The Strength of the Wolf (43 page)

Tragically hip, indeed. A perpetual worrier, at times manic, Selvaggi grew up in the same Pelham Bay section of the Bronx as Charlie Siragusa's younger brother. “I went to high school with Charlie's niece,” Selvaggi explains, “and after I graduated from the Maritime Academy, I asked her to marry me. But the Siragusas were old-fashioned Sicilians, and you know what that means?” He gives a quizzical look. “I had to have $25,000 in the bank to get permission, and it took two and a half years to scrape it together.”

The marriage was fine, but Frank's wife was lonely, and the kids needed to see their seafaring father more often, so Charlie Siragusa, as a favor for his brother, offered Frank a job with the FBN. “I'd done Charlie a favor a few years earlier,” Selvaggi explains. “I was on an American Export Line ship, and he asked me to keep an eye out on a particular voyage. When we put into port in Marseilles, I saw the third mate toss a package overboard. I told the captain and he had the package retrieved, and it turned out to contain ten kilograms of heroin. I'd done that favor for Charlie, and my wife wanted me at home, so in 1958 I became a Special Hire.”
¹

Giving up his maritime job wasn't easy: as a seaman Selvaggi made three times as much money as a basic FBN agent. Being married to Siragusa's niece didn't afford him any special privileges either. On the contrary, his fellow agents assumed that Siragusa was helping him behind the scenes, and so they held him to a higher standard. Yet Frank Selvaggi surpassed everyone's expectations, and among his many achievements, he made the historically important case on notorious Joe Valachi, and pressured the old hood into exposing the Mafia's history and hierarchical organization. Sadly, this amazing accomplishment went unacknowledged outside the FBN. More to the point, the FBI deliberately ruined Selvaggi's career because of it, as will be explained in a subsequent chapter.

“My first group leader,” Selvaggi recalls, “was Angelo Zurlo in Group Three. The members of that group were all respected street agents who knew what was going on. Art Mendelsohn was my first partner. Art had been around for years, and he treated me like a kid, but I learned a lot from him – as well as from Angie Zurlo, who made me read all the files. Ben Fitzgerald had Group One. Ben had a reputation as the most intelligent agent in the office, although he'd been Fred Dick's partner, and even though he'd walk off a surveillance at dinnertime. But Group One did okay because of Lenny
Schrier. George O'Connor had Group Two. Joey Amato had Group Four. Pat Ward was the enforcement assistant, and Jack Cusack had the Court House Squad. Cusack,” Selvaggi says candidly, “was a clerk who wrote stories, and John Enright was his disciple. Enright was a nine-to-fiver who ran the Court House Squad after Cusack and later moved to Washington headquarters.

“When I arrived, Lenny Schrier was making a lot of cases with an informant he'd inherited from Fred Dick. Then Lenny made the Orlandino case, and when Angie Zurlo retired, Lenny thought he'd get Group Three. And he should have. But Gaffney gave it to John Dolce instead, and that's when the animosity began.

“Gaffney was a good district supervisor,” Selvaggi continues, “but he was a square, and he was duped by Pat Ward, just like John Dolce was poisoned by Patty Biase. My own problems with them began during the Cotroni case. I was in the hotel room with Dolce, Biase, and Jack Brady while they were guarding Cotroni's girlfriend. It was the night that Pat Ward's informer, Eddie Smith, was going to make John Ormento, and because I was a new guy, they wanted me out of their hair.” Frank frowns. “First they told me to stand in a corner, then they told me to go up to Harlem and toss junkies. They weren't supposed to do that, but I didn't know any better, so I went up there alone and got slashed in the leg by a Puerto Rican whore. I wrapped my handkerchief around the gash, went back to the hotel, and asked them what I should do next? They told me to forget about it, and avoid the hassle of trying to explain to the bosses what had happened up in Harlem.”

Selvaggi was trying to fit in, so he did what he was told. But his wife saw the bloody bandage when he got home and she told her father, and he told Charlie Siragusa, and Siragusa blasted John Dolce for sending Selvaggi into Harlem alone.

“Dolce had a nice wife,” Selvaggi says, “and we all felt bad when she lost a child at birth. I grew up in the same neighborhood with Patty Biase, and went to school with his younger sister, Angelica. Jack Brady had been in the New York narcotic squad, and Gaffney was so impressed with his performance that he hired him. They were all good agents; but after Charlie gave them hell, Dolce, Biase, and Brady spent the rest of their lives trying to get even.”

