by Sam Giancana
Clearly, Mooney was after Genovese. One thing Chuck knew about his brother was that he was unwaveringly loyal to a friend. Costello was the closest thing to that Chuck had ever known; Mooney would pull out all the stops to get rid of Costello’s enemy.
Mooney had a special saying he’d picked up from his travels in the Middle East: “The enemy of my enemy is my friend.” Anybody who was after Genovese was Mooney’s ally for now—anybody. Such a philosophy made for strange bedfellows, Chuck thought as he studied the expression on Mooney’s face. But he said nothing about that, saying instead, “Definitely, you’d have had Chicago locked up like a fortress if they’d come here.”
“That’s right. And that’s because I know what I’m doin’. I have my town under control.” A cruel smile played across his lips. “But we’re not done with the bastard yet. Just watch, pretty soon he’ll be layin’ in a prison cell. Too fuckin’ bad, huh?”
It was almost as if the old Mooney was back. He was scheming and plotting and he beamed when he talked about his plans. When he was like that, he was invincible, untouchable.
The events of that November would have far-reaching implications. In Washington, while Bobby Kennedy and John McClellan were feeling vindicated, FBI director J. Edgar Hoover was seething with embarrassment.
For literally decades, Hoover had insisted there was no such thing as an organized crime syndicate. He’d scorned Estes Kefauver’s assertion in the early fifties that an organized Italian underground existed in the United States. Recently, he’d pooh-poohed Kennedy and McClellan. Now, due to the events at Apalachin, he was faced with public ridicule for his lack of knowledge on the subject of organized crime. But perhaps, worst of all, his ego had suffered; he’d been beaten to the punch by a handful of New York cops along with the FBI’s longtime rival, the Bureau of Narcotics.
Mooney said more than once that former FBI man Guy Banister was part of the Outfit’s plans. “Remember me tellin’ you about how we helped him nail Commies, run in punks free-lancin’ car thefts, that kind of shit? Well, we got him set up with Marcello down in New Orleans when he took over the police department down there.”
Mooney also confided that J. Edgar Hoover himself had been on the pad for years. “Costello worked the whole thing out. He knew Hoover was just like every other politician and copper, only meaner and smarter than most. Hoover didn’t want an envelope each month—that offended his sensibilities,” Mooney said, sneering. “So we never gave him cash outright; we gave him something better. Tips on fixed horse races. It was up to him how much money he wanted to make on the information. He could bet ten thousand dollars on a horse that showed twenty-to-one odds, if he wanted . . . and he has.”
Getting the tips to Hoover was easy enough, Mooney explained. Frank Costello would hear from Frank Erikson, the country’s biggest and most powerful bookie, about an upcoming fix on a race. Next, Costello would tell columnist Walter Winchell, and Winchell, in turn, would call Hoover. Hoover would hop in his car under the pretext he was working on a case and head for the track.
“He’d place a two-dollar bet at the window while one of his flunkies put the real money on the sure thing at the hundred-dollar window,” Mooney said. He told Chuck that Costello never let the FBI director down; Hoover won every time.
“Nice and neat, for sure, and you can call it anything you want . . . but a payoff is a payoff is a payoffs,” Mooney insisted, chewing on his fat cigar.
With so much attention focused on Hoover, Mooney expected repercussions. “After all, the guy’s gotta make it look good. He’s gonna have to stop chasin’ Commies and car thieves and let the public know he’s fightin’ the Mafia.” Mooney drew the word Mafia out with an overly dramatic sense of evil in his voice.
Mooney believed Hoover would be worried; if he came down too hard on his old “benefactors,” he could be exposed or faced with the threat of blackmail from the underworld. However, if he didn’t move—and move fast—he could lose funding for his bureau and his personal stature as a crimefighter.
“Hoover could be dangerous now. We’ve been on the same side before. We’ve helped him out with Commies and that shine, Martin Luther King, more than once,” Mooney commented, shaking his head. “Now, the rules have changed. He’s in a corner and he knows it. It won’t matter that it was Bobby Kennedy who’s to blame for the whole fuckin’ mess. A guy like Hoover has only one choice when the heat’s turned up . . . kill or be killed. The game now will be survival. I’ll put money on him tryin’ to get us before we get him.” Mooney smiled. “This is gonna get interesting, Chuck, real interesting.”
