The Prince

by Vito Bruschini

  “What the fuck were you thinking?” Genna shouted, stunned by the slaughter. “This was all premeditated, right?” he yelled at Jack Mastrangelo.

  “Blood for blood,” Licata’s man replied calmly. “The offense is avenged. Tell Genovese. Prince Licata is now at peace with himself and therefore with all those who want to be at peace with him.”

  “I’ll tell him! But that’s a hell of a way to act!” Genna was genuinely shaken. “You Sicilians sure are melodramatic! Was it really necessary to cause all this carnage?” Genna, careful not to step in the pools of blood, sidestepped Cooper—who was still staggering around the room, stunned, with the harpoon stuck in his stomach—and walked out of La Tonnara.

  Cooper’s agony went on a bit longer, but since they didn’t have pistols or other firearms with them, they were forced to wait until he expired on his own. When he finally did, they breathed a sigh of relief and began cleaning the place up. Then they took care of getting rid of the four bodies, which disappeared at dawn in the concrete foundation of a new tenement building under construction in the Bronx.

  Chapter 45

  Shortly before Christmas 1939, the doctors at Bellevue Hospital performed delicate reconstructive surgery on Prince Licata’s face, particularly the nose and mouth, 90 percent of whose surface had been destroyed.

  The plastic surgery procedure was extremely complicated and the recovery time would be long, according to the physicians’ prognosis. Ferdinando Licata asked to be moved to a secure hiding place, where he could spend the long period of convalescence surrounded by nature’s greenery.

  Jack Mastrangelo personally took care of finding a safe haven for him. He didn’t tell anyone where it was, not even Saro. He thought it should be a place far from the East Coast, and preferably in another country. His own past led him to choose Vancouver, British Columbia, on the Pacific Ocean. Mastrangelo knew it well, having hidden there himself for two years a long time ago.

  Once he had arranged for the prince’s transport by plane, he rented a house at Sunset Beach. St. Paul’s Hospital was just a short distance away, so the prince would be able to receive excellent medical treatment and have any further operations there if necessary. “The only thing you didn’t find me was a girlfriend,” the prince joked when they reached their destination.

  Ferdinando Licata spent the entire next year and most of the following one there.

  He passed his time listening to the radio and reading the newspapers. The prince was quick to grasp the importance of the media. He realized how crucial it would be to own a newspaper or at least enjoy the benevolent complicity of a sympathetic journalist. That was when he decided it was time to “stick an oar” in the world of journalism, as he told Mastrangelo and Saro.

  He ordered his two lieutenants to approach a reporter from the Sun to “convince” him to be on their side. The Sun was the oldest and most influential newspaper in New York City, distributed on every street corner by an extensive network of newsboys. Until that time, most newspapers were circulated only by subscription, thanks to the perfect efficiency of the US mail. The Sun—not aimed exclusively at the business elite but also at clerks, laborers, and the general population—offered articles on local news along with tabloid sensationalism, thereby achieving great publishing success.

  Promising to hand him some front-page news, Jack Mastrangelo approached an editor of the Sun and made him a tantalizing offer: promising to double his salary starting immediately. The young reporter, Luke Bogart, wasn’t naive; he knew he was signing a promissory note, but how could he turn down a bundle of tax-free dollars?

  * * *

  Twenty-three months after the Saint Ciro attack, the surgeon removed the bandages from the prince’s final operation and handed him an oval mirror. Licata observed his new features. Present at the ceremony, in addition to the surgeon and his assistant, were Licata’s only two friends in America: Jack Mastrangelo and Saro Ragusa. The tension that had filled the room until then dissolved in a flash, because the prince then smiled. “Well done, doctor. It’s as if you gave me a second life. I’ll have to call you dad.”

  The men smiled.

  The surgeon was clearly pleased. “For me it is indeed an honor to be your friend—even more so your father.” He turned and left the room.

  Licata called Saro to his bedside. Mastrangelo stood back a few steps. They were now alone in the room of the Canadian hospital.

