arrangements can be made, the fix is put on later. The standin takes over for the real criminal immediately after the first arraignment, even standing trial, and if found guilty, doing the time.
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StandUp Guy: Hobster who won't "talk"
In the argot of the Mafia, it is a great compliment to be called a "standup guy," one who stands up to considerable pressure and threats from law enforcement officials and refuses to turn stool pigeon.
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The Witness Protection Program is and has been loaded with fugitives who fall short of "standup guy": Joe Valachi, Vinnie Teresa and Jimmy Fratianno, for example. In fact, almost all mafiosi doing time can win leniency if they talk, but many have refused. This does not always reflect strength of character but, as in Peter Joseph Salerno's case, the fear of mob retribution against themselves or members of their family.
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Peter Joseph Salerno had every intention of being a standup guy. A professional jewel thief, he came to have close contacts with the Genovese crime family. However, Salerno began to believe that when in doubt the mob will kill a potential stool pigeon. He was in Atlanta (like Joe Valachi) when he learned there was a contract out on him, and he decided to turn, becoming one of the federal government's most reliable witnesses against the Mafia and on whose head is posted $100,000.
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Probably the highest-ranking standup guy in syndicate history was Louis Lepke, the labor racketeer and boss of Murder, Inc., who became in 1944 the only top-level crime executive before or since to be executed. Lepke was known to have information concerning high political and union officials, and his revelations would probably have put Governor Thomas E. Dewey in the White House. The speculation is that Dewey wanted not only a labor official (allegedly Sidney Hillman who was very close to President Franklin D. Roosevelt), but also the crime bosses as well. On the day of his execution, Lepke had his wife read a statement he had dictated in his death cell:
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 | | I am anxious to have it clearly understood that I did not offer to talk and give information in exchange for any promise of commutation of my death sentence. I did not ask for that! [Lepke himself inserted the exclamation point.] ... The one and only thing I have asked for is to have a commission appointed to examine the facts. If that examination does not show that I am not guilty, I am willing to go to the chair, regardless of what information I have given or can give.
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Obviously the phrase "information I have given" meant Lepke had talked some, but, by using his wife to make the announcement, it was clear he was signaling the syndicate that he was not talking about the crime cartel. He was talking only about politicians and labor people, which the syndicate would tolerate so long as he did not reveal information about the mob. By using his wife as a spokesperson, he was telling the boys he realized no member of his family would be safe if the crime leaders thought he was talking about the organization.
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What Lepke couldn't grasp was that Dewey, whatever his desires and ambitions, could not possibly accept a deal that delivered political figures, his electoral enemies, but let every important crime leader in the countryLuciano, Lansky, Anastasia, Siegel, Costello, Adonis, Lucchese and many othersoff the hook.
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As a result, Louis Lepke went to the chaira standup guy.
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State Street Crap Game
The importance of gambling to the Mafia cannot be overestimated. It provides the mob with the money and power to set up other operations that the public finds less wholesome such as narcotics dealing and murder.
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A case in point, Brooklyn's State Street Crap Game, operated by the mob in the 1930s, financed Murder, Inc., the official mob extermination branch. The game was run in a building just off the busy corner of State and Court Streets in downtown Brooklyn. It was for high rollers, attracting wealthy businessmen, and, at times, even police brass and politicianswho suffered big losses and ended up beholden to the gangsters.
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Abe Reles, together with Pittsburgh Phil Strauss, one of the two most important hit men of Murder, Inc., was designated by crime bosses Louis Lepke and Albert Anastasia to be the official shylock of the game. Reles's underlings would move among the players, wads of money at the ready, making loans at a trifling 20 percent interestper week. (Mob hit men are seldom if ever paid for any particular murder, but are usually put on a sort of retainer, often consisting of exclusive rights to a certain racket, such as gambling.)
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The play per night at the State Street game was usually in excess of $100,000, and Reles's nightly profit from the shylock operation was, by his own estimate, anywhere from $1,000 to $2,000. And the businessmencompulsive gamblers who ended up paying huge amounts of "or else" interestnever realized they were footing the bill for murder.
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When Reles turned stool pigeon concerning Murder, Inc., operations, the authorities cracked down on the State Street game with a subsequent big loss to the mob. However, gambling is the easiest racket to get started anew and with the public, the politicians, the police
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