The Mob and the City

Published 2014 by Prometheus Books

The Mob and the City: The Hidden History of How the Mafia Captured New York
. Copyright © 2014 by C. Alexander Hortis. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, digital, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, or conveyed via the Internet or a website without prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

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Cover photo of Paul “The Waiter” Ricca, Sylvester Agoglia, Charles “Lucky” Luciano, and Meyer Lansky used by permission of the John Binder Collection

Jacket design by Grace M. Conti-Zilsberger

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The Library of Congress has cataloged the printed edition as follows:

Hortis, C. Alexander, 1972–

The mob and the city : the hidden history of how the mafia captured New York / by C. Alexander Hortis.

        pages cm

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN 978-1-61614-923-9 (hardback)

ISBN 978-1-61614-924-6 (ebook)

1. Mafia—New York (State)—New York—History. 2. Organized crime—New York (State)—New York—History. I. Title.

HV6452.N72H67 2014
364.10609747’1—dc23

2013049314

Printed in the United States of America

Foreword by Dr. James B. Jacobs

Acknowledgments

Introduction:
The Godfather
vs. New York History

PART 1. NEW YORK CITY THROUGH PROHIBITION

1. A City Built for the Mob

2. Prohibition and the Rise of the Sicilians

PART 2. TAKING GOTHAM: THE 1930S AND ’40S

3. The Mafia Rebellion of 1928–1931 and the Fall of the Boss of Bosses

4. The Racketeer Cometh: How the Mob Infiltrated Labor Unions

5. The Mafia and the Drug Trade

6. The Mob Nightlife

PART 3. THE MOBBED-UP METROPOLIS: THE 1950S

7. The Lives of Wiseguys

8. Mouthpieces for the Mob: Crooked Cops, Mob Lawyers, and Director Hoover

9. The Assassinations of 1957

10. Apalachin

Conclusion: New York's Mafia

Notes

Select Bibliography

Index

The book you are about to read is an important contribution to New York City history and, given New York's importance, to the urban history of the United States. I take much delight in it because Alex Hortis was my student and coauthor at New York University School of Law in the late 1990s.

Much has been written about the Mafia and about New York City's Mafia families. However, Hortis shows that much of what has been written is wrong. Perhaps the greatest contribution of this highly readable tome is its debunking of many Mafia myths, for example, that Mafia members did not deal in drugs and did not inform on one another. His revisionist history of the so-called Castellammarese War is one of the most impressive achievements of this meticulous primary-source-based history.

In attempting to integrate New York City's Mafia history with the city's demographic, social, economic, and political history, Hortis is absolutely on the right track. He begins by showing that the evolution of the Mafia in New York is very much a story of ethnic succession. The Italians did not invent organized crime, but they brought it to a new level. Italian immigration followed both Jewish and Irish immigration, and Italians followed both of those groups into rackets like drugs, gambling, and labor racketeering. But the Italian mobsters were not nearly as monolithic and ethnocentric as other writers have assumed. Their intra- and intergroup relations were complex and important. Their ability to forge coalitions and overcome factionalism was utterly necessary for their remarkable successes.

Hortis presents a fascinating look at Mafia members’ social lives, particularly their participation in New York's nightlife at the most famous nightclubs like the Copacabana (owned by Frank Costello), where they rubbed shoulders with famous sports figures, entertainers, businessmen, and politicians. People went to the Copa to meet and be seen with the Mafia bosses; this tells us much about how Mafia members were regarded by and integrated with the city's
elite. Also fascinating and new (at least to me) are Hortis's accounts of Mafia members’ ownership of gay bars and clubs and the participation of some mobsters in the gay scene.

The Mafia carried on the role of its Jewish and Irish predecessors, connecting the underworld (especially the world of vice) with the upperworld (business and labor). Hortis does a great job documenting and explaining how Italian-American organized crime members infiltrated or strong-armed their way into many New York City union locals. They used labor power to attract employer bribes or to extort employer payoffs. They then leveraged their union power to create and police employer cartels. And they took business interests in many companies that participated in the racketeer-ridden industries. The history of New York City's economy, especially in construction, seaborne and airborne cargo, and wholesale food markets is thoroughly permeated by the influence of the Mafia.