  Ferdinando Licata took another look in the mirror. “A man who contemplates revenge must keep his wounds open.”

  “Patri, we have two bills to collect on,” Mastrangelo reminded him.

  Licata nodded. “It’s time to cash in.” Then he turned to Saro, looking directly into his eyes. “Jack has been watching you all these months, and he’s told me that you work well together. You have the makings of a leader because you keep your head at critical times and quickly reach the right decision. At the same time, you’re able to handle your men generously and without favoritism.”

  Saro was embarrassed by all that praise, feeling unworthy of it.

  Licata got out of bed, took off his hospital gown, and, with Mastrangelo’s help, began putting on the clothes he’d worn when he checked into St. Paul’s Hospital.

  “I’m furious at those butchers who kill women and children in cold blood,” he said as he slipped on his silk shirt. “We’ll sweep away all the rot defiling the streets of New York; we’ll restore the old values of our forebears. War should be waged by soldiers, not civilians. As of today, anyone who lays a hand on a woman—or worse yet, a child—in our neighborhoods will be sorry he was ever born.”

  He sat on the chair to recoup his strength. “Here’s what I have in mind.” He motioned the two to come closer. “We’ll operate on two fronts. The first is New York. And I’ll handle it. We already control the Stokers’ territory. The next step will be to eliminate the Bontades. By combining the two territories, we can be a real family, on a par with those that now dominate the city. The second front will be Sicily. And you, Saro, will deal with that.”

  Saro glanced at Mastrangelo, who remained impassively behind him. Licata noticed it. “Jack is one of us. He will remain our consigliori. I know him well, and he doesn’t like to be conspicuous. Being in command doesn’t interest him. But his experience will be invaluable to us. The three of us must act as one man. You’ll pretend to be the boss, while I’ll be the subordinate. I’ll never appear openly. You’ll be the one to give the orders, but I’ll be the one calling the shots. Our adversaries mustn’t know who’s boss and who isn’t. We must disorient them, and by the time they try to react, we will have already sidelined their best men. Now listen to me carefully. Here’s the plan . . .”

  * * *

  The Clinton Correctional Facility, a maximum security prison nestled in one of the valleys of northern New York State, was considered the Siberia of penitentiaries in the United States. Residing in one of its cells since 1936 was Lucky Luciano, ever since lady luck had turned her back on him, as he put it.

  Luciano’s misfortune had a name: Thomas Edmund Dewey. He was the district attorney of the county of New York, a brilliant lawyer and esteemed politician, so well regarded that some years later he was nominated as the Republican candidate for president. Dewey was a moralist and the sworn enemy of every lawbreaker in the city. His fight against the Cosa Nostra was carried out not in the name of morality alone but also had utilitarian objectives. The stream of dollars produced by the Mafia had helped fatten labor unions, and from there a considerable number of Democratic politicians. If he could stop that flow of money, he would also dampen the Democrats’ extravagant political campaigns.

  Dewey had cut his political teeth in the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York, where he’d become familiar with the strategies of the rank and file. At the head of a seasoned group of assistant prosecutors, he had achieved significant results by putting gangsters such as Dutch Schultz out of play, and in Luciano’s outfit, he’d sent
Lepke Buchalter, the only foreigner in the family, to the electric chair.

  But how to bring down Luciano and his organization? Thomas Dewey was familiar with the Mafia mentality. He knew that among Sicilians, the price of betrayal was death. He knew that he would never gather evidence against the kingpin as far as drugs were concerned. Except for his early years of apprenticeship, Lucky Luciano had never touched a packet of heroin or cocaine as an adult, in order to avoid having some informer point a finger at him. Dewey had an idea: women have a unique sensibility and way of thinking. For them, feelings take first place on the scale of values. Omertà, the code of silence connoting a sense of belonging and honor, has no meaning if a woman has been deceived, betrayed, or cheated. So he attacked the Cosa Nostra boss in the prostitution arena.

