Only Antonio Pa.s.sananti and Cascio Ferro were not among the 140 suspects whom Ceola detained. Both men had disappeared from their usual haunts on the day of the murder, and neither could be found by the police.
AS SOON AS WORD of the Petrosino murder got out, the Sicilian authorities were deluged with letters and telephone calls offering theories, tips, and information. The correspondence came from all over Italy and from the United States, thousands of pieces in all, but though Ceola had his men review every page of every letter, he took only three of the items seriously. All came from New York, and two were, apparently, written by the same man-someone who possessed a remarkably close knowledge of the inner workings of the Morello gang. The third letter, postmarked Brooklyn, had been written in Sicilian dialect but was probably composed by a man who had been born in New York. All three communications were anonymous. of the Petrosino murder got out, the Sicilian authorities were deluged with letters and telephone calls offering theories, tips, and information. The correspondence came from all over Italy and from the United States, thousands of pieces in all, but though Ceola had his men review every page of every letter, he took only three of the items seriously. All came from New York, and two were, apparently, written by the same man-someone who possessed a remarkably close knowledge of the inner workings of the Morello gang. The third letter, postmarked Brooklyn, had been written in Sicilian dialect but was probably composed by a man who had been born in New York. All three communications were anonymous.
None of the letters made complete sense by itself, but by reading the three of them together it was possible to piece together what had happened. According to the first-sent from New York on March 13, only hours after news of Petrosino"s murder reached Manhattan-the killing had been ordered by Morello, Lupo, the Terranova brothers, Giuseppe Fontana, and three or four other Mafiosi, who had banded together to send a pair of agents to Palermo. The second communication, mailed two days later, added the names of several other members of the Morello family and explained that the detailed planning of the killing had been turned over to Cascio Ferro. The third letter was the only one to mention Costantino and Pa.s.sananti by name. According to this missive, the two Partinicans had actually murdered Petrosino.
Ceola included all three of the letters in the report he was preparing for the Criminal Court in the Sicilian capital. They deserved to be taken seriously, he said, in large part because they contained information that was known to the police but had never appeared in the newspapers-most especially the involvement of Costantino and Pa.s.sananti and the fact that the two men had sailed from New York to Palermo. There was also a clear motive for the murder: if not, as Ceola believed, because Morello feared deportation back to Italy, then certainly because of the threat that Petrosino posed to his family"s criminal activities. Cascio Ferro"s involvement also made a good deal of sense, given the boss"s influence in Sicily-more so when Don Vito was finally arrested three weeks later, stepping off a train at Bisaquino station. A police search of his home turned up several incriminating bits of information, among them a photograph, taken in New York, that showed Cascio Ferro with Morello, his wife, Lina, and Giuseppe Fontana.
"Lieutenant Petrosino"s arrival in Palermo frightened too many people and threatened too many interests," Ceola concluded in his interim report.
For this reason an international coalition was organized against him. Furthermore, the fatal ambush, carefully set up by the murderers, with the a.s.sistance of false confidential agents who succeeded in convincing the ingenuous detective that he could manage without the co-operation of the police, clearly shows that the preparation of the crime must be laid to an a.s.sociation of criminals possessing substantial resources.Who else could that be but the Mafia?
CEOLA"S CASE WAS compelling but it was not watertight. It made perfect sense, and the circ.u.mstantial evidence apparently confirmed it, but it was doubtful that it would convince a jury. It was not enough for Costantino and Pa.s.sananti to have been seen in the Piazza Marina hours before the shooting when there were no witnesses to put them there at 8:50 compelling but it was not watertight. It made perfect sense, and the circ.u.mstantial evidence apparently confirmed it, but it was doubtful that it would convince a jury. It was not enough for Costantino and Pa.s.sananti to have been seen in the Piazza Marina hours before the shooting when there were no witnesses to put them there at 8:50 P.M P.M. The mysterious telegrams might mean nothing as well as something. And to n.o.body"s surprise, Cascio Ferro, who had had nearly a month to prepare for his inevitable arrest, turned out to have the strongest alibi imaginable. On the night of the murder, he explained to the police, he had been staying with the Honorable Domenico De Michele Ferrantelli, a n.o.bleman who also happened to be a member of the Italian parliament. Ferrantelli, for reasons best known to himself, had recently employed the Mafia boss as an agent and placed him in charge of the sale of produce from his landed estate.
Cascio Ferro"s story was not enough to stop Ceola from obtaining a warrant for his arrest, nor from confining him in a Palermo prison pending further hearings-though the Mafioso made light of that restriction by paying for a comfortable private cell. It was, however, easily sufficient to d.a.m.n any attempt to bring Don Vito to trial, particularly after Ferrantelli confirmed, on his honor, every word of his friend"s statement concerning his whereabouts on the night of March 12. And as things turned out, the combined influence of the two men was also easily sufficient to cost Balda.s.sare Ceola his job. On July 17, 1909, a little over three months after the Petrosino murder, Commissioner Ceola received notification that he was being recalled to Rome and compulsorily retired. Four months later, on November 16, Cascio Ferro and Costantino were quietly released from prison and the charges against them both were dropped.
The Petrosino murder continued to crop up in the American press from time to time for years to come; there were rumors that the detective"s murderer was working in a Pennsylvania coal mine or hiding out in Mexico. But none ever amounted to much. The killing remains officially unsolved.