Immediately after Thanksgiving, on November 27, 1957, J. Edgar Hoover did exactly as Mooney had surmised, formally launching an FBI attack on organized crime with his Top Hoodlum Program, or THP. Agents were assigned to this new vendetta in towns across the nation, but Hoover made it known Chicago and New York would receive the lion’s share of scrutiny.
Hoover even managed to turn his initial embarrassment at having nothing on the “Mafia” in his voluminous FBI files to a sort of public-relations coup; he gave the Bureau of Narcotics’s “Mafia” a new name, La Cosa Nostra, Italian for “Our Thing.” By coming up with this name—one no one, including guys in the Chicago Outfit, had ever heard of—Hoover gave the impression of being better informed. Chuck decided Mooney was right; J. Edgar Hoover would be a wily opponent.
In Chicago, ten agents were assigned to the THP. Mooney had Murray Humphreys and Mayor Daley keep tabs on things and notified his men that the G were on the prowl. He’d gotten word from Washington that the whole thing was only temporary and that things would blow over just as they had in 1946 when Hoover had his fun with CAPGA—the code name given by the FBI for “reactivation of the Capone gang.” But he was suspicious and on his toes, telling Chuck, “It’s up for grabs now . . . and it’s winner take all. In this deal, I intend to be the winner.”
Not only did the events in Apalachin increase the surveillance of Outfit activities; they also resulted in a third investigation by the McClellan committee into organized crime and the “Mafia.” Word circulated among the Outfit guys that suspected key members of the national organization could expect to be subpoenaed to testify, and sure enough, by April 1958, a subpoena would be issued for Mooney.
But for now, Mooney didn’t seem overly worried; he confided to Chuck that he didn’t expect to be served—even if a subpoena was issued. “They gotta make it look good,” he stated matter-of-factly. “But, as long as I keep a low profile and don’t go actin’ too fuckin’ obvious, Humphreys tells me he’s got old man Kennedy’s word they’ll just keep sayin’ they can’t find me.”
Chuck was largely unaffected by the turmoil created by the McClellan committee and Hoover’s G-men. He reasoned he was on the outside and perhaps, at last, was seeing some benefit. As Anne Marie had said once, “We’re not gangsters and murderers.” He knew he had nothing to hide; the motel was still clean, and if he’d committed any crime, the only one he could think of was being Mooney’s brother. “The FBI doesn’t investigate you for that,” he told his wife while stringing multicolored lights around their Christmas tree that year. “It’s no crime to have the same last name, now is it?”
More and more, it seemed to Chuck that having the same last name might be the only thing he and Mooney had in common. By this time, he’d expected to be at Mooney’s side, a respected partner. But instead, there were now ranks of loyal soldiers and lieutenants standing between him and that dream. And, according to the other Outfit guys, the only men even remotely considered Mooney’s equals were the New York bosses—Cambino and Costello. Certainly, Lansky was a top guy—but he was a Jew, which meant he was still on the outside. Ultimately, most of the guys Chuck talked to agreed that even these men didn’t count; because there were really two Mobs—the one that ran New York and the one that was headquartered in Chicago and ran everything else.
Chuck believed this assessment of his brother’s dominion was accurate; there were l
iterally hundreds of examples to verify such an assertion. By playing matchmaker between the other bosses around the country, Mooney had elevated himself to the man in charge. He had New Orleans boss, Carlos Marcello, as a partner in Chicago’s gambling ventures in Texas, Alabama, and Georgia. Santo Trafficante, Jr., was his “man” in Florida, reporting to Mooney, feeding Chicago casino dollars from Cuba and drugs from Central America, the Caribbean, and Asia. In New York, Mooney had aligned himself further—working since Albert Anastasia’s death with Carlo Gambino to solidify contacts with the European rackets and drug trade. In exchange, when Mooney embarked on a European gambling venture—always his specialty and under his domain—he brought Gambino along for a piece of the action. Largely, Mooney’s international deals involved Lansky and whomever else they needed to take care of at the time. But with each new inroad into a major racket or geographic territory, Mooney made sure he held the reins.
That spring of 1958, Chuck had been having a leisurely drink with Mooney at the Pink Clock Lounge, a bar located only a block from Chicago’s Armory Lounge, when his brother suddenly stood up. “Let’s go upstairs,” he said.
