The First Family Part 4

VENGEANCE.

"CLEAR THE COURT OF ALL PERSONS HAVING NO BUSINESS HERE!"

Peter Barlow leaned forward on the magistrate's dais at Jefferson Market police court, a Gothic monstrosity that rose in gaudy red-brick tiers over 10th Street at Sixth Avenue. He was annoyed that he had to shout to make himself heard above the rising hubbub in his crowded courtroom. It was bad enough that he was hearing cases on a Sunday worse that he had been given charge of the arraignment of Giuseppe Morello and twelve of his a.s.sociates, all held since their arrest three days earlier on suspicion of involvement in the Barrel Murder. And it was certainly intolerable that, with the prisoners marshaled just outside the door, all waiting for the hearing to begin, his courtroom was filled to overflowing with a throng of incomprehensible Sicilians, most of them fierce-looking men in frayed second-best suits, and all of them talking at once.

"Clear the court!"

Barlow was new to Jefferson Market. He had been a magistrate for less than a year. But he had heard about the Black Hand and the Mafia, and knew that Italian gangsters habitually packed courtrooms with their intimidating friends. These men would sit in the front rows of the public seating and glare menacingly at the prosecution witnesses as they took the stand. Shus.h.i.+ng, hissing, threatening gestures-all were used to cow their adversaries into silence. Faced with a fierce-looking row of hoodlums, and all too uncomfortably aware that the names and addresses of those who offered testimony were routinely published in the press, many a witness stuttered and lost his chain of thought, or retracted every word of the statement he had sworn to give. Barlow had little doubt that the Morello gang hoped to dissuade as many of Chesty George McClusky's witnesses as they could from giving evidence.

"Clear the court!"

The first few people in the public seats began to move at last, but it took Barlow's ushers several minutes to eject the last of the unwanted spectators-most still protesting in their native language-and to escort in the prisoners. Morello stood flanked by Vito Laduca (whose knife, the police revealed, had been smeared with a rust-red substance that they believed was human blood) and Messina Genova, also a butcher, who Petrosino now believed had struck Madonia's deathblow. Bail on these three had been set high, at $5,000 a man. Most of the remaining prisoners had their bails fixed at a more modest $1,000, including Ign.a.z.io Lupo, who had been the last of the thirteen men to be arrested. A few minor members of the gang, including three who had been in the United States for only a month, were held on bonds of a mere $100.

It was April 19, 1903, the first day of the first hearing into the barrel killing, and the day before Joseph Petrosino would finally confirm the victim's ident.i.ty. For men who claimed to work at menial jobs, the Sicilians had secured first-rate representation. Morello and Lupo had retained Charles Le Barbier, one of the half-dozen most celebrated lawyers in Manhattan; five lesser attorneys from Le Barbier's firm had charge of the other members of the gang. According to the police, the legal fees had been met by a compulsory levy raised in Little Italy by other members of Morello's family, the total collected being as much as ten thousand dollars. Over the next few weeks, word would filter in that similar collections had been made in other cities on the eastern seaboard, a startling testimony to the boss's growing influence. In Boston, seven Sicilians appeared at police headquarters to beg for protection against the Mafia, "by which," a local paper noted, they claimed to have been ordered to contribute to the defense fund in the barrel murder case. Each of the foreigners showed a letter from New York. They were thoroughly frightened even when they were in the secure shelter of [the chief of police's] private office. The letters told them that everywhere they went they were marked men; that the eye of the Mafia was on them always; [and] that they were as good as dead if they did not send the required money immediately.

Le Barbier and his a.s.sociates set about earning their fat fees as soon as Barlow opened the proceedings. "I ask that the weeding out process begin today," Le Barbier began. "There are a great many prisoners, and as this was a secret murder, all these men could not have had a share in it." A "bunch" of his clients should be dismissed at once, the advocate continued. When Barlow rejected his request, Le Barbier fired back by highlighting the single greatest weakness in the prosecution case: I am sure the police are on the wrong track. They have made a great mistake. The proof of this error is apparent when, from day to day, they have failed to establish the ident.i.ty of the victim of these murders. I ask that the a.s.sistant District Attorney point out one among the prisoners against whom there is some ground for the belief that he is guilty.

Le Barbier's interjection set the tone. Hamstrung by Inspector McClusky's insistence on premature arrests, a.s.sistant District Attorney Francis Garvan had no real answer to him, nothing but hope that an identification would be made and some prospect that he could at least prove that the gang had been engaged in a conspiracy. To make matters worse, Morello himself gave away nothing on the stand; the Clutch Hand denied so much as knowing the dead man, and answered most questions with a shrug of the shoulders and "I don't remember." Lupo, called next, struck the reporters in the courtroom as suave and unruffled. He "perjured himself again and again," one newsman thought, but there was little that even McClusky could do about such lies other than to vow to waiting reporters that "the prisoners will be given the third degree to the limit in the hope that one of them will break down."

It was not until the hearing's second morning that Garvan got his stroke of luck. The a.s.sistant DA was halfway through another unproductive examination when a clerk from his office crept into the courtroom with a piece of paper on which was scribbled information just phoned in from Buffalo: a name, and the details of the dead man's home and circ.u.mstances. It took Garvan a moment to digest the news. Then he smiled, put down the note, and started to recall the prisoners, beginning with Morello. Had they ever met a Benedetto Madonia? The result was the closest thing to a sensation the newsmen covering the hearing had yet witnessed. "Each denied knowing the man," a reporter from the Sun Sun observed, "but the first time the question was asked, there was a great babbling in Italian among the prisoners and they were apparently very much excited." observed, "but the first time the question was asked, there was a great babbling in Italian among the prisoners and they were apparently very much excited."

Garvan got in a few more good blows after that. His best moment came the next day, when he produced the ledger Flynn had found in Morello's apartment, with its entries relating to Madonia, and with it a letter Petrosino had recovered from the dead man's family. The letter, addressed to Buffalo, had been scrawled in red ink in the same crabbed Sicilian script as the ledger entry, and Garvan forced the Clutch Hand to admit that he had written it. It was proof that Morello knew the barrel victim. The letter was also, at least in the eyes of the police, the dead man's death warrant. "In the Mafia," one officer explained to the Evening Journal Evening Journal, it is not customary to threaten. The leader does not communicate to a suspected member that his acts have rendered him subject to the death penalty. Their method of procedure is more subtle.

To the offending member of the Mafia a letter written with red ink, in lieu of blood, is sent. ... Compliance with the contents, or the contrary, will not affect the doom of the recipient. To an Italian versed in the ways of the Mafia, the receipt of such a letter is equivalent to a sentence of death.

