The Outfit

by Russo, Gus

  By January 1958, Luella was experiencing a recurrence of mental instabilities that had plagued her on and off over the years. Curly had her committed to a Kansas City sanitarium, where she would remain for over three years. “Murray spent over thirty-six thousand dollars on her hospital bills,” remembers Jeanne Humphreys.

  Although Humphreys’ heart disease was progressing, he kept up a hectic pace. In addition to having to squire his new young-enough-to-be-his-daughter wife, and caring for his actual daughter and fatherless grandson, Humphreys’ legal counseling skills were in constant demand. Even as Humphreys told all within earshot that he was retired from the Outfit - and he may have wanted to be - he had to oversee the Teamster pension fund operations and strategize the Accardo tax situation. The IRS had given Accardo an ultimatum, stating that he could no longer claim vast amounts of “miscellaneous income” as he had since prohibition. According to information gathered by the Chicago Crime Commission, Curly’s solution was unveiled at a meeting at the Armory Lounge in Forest Park, headquarters of the new boss, Mooney Giancana.

  In attendance with Humphreys were Accardo, Sidney Korshak, Giancana aide Jackie Cerone, Eugene Bernstein (the tax consultant so pivotal in the Hollywood parole deal), and officials from the Fox Head Brewing Company. Humphreys owned twenty-two hundred shares of Fox Head, and he had decided to instruct the company’s executives to place Accardo on their payroll to the tune of $65,000 per year. The maneuver only managed to buy time, as the IRS eventually indicted Accardo. During this time, Accardo, in a further effort to decrease the feds’ attention on him, put the word out on the streets that Mooney Giancana was now the boss of the Outfit. In time, Joe’s decision to make Giancana a Nitti-type flak-catcher would prove to be inspired.

  One member of Accardo’s legal team, who wishes to remain anonymous, recently recalled how the Outfit conducted a typical brainstorming session at his office. “Joe and Curly would show up late at night with three or four assistants, each of which carried bags of groceries,” the attorney remembered. “For two hours they’d cook an Italian meal, which we had to eat before we conducted business. Everything revolved around food.” Finally, around midnight, the group would commence work. On the eve of one of Accardo’s most important court hearings, the hoods showed up unannounced at the attorney’s office for an all-night, last-minute strategy session. After the mandatory cookfest, as they finally started to work, Joe noticed the attorney’s secretary was on the verge of tears. Accardo cajoled the woman into an explanation for her sorrow. She told of her recent engagement, and her first meeting with her in-laws, which was to take place the next day. The girl was expected to prepare a meal for her fiance and his parents, but had no skill in the kitchen. Seeing the gang feasting on an impeccable lasagna had brought her insecurities to the point of breakdown. Accardo told her, “Not to worry.” He adjourned the all-important confab, and he and his assistants took off to scour the county for a market open at 1 A.M. - or to open one. When they returned an hour later, they spent the rest of the night preparing a four-course gourmet meal as a wedding gift to the distraught bride-to-be.

  “The gang left about five A.M., with no work having been done,” recalls the attorney. “We met at the courthouse at nine A.M. and faked it.”

  The “eat first” ritual reoccurs like a leitmotiv in the business world of the Outfit. Frequently overheard on hidden FBI microphones were good-natured sarcasms about one another’s expanding waistlines. On some occasions, gang members discussed which prisons’ cuisine was more fattening. Curly was often heard addressing his associates with “Hey, Fat Boy.” The importance of food is clearly seen in the bosses’ choice of bodyguards, many of whom had to double as cooks. Mooney Giancana was especially fortunate: His driver/bodyguard, Joe Pignatello, was a gourmet chef who eventually opened his own Italian restaurant in Las Vegas (Joe and his restaurant are still there at this writing).

