Boardwalk Gangster

by Tim Newark

The owner of the farmhouse was Don Calogero Vizzini. A little man in his sixties with a potbelly, he dressed in the usual understated style of a local businessman with his shirtsleeves rolled up and braces hauling his trousers up over his stomach. The image belied his true importance. Don Calo was, in fact, the leading mafioso of the region, and he would later become a major player in postwar Sicily, when he would have direct links with Luciano.

  As Don Calo opened the bag dropped by the pilot, he saw at once that an important message had been sent to him by his friend in New York. Inside was a yellow silk handkerchief bearing the “L” of Lucky Luciano. It was a traditional Mafia greeting, and Don Calo knew exactly what he must do next. He wrote a coded message to another mafioso, Giuseppe Genco Russo, and instructed him to give every possible assistance to the advancing Americans. Six days after that, on the twentieth, according to the legend, three U.S. tanks rumbled into the town center of Villalba. Children danced around the vehicles, hoping for sweets and chewing gum. A little yellow pennant flew from the radio aerial of one of the tanks—on it a black “L.” An American officer emerged out of the tank and, speaking in the local Sicilian dialect, asked to see Don Calo. The crowd parted as the mafioso made his way toward the tank. He handed his yellow flag with a black “L” to the American, who helped him climb up onto the hull and then disappeared with him into the turret.

  The following day, the twenty-first, the Americans braced themselves for an assault against a mountain pass at Monte Cammarata, to the north of Villalba, held by Italian troops reinforced by Germans armed with eighty-eight-millimeter antitank guns and Tiger tanks. But during the night, Don Calo and Russo had worked their magic and their agents had quietly stolen into the Axis camp. By the next morning, the Italian troops had taken the persuasive advice of the Mafia henchmen, dumped their uniforms and weapons, and disappeared into the hills. The few Germans left behind were hopelessly outnumbered and promptly withdrew their forces. Surely there could be no better example of how Luciano and his Sicilian Mafia contacts were helping the Americans win the war in Sicily. It would be—if it were true.

  The Villalba tale was first told in 1962 by Michele Pantaleone, a journalist whose family had lived in the town for years. His account was then taken up by the British travel writer Norman Lewis, who repeated it for an English-language audience in his much admired book about the Mafia, The Honoured Society. The only problem with this is that Pantaleone was a very biased source. He was a brave campaigner against the Mafia in his country, but he was also a Communist supporter who was in direct competition with the political power wielded by Don Calo. Added to this was a long-running dispute between the Pantaleone family and the Vizzinis over who owned the rights to a local property. As a result, American OSS agents based in Sicily considered him an unreliable witness.

  None of this would matter if only there were other records that corroborated Pantaleone’s story. But the daily field reports kept by the U.S. Army as it pushed on through Sicily, reveal a very different picture of the events around Villalba in July 1943. Documents kept at the U.S. Army Military History Institute record that it was a mechanized unit—the Forty-fifth Cavalry Reconnaissance Troop—that entered Villalba on the twentieth. All they found, according to their daily journal, were two small Italian tanks that had been wrecked and abandoned by the retreating Axis forces. Nothing was mentioned of a major body of Axis troops located at Monte Cammarata. Indeed, other U.S. troops were already fifty miles north of Villalba on their way to Palermo and reporting minimum resistance, if any at all. The Third Cavalry Reconnaissance Troop was also operating in the area and their daily journal for the twentieth and twenty-first reports that the road from Cammarata to Santo Stefano was clear. Any minor resistance was quickly overcome as U.S. troops plowed on toward Corleone. None of this verifies the story told by Pantaleone.

  A final piece of evidence is provided in the memoirs of Luigi Lumia, a onetime mayor of Villalba. His source was a young man who accompanied Don Calo into the American tank, acting as interpreter for the Mafia boss. According to the interpreter, Don Calo was taken away to be questioned about an incident a few days earlier when an American jeep had come under fire and one of the soldiers was killed. The shots had come from a clump of olive trees near a farm. The Americans shot back and this ignited a field of dry crops. Don Calo nodded sagely, knowing exactly what had happened. The fire had spread, he explained, and set off some boxes of ammunition left by the retreating Italians. It sounded like heavy gunfire, but really it was nothing—the Americans faced no local resistance at all. The explanation sounded farfetched to the American interrogator and he lost his patience with the old man. He began shouting at Don Calo, telling him to get out and walk back to his town. This was an enormous loss of face for the mafioso and he was profoundly embarrassed by the whole affair.

