by Tim Newark
Luciano enjoyed this reception in his hometown, among members of his family still living there, but he soon had enough of his enforced vacation. He was itching to get back to the United States and make contact with his old friends, especially Lansky and Costello.
“I’m a city boy,” he told a reporter. “Italy’s dead—nice, but dead. I like movement. Business opportunities here are no good. All small-time stuff.”
He said the same thing about Italian horse racing.
“The action at these joints is no good. I need New York. There’s the true action. They don’t speak my language here,” he concluded.
Luciano knew that his continued absence meant that rivals like Genovese would soon muscle in on his territory back in New York. He was also conscious that at forty-eight years old he wasn’t getting any younger. He wanted to enjoy his investments and catch up on all the pleasures he’d missed during a decade in jail. Italy just didn’t suit him that well. As he endured the dusty heat of Sicily, recoiling at the stink of the sulfur mines his father had left behind half a century before, he plotted his return.
On July 10, 1946, FBI Assistant Director A. Rosen reported that he had received information from the Los Angeles division that exiled mobster Charles Luciano was staying in Tijuana, Mexico. The vicinity of Tijuana was known as the “free zone” because no tourist card or legal permit was needed to enter that portion of Baja California on the border between Mexico and the U.S. FBI Special Intelligence Service (SIS) agents were sent to investigate. They belonged to an elite wartime division of the FBI tasked with tracking down foreign agents who posed a threat to the United States They’d identified some thirteen hundred Axis spies and prosecuted many of them. With the war over, they were a valuable resource and given the mission to make sure Luciano didn’t sneak back into the United States.
The FBI agents searched the whole of Tijuana, giving special attention to the locations Luciano liked to haunt, such as the racetrack, casinos, exclusive hotels, and fashionable nightclubs. They spoke to local gangsters, heard lots of rumors, but got nowhere. Further investigation revealed that the tip-off stemmed from a headline appearing in the Mexico City daily newspaper, Excelsior, on March 26, 1946, which ran the story “Vice Czar Intends to Return to Mexico.” The reporter claimed that two of the mobster’s associates were staying in a prominent hotel in Mexico City in order to establish Luciano in the country. The Mexican journalist was interviewed by the FBI’s SIS but could not name the henchmen involved and claimed he got the story from a press release coming from the Associated Press in the United States.
A later AP story quoted in the New York Daily News on September 3 said that it had received information from Naples saying Luciano was “plotting a return to power in the North American underworld.” It claimed that “Neapolitan stoolpigeons reported to the Italian police that he wangled illegal passage to Mexico on a freighter.” In any event, Luciano had disappeared, not having been seen in the previous six weeks since an appearance in Salerno. U.S. Army CID (Criminal Investigation Command) agents compounded the rumors by privately agreeing that “it’s very likely he skipped the country, probably hoping to contact some of his old henchmen from Mexico or actually smuggle himself into the States.”
A curious story reported in the New York Journal American for September 5, 1946, claimed that this was all part of a plot by Luciano to become one of those legends “with everyone declaring he is dead, but no trace of a body.” It said that “Luciano would be very happy to have everybody—particularly Government immigration authorities—believe that a sailor who had agreed to smuggle him out of [a South American] port gave him what may be known as ‘the Chinese treatment’—in other words, took him aboard ship and, after getting his money, drugged him and dropped him over the side during the night … .”
The FBI pursued this lead and found it to be fallacious. Forced to wind up these dead-end investigations, the FBI requested that the State Department ensure that no American consulate ever grant Luciano a visa to enter the United States. The next sighting of the mobster, however, was a hundred percent true.
In early 1947, FBI Assistant Director Rosen passed a memorandum saying that Luciano had been observed by two FBI SIS agents on February 8 in Havana, Cuba, at the Oriental Park Racetrack. He was chatting with various American tourists and Cuban residents while seated at a table in the Jockey Club. Among the Cubans who recognized and talked to Luciano were a wealthy Cuban sugar merchant and a member of a socially prominent Cuban family. He was traveling under the name of Salvatore Lucania and had received his visa through a Cuban congressman who had a financial interest in the local racetrack and Hotel Nacional casino.
