The Prince (51 page)

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 maximum 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.

It was a unique opportunity. And the Cosa Nostra bosses couldn't afford to miss that train. They had to take a chance and force New York prosecutor Thomas Dewey to come to an agreement about Lucky Luciano. But how?

Sante Genovese couldn't answer that question. “You want to kidnap the prosecutor and make an equal exchange? We thought of it, but it's too risky,” Genovese concluded.

“No, no kidnapping. Luciano would be against that,” Saro said.

“Then what is this brilliant idea?” Sante asked, intrigued.

“It's simple. We'll carry out various acts of sabotage at the Port of New York and on warships bound for Europe. We'll bring the war effort to its knees. We'll spread the rumor that the sabotage is the work of Nazi-fascist secret forces operating on American soil. We'll see to it that word reaches the ears of the military command that our organization, owing to Lucky Luciano, could neutralize those subversive groups. After all, everyone knows that the waterfront is in the hands of the Anastasia brothers, who are notoriously devoted to Luciano. At that point, Luciano will have to intervene personally. Once this happens, we'll ask the authorities to return the favor. That's the idea. We'll perform the acts of sabotage ourselves, after getting the all clear from the Anastasias. What do you say?”

What could Genovese say, except that it was worth a try? Just to be sure, however, he informed Luciano of Saro's plan, and the boss readily consented. He liked the idea that the Cosa Nostra could even have a hand in the war. Finally, he was beginning to see a glimmer of hope for his future release.

– 1942 –

H
istory doesn't report it, and the few who knew about it may have forgotten, but there was a time during the winter of 1942 when residents of New York feared they would see invading Nazis, as well as Japanese troops, set up operations amid the trees of Central Park.

Throughout the city, but particularly along the docks, accidents and incidents of sabotage occurred that were attributed to the special forces of the Third Reich's secret service.

One of the first, most disturbing episodes occurred in the shipyards of Navy Pier 88.

For some weeks workers had been toiling to convert the French cruise ship the SS
Normandie
into a transport carrier for American troops.

The
Normandie
was the fastest transoceanic vessel at that time, able to complete the Le Havre–New York crossing in just four and a half days, thanks to a speed of over thirty knots. The
Normandie
had docked in New York on August 28, 1939, a few days before the Nazi invasion of Poland, and had been laid up in port since Europe went to war. Once the United States entered the war, the US Naval Command requisitioned the
Normandie
to convert it into a troop carrier. The vessel could transport up to twelve thousand combat-ready troops at a time, at a speed so fast it wouldn't even require an escort of torpedo boats. It was renamed the USS
Lafayette
.

On February 9, 1942, Saro Ragusa and his friends lingered at Petrosino's Cafe on West Fifty-Fourth Street near the Hudson River piers. Present at the table, besides Saro and Mastrangelo, were Carmine Mannino, Tommaso Sciacca, and Alex Pagano. Having done his military service in Friuli, Italy, with the fortifications unit of the US Corps of Engineers, Carmine Mannino knew all about mines and explosives in general. They had taught him how to bring down a bridge with only three charges and how to place active and passive obstacles in a given territory. Saro had accompanied him on his inspection during a twenty-minute walk along the pier, which had enabled Mannino to determine which locations the blast could damage most easily and thus where he should position the charges.

During lunch, they talked about everything except what they were about to do. Parked outside the restaurant was Saro's brand new Packard 120-C Touring sedan, its roomy trunk packed with sticks of dynamite. They were in high spirits and laughed each time Tommaso Sciacca, the group's clown, cracked a joke. They seemed like a group of old friends enjoying a get-together. Only Alex Pagano, the youngest of them all, was silent and gloomy. He had left his girlfriend back in the old country. His older friends told him, “Forget about Irene! Go lay some woman. Irene has probably already dumped you by now.” But the more they insisted, the more angrily he vowed that Irene would never leave him because they really loved each other.

It was past two o'clock in the afternoon, and they had to get a move on because in thirty minutes the whistle would signal the end of the first shift at the port and the start of the next. It was the moment when they could blend in with the other workers. The shift supervisors had already been advised. If they spotted an unfamiliar face, they were to simply look the other way and not ask questions.

Saro urged his pals to speed it up. Carmine ordered another ice cream and ate it in the car, on their way to the port. The dynamite was inside three black leather bags. Carrying them, Carmine, Alex, and Tommaso looked more like three undertakers going to dissect a corpse than three dockworkers.

“You could have chosen three bags that were less noticeable,” Mastrangelo criticized.