  Before Accardo’s trial finally commenced in 1960, Humphreys obtained the list of prospective jurors, numbering more than one hundred, and had his boys run background checks on them. Curly found numerous ways to muscle the jury pool. “We have to work on the weakest jury guy and scare the shit out of him,” Curly said unknowingly into hidden FBI mikes. When one on the jury list turned out to be a trucker, Humphreys knew exactly how to handle it. As recounted by his FBI case officer, Humphreys “immediately dispatched Frank ’Strongy’ Ferraro to . . . call Jimmy Hoffa on the phone, find out whether this trucker was a member of the Teamsters, and if so, what local did he belong to and who could be contacted within the Teamsters to approach this possible juror to understand what a bummer of a case against Accardo this really was.”

  (Humphreys had things well in hand when the trial finally began in September 1960. However, the court had been tipped by the FBI, which had by this time inherited a bug previously placed in one of the Outfit’s meeting places, and the judge reprised what Judge James Wilkerson had done in the Capone tax trial three decades earlier. On the first day of the trial, Judge Julius Hoffman switched juries. When Humphreys found out, he was livid, according to the FBI bugs. Agents listened in as Curly railed about all his hard work, using dozens of “made guys, all down the drain.” When Accardo was convicted and sentenced to six years, the case was appealed, allowing Curly to try again, and when the appeal was heard in October 1962, the verdict was reversed, because, according to the FBI, Curly Humphreys had strong relationships with the appellate court judges. That court deemed that Accardo had received prejudicial pretrial publicity.)

  Although Joe Accardo was afforded little respect from the federal boys, his prestige in the Windy City was at an all-time high. He had developed close friendships with numerous successful local businessmen, many of whose wives worked with Clarice Accardo on community issues and local charity drives. And though he exercised his power quietly, Accardo’s long reach is retold in countless local anecdotes. One such example recalls the time in 1957 when Joe purchased a used car as a surprise high school graduation gift for his daughter Marie. Among Joe’s friends at the time was John Marino, the manager of the Hendrickson Pontiac Dealership in Forest Park, the largest Pontiac franchise east of the Mississippi. As a regular customer, Joe was well-liked by the mechanics, who knew him as the dealership’s biggest tipper. According to Dr. Jay Tischendorf, whose father, Jerry, was the shop supervisor at Hendrickson’s, Joe brought Marie’s gift in for a tune-up, accompanied by two “assistants.”

  “I need this done by three,” Accardo said to Tischendorf. “My father almost fainted,” recalls the younger Tischendorf. “At the time, there was a strike by the mechanics” union, and no work could be taken in.’ Jerry Tischendorf started to say, “I’m sorry, Mr. Accardo, but - “ when he was cut off by a smiling Accardo, who repeated, “This is for my daughter, it’s important. I’ll see you at three.” Before Tischendorf could catch his breath, Accardo was gone. “My father assumed that Joe had no idea about the strike,” says Jay Tischendorf. While Jerry Tischendorf fretted about what to do, Joe Accardo must have been laughing. “Within half an hour, all the shop’s mechanics showed up,” Jay was told by his father. Apparently, Accardo had his men get the word out to the union, which was likely controlled by Humphreys, that the strike was suspended for two hours to service Marie’s car. Accardo returned at three and picked up his immaculately tuned automobile.

  That same year, 1957, Paul Ricca also continued to feel the wrath of the IRS, which prevailed upon immigration authorities to commence deportation proceedings. As if the Accardo case were not enough to deplete Curly’s energies, he now had to work the Ricca case, which lasted three years. One of his strategies was to hire a New York detective agency to surveil the jurors in an effort to compromise them. However, this strong-arm approach was vetoed by his fellows, Accardo and Giancana. When Ricca was convicted, the gang realized they should have followed Curly’s advice. The FBI noted that, since the conviction, “the hoodlums . . . are more inclined to listen to Humphreys in this regard.” Although Ricc
a would eventually be imprisoned on tax charges in 1959, Curly worked tirelessly on his appeal and was able to quash the deportation order.

