The First Family Part 9

Clemente began to prove his worth at once. It was his information that alerted the Chief to the existence of the Oddo farm and its grisly private graveyard. It was also he who warned Flynn that the Terranova brothers were making plans to s.n.a.t.c.h his children. But perhaps the most important details that the Chief's new man supplied were insights into the family's struggle to maintain its dominance in Little Italy. With Lupo and Morello locked away, potential rivals had begun to rear their heads. The Harlem Mafia had faced few threats on its home ground for years, not since the Barrel Murder showed just what the likely fate of any challenger would be; now, with the family seemingly leaderless, allies and old enemies alike began to circle. The next ten years would be bloodier by far than the preceding decade for every member of the first family.

The problem was lack of leaders.h.i.+p at first, and for this Giuseppe Morello himself was chiefly responsible, since he refused to cede power without a struggle. For months the Clutch Hand tried to run his family from a prison cell, pa.s.sing instructions to New York in elliptic Corleone slang that baffled even the Italian speakers a.s.signed to read his letters and eavesdrop on his conversations. It was only in 1911, with the failure of the appeal-and with it the realization that there would be no swift return to Manhattan-that he yielded control to two lieutenants. His chosen successors were the Lomonte brothers, Tom and Fortunato, both Sicilians, both racketeers, and co-owners of a saloon on East 107th Street, which they ran with Morello's crooked brother-in-law, Gioacchino Lima.

Why Morello's choice fell on the Lomontes is not known. There was little to recommend them, superficially at least. They were not family. Both were still young, in their late twenties, and neither had been prominent in Harlem's underworld, nor had either ever been charged with any serious crime. The brothers may simply have been the last men standing after Flynn jailed the family's established leaders. Whatever the truth, they were at least well known to the Clutch Hand; he had first met them when they organized a plasterers' union years earlier, and he employed one of their cousins in his grocery business. Whether the brothers were the right men to lead the Morellos into a new and far more complex criminal era, though, was doubtful even at the time that they were given command of the first family.

The years from 1911 to 1916 are among the darkest in the history of New York's Mafia-dark, in that they were a period of bloodletting and turmoil, but dark, too, because they are so poorly chronicled. Personal testimony is absent, police records are lacking, and, since the Morello family steered well clear of counterfeiting after 1910, even Flynn, with all his bulldog's tenacity, could devote no more than a fraction of his scant resources to keeping an eye on events in Little Italy. Manhattan's newspapers, too, cut back their coverage of crime after 1914. With the Great War raging in Europe, the disputes of a few bloodthirsty gangsters began to seem more petty than thrilling.

For the Morellos, their enemies, and their allies, though, the years that followed the counterfeiting trial of 1910 were deadly-the most violent that they had ever known. The first family had lost its leaders and nearly half its men; Flynn, who had estimated the strength of the Clutch Hand's gang at 110 late in 1909, convicted 45 of them in 1910, this at a time when the rising tide of Italian immigrants was sweeping a flood of young, ambitious criminals into New York. Districts that the Morellos had dominated a decade earlier now seethed with likely compet.i.tion.

The Lomontes responded to these threats as best they could. They rebuilt the strength of their family, initiating a number of new members. They also made deals and forged relations.h.i.+ps with other gangs. By doing so, the brothers b.u.t.tressed their position, but the protection they obtained through their alliances was gained at the expense of the family's clannishness and independence. Few of the newcomers who joined its ranks after 1910 were Corleonesi; some were not even Sicilian. And while the Lomontes' allies supplied extra strength, the Harlem Mafia was inevitably dragged into the disputes of its new friends.

A number of influential names make their first appearance in the Morellos' story at this time. One was Eugene Ubriaco from Cosenza, a Calabrian who had entered the United States in 1907 and became the first man from outside Sicily to rise to prominence within the Clutch Hand's family. Another was Joe DiMarco, an influential figure in the lucrative world of illegal gambling. DiMarco, his brother Salvatore, and another Sicilian, Giuseppe Verrazano (who ran card games downtown on Kenmare Street), gave the Morellos a larger stake in the criminal economy of southern Manhattan. The Morellos, in return, offered protection.

It was in Harlem, though, that the most unusual of the Lomontes' allies lived. She was a dumpy, mannish Neapolitan woman named Pasquarella Spinelli-square-faced, red-haired, and nearly sixty years old-and she was the owner of the largest livery stable for miles around: a tumbledown warren of corrugated iron hideaways that stood only a short walk from the brothers' feed store and stretched the width of a city block from its entrance at 334 East 108th Street. Though barely literate-she was well known in Harlem for keeping accounts scrawled with a lump of coal on whitewashed walls-Spinelli was rich, a successful businesswoman who lent money, leased tenements, and owned the Rex, the largest Italian vaudeville theater in Manhattan. To most of the population of East Harlem, she was also a sinister figure, and it was generally understood that most of her considerable fortune came from crime. The local police, for whom she acted as an occasional informant, knew Pasquarella as the head of a gang of horse thieves and extortionists, most of whom worked from her stable as grooms. She was worth three hundred thousand dollars, it was said.

The Lomonte brothers had good use for such an ally. For one thing, Spinelli was likely a valued customer of their feed store; for another, Nick Terranova, who ran the Morellos' horse theft racket, could use her stable to conceal his stolen animals-a service for which Pasquarella charged her customers the rate of five dollars a day. The closeness of the relations.h.i.+p between Spinelli and the Mafia was demonstrated in December 1911 when Nick opened a blacksmith's shop on her premises. What Pasquarella got from the arrangement is less clear, but it probably had much to do with her own need for protection in the Harlem underworld. Certainly a number of murders were committed on and around her property over the years (the Herald Herald, in 1917, would put the total at more than twenty), so many that the place became infamous throughout the borough as the "Murder Stable." According to New York rumor-and it was rumor that was printed as fact by newspapers as august and as cautious as The New York Times The New York Times-Spinelli's labyrinthine premises concealed makes.h.i.+ft torture chambers and murder rooms where the Morellos' enemies were questioned and killed, and the screams of their unfortunate victims could be heard drifting out across East Harlem late at night. In truth, accounts of this sort stemmed from error and imagination, but there is no question that Spinelli had many enemies and went in fear of her life.

If Pasquarella thought that the Lomontes and the Mafia could keep her safe, though, she was wrong. Only a few months later she was dead, shot through the head and neck by a pair of gunmen who had lurked outside the main doors to her stable and who had plainly waited some time for her to show herself. The murder was never solved; Spinelli's a.s.sa.s.sins escaped, and there were conflicting theories as to who had sent them. Some attributed the shooting to a vendetta Pasquarella and her daughter had been pursuing with some minor gangsters, while others, including the police, pointed to the machinations of her business partner, Luigi Lazzazzara.

