The First Family Part 3

Whether Matranga retained any active involvement with crime on the waterfront remains obscure; certainly he was never convicted of any offense. Nor was much more heard for several decades of the New Orleans Mafia, although dark rumors still swirled out of the bayous from time to time: word of an Italian plot to murder all the officials in New Orleans in 1890, concern over a spate of eleven unsolved murders of Italians five years later. It may be that the lynchings disrupted the Stoppaglieri's operations, or at least made the gang more cautious. Whatever the truth, though, the United States had received its first glimpse of the Honored Society at work.

THE HENNESSY MURDER sparked the biggest Mafia scare of the century and by far the most influential. It cemented belief in the society's existence among thousands of Americans. It also greatly increased hatred and fear of Sicilians throughout the country. In the coming decade, a large proportion of all the violent crimes committed by Italians in the United States would be routinely attributed to the Mafia, and as a result there was more violence and discrimination against Italians. Eight Sicilians were lynched in Louisiana in the 1890s, another three in 1896, and five more three years later. There were minor scares in Denver in 1892, in Milwaukee in 1897, and in San Francisco in 1898. sparked the biggest Mafia scare of the century and by far the most influential. It cemented belief in the society's existence among thousands of Americans. It also greatly increased hatred and fear of Sicilians throughout the country. In the coming decade, a large proportion of all the violent crimes committed by Italians in the United States would be routinely attributed to the Mafia, and as a result there was more violence and discrimination against Italians. Eight Sicilians were lynched in Louisiana in the 1890s, another three in 1896, and five more three years later. There were minor scares in Denver in 1892, in Milwaukee in 1897, and in San Francisco in 1898.

In Boston, two Italian policemen received threats from a "Mafia" that claimed to have forty-five members in the city. Lieutenant John Wheeler of the Chicago police said he was certain, from personal experience, that "a branch of the Mafia society" existed in his city-an opinion that was echoed by A. L. Drummond, the storied former head of the Secret Service. There were still plenty of policemen, judges, and reporters who took a different view, and evidence that proved the existence of a "Mafia society," rather than merely suggesting it, was difficult to find. In Chicago, Lieutenant Wheeler's boss, Inspector Michael Lewis, insisted that he had not "the slightest reason to suspect the existence of the Mafia in Chicago," and Oscar Durante, who edited the local Italian American daily, went further. "This is all sheer nonsense, stupidity, imbecility," the newspaperman exploded. "Every time a drunken row among Italians occurs, the people and the press cry 'Mafia.' There is no such organization and never was."

Only in New York was there persuasive evidence for the existence of what The New York Times The New York Times described a few years later as "the most secret and terrible organization in the world;" only in New York were the police disposed, for a while at least, to believe that there were Mafiosi in the city. Evidence that members of at least one Sicilian Mafia family were active in New York dated back a good way, too-to the spring of 1884, in fact, when both the Police Department and the Secret Service were alerted to the activities of two brothers named Farach. described a few years later as "the most secret and terrible organization in the world;" only in New York were the police disposed, for a while at least, to believe that there were Mafiosi in the city. Evidence that members of at least one Sicilian Mafia family were active in New York dated back a good way, too-to the spring of 1884, in fact, when both the Police Department and the Secret Service were alerted to the activities of two brothers named Farach.

Raymond and Carmelo Farach had come to New York from Palermo, though at such an early date (the summer of 1853) that they were probably not themselves Mafiosi. But the police in Brooklyn, where they lived, were sure that the pair had some secret source of income. Raymond Farach was an impressive-looking, educated man who spoke excellent English, stood six feet tall, and was immaculately groomed and dressed, from his cultivated side whiskers to his shoes-more than would be expected of a man who owned and ran a little photographic studio. His younger brother, Carmelo, was similarly well turned out, despite earning his living as a barber and co-owner of a failing cigar store. Raymond undoubtedly had criminal connections. But it was Carmelo Farach who came to the notice of the police first when, early in April, his body was discovered in a remote field on Staten Island. He had been stabbed through the heart.

Farach's death was certainly peculiar, as the Brooklyn Daily Eagle Brooklyn Daily Eagle did not hesitate to point out. For one thing, it was written off as a suicide at first, even though the surgeon who examined the corpse determined that Farach had cuts to his face and had been stabbed from behind. For another, the body was found with a sword cane by its right hand, though Farach was left-handed. Finally, when detectives went to talk to the dead man's business partner, Antonio Flaccomio, they discovered, by inspecting his handful of possessions, that he had recently scoured and cleaned his clothes with acid. The police took much more interest in Flaccomio thereafter, and in time they located a witness on Staten Island who had seen Farach talking with a man who answered his partner's description only a minute or two before his death. Several more testified to the perilous state of Farach's cigar business and to having observed him fighting with Flaccomio over money. Another man had seen Farach and Flaccomio board the Staten Island ferry on the morning of the stabbing. did not hesitate to point out. For one thing, it was written off as a suicide at first, even though the surgeon who examined the corpse determined that Farach had cuts to his face and had been stabbed from behind. For another, the body was found with a sword cane by its right hand, though Farach was left-handed. Finally, when detectives went to talk to the dead man's business partner, Antonio Flaccomio, they discovered, by inspecting his handful of possessions, that he had recently scoured and cleaned his clothes with acid. The police took much more interest in Flaccomio thereafter, and in time they located a witness on Staten Island who had seen Farach talking with a man who answered his partner's description only a minute or two before his death. Several more testified to the perilous state of Farach's cigar business and to having observed him fighting with Flaccomio over money. Another man had seen Farach and Flaccomio board the Staten Island ferry on the morning of the stabbing.

Much of this information was hard-won. A Brooklyn barber who was one of the last to see the dead man alive refused to say a word to reporters, stating: "I don't want my name to be put in the papers because those Sicilians are a bad, treacherous lot, and my life would not be safe for a moment if it were known I had said anything either way." (The newsmen, who had little time for Italians, printed his name anyway.) Raymond Farach was also reticent. "Italians that come from Palermo are, as a rule, the worst men in Italy," he told the police. "They will knife a person as soon as look at him." Few were surprised when, at the inquest into Farach's death, the coroner's jury called the case murder but said there was too little evidence for any formal charges to be brought.

That was the last that was heard of Antonio Flaccomio for more than two years. The chief suspect in the Farach case left New York soon after the inquest and traveled widely through the United States-to Buffalo, Louisville, Chicago, and New Orleans.