As a rookie agent in late 1958, Frank Selvaggi, along with his senior partner Art Mendelsohn and veteran NYPD narcotic squad detective Harold
Kunin, arrested Helen Streat, a heroin addict and prostitute in Harlem. They found ten ounces of heroin on her during a routine shakedown, and rather than go to jail, she flipped. And based on information Helen provided, Selvaggi and his colleagues made a series of street-level cases that led to John Freeman, a powerful drug trafficker from Louisiana. From his flower shop in Harlem, Freeman supplied drug dealers in Chicago, Detroit, and Los Angeles. Freeman stood six feet four and weighed 350 pounds, and he was known in the underworld as “Mr. Big.” As Selvaggi recalls, “When he was arrested, he looked around the room and said: ‘Anyone talks to the cops has his tongue cut out.'

“Although we didn't know it at the time,” Selvaggi adds matter-of-factly, “Freeman was supplied by Valachi, and Valachi copped from Sal Rinaldo.”

The Valachi case developed when Helen Streat set up her supplier, Hank Townes, and he flipped and took undercover Agent Charles “Charlie Mac” McDonnell to Freeman's runner, a one-eyed gangster from Brooklyn called Slim. Freeman never handled narcotics himself, but instead he had Slim receive the heroin from Joe Valachi's deliveryman, and then Slim in turn delivered it to Freeman's customers, including Hank Townes. Freeman had five customers, and all five were hand-picked because they were ex-cons with records for armed robbery or other gun-related charges.

Charlie McDonnell made two undercover buys from Slim, each for 100 ounces of heroin. Then, showing tremendous composure, he met alone with Freeman in his flower shop. On this critical occasion, which assured Freeman's conviction, McDonnell persuaded Mr. Big to supply him directly, and Freeman unwisely had his son, John Jr., personally deliver 100 ounces of heroin to McDonnell.

Surveillance conducted during the buys revealed that Ralph Wagner was Valachi's delivery man to Slim. And during a forceful interrogation, in which Selvaggi and Jack Brady placed him under extreme duress, Slim revealed that the “Italian boss” lived in an apartment building with unusual gates in a neighborhood Selvaggi was familiar with in the Bronx. Selvaggi drove around the neighborhood for several days until he found the apartment building, and then he and Agent Ivan “Ike” Wurms staked it out. Eventually they saw Joe Valachi enter the building, and they discovered that Michael Monica was the “plant-man” holding the heroin for Valachi in his apartment. But Valachi, Wagner, and Monica realized they were being watched, and after Freeman was arrested in May 1959, they tried to slip out of sight.

“Valachi hid out in New Rochelle for awhile,” Selvaggi says, “then moved to a trailer camp in Connecticut. Ralph fled to Mexico then Texas,
where he was arrested. Ralph was returned to New York, and while he was out on bail, we started meeting.”

Ralph Wagner, a one-time professional boxer with a bad temper when he got drunk, became Selvaggi's informant, and in November 1959 he provided Selvaggi with the vital information that led to Valachi's arrest. While Valachi was on the lam in the Freeman case, he turned his jukebox concession over to a young hood named Paulie. Paulie would make the rounds, collect the coins, count them up, and then call Valachi and tell him how much money he'd made that week. Wagner knew the number that Paulie called every Friday night around eleven o'clock. He knew it was a pay phone off a two-lane highway near Thomaston, Connecticut, but he didn't know the exact location. So Selvaggi, Art Mendelsohn, and Ralph Wagner drove to Thomaston one Friday night. It was a shot in the dark, yes, but they didn't expect to find themselves in the middle of nowhere, driving up and down an unlit road in rural Thomaston, looking for a pay phone booth.

“We'd made two swipes,” Selvaggi recalls, “then by sheer coincidence Valachi lights a cigarette in the phone booth just as we're passing by. The whole thing lit up, and we could see his white hair. We stopped the car and Ralph jumped out. To this day I have no idea how he got back to New York. We didn't have time to do anything about Ralph running away, so we went to grab Valachi, and as Mendelsohn and I approached the phone booth, he saw us coming. It was a very spooky night and he thought we were mob guys come to kill him. ‘Don't shoot! Don't shoot!' he said, as he came out of the booth.

“Valachi was mine ten minutes after we grabbed him,” Selvaggi says with satisfaction. “We'd been driving all over, up and down the highway, and we were about to run out of gas. So we pulled into a fire station, identified ourselves as federal agents, and while Mendelsohn filled up the car, Valachi and I went inside to take a piss. He was a diabetic, and I agreed to drive back to the trailer park so he could get his pills. After I agreed to do that, he said he wanted to make a deal. But only with me, because I was an Italian, and because he thought that Mendelsohn was Jewish. So,” Selvaggi shrugs, “between him thinking that Mendelsohn was Jewish, and me agreeing to drive him back for his pills, that's how I became Valachi's case agent.”

