by Sam Giancana
“I want you to take care of this for me,” Mooney said, patting the package with one hand.
“Yeah . . . anything else?”
“Full of fuckin’ questions, aren’t you?” Mooney chided good-naturedly.
Chuck shrugged his shoulders.
“Just keep this. Okay? And don’t ask questions.”
“Hey, fine. No problem,” Chuck said; he thought his voice sounded defensive.
“Hey, don’t go gettin’ burned up. . . . There’s a half a million bucks in here. Okay? So now you know.”
Chuck almost gasped. “So, what do you want me to do with it?”
“Hold it here at your place . . . hide it. Hide it good, too. Damned good. That’s all. Just take good care of it. When I need it . . . I’ll ask for it.” Mooney paused and cleared his throat. “But . . . if anything should ever happen to me, Chuck . . . open this up right away. I want my sisters to each have fifty Gs and you and Pepe to split the rest. Got that? There’s an envelope inside here, too.” He tapped the top of the package for emphasis. “Do what it says.” Chuck thought he suddenly detected a concern, a fleeting look of worry cross his brother’s face.
“Hey, don’t you worry about a thing. No problem. You know you can count on me.”
“Yeah, I know I can count on you,” Mooney said, and then he brightened. He started to laugh and stood up. “Shit, you tell me that all the time; I guess I should know it by now, huh? Jesus . . .” He looked down at his watch. “It’s time for me to get the hell outta here.”
The next morning, Chuck immediately wrapped Mooney’s package in asbestos, making it fireproof, and placed it in the attic of their home, beneath the ceiling insulation.
For weeks, he was afraid to leave the house. “What if there’s a fire?” he exclaimed to Anne Marie. “Imagine five hundred thousand dollars of Mooney’s money gone . . . and after he trusted me, too.”
He was therefore relieved when the phone rang late one night with directions for delivery of what they had started to call “Mooney’s package.”
“The guy down in Mexico,” the voice on the other end of the line said. “He said to tell you he needs the package. He said you’re to have Anne wrap it like a birthday present with a big bow. A driver will pick it up tomorrow.”
They did as instructed and it wasn’t until years later, when Mooney was actually living in Mexico, that Chuck would recall “Mooney’s package” and—putting two and two together—realize that the half a million he’d held for Mooney was just a drop in the bucket. Chuck would be told by Outfit guys that during Mooney’s reign, his brother had shuttled millions across the border, using Father Cash as his courier.
But that June of 1957, Chuck wasn’t focused on Mooney’s international schemes. Instead, there was another onslaught of local publicity that captured his attention; Mooney’s trial for the Wagon Wheel indictments came up and the case was thrown out of court for lack of evidence. “I called in some markers,” Mooney boasted to Chuck. “I’ve got more important things to do than sit around listenin’ to a bunch of asshole lawyers argue.”
The papers all said Mooney sat through the trial bored and disinterested—which was accurate. But what they didn’t know was that Chicago’s Outfit boss had bigger fish to fry; his attention was once again focused on the Kennedys.
Initially, Mooney had given the proceedings in Washington little thought. He’d saved Joe Kennedy’s life, after all, he reminded Chuck, and had little reason to think the man’s sons wouldn’t recognize the debt they owed.
But by early August of 1957, Mooney was following the McClellan committee hearings more closely. The Teamsters had come under intense scrutiny, as had Dave Beck, its leader. And although the theft of union funds was linked to the Outfit, organized crime had not yet been scrutinized to any great degree. However, Mooney got the word from Washington that the Outfit would be investigated in greater depth. Obviously Bobby Kennedy was planning a full-scale attack on the underworld.
Ultimately spanning thirty months and three sessions of Congress, with three distinct phases of inquiry, the McClellan committee would first attack the theft of union funds by specific union officials. In its second phase, unions with a history of racketeering—like the Teamsters—would be investigated. But it was the committee’s third and final inquiry into improper labor practices that would prove most sensational: a direct look at what were thought to be leaders of organized crime in America.
When his brother came into the motel on a typically windy fall afternoon in Chicago, Chuck could tell he was not a happy man.
