SOME schmo accidentally hit a boy with his car. The boy was fine, minor scrapes and bruises, but the kid’s father, a knock-around guy, went berserk. I knew the father, and knew he was serious when he vowed to kill the driver.
When the driver got wind that he was in trouble with a knock-around guy, he went to a local hoodlum, Greedy Pete, and asked for his help. Pete knew I was friendly with the kid’s father and came to me. Not to save the driver’s life, but to put the squeeze on him. (Be careful who you turn to in a time of need.)
“He’s loaded,” Pete said to me. “Let’s milk him dry.”
Pete’s plan was to turn the heat up on the driver and frighten him even more, but assure him he could buy his way out of the problem. My job was to calm the kid’s father and promise him a cash reward for scrapping his murderous plan.
Over the next week, Pete met with the driver on several occasions. Between meetings, he pretended to go back and forth with the boy’s angry father in an effort to negotiate a settlement. In truth, Pete was reporting to me.
At first, the driver offered ten grand to bury the incident and save his own life. Pete’s goal was to bring the settlement up to fifty large. At every five-thousand-dollar hike, the driver claimed he couldn’t go for another nickel. But each time he lied, and later agreed to cough up more until finally, at thirty-five grand, Pete came to me and said, “He’s done. We can’t squeeze him for another penny.”
I found this hard to believe. The driver had lied all week. Why believe him now? Was Greedy Pete bullshitting me, skimming fifteen off the top for himself?
“Lou,” Pete said to me. “I’m doin’ this a long time. I know when a guy’s bullshittin’, an’ when he’s not. If we push him any harder, he’ll either drive himself to the police station or off the edge of a cliff.”
“How’d you know he was bullshittin’ all week, but he ain’t now?”
“I don’t go by words,” said Pete. “Everyone lies. I go by eyes, hands, breathin’, an’ every other fuckin’ thing.”
I accepted Pete’s reasoning—for the very same reasons—and we settled for thirty-five G’s. I’d like to say we gave it to the boy for his college fund. Instead, we took ten grand apiece, me, Pete, and the father, and kicked five upstairs.
Almost all people use body language. They may not talk with their hands—like many Italians—but they give up clues in a million different ways that either confirm or betray their words. Being aware of these clues gives you the edge in any negotiation.
The tongue was given [to] the diplomat so that he could conceal his thoughts.
—Talleyrand, foreign minister and consigliere to Napoleon
In the Mob, body language can be used to gauge how much someone is willing to pay for a stolen load, whether a guy has your money when he claims he doesn’t, or how heavy you can lean on a guy before he looks for another way out. The examples are endless and can be applied daily in the business world.
Don’t trust words if the body is saying something different.
LESSON 51
Deliver the Goods: Stand Behind Your Name
WHEN Philly mobster Nicholas “Nick the Blade” Virgilio was indicted for murder, he met with a crooked municipal court judge named Edwin Helfant. Helfant claimed to have a relationship with Virgilio’s sentencing judge, and offered to fix Virgilio’s sentence for twelve grand.
Virgilio forked over the money—and got slammed in court anyhow.
Six years later, Virgilio was released from jail early on account of good behavior. He began to stalk Helfant. One snowy day, Virgilio bought a shovel, ski mask, gloves, and a .22-caliber pistol. Posing as a snow shoveler in need of the men’s room, Virgilio walked into a lounge where Helfant was dining with his wife. When Virgilio left the lounge, Helfant was slumped over in his seat, dead.
There is a certain honor among thieves, and the Mob firmly believes that everyone should get what they pay for.
A handshake from Meyer Lansky was worth more than the strongest contracts that a battery of lawyers could put together.
—Ralph Salerno, retired NYPD Mob investigator
How many calls are dropped on your mobile phone each month? And yet the phone company demands its bill. How many products have you purchased this year that broke on account of poor manufacturing? Don’t you love those limited warranties that cover every possible problem but the one that’s bound to happen? Do you like talking to an automated recording when you need a live customer service rep? How about waiting twenty or thirty minutes on hold to get through to that rep, then getting disconnected, and having to start all over again? Does anyone stand behind their service or product pledge?