NEWS OF PETROSINO"S DEATH reached New York within hours. The reached New York within hours. The Herald Herald, with its network of European correspondents, was the first paper to receive the word; its man in Rome cabled an account shortly after midnight, New York time, less than eight hours after the shooting and in time to make the morning edition. The Herald"s Herald"s story was on the streets by dawn, and it was exclusive. A few hours later, just before ten, the first official telegram arrived- story was on the streets by dawn, and it was exclusive. A few hours later, just before ten, the first official telegram arrived- PALERMO, ITALYPETROSINO SHOT. INSTANTLY KILLED IN HEART OF CITY THISEVENING. a.s.sa.s.sIN UNKNOWN. DIES A MARTYR.BISHOP, CONSUL.
-and by noon, the evening papers were already hawking their first extras. The shooting was front-page news in every paper, and all in all the press coverage of the story was enormous, even greater than it had been when President McKinley had been murdered eight years earlier. Most New Yorkers felt a sense of outrage, mixed with shock. Adelina Petrosino, woken at 2 A.M A.M. by one of the Herald"s Herald"s men, broke down in tears at the news; she had just received a letter from her husband in which he spoke of the risks he faced and told her how much he was looking forward to coming home. Emotions in the Italian quarter, though, were mixed. "Not in years has there been as much excitement in Little Italy," the men, broke down in tears at the news; she had just received a letter from her husband in which he spoke of the risks he faced and told her how much he was looking forward to coming home. Emotions in the Italian quarter, though, were mixed. "Not in years has there been as much excitement in Little Italy," the Tribune Tribune observed. "A stranger in one of the cafes last night was an unwelcome guest. ... Italians discussed the murder on corners and in cafes, and while some showed sorrow there were others who gloated over the death of the Italian detective." observed. "A stranger in one of the cafes last night was an unwelcome guest. ... Italians discussed the murder on corners and in cafes, and while some showed sorrow there were others who gloated over the death of the Italian detective."
The police, the paper added, were "boiling with anger" at the news, and for weeks hundreds of ordinary immigrants were routinely abused and hara.s.sed in the streets. Privately, though, there were those at headquarters who conceded that Petrosino should bear some responsibility for his own death. The lieutenant had fatally underestimated the power of the Mafia, and the influence and ruthlessness of Morello in particular; stripped of the security and the support he had enjoyed in Manhattan, the detective had made himself an easy target in Palermo, a woeful misjudgment that he had further compounded by leaving his wife with practically nothing. Unlike the great majority of New York"s policemen, Petrosino had been an honest man and had never banked a small fortune in graft. It took a public subscription, which raised $10,000, and the decision to grant the widow a $1,000-a-year city pension, to properly secure Adelina"s future.
The one thing that almost everybody was agreed on was that Petrosino had died in the service of the city of New York and that the city should do right by him. Arrangements were made to have the body embalmed by a "professor," brought in specially from Naples, and returned to Manhattan for burial. When the casket was unloaded at the city piers on April 9, nearly a month after the murder, a large number of people were waiting for it.
The crowds were vastly greater at Petrosino"s funeral on the twelfth. The day had been declared a public holiday, and a large a.s.sembly, well over twenty thousand strong, lined the streets as the murdered policeman was solemnly escorted on his final journey. Bells tolled; flags flew at half-mast on every public building. And when the last bars of Verdi"s Requiem Requiem had faded in the interior of St. Patrick"s Old Cathedral and the hea.r.s.e set out for Calvary Cemetery in Queens, it was accompanied by a thousand policemen, two thousand schoolchildren, and representatives from sixty Italian a.s.sociations, all in uniform. had faded in the interior of St. Patrick"s Old Cathedral and the hea.r.s.e set out for Calvary Cemetery in Queens, it was accompanied by a thousand policemen, two thousand schoolchildren, and representatives from sixty Italian a.s.sociations, all in uniform.
Only one thing marred the dignity of the proceedings. Adelina"s wish to have an open casket had had to be refused. Something had gone badly wrong with the embalming process, and when the coffin lid was lifted in the undertaker"s parlor, Petrosino"s corpse was black and swollen with decay. The only solution was for the casket to be sealed, and when the congregation filed slowly past the bier, a large photograph of Petrosino perched on top of the coffin did duty for the policeman"s face itself.
CHAPTER 10.
SHEEP AND WOLVES.
THE NEWS OF PETROSINO"S DEATH, WHICH HAD REACHED NEW York on March 13, took only one more day to travel the fifty miles up the Hudson River to Highland. York on March 13, took only one more day to travel the fifty miles up the Hudson River to Highland.
Lupo brought it, early in the morning, when he arrived to inspect the latest batch of counterfeit notes manufactured in the woods. The spring thaws, which were at last melting the thick drifts of snow, had turned the grounds and unpaved roads to mud and made travel from the village to the old stone house more difficult, if possible, but the Wolf was in a buoyant mood. He p.r.o.nounced the latest batch of two-dollar notes excellent and said Calicchio deserved a medal for his fine work with the inks. Then Lupo turned to Zu Vincenzo. "Petrosino has been killed," he said with a smile. "It was successful!"
"I knew it would be done successfully," Uncle Vincent replied, and Comito heard the triumph in his voice. Cecala wanted to know where the murder had been committed.
"In Palermo.""Then it was surely well done," said Uncle Vincent."The way it was planned, it never could have missed in Palermo," said Lupo. "It is well he was fool enough to go there.""d.a.m.n him," said Cecala, "it was a death too good for him. How many sons of mothers has he condemned for nothing!"
Zu Vincenzo thought the a.s.sa.s.sination would scare other policemen off the idea of going to Sicily in search of evidence to use against the Mafia. "No one will now dare to go to Palermo, for in going they will find death," he said. "But it is too bad that it could not have been done here. It would have helped us a great deal."
That thought did not bother Lupo unduly. The money used to send men after Petrosino had been raised in New York, he pointed out. "Some credit is due to us, though the Palermo crowd will get most." Cina opened a bottle, and Morello"s men toasted their success in wine.