Flaccomio did not return to Brooklyn until July 1886, when he paid an unexpected call on Raymond Farach-who later said Flaccomio had confessed and begged permission to return to New York, an odd thing for anyone to ask of a moderately prosperous small businessman. According to the Daily Eagle Daily Eagle, Raymond told his visitor he could not live in Brooklyn ("If he does, and I again encounter him, I will kill him!"), and Flaccomio had gone instead to Little Italy. Certainly it was in Manhattan, outside Cooper Union on St. Mark's Place, that Carmelo Farach's murderer met his own death two years later.

Flaccomio had spent the evening of October 14, 1888, playing cards with a group of friends. Walking home, he was suddenly attacked: Two men rushed up to him on a street corner, and while his companions grappled with one, the other pulled out a wicked-looking bread knife and stabbed him in the chest. Flaccomio had just sufficient time to mutter, "I am killed" before he crumpled to the pavement. In the ensuing confusion, his murderers escaped. They had been recognized, however, and-between themselves-the dead man's friends agreed they were Italians.

The Cooper Union stabbing was not the sort of case New York's police would normally have solved. It was a purely Sicilian affair, and the NYPD had a poor record of tackling Italian crime. Only two of its detectives spoke the language-Joseph Petrosino was still seven years from his promotion at this point-and the half-dozen witnesses, all of whom were friends of the victim, had sworn a solemn vow to deal with the matter themselves rather than divulge the murderers' ident.i.ty to the authorities. Yet the Flaccomio killing was rapidly investigated and, to the surprise of most of Little Italy, apparently just as quickly solved.

The man responsible for this unexpected turn of events was Inspector Thomas Byrnes. Irish, forty-six years old, with thinning hair, a s.h.a.ggy mustache, and eyes that glinted like steel knitting needles, Byrnes was the head of New York's Detective Bureau. Renowned as the most brilliant policeman in the city, Byrnes was an innovator who reformed the department's record department, introduced the Rogues' Gallery, which collected crooks' mug shots, and perfected the brutal but productive methods of the third degree. He was also rich, having, with the help of stock tips provided by Wall Street insiders, a.s.sembled a portfolio of property and shares worth seventy times his five-thousand-dollar salary.

Byrnes had taken an interest in the Cooper Union case for a couple of reasons. The first was official: Flaccomio-quite unknown to his friends-had been a police informer, one of the few the NYPD possessed in Little Italy. He had recently provided the Detective Bureau with evidence against a fellow Sicilian and apparently provided information about the Mafia as well. Byrnes's second reason was personal. He had built much of his reputation for exceptional police work on well-timed disclosures to the press and saw, in Flaccomio's murder, the prospect of further headlines, not least because he thought that he could crack the case.

Byrnes's first move was to arrest the witnesses. He had three of the men who had been with Flaccomio when he was killed locked up in New York's grimmest prison, the Tombs, on Centre Street in lower Manhattan. Three days' confinement in the jail's tiny, dripping cell blocks yielded names. The killers, Byrnes informed the press a few days later, had been two brothers from Palermo named Carlo and Vincenzo Quarteraro. It was too late to capture Carlo, who had had slipped out of the country disguised as a priest, but Vincenzo Quarteraro was arrested and then sent for trial.

Byrnes felt sure he had his man-so sure that he supplied New York's newspapers with the details of his case. He had been struck, he said, by the intelligence and criminal abilities of the men whom he had locked up in the Tombs, but more so by the details of the ruthless fraternity that they described. "They are rather intelligent and have received some education," Byrnes told The New York Times The New York Times.

They are fugitives from their native country, having been engaged there in various crimes and offenses. The criminal cla.s.ses in Sicily are banded together in a secret society known as "The Maffia," all the members of which are pledged to protect each other against the officers of the law. If one of the society commits a crime, all the other members are bound to s.h.i.+eld and keep the crime secret under pain of death. The members of this society are chiefly forgers, counterfeiters and a.s.sa.s.sins. Murder with some of these men is simply a pastime. They have no pity, and think nothing of killing any one who stands in their way or betrays their secrets.

How much of this intelligence had been wrung from Byrnes's interviews is difficult to say. The inspector may have had some of his details from other sources, perhaps even from newspaper accounts of Sicily. But his knowledge of contemporary Mafia activities in the United States was detailed enough to suggest a firsthand source of information. There were, he explained to the Times's Times's reporter, "two princ.i.p.al headquarters of this society in this country-one in this city and the other in New Orleans." The two groups were connected, so that "members of the society who commit a serious crime in this city find refuge among friends in the South, and vice versa." New York's Mafiosi were also well enough organized to deal with unreliable a.s.sociates. Flaccomio had been marked for death when it was discovered he had pa.s.sed information to the authorities, and the dead man had known all about the danger he was in-a few days before his murder he had sat down to talk with his thirteen-year-old son, explained that he would inherit the family fruit store if he, Flaccomio, died, and asked the boy to take good care of his sister. reporter, "two princ.i.p.al headquarters of this society in this country-one in this city and the other in New Orleans." The two groups were connected, so that "members of the society who commit a serious crime in this city find refuge among friends in the South, and vice versa." New York's Mafiosi were also well enough organized to deal with unreliable a.s.sociates. Flaccomio had been marked for death when it was discovered he had pa.s.sed information to the authorities, and the dead man had known all about the danger he was in-a few days before his murder he had sat down to talk with his thirteen-year-old son, explained that he would inherit the family fruit store if he, Flaccomio, died, and asked the boy to take good care of his sister.

Coming from a policeman of Thomas Byrnes's stature, these disclosures were significant. The newspapers that reported the interview saw no reason to doubt them, and when Vincenzo Quarteraro came to trial at the end of March 1889, the same papers ran stories under the headline THE "MAFIA" MURDER THE "MAFIA" MURDER. Unfortunately for the police, however, the publicity given Byrnes's statements had concealed essential weaknesses in their case, the most important of which was that there was no real evidence against Quarteraro other than the statements of the victim's friends, all of whom were criminals themselves. Even John Goff, the a.s.sistant district attorney charged with prosecuting the case, admitted that it would be difficult to secure a conviction. "He says that if the charge was larceny he would recommend the dismissal of the indictment on the evidence, but as it is murder he does not care to take the responsibility," the Times Times observed. observed.

Goff had found one witness to testify to the Mafia's existence: "an Italian whose death was ordered for having given information to the Government ... A scarred cheek shows that an effort was made to carry the Mafia's decree into execution." Against that, though, Quarteraro mustered a formidable array of testimony, American as well as Italian, to prove that he had been miles away at the time of the killing. Goff's evidence, on the other had, was supplied by a succession of lowlifes-"the sc.u.m of Sicilian society"-who failed to impress either judge or jury. Quarteraro's attorney openly accused the three men Byrnes had locked up in the Tombs of having committed the murder themselves.