Mooney maintained an apartment above the Pink Clock to accommodate his ever-changing bevy of girlfriends and one-night stands. Chuck had been there before and he always marveled at how well decorated and tasteful Mooney’s places were. When it came to living it up, his brother spared no expense.
For the remainder of the afternoon, Chuck sat, glass of wine in hand, listening as his brother talked about everything from Apalachin and his daughters to Frank Costello and his gambling interests in Havana.
It had been decided, Mooney said, that the United States government, certain American investors, and the Outfit would “play both sides of the fence in Cuba”—sending arms and munitions to the rebels attempting to overthrow Batista while publicly backing the current ruler.
Joint Outfit/CIA involvement in international schemes wasn’t without precedent, Mooney reminded Chuck. He’d helped former Chicago FBI agent-turned CIA man Bob Maheu with both a Saudi Arabian and Indonesian CIA operation before and—as if made-to-order-already had a smuggling operation set up out of Texas. He’d worked with one agent or another over the years, he said, in the Middle East, Guatemala, and Asia, forming ties that came into action only when necessary. But when not needed for “patriotic” purposes, those ties served as potent protection for his illegal smuggling concerns.
In exchange for his underworld services, Mooney said the CIA looked the other way—allowing over $100 million a year in illicit drugs to flow through Havana into the United States. It was an arrangement similar to all the rest they’d made, he said. The CIA received 10 percent of the take on the sale of the narcotics, which they utilized “for their undercover slush fund.” Such illegally earned monies were stashed away by the CIA in Swiss, Italian, Bahamian, and Panamanian accounts.
As the turbulence in Cuba had increased, it was only natural that the CIA would turn to its friends in the Outfit. Having invested millions in Havana, both parties stood to lose a great deal.
Mooney said he was putting everything in place. He’d sent Lewis McWillie to serve as pit boss of the Tropicana in Havana. McWillie was one of his soldiers from Texas, where he’d run guns south of the border as well as smuggling narcotics, and whom he said had previously worked with Jack Ruby and Frank Fiorini—aka Frank Sturgis. When McWillie wasn’t working the casino, Mooney explained, he would be assisting Johnny Roselli with their smuggling operations. Roselli still spent a large portion of his time in Hollywood and Vegas, but now he often floated from city to city, representing Chicago—and Mooney—much as a diplomat might represent his country’s leader.
Pulling off this new plan would be simple, Mooney said, flicking his cigar with confidence. “The black-market weapons will be supplied to the rebels by the CIA.” He laughed and added, “But of course the CIA will buy them from the Outfit . . . with money they’ve made from their other deals with us. After all, they can’t take money out of their budget to support both Batista and the rebels . . . how would that look to their fellow Americans? Anyway, we’ve got all the contacts for arms and we’ll buy them with money we’ve skimmed from Hoffa and the Teamsters. We’ll store them in a warehouse in Texas, then we’ll ship or fly them to Cuba. The CIA’ll get us the planes and boats . . . or I might try to set up a company to lease planes and boats to the government.” He took a sip of wine and continued, expressing his confidence that Ruby would get the job done in Texas. “He’s worked with Trafficante and Marcello for me before on a few smuggling deals as a middleman with the cops and feds. Trafficante will oversee the operation for me. McWillie will team up with the CIA to deliver the guns to Roselli and one of Trafficante’s boys and another CIA agent who will get them to the rebels.”
“Beautiful,” Chuck said.
Mooney beamed. “Yeah, beautiful.”
“Hey, maybe you’ll get that government pension, after all,” Chuck teased.
“Maybe,” Mooney said, smiling. “But I’ve got a bigger marker I’m waitin’ to call in . . . shit, I may need to.”
“What’s that?”
“I may have to get them to call off Hoover and his pack of wolves. Or do somethin’ with Bobby Kennedy and that goddamned McClellan shit.”
Word had circulated that a McClellan committee subpoena had been issued for Mooney. To avoid being served, he’d spent a lot of time that year out of town, bumping into his associates wherever he went. In spite of the pressure he was under, Mooney seemed to thrive. He liked a good challenge, he said, and Outfit business was his entire world.