In an underworld that was becoming more dangerous each day, no one could escape the consequences for long-not the owner of the Murder Stable, nor, as it soon became clear, even the Morellos themselves.

PASQUARELLA HAD BEEN one of Harlem's most prominent residents, but even her death made no difference to the smooth running of the Italian underworld. Lazzazzara took on the stable and the grooms, and the horse theft racket went on much as it had before. The same could not be said of the next murder to take place in the Sicilian quarter. That April, just three weeks after Spinelli was shot, Giuseppe Morello's only son was also killed. This time there were repercussions-for the boy's a.s.sa.s.sins, who were hunted down, and for the leaders of the Morello family themselves. By the time peace was restored a few months later, the Lomonte brothers had lost a good deal of their influence and a new boss had emerged from the ranks of the Harlem Mafia. one of Harlem's most prominent residents, but even her death made no difference to the smooth running of the Italian underworld. Lazzazzara took on the stable and the grooms, and the horse theft racket went on much as it had before. The same could not be said of the next murder to take place in the Sicilian quarter. That April, just three weeks after Spinelli was shot, Giuseppe Morello's only son was also killed. This time there were repercussions-for the boy's a.s.sa.s.sins, who were hunted down, and for the leaders of the Morello family themselves. By the time peace was restored a few months later, the Lomonte brothers had lost a good deal of their influence and a new boss had emerged from the ranks of the Harlem Mafia.

Morello's son was still young, only seventeen, when he was killed, and his death was all the more shocking for being unexpected. Calogero's death took place on a clear evening early in spring, a few blocks north of the Morellos' strongholds, as the boy was strolling up Third Avenue with his friend Joe Pulazzo. Just as they reached 120th Street, a group of men emerged from several doorways. Pa.s.sersby heard voices raised, then several shots. The two groups had been grappling a moment earlier, and the shots were fired from point-blank range. Morello was. .h.i.t once in the stomach, invariably a fatal wound at the time; Pulazzo took a bullet through a lung. Reeling back, the Mafiosi drew their own weapons and returned fire, mortally wounding one attacker. The two Sicilians were outnumbered, though, and so badly wounded that neither could get more than a few blocks from the scene of the ambush. Calogero, trailing smears of blood, staggered as far as Lexington Avenue before collapsing against some steps. An ambulance was summoned, and as the dying boy was stretchered aboard, a pa.s.sing priest climbed in and gave the boy the last rites. Morello, Pulazzo, and their wounded a.s.sailant all died the next day in the hospital. None had said a word to the police.

Word of the triple shooting filtered down to Flynn next morning, and the Chief's inquiries soon revealed the basics of the story; Calogero's attacker had been "one Barlow, alias Kid Baker," a gang leader from the Upper East Side. The motive for the ambush, though, was harder to discern; Baker had no ties to the Mafia, and there was all sorts of speculation in East Harlem. One report suggested that Morello had been a police informant, killed on the orders of his family when his betrayal was unveiled. Another theory was that the ambush had had its roots in disputes over the control of prost.i.tution in the Italian neighborhoods.

Salvatore Clemente would fill in the facts. Clemente's version of events differed considerably from the rumors that were circulating on the street. As it was, though, the counterfeiter's reports shone vital, unexpected light upon a little-known part of the Morellos' saga: the eclipse of the Lomonte brothers and the rise of Nick Terranova to the leaders.h.i.+p of the first family.

It was at Calogero's funeral, Clemente said, that he first learned the truth about the murder. He was by then a favorite of the Terranova brothers-he had lent them the money to hire handsome carriages for young Morello's funeral procession-and they confided what had actually happened on 120th Street. Calogero, the Terranovas explained, was not merely the unlucky victim of a street brawl. He had been shot down as part of a vendetta: revenge, on the part of the Madonia family, for the murder of the barrel victim nine years earlier. The ambush had been carefully planned; Morello had been lured up Third Avenue by an urgent message sent not by Kid Baker but by Baker's lieutenant. The lieutenant, who was Madonia's nephew, had begun a scuffle to create a pretext for the shooting; afterward, according to the Terranova brothers, he had gone to Lucy Madonia in search of protection and begged her to use her influence to make peace. When Mrs. Madonia refused to intervene, the nephew was forced to flee New York for Italy.

The three Terranovas thirsted for revenge. Calogero was, after all, a Mafioso-even at seventeen, he had been "carrying a gun" for the first family. The brothers were also deeply concerned at the effect the news of the murder would have on the boy's father. "The family," Clemente said, "did not know what to tell Morello, as they fear when he hears of the death of his son it will perhaps kill him." They were also thoroughly disgusted by the Lomonte brothers' failure to seek vengeance. The Morello family's new leaders made no attempt to find Calogero's killers. Their unwillingness to avenge his death was a grave breach of Mafia custom, and at young Morello's funeral Nick Terranova publicly humiliated them, placing a hand upon his nephew's coffin and loudly swearing revenge. He would "butcher every one" of the Kid Baker gang, he vowed.

Nick wasted little time in making good on his promise. A week after Calogero's death, he vanished from East 116th Street one evening and reappeared the next morning with news that he had tracked down and killed the first member of the Baker gang. A few weeks later, the youngest of the Terranovas murdered again, this time shooting down the man who had sent his nephew the message that lured him to his death. Nick, clearly, was taking considerable risks; he and his brothers would undoubtedly be suspects if the killings were discovered. When Clemente called on them next day, he found his friends rehearsing alibis and "constantly sending out for papers and observing that there was nothing in them of it yet"-good news, of course, since it meant that the police knew nothing of the murder.

Terranova grew substantially in stature in these months. He was the youngest of three brothers, and only twenty-two years old in 1912; a year earlier, when Morello had been jailed, he had been thought too young and inexperienced to succeed as boss. Now, though, he revealed himself to be a natural leader, and by avenging Calogero's death he acquired an influence that matched and then eclipsed that of the two Lomontes. Other members of the Morello family began to ask him for advice and to depend on his decisions. The Lomontes, for their part, backed away. The brothers severed at least one of their ties with the Morellos at about this time, giving up their saloon on East 107th Street and opening another in its stead. The new tavern stood two blocks to the north, and they ran it in partners.h.i.+p with a man called Gagliano. Gagliano was the family name of another group of Mafiosi from across the East River in the Bronx.

It took time, of course, for the inexperienced Terranova to acc.u.mulate enough support to rival the Lomontes; Clemente was still referring to the first family as the "Lomonti gang" as late as 1913. What does seem indisputable is that the brothers' influence declined as Nick gained power. When that happened, the Lomontes turned to yet another ally for support. They turned to the King of Little Italy.