  “It was already nighttime,” recalled Lumia, “and Calogero Vizzini, tired and browbeaten, was driven back to his house, halfway between the Americans and the countryside. He told his interpreter not to tell anybody what had happened and then lay down in his bed and went to sleep.”

  Don Calo would have far preferred the tale told by his enemy—Pantaleone—to be spread around, as that made him look more important than the reality of this humiliating clash revealed. Maybe that is why the Villalba legend has endured for so long. It presents Don Calo and Lucky Luciano as far more integral to the American victory in Sicily than they really were.

  In truth, it is clear that the American advance in central and western Sicily was too overwhelming and swift for there to be any opportunity or need for the Mafia to come to their assistance. The only direct proof we have of Luciano’s influence is on the coast during the initial landing phase with the testimony of the four naval intelligence agents. Beyond that, the mobster’s influence was not needed and not called on. That is the truth of what happened in Sicily in 1943. Lucky Luciano might have been itching to get into the combat zone, but there was no need for him.

  Despite the truth that Luciano had little impact on the Sicilian campaign, he got his reward for his general wartime assistance from the U.S. government in early January 1946. After spending nine years, nine months in jail, his nemesis Governor Thomas E. Dewey commuted his sentence.

  Far from hiding the nature of Luciano’s service to the nation, Dewey made a statement to the legislature in which he said, “Upon the entry of the United States into the war, Luciano’s aid was sought by the armed services in inducing others to provide information concerning possible enemy attack. It appears that he cooperated in such effort though the actual value of the information procured is not clear.”

  A month later, New York Times journalist Meyer Berger speculated further on what this aid might be. He claimed that Luciano had been pardoned “ostensibly for help he gave the Office of Strategic Services before the Army’s Italy invasion. It is understood that Luciano provided Army Intelligence with the names of Sicilian and Neapolitan Camorra members, and a list of Italians sent back to their native country after criminal conviction in the United States.”

  The reporter appears to have got his facts wrong, as we know it was U.S. Naval Intelligence that communicated with Luciano in jail, not the OSS. But the reference to the precursor of the CIA is intriguing due to future references to Luciano perhaps playing a role in the Cold War. Certainly, OSS agents were very active in Palermo and had close links with major Mafia figures in Sicily.

  Luciano might have been free, but he was no longer welcome in America. In preparation for deportation to Italy, he was moved to a cell on Ellis Island, the entry point to the United States for his family and so many other immigrants thirty-nine years before. Meyer Lansky, Frank Costello, and Moses Polakoff visited him there for their final instructions from him. To comply with government rules that only $60 could be taken out of the country, Luciano gave up the $400 in cash he had on him to Costello. With no limitation on the use of travelers’ checks, Costello gave Luciano $2,500 in unsigned checks and explained to Luciano how to
sign for them. Three unnamed relatives visited him on Ellis Island, perhaps his brothers and sister.

  On February 9, Luciano was escorted by two agents of the U.S. immigration service onto the seven-thousand-ton freighter Laura Keene, which was shipping a consignment of flour. Reporters swarmed around the dockside, wanting a final picture of the king of the underworld. Fifteen journalists were refused admittance to the pier by a menacing guard of longshoremen armed with baling hooks. They’d been provided by the Mafia to keep the media at bay and their boss told the reporters to “beat it.”

  Six police guards working in pairs watched Luciano twenty-four hours a day in eight-hour shifts during his period of custody on board the Laura Keene. Officially, they denied the presence of any liquor or extra food on board for Luciano, but Lansky told a different story.