The press made a good deal of this revelation, and the prosecution could now prove, by way of the letter and the ledger, that Morello had lied under oath in swearing that he did not know Madonia. But neither the written evidence nor anything that the ADA pried out of the prisoners proved that any one of them had partic.i.p.ated in the Barrel Murder. Madonia had last been seen by Flynn's operatives walking off down Prince Street at eight in the evening with several of Morello's men. But what had happened to him after that remained a mystery. Speculation, circ.u.mstantial evidence, tips from several informers-all had helped the police to reconstruct those last few hours. But none of it was admissible in court. There was insufficient information, Barlow concluded on the fourth day of the hearing, to hold any one of the prisoners on a charge of murder. That meant that all thirteen would have to be discharged.

Word of the prisoners' impending release spread quickly to the crowd of friends and relatives waiting outside the courtroom. But Morello and his men got no farther than the courthouse steps before McClusky rearrested them, this time on charges of perjury-each man having denied on the witness stand that he so much as knew Madonia.

Lupo was held on a separate counterfeiting charge; correspondence that Flynn had taken from his room showed that he had been mailing forged notes to Italian laborers in Canada.

So far as most New Yorkers were concerned, all this legal maneuvering meant little. Morello was still under arrest in the House of Detention with his men. The police were searching for more evidence. There was still time for them to make a case, and Petrosino had brought Salvatore Madonia, the dead man's son, to New York to give statements. The young Madonia indeed proved to be a font of useful information: He gave the police details of his father's thoughts, his movements, and the belongings he had taken with him on his travels. At times Salvatore amplified or contradicted the information Petrosino had obtained from the young man's mother. She had described her husband's pocket watch as a valuable gold one, for example, but Salvatore said Benedetto had actually taken his son's cheap tin watch when he left for New York. It was easily identified, Madonia added, being stamped with an image of a locomotive on its cover.

Salvatore had little doubt about the murder. "I believe my father was killed by the Mafia because he threatened to reveal secrets which had come into his possession," he told Petrosino. "He knew a great deal about the members of Morello's gang, and I believe that through fear or revenge they murdered him." His statement was so persuasive that even the usually cautious sergeant made a bullish statement of his own when cornered by a reporter from the Evening Journal Evening Journal. ("This murder," the Italian detective said, "has done more to reveal the extent to which the Mafia flourishes in New York than anything else that ever happened before. Heretofore the name 'Mafia' has been a.s.sociated with the Italians of New Orleans. It is now made clear to every one that the largest and most dangerous branch of the society in existence has its headquarters right here in New York.") But there was plenty more that Petrosino wanted from his witness, not least his statement in an open court. The inquest into the barrel victim's death had just been scheduled for the first of May, and that would give the police another opportunity to interrogate Morello under oath. That evening the detective booked Madonia into a hotel on Bleecker Street and left him there under the protection of a Sergeant Illich.

Petrosino planned to return next morning, but he was not the only person in Manhattan who saw the young man as a vital witness, and something took place that evening to shatter his informant's fragile confidence. Madonia begged Illich to stay the night with him and double-locked his door. Rising early the next morning, the young man then declared that he would not stay in New York any longer. "If I remain here they will kill me," he informed his bodyguard. "I shall have to go away from Buffalo and hide somewhere where I am not known. Even then I am afraid they will find me. Their vengeance never rests."

There was nothing that Sergeant Illich or anybody else could say to dissuade the boy, and an hour or two later Madonia was on board a fast train back to Buffalo. With a week to go until the inquest, the police had just lost their most important witness.

WILLIAM FLYNN HAD barely thought about the barrel case for several days. There had been so little time; the demands of his heavy caseload had confined him to the collection of sc.r.a.ps of extra information that he had forwarded to Was.h.i.+ngton. He and his men had played no part in McClusky's laborious and unproductive questioning of the thirteen Sicilians or in the proceedings at Jefferson Market. Nor had Flynn looked in any detail at the exhibits and evidence the police had gathered. barely thought about the barrel case for several days. There had been so little time; the demands of his heavy caseload had confined him to the collection of sc.r.a.ps of extra information that he had forwarded to Was.h.i.+ngton. He and his men had played no part in McClusky's laborious and unproductive questioning of the thirteen Sicilians or in the proceedings at Jefferson Market. Nor had Flynn looked in any detail at the exhibits and evidence the police had gathered.

Barlow's hearing changed all that. The public might feel rea.s.sured that Morello remained in custody, and be taken in by optimistic statements that the barrel mystery was close to a solution; Flynn knew better. The evidence against the counterfeiters was so weak that it seemed likely that the entire gang would escape conviction. Irritated though the Chief still was by McClusky's handling of the case, he felt that he should try to help.

McClusky made no objection when Flynn called at headquarters on April 25 and asked if he could see the evidence; after Barlow's ruling, even the police inspector was willing to admit that he would welcome some a.s.sistance. Flynn was shown into an empty room, and, a few minutes later, several boxes were brought in and piled against a desk for him. Most contained the personal possessions of the thirteen prisoners, seized from their homes or taken from their pockets ten days earlier.

Flynn spent some time going through the containers, finding nothing of special interest until he reached the box that held the items taken from Morello's bodyguard, Petto the Ox. The Secret Service man tipped the contents over the desk and let his eyes wander over the detritus of the Ox's life: a motley a.s.sembly of cigar b.u.t.ts, handkerchiefs, loose change, and junk. Toward the bottom of the pile he noticed a sc.r.a.p of paper. Flynn spread it open on the desk and saw it was a p.a.w.n ticket issued by Fry's Capital Loan Company, a store at 276 Bowery. The ticket was dated April 14, the day after the Barrel Murder. Capital Loan had advanced Petto the sum of one dollar in exchange for a pocket watch.

Flynn thought back to the day of the murder and recalled that Madonia's waistcoat had sported a watch chain but no watch. He called Detective Sergeant Carey. Had the ticket been redeemed? he asked. No, Carey said; Madonia's wife had stated that her husband was carrying a large gold timepiece-an item worth far more than a dollar, even to a p.a.w.nbroker. The police believed the old watch must be Petto's.

Flynn knew nothing of Salvatore Madonia's statement, nothing of the cheap tin watch the boy had loaned his father, but the p.a.w.n ticket intrigued him. Check it, he urged Sergeant Carey. Just to be certain.

IT WAS NOT UNTIL the next day that Carey got around to visiting the Capital Loan Company, and by then the sergeant had read Petrosino's dossier. He asked a clerk to redeem Petto's pledge and waited while the man looked over the ticket, rummaged under the counter, and produced a battered timepiece with the outline of a locomotive punched into its cover. the next day that Carey got around to visiting the Capital Loan Company, and by then the sergeant had read Petrosino's dossier. He asked a clerk to redeem Petto's pledge and waited while the man looked over the ticket, rummaged under the counter, and produced a battered timepiece with the outline of a locomotive punched into its cover.