GIOSUE GALLUCCI, THE MAN who gloried in that t.i.tle, was generally agreed to be the most influential Italian in New York. He had arrived in the United States in 1892 from Naples and gradually established himself as a power in East Harlem. By 1912 he had business interests throughout the district. He ran much of the ice trade in the summer and controlled the coal trade in the winter. He was also one of the biggest moneylenders in the Italian quarter, owned a string of cobbler's shops, dealt in olive oil, enjoyed a near monopoly on hay and feed sales to the district's livery stables, and was the owner of a popular bakery at 318 East 109th Street, where he lived in an apartment over the store. Everybody knew him; hundreds owed their living to him, and thousands more paid him in one way or another. "To Gallucci," said Salvatore Cotillo, who would rise from a middle-cla.s.s home in Harlem to become the first Italian-born Supreme Court justice in New York, "all people were either hirelings or payers of tribute. It was a matter of concern in the neighborhood if you were looked down upon by Gallucci." who gloried in that t.i.tle, was generally agreed to be the most influential Italian in New York. He had arrived in the United States in 1892 from Naples and gradually established himself as a power in East Harlem. By 1912 he had business interests throughout the district. He ran much of the ice trade in the summer and controlled the coal trade in the winter. He was also one of the biggest moneylenders in the Italian quarter, owned a string of cobbler's shops, dealt in olive oil, enjoyed a near monopoly on hay and feed sales to the district's livery stables, and was the owner of a popular bakery at 318 East 109th Street, where he lived in an apartment over the store. Everybody knew him; hundreds owed their living to him, and thousands more paid him in one way or another. "To Gallucci," said Salvatore Cotillo, who would rise from a middle-cla.s.s home in Harlem to become the first Italian-born Supreme Court justice in New York, "all people were either hirelings or payers of tribute. It was a matter of concern in the neighborhood if you were looked down upon by Gallucci."

So far as the city's newspapers were concerned, the King was a legitimate businessman-the epitome, in fact, of the successful immigrant. He was a physically imposing man, large without being particularly tall, and always immaculately dressed in tailored suits. He sported magnificent waxed mustaches, and, at a time when New York's Mafia bosses still dressed in ordinary working clothes and only the dandified Lupo the Wolf had any pretensions to elegance, he flashed a $2,000 ring and fastened his s.h.i.+rts with diamond studs worth an additional $3,000, as he swaggered around Harlem swinging his loaded cane.

In Little Italy, however, Gallucci was generally understood to have made much of his immense fortune from crime-from racketeering, mostly, and extortion. Unlike the Morellos, though, he had taken the profits of his criminal enterprises and used them to insinuate himself into every aspect of life in the immigrant quarter. The King ran what purported to be the New York office of the Royal Italian Lottery but was in fact nothing more than a front for his own numbers racket, and he sold thousands of tickets every month throughout Harlem. More important, he was also heavily involved in politics. He was "certainly the most powerful Italian politically in the city," one newspaper remarked, "and during campaigns was exceptionally active."

Gallucci's ability to mobilize the vote in Harlem, to get immigrants registered and to make sure they cast their ballots as he told them to, allowed him to wield the sort of power that Morello never had: power that stretched beyond the confines of the Italian neighborhoods. Hundreds of thousands of immigrants meant hundreds of thousands of valuable votes cast, and, as a partisan of the all-powerful Democratic political machine, which ruled Manhattan from its headquarters at Tammany Hall, the King possessed influence that his rivals could only dream of. Tammany rarely lost an election, and that meant that it controlled the city's police, not to mention the huge army of bureaucrats responsible for handing out city construction contracts and licensing saloons. With Tammany at his back, Gallucci was all but immune from prosecution, and though he was occasionally arrested for minor crimes, the cases never seemed to come to court. The Herald Herald observed in the spring of 1915 that the King was then "out on $10,000 bail on a charge of carrying a pistol, and so strong has been his political influence that it even reached Was.h.i.+ngton, and in two years he has not been tried on the charge." observed in the spring of 1915 that the King was then "out on $10,000 bail on a charge of carrying a pistol, and so strong has been his political influence that it even reached Was.h.i.+ngton, and in two years he has not been tried on the charge."

Thanks to their interest in the feed store on 108th Street, the Lomonte brothers had known Gallucci for several years, and an alliance offered them security and influence. To other members of the Morello family, however, the friends.h.i.+p between the Lomontes and the King was deeply shameful. Gallucci, after all, was Neapolitan, and, in the Morellos' diminished state, he was also the Lomontes' superior, at least in the districts around his 109th Street base. It was a distinction so obvious that it was even noted by the New York newspapers. For the Herald Herald, which followed Italian affairs more closely than the other English language dailies, the Sicilian brothers were actually nothing more than mani forti mani forti-strong men, bodyguards-in the retinue of the King.

THE LOMONTES' FALL had its beginnings in the weakness that they showed in failing to avenge Calogero Morello's death in 1912, but, bolstered by their alliance with Gallucci, it was not until two years later, in May 1914, that the elder of the brothers lost his life. Fortunato, then thirty years old, was murdered in the open, in broad daylight, by a gunman who approached to point-blank range and fired three shots. The boss died almost at once, hit in the neck, chest, and stomach only a few yards from the entrance to the Murder Stable and in the heart of "King" Gallucci's territory. His killer escaped in the confusion. had its beginnings in the weakness that they showed in failing to avenge Calogero Morello's death in 1912, but, bolstered by their alliance with Gallucci, it was not until two years later, in May 1914, that the elder of the brothers lost his life. Fortunato, then thirty years old, was murdered in the open, in broad daylight, by a gunman who approached to point-blank range and fired three shots. The boss died almost at once, hit in the neck, chest, and stomach only a few yards from the entrance to the Murder Stable and in the heart of "King" Gallucci's territory. His killer escaped in the confusion.

It was Salvatore Clemente who first drew attention to the oddness of Lomonte's murder. Few shootings in East Harlem were quite such public affairs, nor was there usually much mystery about the killer. Lomonte's death, though, might have been designed to demonstrate how powerless he was, and, asking around, Clemente discovered that the gunman's ident.i.ty was a mystery even to the leaders of the Morello family. None of the witnesses had ever seen the man before. "No one appears to know who shot Lomonte," the informant said. "They think it was a stranger."

Fortunato's death left Tom Lomonte nominally the boss of the first family, but the younger of the brothers was by this time not much more than a figurehead. Certainly he lacked the power to offer any sort of aid to Giosue Gallucci, who now himself became the target of an unknown enemy. The King was well used to the ordinary feuds of Little Italy; he had survived several, and though there were inevitably casualties (his own brother, Gennaro, had been shot dead in 1909 in the depths of the Gallucci bakery), he had thus far always won his wars. As recently as 1912, the King had become enmeshed in a struggle for power with one of Harlem's most notorious Black Handers, Aniello Prisco-a murderous cripple who gloried in the lurid alias of Zopo the Gimp-and when the extortionist unwisely attempted to levy tribute on 109th Street, he was summarily executed by a Gallucci bodyguard. The gunman who killed Zopo was later charged with murder, but few who knew the King were surprised when the man obtained an acquittal on the grounds of self-defense.