“I took the first ones I could find,” Tommaso said in excuse.

“Go on, get going; there's the second whistle,” Saro broke in.

Saro and Mastrangelo stayed in the car and waited for the three to go off and mingle with the other workers entering the shipyard of the former
Normandie
.

Once the charges and detonators had been placed, the three would have to leave the pier and get away using public transportation.

Around three in the afternoon, New Yorkers were still at work when, from the upper windows of skyscrapers, they saw a column of smoke rising from one of the docks at the port. In a flash, the news spread throughout the city: a fire had broken out on the
Lafayette
, the cruise ship that was being altered for troop transport.

Fire engines and ambulances raced to pier 88. From other docks along the port, pilot boats, tugs with water cannons, and tankers rushed toward the ship, which was now engulfed in flames.

The main fire originated in the center of the vessel, in the spacious first-class lounge. But it wasn't the only outbreak. Saro's men had done a skillful job, placing four explosive primers that would be triggered one after the other in four different areas of the ship, in such a way that the sabotage would be passed off as a simple short circuit. Since the ship had been in the process of being overhauled, it was quite plausible that some careless workman might have left an open flame or forgotten to turn off his soldering iron.

Over time the various commissions investigating the incident never reached a decisive conclusion on the cause of the blaze and the newspapers referred to it as an unfortunate accident.

Throughout the afternoon, rescue teams flooded the vessel with water and foaming agents. The result was that during the night between February 9 and 10, due to the weight of all the water used to extinguish the fire, the
Lafayette
slowly rolled over, coming to rest on its port side. The ship remained that way, with one side semisubmerged, until the end of the war—a grim testament to the lengths a Mafia organization would go to achieve its objectives.

Prince Licata's plan did not end with that first major show of force.

In late February, Saro, with the help of some explosives experts who had served in the Italian Army before fleeing to America, had thirteen Liberty merchant ships mined beneath the waterline. The ships were due to set sail for England, carrying troops and war equipment. As soon as the vessels left New York Harbor, they were shaken by thirteen explosions that split them in two and caused them to sink in just minutes. It was a mass execution for sailors and soldiers; only a few were rescued because no one had time to put on a life jacket. Eight hundred crewmen perished in the flames or were drowned.

An obsession with spies spread throughout the city. To stem the panic, the authorities were forced to take extremely unpopular measures. They sent thousands of Italian, German, and Japanese immigrants into internment camps, insisting that spies and saboteurs may have infiltrated those groups.

That did not solve the sabotage problem, however. In addition to the 71 merchant ships sunk in February 1942, another 49 were lost between March and April, while in May no fewer than 102 Liberty ships were attacked by German U-boat submarines or sabotaged by the Mafia.

Naval officials were in a panic. The navy's chief of staff, Lieutenant Commander Charles Radcliffe Haffenden, was no longer so sure that it was German U-boats sinking the Liberty ships in US territorial waters. In all those months, US Navy torpedo-boat destroyers had been able to identify only one of them. It was possible, however, that the city was swarming with Nazi saboteurs, or so they thought. But where had they come from? When had they landed in America? Was it conceivable that they couldn't be found? The few spies that the FBI had caught up until that point had all been executed, after summary proceedings that were well publicized in the newspapers and on the radio. Where were they hiding, those covert forces that constantly defied surveillance and freely held sway over the Port of New York?

The answer began to appear in the Navy Department's morning reports: those forces were the Mafia.

Commander Haffenden, with the help of New York City's new district attorney, Frank Hogan—the man who succeeded the cunning Dewey in 1941 when he stepped down from the prosecutor's office to become a candidate for governor—decided that it was time to engage in direct discourse with the port's union bosses in order to get through to the Cosa Nostra.

He never thought he would ever do or say such a thing in his life, but the war effort took priority over any moralistic considerations.

After the slaughter at La Tonnara, Tom Bontade had barricaded himself in his house in Beechhurst, a residential area of Queens. He had lost his most trusted men in the war with Ferdinando Licata. The only senior men he had now were Vito Pizzuto and his henchman Roy Boccia. In the last several months, Bontade had thought more than once of retiring permanently from the business, but he didn't want to give in and let the interlopers win. He had enough money to rebuild a team of soldiers ready and willing to do anything he asked. But the problem wasn't in finding a handful of violent individuals, for the city's streets were filled with them. The thing hardest to come by these days was loyalty. For the moment, the only man he could rely on besides Boccia was the Sicilian from Salemi who'd been the last to join the family: Vito Pizzuto.