Carey recognized the watch at once. Its description matched Salvatore Madonia's, right down to a ma.s.s of scratches on the neck where the boy had once tried to pry the casing open. It seemed unlikely that the barrel victim would have given away a watch belonging to his son, and since young Madonia's father had not been short of money, it followed that the timepiece had almost certainly been stolen by his murderer. The sergeant hastened back to Mulberry Street to find McClusky.

Carey, as he most likely knew, was only just in time. No one had imagined, until now, that Petto was a man of any importance in Morello's gang, or guessed that the Ox might have played more than a minor part in the Barrel Murder. Indeed, the police had thought so little of him that Petto was still being held on a bail of just five hundred dollars, a figure so low that he had by now found a bail bondsman willing to supply it. The police had uncovered the one piece of evidence tying the Morellos to Madonia's murder on the very morning Petto was due to be released.

McClusky recognized the importance of Carey's find at once and wasted no time in placing a phone call to the House of Detention. Then, having instructed the warden not to release Petto under any circ.u.mstances, the inspector hurried over to the Criminal Courts building on Centre Street to speak to the district attorney. The upshot of all this activity was the best news the police had had in weeks: Petto's bondsman was turned away from the House of Detention, and, shortly afterward, the Ox was arraigned and charged with murder.

Word of these developments did much to restore morale at police headquarters, where McClusky made several more bullish statements to the press. Sergeants Carey and Petrosino resumed the questioning of Morello's men with extra vigor-as promised, several of the prisoners were subjected to the physical interrogation methods of the third degree-and the two detectives began to think for the first time that they were making progress. Pietro Inzerillo and Joseph Fanaro both showed signs of talking, Carey said, and when Fanaro, who had been seen in the murdered man's company more often than any other member of the gang, spent several hours closeted with a.s.sistant District Attorney Garvan, word spread that the Sicilian was prepared to testify. To Carey, even Morello seemed to be weakening; I thought that he might talk. It had not been unusual to find that gang leaders like him would talk, for the tradition prevails among this type of criminal organization that the king can do no wrong, and Morello was a king.

So far as Petrosino was concerned, however, this was wishful thinking. Morello was too stubborn and too well aware of the weaknesses of the police case to break as easily as that, and Fanaro and Inzerillo were both too frightened of their leader to risk turning against him. If the NYPD wanted more arraignments and convictions, it would have to prove its case against a stone wall of Sicilian obstruction, starting with a strong performance at the coming inquest. The effort would be worthwhile; the right verdict would open the way for charges to be brought against the other members of the gang.

A week remained before the inquest opened, long enough for Petrosino to make the necessary arrangements. First Salvatore Madonia and his mother were ordered back to Manhattan to give evidence. Then Giuseppe Di Priemo was brought down from Sing Sing to be examined as to his part in the Madonia affair. The witnesses were plainly reluctant, Salvatore perhaps most of all. Among them, however, or so Petrosino hoped, the three could do much to explain Madonia's death and illuminate his relations with Morello.

Before any of that could happen, though, the Manhattan coroner would need to find a dozen men willing to serve as a jury.

FOR GEORGE LEBRUN, the Barrel Murder inquest was turning rapidly into a nightmare.

LeBrun was Manhattan's a.s.sistant coroner, and one of his innumerable duties at Coroner Gustav Scholer's court was to empanel inquest juries. He had years of experience of this, and never had he found a routine task so difficult to organize. Newspaper coverage of the "Mafia murder case" had left the readers of the New York press in little doubt as to the ruthlessness and brutality of the killers, and the majority of the jurors summoned would not sit, citing various excuses. "Even with the formal arrests," LeBrun confessed, "I had difficulty getting enough men to serve," and the a.s.sistant coroner was left in no doubt why. Several potential jurors, the man from the Herald Herald wrote, "made no secret of the fact that if it could be avoided they would be most loath to sit on a jury and have to bring in a verdict of guilty against a member of the Mafia, even if the weight of evidence was conclusive, and it was evident that in the minds of several of them the prospect of Mafia vengeance in such an event was extremely vivid." When, after a delay of almost a day, a jury was finally a.s.sembled and the jurors' names were read, not one among the dozen was Italian. Most were stolid men with German names who lived far from Little Italy. wrote, "made no secret of the fact that if it could be avoided they would be most loath to sit on a jury and have to bring in a verdict of guilty against a member of the Mafia, even if the weight of evidence was conclusive, and it was evident that in the minds of several of them the prospect of Mafia vengeance in such an event was extremely vivid." When, after a delay of almost a day, a jury was finally a.s.sembled and the jurors' names were read, not one among the dozen was Italian. Most were stolid men with German names who lived far from Little Italy.

Interest in the case was great; every public seat was filled, and a line stretched down the corridor outside. Most of those who did gain entry to the courtroom were Sicilian, and though these spectators sat impa.s.sively through most of the proceedings, there were ominous stirrings on the public benches whenever critical pieces of evidence were heard. Scholer, unlike Peter Barlow, never ordered that his court be cleared.

a.s.sistant District Attorney Garvan again took charge of questioning the witnesses. The most dramatic moment of the morning came when Petto the Ox was on the stand. The prisoner, who had sat sullenly through Garvan's interrogation and refused to look at the array of stilettos and other "gruesome objects" brandished by the ADA, was stonewalling more questions when a photograph of the murdered man showing him as he appeared after death, was suddenly thrust by Detective Sergeant Petrosino beneath the eyes of Petto, who is directly charged with the murder. The man gave a start of surprise, his eyes rolled, and he clasped his hands convulsively, but it was only a moment ... he recovered his self control and, shrugging his shoulders, refused to look again at the photograph, although it remained in front of him for fifteen minutes.

Mostly, though, Garvan and Petrosino struggled to make an impression on their witnesses. Newspaper reporters made much of the admissions of Nicola Testa, who was the butcher's boy at Vito Laduca's Stanton Street store and who startled the press bench by agreeing that he was the nephew of the murdered Brooklyn grocer Giuseppe Catania-but that was merely circ.u.mstantial evidence. Giovanni Zacconi, a Sicilian with a stake in the same store, was named in court as the owner of the wagon that had carried Madonia's corpse away, and a warrant was issued for his arrest. But Joseph Fanaro, of whom much had been expected, had plainly reconsidered his position since his meeting with the district attorney. Placed on the witness stand, he remained determinedly mute, denying absolutely that he knew Madonia even though he had made a lengthy statement on the subject only two days earlier. It was "a remarkable exhibition of an apparent loss of memory," the Herald Herald caustically remarked. caustically remarked.