This time, though, the boss was dealing with a more implacable enemy. Half a dozen determined attempts were made on his life-he was shot twice in the body in 1913, and again during a gun battle on First Avenue a year later. By then, bodyguarding Giosue Gallucci had become a spectacularly dangerous occupation. The King himself told a friend that ten men had died protecting him over the years, and by the spring of 1915 he was so concerned for his safety that he rarely ventured more than a few yards from his 109th Street bakery and took to wearing a lightweight chain-mail vest, a rare item then obtainable only from certain arms dealers in Chinatown. When yet another bodyguard was killed early in May, shot by a sniper who had been aiming at the boss, even the King grew fatalistic. Henceforth, he told a Herald Herald reporter who called on him, he would go about his business without protection. "But they will get me," he added. "I know that they will get me yet." reporter who called on him, he would go about his business without protection. "But they will get me," he added. "I know that they will get me yet."

Who "they" might have been, the Herald's Herald's man did not suggest, but it was evident to all Harlem that Gallucci's enemies were well resourced, well organized, and astoundingly persistent. The a.s.sa.s.sins' chance came a few days later, at ten on the evening of May 17, when the King ventured briefly out of his bakery and hurried four doors down East 109th Street to a coffee shop owned by his teenage son Luca-"a place where men could gather, sip coffee, chat, and play pool, and the police said that if they were well enough known they could get something in that coffee." As the same reporter told it, man did not suggest, but it was evident to all Harlem that Gallucci's enemies were well resourced, well organized, and astoundingly persistent. The a.s.sa.s.sins' chance came a few days later, at ten on the evening of May 17, when the King ventured briefly out of his bakery and hurried four doors down East 109th Street to a coffee shop owned by his teenage son Luca-"a place where men could gather, sip coffee, chat, and play pool, and the police said that if they were well enough known they could get something in that coffee." As the same reporter told it, as the two men entered the coffee house they saw several strangers there. Two more followed them in. Some one in the rear opened the widows saying the place was too warm. Suddenly the lights went out and a man cried in Italian-"We've got them at last!"Then the shooting began. At least seven shots were fired. Luca threw his father back to the wall and held himself against him, crying "Shoot me! Shoot me!" They did.Before the echoes of the shots had reached the street, the a.s.sa.s.sins, five or six of them, ran out, turned the corner of First Avenue, leaped into a waiting automobile, and were driven away. Neighbors and the police soon found Gallucci and his son, both mortally wounded. ... [The killers had] sent a bullet through his stomach and another through his neck. At Bellevue Hospital it was said he could not possibly recover.

Gallucci and his son were both still conscious when they reached the hospital, but neither one would talk or help identify their killers. ("Both," another newsman recorded, "steadfastly refused to say how their wounds were inflicted, although a.s.sured death was imminent.") To the police, though, there were clues: Gallucci's killers had lain in wait for him, perhaps for days; there had been half a dozen of them; and they had taken the one chance they were offered swiftly and with savage determination. That narrowed down the list of suspects quite considerably.

The investigation proceeded only slowly, nonetheless. Then, on October 13, 1915, Tom Lomonte was murdered, too-in public. He was loitering on a street corner on 116th Street, talking to a female cousin, when a skinny youth crept up from behind and shot him three times in the back. A nearby policeman heard the shots, spotted the gunman, and pursued him as he made off down First Avenue. After a short chase, the youth darted into a tenement at 36 East 115th Street, scrambled up the stairs to the first floor, and hammered on the door of an apartment owned by a Mrs. Maria Pappio. By the time the pursuing officer reached the spot, he had thrown off his clothes, dived into a bed, pulled the covers up to his chin, and was pretending to be asleep. The policeman was not fooled; he dragged the boy out, searched under the bed, and there found a machine pistol. The gunman was dragged off to the nearest precinct house, where, under vigorous interrogation, he gave his name as Antonio Impoluzzo, admitted that he was nineteen years old, and said that he lived downtown, on East 39th Street, where he had only the most modest of criminal records.

There was no clear connection between Lomonte and the boy who killed him. So far as the police were able to establish, Impoluzzo had no friends, no family, and no business whatsoever on East 116th Street; nor did the detectives who investigated the Lomonte murder obtain a confession or anything but the feeblest of alibis from him. At the boy's trial, the same December, the jury heard a week of evidence but no mention of any motive, and he went to his death in the electric chair less than a year later without ever uttering a word about the murder.

Whether the killer kept silent out of loyalty or fear n.o.body knew, but the police were quietly convinced that he had been hired and sent uptown to kill Lomonte precisely because there was no chance he would be recognized in Harlem. The real question was who would need to take precautions of this sort, and the answer-as both Flynn and the police believed-was that Lomonte's death had probably been ordered by someone who lived in Harlem-the same person, in all likelihood, who had also ordered Fortunato's murder, and possibly Gallucci's, too. Someone whose own men would have been only too easily recognized on 107th Street.

Looking at the murders from a detective's point of view, the most likely killer was whoever benefited most from this series of b.l.o.o.d.y deaths. And, from that perspective, one suspect stood out. The deaths of the Lomonte brothers and Gallucci, after all, had one important thing in common: They might all have been designed to restore the Morello family to its old ascendancy.

CHAPTER 12.

ARTICHOKE KINGS.

GIOSUE GALLUCCI'S DEATH IN MAY 1915 LEFT THE MORELLOS the dominant force in Harlem's underworld. Led now by Nick Terra-nova, the first family experienced little difficulty in seizing control of the lucrative Royal Lottery, as well as Gallucci's share of the coal, ice, and olive trades. There were other ways of making money, too, and if some were now in sharp decline (Black Hand crime became increasingly uncommon after 1912), others soon emerged to take their place. New forms of crime included labor racketeering-often involving the exploitation of workers via their unions-and, increasingly, narcotics, in which the police suspected the Morello family dabbled from around the middle of the decade. Gambling, too, became practically a Mafia monopoly. The family was richer than ever, probably earning tens of thousands of dollars in the twelve months after Gallucci's death. the dominant force in Harlem's underworld. Led now by Nick Terra-nova, the first family experienced little difficulty in seizing control of the lucrative Royal Lottery, as well as Gallucci's share of the coal, ice, and olive trades. There were other ways of making money, too, and if some were now in sharp decline (Black Hand crime became increasingly uncommon after 1912), others soon emerged to take their place. New forms of crime included labor racketeering-often involving the exploitation of workers via their unions-and, increasingly, narcotics, in which the police suspected the Morello family dabbled from around the middle of the decade. Gambling, too, became practically a Mafia monopoly. The family was richer than ever, probably earning tens of thousands of dollars in the twelve months after Gallucci's death.