The Sicilian's eventual acquittal seems to have come as no surprise to those who had actually watched the trial, but it was certainly an unwelcome blow to Byrnes. The inspector had staked a small part of his immense credibility on Quarteraro's guilt, and the jury's verdict left him scrambling to distance himself from his earlier statements. "As a cla.s.s," the inspector told the New York Tribune New York Tribune, "Italians do not seem to be dangerous to the public of this city." Most were actually law-abiding; there were "no portraits of Italian thieves in the Rogues' Gallery." When the Hennessy shooting brought the Mafia back into the news a year later, Byrnes declared that while Sicilian killers could certainly wreak havoc in the distant South, "no band of a.s.sa.s.sins such as the Mafia could be allowed to perpetrate murders in New-York."

Inspector Byrnes's volte-face was an important milestone in Mafia history. The great detective possessed the prestige to sway New York's newsmen and New York public opinion. Had Vincenzo Quarteraro been convicted, the papers would have reported Byrnes's triumph and approved his verdict on the Mafia. The idea that members of the fraternity were living in New York might easily have been commonly accepted a year or more before Giuseppe Morello so much as set foot in the United States, and the police, particularly the Detective Bureau, would almost certainly have taken a much tougher stance against Sicilian crime and perhaps even have recruited more Italian detectives. Courts, too, would likely have been more willing to convict suspected Mafiosi than they were after the Quarteraro verdict.

As it was, however, the consequences of New York's first and least-remembered Mafia trial were very different. The police grew more wary of Italian crime. Newspapers grew more skeptical. Most important of all, Byrnes-the most famous, the most celebrated, the most powerful detective in the country-more or less washed his hands of Little Italy and its inscrutable inhabitants. "Let them go ahead and kill each other," the inspector was reported to have said-and whether he did say it or not, it was a view widely held in the NYPD. Thenceforth, for several decades, the police would pay far less attention to crimes committed in the Italian quarter than they would to similar offenses reported from elsewhere in the city. Murders, bombings, public outrages-all these were still investigated, naturally, though it was relatively seldom they were solved. But more minor crimes, even crimes of violence, received short shrift, and Italian criminals who preyed solely on Italians went unmolested much of the time.

The Hennessy and Flaccomio trials, between them, shaped America's view of the Mafia for more than a decade-the former more than the latter, for Quarteraro's trial attracted only a tiny fraction of the coverage accorded to the events in New Orleans. But if Vincenzo Quarteraro's acquittal went largely unremarked on in the country as a whole, it did have important consequences in New York itself, and one was to make it easier for the earliest Mafiosi in the city to operate unhindered.

For Morello, that was very welcome news, because-for Morello-crime was about to pay.

CHAPTER 5.

THE CLUTCH HAND.

GIUSEPPE MORELLO HAD RETURNED TO NEW YORK FLUSH WITH the money saved from a year in the sugar fields of Louisiana and two more of sharecropping in Texas. It probably amounted to a good sum for the day-five hundred dollars would be a reasonable estimate. That would have been enough to pay for a decent apartment in the Italian quarter and keep the whole family for a year, or it might have provided the seed capital for a small business. That Morello and the Terranovas did not possess sufficient cash for both purposes is suggested by their choice of residence; as late as 1900, Bernardo Terranova still lived at 123 East 4th Street, in a small apartment in a poor tenement district, and Morello in a room at the foot of Second Avenue at East Houston Street, one of the most densely populated slums in all Manhattan. Most of the family's savings were poured instead into an ornamental plastering business that Terranova opened in the Italian quarter. For the next few months, Morello helped his stepfather when he could-as did Vincenzo, Nicola, and Ciro, after school. At the same time, Morello began to plow what remained of the family's money into business ventures of his own. the money saved from a year in the sugar fields of Louisiana and two more of sharecropping in Texas. It probably amounted to a good sum for the day-five hundred dollars would be a reasonable estimate. That would have been enough to pay for a decent apartment in the Italian quarter and keep the whole family for a year, or it might have provided the seed capital for a small business. That Morello and the Terranovas did not possess sufficient cash for both purposes is suggested by their choice of residence; as late as 1900, Bernardo Terranova still lived at 123 East 4th Street, in a small apartment in a poor tenement district, and Morello in a room at the foot of Second Avenue at East Houston Street, one of the most densely populated slums in all Manhattan. Most of the family's savings were poured instead into an ornamental plastering business that Terranova opened in the Italian quarter. For the next few months, Morello helped his stepfather when he could-as did Vincenzo, Nicola, and Ciro, after school. At the same time, Morello began to plow what remained of the family's money into business ventures of his own.

Whether the man who had played such a prominent part in the affairs of the Corleone Fratuzzi really meant to live an honest life in the United States remains something of a mystery, but the available evidence suggests he did, at least at first. There was, after all, the lingering threat posed by Morello's 1894 conviction in Messina, and the six-year sentence waiting to be served should he ever be deported to Sicily; then there were the attempts, apparently sincere, to wrest a living from the land in Texas and Louisiana. There was never any suggestion of criminal activities in those years, though there may well have been some after the family returned to New York-even five hundred dollars did not go all that far in Manhattan in those days. Certainly, if Morello really meant to start fresh in the United States, that ambition did not survive the failure of four successive attempts to make his mark as a legitimate businessman.

The Clutch Hand's first acquisition, in the spring of 1897, was a coal store in Little Italy. It lasted only a year. After that, Morello ran an Italian saloon on 13th Street and another on Stanton Street that had to be closed only six months after it opened "on account of no business." Business wasn't much better up on 13th Street, and the second bar was also sold. His most ambitious venture was a date factory that employed fifteen or twenty people, but this too swiftly failed. Morello, Ciro Terranova said, "kept this factory for about six or eight months, but used to lose on it." By the spring of 1899, the money was mostly gone, and the bars and factories-Terranova's plaster contracting company excepted-were sold or closed.

It must have been then, sometime in 1898 or early 1899, that Morello returned to his old trade as a counterfeiter. There was, after all, something irresistible in solving money problems simply by printing money, and the Clutch Hand had the right sort of acquaintances among the criminals of the Sicilian community; he maintained a wide correspondence with exiled Corleonesi in every part of the country, exchanging letters with men as far away as Kansas City, New Orleans, Belle Rose in Louisiana, and even distant Seattle. In New York, on the streets of Little Italy, there were hundreds more men who had the necessary skills.

For the New York office of the Secret Service, led then by a hugely experienced veteran by the name of William P. Hazen, the first faint whiff of trouble came as early as the spring of 1899. Agents in Boston tracking the activities of another Italian counterfeiting gang, the Mastropoles, had begun intercepting letters sent between its members. That March they found one postmarked New York, which, when opened, proved to have been sent by Morello. There was nothing especially incriminating in the letter itself, but when dealing with Italian gangs it was standard practice to forward this sort of information to the agency's headquarters in Was.h.i.+ngton, D.C. There it was entered, checked, cross-referenced against existing lists of suspects, and then forwarded to sister offices for further investigation.