If you’re paid for a service or a product, deliver!
No one had any problem dealing with a kid. My word was good. I delivered.
—Unlocked
Don’t take people’s money, jerk them off, and go have a drink in a lounge, like Edwin Helfant. Stand behind your name. When it comes down to it, it’s all you’ve got.
LESSON 52
Fireproof Your Ass: Never Let Anyone Light a Flame Under You
AT one time, a pair of con men in Queens would drive around in a van on the lookout for an average Joe, usually a guy at a gas station or walking along the sidewalk. Once the crooks spotted their target, the van would screech to a halt and the side door would slide open. One crook would jump out and point to a stack of TV boxes inside the van.
“We just knocked off this joint,” he’d say. “Gotta move fast, thirty-two-inch TVs. Want one?”
Understand that Queens isn’t Beverly Hills; most residents in the low-income neighborhoods are acquainted with crime and unfazed by a situation like this. Blue-collar workers can always use a discount, and most don’t feel that buying a hot item is the same as committing a crime. Think of the millions of people who buy bootleg DVDs.
If the guy told the crooks, “I’m not interested,” they’d speed away, on to the next sucker.
If the guy hesitated, the crooks would know he was ripe for their con, and step up the pressure.
“C’mon, buddy, make up your mind,” one might say. “I gotta dump this stuff.”
The one driving the van might yell “Hurry up!” or rev the engine to force a decision.
The guy had no time to ask questions—or open a box to check the merchandise.
“How much?” is all the crooks would need to hear to know they’d hooked a fish.
They might ask for a hundred bucks, but they’d take whatever the guy was willing to pay. If the guy scraped together fifty bucks, they’d say, “Okay, but only because I gotta move fast.”
When the guy got home and opened the box, he’d find a few bricks wrapped in newspaper.
These crooks succeeded because they were experts at rushing people into making on-the-spot decisions. They’d catch their prey off-guard when their van screeched to a halt. Once they knew they had a possible sale, they’d step up the pressure.
Any guy afraid to walk away from a “great” deal that seems to have fallen into his lap is ripe for a con.
[N]ever give an immediate reply to any proposition . . . nor to any complaint or unexpected offer. . . . One must always have time to reflect, and it is better to put off to tomorrow what one cannot do readily and well today, than to act precipitously.
—Talleyrand
There are plenty of crooks in the business world who might try to rush you into a decision. It’s okay to stall people who put pressure on you, because it probably means they’re bullshitting you. If not, they’ll respect your need to think things through.
LESSON 53
Go to Bat for Your Guys: Loyalty to Your Employees
BONANNO hit man Louie Tuzzio popped Gus Farace in response to Farace’s reckless murder of DEA agent Everett Hatcher. When Tuzzio ambushed Farace, there was a passenger in Farace’s car who also got hit by the shots. The passenger was the son of a Gambino soldier. Although the soldier’s son made a full recovery, the soldier asked his don,
John Gotti, for street justice; he wanted the hit man, Louie Tuzzio, killed.
Contrary to media tags at the time, Gotti was no boss of bosses. Although he ruled his own family, he had no authority over wiseguys in other families. Bonanno family acting boss Anthony Spero was the man responsible for Tuzzio. All Gotti could do was approach Spero and request that Tuzzio be killed for his mistake.
Spero did not have to answer to Gotti. He had a choice. He could deny the request and go to bat for his own guy, or pop Tuzzio and ingratiate himself with Gotti. While Spero may have agonized over the decision to kill Tuzzio, in the end, he had him killed.
John Gotti was placed in the same exact predicament as Spero when a member of Gotti’s borgata put out a contract on Lucchese underboss Anthony “Gaspipe” Casso. Casso was injured but survived the hit. After Casso recovered, he tracked down the hit man who shot him, and tortured the man until he gave up the wiseguy who’d dispatched him. The wiseguy, Angelo Ruggiero, was a member of Gotti’s personal crew.
