these days?”
“You’re looking at the new assistant prosecutor for the United States Justice Department. I need a right-hand man, somebody who knows the gangsters in this town, somebody who knows the city, somebody who knows the law.”
“Gangsters? Who are you going after?”
Dewey smiled. “All of them.”
Never surrender, Tommy thought. Was there still a chance? Tommy breathed deeply, stood, took the pile of mortgage applications from his desk, and threw them through the open window.
“When do I start?”
“You just did.”
They walked out of the office together.
• In Chicago, a jury convicted Al Capone of all the charges against him. On October 24, 1931, he was sentenced to eleven years in Alcatraz. He complained, “All I ever did was sell beer and whiskey to our best people.” He was paroled in 1939 and died, crazed from syphilis, in Palm Island, Florida, in 1947.
• The Seabury investigation showed that New York mayor Jimmy Walker had pocketed millions of dollars in graft money during his years in city hall. On September 1, 1932, Walker wired his resignation to Governor Franklin D. Roosevelt and fled to Europe with his mistress.
• In 1943, Father Mario Falcone was elevated in the church, and called “Right Reverend Monsignor.” He died in 1961, still serving the same New York City parish.
• Prohibition was ended by constitutional amendment in 1933; the crime organization it created would not die so easily.
• Bugsy Siegel moved west and sold the syndicate on the idea of turning Las Vegas into a gambling paradise. But when he started skimming from the syndicate’s construction funds, he was shot in the head in his girlfriend’s Beverly Hills mansion on June 20, 1947. His closest friend, Meyer Lansky, authorized the hit. “We had no choice,” he later explained.
• The Dow Jones stock average eventually fell to 41; 25 percent of Americans were out of work. The market would not match its 1929 high until 1954, a quarter of a century later.
• When his brother was killed on a Harlem street by Dutch Schultz, Vincent “Mad Dog” Coll swore undying enmity to the Dutchman. “I’m gonna burn the Dutchman to hell.” He hijacked Schultz’s liquor trucks, kidnapped his lieutenants for ransom, and took over a huge section of Schultz’s gambling racket. Schultz enforcer Joey Rao came looking for him, but Coll found him first on 107th Street. Shooting at Rao from a moving car, Coll missed the gangster but sprayed machine-gun bullets into a group of five children, aged two to four. One of them died. Coll beat the rap, but three months later, while threatening another mobster from a pay phone booth on West Twenty-third Street, Coll was machine-gunned to death by Joey Rao.
• Tina Falcone never sang professionally again. On January 12, 1933, she took her vows and entered the convent of the Sisters of Charity in Bellmore, Long Island. No further records concerning her can be found.
• Joe Adonis was convicted in 1951 of violating gambling laws. When it was learned he had entered the United States illegally, he was deported in 1953 to Italy, where he died in 1971.
• Franklin D. Roosevelt became president of the United States. Fiorello La Guardia became the reform mayor of New York City.
• Tom Dewey was as good as his word. In a succession of positions, as U.S. attorney, special prosecutor, and district attorney, he went after the mob anywhere he found them. Bootlegger Waxey Gordon went to jail. Lepke went to the electric chair, and his henchman Gurrah Shapiro got life. Luciano was the next target. But Lucky proved hard to nail. Dewey could find no compelling evidence against him.
• Tommy Falcone had a desperate idea. He sent men out to the red-light districts, to which he had once been banished by Luciano, and they began rounding up prostitutes. When Tommy walked into the room where they were being questioned, two of them recognized him. “It’s Sir Galahad,” said Nancy Presser. “The only straight cop in the city,” Cokey Flo Brown agreed. “And it’s time to start telling the truth,” Tommy said. “We’ll protect you.” The two prostitutes convinced forty more streetwalkers to testify against Luciano, and in 1936 Dewey indicted Charlie Lucky and nine of his cohorts on ninety counts of extortion and direction of harlotry. Luciano fled to Hot Springs, Arkansas, but was extradited for trial. Dewey destroyed him on the witness stand, and on June 18, 1936, Luciano was sentenced to serve thirty to fifty years. As he left the courtroom, Luciano bumped into Tommy Falcone but did not recognize him.
• With Luciano facing jail, Vito Genovese moved to take over the rackets, but when he was indicted in 1937 on a murder charge, he fled to Italy, where he spent World War II smuggling narcotics into the United States under the personal protection of his close friend, Italian dictator Benito Mussolini. In 1945, with Dewey no longer prosecutor, he returned to the United States and took over Luciano’s crime family.
