The First Family: Terror, Extortion, Revenge, Murder and the Birth of the American Mafia (23 page)

The stone house was chilly and uncomfortable. It was a good-sized property, with three stories and six rooms: a kitchen and a storeroom on the ground floor, a workroom and two small bedrooms above, and finally a garret attic. But there was no heat, no light, no running water, and no tables, chairs, or food—nothing but two dilapidated beds, the printing press that Cecala had purchased in New York, and what they had brought with them on the cart. Giglio set up a small stove in the kitchen and did his best to fix the broken beds.

Comito thought of running off, getting away, and realized at once how difficult that would be. He still had no money, nor the sort of clothing he would need to hike across rough country. He did not know where he was, or how to get to the nearest town or village. And Cina had told him that he and Katrina would never be alone in the stone house. That promise had seemed a comfort once, but now he saw that it was not. The men assigned to provide company would be watching him as well.

Next morning, another man appeared with a cartload of provisions: kerosene for the stove, a hundred-pound sack of potatoes, flour, thick black bread, oil, smoked fish, tomato sauce, and macaroni for the kitchen. The food was of good quality and there was plenty of it, but that merely made Comito more despondent. Supplies sufficient for several months implied a long stay in the woods.

Still he had no idea what was required of him. He searched the workroom where the printing press now stood and found no type, no forms, no plates. Whatever it was that Cina and Cecala were working on, he thought, must still be in New York.

IN AN ANONYMOUS
apartment in the north part of the Bronx, far from the eyes of the Secret Service, Antonio Milone sat in a small room he had converted into a makeshift photographic studio. He was carefully assembling a set of flimsy zinc sheets. To Milone’s right was a shallow trough filled with nitric acid and alum; beside that sat a jug containing a careful mix of half a dozen other chemicals. It was time to etch the printing plates.

Milone was a secretive man who valued privacy. He rarely mixed with other members of the New York Mafia; most, indeed, had no idea he existed. Only Morello himself, and a handful of his most trusted associates, knew where the engraver lived, and few even of their number understood his true importance to the first family. Milone was Morello’s moneyman. For several years, as president of the Ignatz Florio Co-Operative Association, he had overseen the laundering of the family’s illegal income, managing its investment in a widening portfolio of legitimate businesses. Just as important, from Morello’s perspective, his friend knew how to make money, literally. Milone was an experienced engraver and a competent printer who possessed the steady hand required to engrave counterfeits. He was the first person the Clutch Hand had turned to when he was forced back into the green goods business.

Milone had been asked to etch two separate sets of printing plates, from which two different sorts of currency would be made. His first commission was for a Canadian five-dollar note, to be printed in five colors, which meant that five different plates had to be engraved. His second was for a three-color U.S. two-dollar bill.

The two-dollar note was a common piece of currency, selected apparently because its face value was sufficient to make it worth the risk of forging but not so high as to excite much attention when it was passed in shops and bars. The five-dollar bill had been chosen, despite its additional complexity, because it would be easier to pass. For one thing, the Canadian note was unfamiliar to most Americans, and any imperfections in the engraving and printing would have a better chance of escaping notice. For another, Canadian currency lacked one of the chief security devices used in the United States. American bills were printed on a special grade of paper made with silk threads running down their length. These could easily be seen by anyone holding the note up to the light and were almost impossible to counterfeit. Canadian currency was silkless.

The technique that Milone used to etch the plates was called photoengraving. He began by obtaining a perfect example of a genuine note, then laid it absolutely flat and photographed it. Next, he dipped one of his zinc sheets into the trough of nitric acid, then spread the same plate with a coating from his jar of chemicals—a solution of ammonium, ammonium hydroxide, egg albumen, and water that was highly sensitive to light. This mixture was allowed to dry.

Milone’s next task was to transfer his photographic negative to the plate. Working with great care, he placed the reversed image in position on the treated plate, pressed it down, and clamped the plate and the negative together. He then slid this assembly into a large box that looked much like a contact printer and closed the lid. The box contained a powerful arc light. Milone switched on the machine and waited. Inside, the arc blazed onto the negative, hardening the ammonium solution on the plate wherever it passed through the photographic film.

It took a minute or two to make the exposure. Switching the arc light off, Milone removed the plate, laid it flat on the table in front of him, and very gently spread a thin layer of ink across it. Next, he washed the whole plate several times with water. The water dissolved the unhardened ammonium solution wherever it had been shielded by the negative. Milone shook off the last few drops of liquid and tilted the plate so that it gleamed. The copper now bore a delicate negative image of a Canadian five-dollar bill, its lines hardened by the action of the arc light.

The last step in the platemaking process was the most difficult, calling on all of Milone’s experience. The plate was returned to its acid bath so that the surfaces to be printed could be etched. To prevent the solution from eating its way under the lines of the image, however, Milone had to dust the surface of the plate carefully with a powder known as dragon’s blood—a resin that slowed the action of the acid. The counterfeiter had to repeat the delicate process of removing the plate from its acid bath, washing it, reinking it, and dusting it with dragon’s blood at least half a dozen times before the etching was complete. After that, using a magnifying glass, Milone examined every millimeter of the plate for errors. Lines that required deepening or correction had to be recut by hand.

By the time the counterfeiter had finished his work, it was the middle of December. Milone wrapped the eight plates carefully in cloth and newspaper. They were ready to be used.

SNOW BLANKETED THE WOODS
west of Highland. It lay two feet deep around the stone house and piled up in drifts against the walls. Comito had abandoned all hope of escape. He had nothing to do—”those days seemed years”—and he was concerned about Katrina, who was doing all the cooking and the household work and who had come down with a fever. It was almost a relief when, on the morning of December 15, there was a knock on the door and Cecala and Cina entered just as yet another snowstorm broke. They had brought more food, and a cloth bundle protruded from one of Cecala’s pockets.