Casso went to Gotti and asked that Ruggiero be put to sleep. At the time, Gotti’s power was new and insecure. He’d recently usurped the Gambino throne and was trying to build alliances with other families. In short, Gotti needed friends, not enemies.
From a strictly political standpoint, Gotti should have sacrificed Ruggiero. Wouldn’t Machiavelli himself have advised Gotti to do so? But Gotti refused, incurring Casso’s wrath and that of the Lucchese family.
Gotti knew politics better than anyone, but wasn’t about to sell out his own guys.
These settlers may have owed their wealth to commerce, or to agriculture, or to the increase in their population, or perhaps to the moral integrity which prompted them to stand by their allies until they themselves were destroyed; at any rate, as I said, they quickly grew prosperous.
—Livy, A History of Rome
In the movie The Untouchables, there’s a scene in which Al Capone, played by Robert De Niro, bludgeons two men to death with a baseball bat. The scene was factual. Capone did kill the two men, Anselmi and Scalise, after he found out they had conspired to kill him.
A few years before Capone killed Anselmi and Scalise, he was asked to hand them over to Hymie Weiss, a gangster Capone was warring with at the time. Weiss, who had a personal vendetta against Anselmi and Scalise, promised to end the fighting with Capone after the two men were handed over for execution. Capone wanted the fighting to stop so he could resume business without interference.
It’s in the DNA of Cosa Nostra to avoid any internal clash because it would mean an opportunity for the police to investigate and fight them.
—Col. Mauro Obinu, carabinieri
Still, he refused. “I wouldn’t do that to a yellow dog!” was Capone’s unequivocal response to Weiss’s request.
Al Capone and John Gotti had many character flaws, but they were loyal to their men. Even Casso, who tried to kill Gotti, had to admit, “[Gotti’s] one of the few people whose word you could take to the bank.”
Go to bat for your people.
LESSON 54
Rest in Peace—in a Lakeside Cabin, Not an Early Grave: Taking a Break and Coming Back Refreshed
IN the 1990s, I knew a mobster who owned a string of successful businesses. He was a workaholic, incapable of taking a break. He once planned a two-week vacation to Florida. After two days, he called the office and said, “I’m on the next flight home.” He was back to work before the day was up.
He was obviously married to his business, not his wife. As a result, his marriage ended in divorce. Unable to keep up the hectic pace, he began to use prescription drugs and eventually crashed, losing everything he’d worked so hard to gain.
The human mind and body can run like a race car, but they can’t sustain high speeds without a pit stop. There’s a fine line between hard work and overwork. That’s why smart mobsters take a break from the action.
Genovese boss Anthony “Fat Tony” Salerno kept a farm in Rhinebeck, New York. Colombo boss Carmine Persico escaped to his estate in Saugerties, New York, and Gambino boss John Gotti had a summer home in Pennsylvania. The list of mobsters who retreated to homes far away from the action is endless. But you don’t always have to go far to get away. Bonanno wiseguy Anthony Spero raised homing pigeons on his roof in Brooklyn, as did Dominick Napolitano and other prominent wiseguys.
After the stress of a big score, I’d personally take off for the Poconos or head out to Long Island for a long walk on the beach. A couple of days of R and R and I’d return to the streets refreshed and eager for business.
A cabin getaway can provide you with the perfect antidote for stress, a million times better than drugs or, worse, a psychiatrist, some of whom are more nuts than anybody. While tucked away in that cabin, clear your mind. If your mind wanders back to the office, control your thoughts, don’t let them control you.
One of the Ten Commandments tells us to keep a day of complete rest, a Sabbath.
A mobster may break every other commandment but he’ll keep a little Sabbath of his own, and return to the streets a new man.
LESSON 55
Don’t Split Yourself in Half: The Wrong Decision Is Better Than None at All
ON April 16, 1984, cops in Garfield, New Jersey, answered a call at a warehouse where they found two fifty-gallon drums filled with body parts. Inside one drum was a man’s head and torso. Inside the other, his legs. It took three months for forensic technicians to identify the grisly remains as those of Cesare Bonventre.