• On May 2, 1957, on Genovese’s orders, a thug named Vincent “The Chin” Gigante shot Frank Costello as he entered the lobby of his apartment building on Central Park West. When he survived the attack, Costello made it clear that he had gotten Genovese’s message. He retired and died in bed February 18, 1973.
• Outraged at the attack on Costello, Albert Anastasia let it be known that he would have his revenge. He moved too slowly. He was shot to death in the basement barbershop of the Park Sheraton Hotel on October 25, 1957, at Genovese’s direction.
• Low-keyed, quiet, and seemingly prosecution-proof, Meyer Lansky continued as the mob’s money man—organizing most of the Caribbean gambling operations—until 1970, when the federal government came after him on income-tax charges. He fled to Israel but after three years was extradited. In a 1973 trial, he was acquitted and the government abandoned its efforts to put him behind bars. He died in 1983.
• For using his influence to help end World War II sabotage on the New York City docks, Luciano’s sentence was commuted in 1946. He was deported to Italy the following February. From Italy, he directed narcotics smuggling into the United States and often traveled to Havana to oversee meetings of the national crime commission, at one of which he and Lansky decided to be rid of the dangerous Vito Genovese once and for all. They helped frame him on federal charges, and Genovese died in prison in 1969. Luciano was already dead. He had suffered a heart attack at Naples’s Capodichino Airport on January 26, 1962, on his way to meet a TV producer who wanted to film the story of his life. Luciano had promised to tell all about the night he survived the infamous “ride” that left him scarred. “It was the cops that did it,” he said. “And I know which ones.” Several months later, his body was returned to New York City for interment. He was buried in St. John Cemetery, Middle Village, Queens, twenty-five feet from the grave of Lt. Tony Falcone.
• Thomas E. Dewey moved from prosecution to politics. When he was elected governor of New York in 1942, Tommy Falcone turned down a top law-enforcement job in his administration and instead enlisted in the U.S. Army. He never lived to see Dewey run twice for president of the United States. Tommy was killed in the fighting in Sicily in 1943. He had never remarried.
• Soon after Nilo’s body was found, Sofia Sesta had gone to the offices of her lawyers to arrange for the transfer of his businesses to her. She found that all the stock in Danny Neill Enterprises had been owned by Salvatore Maranzano, and the government had seized the entire Maranzano estate. Left with only her savings, Sofia Sesta and her two children moved back with her mother into the apartment on Crosby Street, where Sofia ran the family restaurant until her death in 1971. One of her sons became a policeman; the other died in prison. It was in their blood, and the blood would have its way.
Acknowledgments
The acknowledgments owed from some sixty years of writing would demand a book of their own. So here are just a few of the people who made a difference in my life and by puttin
g up with me, had a hand in this work: Andy Ettinger, Henry Bolte, Ron Semple, Bob Waldron, Bob Randisi, Rick Myers, Ted Joy, Steve Needham, Richard Curtis, E. R. Boffa, Mark Coles, the remarkable Neil Bagozzi family, Patsy and Chrissie, Sheriff Bill and Mary Chambers, Merc and Asli, Jim Mullaney, Will Murray, Mary Higgins Clark and Larry Block, K. S. Brooks, Bob Napier, Tom Whelan, and every cocktail waitress and bartender in the Western world—each of them indispensable.
Let us all persevere enough to hang around until the pub closes.
About the Author
WARREN MURPHY was born in Jersey City, where he worked as a reporter and an editor. After the Korean War, he drifted into politics before turning to writing instead. His first novel, Created the Destroyer, was published in 1971. Now, with more than 150 books published and over 50 million copies sold, the Destroyer is one of the bestselling series of all time.
The recipient of a dozen national awards, Murphy has been called “a mentor and teacher to a whole generation of crime and thriller writers” by Encyclopedia Mysteriosa. Also a screenwriter, Murphy cowrote The Eiger Sanction, which starred Clint Eastwood, as well as Lethal Weapon 2.
Murphy has served on the board of the Mystery Writers of America. He has been a member of the Private Eye Writers of America, the International Association of Crime Writers, the American Crime Writers League, and the Screenwriters Guild. Warren Murphy passed away in September 2015. You can sign up for email updates here.
ALSO BY WARREN MURPHY
SERIES
The Destroyer Series (with Richard Sapir)
The Legacy Series (with Gerald Welch)
The Trace Series
Trace
And 47 Miles of Rope
Bloodline: A Novel Page 53