Production of the counterfeits continued at the same steady pace throughout March, The gang printed about five hundred notes a day, including $20,400 in American two-dollar bills, and the results improved significantly; Calicchio had painstakingly retouched the plates to tidy up the less convincing details. Cecala and Cina were delighted; the improved notes, they said, were easier to sell. Morello, in New York, also seemed pleased, since large additional supplies of paper began appearing in Highland every few weeks. According to Cina, the Clutch Hand had ordered that a total of $5 million in forged currency be produced, saying that work would cease only "when we were all rich."
Comito and Calicchio were less happy, Comito in large part because he had still barely been paid-only a few dollars here and there for five months" work, so little that he and Katrina could not even afford new shoes. But there was also the problem of the five-dollar bills. Morello"s ambitious target would be almost unattainable without improvements in the Canadian notes, which, since they were being printed from photoengraved plates, were still blotchy and unlikely to convince anyone who took the time to study them. Cecala and Cina were having considerable trouble selling the fives; on one trip along the eastern seaboard, the pair had disposed of four thousand dollars" worth of U.S. two-dollar notes but found no takers at all for the foreign currency.
"That was not your fault," Lupo rea.s.sured Comito when the two Sicilians reported back to the stone house; "the plates are no good." But the other members of the gang were not so forgiving. When word of the problems with the five-dollar notes got out, even the most junior among them became abusive. Giglio, Sylvester, and the guard, a young farmer named Bernardo Perrone, told Comito that he was stupid, ate too much, "and should be fed to the hogs." Cina threatened the printer with a knife. And when another minor problem arose, several members of the gang lost what remained of their self-control: Bernardo grabbed me by the throat and forced me back against the wall, his fingers sinking in my throat until I thought that I was dying. Sylvester grabbed a revolver and c.o.c.ked it, and, while Bernardo held me, walked over and forced the muzzle into my mouth until the sight on the end cut my throat way back and I could feel its coldness against the back of my head inside. Giglio grabbed an axe and said he would dismember me. ... They threatened to dig out my eyes and make my woman eat them raw.
It took Katrina"s desperate intervention to make the men back off, and even then, Comito thought, "they desisted unwillingly, Bernardo saying: "It is a shame to let such a good start go unfinished.""
Comito took his companion"s threats sufficiently seriously to fear for his life, and once, when they were left alone for a few minutes, he found one of Lupo"s rifles and showed Katrina how to use it. "If people come with some excuse or other to get you," the printer told her, "it will be a sure sign that they have murdered me. Before they get you into a trap where they can kill you and hide your body, shoot them dead. Do not hesitate; they are devils and will likely enough come to you smiling to disarm your suspicions. Shoot, and shoot straight."
The real problem, as Comito knew, was that his position within the counterfeiting gang had been entirely undermined by Calicchio"s presence. The master printer, with his greater experience and his engraving skills, was now the man to whom Cecala and Cina turned when there were problems to be solved; Comito had become a mere a.s.sistant, and a largely useless one at that. Even Lupo"s mood underwent a change in time. When Cecala and Cina returned from another journey down the coast with alarming tales of angry customers and the news that a large number of five-dollar notes remained unsold, the Wolf exploded. Comito"s shoddy work had cost the gang eight thousand dollars, he said, and the poor-quality bills would have to be destroyed. "What is his use here?" Lupo demanded of Zu Vincenzo as his temper flared. "This ugly Calabrian is not worth what he eats. He should have been tied up and his work burned on his head."
Only the risk of betrayal and, probably quite as important, the prospect of living in the woods without a woman to cook and clean for them seems to have prevented the gang from dispensing with Comito and Katrina, and both were acutely aware that the obvious solution, killing them, was unlikely to bother their companions for a moment. "What you are trying to do is get me to blow your d.a.m.n brains out," snarled Cina when the printer begged to be allowed to return to New York. "But that is too nice for a fool like you. You are dealing with gentlemen or long ago you would have been rotting in the farm here-you and the woman. Go on now and work before I stick you."
And Comito scurried away, "like a whipped dog, with my tail between my legs."
THE ONLY WAY TO fix the problem of the five-dollar bills was to engrave new plates. The job took a long time, two months, and it was not until the middle of June that Calicchio completed the work. The engraving was, Comito thought, "marvelously perfect," and the plates, for U.S. notes this time, produced fine proofs almost immediately. When Cecala took a few samples with him to show likely customers in New York and Hoboken, he returned with orders for more than $15,000 of currency. fix the problem of the five-dollar bills was to engrave new plates. The job took a long time, two months, and it was not until the middle of June that Calicchio completed the work. The engraving was, Comito thought, "marvelously perfect," and the plates, for U.S. notes this time, produced fine proofs almost immediately. When Cecala took a few samples with him to show likely customers in New York and Hoboken, he returned with orders for more than $15,000 of currency.
As the pace of work increased, it became hard even for Comito to keep track of what had been produced. A stock of $10,000 worth of two-dollar notes and $14,700 of the Canadian fives was ready by the end of May, and they ran off $15,000 more in twos that month. A short while later, Cina returned from a trip through Boston, Buffalo, and Chicago demanding $13,500 more of the new twos, and Cecala had similar success in Philadelphia and Pittsburgh. In all, the total value of the forged bills printed in the Highland woods almost certainly approached $100,000, and the work took Comito and Calicchio until the middle of July to finish.