“What the fuck is wrong with that Kennedy brat?” Mooney exclaimed. “Can you believe that little bastard Bobby is gonna go for the throat? It doesn’t make sense. . . . Doesn’t he know he’s costin’ his brother every union vote in America? And what the hell is wrong with his brother Jack, anyway? Shit, he’s on the committee, too . . . and just about as bad as Bobby. Are they fuckin’ nuts?”
Chuck looked into Mooney’s eyes—back ribbons of rage, they reminded him of his childhood and the night long ago when Mooney had found his money stolen. Chuck hadn’t thought about the terrible beating he and Pepe and his cousins had gotten in years. But now, searching his brother’s face, he saw the same horrible, almost terrifying cruelty still residing there.
Mooney thought he was being played for a sucker. And he hated that probably more than anything. Chuck couldn’t think of anybody who’d ever tried such a thing and lived to tell about it. He shook his head. “It doesn’t make sense, these Kennedy boys. . . . What’s Murray have to say?”
“The same fuckin’ thing . . . Joe’s got it handled . . . Joe’s got it handled. Shit, old man Kennedy’s out fiddlin’ with whores in Tahoe at the Cal-Neva while Rome burns.”
“Hey, Mooney, relax then. Kennedy must know things are under control. And Murray’s got Washington wired, right?”
“Yeah, but you’d think I’d get a fuckin’ answer. Someone’s baby-sittin’ the old man out west. Joe just keeps tellin’ him and the guys that it’s just a political move, just a game. Murray says the same thing.”
“Hey, Mooney, like you’ve said before, Joe Kennedy owes you his life. You think he’s gonna bullshit you about this?”
“He owes me more than that and he fuckin’ well knows it,” Mooney snapped. “We can’t keep business movin’ if we got these assholes up in Congress breathin’ down our necks, now can we?”
“No, I guess not.”
“Wet!”—Mooney managed a half smile—“we have more than a few aces. We’ve got a couple of senators who owe us big time.”
“So what’s the problem?” Chuck said, brightening. “You’ve always managed to keep your nose clean. You’ve got guys on every corner who owe you; you’ve got politicians in your pocket. Relax.”
Mooney smiled hesitantly and nodded. “You’re right. Let’s have a fuckin’ drink. It’s been a long day.”
The wheels of justice continued to turn in Washington as the weeks sped by. There was the usual bipartisan grumbling from Senate committee members. Republican Barry Goldwater was quoted as saying that the committee’s young chief counsel, Robert Kennedy, was exerting too much influence over the proceedings. But the committee’s chairman, Democratic Senator John McClellan, a down-to-earth Arkansas Baptist, defended Kennedy’s judgment and aggressiveness. “He’s tops,” McClellan retorted to Kennedy’s detractors.
There was an admirable vehemence in the young Kennedy’s manner that was perhaps unsettlingly familiar to Mooney. At thirty-one, the task of acting as chief legal counsel to the committee must have been staggering, if not overwhelming. There were one hundred accountants, lawyers, and investigators reporting to the chief counsel, and on the horizon, over fifteen hundred witnesses to be called and twenty thousand-plus pages of testimony to be chronicled and analyzed.
Mooney saw in Bobby Kennedy—as he’d seen in Teddy Roe—a calculating juggler, a ruthlessly ambitious man. A man very much like Mooney himself.
CHAPTER 17
After the Depression, unions had flourished in the United States, and Chicago—due to the brilliance of Murray Humphreys, in particular—was no exception. Of all the unions, the Teamsters were the shining star in Humphreys’s crown. Like the film industry’s Screen Actors Guild, which Chicago effectively controlled, theirs was a commodity with deadlines. If meat and produce didn’t arrive at the stores, it spoiled. If shipments of equipment or machine parts didn’t arrive, factories ground to a halt.
The power this gave the Teamsters was particularly impressive insofar as it offered the capability to target a specific business or industry. A shipment’s speedy or late arrival could often mean the difference between success and failure in the U.S. climate of increased competition. Enterprises could be targeted by the Outfit for takeover, ruin, and bribery. Or conversely, if certain executives played ball with the union and Outfit muscle, their competition might begin to experience devastating shipping problems.