Fanaro's mulishness was the first clear sign that Garvan and Petrosino's case was not going according to plan, but the remainder of Garvan's witnesses fared even worse under the defendants' steely gaze. Lucy and Salvatore Madonia had both given statements identifying the tin watch that Carey had retrieved from Capital Loan, but, once on the witness stand, Salvatore began to speak with "evident misgivings," terror etched on his face. Carey was there to see the youth give evidence. "The watch," he said, was handed to the lad. He looked at it and was about to speak when there was a shuffling of feet and a hissing in the courtroom, which was filled with swarthy-faced men. One of these jumped up and put his fingers to his lips. Young Madonia was now not so sure it was his father's watch.

"It looks like mine," the boy stammered at last in answer to Garvan's question, "but there may be many watches like it in the world, and I cannot say it is."

Lucy Madonia, the dead man's wife, was just as equivocal. She, too, was handed the timepiece, and she, too, started as the same stirring of bodies and rustling of feet swept through the courtroom. The same dark-skinned man half rose for a second time, and "Mrs. Madonia," Carey said, "positive the day before that the watch was her husband's, now suffered a lapse of memory." The Madonias' useless testimony was a huge blow to the police, shattering the one firm link between Petto the Ox and the Barrel Murder, and what was left of the police case crumbled when Pietro Inzerillo took the stand. The confectioner, "who had been prepared, among other things, to admit the presence of the sugar barrels in the rear room of his shop," blanched at the same sinister shuffling of feet and refused to talk.

The final witness called to the stand on that first afternoon was Giuseppe Di Priemo, Madonia's imprisoned brother-in-law. The squat Sicilian was the last of the witnesses whose evidence might have indicted the Morello gang. Knowing that Di Priemo had every reason to loathe the Clutch Hand, Petrosino had done what he could to persuade the queer-pusher to give evidence, promising full protection from Morello's family. Apparently rea.s.sured by that guarantee, Di Priemo had spent nearly two hours two days earlier giving a statement to Francis Garvan, but once in court, he took the oath and promptly withdrew every word. The counterfeiter "laughed on the stand," a bitter Sergeant Carey would recall, "and said that Petto was his very good friend and surely would not have killed his brother-in-law. Yet we knew he hated the bull-necked man." This once, Carey thought, his witness was not particularly intimidated by the ma.s.sed ranks of Sicilians in the courtroom. So far as the detective sergeant was concerned, Di Priemo had an altogether different motive for his silence: He planned to exact his own revenge for the murder of his sister's husband.

The inquest ran for seven more days after that, but the verdict had been decided long before it staggered to a close. Madonia, the jury ruled, had certainly been murdered-but by "a person or persons unknown." There would be no more indictments; even Petto was eventually released from his damp cell in the Tombs. Morello was never heard to utter another word upon the subject. But it was not long before events elsewhere brought the Barrel Murder back to the attention of New York's papers. When they did, the city and the city's police got a longer, deeper, cooler look at the dangers of angering the Mafia.

GIUSEPPE MORELLO LEFT few clues to his true character beyond the little that can be deduced from his crimes, which were intelligently planned and resolutely executed. He was in many respects conventionally Sicilian: a man who took his duties both as son and as the head of his own family seriously, and was so determined to honor his father's memory that three of his own sons, in succession, were christened "Calogero." More than that, though, Morello was a man of dominant personality and steely determination, both attributes that were most likely products of the struggle he was forced to wage to overcome his disability. His exceptional qualities-for a murderer, at least-are evident in his achievements, for though there had been Mafiosi in the United States long before the Clutch Hand arrived there, none was ever regarded with so much awe by his fellow criminals. few clues to his true character beyond the little that can be deduced from his crimes, which were intelligently planned and resolutely executed. He was in many respects conventionally Sicilian: a man who took his duties both as son and as the head of his own family seriously, and was so determined to honor his father's memory that three of his own sons, in succession, were christened "Calogero." More than that, though, Morello was a man of dominant personality and steely determination, both attributes that were most likely products of the struggle he was forced to wage to overcome his disability. His exceptional qualities-for a murderer, at least-are evident in his achievements, for though there had been Mafiosi in the United States long before the Clutch Hand arrived there, none was ever regarded with so much awe by his fellow criminals.

There was, even so, little that was attractive in Morello's makeup. True, he was an innovative boss, one who rarely felt bound by other people's rules, and he created, in the first family, a criminal organization of considerable effectiveness. The gang was, moreover, very much his own creation; it bore only a pa.s.sing resemblance to a Sicilian Mafia family, and not the least of the Clutch Hand's talents was an ability to weld together a disparate group of Mafiosi from different towns and backgrounds and make them so formidable that they gained an ascendancy over all the other gangs in New York's Italian district. But Morello was also treacherous and unforgiving, an autocrat who suppressed all dissent and rarely sought advice from even his closest lieutenants. Only Lupo the Wolf, of all his numerous a.s.sociates, seems not to have feared him; the remaining members of the family acted as much from terror as from loyalty. Chief Flynn, who mulled over the puzzle of Morello's personality for years, concluded that the boss was interested chiefly in power, not money, which explained why he lived modestly and why he never made as much as he might have done from his murderous career. For Flynn, the Clutch Hand's actions were really not hard to explain. Morello, he wrote, was simply "bad-thoroughly, conscientiously and zealously bad. ... There are few men of whom you may truthfully say that they enjoyed being criminals. Old Giuseppe was one of them."

It was Morello's obsession with power, the Chief was sure, that made him such an implacable enemy, determined to exterminate the weakness within the ranks of his own gang that the barrel case exposed and perfectly willing to kill even his most loyal followers if it suited his purpose. Certainly it did not take a man of the Clutch Hand's cunning to deduce that the Secret Service knew far more about his family's doings than he had realized, and that the gang's brush with the authorities owed much to the incompetence of his own men-not least that of Petto the Ox, whose decision to relieve Madonia of a one-dollar watch could easily have cost the boss and several other men their lives. Morello's own a.n.a.lysis of events soon convinced him that he had at least one traitor in his ranks, and he apparently also grew determined to rid himself of a number of men who knew too much about the Barrel Murder. The thirst for vengeance against all those who he believed had wronged him was one of the Clutch Hand's most p.r.o.nounced traits. In the autumn of 1903, he began to plot against them all.