How much the Morellos made from this is very hard to calculate. Cecala and Cina did not often sell at the Clutch Hand"s price of fifty cents in the dollar. The best they usually obtained was 35 cents, and often they were forced to accept as little as 20 or 25 cents-though even this was twice what other counterfeiters realized. The earliest batches of notes fetched so little that the operation was barely profitable when travel expenses had been deducted. Calicchio"s notes, though, were of better quality, and tens of thousands of dollars" worth were printed; they alone could easily have earned $8,000 or more, which was an appreciable sum at the time. Whatever the real profits, the one certainty is that Morello kept the money for himself. Calicchio had been retained on a salary of $20 a week, which was not paid with any regularity. Comito, who had been promised $500 when the work was done, received no more than $40 for his services, and that over eight months. Katrina got nothing at all.
Work was finally suspended for the summer when the last of the two-dollar notes were printed, trimmed, and packed in bundles of a hundred. It would begin again in four months" time, Cina announced, when the first batch of notes had been disposed of. Until then, the press, the plates, and inks would be nailed up in boxes and hidden on his farm.
The next day, the dismantled press and plates were loaded onto Cina"s wagon and hidden beneath a pile of hay. "Boys," the counterfeiter said, "the work is done. From tomorrow each man can attend to his own business." The gang dispersed. Comito was handed a single genuine five-dollar note and used it to take a train back to New York.
The enforced nine-month stay in Highland had had one beneficial consequence. Economic conditions had improved throughout the country while Comito was away, and there were jobs to be had in printing once again. It took only three days for the Calabrian to find work in an Italian-owned print shop in Brooklyn, and there, for the first time in nearly a year, he felt secure. Cina had promised to find him and pay the five hundred dollars he was owed, but Comito neither believed him nor even wanted the money. He was glad merely to have escaped Highland alive and vowed never again to risk his life for such a paltry reward. To keep the Morellos off his back, Comito wrote one last time to Cina, informing him that he planned to leave the United States for Italy. Then he went instead to live in Brooklyn, studiously avoiding places where he might encounter members of the gang.
And all went well for the best part of a month. Then, on August 12, 1909, Comito picked up one of New York"s Italian-language newspapers and read of the arrest of a number of Sicilians. They had been charged with pa.s.sing two-and five-dollar counterfeits. He checked the description of the bills: They were all forged Morello notes. Cecala and Cina were no longer the only people looking for him. Now he was wanted by the Secret Service, too.
CHIEF WILLIAM FLYNN had spent the six years since the Barrel Murder working hard to improve the Secret Service"s efficiency. He had added several more agents to the strength of the New York bureau and a.s.signed one of them, the Italian-speaking Peter Rubano, to undercover work in the immigrant quarter, where the latter spent time hanging around street corners and saloons. Rubano had started this work around 1905 and gradually became familiar with several members of the Morello family, most notably Lupo the Wolf. Lupo took Rubano into his confidence on several matters but never mentioned forgery to him; to compensate, Flynn also developed several new Italian informants, whose ident.i.ties he kept strictly confidential. had spent the six years since the Barrel Murder working hard to improve the Secret Service"s efficiency. He had added several more agents to the strength of the New York bureau and a.s.signed one of them, the Italian-speaking Peter Rubano, to undercover work in the immigrant quarter, where the latter spent time hanging around street corners and saloons. Rubano had started this work around 1905 and gradually became familiar with several members of the Morello family, most notably Lupo the Wolf. Lupo took Rubano into his confidence on several matters but never mentioned forgery to him; to compensate, Flynn also developed several new Italian informants, whose ident.i.ties he kept strictly confidential.
Under Flynn"s energetic leadership, the agency"s New York bureau had become everything that the NYPD might have been but was not: efficient, discreet, and above all extraordinarily persistent. Known counterfeiters were subject to "life surveillance," not consistently, since the Secret Service lacked the manpower for such ambitious operations, but every few months at least, so that Flynn kept up to date with where the men lived and what they were doing. Thanks to this policy, Giuseppe Morello had been placed under intermittent observation ever since 1903, and over the years the service had come to know him fairly well, certainly well enough to have a firmer grasp than the police did as to how dramatically his power and his influence had spread. According to John Wilkie, Flynn"s boss in Washington, the Morellos lay behind as much as "60 percent of the Black Hand extortion that has gone on in the United States for the past 10 years ... as far west as Chicago and as far south as New Orleans." But Wilkie also knew that intermittent hara.s.sment by the detectives of his local police precinct didn"t cause the Clutch Hand much concern: The oftener Morello was arrested, the more insolent he became. By this time he had come to sneer at the police and dictate whatever orders he saw fit; to the Italians he had come to dominate. ... [His] maimed hand interfered with him as an outside man, so he did the thinking and ordered others to execute his plans.A rough and hard-faced scoundrel, he sat in his office and sent out orders.
Flynn, who had a love of personal publicity quite at odds with the professional discretion he maintained at work, would sometimes talk to newsmen about the tactics he employed to tackle counterfeiters, at least in general terms. The Chief stuck to two sensible but vital principles, a reporter from The New York Times The New York Times explained ("First, hide your evidence-getting methods. Second, make the detection of crime not so much the result of one-man cleverness as a mosaic of information gained from many sources by specialists"), and both were plainly in evidence in the New York bureau"s tracking of Morello. But the same journalist identified two other important reasons for the Chief"s success: "His ideas are big. He shows it by the way he sweeps aside minor details and goes to the very heart of a subject. [He is] a man with suggestions of a bulldog"s tenacity and words fewer than those of the average New Yorker." explained ("First, hide your evidence-getting methods. Second, make the detection of crime not so much the result of one-man cleverness as a mosaic of information gained from many sources by specialists"), and both were plainly in evidence in the New York bureau"s tracking of Morello. But the same journalist identified two other important reasons for the Chief"s success: "His ideas are big. He shows it by the way he sweeps aside minor details and goes to the very heart of a subject. [He is] a man with suggestions of a bulldog"s tenacity and words fewer than those of the average New Yorker."