Hortis also provides some tantalizing clues as to the influence of the Mafia in politics. There is no question about the fact that the Mafia was highly integrated into Tammany Hall. Mob bosses contributed money and other forms of support to their favored politicians. In return, they obtained a good deal of immunity from interference with their illegal activities. Even after the demise of Tammany, mob bosses continued to be power brokers who exercised influence over politicians and political events. Much of their power stemmed from their positions in the unions.

The beginning of the Mafia's decline can be traced back to the early 1970s. After the 1972 death of FBI director J. Edgar Hoover, the FBI reinvented itself, changing from an internal security (anti-subversives, anti-Communist) agency to a modern-day law enforcement agency. By the late 1970s and early 1980s, the FBI had settled on control of organized crime as a target worthy of the attention of the nation's most important and competent law enforcement agency. Since then, federal, state, and local law enforcement agencies have decimated the Mafia's ranks. Yet remnants of the Mafia continue to exist and continue to engage in many of the rackets that Hortis documents in this tome.

James B. Jacobs
Warren E. Burger Professor of Law
New York University School of Law

Researching this book was terrific fun. The book was built on primary sources, so I must first acknowledge the archivists. I am particularly grateful to Leonora Gidlund, Marcia Kirk, Kenneth Cobb, and Dwight Johnson of the New York Municipal Archives; William Davis of the National Archives in Washington, DC; Michael Desmond of the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library; Keith Swaney of the New York State Archives; Ellen Belcher of the John Jay College of Criminal Justice; Mattie Taormina of Stanford University; George Rugg of the University of Notre Dame; Lori Birrell of the University of Rochester; Michael Oliveira of the ONE National Gay & Lesbian Archives; and Patrizia Sione and Kathryn Dowgiewicz of the Kheel Center for Labor-Management Documentation and Archives. Special thanks to Chris Magee for locating cases at the National Archives at Kansas City. I also appreciate the help of the staffs of the Enoch Pratt Free Library in Baltimore, Maryland, and the Library of Congress in Washington, DC.

New and old friends contributed to this book. Christina M. Gentile was my Italian-language translator, and Ted Pertzborn was the graphics artist for the maps. I received support and assistance from Ryan Artis, John Binder, David Critchley, Josh Dowlut, Mario Hortis, Jacqueline Janowich, Meirong Liu, Will Meyerhofer, Arthur Nash, Lennert van't Riet, and Nathan Ward. I would also like to thank Greg Cross, Chris Mellott, and Colleen Mallon, my former colleagues, for allowing me to work part-time while completing the book. My agent Scott Mendel is the best
consigliere
anyone could have in the publishing world.

Prometheus Books is a wonderful place for authors. Editor-in-Chief Steven L. Mitchell improved the book with his editing. Grace M. Conti-Zilsberger designed the beautiful cover. Thanks also to Brian McMahon, Lisa Michalski, Mark Hall, and Melissa Raé Shofner.

My high school teacher Mr. Gerald Gerads first turned me on to history,
and Professor Peter Rachleff introduced me to primary-source research. Professor James Jacobs of New York University School of Law, the nation's foremost scholar on the mob, started me on the path to this book back in 1998. He has been extraordinary generous over the years. This book could not have been finished without Thomas Hunt and Richard Warner. Tom Hunt contributed his eye for detail and shared sources from his own book
DiCarlo: Buffalo's First Family of Crime
. My honorary coauthor Rick Warner read the entire manuscript and offered invaluable suggestions.

Above all, I thank my parents, Bati and Linda, Mom and Kent. They have shown me the meaning of unconditional love.

When the cell doors clanged shut on Giuseppe Morello, Ignazio Lupo, and dozens of their men in the Atlanta Federal Penitentiary in 1910, their gang
should
have just dissolved into the streets of New York City. The Morello Family was just another struggling band of rogues, its modest numbers cut in half by convictions for a reckless counterfeiting scheme that had drawn the ire of the United States Secret Service.
¹
The Sicilians were small fish in New York's underworld. The Irish mob enjoyed natural ties to the docks and police force; African-American gangsters held sway in black Harlem and San Juan Hill; and Jewish organized crime was far stronger throughout the city.