Bonventre was a thirty-three-year-old wiseguy with the Bonanno family when he was murdered. The family was involved in a power struggle, and Bonventre was cut in half while in the process of deciding to whom he would swear allegiance.
A wrong decision is better than none at all. An error can be fixed, and you’ve got a shot at getting it right. No decision will get you nowhere.
Dictator Benito Mussolini ruled Italy like a Mafia don. So much so that he launched a crusade against Italy’s real Mafia dons, regarding them as a threat to his power.
In 1922, Mussolini used his talent for resolute decision making when he and his gang marched on Rome and seized power from an impotent king and a horde of disorganized politicians. But in 1939, at the start of World War II, Mussolini made a critical blunder by choosing to fight alongside Nazi Germany instead of the Allies.
Six years later, with Italy in ruins, Mussolini’s son Vittorio asked him how he had fucked up so badly in aligning Italy with the Nazis.
In so many words, Mussolini told Vittorio that he’d simply picked the wrong horse. The decision was based on many complex factors, but Mussolini was a practical man and knew, in the end, that it came down to that.
However wrong Mussolini’s decisions were, he reached the heights of power by making decisions. Unlike Bonventre, who was cut in half, halfway up the career ladder.
LESSON 56
New Orleans Wasn’t Built in a Day
FOR decades, Carlos Marcello was the undisputed Mafia boss of Louisiana.
Marcello’s capacity to both think ahead and move one step at a time was evident even in his early years. As a boy, the future don was so poor, he couldn’t even afford a gun. He came up with the idea of borrowing one to stick up a grocery store. He’d then use the loot from the grocery store stickup to purchase two more guns. With three guns, Marcello and his gang of youths would have enough firepower to hold up a bank and make off with a bundle.
Granted, we’re not talking about pulling off the Pink Panther jewel heist here, but Marcello showed an early ability to plan several moves in advance.
Marcello went from sticking up a grocery store, to owning a dive lounge, to running a casino, to dominating the underworld. Using the same methodical approach as a legit businessman—acquire capital, invest wisely, spend money to make money—he eventually owned restaurants, motels, marinas, banks and bars, gas stations, cab companies, and a fleet of shrimp boats.
Some of these businesses were started with Mafia money, but
that doesn’t diminish the credit Marcello deserves for making them successful. If one man invests from his dishonest dealings, another from his family’s coffers, yet another obtains a business grant or low-interest bank loan, all three men start off on an equal footing, except that the mobster’s acquisition of funds was accompanied by a wealth of experiences. A bank or personal loan offers nothing valuable besides the money.
Many of the legit businesses Marcello started in Louisiana decades ago are still in operation today. Like a talented chess player, Marcello planned several moves in advance, but always moved one piece at a time. In this manner, he entered the game of life a pawn and left it a king.
If you plan to build an empire, realize, as Marcello did, that the greatest accomplishments are the sum of numerous short-term achievements, carried out with an eye on the big prize.
LESSON 57
Bugsy and Bacchus: The Lessons of History
FLORIDA Mob boss Santo Trafficante was a voracious reader of histories and biographies. Carlo Gambino quoted Machiavelli, and Joe Bonanno read classics from Homer to Dante. These three Mafia bosses were titans of organized crime, and applied learned wisdom to everyday problems, and imparted that wisdom to underlings. Anyone familiar with their lives will conclude that reading was undoubtedly connected with their success.
Mr. and Mrs. Santo Trafficante stay around the house at all times . . . and all they ever do is read books.
—Trafficante housemaid, responding to FBI questioning
Jewish mobsters Bugsy Siegel and Meyer Lansky grew up together on the streets of New York. As boys, they shared the same aspirations, chose the same career path, and proved to be equally cold and calculating. As adults, their business lives were very similar, but their hobbies were different.
Lansky was an avid reader, a loyal member of the Book-of-the-Month Club. He’d usually tuck into bed early with a good read.
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