  As if Curly did not have enough to fret over, his laundry empire, which he had never abandoned, continued to expand. By August 1957, Humphreys had formed partnerships with several companies, including Normal Wet Wash Laundries, Modern Laundry & Dry Cleaning, Empire Laundry, and Lewis Wet Wash Laundries and Dry Cleaning. The FBI reported that all the stress was taking a profound toll on the fifty-eight-year-old gangster, who was believed to have suffered three more heart attacks within the last year. The FBI would eventually overhear conversations that gave evidence that Humphreys’ legendary mild manner was beginning to fray. “I’m going to retire and go to Wales where there are only Protestants, so I can get away from the Catholics and Jews,” Curly complained. On another occasion, Humphreys told Frankie Ferraro that he was off to Florida for a year and a half, bone weary from doing legal work for his inferiors. “The hell with you guys - I’ve been doing this for thirty years,” Humphreys ranted.

  In 1957, the frenetic activity under way in Chicago, Las Vegas, and Washington would be eclipsed by a momentous gathering just ten miles west of Binghamton, Newr York. The assemblage would herald a new era in the epic of the Outfit, an era marked by the gang’s volatile, and often contradictory, relationship with the federal government, or, as they referred to it, the G.

  1. Chesrow’s elevation was a typical Outfit move. The Oak Forest Hospital was directly across the street (159th and South Cicero) from a building referred to by the gang as The Wheel. This facility was a gambling joint and a clearinghouse for prostitutes recently arrived from various Midwestern states. The girls would stay at the Wheel for a week while going through a battery of medical checkups before being dispatched to Windy City brothels for their three-month “tour.” This rotation, or wheeling, was overseen by none other than the good doctor Chesrow.

  2. For a couple months in the late 1930s, Dorfman’s Scrap Iron Union had one temperamental slugger who would achieve infamy after he moved to Dallas in 1947. Known in Chicago as an emotional powder keg, Jacob Rubenstein, aka Jack Ruby, would avenge President Kennedy’s November 22, 1963, assassination by whacking his killer, Lee Harvey Oswald, two days later.

  3. Jeanne, a passionate animal lover, populated the new home with sundry wildlife such as mynah birds, parrots, dogs, and a squirrel monkey. ’What made it even more bizarre,’ says Jeanne, “was that the mynah birds mocked the dogs and monkeys.” The cacophony was a surreal counterpoint to the parade of gangsters who commandeered Jeanne’s kitchen for hours on meeting days. On one occasion, Jeanne thanked her Cuban-born housemaid, Modesta, for putting up with the mayhem. “Gracias, mi amiga,” Jeanne said. “Mi casa es su casa.” Modesta shot back, “Mrs. Hart, no gracias. Su casa es un loco casa!”

  Besides fishing in the Keys, the “Harts” of Key Biscayne dawdled about in their garden, a hobby that gave rise to a humorous exchange between Curly and Modesta, whose thick accent often made for laughable exchanges. Worried about her boss’ health, Modesta once warned him about working too long in the hot garden, adding that if he did not rest, she would tell Mrs. Hart when she returned.

  “Do you know what happens to stool pigeons?” Curly asked the housekeeper. Whereupon Modesta went into the kitchen and returned with a stool. “It’s where it always is,” Modesta scolded.

  Part Five

  The G

  15.

  The Game’s Afoot:

  The G Gets Involved

  While the Outfit struggled with its own nuisances, namely Bobby Kennedy and the IRS, their travails paled in comparison with those of their sometime associates in New York. For unlike in Chicago, which had unified its underworld in one sixty-second shooting spree on St. Valentine’s Day, 1929, New York gangsterism was typified by a continuous series of internecine bloodlettings. For years, the New York turf had been parceled out to five “families,” the brainstorm of 1930s boss Salvatore Maranzano, even as Charles “Lucky” Luciano attempted to downplay the “old-world” family paradigms in favor of Torrio’s modern vision. As writer John Davis says, “What Luciano accomplished was to Americanize and democratize the old Sicilian Mafia, turning it into a huge, and fearsome, moneymaking machine.” Despite Luciano’s national influence, the five New York bosses continued to squabble, with their leadership increasingly determined at the point of a gun. The recent attack on Costello, which had tipped authorities to the breadth of the Las Vegas collusions, was but the most recent example of the turbulence.