The first man to die in the aftermath of the Barrel Murder was Salvatore Especiale, a New York Sicilian of some education who was found dead, with two bullets in his chest, on a street corner in Brooklyn that December. According to the local police, Especiale had known Giuseppe Catania and had some peripheral involvement in the Madonia affair as well. More significantly, as Captain Condon of Fulton Street station explained, he was rumored among his a.s.sociates to have been "used as a 'stool pigeon' by the Secret Service men." Especiale, it was said, had been responsible for supplying information that led to the arrest of several Italian counterfeiters. There is nothing in William Flynn's files to suggest that this was actually true; what mattered, though, was that his fellow Sicilians believed it was. Especiale certainly knew he was in danger. He had purchased a steams.h.i.+p ticket to Naples a few days before his death, and "the dread penalty," so one newspaper observed, was widely understood to have been exacted by the Mafia and "was now believed to be the tragic sequel to the ghastly barrel murder mystery." Morello, in other words, had ordered the murder of a man who he believed to have been Flynn's informant inside his counterfeiting ring.

The next in the series of killings linked to the Madonia affair did not take place until October 1905, and it occurred far from New York, in the mining town of Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania-itself a noted stronghold of the Mafia and the Black Hand. The victim on this occasion was Tommaso Petto, who had fled Manhattan soon after his release from jail in January 1904 and had been living in the town under his real name, Luciano Perrini. Petto had continued his criminal career after leaving New York; he had ama.s.sed several arrests, and the other Sicilians of the district were, a Wilkes-Barre newspaper reported, "often afraid of him. It is alleged that he was a member of the Black Hand and Mafia clans [and] he was what is known as a boss or king among his countrymen." Whatever Petto's reputation, though, it was not sufficient to save him from a.s.sa.s.sination. A few days before his murder, the Ox's pretty wife had noticed a stranger hanging around their house, and when she informed her husband, he had taken her sufficiently seriously to begin carrying a large-caliber revolver in his waistband. This gun was discovered lying by the body after Petto was found sprawled dead in the road close to his home on the evening of October 21. He had been ambushed on his return from work and given no chance to return his a.s.sa.s.sins' fire. Five rifle bullets had smashed into his chest from a short range. From the size of several of the wounds-"large enough to admit a teacup," one local journalist reported after speaking to the town's police-it appeared that the Ox's killers had used explosive bullets to make sure of killing their man.

News of Petto's death reached New York days later, and it was immediately supposed that he had been killed by Giuseppe Di Priemo in revenge for his involvement in the Barrel Murder. The Sun Sun even reported that the imprisoned counterfeiter had been seen by several people in Manhattan, "on a hunt for 'The Ox,' and that he had gone to Pennsylvania in search of him." Flynn, though, was adamant that Di Priemo could not have been Petto's killer; in October 1905, the Secret Service man observed, Benedetto Madonia's brother-in-law was still locked up in Sing Sing. The Chief was correct. Di Priemo's surviving prison records show that the earliest date he could have been paroled was April 14, 1906. even reported that the imprisoned counterfeiter had been seen by several people in Manhattan, "on a hunt for 'The Ox,' and that he had gone to Pennsylvania in search of him." Flynn, though, was adamant that Di Priemo could not have been Petto's killer; in October 1905, the Secret Service man observed, Benedetto Madonia's brother-in-law was still locked up in Sing Sing. The Chief was correct. Di Priemo's surviving prison records show that the earliest date he could have been paroled was April 14, 1906.

So far as Flynn was concerned, the most likely solution to the Petto murder mystery was that the Ox had been murdered by another of Madonia's relatives. "To my mind," he wrote, "there was no doubt that the slaying was an act of vengeance." It was not long, though, before the police began to formulate a rival theory. Petto, it was speculated, had been a victim of Morello himself, shot dead as a punishment for the idiocy he had displayed in p.a.w.ning Madonia's watch and because he knew too much about the barrel mystery.

The notion of Morello as the killer, wreaking vengeance on the members of his own gang, and perhaps using his own Mafia connections to have the murder carried out, was an idea that gained greater currency over the next few years as several other members of his family met equally violent deaths, in several cases far from Manhattan. Vito Laduca was the next to die, shot dead in Carini, Sicily, in February 1908; then Messina Genova was murdered in Ohio. A year after that, in the summer of 1909, Giovanni Zacconi-the Stanton Street butcher thought by Petrosino to have driven the covered "death wagon" that took Madonia's body, in its barrel, to its resting place on East 11th Street-was also killed. Zacconi had abandoned New York for a new life as a fruit farmer in Danbury, Connecticut. On July 28 he was ambushed by a group of seven killers who attacked him with shotguns in a country lane. At least a dozen sh.e.l.ls were fired, and the Mafioso was found by his son lying by a ditch with half his face blown away. "He was," one Was.h.i.+ngton newspaper reported, "arrested in connection with the famous 'barrel murder,' [and] it is believed he incurred the enmity of the organization and was slain for revenge." The Chicago Tribune Chicago Tribune said much the same, adding: "The police explain the four killings [of Petto, Laduca, Genova, and Zacconi] on the theory that the real murderers of Benedetto have been killing the men who knew the details of the crime." said much the same, adding: "The police explain the four killings [of Petto, Laduca, Genova, and Zacconi] on the theory that the real murderers of Benedetto have been killing the men who knew the details of the crime."

SOMEHOW, FEW PEOPLE seemed at all surprised at the collapse of the Barrel Murder investigation. New Yorkers had grown used to seeing Italian crimes going unsolved, almost always for lack of conclusive evidence. But a yearlong Secret Service operation lay in ruins, along with all the lonely, boring, dangerous hours of observation that it had entailed. Worse, Morello and his confederates had been thoroughly alerted to the fact that they were under continuous surveillance. seemed at all surprised at the collapse of the Barrel Murder investigation. New Yorkers had grown used to seeing Italian crimes going unsolved, almost always for lack of conclusive evidence. But a yearlong Secret Service operation lay in ruins, along with all the lonely, boring, dangerous hours of observation that it had entailed. Worse, Morello and his confederates had been thoroughly alerted to the fact that they were under continuous surveillance.

The Clutch Hand had always been a careful man; now, the Secret Servicemen a.s.signed to watch him observed, he had grown almost pathologically cautious. His movements became ever more unpredictable, and when he did emerge from one of his haunts, he walked rapidly, frequently glancing over his shoulder to see if he was being followed, and developed the unnerving habit of turning a corner and vanis.h.i.+ng by darting into a nearby building before the man tailing him could catch up. Arrangements were also made by the Morello family for mail to be delivered covertly to an unknown address, probably a bar or store owned by one of the boss's friends. The Secret Service, which had obtained more firm evidence of wrongdoing by intercepting the gang's correspondence than from any other source, spent months attempting to discover where the missing mail was going, but without success.

