Lansky had enjoyed a long relationship with Batista, even before he took the Cuban to his hotel room to show him a set of suitcases stuffed with a reported $6 million, just a sort of good-faith demonstration to prove how easily the boys could set up a gambling empire that would make them and Batista rich. Batista knew Lansky was a producer; he had in the past enjoyed the fruits of a rewarding business by supplying Lansky with a steady flow of molasses to keep a mob bootleg operation functioning.
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Batista considered Lansky a "genius," a fact he repeatedly demonstrated by laughing off the efforts of other big-time mobsters to muscle in on Lansky. When Santo Trafficante, the Mafia boss of Tampa, Florida, tried to set up his own casinos on the island, Batista waved him off coldly, saying, "You have to get approval from the 'Little Man' [Lansky] before you can get a license on this island."
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Magnanimously, Lansky cut Trafficante in for a small piece of the action, more to demonstrate his power with Batista than to placate Trafficante. That hold continued even after Batista fled. Batista kept hoping that Castro would fall so that he and Lansky could return to Cuba. Needless to say, Batista would never do without Lansky who made taking bribes so easy. The Little Man's aide, Doc Stacher, handled the couriers who took all the gambling profits and Batista's cash bribes direct to Switzerland. Stacher exercised the right to make deposits to Batista's account but the Cuban dictator alone had the authority to withdraw funds from the account.
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Obviously Batista never wanted for money during the remaining dozen years of his life. And undoubtedly he often considered the truism that if all his supporters had been as remarkably efficient as Lansky, no upstart like Fidel Castro would ever have overthrown him.
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Battaglia, Sam "Teets" (19081973): Chicago Outfit's narcotics overlord
For many years during the reign of Sam Giancana as boss of the Chicago Outfit, Sam "Teets" Battaglia was regarded as his heir-apparent. Battaglia was also considered Giancana's narcotics overlord, belying the claim by some, including informer Joe Valachi, that Chicago had an edict against dealing in drugs. The fact was that narcotics was so important in mob economics that traffickers had to have approval to operate. Battaglia dispensed or withheld such rights and permission.
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Battaglia and Giancana had climbed a long road up from Chicago's notorious juvenile 42 Gang of the late 1920s. Battaglia succeeded because he always exhibited the same vicious outlook as his mentor. In 1924, at age 16, he was arrested for burglary. In all he accumulated more than 25 arrests for burglary, larceny, robbery, assault and attempted murder. He was considered the prime suspect in at least seven homicides.
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The simple recitation of Battaglia's criminal record does not capture his essential zaniness. Battaglianicknamed "Teets" because of his muscular chestfirst came to the public's attention for a bizarre crime in 1930. He was arrested for robbing at gunpoint the wife of the mayor of Chicago, Mrs. William Hale Thompson, of her jewels worth $15,500. Rubbing it in, Teets marched off with the gun and badge of her policeman chauffeur. However, a hitch developed in the police case when a positive identification could not be made and Teets insisted he was watching a movie when the robbery occurred. He also produced a half dozen witnesses who said they were watching him watch the movie.
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The robbery took place on November 17 and until the end of the year Teets was a busy criminal, being involved in one fatal killing and one attempted killing. Such remarkable exploits attracted the favorable attention of Capone mobsters and, like Giancana, Teets was on the rise. By the 1950s he was involved in, besides narcotics, mob extortion, burglary, fraud and murders. He was also the king of much of the mob's loan shark activities and sat as a "judge" in "debtors court" held in the basement of Casa Madrid. Here Battaglia heard the cases of delinquent juice victims and meted out the appropriate penalties, either severe beatings or death.
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Battaglia, a hoodlum with far more brawn than brain, became a major success in organized crime. He was a millionaire several times over and owned a luxurious horse-breeding farm and country estate in Kane County, Illinois. In the mid-1960s when the elders in the Chicago Outfit, Paul Ricca and Tony Accardo, decided that Giancana had to be downgraded in authority because of the intense heat he was taking, Giancana wanted Battaglia named as his successor. In that fashion, Giancana knew, he would maintain effective control of the organization. However, Ricca and Accardo decided they favored instead the duo of Cicero boss Joey Aiuppa and Jackie the Lackey Cerone.
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The mob infighting on the succession resolved itself in 1967 when Teets was finally ushered off to prison for 15 years on an extortion conviction. He died six years later. It has been suggested by some crime experts that there was no way Sam Giancana could be forcibly removed from the Chicago crime scene until three of his murderous followers had first vanished. The trio were Teets Battaglia, Fifi Buccieri and Mad Sam DeStefano. All three died in 1973, Mad Sam violently. Giancana was murdered in 1975.
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