Cuba was the perfect playground for Luciano, just an hour’s flight from Miami. Meyer Lansky had been exploring its numerous attractions since the early 1930s. With the growth of cheaper, more available air flights, he understood it was the perfect destination for well-heeled American tourists who liked to gamble and dabble in illicit pleasures. To this end, he invested a great deal of Mob money in acquiring underworld assets there. Joseph “Doc” Stacher was an old associate of Lansky and became closely involved with the Cuban operation.
“[Lansky] said we needed somewhere safe to put the cash from the bootlegging,” remembered Stacher. “Our biggest problem was always where to invest the money. It didn’t appeal to any of us to take it to Switzerland and leave it there just earning interest. What Lansky suggested was that each of us put up $500,000 to start the Havana gambling operation.”
Luciano and Siegel, plus a few other mobsters, each put their half-million dollars into the pot, and Lansky took the cash to Cuban military dictator Fulgencio Batista. In return for guaranteeing him an income of $3 to $5 million a year, Batista protected their monopoly on casinos at the Hotel Nacional and Oriental Park Racetrack—the only two places in Cuba where gambling was legal. It looked as though the Mob had bagged its own resort in the Caribbean. But in 1944, a new president, Dr. Ramón Grau San Martín, took over and the native Cuban crime syndicate combined financial power with close political contacts that could ultimately mobilize the army to protect its interests. Always welcoming to outside investors, Cuban mobsters were not completely in awe of Lansky and his Mafia associates and were well aware of where the ultimate power lay.
On February 15, 1947, a photograph appeared in the Havana Post showing thirty-two-year-old pop singer Frank Sinatra at the casino of the Nacional Hotel talking to Captain Antonio Arias, president of the casino. The same newspaper claimed on February 23 that Lucky Luciano was seen nightclubbing by New York gossip columnist Robert C. Ruark with Frank Sinatra and Ralph Capone, brother of the late Al Capone.
At the time he was first spotted, Luciano told the Havana Post reporter, “This is terrible. I came here to live quietly and now all this blows up in my face.” He said he had money saved from better days and had the ability “to get along most anywhere.”
Spurred on by the unwelcome publicity, the Cuban secret police picked up Luciano for questioning as he sipped coffee in a Vedado café. The Cuban police revealed that Luciano had $4,000 when he arrived by plane in October and still had $1,000 in his bank account, so they surmised he was receiving an income from somewhere.
Gossipmonger Ruark saved his full fury for the popular singer hanging out with Luciano. “I am frankly puzzled as to why Frank Sinatra, the lean trust and the fetish of millions,” he wrote, “chooses to spend his vacation in the company of notorious, convicted vice operators and assorted hoodlums from Miami’s plush gutters. This is, of course, none of my personal business. If Sinatra wants to Mob up with the likes of Lucky Luciano, the chastened panderer and permanent deportee from the United States, that seems to be a matter for Sinatra to thrash out with the millions of kids who live by his every bleat.”
Ruark said Sinatra spent four days in Havana at the racetrack and casino in the company of Luciano, Luciano’s bodyguard, and a rich collection of high-rolling gamblers. He says he was also informed that they
attended a party with Ralph Capone, hosted by Jorge Sanchez, a sugar merchant. Sinatra’s presence was really not that surprising, as the Mafia were keen on the singer.
“The Italians among us were very proud of Frank,” said Doc Stacher. “They always told me they had spent a lot of money helping him in his career, ever since he was with Tommy Dorsey’s band. Lucky Luciano was very fond of Sinatra’s singing.”
Sinatra’s concert at the Hotel Nacional was, in fact, a welcome-home party for Luciano, in which all of America’s top mafiosi gathered in Havana.
“Everybody brought envelopes of cash for Lucky,” remembered Stacher, “and as an exile he was glad to take them. But more important, they came to pay allegiance to him. A number of the younger guys were doubtful about paying allegiance to the old-timer, as they called him, but Meyer backed him a hundred percent and nobody wanted to cross the Little Man.”
