Authors: Gus Russo
The Game’s Afoot:
The G Gets Involved
W
hile 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 sixty-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.”
The Chicago contingent was incensed that the Commission meeting had taken place in a venue they had warned against. Giancana was especially irritated, venting to Rosselli, “I told that fuckin’ jerk in Buffalo [Stefano Magaddino] that we shouldn’t have the meeting in the goddamn place that he should have the meeting here in Chicago, and he’d never have to worry about cops with all the hotels and places we control.” Years later, Mooney had still not let up about the confab. Utilizing a telephonic wiretap placed in one of the gang’s hideouts, the FBI heard Mooney chew out Magaddino personally for the debacle in New York. “I hope you’re satisfied,” Mooney fumed. “Sixty-three of our top guys made by the cops.” To which the chastened Buffalo mobster replied, “I gotta admit you were right, Sam. It never would have happened in your place.” In the next few sentences of the FBI’s transcript, Giancana said more about the Outfit’s influence, and legit business penetration, in Chicago than a hundred editorials: “This is the safest territory in the world for a big meet. We could’ve scattered you guys in my motels; we could’ve had the meet in one of my big restaurants. The cops don’t bother us there. We got three towns just outside of Chicago with the police chiefs in our pocket. We got what none of you guys got. We got this territory locked up tight.”
The national press had a field day with the Apalachin story, an occurrence that gave a temple-pulsing headache to the director of the nation’s premier investigative unit, the FBI. J. Edgar Hoover, the portly paladin who was ever protective of his beloved Bureau’s reputation, was now being pressured into action against organized crime. For decades, Hoover had denied that crime was anything but a local problem, that just such an assemblage as Apalachin was inconceivable. Now, for the first time publicly, Hoover was seen as being behind the curve. The G’s boss moved quickly to make up for lost time. On November 27, Director Hoover fired off a memo to all the FBI field offices. The missive was headlined “Top Hoodlum Program (THP),” and it ordered the FBI to penetrate the inner sanctums of organized crime, define it, and make cases that would stick. Hoover’s number two man, Cartha DeLoach, contends that the THP had actually been formed earlier in the year and that Apalachin only energized it. Other agents, such as Chicago’s Bill Roemer disputed this.
In either event, the nation’s major cities soon saw an influx of new G-men sent to ensure the success of the THP. By far the most emphasis was placed on New York, which welcomed twenty-five new agents, and Chicago, with ten. For the next two years, the new federal arrivals went to school on organized crime. In Chicago, FBI special agents wisely sought out the counsel of the former members of the city’s Scotland Yard investigative unit, recently disbanded by Mayor Daley. Although it would take many months before the Bureau was able to acquire connected sources, and critical inside information, it would eventually do so. That success would represent a major turning point in the fortunes of the Outfit. In the short term, the Outfit’s chieftains, increasingly desirous of going legit, kept a low profile throughout most of 1958-59, confining their business expansion to the offshore gambling haven of Cuba. While Meyer Lansky had just opened his deluxe twenty-one-story, 440-room Havana Riviera Hotel Casino (the first large Cuban building to be fully air-conditioned), the Outfit expanded in other directions. With Mooney Giancana as his partner, Joe Accardo invested in Havana-based shrimp boats and processing plants, an endeavor that reaped still more millions in profit. Accardo also teamed with Diamond Joe Esposito to cut in on the lucrative Cuban sugar export business. The Outfit’s low-profile domestic activity was believed by some to have had one bloody exception: In Vegas, drastic action was taken to prevent the Outfit’s Riviera HotelCasino plum from going
belly-up.
The disturbing reports from Las Vegas were unabated: Gus Green baum’s personal descent was escalating. He was deep into the abyss of heroin addiction, spending night after hazy night with prostitutes, but only after losing stacks of money at the craps tables. His dreadful condition, which allowed him only a couple hours of afternoon work, predictably spilled over into his administration of the Outfit’s Riviera business. Although Greenbaum had worked his managerial magic for a decade in Las Vegas, now for the first time his ledger sheets were awash in red ink. With the Riviera’s casino doing a good volume of business, the Chicago bosses knew it could not be losing money - unless Gus Greenbaum was skimming to support his many addictions. Consequently, Greenbaum received another visit from the dreaded Marshall Caifano.