Crime had become increasingly organized since the Clutch Hand's imprisonment in 1910. The Lower East Side was dominated by Jewish gangs engaged in much the same rackets as the Mafia, and at least as successfully The West Side was partly Irish, and everywhere there were American criminals as well, involved in every form of business from illegal gaming houses to cocaine trafficking. The Italian underworld, meanwhile, remained as dangerous as ever, and even with Gallucci and Spinelli dead, the Terranova brothers were forced to deal with compet.i.tors based within a few blocks of their heartland on 116th Street. Most of these gangs, it is true, were weaker and less feared than the Morellos, but a handful were not, and of these the Terranova brothers' most dangerous rivals were other members of the Mafia. The first family was no longer alone. As early as 1912, New York was home to not one family but four.

- WHILE OTHER CITIES, including large ones such as Boston, Chicago, and Los Angeles, never supported more than a single Mafia family, New York was too big and too much the focal point of Sicilian emigration for the same to hold true there. As hundreds of thousands of Italians continued to stream through Ellis Island each year, it was all but inevitable that the Morellos would eventually be challenged. Giuseppe Morello's open preference for Corleonesi was one reason for this; men from other Mafia towns in Sicily knew that they would find it difficult to rise to eminence within the ranks of his family. The city's sprawl was another; however strong the Morellos became, they could never dominate Brooklyn or the Bronx as they did Harlem, and it was in Brooklyn, sometime after 1902, that the second of New York's Mafia gangs was founded.

Its leader was Nicola Schiro-Cola Schiro, he was called-who had arrived in the United States from the small port town of Castellammare del Golfo around the year 1902. Castellammare had a strong criminal tradition, sending large numbers of emigrants to Chicago, Detroit, and Buffalo as well as to Brooklyn, and Schiro was thirty when he first appeared in the United States; between 1905 and 1910 he would find enough of his townsmen in New York to form a family. Like Schiro himself-who was an uninspiring leader, better at making money than he was at leading men-the Castellammare gang kept itself out of the news; the little that is known about the family survives in the words of Salvatore Clemente, who spoke of it to Flynn. Much the same can be said of the second of Brooklyn's families, this one organized by a Palermo Mafioso named Manfredi Mineo. Mineo, who also kept himself out of the public eye, was apparently an effective leader. His family, the smallest and newest of the city's four when Clemente described it early in 1912, would grow to be the largest in New York by 1930.

Both Brooklyn gangs seem to have acknowledged the Clutch Hand as boss of bosses before his imprisonment in 1910; both, certainly, attracted limited attention because they went about their business on the east side of the East River-where there were fewer newspapers and fewer nosy journalists-and because they steered well clear of Flynn by staying out of the trade in counterfeits. It was the third and last of New York's new Mafia families that caused the Morellos the most trouble, in part because the two gangs lived crammed uncomfortably cheek by jowl in Italian Harlem, but also because this gang's leader was a more formidable character than either Schiro or Mineo. Salvatore "Tot" D'Aquila was another Palermitano, which meant that he came from a city in which there were as many competing cosche cosche as there were in New York. It also meant that he had been born in a town where the local Mafiosi considered themselves a cut above the yokels of the interior. as there were in New York. It also meant that he had been born in a town where the local Mafiosi considered themselves a cut above the yokels of the interior.

D'Aquila was less experienced than Schiro and Mineo. He was not quite thirty years old when he appeared in Manhattan, and though little is known of his first years in the United States, the first blot on his police record was a peculiar and fascinating one. In 1906, D'Aquila was arrested for working as a confidence man-an avocation that demands eloquence, quick thinking, and high intelligence of its pract.i.tioners, all useful attributes that were noticeably lacking in the majority of Mafiosi. D'Aquila was also, as he would soon prove, the toughest, strongest, and most aggressive of New York's rival bosses. It was the Morellos' misfortune that they shared the cramped and busy streets of Harlem with him.

Powerful new bosses such as Tot D'Aquila would almost certainly have risen to prominence whether or not Lupo and Morello had been jailed. It seems unlikely, though, that the first family would have faced quite so many threats so quickly had the Clutch Hand remained free. Morello's position as acknowledged boss of bosses would surely have prevented that; so, too, would the almost superst.i.tious awe in which he was held. And the Morello who had-at least if the police were to be believed-half a dozen members of his own family shot or hacked to death as a precaution would surely have dealt with emerging rivals more ruthlessly than his half brothers felt able to. The truth was that no criminal organization, even one as well established as Morello's family, could survive unscathed the jailing of so many of its leaders. Nor could the Clutch Hand's successors simply demand the respect that the old boss had so laboriously earned. Mafiosi, whether Sicilian or American, have always had a keen appreciation of charisma and expect more than mere efficiency from the men who lead them. From that perspective, the appointment of the colorless Lomonte brothers to lead the Harlem family had been a terrible misjudgment on Morello's part. It permitted rival Mafiosi to rise in a manner that would have been unthinkable a few years earlier. It also meant that Nick Terranova had to face threats that the Clutch Hand never had.

According to Nicola Gentile, the well-traveled Pittsburgh Mafioso, D'Aquila was a dangerous man: arrogant, ambitious, and feared rather than respected by his men. He was efficient, too, and with Lupo and Morello out of the way wasted no time in turning his own family into the strongest cosca cosca in the city. D'Aquila achieved this feat in part by attracting defectors from New York's other Mafia gangs; most came from the Morellos. Among those who joined his family in search of greater power and larger spoils by 1912 were two well-known members of the first family: Giuseppe Fontana, the old Sicilian Mafioso notorious for his involvement in the murder of the head of the Bank of Sicily in 1893, and Joseph Fanaro, a suspect in the brutal killing of Salvatore Marchiani who had also been arrested at the time of the Barrel Murder. in the city. D'Aquila achieved this feat in part by attracting defectors from New York's other Mafia gangs; most came from the Morellos. Among those who joined his family in search of greater power and larger spoils by 1912 were two well-known members of the first family: Giuseppe Fontana, the old Sicilian Mafioso notorious for his involvement in the murder of the head of the Bank of Sicily in 1893, and Joseph Fanaro, a suspect in the brutal killing of Salvatore Marchiani who had also been arrested at the time of the Barrel Murder.

The defection of a man of Fontana's experience and reputation was as good a sign as any of the s.h.i.+fting balance of power in Italian Harlem, and few of New York's Mafiosi can have been surprised when, with the Clutch Hand in prison, D'Aquila maneuvered to have himself acclaimed as boss of bosses. The t.i.tle still conveyed no formal powers, apparently, and the new boss engineered his elevation in the approved way, by acclamation at a meeting of the Mafia's general a.s.sembly. According to Gentile, though, D'Aquila was ruthless in his determination to acquire influence, and Salvatore Clemente's evidence confirms as much. Through Clemente, Flynn learned that the Palermo man possessed and exercised the power to summon all New York Mafiosi to meetings. D'Aquila, moreover, closely controlled the admission of new members into all four families. "There are four gangs in this locality," the Chief's informant said, "and when a new member is proposed for any one of the four gangs, it is always brought up before [them all]."