Flynn was extremely perturbed by this turn of events. Lupo and Morello were among "the most dangerous foreign criminals in the country," he had concluded, and he had warned McClusky that his arrests were premature. "Too many policemen," the Chief complained, "make the mistake of viewing an arrest as their most important function. The most vital task of a policeman is not an arrest-but a conviction conviction. An arrest without the necessary evidence for a jury is not only wasted labor, but in its final a.n.a.lysis a confession of weakness."

What made the failure to prosecute the gang the more galling in Flynn's eyes was the inability of the police to learn from their mistakes. The NYPD made no real attempt to keep the Morello family under surveillance after May 1903, let alone to investigate the sources of its income or obtain fresh intelligence about its members. Petrosino, who might have played a central role in such an effort, found himself swept off almost immediately to check the rising tide of Black Hand crime; he had little time to spare for longer-term investigations over the next two years. McClusky and his Detective Bureau were relieved to drop the case. That meant that the job of keeping an eye on Morello and his men fell by default to the ordinary patrolmen of the first family's local precinct, the 104th Street station, who were woefully ill equipped to deal with such well-organized criminals. Rather than concentrating, as Flynn urged, on quietly ama.s.sing fragments of intelligence, the police instead indulged themselves in a campaign of petty hara.s.sment. "The detectives," Ciro Terranova said, "used to come around very often and search everybody. Since the time of Morello's arrest, each and every member of my family including my brother, have been searched on average twice a week."

The Morellos had some reason to resent the attentions of the 104th Street men; on one occasion, several officers seized Ciro and his brother Vincenzo while they were out searching for a doctor to tend Morello's son and, ignoring their protests, dragged them off to the station house for interrogation. But the Sicilians had more reason to be grateful. The crude efforts of the Harlem precinct barely hindered the family's activities, the police felt they were "doing something," and their regular hara.s.sment made the Morellos more careful and so more effective. For Flynn, the 104th Street campaign amounted to rank incompetence.

What was really needed, it seemed clear to almost everybody, was a police squad dedicated to Italian crime. There was reason enough to set one up; the number of Black Hand bombings, shootings, and stabbings rose fourfold between 1903 and 1907, by which time The New York Times The New York Times alone was reporting in excess of three hundred incidents a year-a figure that implied that a far greater number of similar offenses were going unremarked. And while at this same time the number of Italian-speaking policemen on the force was gradually rising, Petrosino was the only man devoted to tackling crime in Little Italy. Detective Sergeant Antonio Vachris, a Genoese who was Petrosino's opposite number in Brooklyn, complained that he spent more of his time dealing with saloon license violations than he did with the Black Handers of his own borough, and of course that meant that the officers who were a.s.signed to investigate murder and extortion in Italian Brooklyn had no chance of grasping the intricacies of such cases, nor even of making themselves understood to their witnesses. alone was reporting in excess of three hundred incidents a year-a figure that implied that a far greater number of similar offenses were going unremarked. And while at this same time the number of Italian-speaking policemen on the force was gradually rising, Petrosino was the only man devoted to tackling crime in Little Italy. Detective Sergeant Antonio Vachris, a Genoese who was Petrosino's opposite number in Brooklyn, complained that he spent more of his time dealing with saloon license violations than he did with the Black Handers of his own borough, and of course that meant that the officers who were a.s.signed to investigate murder and extortion in Italian Brooklyn had no chance of grasping the intricacies of such cases, nor even of making themselves understood to their witnesses.

It was not until January 1905 that a new police commissioner solved this conundrum, partially at least. Worried by the rising tide of violence in Little Italy, William McAdoo, a reform-minded New Jersey lawyer, brought together a small group of Italian-born officers to tackle the problem. Petrosino, still a detective sergeant then, was the obvious choice to lead this new Italian Squad, but McAdoo scoured the ranks of the NYPD for other speakers of the language, eventually unearthing eight more men, among the four thousand then on the force, who possessed the necessary linguistic skills. There were so few Italian policemen in New York, in fact, that Petrosino's deputy, Maurice Bonsoil, was half Irish and half French, but Bonsoil had grown up in a Sicilian quarter of the city and spoke the dialect better than he did English. There were other surprises, too: The addition of an Irish-sounding patrolman, Hugh Ca.s.sidy, to the ranks of the squad baffled newspaper reporters until it was discovered that the man had been born Ugo Ca.s.sidi and had Anglicized his name.

Petrosino's nomination to lead the new Italian Squad was well received throughout the city, not least in Little Italy itself, where word of the appointment helped a.s.suage growing concern among the great majority of honest immigrant families that the spate of bombings and kidnappings for ransom was getting out of hand. Early successes, including the solution of an especially b.l.o.o.d.y murder in the Bronx, helped to burnish the detective's reputation further. Petrosino also scored a signal victory in arresting and having deported to Italy an important Neapolitan criminal named Enrico Alfano, who was one of the heads of the Camorra, an extended, organized criminal band that terrorized Naples in much the same way as the Mafia did Sicily. Alfano had fled to the United States after the murder of a rival boss and was widely considered untouchable. His deportation caused a sensation in Italy, where it resulted in an eleven-month trial and, eventually, in thirty convictions-the fiercest blow struck against the Camorra in a generation. Petrosino's exploits also made a deep impression on the Italians of New York, many of whom had viewed Alfano with a superst.i.tious dread. The Neapolitan crime boss had been seen, The New York Times The New York Times reported, "in the light of a demi-G.o.d; he was thought to be invulnerable to bullets and able at all times to escape his pursuers." Yet the Italian detective had defeated him. reported, "in the light of a demi-G.o.d; he was thought to be invulnerable to bullets and able at all times to escape his pursuers." Yet the Italian detective had defeated him.

By the time the Alfano affair reached its conclusion, Joe Petrosino was unquestionably one of the two or three most famous policemen in the city, and arguably in the entire United States. He was certainly influential enough to browbeat his superiors into increasing the size of the Italian Squad, which grew to number thirty men by 1908, with ten more stationed across the East River in Brooklyn. "The personality and the mentality of the chief of the Italian squad are striking," wrote one reporter who returned impressed from interviewing Petrosino.

He is short in stature, but stoutly built. He is clean-shaven and shows a strong but determined jaw. The mouth is firm, the lips are set in a straight line, suggesting purpose rather than severity. The eyes are not the searching eyes of the inquisitive prodder, but the intelligent eyes of a student. There is generally a kindly light in them, a light that makes one feel easy in mind. They invite you to be confidential, and when the straight line of the lips breaks into a smile, you can readily imagine that you are talking to some gentle and thoughtful person who has your interests at heart.Petrosino is suave, but this is never discovered until too late, and the Italian criminal who has been chatting with him over a wicker-jacketed Chianti bottle, finds a strong hand clasping his wrist and the information is given to him that he is under arrest.

