Does this sound like a lucky guy to you? And yet, they called him Lucky. Not sarcastically; they really meant it. How can a guy with a track record like that be called Lucky?
His name was Charles “Lucky” Luciano. And he made his own luck.
As a young boy, Luciano ran errands for anyone who needed an errand boy. He’d run tirelessly back and forth to the grocery store, carrying people’s bags to their homes for small change. A Sicilian immigrant who came to America as a kid, Luciano would sit in a theater all day watching silent movies with subtitles to teach himself English.
As a teen, Luciano went to work delivering ladies’ hats to department stores. He worked so hard and such long hours that the Jewish owner of the company took him home on Friday nights after work so Luciano could celebrate the Sabbath and at last enjoy a little rest.
While still a teen, and still working hard as a delivery boy, Luciano became a skilled organizer; he put together his own gang and forged alliances with other gangs. He’d later use this skill to work long enduring hours organizing labor unions, and putting together the strongest Mafia family in the world.
Tony [Spilotro] was a totally focused human being. He had all kinds of financial deals going on at the same time. He had different groups, hundreds of people, a million schemes, all of them in various stages of development. [He] put in a sixteen- to eighteen-hour day trying to put the deals together.
—Nicholas Pileggi, Casino
With a penchant for hard work, Luciano has earned the title of the American Mafia’s Founding Father. Let’s compare Luciano’s achievements to one of America’s founding fathers, George Washington.
Washington broke America away from British control. Luciano broke the American Mafia away from Sicilian control.
After the Revolutionary War, Washington insisted that Americans remain united, so as not to have another bickering Europe. After Luciano’s revolutionary war, he insisted the Mafia remain united and created the Commission to settle disputes and keep all the families working together in harmony.
Washington was offered a crown but refused, knowing the crown would lead to problems. Luciano was offered the title capo di tutti capi, boss of bosses, but refused, knowing the title would lead to problems.
Washington’s accomplishments inspired the French with their own revolutionary ideas. Luciano’s accomplishments inspired the Sicilian Mafia with their own idea of a commission; they called it the Cupola.
All this makes me wonder if Luciano studied Washington’s life and tried to emulate it.
George Washington started out just as poor as Luciano. When he was eleven years old, his father died and Washington became the man of the house. By age seventeen, Washington began work as a surveyor, courageously venturing into the wild to define tracts of unsettled land. He learned to live off that land, swam horses across snowy rivers, and forged alliances with wild Indian tribes. By twenty-two, Washington commanded a group of ragtag soldiers and was shooting it out with the French military over land claims.
Like Luciano, Washington would later use his organizational skills and penchant for hard work to piece together an army that defeated the strongest military in the world.
As Washington sat comfortably as the president of a new nation and the greatest revolutionary hero of his time, he may have appeared lucky.
Here’s some insight into Washington’s “lucky” life at a glance: he rowed his way across the icy Delaware, froze his ass off at Valley Forge, had horses shot out from under him, his coat riddled with bullets, survived a plot to kill him, suffered from illness, fatigue, depression, and anxiety, put down a revolt by his own men, died childless, and had false teeth. Sound lucky to you?
The founding father of America and the founding father of the American Mafia would both tell you that you make your own luck. A study of their lives proves that any luck they got was a product of hard work.
Work hard. Think big. And never lose sight of your goals.
LESSON 17
The Bank of Favors Pays the Highest Interest
DURING World War II, Italian newspaper editor Carlo Tresca railed against fascism and Benito Mussolini. Tresca was living in the United States at the time, where, as a personal favor to Mussolini, Don Vito Genovese ordered a hit on Tresca. The newspaperman was shot down on a Manhattan street. This pleased Il Duce and indebted him to Genovese.
This was a big favor for a big person. Genovese, however, did favors for small people, too.
Yolanda and Sal were like any other newlywed immigrants who arrived in America. They scraped to get by and were happy to live in a tenement on the Lower East Side where they shared a bathroom with half the building.
When Yolanda needed surgery but couldn’t afford it, Vito Genovese, the neighborhood don, took care of Yolanda’s medical bills.
Like many immigrants at that time, Yolanda and Sal gave birth to a stable of children. One child in particular repaid the favor to Genovese.
[Lucky] Luciano had few interests in the harbor. [But] Irish hoodlums who operated on the waterfront owed him favors.
—Selwyn Raab, Five Families
The child’s nickname was Cinzano. As a young man, Cinzano became Genovese’s loyal soldier and bodyguard. He’d later become known as “Chin” or Vincent “The Chin” Gigante. When Genovese wanted to eliminate rival Mob boss Frank Costello, he dispatched Gigante. Although Gigante shot Costello in the head, the wound wasn’t fatal. Gigante was arrested, kept his mouth shut, and beat the case. He continued to do favors for Genovese and years later, after Genovese died, he assumed control of the Genovese family.
The favor Genovese did for two Italian immigrants paid off in spades. Through Gigante’s efficient leadership, the Genovese clan was run like a Fortune 500 company.
The Genovese family is still the most powerful family in the United States and I refer to them as the Ivy League of the underworld.