By the autumn of 1913, in short, D'Aquila had established himself in a stronger position than Morello had ever claimed. His increasing dominance greatly worried the Schiro and Manfredi families of Brooklyn, as well as the Terranovas, and the strength of the D'Aquila family, which was by now equal to that of the other three Mafia gangs combined, posed such an obvious threat that for a time his subordinates combined their strength and openly opposed him. Clemente set all this out for Flynn, explaining that there are four gangs, that three of them are working together: the Manfredi gang, the gang headed by Nicola Schiro, both of Brooklyn, and the Lomonti gang of Harlem; that the fourth gang, led by D'Aquila of Harlem, is opposed by the other three gangs; that [men have] been shot on account of the feud between these gangs in all probability; that no doubt there will be more shooting soon.

Clemente's predictions were soon proved correct when, taking advantage of D'Aquila's absence from New York on a trip home to Sicily, the Terranovas took revenge on both defectors from their ranks. In November, Fontana was ambushed on his way to work on 105th Street by gunmen from the Morello and Mineo families. Fanaro followed him into oblivion three weeks later.

Two deaths still amounted to a squabble, not a full-blown war, and D'Aquila's response, whatever it was (Clemente remained infuriatingly silent on the subject), did not include an escalation of hostilities. That left the Terranovas free to deal with another of their sometime allies, the most powerful of all the gambling lords in Little Italy. Still smarting from Fontana's and Fanaro's betrayals, Nick Terranova went gunning for the DiMarco brothers.

JOE DIMARCO HAD FEARED for his life for several years. Stocky, clever, smallpox-scarred, and twenty-eight years old, he owned a stake in the Lomontes' feed business and pa.s.sed in the immigrant quarter as a restaurateur. DiMarco's real business, though, was running profitable card games throughout Italian Harlem, an avocation that required him to be nearly as well connected politically as Giosue Gallucci. He had been a Morello ally since at least 1910 but had fallen spectacularly from favor with the Lomontes' decline, not least because he would not give the Terranova brothers the larger share of gambling profits they believed to be their due. That had been uncomfortable, and over the next three years DiMarco had seen enough of Nick Terranova to recognize the murderous ambition in the rising boss. Word in the Italian underworld was that the two men cordially hated each other, that DiMarco had tried to have Nick shot, that the attempt had failed, and that the gambler's own life was now in danger. for his life for several years. Stocky, clever, smallpox-scarred, and twenty-eight years old, he owned a stake in the Lomontes' feed business and pa.s.sed in the immigrant quarter as a restaurateur. DiMarco's real business, though, was running profitable card games throughout Italian Harlem, an avocation that required him to be nearly as well connected politically as Giosue Gallucci. He had been a Morello ally since at least 1910 but had fallen spectacularly from favor with the Lomontes' decline, not least because he would not give the Terranova brothers the larger share of gambling profits they believed to be their due. That had been uncomfortable, and over the next three years DiMarco had seen enough of Nick Terranova to recognize the murderous ambition in the rising boss. Word in the Italian underworld was that the two men cordially hated each other, that DiMarco had tried to have Nick shot, that the attempt had failed, and that the gambler's own life was now in danger.

The Terranova brothers first struck back at DiMarco in April 1913, when an a.s.sa.s.sin hidden behind a fence on East 112th Street opened fire as he walked past. The gunman knew his job; DiMarco was shot through the neck, leaving a deep and b.l.o.o.d.y wound. Taken to the hospital still conscious, he was told that he would die. It took several skillful surgeons and an "unusual operation" at Harlem Hospital to save him.

A year later, the Terranovas tried again. This time DiMarco was an even softer target: he was reclining, helpless, in a barber's chair on 106th Street when two men armed with sawed-off shotguns burst into the shop. This time the gambler was even luckier. Instead of closing to decisive range, his would-be killers opened fire from the doorway, turned, and ran. Lying there smothered in lather and blood, DiMarco felt cautiously about his body and found he had been wounded. A dozen pellets had struck home, but none had done serious damage. Again he survived.

Two narrow escapes would have been enough to persuade even an optimist to leave Harlem, and DiMarco was scarcely that. Late in 1914, he moved his operations more than a mile downtown, opening a large restaurant at 163 West 49th Street and hiring two gunmen to act as bodyguards. He rented an apartment above the premises and lived there with his brother Salvatore, seldom venturing out. These precautions were enough to keep him alive for another eighteen months, but they could not do so indefinitely, and in the summer of 1916 the Terranova brothers made a final effort to dispose of his elusive enemy and seize control of his gambling rackets. Everything was carefully arranged. There was to be no possibility, this time, of a mistake.

DiMarco, the Herald's Herald's man in Little Italy reported, man in Little Italy reported, liked to play poker, and his enemies used that fact to lure him to his death. Some one guided him to a dark little room in the rear of a tenement down in James Street in the afternoon, where it was understood there was to be a poker game. DiMarco took one, or maybe two, of his bodyguards along. [One, Charles] Lombardi sat beside him at the poker table.How far the game had progressed, who was there in addition to DiMarco and Lombardi, and other incidents of the afternoon are blank to the detectives. They do know, however, that a "straight flush," a very unusual "hand," was dealt to DiMarco, for that "hand" was found under his bullet-riddled body. They believe that the dealing of that hand was the signal for the "gunmen" to open fire on DiMarco and his unsuspecting bodyguard. Twenty shots were fired, perhaps more. ... DiMarco was shot ten times and Lombardi twice. Eight or ten men who had been in the room and were a part of the murder plot escaped "clean," as the police say. That is, they got away before any one saw them and left only their hats as clews, and as ten straw hats were found the police are suspicious that they were left to mislead them.

There was a postscript to DiMarco's murder. The dead gambler's brother, Salvatore-long a force in the coal racket-was found dead two months later, sprawled in a clump of weeds on Was.h.i.+ngton Avenue. He had been struck hard across the forehead with some sort of club, perhaps a baseball bat, and lay with his skull turned to eggsh.e.l.l, his throat cut, and a large sum of money-the proceeds of the sale of his brother's restaurant-missing from his pockets. Salvatore's murder finished the DiMarcos as a force in the Italian underworld and made certain that there could be no feud with the Morello family. That, as it happened, was just as well, for by then the Terranova brothers were confronting a threat more serious than any they had faced. Over the East River in Brooklyn, a new power, hailing from Naples, was rising in the underworld-one as terrible and as murderous as the Mafia and no more willing to share the spoils of New York with others.

The Camorra had arrived in the United States. War was brewing.