For all that, though, for all the Secret Service"s efficiency, Morello"s care and cunning kept Flynn from discovering for the best part of a year that new counterfeits were being struck, and though counterfeiting in the old stone house had gotten under way in November 1908, it was not until the following May that the first forged bills appeared in circulation. These were the gang"s first attempt at the Canadian bill, and thus were relatively easy to spot. They poured into Secret Service headquarters from bankers in Philadelphia and storekeepers in Pittsburgh, from Buffalo and Chicago, Boston and New York, and when it became clear that the bills were being pa.s.sed in the Italian districts of each city, the order went out to mount surveillance of likely suspects. In New York, that meant Morello above all.
Flynn responded by ordering several of his men to recommence an intermittent watch, but there was nothing especially incriminating about the Clutch Hand"s movements, at least not at first. Morello was too wary, too careful to fall into any of the obvious traps. He took pains never to be seen with known counterfeiters, nor to pa.s.s any forged bills. There were no more meetings with Comito, either, and for a while the Chief was uncertain whether the first family actually was behind the flood of counterfeits.
Deprived of any useful leads, Flynn turned instead to studying the phony bills. They were moderately good forgeries, he reported-of a far higher quality than the amateurish fives that the Clutch Hand had been manufacturing in 1900 or the greasy dollars he had had printed in Italy two years later, but still not fine enough to fool an experienced eye. The counterfeits were also suitable only for small-scale use in shops and taverns; because all the notes were printed from the same plates, they bore identical serial numbers, which meant it would be highly dangerous to pa.s.s more than one of them at once. Industrial though the Mafia"s production was in scale, the operation remained at heart a minor fraud.
Thanks in large part to Morello"s caution, it was not until summer that Flynn made his first real breakthrough, and it came not in New York but in Pittston, Pennsylvania: a grim, crime-ridden coal town with a large Italian population and a significant criminal presence. Forged bills began to surface there in June, and in sufficient quant.i.ty to persuade Flynn to venture south to carry out his own investigation. The decision was, in truth, one born of desperation, but it proved to be a good one nonetheless. Detailed questioning of local storekeepers led to a Sicilian of dubious reputation known locally as Sam Locino. Locino was put under surveillance. Once Flynn was certain that Locino really was pa.s.sing the forged notes, he had the man arrested.
Locino proved to be an interesting character. He was scabrous, shifty, and untrustworthy, though possessed of a broad streak of self-interest that made him potentially useful to the Secret Service. In common with all the queer-pushers employed by the Morello gang, he worried about the prospect of a lengthy prison sentence but was vastly more frightened of betraying his suppliers. It took Flynn time to persuade his prisoner to talk, and when Locino did it was only after receiving ironclad a.s.surances that he would be protected by the government, that he would not be forced to testify in open court, and that his name would be kept out of the press.
It was only when all three promises were made that Locino offered Flynn the thing he wanted most: the name of the man from whom he had acquired his counterfeits. The notes came from another Sicilian, the pusher whispered: a man from Corleone named Giuseppe Boscarini. Boscarini, he told the Chief, was a much older man, perhaps fifty-five, of middling height, with graying hair. He lived in New York but was a regular visitor to Pennsylvania. Better yet, Locino was confident that he would be willing to sell more counterfeits.
It was the news the Secret Service had been hoping for, and Locino"s casual mention of Boscarini"s hometown was a sc.r.a.p of information filled with meaning for Flynn, whose years of painstaking surveillance had taught him that Giuseppe Morello always preferred to depend on other Corleonesi when he could. Still, much needed to be done to make even the beginnings of a proper case, and the next step was to obtain evidence in writing. Locino was ordered to send a letter to Boscarini inquiring about the availability of his counterfeits and asking for samples of the latest notes. His story was that he wanted to discover how easily the bills would pa.s.s in Pittston.
Flynn had experience of counterfeiting trials and knew that any attorney worth his fee would seek to prove that correspondence produced in evidence was bogus. Taking Locino"s letter with him, he went to call on Pittston"s mayor and then the local chief of police. Both men were asked to accompany the Chief to the local post office, where they witnessed him register the envelope addressed to Boscarini and mail it to New York. Registration, Flynn calculated, would force the counterfeiter to call at the post office to collect his mail. That in turn would give his operatives the chance they needed to identify him.
The plan worked precisely as the Chief hoped. Agents from the New York bureau stationed themselves inside the post office closest to Boscarini"s home and identified the Sicilian when he came to collect his mail. Now armed with a detailed description of their suspect, Flynn"s men followed him home and then kept watch on the premises until their target emerged the next morning and headed back to the post office. There Boscarini purchased a special delivery envelope, scribbled down Locino"s details, added a false return address, and stamped the letter with two one-cent stamps placed upside down. Armed with that precise description, Flynn had no trouble intercepting the package at the Pittston post office the next day. It proved to contain two sample Morello notes: a two and a five. Now the Chief had the evidence he needed to arrest and convict Boscarini.
The investigation had reached a critical point, Flynn told his superiors in Washington. To swoop down on Boscarini would expose Locino to the vengeance of the Mafia, and that was something that the Chief was not prepared to do; aside from betraying a man he had promised to protect, the arrest would achieve little but drive the leaders of the gang into hiding. Flynn had a better idea, anyway. Instead of detailing men to pick up Boscarini, he gave Locino thirty-five dollars and sent his informant to Manhattan, an apparently satisfied customer eager to purchase a hundred dollars" worth of counterfeits. Locino located his supplier on a street corner in Little Italy and made the necessary arrangements, handing Boscarini the Secret Service money in exchange for a fresh batch of counterfeits. The exchange pa.s.sed off without a hitch. Neither Sicilian was aware that Flynn had subtly marked each of the genuine bills, placing an extra dot of ink among Abraham Lincoln"s shirt studs. By the time Locino had repeated the same procedure weekly for the better part of a month, it was September and the counterfeiters were holding well over one hundred dollars of the Chief"s marked bills.
