The Mob and the City (35 page)

The mob boss was having personal problems as well. He had suffered through recurring bouts with throat cancer, which turned his voice gravely. In the late 1940s (long before
The Sopranos
invented a mob boss in therapy), Frank Costello was seeing a psychiatrist in Manhattan.
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His disastrous testimony before the Kefauver Committee in March 1951, televised to a national audience, made him a target of law enforcement. In 1954, Costello was convicted of federal income tax evasion. His lawyers would spend years trying to overturn his conviction while he was out on bail.
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9–1: Frank Costello, testifying before the Kefauver Committee, 1951. (Photo by Al Aumuller, courtesy of the Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division, New York World-Telegram and Sun Newspaper Photograph Collection)

11:00 p.m., Thursday, May 2, 1957, 115 Central Park West, Manhattan: The Attempt on Frank Costello

On the evening of Thursday, May 2, 1957, Frank and his wife Loretta went to see friends at the elegant L'Aiglon Restaurant. The dinner party included Mr. and Mrs. Al Miniaci, president of Paramount Vending, with whom Costello did business; Mr. and Mrs. Generose Pope, the publisher of
Il Progresso
, the Italian-language newspaper of which Costello was a longtime backer; and William Kennedy, owner of a modeling agency. After dinner, the group strolled down East 55th Street to the Monsignore Restaurant, where they met up with Frank Bonfiglio, a Brooklyn businessman who Costello had known for decades.
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Despite his good spirits, Costello's legal problems were weighing on him. He placed a call at about 10:45 p.m. to a Philadelphia lawyer. Frank returned to the table to apologize for having to leave early; he would be taking an 11:00 p.m. telephone call at home from his Washington attorney. His wife Loretta wanted to stay. So Costello left with Mr. Kennedy in a taxicab bound for the Upper West Side.
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At about 10:55 p.m., the taxicab arrives at Costello's upscale co-op apartment complex overlooking Central Park. The boss gets out of the cab and walks into the building's lobby. Then, a black Cadillac pulls up behind the parked cab. A hulking thug gets out of the Cadillac and rushes into the lobby.
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“This is for you Frank!” he shouts. Costello reacts, turning toward the shout. In a split second, a freakish bullet grazes the skin beneath Costello's right ear, furrows under the hair of his scalp, and exits, smashing into the marble wall of the foyer. Feeling a sting and the blood pouring down his neck, Costello staggers to the leather couch in the lobby. “Somebody tried to get me,” Frank cries. The doorman and William Kennedy then took him to Roosevelt Hospital.
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Don Vito Rallies the
Caporegimes

The gunman's macho shout may have saved Costello's life. The doctors who treated his wound at the hospital concluded that Costello had turned his head at the very last moment. So instead of the bullet shattering his skull, Costello walked away with a flesh wound.
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According to underworld sources, the gunman who botched the assassination was twenty-nine-year-old Vincent “The Chin” Gigante, a husky former boxer who had become a mob soldier for Genovese. “The Chin wasted a whole month practicing,” mocked Joe Valachi, a fellow hit man for Genovese.
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The NYPD believed that Thomas Eboli, a
caporegime
close to Genovese, was driving the getaway car. Tommy Eboli's company put up $76,000 ($500,000 in 2013 dollars) as collateral for Gigante's bail.
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Rather than trying to deny he was behind it, Vito Genovese proceeded to stage a
coup d’état
in the Luciano Family. The rank and file had little affection for their absentee boss. For all of Costello's ease around New York's power brokers, Genovese better understood that the real power in the mob was in its street crews. So while Costello was out hobnobbing with celebrities and politicians, Genovese was building loyalty among the
caporegimes
.

Genovese tested that loyalty in the days following the botched attempt. “Vito called a meeting of all his lieutenants to condone his attempt on Costello's life,” describes an FBI report. “All of the lieutenants showed up at the meeting except Augie Pisano.”
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It was an impressive show of strength. “After the Costello
shooting, his Family rallied around Genovese,” confirms Joe Bonanno. Genovese then made his move: “Don Vito” proclaimed himself boss of the Luciano Family and named Gerardo “Gerry” Catena as his underboss.
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9–2: Vito Genovese, ca. 1934. (Courtesy of the New York Police Department)

Genovese and his soldiers braced for retaliation. The man they feared the most was Albert “The Executioner” Anastasia, who was furious about the attempt on his longtime ally Costello. Anastasia polled the Commission to see if it would remain neutral if he went after Genovese. The Commission's members warned Anastasia that they would oppose him if he turned it into a wider conflict. They persuaded him to stand down.
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The Trial of Vincent Gigante

Frank Costello had had enough of the mob life. He was already preoccupied with his own legal and health problems. Waging a prolonged fight against Genovese was unpalatable. He decided to retire as boss.
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Although police detectives believed that Costello had seen the gunman's face, he was completely unhelpful to their investigation. Costello insisted that he never had “an enemy in the world.” In response, a detective quipped, “Whoever this guy was, he had a very strange way of showing his friendship.”
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The following year, in May 1958, Vincent “The Chin” Gigante went on trial
for the attempted murder of Frank Costello. Gigante's criminal defense attorney Maurice Edelbaum exploited Costello's unwillingness to identify the shooter:

“Do you know any reason why this man should seek your life?” Edelbaum asked.