All the top mobsters flew into Havana to greet Luciano, including Lansky, Frank Costello, Joe Adonis, Albert Anastasia, Joe Profaci, Joe Bonanno, and Vito Genovese. Lansky had many private conversations with Luciano about joint projects. They hoped that Governor Dewey would run for president again in 1948 and that would allow them to contribute to his campaign. Although Dewey had put Luciano behind bars, they believed that his understanding of Luciano’s war record meant there might be a bargaining chip there for future relations between the two. Personal enmity should never be allowed to cloud the possibility of business.
Generally, when all the mobsters sat together, they listened to Lansky and Luciano expound on how they wanted to turn Cuba into the Monte Carlo of the Caribbean. It would make Las Vegas look like small potatoes.
But alongside the socializing there were tensions. A strong hostility existed between Luciano and his former underboss, Vito Genovese. Not only was it a matter of personal rivalry, but it also went back to an incident during the war, when Genovese organized a hit on a key opponent of Mussolini in New York—the outspoken journalist Carlo Tresca.
In the late 1920s, Tresca, editor of the anti-Fascist Il Martello, had been a favorite of the New York Mafia, who protected him against the Blackshirts. Come the war, however, Genovese wanted to demonstrate the extent of his power to his new Fascist patrons in Italy. When word got through to Genovese that Mussolini was offended by Tresca’s constant criticism of him in his newspaper, he put out a contract on the editor. The Brooklyn gunman Carmine Galante was ordered to shoot him down in January 1943. The New York Herald described what happened next.
The Fifth Avenue intersection was dark in the dimout. There was little traffic, and few people were about. As Mr. Tresca and Mr. Calabi [his friend] turned the corner into Fifth Avenue the killer suddenly materialized in the dimout, whipped out a gun and shot four times. Two bullets went wild, but one struck Mr. Tresca in the head, passing through his cheeks, and another lodged in his back. He fell into the Fifth Avenue gutter, the oversize hat he customarily wore dropping beside him, and he was dead when Mr. Calabi bent over his friend.
The gunman ran across Fifteenth Street to the getaway car and sped off toward Union Square. Luciano was furious when he heard of this abuse of Mafia power. He strongly disapproved of Genovese’s new loyalty to the Fascists—these were the allies of Hitler and the wartime enemies of the United States. He later offered to give up the names of the Mob assassins who killed Tresca in return for his outright parole and permission to stay in the United States. The U.S. government refused.
Some sources say that a face-to-face meeting between Luciano and Genovese in Cuba ended in blows, but this seems unlikely. Despite Luciano’s distaste for Genovese’s wartime record and suspicion of his ambition, he probably followed the Mafia dictum of keeping your friends close but your enemies closer.
There was one item of personal business, however, that could not be ignored. Bugsy Siegel was Meyer Lansky’s oldest mobster friend. They had grown up together and formed their own gang. Lansky criticized his hotheaded approach to problems—Siegel was too keen to reach for the revolver—but Lansky had managed to remove him from causing trouble in New York by sending him to the West Coast. There, he took care of their business in Hollywood and their new investment in Las Vegas.
Lansky was backing Siegel’s creation of a luxury casino in the desert called the Flamingo. It was costing the Mob a million dollars, but word had got through to Lansky that Siegel was overspending by many more millions. Every made major mobster had given a contribution to this Las Vegas project, and they were not happy to hear rumors that Siegel’s girlfriend, Virginia Hill, was skimming off money from the construction budget and stashing it in a Swiss bank account.
Lansky did everything he could to shield Siegel from the wrath of the Mob, explaining that the casino would bring in millions more, but all they could see was that one of their own was ripping them off. Eventually, it was Luciano, during a lavish celebration for Sinatra, who told Lansky the brutal truth.
“Meyer, this is business,” said Luciano, “and Bugsy has broken our rules.”
Lansky tried to excuse Siegel by saying he was under the influence of Virginia Hill.
“They’re like two teenagers in love.”
Luciano wasn’t interested. Time was running out for Siegel.
