The Black Hand

by Stephan Talty

  But two years before, Longo’s four-year-old nephew had been kidnapped by the Society. Longo had encouraged the boy’s father, Felippo di Fiore, to report the crime to the police, and had argued with him vociferously when di Fiore resisted. Longo had always suspected that his brother-in-law had paid a ransom for his boy, which in the world of the Black Hand also endangered the victim’s relatives. Di Fiore refused to say what had happened, and had never told his brother-in-law the names of the men involved in the crime, although he knew them well.

  As dusk began to fall, Mrs. Longo left her house and began knocking on the doors of Francesco’s classmates. Had Francesco come home with them? she asked. The boys and girls shook their heads. When had they last seen him? The children all recalled having spotted Francesco at their morning classes, but no one could remember running into him after the lunch recess. Mrs. Longo thanked them, then rushed to the school and caught the janitor before he left for the day. He’d seen nothing. With dusk falling, she tried the homes of Francesco’s teachers. No one could remember having come across Francesco after noon. Mrs. Longo left the house of the last teacher and walked home, “her lips continuously moving in silent prayer to Santa Lucia,” the patron saint of small children.

  Like most boys, Francesco loved toys and candy, so on her way home, Mrs. Longo dashed into each small store along the path from the school to her home on Bleecker, even inquiring at the Italian fruit stands. Had Francesco stopped that day? The owners shook their heads. When she emerged from the last one, her eyes swept the street. “There were hundreds of children playing in the streets of the populous neighborhood,” wrote one reporter, “and every few moments the signora’s heart came into her throat when she caught sight of a boy who looked in the distance like Francesco.” At this moment, Mrs. Longo would envision boxing her son’s ears and sending him to bed hungry. But when each boy turned out be someone else’s child and not her own, “she would bitterly reproach herself for her cruel thought, promising herself that when he got home, as of course he would before dark, he should have ravioli and frosted cake for his evening repast, and that then she would hold him close in her arms until his bedtime.”

  At 8:00 p.m., instead of the figure of Francesco appearing, a letter was slipped under the door. It was in a special delivery envelope and had been postmarked Brooklyn at 5:30 p.m. It read: “Dear Friend: Beware not to seek your son Francesco. He will be found in good hands, and we want the sum of $5000 . . . If this comes to the attention of the police, you will receive the body of your son by parcel post.” Francesco had been kidnapped by the Society.

  Immediately after reading the note, Francesco’s father rushed to his brother-in-law’s house and burst through the front door. “Had it not been for your cowardice,” he shouted at di Fiore, “my son would not have been stolen from me today.” He was convinced the same gang had targeted his boy, and demanded the names of the men who’d kidnapped his nephew two years before. “You say that the Black Hand will take your life if you do [tell me],” he said. “Well, I will take your life if you do not.” Still, di Fiore held back the names of his kidnappers: as ferocious as his brother-in-law was, he feared the Black Hand even more.

  Di Fiore nevertheless accompanied his brother-in-law to the MacDougal Street police station, where they asked to speak to the detective on duty. A man emerged from the back: Rocco Cavone. Cavone had continued working Black Hand cases even after his mentor, Petrosino, had been killed.

  That evening, Commissioner Woods was told of the case. It was the first Black Hand kidnapping under his administration. He called a captain, who was in charge of the bomb squad and was familiar with Society cases, to his office. “Take the matter in charge yourself,” he said, “and drop everything else until you get the boy. Use every member of the detective bureau, if you find it necessary. Spare no time or effort in fastening the crime upon its perpetrators, so that we may infallibly prove it upon them in court.” Woods told the officer that he didn’t want just the bagmen and the underlings of the gang but the principals as well. Time, money, man-hours: they were all irrelevant. The detectives would stay on the kidnapping until they built an airtight case. Petrosino had never enjoyed such a mandate. Woods was determined to use the Longo case to crush the Society once and for all.