—Joe Coffey, Organized Crime Task Force
In the straight world, favors don’t entail killing newspaper editors or shooting rival Mob bosses.
When I came home from prison, I was legally prohibited from associating with any members of the Gambino family, all of whom formed my old network. In effect, I’d built up a large bank of favors but was denied access to the account.
Fortunately, I was friends with a legitimate businessman on Long Island who has created a massive web of favors in which he is the center.
Like a switchboard operator, John “Johnny Parkway” Brunetti connects you with someone whose help you need. Once Johnny has done a favor for you, you’ll more than likely oblige if he asks you to do a favor for someone else, and that’s how his circle of favors grows.
Bonasera: How much shall I pay you? Don Corleone: Some day, and that day may never come, I will call upon you to do me a service in return.
—Mario Puzo, The Godfather
Johnny Parkway offered me a loan from his bank of favors, putting me in contact with anyone he thought might help me pursue a career as a writer.
Johnny Parkway helps a lot of people. In doing so, he’s become successful. He’s got good business sense but his circle of favors is what sets him apart from the herd of corporate elites who won’t move their asses unless there’s an immediate profit involved.
Favors are like money in the bank with Italians. We collect favors, trade favors, count them like assets, hold them and collect on them.
—Fictional Mafia don Frank Bellarosa, in Nelson DeMille’s The Gold Coast
Keep a stash in the Bank of Favors; you never know when you’ll need to make a withdrawal.
LESSON 18
Why “The Chin” Wore Pajamas to Work: When to Play Dumb
WHEN Don Joe Bonanno was subpoenaed to appear before a grand jury, he complained of heart problems and checked himself into a hospital. He was seventy-nine. Despite Bonanno’s complaints, the old ticker beat like a Rolex for ninety-seven years, nearly a century. The best engineers at BMW can’t make an engine like Bonanno’s hea
rt.
During World War II, Joe Colombo faked mental illness to get out of the Coast Guard. He later became don of the family that bears his name.
Anthony “Tumac” Accetturo cried amnesia when he was indicted. After he beat the rap, he claimed he hit his head in the shower and miraculously got his memory back.
The Mafia has more artists than Florence during the Renaissance: bullshit artists. That said, the Mob’s Michelangelo was Vincent “The Chin” Gigante, the boss who feigned insanity for thirty years to avoid prosecution.
Aware he was under constant surveillance, Gigante strolled Manhattan in striped pajamas and a bathrobe, talking to parking meters. Gigante even subjected many of his fellow mobsters to his charade.
While Gigante was still a capo, a friend of mine was at a sit-down with him. Gigante, maintaining his silence, had appointed another wiseguy as his mouthpiece. While the discussion carried on, Gigante threw his foot up on the table and began clipping his toenails. As if this wasn’t crazy enough, he cut them too short and his toes bled onto the table. My friend left the sit and said, “I know it’s an act, but this guy’s fucking nuts!”
Gigante’s behavior was extreme, as were the consequences he was trying to avoid, a life sentence in prison. He does, however, illustrate why it’s sometimes expedient to conceal the depth of your intelligence.
Whether climbing a Mafia or corporate ladder, you’ve got plenty of jealous people above you. If you’re a threat on their radar, they’ll aim their missiles in your direction.
Philly mobster Salvatore Testa was a young, intelligent wiseguy. When a Wall Street Journal article described him as a rising star in the Philly Mob, his boss, “Little Nicky” Scarfo, felt threatened and had him whacked.
When working for someone with Scarfo’s attitude, all too common in the legitimate world as well, it’s wise to conceal the depth of your intelligence and hide your ambitions. It’s sometimes the only way to survive.
There was a wacko Roman emperor named Caligula, who whacked everyone.
While Caligula was having degenerate sex, eating like a pig, and killing members of his own court, there was an imbecile standing in the corner watching it all. Sometimes the imbecile mumbled a few words and everyone threw food at him.
A group of conspirators finally got fed up with Caligula’s behavior and iced him.
With no emperor to lead the empire, the conspirators needed to appoint someone fast. They looked around the court for a person they could control, and decided to appoint the imbecile everyone had thrown food at. His name was Claudius.
As emperor of Rome, Claudius proved to be nobody’s puppet. A sharp emperor, he ruled for thirteen years, built public works, studied law, and oversaw the expansion of the empire, including the conquest of Great Britain.
Some imbecile.
Claudius knew how to survive and prosper in a lion’s den. Plenty of mobsters have survived and prospered the same way. Some went on to become boss, like Claudius. And just about every time, nobody saw it coming.
LESSON 19
The School of Hard Knocks: Experience
WHEN I was released from prison, if you were a potential employer looking at my résumé, a few salient facts would have jumped off the page:• Three violent felonies
• Never worked an honest day
• Never paid taxes
• Never had a credit card
• No higher education
• No trade
• No honest skills
• No driver’s license
Shall I continue? To tell the truth, I’d be leery of working for anyone who would hire me in the first place, based on my résumé, anyway. Now here are the credentials that don’t show up on my résumé:• Honorable
• Ambitious
• Resourceful
• Word is gold
• Friends trust him with their lives, and he’s proven worthy of that trust
• Refuses to quit
• Never makes the same mistake twice
This last bullet point is key, because the School of Hard Knocks involves countless mistakes—and learning from each.