“None whatsoever,” replied Costello.

….

“Tell us the truth,” Edelbaum demanded in theatrical fashion. “Who shot you?”

“I'll ask you who shot me,” Costello replied with a sly smile. “I don't know. I saw no one at all.”

The victim had rendered himself useless as a witness.
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That left the building doorman as the sole eyewitness to identify Gigante. Unfortunately, the star witness was completely blind in one eye and impaired in the other. Edelman destroyed the doorman's testimony on cross-examination.
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Shortly before midnight, the jury returned its verdict: not guilty. Loud applause broke out in the gallery; the defendant's wife Olympia and four children burst into tears.
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When the cheering stopped, Gigante was released by the court. The Chin walked over to Frank Costello, who was sitting in the back of the gallery. “Thanks, Frank,” said Gigante.
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The Luciano Family was not the only one of the original five families wracked with strife during the 1950s. Even more severe problems were stirring in the old Mangano Family.

MOB PATRICIDE: VINCENT MANGANO AND ALBERT ANASTASIA

By 1951, Albert Anastasia had been the underboss to the Mangano Family for twenty years. The young Umberto Anastasio had come up under the tutelage of Vincent and Philip Mangano. Albert the Executioner was their enforcer on the waterfront, and he was underboss to their mob family. Albert once said that Vince Mangano was “like a father to him.”
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After decades as their underboss though, resentments had arisen. Anastasia's ambitions were frustrated by the long tenure of the Mangano brothers. He was
having a difficult time masking his contempt for Vince Mangano. “He always keeps surprises in store,” Anastasia sarcastically told a guest of his boss. For his part, Mangano was distrustful of Anastasia's close alliance with Frank Costello. “Mangano and Anastasia were at a stage where they feared one another,” recalled mob boss Joe Bonanno.
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Vincent Mangano went missing in early spring 1951. Then, on April 19, 1951, the bullet-riddled corpse of his brother Philip Mangano turned up in a marsh in Brooklyn. The police sought to question Anastasia and his associates about the gangland-style hit. But nobody was talking to the police. The homicide of Phil Mangano was never solved. Vince Mangano's body was never even found.
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The Commission wanted to know what happened to Vince Mangano. He was after all one of the original charter members. The Commission summoned Anastasia to a meeting. “He neither denied nor admitted rumors that he was behind Vincent's disappearance,” recalled Joe Bonanno, a Commission member. “However, he said he had proof that Mangano had been plotting to kill him” and that “if someone was out to kill him, then he had the right to protect himself.” His ally Frank Costello, as boss of the Luciano Family, backed up Anastasia's version of events before the Commission. Their message was clear enough. The Commission was not about to challenge them.
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Vince Mangano had never been pure in these matters anyway. In April 1931, Mangano betrayed his boss Joe Masseria by joining Salvatore Maranzano. Then, after Maranzano's assassination in September 1931, Mangano became boss of the Brooklyn waterfront by pushing aside Frank “Cheech” Scalise.
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It was not exactly a pristine rise to power.

The flaw was present in the Mafia since the very beginning. The Mafia families were well-structured to allow their members to make money. The Commission provided a forum to arbitrate ordinary disputes and preserve general standards for the Cosa Nostra. But the Mafia, like other crime syndicates, really had no peaceful means to resolve severe conflicts among its top leaders. They could not call the police or bring a civil action in court. Rather, they took matters into their own hands. Take the case of Anastasia's underboss Frank Scalise.

THE UP-AND-DOWN LIFE OF FRANK “CHEECH” SCALISE

After a lifetime in the mob, Frank “Cheech” Scalise had reason to be cynical.

He had once been a boss. Back in 1930, Scalise was one of the first to answer Salvatore Maranzano's calls for a revolt against Joe Masseria. As reward, Maranzano offered Scalise the opportunity to become a boss on “the condition that he would eliminate [Vincent] Mangano at the first opportunity.” Scalise took the deal to become boss.
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Then, Scalise delayed the hit. Growing impatient, Maranzano demanded to know why Mangano was still alive. Scalise tried to explain that he was unable to develop “any pretext to kill [Mangano] in order to justify his action with his countrymen.” The boss of bosses was extremely unhappy with Scalise.
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Fearing that Maranzano would send killers after
him
, Scalise spilled the beans about the murder scheme to Mangano's allies. This further fueled the conspiracy against Maranzano. As we saw, Charles Luciano's hit men killed Salvatore Maranzano in his Park Avenue office on September 10, 1931. Although Scalise probably saved his own life by revealing the scheme, he was not going to be a boss anymore. “Scalise's star fell. Scalise had been too close a supporter of Maranzano,” explained Bonanno. Scalise was demoted from boss and replaced by Vince Mangano. Scalise had gone from boss to has-been in a few months.
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