  Meanwhile, Longo again ordered his brother-in-law to name the kidnappers of his son. Cavone, too, worked on di Fiore. Finally, the man blurted out the names: Nicolo Rotolo, a baker on Bedford Street, near the Longo home, and the Zarcone brothers, from Islip, Long Island. Fifteen minutes later, detectives set up surveillance near Longo’s bread shop and Rotolo’s store and kept both locations under constant watch. Others went to Islip and found that the Zarcones had moved, their whereabouts unknown.

  The police rented rooms across from the two bakery shops. They would maintain twenty-four-hour surveillance of both businesses for the next forty-eight days. And they developed an elaborate system for observing every man or woman seen entering the shop or lingering nearby. The movements of the suspects were logged, and any suspicious characters they encountered were followed as well. The Black Hand knew to look for solo detectives tailing them, so Woods assigned a team of four investigators to each person. If a suspect noticed the first detective, he would stroll past and the next man would take his place. The tails were dressed in different disguises every day: streetcar conductors, ditchdiggers, motormen, chauffeurs, firemen. The same team was never allowed to tail the same man twice. If two suspects seen at one of the stores individually came into contact later, this was noted. Suspects were tailed to all the boroughs, and to Long Island, to Westchester, to Perth Amboy, New Jersey, and to Bridgeport, Connecticut.

  When a suspect entered a home, it was soon visited by a mailman, a deliveryman, or some other service worker. In reality, all these people were NYPD detectives in disguise. If the suspect was unwilling to answer ordinary questions about his house, a second detective would soon arrive, dressed as an inspector from the local health department. Using an imaginary gas leak as a pretext, the inspector would go through every room in the house and ensure that Francesco wasn’t present.

  Two weeks went by, and Cavone’s men built up a large database of people connected with Rotolo and all their associates. The notes kept by the surveillance teams turned up an anomaly: two men who had been tailed from the two shops had both separately entered another store, a grocery owned by one Francesco Macaluso on East 76th Street. Macaluso, as it turned out, was known to the NYPD: he’d been a longtime associate of none other than Giuseppe Morello and Ignazio Lupo. The pair had been convicted of counterfeiting (in the same case that led to the confession of Antonio Comito) and were imprisoned at the federal penitentiary in Atlanta, but Macaluso, the detectives believed, was still an active criminal. He’d been a suspect in other kidnapping cases, but police had never been able to collect enough evidence to convict him.

  The investigation expanded yet again. The NYPD rented an apartment across from Macaluso’s store and began to log every visitor. A few aroused the curiosity of the investigators: One Antonio Siragossa was “known to the police,” and Longo had once done business with him. The Milone brothers, also known to the police, were seen at both Siragossa’s place and the grocery; each got his own surveillance team. A Nunzio Paladino haunted taverns that were known to be Black Hand hangouts. He, too, was put under a twenty-four-hour watch.

  Cavone met regularly with the father of the kidnapped boy to exchange information. After a few weeks, he began noticing something odd: the same three or four men kept appearing near the places where he talked to Longo. Cavone came to the conclusion that the Society had turned the tables on the NYPD and was now following the father of the victim. He knew that if he was seen in Longo’s presence, it could mean the death of Francesco. To avoid this, he instituted a new protocol. Instead of meeting Longo on the street, Cavone began slipping into the apartment building of one or another of Longo’s regular customers on his bread delivery route. When Longo showed up at the d
oor, Cavone would be waiting in the hallway, out of sight of anyone watching from the street. The two would talk briefly, then Longo would exit and continue on his way. Taking no chances, Cavone would ascend to the top of the stairs within the building, open the skylight, then escape across the rooftops. He would then enter the skylight of another building. The Black Hand tails never spotted him walking down the stairs and out the front door of an apartment building down the block, so his meetings with Longo remained secret.

  The outlines of a kidnapping gang were emerging, but the members were clearly wary. Three more letters arrived at the Longo house, but none contained a drop-off address for the ransom. Perhaps the gang suspected something. Perhaps there was a leak in the investigation. More time went by.