The sheer genius of such schemes hailed back to 1944, when Humphreys had placed a tough little Sicilian, Joey Glimco, in charge of Chicago’s Teamsters. The five foot four, beak-nosed Glimco didn’t let the Outfit down; Chicago’s Teamsters’ membership skyrocketed under his leadership as he forced the union into everything from egg workers and florists to bathroom sanitation workers. Over the next twenty years, others such as Dave Yaras, Lenny Patrick, Red and Allen Dorfman, and Irwin Weiner spun off their own “feeder” enterprises. Mooney told Chuck, that dozens of bogus companies—from resort and hotel development to health insurance and restaurants—were used by these men as fronts for schemes destined to bilk the Teamsters membership out of tens of millions of dollars. Most were created solely for the purpose of receiving immense loans from the Teamsters’ pension fund. Once a loan had been made, the company quickly went bankrupt, bled dry by the Outfit.
With Dan Tobin’s retirement as the International president, Chicago made sure a man they could do business with assumed office. Dave Beck, a tough organizer from Seattle, came in to head the International. As Beck’s right-hand man, the Outfit selected a like-minded Detroit thug, Jimmy Hoffa. In these two, they had the ideal partners for Glimco’s continuing schemes.
After the heat on Dave Beck became too intense, it was time for a change, and in September of 1957, Chicago pushed Jimmy Hoffa to a sweeping victory as president of the International Teamsters. By October of that year, with their boy Hoffa at labor’s helm, Murray Humphreys stroking the national politicians, and Mooney Giancana calling the shots, Chicago was the nation’s star ascendant. The circle of power was complete.
Rather than a circle, though, Bobby Kennedy seemed to view organized crime’s involvement in unions as a noose—one that mobsters had placed around the nation’s throat, holding innocent people in its stranglehold. Consequently, during the McClellan committee hearings, he and his brother Jack grandstanded—grilling and fawning and mocking one witness after another. Jack Kennedy had lost to crimebuster Estes Kefauver in his bid for the vice-presidential nomination in 1955 and he seized on this opportunity to make a name for himself.
While the McClellan committee was unveiling the second phase of its investigation during the summer and fall of 1957, most of the nation’s underworld was riveted to the unfolding drama in New York.
Following Willie Moretti’s slaying in 1951, and Albert Anastasia’s rise to boss of the Mangano family, Vito Genovese had been steadily working behind the scenes to dethrone Frank Costello. In May of 1957, Genovese had sent henchman Vince “the Chin” Gigante to assassinate Costello. In a twist of fate, the single bullet merely grazed the boss’s head.
Although Costello survived the attempt on his life, he would not survive the interrogation that followed. A piece of paper listing the Las Vegas Tropicana’s gross receipts, found by authorities in his pocket after the shooting, elicited the scrutiny of the IRS. He was soon indicted for tax evasion. It was a victory of sorts for the double-dealing Genovese, but as long as Anastasia remained in power as Costello’s protector and ally, Costello was technically invulnerable. Not to be thwarted, Genovese set out to remove Anastasia, eventually convincing Meyer Lansky and other Mob leaders that Anastasia’s “cowboy craziness” and attempts to move in on Cuban casinos merited elimination. Shortly thereafter, Albert Anastasia was murdered as he sat in a barber’s chair.
Unfortunately, the timing for such a power struggle in the underworld could not have been more inopportune; thanks to the McClellan committee, the nation would soon be watching their every move.
On November 13, 1957, Chuck and Anne Marie sat down to catch the evening news over some cake and coffee. Like other citizens, they were amazed to hear what Joseph Amato from the Bureau of Narcotics had said that day to the McClellan committee about the “Mafia”: “We believe there does exist . . . a society, loosely organized, for the specific purpose of smuggling narcotics and committing other crimes. . . . It has its core in Italy and it is nationwide. In fact, international.”
“Oh my God,” Anne Marie said, shocked at such a possibility. “Is that true, Chuck?”
“No . . . Mafia? What the hell is that? It’s just a name some government guys made up, that’s all,” he replied, and asked for another cup of coffee, hoping to change the subject. In fact, he’d never really heard any talk of a Mafia, except perhaps that the guys in New Orleans liked the moniker. Mostly there was the Outfit, the Syndicate, the Mob, the Commission. And through the years, there’d been the Black Hand societies and the Camorra, but he suspected the word Mafia was largely a name used by crazy New Yorkers and Louisiana guys—and was now being seized by the media in an effort to identify the enigmatic animal called organized crime.