John Wilkie, the director of the Secret Service, took care of the last part of the job himself, dictating a note to Hazen requesting that an agent be sent down to Second Avenue to search the new suspect out. Hazen a.s.signed the task to Special Operative Frank Brown, and Brown caught a streetcar to the East Side the same afternoon. The agent located Morello's address but could find no trace of the Clutch Hand, nor anyone who would admit to knowing him. The matter did not seem especially important at the time; Morello was just another name, and there were always dozens to be checked. Brown reported his failure to Hazen, who filed a two-line report to Wilkie and then rapidly forgot about it. It was an error he and several other people would live to regret.

SEVERAL MILES UPTOWN, in a small apartment on the first floor of 329 East 106th Street, Giuseppe Morello was busy installing a small printing press in an empty room. It was an old, unsophisticated machine, certainly not one capable of producing exact copies of Treasury bills, but it was the best he had been able to obtain. Perfect reproductions were unnecessary anyway. The Clutch Hand's counterfeits would be pa.s.sed at night in busy places-saloons, gambling houses, oyster bars-where they would be subjected to no more than a cursory examination. They would not fool a bank or a policeman, but they were never meant to.

Morello had moved to the Italian enclave in East Harlem just in time, apparently more by luck than judgment, and probably because he needed a larger base. The press had to be positioned where the sound of forged notes being struck would not easily be overheard, and there were printing plates and sundry other items of equipment that were far too precious to be left unguarded. All had to be stored in the apartment, which would also act as a home and the headquarters of several members of the gang.

The counterfeiters were an odd, mixed bunch. Morello had located an Italian from New Jersey who knew how to make printing plates, and a young Sicilian named Calogero Maggiore to take charge of disposing of the notes. Maggiore, who looked younger than his twenty years, had a job ironing s.h.i.+rts in a laundry and no criminal record, a decided advantage in Morello's eyes. He would seek out buyers with a more experienced Italian, a street hustler known as "Lingo Bingo" around 106th Street, and there were at least two other Sicilian members of the gang. But the remainder of Morello's men were Irish, led by a Brooklyn oyster bar proprietor known as the Commodore and a streetwise crook named Henry Thompson. Thompson, who was nicknamed "Dude" for his natty taste in clothes, recruited another eight or ten queer-pushers, all of whom were told they could purchase as many of the forged notes as they wished at a discount of 60 percent. Since the plates Morello had commissioned from his printer friend turned out five-dollar "General Thomas head" bills of a type first printed in 1891, the pushers would have to find two dollars in good currency for every five-dollar fake they bought.

The Clutch Hand was very careful. Maggiore and the other Italians knew where the counterfeiting operation was based, but the less trustworthy Irish queer-pushers, even the Commodore, were kept in ignorance of this essential detail; they met and talked to Maggiore or to Lingo Bingo on the streets. Most of the bad currency would be pa.s.sed well away from 106th Street, too; Dude Thompson's most reliable men-three down-on-their-luck Irish petty crooks-were told to work the beach resorts out on Long Island, where the stores and restaurants opened late and the counter staff were often far too busy to check for forgeries.

The one other potential source of trouble was the maid Morello had hired to cook and clean for him. She was an Irish girl named Mollie Callahan, the daughter of Dude Thompson's lady friend. Mollie's sweetheart, Jack Gleason, was another minor member of the gang, and Morello must have concluded that she could be trusted. Just to be certain, though, the girl was told to stay away from the room in the apartment where the press, the plates, and other counterfeiting gear were stored.

For several months all went well with the Clutch Hand's preparations. Two copper plates were etched, and paper resembling the sort used to print the five-dollar notes was purchased. Test sheets were run off on the press, and inks mixed until the colors more or less matched. Morello seemed satisfied; distribution of the counterfeit bills would begin in the New Year, he said.

Then, one day in late December 1899, Mollie Callahan's inquiring mind got the better of her common sense at last. She had glimpsed the press while she was cleaning. Exactly what was being printed, though, remained a mystery to her-one that neither her mother nor her lover would explain. Unable to restrain her curiosity, the girl waited until she thought the place was empty, then crept into the forbidden room.

A bundle concealed the printing plates, and Callahan picked it open. A gleam of copper caught her eye, then a neatly etched five-dollar symbol. Then a movement to one side, by the door.

Whirling round and stifling a scream, Mollie found herself staring deep into the blackest eyes that she had ever seen.

THE DISAPPEARANCE OF MORELLO'S servant girl on the cusp of the new century went unnoticed by all but her closest relatives; there were always thousands of runaways on the streets of New York. Callahan's mother, fearing the worst, reported her daughter's absence to the precinct house on East 104th Street, where the police launched a routine investigation. No one they spoke to seemed to have any idea where the maid had gone-no one, that is, but Jack Gleason, to whom Mollie had confided some of her suspicions concerning her mysterious employer. Gleason felt sure his girlfriend had been murdered, but he was far too frightened of the Clutch Hand to say as much, and the Italians the policemen questioned shrugged their shoulders expressively and regretted that they could not help. The apartment on 106th Street was checked, but there was nothing to be found there, and the press was gone. servant girl on the cusp of the new century went unnoticed by all but her closest relatives; there were always thousands of runaways on the streets of New York. Callahan's mother, fearing the worst, reported her daughter's absence to the precinct house on East 104th Street, where the police launched a routine investigation. No one they spoke to seemed to have any idea where the maid had gone-no one, that is, but Jack Gleason, to whom Mollie had confided some of her suspicions concerning her mysterious employer. Gleason felt sure his girlfriend had been murdered, but he was far too frightened of the Clutch Hand to say as much, and the Italians the policemen questioned shrugged their shoulders expressively and regretted that they could not help. The apartment on 106th Street was checked, but there was nothing to be found there, and the press was gone.

Morello had the counterfeiting operation under way again by March. It was still a small-scale business-about two hundred five-dollar bills were printed and the forged notes, wrapped individually in newspaper, were sold to the queer-pushers in batches of three or four at a time. Five dollars was double the daily wage of a workman at the time, however, and at a profit of nearly two dollars each, even two hundred bills would generate a decent income.