In January 1960, Joe Valachi pled guilty in the Eastern District Court in New York, and was let out of jail with the agreement that, prior to sentencing, he'd secure information for the initiation of a major federal narcotics case. “After that we started going for drives late at night,” Selvaggi says, “talking in bars around Westchester County. One night we're having a beer at Foley's
in Pleasantville. Valachi's hinky. He's a tough guy, a buttonman in the Genovese family, so he doesn't want to give anyone up. He tries to put a $100 bill in my pocket.” Selvaggi scowls. “I told him: ‘I give
you
money.' Then I reminded him that he was due in court for sentencing in February, and that time was running out. I said I'd delay the proceedings, but only if he gave up Michael Monica as a sign of good faith. So Valachi made an appointment to meet Monica on a street corner in East Harlem at two o'clock in the morning. And when Monica climbed out of the cab, I arrested him. He was the last fugitive we picked up in the Freeman case.”

With Monica's arrest, Valachi's crew chief, Tony Bender (real name Anthony Strollo), sent him and Ralph Wagner to Stefano Magaddino in Buffalo. Bender assured the fugitives that Magaddino, the Mafia boss of upper New York State, was going to smuggle them into Canada. But Wagner had a gut feeling that Bender had actually paid Magaddino to kill them, so he fled to Texas, where he pulled two armed robberies and was arrested in March 1960. He was tried, convicted, and sentenced to twelve years at the Atlanta Penitentiary. Valachi, meanwhile, remained in Buffalo until Bender summoned him back to New York City. “Bender told him the fix was in,” Selvaggi explains. “He said he'd only get five years, so Valachi turned himself in to John Enright at the Court House Squad.

“To understand all this,” Selvaggi says, “you have to go back to Vito Genovese. Genovese was a classy guy. He'd been convicted on a narcotics rap in 1959, and I met him in Tompkins Square late one night while he was out on bond. I asked him why he didn't skip town. ‘Generals don't run,' he said. Then he told me to get a haircut. Joe Adonis was a classy guy too. When they were in charge, there was no crime in their neighborhoods. But they had a strict code. If you were a made guy like Valachi, you had to adhere to the rules. If you adhere to the rules, no one can slap you, no one can bother your business, no one can mess with your wife. But you have to follow orders. You have to follow the rules that the smart old Mustache Petes put in place to keep buttonmen like Valachi in line. The old bosses knew they couldn't trust the buttonmen, but they needed money-makers, so they made the rules.

“Then Genovese decided that Anastasia had gone too far, after he had Scalici killed. That's when Genovese made the rule, ‘No drugs.' But the younger guys didn't want to give up the drugs because it was a good way
to make money. So the bosses said, ‘OK, long as you keep it in Harlem. It's not in our neighborhood, who cares?' ”

Despite his own rule, Vito Genovese was convicted (some say falsely) on drug charges, and that's what set the stage for Joe Valachi's great betrayal. While Genovese was out on appeal, Tony Bender started plotting to take over the family with his two top lieutenants, Vinnie Mauro and Frank Caruso. Mauro and Caruso were vicious hoods, and Valachi was working for them. But he was a disgruntled employee. His godfather was Joe Bonanno, and he was married to the daughter of a powerful Mafia don, Giacomo Reina – so Valachi thought he should have been a boss, not a buttonman. But Genovese put him in Tony Bender's crew, and then Bender made Vinnie Mauro, not Valachi, his top lieutenant. That hurt, because Mauro had been Valachi's protégé. And once Bender and Mauro were in charge, they never let Valachi make any real money. They gave him about twenty-five jukeboxes, that's all, and that's how they kept him down. And that's why he dealt narcotics on the side.

“Ralph told me about Valachi's hassles with Bender and Mauro,” Selvaggi explains, “and that's how I learned he was a disgruntled employee. Been one for years. Then Genovese lost his appeal [in February 1960] and was sent to the Atlanta Penitentiary. But he still wanted to run the show. But he knew he couldn't trust Bender, so he sent Tom Eboli to Detroit, where Eboli was inducted into the Mafia. After Eboli was made, Genovese named him head of the family; at which point Bender decided he was going to overthrow Eboli. But Bender needed cash to finance the revolution, so his money-makers, Frank Caruso and Vinnie Mauro, took $500,000 in drug money to the track and lost it all in two weeks. And that's when everyone started getting desperate.”
²