  On the evening before Luciano’s departure, all the city’s top mobsters gathered on board the freighter for a farewell party. They included Meyer Lansky, Frank Costello, Albert Anastasia, Bugsy Siegel, William Moretti, Tommy Lucchese, Joe Adonis, and Stefano Magaddino. Someone must have bribed the police guards generously. Champagne corks popped and they laughed about old times. “We had a wonderful meal aboard,” said Lansky, “all kinds of seafood fresh from the Fulton Fish Market, and spaghetti and wine and a lots [sic] of kosher delicacies.” Luciano loved his Jewish food.

  “Lucky also wanted us to bring some girls to take along with him on the ship to keep him company. I asked Adonis to do something about that … Joe found three showgirls from the Copacabana Club and there was no difficulty in getting them aboard. The authorities cooperated even on that. Nobody going into exile ever had a better [s]end-off.”

  An FBI report gives yet another version of Luciano’s last days in America. An anonymous FBI agent visited him on board the Laura Keene.

  “I had no trouble whatsoever with the stevedores on the pier or on board the ship,” he reported, “nor was I molested or threatened.” The stevedores, “chiefly Italians, looked upon Luciano as more or less a hero, and that any word from him requesting that the reporters be barred was all that was needed to have it carried out by the stevedores as an order … there would have been bloodshed if the reporters tried to storm the pier in an unauthorized entry.”

  The agent flashed his ID to the steamship guard and was shown to Luciano’s cabin.

  “When I entered Mr. Luciano’s cabin, I told him that I was stopped by the representatives of the press at the end of the pier and that they would like to interview him. He reacted unfavorably to the idea and he told me that since the press had not been too nice to him in the past, he had no desire to give any statements.

  “Mr. Luciano was quartered in a cabin known as the ‘gun crew quarters’ aft of amidship. In the cabin with Mr Luciano was the first mate who informed Luciano that he would have to remain in the quarters assigned to him, until the ‘old man,’ meaning the captain, orders the change of quarters.”

  The FBI agent contradicts Lansky’s story of a farewell feast. On Saturday evening, February 9, he was told by guards that Luciano had baked macaroni and steak for dinner. He asked for a cup of tea but was told there was none and he settled for a drink of milk. They stated there was “no evidence of any parties, drinking or visitors to Luciano during the time he was under their surveillance” from midnight to 8:00 A.M. on Saturday the ninth through Sunday the tenth. They denied he had been visited by Albert Anastasia.

  The agent returned on Luciano’s last day in Brooklyn docks at the Bush Terminal at 6:00 A.M. “Upon my arrival there, I saw a gang or mob of 60 to 80 men and about 20 to 30 cars. I have no idea to their identity or their purpose for being on hand.”

  When the ship left the pier at 8:50 A.M., a launch followed them for three miles. The agent guessed it was members of the press trying to get one final shot of Luciano. The agent left the ship at 2:00 P.M. when he caught a ride on a fishing ship returning to the Brooklyn docks.

  The FBI were generally cynical about the deal with U.S. Naval Intelligence, and J. Edgar Hoover’s suspicions were confirmed when on March 1, 1946, he received a letter from FBI Special Agent E. E. Conroy stating that “Haffenden admitted he was friendly with Costello and had played golf with him” at the Pomonok Country Club in Flushing. To this was added the allegation that “there has been talk around the city that $250,000 would be paid for the release of Luciano from State Prison. This money, however, would probably not go to Haffenden, but rather to others in political circles. It is observed that Haffenden has already been rewarded with the position of Commissioner of Marine and Aviation.” This key position gave Haffenden jurisdiction over the docks of the city of New York as well as LaGuardia and Idlewild airports. “When the latter airport is completed there will be a tremendous number of concessions to be leased and the possibilities of graft are said to be great.”

  A letter dated March 6 from FBI Assistant Director A. Rosen said the newspaper stories about Luciano’s assistance to navy and army authorities “might be laid to a fraudulent affidavit on the part of Commander Charles Radcliffe Haffenden.” In the same letter, Rosen said that despite Haffenden receiving a Purple Heart for wounds in combat, Special Agent Conroy said that Haffenden had received no such wounds and was “hospitalized as a result of a large gun going off near him thus renewing a stomach ailment.”