On good days, dealing forged notes was not a high-risk business. The stores and bars where the bills were pa.s.sed rarely examined them, and when a counterfeit was detected it was often enough for the pusher to apologize, say he had no idea how he had gotten the note, and replace it with some genuine currency. There were narrow escapes, however. Edward Kelly, one of Thompson's men, was picked up on May 23 23 when he was caught trying to pa.s.s a Morello bill on East 46th Street in earshot of a beat patrolman. Mary Hoffman, the proprietor of the clothing store Kelly had entered, screamed for the police, and Officer Bachmann, of the local precinct, appeared before the Irishman could bolt. Kelly, who had been attempting to purchase a pair of drawers, was arrested but kept quiet. Taken to the nearest station house, he insisted he had won the bogus note playing c.r.a.ps and said nothing to implicate his confederates. when he was caught trying to pa.s.s a Morello bill on East 46th Street in earshot of a beat patrolman. Mary Hoffman, the proprietor of the clothing store Kelly had entered, screamed for the police, and Officer Bachmann, of the local precinct, appeared before the Irishman could bolt. Kelly, who had been attempting to purchase a pair of drawers, was arrested but kept quiet. Taken to the nearest station house, he insisted he had won the bogus note playing c.r.a.ps and said nothing to implicate his confederates.

Kelly was released on bail a few days later and went straight back to pa.s.sing bills, and it was not until May 31, 1900, that things went seriously wrong for the Morello gang. It was a warm and pleasant early summer evening, and the resorts on the Queens side of the East River were crowded with revelers, ideal conditions for pa.s.sing counterfeits. Three of Dude Thompson's men-Kelly, Charles Brown, and John Duffy-were working the resort in North Beach, palming off bills in sideshows and restaurants. To minimize their risk, each carried only a single Morello note, mixed in with genuine currency. A fourth member of the gang, Tom Smith, a black-mustached night watchman, hung around on a nearby street. His job was to be the pushers' "boodle carrier"-the man who held a roll of notes but did not attempt to pa.s.s them. The theory was a good one: If any one of Thompson's men was captured, he would be holding only a single forgery, and the ambitious scale of Morello's operation would be hidden from the police.

It was shortly before 10 P.M P.M. when a North Beach restaurant owner took a second look at a five-dollar bill and recognized it as a forgery. Kelly, who had presented the note in payment for a plate of oysters worth five cents, tried to talk his way out of the situation, without success. Instead the proprietor summoned several policemen to detain him, and when someone pointed out that Kelly had entered in company with John Duffy, Duffy was arrested, too.

Tom Smith, the boodle carrier, escaped, but a sweep of all the shops and shows on the waterfront dredged up Charles Brown, the third member of Dude Thompson's group. All three of the queer-pushers were taken to the 74th Precinct building, booked, and held in the cells overnight. The next morning the police called Hazen's office, and the prisoners were taken to the U.S. marshal's office in Brooklyn. By the time a.s.sistant Operative Tyrrell, one of Hazen's men, got there at lunchtime on the first of June, the three had all been questioned and were each being held on bail of three thousand dollars.

Left solely in the hands of the police, the investigation into Morello's counterfeiting ring might have ended there, but the Secret Service did things differently Hazen had little interest in getting men as insignificant as Kelly off the streets. The important thing, he knew, was to trace the notes back to the men who had printed them and to seize their press.

The first thing was to persuade one of the arrested men to talk. Tyrrell accomplished this quite neatly by checking over the men's records and then taking Charles Brown aside. Brown had a prior conviction for larceny-he had served four years in Sing Sing prison-and was not keen to return to jail. By dangling the lure that the Secret Service would go easy on him, Tyrrell obtained a full confession. Brown named names and, thanks to his information, agents began tailing Dude Thompson around his haunts on the East Side.

It did not take Hazen's operatives long to gain the confidence of Dude and his confederates. Two Secret Service men posing as potential buyers of counterfeit notes eavesdropped as the Irish members of Morello's gang talked over the North Beach incident, blaming the arrests on the carelessness of Brown and his confederates; the three men had gotten steaming drunk before leaving New York. Thompson, who still had six Morello notes to dispose of, sold one to the agents, and a few days later Hazen's men went to see Kelly in prison and got from him some idea of the location of the printing press.

Penetrating the depths of the Morello gang took time, nonetheless. The agents spent a week identifying Calogero Maggiore, and they were still not sure who stood behind the young Sicilian when Hazen gave the order to round up as many of the gang as possible. On the morning of June 9, a Sat.u.r.day, four operatives picked up Dude Thompson, Jack Gleason, and several of their confederates. Gleason talked immediately, apparently glad to confide his suspicions concerning the disappearance of Mollie Callahan. Knowing that word of the arrests would soon spread through the district, Operative Burke went straight to Maggiore's favorite saloon on East 106th Street. Hoping to entrap the young Sicilian, he offered to buy twenty dollars' worth of counterfeits. Maggiore left the bar to fetch the notes and was arrested on the corner.

It was only now, at the last moment, that the Secret Service men found out about Morello, and the Clutch Hand's arrest that early summer afternoon owed more to luck than it did to the agents' judgment. Jack Gleason was standing outside the 106th Street saloon telling Hazen's operatives the little he knew about Morello when the Irishman spotted his employer hurrying across the road. The Clutch Hand had been lurking in a dark recess of the bar, watching Maggiore do his business, and made off when he realized that his man had been arrested. Agents Burke and Griffin seized him on the corner of Second Avenue and East 108th Street at 2:15 P.M P.M.

Morello was escorted to the police station house on 104th Street to be booked. It was the same building in which Margaret Callahan had reported her daughter missing six months earlier, and the first time that the Clutch Hand had been arrested since his arrival in the United States. Morello proved to have $26.39 in genuine currency on him and no counterfeits, and Hazen and his agents quickly realized that they had little firm evidence against him. Gleason was the only member of the gang to identify their leader. The other counterfeiters refused to betray him-inspired by either loyalty or fear-and without the press and the printing plates, none of which were ever found, it was impossible to prove that Morello had produced the General Thomas notes. Fortunately for the Clutch Hand's prospects, American law also prohibited the conviction of criminals based solely on the testimony of accomplices.

Morello's cunning in distancing himself from his criminal activities, a practice he would follow throughout his career, was clearly shown when he and the other members of the gang were brought before Judge Thomas in the U.S. Circuit Court. Calogero Maggiore, little more than a boy, was singled out as the ringleader of the gang and sentenced to six years in Sing Sing. Brown got three years and Kelly two. Morello was discharged and walked free. He had enjoyed a narrow escape, and he knew it.

The way forward was plain enough. There was no security in working alone, no certainty in relying on confederates from unknown backgrounds, or on men who lacked the steadfastness and loyalty that came from swearing binding oaths. Those qualities could be found only in Sicilians-in other Mafiosi. The Clutch Hand would have to build a family of his own in New York City.