One day that spring, Willie Potatoes, platinum blond girlfriend at his side, strolled across the black and white terrazzo floor of the Thunderbolt lounge, and declared, “Guess what just happened in New York?”
Chuck was at a table with Rocky Potenza and Johnny Matessa, and in unison they kiddingly cried out, “What?”
Willie leaned down toward the trio and whispered, “Mooney and the guys got Genovese . . . got him on a narcotics rap.”
“The bastard deserved it,” Rocky piped up.
Willie turned to the blonde. “Go powder your nose, honey,” he said, winking at the guys.
She nodded. “Okay, Willie.”
“Take your time,” Willie called out as she turned to go. Their eyes followed her tight-skirted wiggle through the lounge and out the door.
“You know how to pick ’em, Willie!” Matessa tipped his glass admiringly.
Willie just grinned as he sat down at the table. “Jesus, it’s fuckin’ hotter than hell out there,” he said, wiping his forehead with a handkerchief.
“I’ll bet it’s hotter in New York.” Rocky snickered.
“You bet it is,” Willie agreed, chuckling. “Some bad weather blew in from Chicago.”
“So, what’s the deal out there?” Chuck asked, motioning to the bartender for another round of drinks.
A broad smile crossed Willie’s face, exposing a toothy, almost sinister grin. “Seems a guy of mine, he ratted on Genovese.”
“A guy of yours?” Matessa gasped in disbelief.
Willie, pleased by the impression he’d made, laughed and nodded. “Yeah, a guy of mine . . . a Puerto Rican. Mooney used him to set Genovese up on a drug rap,” Willie said with pride. “You know, that cocksucker Genovese’s been trouble ever since he tried to hit Costello. Chicago supplied the Puerto Rican stool pigeon. The New York guys kicked in twenty-five grand apiece and promised the stoolie three grand a month for the rest of his life just to talk in court and give enough information on Genovese to send him to the slammer.”
“Shit, I don’t know if it’s worth three grand to go up against a boss like that,” Matessa said.
“Who the fuck cares?” Willie shrugged. “Like Mooney says, ‘Use ’em when you can’ . . . we’ll make sure the spic doesn’t get hit after it’s all over.”
It had been Mooney’s idea from the start, Willie told them later. But even so, the
other bosses all threw in support. Any deal they all agreed on, they all participated in. It was always like that; each guy contributed—whether it was money or a man. It wasn’t that any one of them alone couldn’t pull off the job; it was that by having each guy take a piece of a job, and assigning their respective soldiers and lieutenants to handle it, they were further removed, as individuals, from any possibility of repercussions.
For the setup of Genovese, Mooney called on Willie Potatoes, who, in turn, brought in one of his soldiers, a low-level dope peddler, Nelson Cantellops. Mooney didn’t have any idea who the guy was—and didn’t care. Cantellops was just a sap, he said, but a smart sap—tailor-made for their plot against Genovese.
Since Mooney supplied the plan and manpower, Lansky, Gambino, Costello, and Luciano supplied the dollars to finance the narcotics caper that would ultimately frame Genovese. For Mooney’s part, he received another 5 percent of the take in Havana. The plan worked perfectly; Genovese was arrested, thanks to Cantellops’s testimony and sentenced to fifteen years in prison, where he would eventually die in 1969.
Getting Genovese out of the way was a breakthrough. “He was the only guy with the balls to start a war,” Mooney later explained. The other bosses, he said, he could work with or around. Only Joe Bonanno raised his ire, but he insisted, “He’s afraid of his fuckin’ shadow . . . and he’s definitely afraid of me. I’ve got no respect for the guy at all. He’s got no guts; whenever there’s trouble, he runs out of town.”
Bonanno had caused Mooney some irritation in Arizona. Like Vegas, Arizona was an area that was considered “open territory,” meaning anybody with the muscle could operate there. Mooney had made swift inroads in recent years, sending Chuckie English out to Arizona to set up real estate deals, jukeboxes and vending-machine operations. Although Bonanno owned a home in Phoenix—a signal to Mooney that he was attempting to stake a claim and grab the entire state for himself—he was only a minor thorn in English’s side, but a thorn nonetheless. More than once, Mooney had confided to Outfit guys that he’d like to see Bonanno taken out. “But the hell with it . . . he’s not worth the bullet.”