  Finally, Cavone decided on a plan to force the Society’s hand. He told Longo to go to Siragossa and tell him about the kidnapping, and ask what he should do. In effect, Cavone was planning to turn the Society’s own psychological strategy—the use of a connected “friend”—against itself. If he could get Siragossa to trust Longo, he might lead the police to the boy. Longo agreed. The next day, he walked into Siragossa’s store and poured out the story of his missing son, leaving out the parts about contacting the police. Siragossa listened attentively and tried to comfort Longo. Then he suggested that the baker see a friend of his who might be able to help: Macaluso.

  Now Cavone knew he had the kidnappers within reach. He told Longo to open the negotiations. Longo went to see Macaluso, who professed to be stricken by the news of the crime and promised to act as an intermediary. The bargaining went on for days. Longo would tell Macaluso a price that he could pay, and the mediator would take his offer to the kidnappers (in reality, his associates). Then he would come back with a higher figure. The tension rose. Cavone still had no idea where the boy was being kept. The two sides remained far apart.

  Eventually, Macaluso came to Longo with a final offer: $700 and he would get the boy back. Longo went to the bank, got the money, and met up with Cavone on one of his deliveries. He handed over the bundle of money, then turned and walked out the front door. Cavone took the money, hustled up the stairs to the skylight, and popped out the front door of a building down the street. The next day, the process worked in reverse: Cavone climbed down through the skylight with the package of bills, now secretly marked by the NYPD, and handed it off to Longo, who hid it in a bread bag. When Macaluso accepted the cash, he told Longo to expect the boy at his shop within the next few days.

  Cavone had essentially reverse-engineered the Society blueprint. The “intermediary” usually protected the Society from detection by acting as a buffer between the gang and their victim. But Woods and his men, by dedicating unlimited resources to the surveillance of suspects, had been able to tap into the Society’s pipeline and inject marked bills into the process. Now the NYPD sent surveillance teams to watch the homes of all the suspects, a list that had expanded to twenty individuals. They’d already documented the ransom money going to the kidnappers. Now they needed the boy. Then they could spring their trap.

  At six o’clock that night, Francesco Longo walked through the door of his parents’ home into his mother’s arms. Within an hour, detectives began swooping down on the homes of the suspects. All were arrested, many pulled out of their beds and handcuffed. Not one had suspected that the NYPD was watching them.

  Each member of the gang was charged according to his role in the plot. Vincenzo Acena and his wife had kept the boy in their home; he was charged, tried, and convicted, and received fifty years in the penitentiary. Pasquale Milone had kidnapped the boy off the street and delivered him to the Acenas; he received thirty years. Macaluso took a plea and got twenty-five. Siragossa couldn’t be tied to the plot and escaped, but four other members of the gang were held on other Black Hand charges.

  The long sentences, and the extraordinary investigation, utilizing dozens of detectives and thousands of man-hours, was a stunning reversal of the laissez-faire attitude the NYPD had maintained for so many years. “It came as a bolt from the blue to the Black Hand,” wrote Frank Marshall White. “It ended kidnapping in the Italian settlements in New York, and was the beginning of the end of Black Hand crime.”

  Not quite. Some elements of the Society remained. But Woods had one last tactic up his sleeve.

  The commissioner quickly adopted another of Petrosino’s methods, one that went directly against his reform platform. His men began to trail known Black Hand suspects and “brace” them, throwing them up against a wall and questioning them closely about their activities, just as the Italian Squad had done years before. Essentially, it was targeted harassment. “The incorrigible criminals among the Italians,” wrote White, “began to discover that what they considered to be their constitutional rights were not being respected by police.” Accustomed to swaggering down the streets, with women crossing themselves whenever their eyes met, Black Hand suspects were now harassed, humiliated, belittled in front of the neighborhood locals. Detectives knocked on their door, sometimes in the middle of the night, brushed past the Society member, and tossed the place, looking for stolen property. (Often, of course, the “stolen property” didn’t exist.) If the men protested, they were slapped around. If a Black Hander left his home and walked down the street, he was often greeted by a bluecoat, who informed him he was guilty of disorderly conduct and if he didn’t move, he’d be arrested. If the Black Hander moved to the next corner, the same cop would approach him again and tell him that he was violating the loitering ordinance. Move or take a beating. If the Black Hander got tired of this and told the cop, “Fine, arrest me,” the bluecoat would take him in, book him, and alert the district attorney. Black Hand crimes were moved to the top of the D.A.’s priority list, and the offenders were prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law.