THE CAMORRA, A CRIMINAL SOCIETY with roots deeper even than the Mafia's, had originated in Naples around the year 1820 as a mutual welfare fraternity for prisoners in the city's jail. It evolved outside of prison walls, moving first into extortion and then to the creation of a full-fledged gang of vicious crooks with bases throughout the city. The Camorra differed from its Sicilian rival in being far more hierarchical; among other things, it had a single recognized and formally anointed leader. In most respects, however, the Neapolitans worked in much the same way as the Mafia. There was a gang-a family-for each district of the city, led by a with roots deeper even than the Mafia's, had originated in Naples around the year 1820 as a mutual welfare fraternity for prisoners in the city's jail. It evolved outside of prison walls, moving first into extortion and then to the creation of a full-fledged gang of vicious crooks with bases throughout the city. The Camorra differed from its Sicilian rival in being far more hierarchical; among other things, it had a single recognized and formally anointed leader. In most respects, however, the Neapolitans worked in much the same way as the Mafia. There was a gang-a family-for each district of the city, led by a capintrito capintrito and consisting of anything up to a hundred men who were formally initiated into the fraternity and divided into four ranks. There was a central council, known as the Great Mother, which settled disputes and punished betrayals. And there were rackets, more or less identical to those run by the Sicilians: horse theft, blackmail, and the control of gambling. and consisting of anything up to a hundred men who were formally initiated into the fraternity and divided into four ranks. There was a central council, known as the Great Mother, which settled disputes and punished betrayals. And there were rackets, more or less identical to those run by the Sicilians: horse theft, blackmail, and the control of gambling. Camorra Camorra was, like was, like Mafia Mafia, a word used by outsiders. Initiated members of the fraternity referred to it as the Societa dell'Umilta, the Society of Humility, or as the Bella Societa Riformata, the Fine Reformed Society.

Since Naples was nearly as poor as Sicily, there were nearly as many Neapolitans in the United States as there were Sicilians, and most large American cities had their Neapolitan quarter and their Neapolitan criminals. When precisely the society first established itself in New York is obscure, though almost certainly it gained its first footholds later than the Mafia did. What can be said with confidence is that a number of prominent Camorrists entered the United States between 1900 and 1910, that most settled in across the East River from the Morellos' strongholds, and that they formed two distinct but allied gangs, one based on Navy Street in Brooklyn and the other farther out, in Coney Island. The former gang, based in a coffee shop at 133 Navy Street, was led by Alessandro Vollero, a youthful-looking thirty-year-old capintrito capintrito who had arrived in New York in 1907 with his wife and children. Vollero's boss, Pellegrino Marano, ran the Coney Islanders from a restaurant, the Santa Lucia, which stood close to the amus.e.m.e.nt parks. who had arrived in New York in 1907 with his wife and children. Vollero's boss, Pellegrino Marano, ran the Coney Islanders from a restaurant, the Santa Lucia, which stood close to the amus.e.m.e.nt parks.

Thanks in large part to the strength of the Mafia, the Camorra was significantly less powerful and less organized in New York than its Sicilian rivals as late as June 1916. There were fewer Camorrists than there were Mafiosi-one member of the Navy Street gang put their total strength, with that of the Coney Islanders, at no more than forty men-and they made their money from gambling and from dealing in cocaine; the far more lucrative vegetable, ice, and coal rackets were all controlled by Sicilians. Members.h.i.+p, too, was a privilege granted far more easily by the Camorra than it ever was by the Mafia. One low-level Neapolitan gunman spent years working more or less honestly in Buffalo before being suddenly summoned to New York and asked to join the gang, apparently simply because he had known another of the Coney Island leaders, Tony Paretti-Tony the Shoemaker, he was called-when they were young in Italy. The Camorra did resemble its Sicilian counterpart in some respects: Loosely linked Neapolitan gangs existed in a number of cities, from Boston to Chicago and from Buffalo to Pittsburgh, and the Neapolitans also organized their own initiation ceremonies, which closely resembled those of their Sicilian rivals. The same Camorra probationer described being handed a penknife and ordered to draw blood from his friend Paretti's arm. Marano then "went near the shoemaker's arm, and sucked the blood, and a little more blood came out. He said to me, 'You have gained.'" For all this, though, and ambitious though its leaders were, the Neapolitan gangs remained less influential than the Mafia even after Giosue Gallucci's death.

Relations between the Sicilians on one side and the Camorra leaders on the other were peaceful enough at first. The rival gangs stuck to their own territories, sharing the spoils of New York's rackets, and their leaders attended an annual "smoker" in Brooklyn, arranged to encourage amity between the two organizations. All this changed, however, after the year 1915, as the Camorrists, sensing weakness, became determined to expand into Manhattan, and the Terranova brothers attempted to resist their advances. The outcome was the first of many modern "wars" between rival factions of criminals.

One flash point was the Neapolitans' first appearance in Manhattan, when the Coney Island gang's Marano opened up a gambling house on Hester Street after Joe DiMarco was killed. Another was a budding feud between Vollero and Nick Terranova, whom the Navy Street gang boss blamed for the death of a close friend. It was only on the orders of Marano that Vollero agreed to keep the peace, at least until a conference between the two sides due to be held at the Santa Lucia late in June 1916.

Marano's plan was to bring the Mafia and the Camorra closer together, to ease friction between the gangs, tighten their joint control over the Italian underworld, and formally parcel out the New York rackets. The Neapolitans knew what they wanted from this arrangement-they were greedy for more money and more power, and Vollero particularly envied the Morellos' stranglehold over the artichoke trade. Motives were less clear on the Sicilian side, though the Terranovas were certainly anxious to avert the threat of fighting a war on two fronts-against the Camorra on one side and the even more grasping Tot D'Aquila on the other. If the Neapolitans read the first family's agreement to discuss concessions as a sign of weakness, though, they were sorely disappointed. When Marano announced that he wanted to discuss not just the vegetable racket but gambling, cocaine, and extortion, too, the Terranova brothers decided that they had heard enough. Unwilling to surrender their hard-fought-for dominance over any racket, Nick, Ciro, and Vincenzo stonewalled until the talks broke down. So far as Vollero was concerned, that was a declaration of war.

Cooperation between the gangs did not cease immediately; it was Vollero who supplied the gunmen who killed Joe DiMarco, and soon after the gambler's murder the Terranovas came down to Navy Street with fifty dollars, a gift for the a.s.sa.s.sins. By August 1916, Vollero was actively plotting his enemies' destruction.

In the end, though, it was not Vollero but Marano who decided that the time was right to dispose of the Morellos. The Coney Island boss's motives were clear enough-he wanted to seize control of the Mafia's rackets and in particular the three most valuable: the artichoke trade, the lottery, and gambling. The Morellos' dominance of the lottery particularly incensed him. "Yes," one of Marano's men would remember him raging, "it is true that these s.e.m.e.n want to keep that game uptown, but they will have to figure it with me. I will show them who Don Pellegrino Marano is. I will have them all killed."