Flynn still needed to establish a connection between Boscarini and his superiors, the real leaders of the counterfeiting gang. It was not an easy one to make; the Corleone man was careful, and days of discreet surveillance produced no useful leads. Still, Boscarini could not run his business indefinitely without obtaining fresh supplies of counterfeits, and one afternoon in the early autumn the Secret Service operative a.s.signed to tail him found himself taking a train up to Harlem, where the suspect hurried down a busy street and ducked into a doorway. The agent noted the address: 233 East 97th Street. It was a spot that Flynn knew well. Boscarini had disappeared into Lupo"s old wholesale grocery store-a place now owned and operated by Morello.
The Chief felt certain that this was the spot where the counterfeiters gathered, but putting the store under observation was by no means a simple matter. Morello was certain to be wary, and East Harlem, in 1909, was more exclusively Italian than Little Italy had been six years earlier. Flynn"s English-speaking agents could not hope to loiter on the street outside for weeks without being spotted, and arousing the least suspicion would likely ruin the entire operation. The solution was to use their Italian-speaking operative, Peter Rubano, who rented a vacant room across the street. The Secret Service"s new base was sufficiently discreet to allow a succession of agents to maintain the watch; comfortably equipped, to enable them to do so constantly; and far enough above street level to shield the operatives from pa.s.sersby It also offered a first-rate view across the road into the windows of Morello"s store.
The ruse worked well, and for several weeks agents noted all the comings and goings at the place. Flynn"s men spotted Boscarini several times, then Antonio Cecala, and on one occasion even Lupo-who had not been seen in New York for nearly a year, not since the day he had fled his creditors. Better yet, the Clutch Hand himself paid several visits, and various other members of the Morello family flitted in and out. All this, of course, was merely circ.u.mstantial; there was no clear proof that any of these men were engaged in a conspiracy. The agents" logbooks, though, were certainly instructive. Boscarini and Cecala habitually entered the building separately, the operatives observed. But they were often on the premises together, and, when they were, they met in a third-floor room shielded behind "great boxes of macaroni and other Italian groceries piled high in the windows." These meetings were brisk and businesslike-none lasted longer than fifteen minutes. And afterward Boscarini always had fresh supplies of counterfeits.
The discovery that Antonio Cecala was implicated in the counterfeiting scheme was the biggest breakthrough yet in Flynn"s expanding investigation. Another team of Secret Service men was drafted in to track the stocky arsonist, and, as their reports came in, the whole thrust of the inquiry changed. It was Cecala, the Chief realized, who was managing the distribution of the forged bills, and Cecala who could lead him to the shadowy Sicilians wholesaling notes from Chicago south to New Orleans. As more and more operatives were pulled from their duties across the country to a.s.sist with the surveillance, Flynn gradually uncovered the most ambitious counterfeiting scheme the Secret Service had encountered in its fifty-year history.
The network so painstakingly unraveled was a pyramidal distribution operation. Cecala, Flynn calculated, "made frequent trips to various cities, establishing agencies for the circulation of the bills," and there were six of these in all, each headed by a man who came from Corleone and was unswervingly loyal to the Morello family. These deputies in turn recruited half a dozen a.s.sistants to distribute forged currency in the various districts of their towns. Here, too, reliability was paramount. "It was," Flynn found, "necessary for these deputies to vouch for any person before Cecala would allow them to have any of the bogus money. ... Thus the notes pa.s.sed through at least three hands before they reached the purchaser, and sometimes the transaction was even more complicated."
The great virtue of this carefully designed system, from Morello"s point of view at least, was that it insulated the Mafia leaders in New York from the distribution of the currency. It was Cecala"s a.s.sociates and their deputies who ran the greatest chance of discovery and the risk of arrest, but to arrest them would in no way help to secure Lupo or Morello. Cecala had issued each of his men dire threats regarding the violent consequences they and their families would face if anybody dared to talk, and "the prisoner, even if he had desired to testify against the counterfeiters, would not know who the leaders were."
It was all highly frustrating. "Like malignant spirits," Chief Flynn mused, Lupo and Morello lurked in the dark and directed the movements of the p.a.w.ns under them in the great counterfeiting scheme that was to make them wealthy and get them out of the difficulties into which the Ignatz Florio a.s.sociation had plunged them. They took no chances-at least they thought they took none-and certainly they were not in the danger to which they exposed their aides.It was they who pulled the strings, and their puppets responded. ... Their system was mysterious, baffling, and almost perfect. But there were flaws in it, and the Secret Service found those flaws.
IT WAS LUPO WHO unwittingly supplied the final piece of evidence that Flynn required to bring his case to a conclusion. unwittingly supplied the final piece of evidence that Flynn required to bring his case to a conclusion.
The Secret Service never fully understood what prompted the Wolf to return to New York that autumn of 1909, with the creditors of his failed grocery business still not satisfied. Lupo told the few who dared to ask that his mind had been disturbed, that he had been working for his brother, a grocer, in Hoboken, and that he had been unable to discharge his debts only because he himself had been a victim of extortion-forced to hand over ten thousand dollars to a Black Hand group that had been threatening his chain of stores. Flynn believed that the more likely explanation was that Lupo had simply grown bored of hiding in the wilds of the surrounding countryside. Whatever the reason, the Wolf was soon a common sight in Little Italy again. He hired lawyers to fight his creditors on his behalf and took up many of his old activities, exuding much of his old self-confidence. Luckily for Flynn and his investigation, he also continued to make trips to Highland to inspect the latest batches of counterfeits.