  He began grilling the girls and madams in Lucky Luciano’s stable. He accumulated volumes of testimony given more or less spontaneously. The girls all came from poor families. It wasn’t easy to persuade them to testify against their employer, because almost all of them had been shamefully seduced by Luciano himself. The script was the same for each of them: A dinner of mock turtle soup, lobster, and champagne, and then an almond cake or a simple orangeade would send the candidate for whore into a dreamworld. When the girl awoke, she found herself in a brothel. There it was up to the madam to control her dream life. The rest was routine.

  When Dewey was confident that he had assembled a powerful set of indictments and, above all, that the young prostitutes would not retract their testimonies in the presence of the “big boss,” he snapped on the handcuffs and hauled Lucky Luciano into court. The man who was rumored to have killed dozens of enemies with his own hands would be brought up on the most paltry of charges: exploiting prostitution.

  Thomas Dewey devised a legal strategy that caught George Morton Levy, Luciano’s attorney, off guard.

  The prosecutor treated each proceeding as a separate case.

  He called his first witness, a blonde Romanian woman whose presence suggested a glimpse of faded beauty. Ileana Romy stated that she had been the madam of a house.

  “What do you mean by ‘house’?” Dewey asked.

  “A place where men who want to can meet prostitutes. I used to charge a dollar and a half a session for the use of the room.”

  “How many girls lived in the house?” the prosecutor continued.

  “About a dozen in all.”

  “Can you tell us what happened on October tenth of last year?”

  The woman was visibly nervous and kept looking over at Luciano, who by contrast never met her gaze, sitting motionless the whole time, as his lawyer had advised. “They were three Italian guys; I had never seen them before. They said Lucky wanted a percentage for the organization, otherwise he’d shut me down.”

  “And what did you answer?”

  “That Lucky could shove it up his—I mean, that I had no intention of paying.”

  A few in the audience chuckled, and the judge restored silence.

  “What happened then?”

  “They returned the next day, and without even saying a word began scaring the clients and smashing the furniture. Then they beat up the girls and me.”

  “After these events, did you pay the organization?”

  “There was no need to, because I had to close the business. They took away all the girls. I know they went to work for him.” She pointed to Luciano who sat there, unmoving. “I went back to walking the streets, thanks to that gentleman.”

  The testimonies of the other women followed the same drift, more or less. Luciano’s lawyer, Levy, wasn’t worried because it added up to a mountain of allegations without any real legal construct. Allegations of crimes that were already beyond recall. Charges made by bona fide human wrecks; troubled girls who were a little batty due to the frequent use of drugs. But then a certain Cokey Flo Brown, a black girl barely twenty-two years old, was called to testify.

  Dewey asked her right away, “What is your profession, Miss Brown?”

  The girl wasted no time beating around the bush: “I’m a prostitute.”

  “Do you have a pimp?”

  “Until two years ago I worked on my own—until a certain Nick showed up.”

  “Nick, who?”

  “Nick Montana. Naturally, it wasn’t he who came, but his henchmen.”

  “What did they ask you for?”

  “What all the bosses ask for: I had to pay him a share of my earnings.”

  “And you agreed?”

  “I had no choice. Montana’s gang disfigured girls who refused, scarring them with acid. They came with the bottle, to show me.”

  “Was Montana part of Salvatore Luciano’s racket?”

  “Not on your life! He belonged to another family.”

  “What happened next?” Dewey was leading her smoothly. It was like watching a student recite her lessons.

  “What happened,” the woman said, looking toward Luciano, “was that after about four months, that guy over there came to my house.”

  “Your Honor, please have the record show that the witness has indicated the defendant Lucky Luciano,” Dewey added.

  “So ordered,” the judge granted. “Have the record reflect the prosecutor’s request,” he told the stenographers.

  “Go on, Miss Brown. Lucky Luciano came to your house, and what happened?”

  Luciano looked up and was about to protest, but his lawyer gripped his jacket, forcing him to sit still.