  The unit that specialized in the Society and other gangs became known as the Strong Arm Squad, then the Massage Squad, for their skill in deploying their blackjacks. “Commissioner Woods,” observed the Washington Post, “is a firm believer in handling the blackmailer, the bomb thrower, and the gunman without gloves and with stout locust sticks in the grip of husky policemen.” For the rest of the population, the commissioner wanted scientific policing, infused with a healthy dose of mercy. But for the Black Hand? “Relentless warfare.”

  The pressure became relentless indeed. Woods had made it clear that the full force of the department and the New York justice system was now behind the war. He had turned Petrosino’s own habit of targeting Black Handers with rough treatment into a vertically integrated campaign against the Society. And it worked. “The result of these indignities constantly practiced upon them,” wrote White, “was that hundreds of the Black-Handers shook the dust of New York from their feet within a year after Woods became police commissioner.”

  It was all, of course, completely unconstitutional. But Woods was determined to break the Society in New York once and for all. And he did.

  Why, one must ask in the name of the dead Petrosino and the thousands of Italians who’d fled New York or seen their dreams aborted, couldn’t this have been done years before? There’s no single answer. It was prejudice and it was money. It was Tammany Hall. It was McAdoo’s conservatism and Bingham’s blind aggression. It was the opacity of Italian culture to the outsider. It was disgust and fear of what Americans did not understand. It was the “o” at the end of Petrosino’s name. Had he been an American without the hyphen, had he been a pedigreed Yankee like Arthur Woods, a WASP and a blueblood, he would most likely have been allowed to destroy the Society in much the same way the commissioner did. But a dozen years earlier.

  A number of other factors also contributed to the demise of the Society: Prohibition, which lured many Italian criminals into the profitable world of bootlegging; the gradual breakup of the Italian colonies as members of the second generation moved to the suburbs; the increasing sophistication and Americanization of that generation, which insulated them from Old World superstitions
; and, finally, several prominent cases brought by federal prosecutors and tried in federal court.

  But Woods and his men led the way. They broke the spell by putting two hundred gangsters, Black Hand and otherwise, in jail and running hundreds of others off into the wilds of New Jersey. This “perfect example of detective work” broke the terror wave in New York, and it followed the blueprint that Petrosino had laid out years before. That blueprint was beautifully executed, but what really made Woods’s push so unusual was its dedication. Woods hadn’t treated the crime as an Italian problem. He’d gone after it as a threat to the American way of life.

  …

  The society lingered on for decades, reduced and scattered, a remnant from the past, like typhus or the Charleston. In the 1930s, in tiny Wellsville, Ohio, a young Matthew Monte watched a group of Black Hand men move purposefully down his block. “They would walk from house to house and knock on doors,” he remembered, “visiting all the Italian families in the neighborhood.” The Society’s tactics had evolved; these men offered protection and money to pay off debts. Monte’s father turned them away, but they returned each month. When one Carlos Marcello of New Orleans was deported from the country in 1953, he was identified as the “alleged leader” of the Black Hand. But it was really meant as a synonym for the Mafia. The true Black Hand was a relic by then.

  The man who remains the most likely suspect in Petrosino’s killing, Vito Cascio Ferro, prospered for another fifteen years after the assassination. When his fall from grace came, it wasn’t because of a police investigator but because of a dictator. Mussolini came to power around 1924, and the Mafia’s influence rapidly declined. Cascio Ferro was abandoned by his political friends and, in May 1925, was arrested for killing two men who had refused to pay extortion money. Cascio Ferro managed to post bail and remained free for another five years, but during that time Mussolini appointed a new prefect for Sicily, an experienced Mafia fighter named Cesare Mori, who launched an all-out war against the secret society and its allies. By 1930, when Cascio Ferro was convicted of murder and sent to prison to serve nine years in solitary confinement, the Mafia had been defanged in Sicily.