  In a later FBI report of March 13, it was alleged that Frank Costello had Haffenden appointed to his new role, “as it is generally felt that Frank Costello has considerable control in the present city administration.” It was said that Haffenden, after returning from Iwo Jima, where he had been wounded, was visited in the hospital by “his good friend” Moses Polakoff and “that Polakoff had induced him, Haffenden, to write a letter to Charles Breitel, Counsel to the Governor of the State of New York. Haffenden explained to the informant that he was not feeling very well and he wanted to do a good turn and he did not see anything wrong about writing the letter on Charles ‘Lucky’ Luciano.”

  As the FBI investigation delved deeper, U.S. Naval Intelligence sought to distance itself from the affair by claiming that its files failed to indicate that Luciano had ever furnished assistance or information to them. On April 17, 1946, Hoover expressed a personal interest to Rosen in wanting to know the details behind Luciano’s parole. As Rosen explored further, he dispatched a memorandum on April 18, 1946, saying that he had spoken to a key witness for the prosecution in the Luciano trial who admitted that “he had perjured himself when he testified against Lucky Luciano” and “states that considerable opinion exists to the effect that Luciano was not guilty of the charges for which he was convicted and that Governor Dewey’s parole of Luciano was motivated partially as an easing of Dewey’s conscience.” He then added in his own handwriting—“so sorry.”

  On May 17, Rosen reported that he had received a letter from the office of the chief of naval operations acknowledging that “Luciano was employed as an informant” but “the nature and extent of his assistance is not reflected in Navy records, and further that Haffenden was censured officially for his actions.”

  Hoover’s comment on the whole affair was noted in a memorandum of June 6, 1946, to Rosen: “A shocking example of misuse of Navy authority in interest of a hoodlum. It surprises me they didn’t give Luciano the Navy Cross.”

  Rosen was later informed that Haffenden had paid the price for their investigation, when he was forced to resign as commissioner of the city’s Department of Marine and Aviation by Mayor William O’Dwyer in May 1946. The excuse for this was that the mayor had not been satisfied with Haffenden’s administration of the position following an item appearing in a New York newspaper. “Unless advised to the contrary by the Bureau, no further action is contemplated by the New York Division in this matter,” concluded the FBI.

  For the moment that was the end of the FBI’s involvement in Luciano’s affairs, but Hoover was itching to match Dewey by nailing the mobster. That opportunity would come a year later.

  Former New York mayor
La Guardia—he had finished his third term in 1945—was less than generous when he heard of Luciano’s departure. “I’m sorry Italy is getting this bum back,” he told a radio audience and added that he was shocked that Frank Costello should be allowed to visit him on Ellis Island. “What is the limit of Costello’s power in the city?” he asked, indicating that that mobster was now the real head of the American Mafia.

  The terms and conditions of Luciano’s deportation were very clear—if he ever reentered the United States he would be deemed an escaped convict and would be required to serve out the maximum of his original prison sentence. He could never again set foot on American territory. For the forty-eight-year-old Luciano, it might have marked the end of his reign as Mob ruler of New York, but he merely viewed it as a challenge to his ingenuity. There were many points of entry back into the United States, and the authorities couldn’t keep him away from his criminal pals.

  13

  CUBA FIASCO

  After a seventeen-day voyage across the Atlantic, Lucky Luciano arrived in Naples on February 28, 1946. He was required to visit the local police station, where he explained that his stay in Naples would be brief and that he was to be accommodated by a relative. He would then travel on to Sicily, where he would visit members of his family. A reporter asked him whether there was any truth to his working with the American government. “You know I can’t talk about those things,” he snapped back. That was the last thing he wanted Italians knowing—that he’d been singing to the authorities.

  Once in Sicily, Luciano visited his hometown of Lercara Friddi—just fifty miles south of Palermo—and was treated like a king. The main piazza of the town was crowded and a feast laid on for the mobster, featuring dishes cooked by local women. Like an old-style mafioso—like the Mustache Petes he’d executed in New York—Luciano distributed money and was greeted by people bowing and kissing his hand. He also donated money to build a cinema where they could watch gangster movies from America like Little Caesar, always popular with the Sicilians.