Amato’s testimony was hailed as a landmark in the investigations and that evening the question was asked around the country in millions of living rooms: Was there really such a thing as the Mafia? Was there really an organization of Italian gangsters? Through a combination of sheer coincidence and Vito Genovese’s ill-timed quest for power, on the following day, the nation and the McClellan committee would have an answer.
Only eleven months previously, Senator McClellan had rocked Middle America with his assertion that “There exists in America today what appears to be a close-knit, clandestine criminal syndicate.” On November 14, 1957, the day after Amato’s fateful “Mafia” testimony, that very Syndicate was staging a conference atop a wooded hill at the 150-acre estate of fellow gangster Joseph Barbara, in Apalachin, New York.
The word Mafia was again in the news. A raid conducted by the New York State Police and federal Treasury agents on the clandestine meeting of Italian criminals turned up a dozen union officials, a Buffalo civic leader, and fifty-eight known gangsters.
On further investigation, it was discovered that fifty had arrest records, thirty-five had convictions, eighteen were suspected murderers, fifteen had received arrests for narcotics, thirty for gambling. Of this group, twenty-two were involved in labor-union activities; twenty-two in import-export, olive oil, and cheese; nineteen in major groceries, vending machines, and construction; and seventeen in bars, restaurants, and hotels.
It was suspected that as many as fifty other gangsters had escaped through the woods and fields.
Two days later, Mooney stopped by the Thunderbolt Motel. He sidled up to the bar and, grinning impishly at Chuck, shook one silk-suited pant leg.
“What the hell’s wrong with your leg?” Chuck asked.
“I’m shakin’ those goddamned New York backwoods burrs off my pants.” Mooney cackled.
Laughing all the way, they adjourned to Chuck’s office for a private cup of coffee.
“Burrs?” Chuck continued, chuckling. “Damn it, I knew if anybody could outfox the coppers up at the conference, it was you.”
“Yeah, you heard about Apalachin? It’s all over the news, right? Well, I wasn’t even gonna go originally . . . but I did it as a favor to Lansky and Costello. They didn’t go because they had a good idea what pitch Genovese was going
to make. But somebody had to be there. Shit, I had to run like a fuckin’ rabbit through the goddamned woods. The place was full of briars. . . . I tore up a twelve-hundred-dollar suit on some barbed wire, ruined a new pair of shoes.” He raised his hands to light a cigar, revealing a pair of magnificent oval-cut star sapphire cuff links.
“Jesus, it sounds crazy. . . .” Chuck tried to imagine his brother doing something so undignified as running in the woods.
“It was crazy,” Mooney said, nodding. He sipped his coffee. “And man oh man, was it ever cold. Did you know leaves get real slippery when they’re wet?”
Chuck shook his head.
“Well, they do . . . out in the backwoods this time of year.” He laid his cigar in the ashtray and started to laugh. “You should’ve seen some of the guys slippin’ and slidin’ down on their asses, splittin’ out their pants. Some of’em went right down through the trees, right down the hill,” he said, snickering.
“It sounds like it must have been a zoo. The news said the coppers were everywhere.”
“Like ants,” Mooney said.
“Well, I guess a lot of guys didn’t get away, huh?” Chuck asked, repeating what he’d heard.
“Yeah, and they’re ready to kill Genovese. . . . They all blame him for gettin’ pinched,” Mooney said.
He leaned back in his chair with an undeniable air of self-satisfaction. His eyes grew cold and hard. “Shit, Chuck, that Genovese, the cocksucker, thought he was gonna make himself ‘boss of bosses’ . . . and after he tried to kill Costello and had Anastasia hit, if you can believe that,” he exclaimed, disbelief rising with the level of his voice. “See, Lansky, Luciano, Costello, Gambino, and I talked before the meeting. Gambino and I would go and they’d lay back. We’d play both sides . . . find out what the sneaky bastard was up to . . . that’s all. No way was the son of a bitch gonna be my boss. The man’s fuckin’ crazy if he thinks I’d let him get away with that. Look what he’s done to Frank Costello.” He clenched his jaw as his lip curled defiantly around his cigar. “Genovese is a total fuckin’ ass . . . but he’s ruined now,” Mooney said with a sneer. “Nobody’ll ever listen to him again. Any boss worth his salt would have had the place protected. And I’m gonna make damned sure every guy in the country knows that.” His eyes flashed with determination.