Tony the Shoemaker agreed. "All the Neapolitans are s.e.m.e.n," he chipped in, "because if we could all get together and agree, after this job is done, we would all be wearing diamond rings; and we would get all the graft."

Marano's first task was to persuade the Navy Street gang to back his plan. This was by no means an easy matter; for all Vollero's scheming, most of the Navy Streeters, who were based just over the East River in Brooklyn, had long been just as friendly with the Morellos as they were with the Coney Island gang. The Morellos had even saved the life of one of Vollero's closest friends, Andrea Ricci, in some otherwise unrecorded incident a short time earlier, and it took Marano quite some time to persuade his fellow Neapolitans to agree to his scheme. Even then there were dissenters; Vollero's chief lieutenant, Leopoldo Lauritano, frankly told other members of the gang that he found the Sicilians more trustworthy than the Coney Islanders. In the end, though, greed won out. As Marano's right-hand man explained matters to the reluctant Ricci, "You must consent to the killing of the Morellos, because you know that up in Harlem there is quite some money to be made. You and I have been there. If we open up a saloon, you know that we can make money with the ice and coal."

"Andrea, you must consent," Vollero added. "You see, there is the graft on the artichokes, the policy [lottery] graft and the zicchinetta zicchinetta [card games], and the ice and coal. We had DiMarco killed to satisfy them. Now we can kill the Morellos to get this graft." [card games], and the ice and coal. We had DiMarco killed to satisfy them. Now we can kill the Morellos to get this graft."

The Brooklyn Camorra of 1916 was nowhere as fearsome as the Morello family. It was far less well organized-both the Navy Street and the Coney Island gangs had existed for no more than a year or two-and not so well resourced. There was, for instance, little of the cooperation that stood the Sicilians in such good stead; both Vollero and Marano closely guarded important portions of their operations, the Navy Street boss refusing to share the cash he made peddling cocaine "to theatrical people and waiters," and Marano keeping the profits of his Harlem lottery for himself. Because of this, the Neapolitans agreed, it would be wildly dangerous to allow themselves to be dragged into a lengthy war. Their best and perhaps only hope was to remove the entire Morello leaders.h.i.+p in a single stroke. Dispose of the Terranova brothers and their aides, Marano and Vollero thought, and their Harlem rackets would fall naturally, like ripened fruit.

It took the Camorra bosses a little less than a month to plot the Morellos' deaths. Six Mafia leaders were invited to Navy Street early in September, ostensibly to discuss the division of the New York rackets: the three Terranova brothers, Stefano "Steve" La Salle, Eugene Ubriaco, and lastly Giuseppe Verrazano, who had taken over from DiMarco as head of the Morellos' gambling interests. With those men dead, Vollero thought, what remained of the first family would flounder, leaderless. The foot soldiers of the Morello gang would either be reduced to petty crime or be forced to join forces with the Neapolitans of Navy Street.

A dozen members of Vollero's gang gathered on Navy Street the day before the meeting in order to go over the arrangements for the planned murders one last time. Three men had been chosen to do the killing, and arrangements were made for their guns to be loaded with special ammunition-bullets smeared with garlic juice and pepper, which were believed to cause infection in a wound and would, it was hoped, account for any Morellos who might be only injured in the ambush. The pistols themselves were concealed in a special cupboard hidden in the wall, and various other Camorrists were a.s.signed lesser tasks: greeting the visitors, making them drinks, and escorting them to the Navy Street cafe.

The ambush had been planned for the afternoon of September 7, a warm early autumn Thursday, and the Camorra a.s.sa.s.sins made sure they were ready in plenty of time, carefully concealing themselves in doorways that looked out onto a corner of Johnson Street. To Vollero's dismay and disappointment, though, only two of the six Morello bosses appeared for the meeting: Nick Terranova and his friend Eugene Ubriaco. The reason for the others' absence was never known; Terranova's willingness to travel to Brooklyn without bodyguards suggests he was unaware of the Camorrists' treachery, and most likely the decision to leave the other four members of the gang behind was nothing more than ordinary caution. Whatever the truth, Nick's usually well-tuned sense of menace failed him now. Noticing that the Camorrist who served his gla.s.s of Moxie looked drawn and had turned white with stress, Terranova looked him up and down and said, "What is the matter? You are kind of pale. Don't you feel well?" "I don't," the man replied, and the Mafia boss shrugged the matter off. "Why don't you have someone examine you?" he said; then, when it was time to go, he and Ubriaco strolled off arm in arm down Johnson Street to their b.l.o.o.d.y deaths.

Vollero's gunmen held their fire until the men were close. Then, emerging from their doorways, they unleashed a hail of bullets, catching their targets from several angles. Terranova was the first to die; the Morello boss had no time to do more than half draw a revolver from his pocket before he crumpled in the nearest gutter, shot six times. Ubriaco lasted a few seconds longer, pulling his gun and backing off along the street as he tried to pick off his attackers. The Camorrists proved to have the better aim, however; Ubriaco was shot through the heart after discharging five of his six bullets. He collapsed on the pavement, his body lying amid shards of gla.s.s from windows shattered in the fight. By the time the last echoes of the fight had died away, Vollero's men had fired some twenty times. They had also disposed of the Morellos' most effective leader.

There was a long police investigation, naturally; the deaths had been too violent and too public, too close to children playing in the streets, to be brushed aside as gangland killings often were. The Camorrists, though, were unconcerned; they made regular protection payments to the local Italian detective, Michael Mealli, who was one of the first policemen on the scene and who conspicuously failed to turn in much in the way of evidence. They also felt safe on their own territory. "The police cannot get any witnesses down there," Vollero was heard to boast of Navy Street. "We can take care of the witnesses, we can get witnesses to prove anything we want. ... They dare not come forward to testify against me."

Nick Terranova's death shook the Morellos to their core. Caught unawares by the sudden outbreak of hostilities, the Harlem Mafia was reduced to something close to disarray and soon lost another half dozen of its members. Four Morello a.s.sociates were shot dead in Philadelphia; a gambler named Joe Nazarro was taken up to Yonkers, shot, and thrown under a streetcar simply for talking to the Mafia. Then, a month after Terranova's murder, Vollero managed to corner another Mafia leader, Giuseppe Verrazano. Verrazano met his end in a restaurant on the Bowery, shot down by two more Camorra gunmen. After that, Ciro and Vincenzo Terranova felt vulnerable even on East 116th Street. The Terranovas stuck close to their headquarters, and their confidence was further shaken when neighbors reported that a group of Neapolitans had been attempting to hire rooms that overlooked the entrance to their apartment block.

In fact, Vollero's and Marano's effo