But the clock was ticking, too, for Luciano, and shortly after the grand gangster gathering, to a soundtrack sung by Sinatra, Luciano was under arrest. His flagrant enjoyment of his freedom in the company of top celebrities and criminals, just ninety miles from Florida, was just too much for the U.S. authorities.
Once arrested, Luciano was escorted by the Cuban secret police to Tiscornia immigration camp, where they allowed the FBI to question him. During the interrogation, Luciano admitted that he gave information pertaining to the war effort to Commander Haffenden of Naval Intelligence. This was a subject of continuing fascination for the head of the FBI, J. Edgar Hoover, as he felt he had been misled and sidelined by this secret deal between the Mob and the navy. Although he knew that something fishy had been going on between them that had ended in Dewey granting him parole, Hoover did not know the exact details and this continued to annoy him.
It partly explains why the FBI sorely wanted to be involved at some stage with Luciano, having so far failed to make any major contribution to curbing his activities. With him temporarily under arrest, they wanted to make the most of this opportunity to talk to him. Interestingly, their report says that Luciano also admitted passing on wartime information to Murray I. Gurfein, who later became a lieutenant colonel in the OSS.
Further questioning revealed that Luciano had arrived in Cuba on October 29, 1946, by air from Italy on an Italian passport issued in the name of Salvatore Lucania with a six-month visa granted by a Cuban chargé d’affaires in Rome. This had been facilitated by a Cuban congressman. Luciano’s passport also contained visas issued in Rome by consuls for Venezuela, Bolivia, and Colombia. Cuban immigration records confirmed that the Cuban congressman had stated that he knew Luciano personally and guaranteed him as “a person of democratic ideals who had sufficient financial resources to prevent him from becoming a public charge.”
Luciano first stayed at the Hotel Nacional and then rented a furnished house at 29 Calle Thirty, in Miramar, a wealthy suburb of Havana. His servants and neighbors called him “Mr. Charley,” and some claimed he was going to marry a Cuban girl to gain Cuban citizenship. The FBI gave a physical description of Luciano in 1947 as five feet nine and three-quarter inches tall, 145 to 150 pounds, slim, wavy, heavy dark brown hair turning gray, dark chestnut eyes, and tattooed on both arms.
Luciano told the FBI he was managing a gambling concession at the Jockey Club and the Hotel Nacional. His New York associates there were identified as Meyer Lansky, Bugsy Siegel, and Frank Costello. FBI research concluded that Lansky had been involved with the operation of the Oriental Park Racetrack Casino since 1939. His official business title in 1947 was recorded as vice president of the Emby Distributing Company at 525 West Forty-third Street, New York City. He al
so had connections with the Elaine Produce and Food Company, the Lansky Food Company, the Paruth Realty Corporation, and Crieg Spector & Citron, a retail grocery organization. Lansky was noted to be spending the winter season in Florida and making regular visits to Cuba.
Following a second interview with the FBI, Luciano admitted he wanted to buy shares in gambling concessions for the baccarat and craps tables at the Oriental Park Racetrack and the Hotel Nacional casino but the deal had never been completed. He said that “gambling in Cuba was so deeply involved in politics that he wanted no part of it.” This hinted at the fact that the local syndicate was no pushover and was flexing its muscles to any foreign mobsters on the make. It was true that Lansky had a comfortable relationship with the Cubans, but that didn’t necessarily mean they were going to roll over for Luciano.
At the same time, the Cuban weekly magazine Tiempo en Cuba ran a leading article that identified Cuban congressman Dr. Indalecio Pertierra and Carlos “the Goat” Miranda as running crooked gambling in Cuba. It said that Pertierra ran the gambling at the Hotel Nacional casino and Jockey Club with the assistance of Luciano, Lansky, and Charles Simms—calling them card sharks. Pertierra was the brother of a former president of the Cuban senate who was reported to receive a cut from the gambling concessions. The magazine warned:
If you go to Havana, keep out of the races. Beware the gamblers … . Under the view of tolerably suspicious police and soldiers, and surrounded by killers, bouncers and gorillas, the cheaters are dividing thousands of dollars every night. Any time that a police official dares to intervene, he will be immediately transferred to another district.
