The Mob and the City (23 page)

The bosses profited from narcotics behind the scenes, too. Nicolo Gentile's boss Vincent Mangano approved of Gentile's drug trafficking scheme in exchange for a split of the profits.
⁸⁷
Joe Valachi recalls a highly revealing conversation he once had with his boss, Vito Genovese:

He said to me, “Did you ever deal in junk?”

I said, “Yes.”

He said, “You know you ain't supposed to fool with it.”

Vito looked at me and said, “Well, don't do it again.”

“Okay,” I said.

Of course, I don't pay any attention to this. This is how Vito was.
⁸⁸

This veiled conversation shows how easily a mob boss could look the other way.

Joe Bonanno's pontifications on drugs are undermined by some damning facts as well. Bonanno portrays his “hero” Salvatore Maranzano as the quintessential “Man of Honor.” Yet as we saw earlier, Maranzano had a convicted drug trafficker in James Alescia as a partner at his Park Avenue office. Bonanno offers no explanation for Maranzano and Alescia.
⁸⁹

“I did not tolerate any dealings in prostitution or narcotics,” Bonanno claimed when he was boss. But in 1959, Carmine “Lilo” Galante, a
caporegime
in the Bonanno Family, was arrested and later convicted for smuggling heroin through the Montreal airport and into New York City.
⁹⁰
Not only was Galante left untouched, but he later became acting boss of the Bonanno Family.
⁹¹
Joe Bonanno conveniently omits any mention of Galante in his autobiography
Man of Honor
. Bill Bonanno tries to shore up his father's omission in Bill's own 1991 autobiography
Bound by Honor
. Bill admits that Galante was a trafficker, but claims his father had no forewarning:

My father was heartbroken by this, although unwilling to do anything about it. There was a standing death sentence for anyone who openly defied an ironclad rule of the Family—such as the one against dealing drugs.

“Leave him alone; doesn't matter now,” my father told me and those in the administration of the Family.

Bill Bonanno claims that he “would have struck out in retaliation” against Galante. However, in a 1979
New York Times
article, Bill Bonanno is quoted as saying that Carmine Galante “was like an uncle,” and that Bill was a “godfather to one of [Galante's] children.”
⁹²

Then there is Natale “Joe Diamond” Evola. Natale Evola was an usher at Joe Bonanno's wedding, and the Bonannos lionize Evola as one of the “boys of the first day.” In 1959, however, Evola was convicted for a narcotics conspiracy. Nevertheless, Evola became boss of the Bonanno Family in the 1970s, and the Bonannos say nothing of his drug record.
⁹³
The facts, it seems, would have gotten in the way of a good myth.

POLICE CORRUPTION

Don Corleone was wrong about the police refusing to help, too. The FBN, in fact, was borne out of a corruption scandal in its predecessor agency, the old Narcotics Bureau. In 1930, a grand jury in New York charged narcotics agents with rampant misconduct and falsification of cases under its commissioner Levi Nutt. But what brought Nutt down were the revelations that his son-in-law took a loan from Arnold Rothstein, the biggest narcotics trafficker in the country, and that Nutt's own son represented Rothstein in a tax-evasion proceeding.
⁹⁴

The FBN's New York office became a den of corruption. When rookie agent Jack Kelly joined the New York office in the early 1950s, he was warned to “try to find someone honest or at least honest when they are working with you.” FBN agent Tom Tripodi saw agents routinely take money in raids; they called it “‘making a bobo’ (a bonus).” Corrupt agents rationalized this by saying they were just taking “Mob money. Drug money.”
⁹⁵

The FBN was a paragon of virtue compared to the narcotics units of the NYPD. “I won't say that every New York City police officer was dishonest, but
finding one who wasn't was an exception,” said Kelly.
⁹⁶
In 1951, a Brooklyn grand jury found that “from top to bottom of the plainclothes division,” the police had formed “criminal combines” with narcotics peddlers. The Knapp Commission later singled out corruption in the narcotics units as the most serious problem facing the NYPD.
⁹⁷

Corruption insulated traffickers on multiple levels. “The New York Police Department charged me two thousand dollars a month in order to operate between 110th Street and 125th Street,” said Arthur. “I couldn't get busted in there. I was on the pad.” The Cosa Nostra neutralized high-level investigations, too. If narcotics agents uncovered a
mafioso
during an investigation, the target would disappear, and the agents would be sent off on a wild goose chase by a senior officer on the take. When Frank Serpico joined the plainclothes division, he was told he could arrest blacks and Puerto Rican dealers, but “the Italians, of course, are different. They're on top, they run the show, and they're very reliable, and they can do whatever they want.” In 1969, nearly the
entire
seventy-six member elite Special Investigation Unit (SIU) of the NYPD was transferred out on corruption charges.
⁹⁸

The low point was the mob's theft of the heroin seized in the French Connection case. The NYPD had stored the ninety-seven pounds of heroin they had seized in the case in the NYPD's Property Clerk's Office. Then eighty-one pounds of it, with a street value of $10 million, disappeared. The mastermind was Vincent “Vinnie Papa” Papa of the Lucchese Family. After the debacle, NYPD commissioner Patrick Murphy concluded that “the single most dangerous feature of organized crime syndicates was their ability to corrupt or co-opt local law enforcement.”
⁹⁹

MAFIA EDICTS AGAINST DRUGS

There is one grain of truth in the mythology. Some Mafia leaders
did
issue bans on drugs. According to Joe Valachi, in 1948, Frank Costello, boss of the Luciano Family “ordered its membership to stay out of dope.” The next edict was issued in 1957 when “all families were notified—no narcotics.” This ban was largely ignored, too.
¹⁰⁰
Wiretaps of the DeCavalcante Family in New Jersey record their
amazement at all the drug dealing: “Half these guys are handling junk. Now there's a [Mafia] law out that they can't touch it.”
¹⁰¹

Still others tried issuing “no-drugs” orders in their families. Mob boss Paul Castellano barred narcotics under penalty of death, yet Castellano's own
consigliere
had a son who dealt. Lucchese Family
caporegime
Paul Vario outlawed dealing in his crew after his boss Carmine Tramunti was convicted on drug charges. It did not matter. Vario could not stop his own crew from dealing.
¹⁰²
The ineffectiveness of these bans shows that “the godfathers” were not omnipotent.

There were human factors at work, too. Hypocrisy was part of the mobster life. Vito Genovese's veiled conversation with Joe Valachi shows how the bosses looked the other way. Bill Bonanno likewise suggests willful ignorance. He admits that “the Family's Administration…received envelopes of cash from time to time in exchange for keeping quiet. No one asked questions about where this money came from or how it was earned.”
¹⁰³

Some
mafiosi
were in denial, too. In the 1930s, public opinion turned strongly against drug sellers as middle-class users devolved into street addicts. No one was lower than the “dope fiend” except the “junk dealer.” Even hardened
mafiosi
had trouble admitting they were into narcotics. Although Joe Valachi readily recounted murders he committed, he sheepishly downplayed his drug dealing, claiming he only sold “small amounts to get back on my feet.” In fact, the FBN had been tracking Valachi's drug trafficking since the 1940s, and it obtained multiple convictions of him. Meanwhile, Nicolo Gentile tried to blame his involvement with narcotics trafficking on woman problems and business debts.
¹⁰⁴

It seems even wiseguys could feel shame. Just not enough to stop taking their cut.