BETWEEN THE SUMMER of 1900, when he so nearly went to prison, and the spring of 1903, when he was arrested for ordering the Barrel Murder, Giuseppe Morello a.s.sembled the first Mafia gang in Manhattan. It was only a small group of men at first, but they were all utterly loyal to him, and if the branch of the Stoppaglieri in New Orleans led by Charles Matranga had claim to be the first of 1900, when he so nearly went to prison, and the spring of 1903, when he was arrested for ordering the Barrel Murder, Giuseppe Morello a.s.sembled the first Mafia gang in Manhattan. It was only a small group of men at first, but they were all utterly loyal to him, and if the branch of the Stoppaglieri in New Orleans led by Charles Matranga had claim to be the first cosca cosca in the country, Morello's family boasted a vastly more significant distinction: It survived. It grew and changed over the years, fighting and merging with other groups until the outward traces of its early days were lost. But its history can be traced all the way to the introduction of Prohibition, then through the 1920s and the great Mafia war that followed, up until the present day. In that respect, as in others, the Morellos were the first family of organized crime in the United States. in the country, Morello's family boasted a vastly more significant distinction: It survived. It grew and changed over the years, fighting and merging with other groups until the outward traces of its early days were lost. But its history can be traced all the way to the introduction of Prohibition, then through the 1920s and the great Mafia war that followed, up until the present day. In that respect, as in others, the Morellos were the first family of organized crime in the United States.

The most important quality that Morello sought in his new a.s.sociates was absolute reliability. His lieutenants were related to him by blood or marriage or were recruited from Corleone. These were men the Clutch Hand had known and trusted in Sicily, and who knew and trusted him in turn. Morello was proud of this fact. Letters written by the boss and his closest advisers were signed not only with their names but also with the salutation "All of Corleone."

The same exclusivity did not apply to the rank-and-file members of the gang, who came from all over western Sicily-a purely practical decision, in all likelihood, since there were still only a handful of Corleonesi in New York. In any case, the petty rivalries that poisoned relations between neighboring communities in Italy mattered scarcely at all in New York; no matter where a Sicilian might hail from, he would have more in common with someone born elsewhere on the island than he ever would with the Neapolitans-with whom there was considerable rivalry-let alone with native Americans. There were strict limits to this policy; to gain acceptance to Morello's gang, a potential member first had to be vouched for by a man from Corleone. But by 1903, the first family was thirty strong and included men who hailed from a number of small towns in the Sicilian interior, among them Carini, Villabate, and Lercara Friddi.

Morello's position as the head of the family was not challenged by anybody. There is no record that Bernardo Terranova, still working full-time as an ornamental plasterer, had any involvement in his stepson's criminal activities; if he did, it was most likely to proffer advice based on long experience. Morello's stepbrothers, meanwhile, were still too young to take much responsibility. Vincenzo, the eldest, was seventeen in 1903, Ciro fourteen, Nicola a year younger than that. Ciro had recently begun working as a waiter in Morello's spaghetti restaurant. The other brothers seem to have a.s.sisted in the plastering business; as they became older, all three became gradually more involved in the family's criminal activities without ever challenging their leader. At the time of the Barrel Murder, Morello's most prominent lieutenant was Vito Laduca, who came from Carini, just outside Palermo, and had spent some years in the Italian navy before turning to a life of crime.

Laduca had served a five-year prison sentence in Sicily before emigrating to the United States in February 1902. He was older than most other members of the gang and possessed a strength and ruthlessness Morello admired. As well as taking a very active role in the family's counterfeiting business-Laduca traveled widely to sell the Clutch Hand's forged notes and was arrested in Pittsburgh on a charge of possessing counterfeit five-dollar bills in January 1903-he was a brutally effective extortionist, referred to in the New York press as the "dread bulwark of the Black Hand." Laduca's criminal activities also extended to kidnapping. Concealing his true ident.i.ty behind the alias "Longo," he was the chief suspect in the abduction of Antonio Mannino, the eight-year-old son of a wealthy Italian contractor, for whom a fifty-thousand-dollar ransom was demanded. Mannino was released after a week for what was widely believed to have been a far lower payment, but Laduca was nonetheless able to send large sums of money home to Carini, where he was thought of as a wealthy man.

The ease with which men such as Vito Laduca moved from Sicily to New York and gained admittance to Morello's family suggests strong links existed between the Mafiosi of the old and new worlds at this comparatively early date. Others made the same journey (among them Giuseppe Fontana, chief suspect in the murder of Marquis Emanuele Notarbartolo, who appeared in the United States in the autumn of 1901) and, when they did, became members of the Clutch Hand's circle so rapidly that their arrival must have been expected and planned for. Giuseppe Lalamia and the brothers Lorenzo and Vito Loboido were seen with Morello by Flynn's Secret Service men less than two weeks after stepping ash.o.r.e at Ellis Island. From a few sc.r.a.ps of surviving evidence, it appears that once the first family had been established, Mafiosi leaving their homeland for America would obtain letters of recommendation from their bosses in Sicily that had to be presented to the leaders of the fledgling cosca cosca in New York. As other Mafia gangs emerged elsewhere, the same credentials, sent by mail or telegram, were also required if a man wished to move between cities in the United States. There were plainly advantages in being able to guarantee the reliability of a man born in an unfamiliar part of Sicily who was not known personally to the existing members of a family. in New York. As other Mafia gangs emerged elsewhere, the same credentials, sent by mail or telegram, were also required if a man wished to move between cities in the United States. There were plainly advantages in being able to guarantee the reliability of a man born in an unfamiliar part of Sicily who was not known personally to the existing members of a family.

Welcomes could be far more elaborate than those accorded to Mafiosi of no consequence. Men who had established a reputation in Sicily would be received in New York with elaborate courtesy. One of the most eminent bosses to make the trans-Atlantic crossing, Vito Cascio Ferro, of Bisaquino in the Sicilian interior, had been in Manhattan for only three days when he received a letter addressing him by the honorific "Don Vito" and inviting him to "eat a plate of macaroni" with Morello, Giuseppe Fontana, and four other New York men of respect. It was most likely through Morello that Cascio Ferro was introduced to another band of Sicilian counterfeiters, led by Salvatore Clemente and a notorious female forger by the name of Stella Fraute. Cascio Ferro became involved with Fraute's gang and narrowly escaped conviction when the Secret Service rounded up her a.s.sociates in 1902. In return for this respectful welcome, the Sicilian boss-at least according to tradition-offered Morello and his family advice on the best means of improving the profitability and efficiency of their operations.