  “Luciano told me that starting that day, I had to pay the percentage to him personally. He told me not to be afraid of Montana because he had already settled things with him. He told me a pile of crap: that he was about to form a union to protect us; that it would be to my advantage to associate with him.”

  “What did you do after that? Did you personally hand over a portion of your earnings to the defendant Lucky Luciano?”

  “That’s right: personally and regularly, every month.”

  A buzz rose in the courtroom. Luciano, who until then had remained calmly detached and somewhat disdainful, lost his head and yelled that it was all a bunch of lies, that it was the first time he’d ever seen that woman, and that he had never taken so much as a dollar from a prostitute.

  The police had a hard time restraining him. Five of them managed to bring him under control and drag him out of the courtroom. The photos that appeared in the newspapers deflated the myth of the cool, composed man capable of withstanding every storm.

  The strategy devised by the district attorney paid off: when the verdict was read, the jury found Luciano guilty on no fewer than sixty-two counts of indictment.

  The judge, in accordance with the jury’s express will, ruled that just punishment for him could be no less than thirty years and no more than fifty. For once, truth had been upheld by lies: the deposition of Cokey Flo Brown had been engineered by the prosecutor himself. Dewey had spent days and days persuading her to help him. He had given her a lot of money to break down her defenses. Finally, Brown had agreed. It was a great deal of money and would enable her to start a new life elsewhere in the world. But then, two days before her testimony, fear of the Cosa Nostra’s long arm, which could reach her even at the North Pole, made her think again, and she’d announced to Dewey that she was no longer willing to testify. The prosecutor had been devastated, realizing that all the statements given thus far would not be enough to convict Luciano. It took another $5,000 to make her reconsider her decision.

  Insiders realized immediately that her entire testimony was an act of perjury. Anyone who has had any dealings with the Cosa Nostra knows that no padrino would ever compromise himself by acting as bagman and collecting from a prostitute. Least of all Lucky Luciano, the boss of bosses.

  Dewey had played an empty hand, bluffing shamelessly. But fortune sometimes smiles on those who are daring.

  Given the sentence, Lucky Luciano was out of commission forever, or so Dewey thought. He was sent in handcuffs to the Clinton Correctional Facility, the maximu
m security prison in Dannemora, New York. In 1936 Luciano was thirty-nine; if he behaved himself, he would be released before his sixty-ninth birthday.

  * * *

  Saro and Jack Mastrangelo had listened carefully to Ferdinando Licata’s plan, marveling at his acumen. The plan was complex, but flawless in its details, even though it required a certain amount of luck. “But how can you achieve impossible goals without a dash of good fortune?” Licata asked.

  In fact, the prince’s strategy was extremely ambitious: ultimately its aim was to bring New York’s prosecuting attorneys to the negotiating table with the Cosa Nostra bosses, specifically with the convict Lucky Luciano. Though such an undertaking seemed unthinkable, Licata had some aces up his sleeve.

  Saro immediately got to work.

  As previously decided, he would act the part of the boss, and in that capacity, he paid a visit to Sante Genovese, along with the inseparable Jack Mastrangelo.

  Don Vitone’s nephew Sante had been following the young man’s activities. Welcoming him to his home, in the living room where Saro had first met him, Sante greeted him warmly, this time embracing and kissing him as if he were one of the family. He congratulated Saro, saying the young man had come a long way. Carmelo Vanni, the Bontades’ deceased bagman, had shown good instincts when he recommended him.

  They talked about Lucky Luciano. By now he’d been rotting in that prison for six years. True, he enjoyed every comfort and was still able to run the Cosa Nostra’s Cupola, its top-ranking bosses, buying off anyone who tried to oppose his decisions. But he was beginning to champ at the bit. Several times, through his friend Meyer Lansky, the Jewish gangster, Luciano had asked Genovese to find a way, on the up-and-up, to get him out of there.

  Saro explained that he had come to solve that very problem. He proceeded to describe his plan to Sante in detail.

  Following the Japanese bombing of Pearl Harbor in December of 1941, several months earlier, America had entered the war, not only against Japan but against Germany and Italy too.