“Don Antonio,” Cecala said, “come upstairs. We must talk.”

They went up to the room where the press was, and Cecala unwrapped Milone’s printing plates. “Here is the work that we must execute,” he said. “Here are the plates. Look at them. Without anyone knowing it we will all soon be rich.”

Comito knew at once that this was counterfeiting and that he was in far worse trouble than he had imagined. “This is not my work,” the printer protested helplessly. “It is very difficult work to execute. I do not even know how to prepare the press.”

“You have to do it,” Cecala rejoined, his voice hardening. “You must do it. Your life will be taken and none shall know why or when if you do not. You will never be found.”

Comito did his best to remain calm. The plates were too small for the press, he explained. They could not be printed unless they were mounted on blocks, and there were no blocks in the house.

Cecala seemed to think that this was mere dissembling. “It is time we perhaps told you more of who we are and how we work,” he replied.

There are twenty of us who have organized this affair. Others higher up in famous places know of it. They will receive their share. Should anything slip and we get into trouble there will be thousands of dollars for lawyers and we will be freed.

We will respect you as one of us, and Katrina shall have respect at all times. When we have made millions, she will be sent to Italy with money of her own. But you, Don Antonio, you will stay with us for life.

We are big, bigger than you know. … You will know perhaps, later on, about the many branches of our society, and how it is possible for us to do things in one part of the country or world and have the other half of the affair carried out so far away that no suspicion can possibly come to us. After you have obeyed and seen some inkling of our power, you will be glad to become one of us.

The printer listened miserably as Cecala went on. The Sicilian talked for about ten minutes, setting out what was required and how it should be done. A hundred thousand sheets of paper had already been purchased, in various qualities and different sizes. The correct inks had also been procured. He himself would help to mix them.

Comito could only sit and nod his head. He would do his best, he said.

IT TOOK FIVE MORE DAYS
to fetch the blocks, and when Cecala returned to the stone house he had another stranger with him.

The newcomer was tall and muscular, with quartz-flecked hair: in his mid-forties, Comito guessed, and “apparently a Sicilian of high birth,” since he dressed well and wore expensive jewelry. Cecala introduced him as Zu Vincenzo—”Uncle Vincent”—and explained that he had come to help with the printing of the notes. The newcomer had once run a small bank on Elizabeth Street. He was “very capable,” Cecala added, and could be relied on for advice when he and Cina were not there. Zu Vincenzo brought the number of people living in the house to six.

The arrival of the blocks meant that there was no reason to delay the printing any longer, and the first proofs were struck off that night—though only after Comito had protested one last time and felt the full force of Cina’s violent temper. The men worked steadily until dawn on Christmas Eve, and it was only when the sun came up that they at last found the correct shade of green for the Canadian five-dollar note. That afternoon, Cecala and Cina selected the best of the samples and departed for New York, where the notes were to be “shown to persons qualified to judge them,” and three days later they were back, this time with orders to print new proofs in a darker color.

Work on test printings of the counterfeits continued throughout the first week of January 1909. To Comito’s relief, Cecala and Cina stayed away from the stone house for much of the time, leaving Giglio and Zu Vincenzo to help him with the work. The three men soon settled into an unvarying routine—mixing inks, running proofs, adjusting the press—and the work proceeded largely in silence. The few conversations that Comito did overhear only encouraged him to say as little as possible. “They would tell me stories that made me shiver,” the printer recalled, “laugh roughly and tell how much [money] they had frightened from someone, or how neatly they evaded the
carabinieri
in the old country, or the fool police here.”

Comito knew by now that he had been brought to Highland by a well-organized group of criminals. He knew, from Cina’s bragging and the stories Giglio and Zu Vincenzo told, that most of the men holding him had police records in Sicily. But he still had no clear idea of who exactly the men were or to which society or gang they owed allegiance. He guessed that they were members of the Black Hand, the group his uncle had warned him so adamantly against, and saw and heard nothing to change that opinion until one day in January when Giglio was absent and Zu Vincenzo told the printer more about the story of his life.

“While working,” Comito would recall,

Uncle Vincent told a thing that I shall never forget. He said that he had been a cattle raiser in his native town. That one day while in the country he had been approached by two men who stated that they desired to buy some oxen. He said that he wanted to see whether they had much money, so stated that he would not talk business unless he knew they meant business. One of them thereupon showed some money. Without a word of warning, Uncle Vincent stated that he threw his rifle to his shoulder and shot the man dead in his tracks. The companion had run when he had fired and he followed him, chasing him some distance. Upon catching up with him, as the man kneeled and cried for mercy, he swung his rifle by the barrel and “scattered the fool’s brains all over the field.” Having killed them both, he returned to his first victim and rifled his clothes, taking 250 lire from the body.

Having committed a double murder for such a paltry sum, Zu Vincenzo had little option but to flee his village. He wrote his family a letter, explaining what had happened and telling them not to worry about him, then took a train to Palermo. In the harbor, Vincenzo found a sailing boat skipper willing to take him to Tunis for one hundred of his 250 lire, and there he stole sufficient money to book a passage first to Tokyo, then to Liverpool.

It was, Zu Vincenzo told Comito, not until

March 1902 [that] he sailed from there to New Orleans. He knew that on arriving here he would have no trouble, as he had so many friends who would help him because of what he knew about them. In fact he explained that this was one of the greatest secrets of success: “Find out something about someone and then hold it over their heads and you need never work.”

I was tremendously interested in this story and asked: “Have you worked while you have been in America these last six or seven years?”

“Never,” he stated emphatically. “Nor do I ever expect to. It is too easy to live in this country without work. If I knew the man who invented ‘work,’ I would kill him with pleasure.”