But for all this, the same writer warned, the Italian Squad was hard pressed to keep up with the demands placed on it: "Petrosino and his men seldom know what it is like to get eight hours of sleep in twenty-four."

Petrosino was promoted to lieutenant in 1907, and most of the press coverage that he generated in abundance was positive; his name was so well known and well regarded by this time that he even became the unwitting star of a whole series of dime novels, published in Italy, which portrayed him as a sort of New York Sherlock Holmes. But the larger question of whether any detective was truly up to such a task was seldom asked. Certainly it was expecting too much of even forty officers to suppress crime in a community that by now numbered well over two hundred thousand people, and it did not help that the men of the Italian Squad were provided with the bare minimum of resources. The squad was given a little office of its own on Elm Street, a short distance from police headquarters, and had its own Rogues' Gallery and files, but no effort was made to integrate this intelligence with the main NYPD files, let alone to share information with Flynn's Secret Service, and the squad remained almost entirely reactive, attempting to solve crimes that had already been committed rather than mounting the sort of long-term surveillance Flynn advocated in the hope of preventing those that were still being planned. To make matters worse, Petrosino still kept much of his own invaluable experience in his head-he boasted to one newsman of being able to identify three thousand Italian criminals by sight-and while this made him a formidable adversary in person, it was a dangerous habit, and one that worried his superiors, who realized how much would be lost if the lieutenant decided to retire or was actually killed.

For his handful of critics, indeed, Joe Petrosino was a good deal less effective than his press coverage suggested-a Victorian policeman who kept the peace in Little Italy in a Victorian way. Having joined the NYPD as long ago as 1883, and having served more than half a dozen years as a beat patrolman before rising to the rank of plainclothesman, Petrosino had always relied as much upon his muscles as his brains-a Brooklyn alderman had once accused him of punching "more teeth than a dentist" from the mouths of criminals. Nor would anyone who knew both men have said that he was in Flynn's cla.s.s as a detective. Petrosino was more of a plodder, a stolid, careful, conscientious man who got results by sheer hard work, solid experience, and the occasional distraction of a modest disguise.

"As a story book detective," a critical reporter from the New York Sun Sun once observed, once observed, Petrosino would have been a lamentable failure. His devices were simple. But his commonplace appearance and the fact that he had to deal with a cla.s.s of criminals not particularly intelligent obviated the necessity for unusual cleverness in his methods. ... He impressed most people as a short fat man, rather dull than otherwise, certainly not to be feared by a malefactor with a mind above a pig's, [and] he looked as unlike a detective as you could imagine. He loafed about the wine shops of the lower East Side, the West Side and Harlem; he worked for a day or two sometimes in trenches with laborers; he pa.s.sed himself off as an immigration official or as an employee of the Board of Health. A big cap, the brilliant red bandana, boots or a long overcoat were about all the properties he needed.

It was true, another newsman added, that Petrosino's men did get a few of their results with the help of clever tricks and innovations such as fingerprinting. But, like their boss, they often seemed more comfortable practicing old-fas.h.i.+oned police work of a sort poorly suited to tackling newfangled crimes. The nightstick, the third degree, the stool pigeon, and the telephone tip-off to a friendly journalist when a newsworthy arrest was about to be made: These were the tools of the Italian Squad.

- ON WALL STREET a mile from Petrosino's Elm Street office, William Flynn was also calculating how best to keep watch over the first family. a mile from Petrosino's Elm Street office, William Flynn was also calculating how best to keep watch over the first family.

Had Flynn worked for the Police Department, he might have left Morello alone. The Chief's sole duty was to catch counterfeiters, and the Barrel Murder case had brought the gang's efforts to distribute bogus notes to a hurried stop. The family had burned ten thousand dollars of counterfeit bills on the boss's orders immediately after his arrest, and the realization that the operation had been exposed by the Secret Service was sufficient to persuade Morello's Sicilians to seek less risky ways of making money. The men of the New York bureau found no evidence that the gang was involved in counterfeiting in the months that followed the Clutch Hand's release from jail in the summer of 1903.

Flynn's instinct, though, was that Morello was still dangerous. The Mafia had already turned to counterfeiting twice; it struck him that there was every prospect that it would do so again. And there were still the loose ends of the Yonkers counterfeiting case to be followed through, investigations that led to the uncovering of the Canadian end of the Morellos' distribution operation and with it traces of a more extensive mail fraud-the gang had been sending small quant.i.ties of notes by mail to agents in Italian communities all over the country. Then, that October, three other Morello agents went on trial, with the upshot that each received a sentence of six years. All in all, Flynn felt certain that his surveillance of the Clutch Hand ought to be resumed. If there were any signs that the Sicilians were making preparations to resume their counterfeiting schemes, the Chief wanted to hear about them long before they were a serious concern.

Aside from all that, there was also Morello, who Flynn knew had gotten away with murder, and for whom the Secret Service man had begun to feel considerable loathing. "He has become enveloped in mystery," Flynn once observed in notes about his enemy, [and] ultimately he will be looked upon as a big bad man, but he wasn't and isn't. He was a little bad man. He was vicious and vindictive and dangerous generally ... treacherous but yellow. His mob was, like all mobs, a fluctuating quality. He enlarged it or decreased it to suit his own immediate purposes, [but] his staff was composed of as sinister an aggregation of cut-throats as I have ever surveyed, arrested and sent to prison.

There was more to Flynn's determination to put a stop to the Clutch Hand's activities than mere dislike, of course. By 1906, the Mafia was evidently a significant threat to law and order in New York.

As the Chief pointed out, convicting Morello would put one of the most murderous men in the city behind bars. "I'm of the opinion that 50 murders could be traced to the Morello-Lupo outfit," he wrote.

Actually putting this decision into action was more easily said than done, of course. More so even than the Italian Squad, Flynn's Secret Service bureau-indeed, the agency as a whole-was desperately short of men. Between the years 1890 and 1910, the number of Secret Service agents a.s.signed to offices across the United States was never more than forty; the average was only twenty-seven men. Nine of those, plus Flynn, were a.s.signed to the New York bureau, which made the Wall Street office the only one of any size outside Was.h.i.+ngton. But the city was home to so many forgers and counterfeit bills that every agent in the city was kept busy. In most years, more than a fifth of all the counterfeiting cases in the country meant work for the Manhattan office.

Both Flynn and his predecessor, William Hazen, had been aware for years they had a problem. As early as the summer of 1900, Hazen had written pleadingly to Was.h.i.+ngton, informing headquarters that the New York bureau required, at a minimum, a stenographer, a typist, and more agents. Little had changed by 1903, when, during the Barrel Murder investigation, Flynn's men had worked sixteen-hour s.h.i.+fts, slept four hours on a sofa in their office, and then gone back out on the streets again. Now, that same autumn, the Chief was able to spare no more than one or two men to watch over Lupo's grocery store and Inzerillo's cafe, and that merely on an intermittent basis. As the months pa.s.sed without any sign of a resumption of counterfeiting activity, even that watch was wound down and discontinued.