The Secret Service operatives detailed to follow Lupo had strict orders not to risk discovery, and the first time they trailed the Wolf to Grand Central Terminal they found that he was taking extensive precautions against being spotted. First Lupo purchased a cigar and went into a smoking room, where he sat for some time watching the activity around him. Next he had his shoes polished, while he sat perched in a chair high on the bootblack"s stand from which he carefully surveyed the crowd. From there he left the station altogether, walking along West 44th Street until he reached a second entrance to the terminal. At that point he ducked back inside the station and hastened to the ticket office.
Flynn"s men had dropped well back in order to avoid detection, and by the time they reached the ticket line Lupo was completing his purchase. The closest agent was too far away to hear the destination, but, as he watched, the Wolf proffered a two-dollar bill and received fifty cents in change. Wherever Lupo was headed, at that fare it had to be a spot no more than sixty miles outside New York.
Later that day, back in his office, Flynn ran through all the possibilities. "At first I thought it was Poughkeepsie," the Chief recalled. "Then I began to put two and two together, and, remembering that Lupo when he fled from New York went to Ardonia, a little town back of Highland, N.Y., I became convinced that the counterfeiting plant must be somewhere along the west bank of the Hudson River, not far from Highland. The country back of the hills that line the river is very wild and very lonesome, an ideal place for the plant of counterfeiters."
The more the Chief thought about it, the more certain he became that he was right, and by the end of September a team of Secret Service agents had arrived in Highland and begun to question the locals. Flynn"s men soon discovered that Cecala owned a large farm outside the village-the local postmaster recalled receiving packages for him-and that he was often accompanied by Cina. Cina"s close relationship with his brother-in-law and neighbor, Vincenzo Giglio, gave the agents another useful clue.
The old stone house in the woods evaded the operatives for a little longer, but in the end they found the Highland farmer who had leased it to Cecala.
The Chief was satisfied he had enough. It was time to move in on the Mafia.
FLYNN HAD ONE REMAINING concern: The size of the counterfeiting operation that was being uncovered was such that it would be difficult to arrest the whole group simultaneously, which meant there was a real risk that some of the gang would realize what was happening and get away. Aside from Morello and Lupo, Cecala and Cina, Boscarini and Nick Terranova, Flynn"s list included several other influential Corleonesi: Domenico Milone, a director of the Ignatz Florio Co-Operative a.s.sociation and now nominally the owner of the grocery store on 87th Street; Stefano LaSala, a power in the city"s gambling underworld who had risen to become one of Morello"s chief lieutenants; and two recent additions to the ranks of the first family, the Vasi brothers, Pasquale and Leoluca. Among them these men occupied twelve different addresses in New York, from Italian Harlem to Long Island City, Queens, and at least three more in Highland. Failure to secure the counterfeiters together was likely to have serious consequences, since any who received sufficient warning would certainly try to get away. concern: The size of the counterfeiting operation that was being uncovered was such that it would be difficult to arrest the whole group simultaneously, which meant there was a real risk that some of the gang would realize what was happening and get away. Aside from Morello and Lupo, Cecala and Cina, Boscarini and Nick Terranova, Flynn"s list included several other influential Corleonesi: Domenico Milone, a director of the Ignatz Florio Co-Operative a.s.sociation and now nominally the owner of the grocery store on 87th Street; Stefano LaSala, a power in the city"s gambling underworld who had risen to become one of Morello"s chief lieutenants; and two recent additions to the ranks of the first family, the Vasi brothers, Pasquale and Leoluca. Among them these men occupied twelve different addresses in New York, from Italian Harlem to Long Island City, Queens, and at least three more in Highland. Failure to secure the counterfeiters together was likely to have serious consequences, since any who received sufficient warning would certainly try to get away.
Flynn"s great concern was that Morello himself would manage to escape. The Clutch Hand had always been a dangerously elusive man; weeks of careful surveillance in the Italian quarter had demonstrated that his movements were worryingly unpredictable, and to make matters worse there were a number of ways in and out of the tenement he occupied at 207 East 107th Street, and he appeared to use them all. The whole building, consisting of sixteen apartments, was occupied by members of Morello"s family or their tenants, and Flynn could not even be certain which apartment the boss would be in on the day the raid was planned. The only way to be certain of locating Morello and covering every possible exit was to obtain exact, timely intelligence of the internal layout of the tenement. And that meant sending an agent into the building to investigate, with all the risk that that entailed.
Flynn decided to a.s.sign the task to the youngest and most anonymous of the Secret Service team: Thomas Callaghan, a seventeen-year-old so youthful-looking that he had been posing as a shoeshine boy along the street. It was a daunting a.s.signment for an inexperienced agent, more so because the Chief wanted the job done late at night, when the Clutch Hand came home for the evening. Decades later, when he was the storied leader of the agency"s Chicago bureau, Callaghan still recalled it as the most terrifying a.s.signment he had ever undertaken.
"It was," the teenage operative said, a dangerous rookery in which to be trailing a killer. It was a four-story building with long hallways, closed stairways, and bare walls. When I finally saw Morello coming down the street around midnight, I noticed that he had his two brothers, Vincenzo and Ciro, and another man with him. I ducked into the house and sneaked up to the second floor. It was pitch dark because the janitor had turned out all the lights at ten o"clock.I knew Morello and his companions had entered the tenement, so when I heard them coming up the stairs, I tiptoed to the fourth floor. And then I thought, What"ll I do if they keep going to the top?Sure enough, they didn"t stop at the third, but kept coming up. They were going to find me skulking there with no reason to be hanging around their place. I figured I was a squashed bug no matter what I did. Then suddenly-I don"t know why-I decided to walk nonchalantly down the stairs.I met them between the third and fourth floors, my heart thumping like a pile driver. When they heard me and when we came face to face, what do you suppose Morello said? "Scusa, please." I stepped aside and they kept going. I"ll never know how I got down.