BY FAR THE MOST IMPORTANT of the men who joined the Clutch Hand's of the men who joined the Clutch Hand's cosca cosca in the first years of the new century was Ign.a.z.io Lupo, who had been born in Palermo and who first arrived in the United States in 1898. A decade younger than Morello and vastly less experienced, with a moon face that he kept generally clean shaven, Lupo nonetheless brought brains, imagination, and even sophistication of a sort to the Clutch Hand's gang of thugs. He was "extremely intelligent," William Flynn discovered, and "by all means the best looking of the bunch," not to mention so emotional that he could easily be moved to tears. But Lupo was also just as ruthless as Morello, and so predatory that he would be known to generations of New Yorkers as "the Wolf." He spoke quietly in a high-pitched, almost feminine voice that perfectly conveyed his silky menace, and could be unpredictable and violent. "I give you my word," said Flynn. "Lupo had only to touch you to give you the feeling that you had been poisoned." in the first years of the new century was Ign.a.z.io Lupo, who had been born in Palermo and who first arrived in the United States in 1898. A decade younger than Morello and vastly less experienced, with a moon face that he kept generally clean shaven, Lupo nonetheless brought brains, imagination, and even sophistication of a sort to the Clutch Hand's gang of thugs. He was "extremely intelligent," William Flynn discovered, and "by all means the best looking of the bunch," not to mention so emotional that he could easily be moved to tears. But Lupo was also just as ruthless as Morello, and so predatory that he would be known to generations of New Yorkers as "the Wolf." He spoke quietly in a high-pitched, almost feminine voice that perfectly conveyed his silky menace, and could be unpredictable and violent. "I give you my word," said Flynn. "Lupo had only to touch you to give you the feeling that you had been poisoned."

Ign.a.z.io Lupo had been born in 1877 to a family that possessed some influence in its native city, thanks in part to its links with the Palermo Mafia. When the Wolf reached the age of eighteen, his father set him up in his own store on the Via Matarazza, where he sold high-quality clothing and dry goods. According to the records of the New York police, he was already an active criminal by this time and had joined a "Black Mailing gang" that was probably an offshoot of one of the city's families; a relative, a man named Francesco Manciamelli, would rise to take the leaders.h.i.+p of one of the half-dozen Palermo cosche cosche around 1912. around 1912.

Lupo might well have stayed in Sicily and forged a career there had it not been for an incident that occurred one day early in 1898. He was serving in his dry goods store when a business rival named Salvatore Morello came in to demand that Lupo stop undercutting his prices. The Wolf refused, and at least in his telling of the story, the argument got out of hand. The dispute became a fight, and when Morello pulled a knife, Lupo drew his revolver, with fatal results.

The Wolf hid in Palermo for about five days, time enough to discover that he would probably be prosecuted. Advised by his anxious family to flee, he sailed for Liverpool and then to Montreal, eventually entering the United States illegally via Buffalo. By the time Lupo reached New York, he had been found guilty in absentia by the Italian courts and was wanted in Palermo to serve a twenty-one-year sentence for murder.

The Lupo family had money-enough to set Ign.a.z.io up in his Palermo store, and enough to get him out of Sicily at short notice-and the Wolf had no apparent difficulty in finding his feet in New York. He set up a store on East 72nd Street in partners.h.i.+p with a cousin named Saitta; then, after a falling-out, he moved to Brooklyn and imported olive oil, cheese, and wine from Italy. By 1901 Lupo was back in Manhattan, running a prosperous grocery shop at 210-214 Mott Street, in the heart of Little Italy. Over the next few years, the business grew, until he was the owner of a large wholesale operation at 231 East 97th Street and at least half a dozen retail stores. His Mott Street flags.h.i.+p, which stood seven stories high, boasted quality foodstuffs, sumptuous new delivery wagons, and an inventory running to well over one hundred thousand dollars' worth of goods. It was generally regarded as the most prestigious grocery store in the Italian quarter: "easily the most pretentious mercantile establishment in that section of the city," The New York Times The New York Times observed, "with a stock of goods over which the neighborhood marveled." observed, "with a stock of goods over which the neighborhood marveled."

Lupo liked to present his success as something he worked hard for, and indeed he did labor long into the evenings at his Mott Street office, where, according to a contemporary, another early Mafioso known as Zia Trestelle, he shuttled ceaselessly between a reception room and his private inner sanctum, alternately barking orders and receiving a succession of mysterious visitors. The truth, though, was that Lupo's increasing affluence owed at least as much to his a.s.sociation with Morello, which allowed him to call on all the growing strength of the Clutch Hand's criminal family. In return Lupo provided the Morellos with a base of operations eminently suitable for preying on weak, frightened, and friendless immigrants, the grocery trade being a favorite cover for Italian criminals at this time. As Morello well knew, the most feared, most efficient gang then based in Little Italy-a group run by a Calabrian named Giuseppe D'Agostino-identified likely victims through its own chain of corner grocery stores. There, as Petrosino would eventually discover, they "wormed information as to the financial standing of Italians living thereabout until they had the rating of nearly every man of their nationality then dwelling in the city. The rest was easy. Demands, accompanied by dire threats, were sent to the ones marked for plucking." The Clutch Hand, Petrosino thought, set out to imitate D'Agostino's operation, with such conspicuous success that his Sicilians pushed the rival Calabrians out of the Italian quarter within a few years.

If nothing else, Morello's interest in the grocery trade helps to explain the startling rapidity with which Lupo rose in the first family-the Wolf and the Clutch Hand having, on the face of it, as little in common as Palermo had with backwater Corleone. The Sicilian capital was the most cultured place south of Naples, a city frequently praised for its graceful proportions and n.o.ble architecture, and Lupo had picked up something of his hometown's swagger. He dressed well, favoring tailored clothes, and could be seen parading through Little Italy in a buggy drawn by a white horse, his hat tilted rakishly to one side. Morello, on the other hand, detested such displays, preferring a life lived in shadows. The contrast between his police mug shot and Lupo's is striking. The Clutch Hand, frozen in time soon after his arrest in the summer of 1900, wears a vest, a rough scarf, a cheap waistcoat, and an ill-fitting jacket. His chin and cheeks are unshaven and his mustache untrimmed. Lupo, pictured three years later, sports a superior air and a fas.h.i.+onable hat. His face has been expertly shaved, though he affects a neat mustache, and he is well turned out in an expensive jacket.

For all this, Morello certainly respected Lupo. First noticed in the company of the first family in 1902, the Wolf had joined the innermost councils of the gang nine months later, and the two Mafiosi, Flynn would write, made a formidable team: Lupo was the business man of the two. Morello had in his makeup more of the cunning of the born criminal. He was cautious like the fox and ferocious like a maddened bull. Lupo was always suggesting new ways for the investing of the money.

From this perspective, it is not surprising that the alliance between the pair was formalized that Christmas when the Wolf married Morello's twenty-two-year-old stepsister, Salvatrice Terranova. The wedding took place in St. Lucia's church in Italian Harlem, up on East 104th Street, the Clutch Hand attending and signing as a witness.