All this did not mean, however, that Flynn abandoned all attempts to monitor the New York Mafia. Informants recruited in Little Italy kept his office supplied with fragments of intelligence, and, unlike the minor street thugs favored as stool pigeons by the Italian Squad, the Chief's recruits were generally former forgers with a good knowledge of serious crime. Tony Brancatto, Flynn's top man in the Italian Quarter, was a Sicilian tailor who had once run a large-scale counterfeiting ring. Since his release from prison shortly before the Barrel Murder, Brancatto had-so Flynn believed-reformed, and the Sicilian now supplied the Secret Service with a stream of useful information, much of it gleaned from criminals' gossip in Italian bars.

Italian-speaking agents supplemented such informants on the streets. In 1903 the New York bureau employed one such man, Larry Richey (born Ricci), a Philadelphian who had joined the Secret Service at sixteen as a result of a dime novel adventure-he had chased a ball down into a bas.e.m.e.nt that turned out to be the lair of a counterfeiting gang. A few years later, Flynn added a second Italian speaker to his staff. Peter Rubano, an older and more experienced operative, became the Secret Service's chief undercover man in the Italian quarter, a.s.similating so well into the life of the district that eventually, so Flynn recorded, he wormed his way into the outer circles of the Morello family itself. Over the years, both Richey and Rubano succeeded in producing large quant.i.ties of useful information.

The task of recruiting able agents of such auspicious quality was made easier by the fact that the Secret Service was regarded as a glamorous employer. The name, the lure of exciting detective work, and the relatively handsome pay of four to seven dollars a day (half as much again as a policeman's) combined to encourage large numbers of well-qualified potential agents to apply for the handful of posts available. There were seldom fewer than three thousand men on Director Wilkie's waiting list, and this meant that it was possible to select honest operatives of high attainment who possessed specific qualities; even Flynn had had to wait a decade for his chance. "In the Secret Service," the Chief once explained to a curious journalist, "are specialists in dealing with certain callings. There are, for instance, the 'lawyer,' and 'doctor,' and the 'engineer.' They can pa.s.s themselves off as doctors, lawyers or mechanics as the case requires." At Flynn's instigation, the bureau even brought in female agents on occasion, a remarkable and forward-looking policy never dreamed of by New York's Police Department. Nor was there ever any problem with corrupt, dishonest agents-this at a time when the Police Department was entirely awash with graft and almost every officer on the force took bribes.

The back office staff responsible for maintaining the Secret Service records in Was.h.i.+ngton were of the same high quality, and their files, a well-maintained and well-indexed collection, together formed an invaluable resource. The bureau's headquarters in Was.h.i.+ngton boasted a Rogues' Gallery, in Room 35 of the U.S. Treasury Building, that featured displays of 250 active counterfeiters and photographs and records of ten thousand more. Files bulged with samples of counterfeits, and clerks labored over ledgers containing the criminal records and exact physical descriptions of every forger and queer-pusher ever arrested by the bureau. The volume of fresh intelligence processed each morning was considerable. Each Secret Service agent was required to submit a daily report summarizing his activities in minute detail, and the names and the information these reports contained were carefully indexed and cross-referenced, providing Flynn and his colleagues in other bureaus with access to a formidable quant.i.ty of information on counterfeiting and counterfeiters throughout the country.

All these resources, all this information, gave Flynn a large advantage when it came to watching the Morellos. When the Chief discovered that the gang had begun to meet in a room at Lupo's wholesale store, he rented a room across the street. He also arranged to have mail dropped into a local box recovered, opened, and read. His agents followed Morello and his men when they left New York, sometimes trailing their targets as far as New Orleans. And long months of dogged detective work-hours standing on street corners observing, weeks spent piecing together the details of the gang's movements, actions, and acquaintances-ensured that Flynn generally had a shrewd idea of where Morello was and what he was doing.

When the Mafia moved, he would be ready.

CHAPTER 7.

FAMILY BUSINESS.

THE BODY LYING IN THE BROOKLYN MORGUE HAD BEEN REDUCED to little more than packages of meat. Its arms and legs lay piled on one side of the slab, sawn clean through at the shoulders and thighs and still clad in the fragments of a suit. The torso and the head lay on the other, the throat cut and the trunk expertly drained of blood-"almost complete sanguination," in the grim phrase of the medical examiner. The face had been so hacked up with a straight razor that it no longer appeared human. Even Antonio Vachris, who had fifteen years of service with New York's police, had never seen such awful mutilations. to little more than packages of meat. Its arms and legs lay piled on one side of the slab, sawn clean through at the shoulders and thighs and still clad in the fragments of a suit. The torso and the head lay on the other, the throat cut and the trunk expertly drained of blood-"almost complete sanguination," in the grim phrase of the medical examiner. The face had been so hacked up with a straight razor that it no longer appeared human. Even Antonio Vachris, who had fifteen years of service with New York's police, had never seen such awful mutilations.

The injuries themselves, though, were familiar enough. The dead man's nose, lips, and tongue had all been roughly cut away, and all were missing-punishments typically inflicted by Sicilians on traitors. The remainder of the mutilations-the slashed throat and the dismemberment-were warnings to anyone who might think of doing likewise. That explained why the body had been dumped where it was likely to be found: wrapped in two oilcloth bundles and thrown onto a stinking dump in Pigtown, a dilapidated Brooklyn neighborhood populated largely by Italians.

The victim had been young and strong, of middling height, though poorly dressed and showing little sign of wealth. Putting a name to the remains would usually have been a lengthy task, but when Vachris slid his fingers into a jacket pocket, they closed around an envelope that held a folded square of paper. It was a letter postmarked Carini, Sicily, a few weeks earlier, and addressed by one Antonio Marchiani to his son Salvatore in New York. Unfolding the paper, Vachris read an urgent scribble in Sicilian: "I hear from a number of people who have returned from America that you are constantly in company of a lot of bad Palermo people," the elder Marchiani had written. "It is the express wish of your father and mother that you cut loose from them, as you cannot come to any good end with them. If you have not the money to return, we will send it to you. Never mind how poor you are: Come home."

Vachris replaced the letter in its envelope. The butchered remains lying in front of him now had a name. But clearly Salvatore Marchiani had had no time to heed his father's warning. His expertly dismembered body was the plainest evidence imaginable that someone powerful and vengeful had wanted hi