  As the situation drifted perilously close to chaos, an emergency meeting of the Commission was called for November 14, 1957. Since Johnny Torrio had conceived the enterprise two decades earlier, the Commission had met regularly every five years to coordinate the members’ mutual or exclusive interests. At the top of this year’s agenda was the desire to effect a truce among the current ruling Empire State families - Genovese, Lucchese, Gambino, Profaci, and Bonanno. Among those invited to deliberate the warfare’s resolution were the Outfit’s Joe Accardo and his heir, Mooney Giancana.

  It was decided that the eighty-odd bosses and their factotums from around the country would assemble at the rural estate of Joe Barbara, in the south-central upstate New York town of Apalachin (pronounced “Apple-aykin”). The fifty-one-year-old, Sicilian-born Barbara, a well-liked local philanthropist, had come to America during prohibition and cut his teeth as a bootlegger, later legitimizing to become the regional Canada Dry soft-drink distributor. New York State Police sergeant Edgar Croswell, however, continued to monitor Barbara, believing his distributorship to be a front for an illegal alcohol racket. On November 13, after learning that Barbara’s son had been booking rooms at the local Parkway Motel, Croswell drove out to the estate, where he observed a coral-and-pink Lincoln and a blue Cadillac, both with Ohio plates. Croswell returned the next day with his partner and two agents of the Alcohol and Tobacco Tax Agency, this time spotting more than two dozen cars parked behind Barbara’s barn. The next sight was even more odd for this rural setting: Scores of suited men were partaking in a sirloin steak barbecue. The 220 pounds of choice cut, valued at $432, had been specially shipped from Chicago the week before.

  Before Croswell could gather his thoughts, the men, who had spotted Croswell, took their steak sandwiches and began vanishing into the surrounding woods, while the good sergeant called in for backup. Croswell quickly set up a roadblock on the only route from Barbara’s property. The first car to approach the rampart was a new Chrysler Imperial containing none other than New York boss Vito Genovese, with whose reputation Croswell was well-acquainted. From there, things degenerated into a comic opera, with backup police giving chase to a dispersing herd of middle-aged men racing through the brambles and mud in their silk suits and $200 imported dress shoes. Before the officers realized they were rounding up men who were not actually wanted for anything, they had arrested many of the cookout’s participants, most of whom had a knee-jerk reaction to run from men in uniform.

  By 1 A.M. powerful bosses such as Santo Trafficante and Joe Bonanno, having been rounded up in cornfields, were being processed, if illegally, at the nearby Vestal police station, charged with absolutely nothing. In custody, the bosses were polite in the extreme, as the frustrated cops grasped for incriminating straws. Croswell later admitted to trying to entrap his detainees: “We gave them a rough time at the station house, but we couldn’t even make them commit disorderly conduct down there.” For their part, the hoods claimed that they were paying respects to an ailing Barbara. All told, sixty-three men had been caught, only nine of whom had no criminal record (their collective record came to 275 past arrests and 100 convictions). The men carried on them the incredible combined sum of $300,000 in cash. One of the bosses, holding ten grand, gave his occupation as “unemployed.” A stark reminder of the upper-world-underworld communion was the collaring of Buffalo, New York’s 4Man of the Year, city councilman John C. Montana.

  Although s
ixty-three of the attendees were processed and quickly released, untold dozens more made their exits without being apprehended. Among them were Accardo and Giancana. Two days later, Mooney showed up at his Thunderbolt Motel in Rosemont, Illinois, managed by his brother, Chuck. “I tore up a twelve-hundred-dollar suit on some barbed wire,” Mooney said of his escape in Apalachin, “and ruined a new pair of shoes.” He gave Chuck a humorous description of the hoods’ flight through Barbara’s woods. “You should’ve seen some of the guys slippin’ and slidin’ down on their asses, splittin’ out their pants.” Mooney’s daughter Antoinette recalled a similar recap given to Johnny Rosselli at the family home. “These cops close in and start grabbing everyone in sight. I took off like I was some sort of gazelle out the back door . . . I mean, I ran like I was doing the hundred-yard dash in the Olympics,” Mooney recounted. “I made the woods in the back by going out the back door.”