“Sell out or you’re gonna be carried out in a box,” Caifano ordered.
After Caifano left, Greenbaum consulted with his senior staff, telling them, “I don’t want to leave. This goddamn town is in my blood. I can’t leave.” The stance was either courageous or foolhardy, given not only Greenbaum’s current troubles with the Outfit, but also that he still had not repaid them the $1 million he had borrowed for the Flamingo Hotel improvements after Bugsy’s death.
What happened next may have come as the result of a Thanksgiving, 1958, meeting of “the Four Joes,” 124 miles south of Phoenix. The site was the Grace Ranch, owned by Detroit gangster Pete “Horse Face” Licavoli. The FBI received reports that Joe Accardo had made the holiday trek to Licavoli’s outpost to confer with New York Commission bosses Joe Profaci and Joe Bonanno and his brother-in-law Joe Magliocco, all of whom had attended Apalachin. With Accardo playing host, the Four Joes feasted on barbecued steak and discussed their business in Sicilian. It was rumored that one of the business decisions they reached cost Joe Accardo $1 million - the money he had lent to Gus Greenbaum for the Flamingo, which could now never be repaid.
In the late morning of December 3, less than a week after the Grace Ranch summit, Gus Greenbaum’s housekeeper happened upon a grisly scene in the Greenbaum bedroom. Still in silk pajamas, Gus Greenbaum’s corpse lay across his bed, his head nearly severed by a vicious swipe from a butcher knife. On a sofa in the den fifty feet away was found the body of Gus’ wife, Bess, also the victim of a slashed throat. Although no one was ever charged in the murders, the killings were widely believed to represent a Bugsy redux, i.e., the fastest way to effect a managerial change in Sin City. If in fact the Greenbaum murder was sanctioned by the Four Joes, the killing of Bess was a potent departure from the Outfit’s rule that prohibited involvement of innocent family members. There is also the distinct possibility that the hired killer overstepped his authority in an effort to dispose of a witness. Chicago insiders believe that the hit was authorized by the Riviera’s Miami investors, since police learned that two suspicious men had arrived from Miami the day of the murders, only to return to Miami that very night. Lending credence to this scenario was a conversation Johnny Rosselli had with Jimmy Fratianno two years after the murders. When Fratianno brought up the Greenbaum killings, Rosselli said, “That was Meyer’s contract.” Meyer Lansky was of course well-established in Miami and was an investor with his fellow Floridians in Greenbaum’s Riviera.
Back in Phoenix, the Greenbaums’ funeral was attended by three hundred mourners, among them Senator Barry Goldwater.
All the while in Washington, the McClellan hearings churned on. For the Outfit, the tribunal was little more than a nuisance, with the gang having to dodge a spate of congressional subpoenas. Eventually, some of the bosses appeared, only to plead the Fifth Amendment ad nauseam.
1
Bobby Kennedy expressed a strong initial interest in hearing from Curly Humphreys on the subject of his alleged anointment of Hoffa. According to files in the Chicago Crime Commission (CCC), Kennedy’s investigators were also interested in Humphreys’ control over the Chicago Restaurant Association and the Hotel and Restaurant Employees Union. “Books of the Union have been sub-poenaed [by the committee] and restaurant owners and workers are being interviewed throughout the city,” a CCC memo noted. Chicagoans were therefore shocked when the Welshman never appeared before the McClellan Committee. The mystery was resolved on February 25, 1959, while Robert Kennedy was grilling Chicago slot king Eddie Vogel. Kennedy was essentially reading “for the record,” since Vogel pled the Fifth to all questions posed. While ticking off the names of various gangsters with whom Vogel was associated, Kennedy included: “Rocco Fischetti, Charles Fischetti, who is now dead; Murray ’the Camel’ Humphreys,
who is now dead . .
.” (Italics added.) The committee had somehow been led to believe that the very much alive Humphreys had passed on.