Lupo's union with Terranova may have been a marriage of convenience, a way of tying a man of obvious ability to the Morello family and perhaps even of sealing some sort of pact between the Mafiosi of Palermo and Corleone. If so, that did not prevent the marriage from being a success. Ign.a.z.io and Salvatrice would have five children-four girls, beginning with Onofria in 1906, and a boy, Rocco, who would eventually follow his father into the family business-and they remained wed for more than forty years. Salvatrice had nothing but praise for her husband. He was "very considerate of me, and always attempted to provide the necessities of life for myself and our children," the Terranova girl would write. "He has been kind to us all and I would consider him and excellent father and husband."

Marriage must have been in the air in Little Italy that year, for Lupo was not the only member of the Morello gang who wed. In the early months of 1903 the Clutch Hand, too, decided to seek a bride, though in his case it would be for a second time.

MORELLO HAD LIVED a largely solitary existence for half a decade, ever since his first wife had died in 1898. Maria Marvelesi's pa.s.sing, at the age of only twenty-nine, perhaps as a result of malaria contracted during the family's sojourn in Texas, had left the Mafioso with a two-year-old son, Calogero, but the boy did not live with his father and was almost certainly raised by Morello's mother and unmarried sisters. Freed of this enc.u.mbrance, the boss preferred to flit between cheap tenement apartments in the poorest districts of the city, most of them, apparently, little more than places to sleep. He was living in East Harlem in 1900, and in a squalid, cluttered attic room downtown at 178 Chrystie Street three years later, but he was seldom to be found at any of his various addresses. When he was, he worked at night, got home late, slept in. Neighbors either did not know him or pretended not to. a largely solitary existence for half a decade, ever since his first wife had died in 1898. Maria Marvelesi's pa.s.sing, at the age of only twenty-nine, perhaps as a result of malaria contracted during the family's sojourn in Texas, had left the Mafioso with a two-year-old son, Calogero, but the boy did not live with his father and was almost certainly raised by Morello's mother and unmarried sisters. Freed of this enc.u.mbrance, the boss preferred to flit between cheap tenement apartments in the poorest districts of the city, most of them, apparently, little more than places to sleep. He was living in East Harlem in 1900, and in a squalid, cluttered attic room downtown at 178 Chrystie Street three years later, but he was seldom to be found at any of his various addresses. When he was, he worked at night, got home late, slept in. Neighbors either did not know him or pretended not to.

Morello did feel some need for female companions.h.i.+p. By 1900 he was seeing another Sicilian woman, with whom he had another child, a daughter born, probably, early in 1901, and so far as the police and Secret Service were concerned, the couple lived as man and wife. But Angela Terranova did not see things that way. The Clutch Hand's mother disapproved of his relations.h.i.+p, and shortly before the Barrel Murder, she and her daughters decided it was time to find her son a second wife. They wanted a woman from a family that they approved of, and one who came from Corleone.

Morello seems to have agreed-"I have a notion to get married," he confided to one female acquaintance, asking her help in breaking off his earlier relations.h.i.+p-but the task of locating a suitable bride fell to his eldest sister, Marietta Morello, who was dispatched to Sicily to make the necessary arrangements. Having called for advice on relatives who still lived in Corleone, Marietta settled on a pair of sisters named Salemi. She procured photos of them and returned to New York. Morello examined the portraits, then chose the younger of the sisters, a striking twenty-year-old named Nicolina-Lina to the family. The necessary arrangements were swiftly made, and that summer Marietta Morello sailed again for Sicily, taking Lucia Terranova with her and returning in September with Lina and a substantial dowry, amounting to nearly four hundred dollars. Sailing with the Clutch Hand's bride-to-be were her elder sister and a brother, Vincenzo Salemi. Vincenzo would marry Lucia that December, four days after Lupo the Wolf and Salvatrice were wed.

The Salemi family was clearly sealing an alliance with the Morello-Terranova clan; the Salemis were also obviously aware of their new in-laws' criminal activities and may even have had ties of their own to the Corleone Mafia, since Lucia Terranova's new husband, Vincenzo, became involved in New York organized crime. But Lina's marriage to Morello, like Salvatrice's union with Lupo, was no mere marriage of convenience. Lina would bear her husband three daughters and a son, the first in 1908, and be his staunchest supporter, too. Dark-haired, pa.s.sionate, and possessed of a sharp temper, Lina could read and write-unusual accomplishments in a Sicilian woman of her time, though like Morello she spoke no English and would not learn to do so for a decade or more. She also possessed a strong sense of her own worth. There would be no more contact between Morello and his Sicilian mistress, nor even with the couple's infant child-who died, in any case, before she reached the age of two. Nor would there be more living in cramped, decrepit rooms. Soon the Clutch Hand was established in a larger and more comfortable apartment on East 107th Street, close to his parents, sisters, and brothers. The family was still not affluent-not then, and not for several years, their rapidly increasing income being diverted into investments or offset by the sharply rising costs of running their numerous illicit businesses. But, thanks in large part to Lina, Morello was at last living in a style more suited to a man of respect.

THE FAMILY BUSINESS was still booming, and by 1903, Lupo's grocery empire was growing fastest of all, spreading from Little Italy to include outposts in Italian Harlem and Brooklyn. The opportunities, both commercial and criminal, seemed endless. Well-off customers were targeted with Black Hand letters. Lupo's wholesale operation, which underpinned the retail business and supplied Italian food and wine throughout the city, was used to extort money from dozens of independent grocers who were forced to pay premium prices and who quickly learned how dangerous it was to contemplate transferring their business to a cheaper rival. Veiled threats soon gave way to violence-beginning, often, with the poisoning of the expensive and vulnerable teams of dray horses every grocer needed to make deliveries, and progressing from there to the bombing of stores and even homes. One shopkeeper, Gaetano Costa, a Brooklyn butcher, was shot dead in his own store for refusing to pay a demand for a thousand dollars, and Salvatore Manzella, who dealt in Italian wines and foods from premises on Elizabeth Street, was reduced to bankruptcy by four years of unceasing extortion. Manzella at least survived long enough to testify that he had been visited regularly by Lupo, who had forced him to sign a series of blank receipts and delivery notes. The Wolf filled these in and discounted them as he pleased. "My life was at stake," Manzella said, asked why he did it, and in all he was bled for several thousand dollars over the years, including one sum of $1,075 in cash, which was every cent he happened to have in his store when Lupo called. was still booming, and by 1903, Lupo's grocery empire was growing fastest of all, spreading from Little Italy to include outposts in Italian Harlem and Brooklyn. The opportunities, both commercial and criminal, seemed endless. Well-off customers were targeted with Black Hand letters. Lupo's wholesale operation, wh