FOR decades, Joseph Stalin controlled Russia with an iron fist. In Young Stalin, Simon Sebag Montefiore makes references to Stalin’s leadership style being similar to that of a Mafia boss:
“Stalin became the effective godfather of a small but useful fund-raising operation that really resembled a moderately successful Mafia family, conducting shakedowns, currency counterfeiting, extortion, bank robberies, piracy, and protection-rackets. . . .”
Nikita Khrushchev, who succeeded Stalin, remembered him this way in his memoirs: “I have seen him . . . making mistake after mistake in rapid succession—but never the same mistake twice.”
Stalin, a graduate of the School of Hard Knocks, knew that mistakes are part of life, but life is too short and intolerant to allow the same mistakes twice.
ON the drive home from prison, I looked around and noticed much of the world had changed. Family and friends in the car with me were saying, “This changed, that changed. Do you recognize this, do you recognize that? Will you be all right?”
“Have people changed?” I asked.
“No.”
“Then I’ll be fine.”
Human nature is constant. The School of Hard Knocks teaches you this with a high premium on experience, which opens your eyes to a million lessons that can never be learned in a classroom.
Most of these guys, after all, were just uneducated guys . . . but they were street smart and the thread of the business ran through everything all the time.
—Joe Pistone
Today, I’m confident when promoting myself during a radio or television interview, negotiating a deal, or presenting an idea. I’ve never been to university but I’ve got a doctorate from the School of Hard Knocks.
Here’s how I earned it: I began life without a penny in my pocket. My young mother withered away and died in my arms when I was twenty. I survived years in a rat-infested prison rampant with drugs, violence, and sexual abuse. I educated myself inside a dark, damp cell, and re-entered society without a penny in my pocket. After all that, what in the world could shake me?
Here’s a little exercise for you; it might be a bit depressing for a few moments but afterward you’ll feel invincible. Think of all the tough things you’ve been through in life: Mom or Dad died, ill child, lost love, messy divorce, survived an auto accident, whatever comes to mind, big or small. When finished, you’ll notice you’ve made it through each and every one of these events, or you’re still valiantly fighting. The proof is that you’re reading this book. You’re no quitter. In fact, you’re answering the bell like Bobby Cabert said, and “Ole Blue Eyes” did.
What you have experienced, no power on Earth can take from you.
—Anonymous
Now tell me, compared with all you’ve endured, what’s a little job interview? How about asking for a raise from the boss? Delivering a product pitch to Walmart? Small potatoes.
You’ve probably graduated from the School of Hard Knocks and didn’t even know it. No diploma, no ceremony, but the notches are in your belt.
By the way, our school has no reunions. We’re too tough for that stuff.
LESSON 20
Is This Phone Tapped?: Watch What You Say Every Day
IN a Manhattan social club, a large banner ran the length of the wall: “THIS CLUB IS BUGGED.” On another wall, a large sign with an arrow pointing at a pay phone read, “THIS PHONE IS BUGGED.”
One day, I visited the club and noticed that the phone’s wire had been clipped.
“What happened?” I asked the wiseguy in charge.
“No matter how many times I warn them,” he answered, “they keep bullshittin’ on the phone.”
Mobsters know not to say anything on the phone that can be used against them in court, yet just about every mobster who gets indicted has phone-tap evidence against him.
Me, John Gotti, will sever you
r motherfuckin’ head off.
—John Gotti, Sr., caught on a government wiretap
Guys on the street talk in riddles to try to get around a tapped line. I once overheard a drug dealer say, “I’ll take ten kilos of flour and twenty kilos of oregano.”
When he hung up the phone, I asked, “What’s on your mind? You think the FBI can’t figure out you mean cocaine and marijuana?”
“I own a pizzeria,” he said. “They can’t prove it’s drugs.”
“Who orders twenty kilos of oregano from Colombia?”
I wasn’t surprised when he got pinched and went away for forty years.
You shouldn’t have to worry about the FBI tapping your phone, but businesspeople record conversations, too. In business, we talk on the phone every day, and we’re not always conscious of everything we say. Avoid conversations you don’t want played back to you.
In most of the United States, telephone recording laws require that only one party is aware of the recording. Therefore, always speak as if the person on the other line is taping you.
Being a mobster awakened me to the dangers of a telephone. No one is immune. While a mobster’s conversation might be played in court, a businessperson’s conversation can be played in court, on prime time news, YouTube, pasted all over the Internet, or kept secret and used as blackmail.
Even celebrities are slowly learning to watch their mouths on the phone. In 2008, Kim Basinger taped ex-hubby Alec Baldwin threatening their daughter. In 2010, Mel Gibson, who probably laughed at Baldwin, made the same mistake with his ex-girlfriend.
Of course, you have to watch your text and e-mail messages even more closely.
Never talk when you can nod. And never nod when you can wink. And never write an e-mail because it’s death. You’re giving prosecutors all the evidence we need.
Mob Rules Page 6