Gasping like a landed fish, Callaghan stumbled back out onto East 107th Street and glanced around. He had not been followed, and he had the information that Flynn needed: the building"s layout and its exits, and above all the intelligence that Morello was spending the evening where the Secret Service wanted him, in an apartment on the highest floor.
It was a long night, the agents staking out the building would always recall-long because it was the middle of November, long because they were all so nervous, and long because Morello worked on until dawn. They waited and waited for the lights on the fourth floor to dim and for their man to fall asleep. It was not until nearly eleven the next morning, when Flynn calculated that he had to be in bed at last, that half a dozen agents and several detectives from the Italian Squad crept back into the tenement and up the creaking wooden stairs. The date was November 15, 1909.
Flynn had a key to the Clutch Hand"s flat, either a copy requisitioned from the building"s janitor or a skeleton key capable of opening a variety of doors. He turned it in the lock so gently that there was no click. The door swung open and the Secret Service men moved softly into the slumbering apartment. The detectives had their weapons drawn, but there was n.o.body about.
The second room that they tried was a bedroom. Morello lay sprawled out on his mattress, deep asleep. His half brother Nick Terranova dozed on a second bed alongside him. "We had virtually no desire to waken them," the Chief remarked, "until we were sitting on them."
A silent gesture, a flurry of movement, and the two Sicilians were roughly pinioned before they were properly awake. Flynn"s caution was justified the moment that his men began to search the room. "Under Morello"s pillow," he reported, we found four fully loaded revolvers; beneath Terranova"s, five. That"s bound to impress you. And two of Morello"s guns were loaded with cartridges containing buckshot-three or four pellets in each cartridge. One might compare Giuseppe to a one-man war, and I frequently wondered whether he didn"t fear himself at times.
The silence of the slumbering apartment had been well and truly shattered by this time, and the m.u.f.fled sounds of the brief struggle roused the remainder of the household. Three or four half-dressed Sicilians emerged, all furious, all disputing the arrests; an Italian-speaking policeman supplied Flynn with a translation. Then Lina Morello herself appeared, an infant daughter in one arm and fury blazing white-hot on her face.
"The furore was spectacular," said Flynn.
Morello"s wife made herself extremely unpopular with us by drawing a wicked knife. It took two of us to get it away from her. Bereft of the knife she subsided into tears. She was to be murdered by the police. Her great, good husband was to be slain. And what was to become of these magnificent children of hers?Fatherless! Motherless! Ah, yes, she knew. They would be thrown into the river at night, like swine. Ah, but there was wickedness in the world when the police should break up this happy Christian home. The dogs of police. She would spit upon them.
The confusion in the packed apartment was indescribable. Morello and Terranova sat together on their beds, each clad only in his underclothes. The other members of the family milled around, shouting and arguing, creating the greatest possible confusion while another of their number took hurried advantage to conceal several pieces of incriminating evidence. A pack of half a dozen letters was thrust into a pocket in Lina"s ap.r.o.n, which lay on the table. Lina herself scooped up her daughter Mary, who was only eight months old, "and it was more or less noticeable," said Flynn, "that she was stuffing something in to the child"s clothes." Grasping her infant in one arm, Mrs. Morello made to leave the room, giving vent to another angry volley of Sicilian as she did so. The burden of this outburst, Flynn"s detective friend explained, was that "she would go into the next room and put her beautiful children to sleep and then she would go to the prison and be mutilated by the dogs of police."
It took two large Secret Service men to part Lina from her daughter, and she resisted them with such determination that the agents "sustained 40 or 50 minor bruises" in the struggle. Then Operative Thomas Gallagher suggested to Mrs. Morello that there might be something of interest to the government wrapped in the cloth that protected the little Morello, and instantly the mother became very emphatic in her native manner of making us understand that she "no understand."Gallagher is a man of Irish extraction from the environs of Boston. In other words, he has a humorous instinct. So he suggested that maybe the poor baby needed a fresh diaper. There was a flash of volcanic fire in the mother"s eyes and two strong arms held her secure while Gallagher removed the cloth from the infant"s limbs.
Three notes, written by Morello to the heads of Mafia families elsewhere in the country, were found inside the infant"s diaper. Lina"s ap.r.o.n pocket contained several lurid Black Hand letters. All in all it was, Flynn thought, a first-rate morning"s work.
Morello was allowed to dress and was led away. His half brother Terranova attempted to escape arrest by posing as "a crazy man ... he just rolled his eyes, stuck out his tongue, and babbled incoherently," as the Chief recalled. "Still, he was brought in, and though he quit the crazy routine, he proved to be about as garrulous as a clam." And, up and down the city at much the same time, other operatives were raiding other addresses. Fourteen Sicilians were detained in all, and careful searches of their homes produced some incriminating finds. A bag containing $3,600 in counterfeit two-dollar bills was found under a bed in the Vasi brothers" flat, and the news from Antonio Cecala"s home on East 4th Street was even more rewarding. Agents Burke and Henry seized $221 in genuine currency from the counterfeiter"s wallet, and this, when carefully inspected, proved to include two of the subtly marked notes that Flynn had pa.s.sed to Sam Locino. Another link between the counterfeits and their suppliers had been made.
The only member of the Morello gang to elude arrest was Lupo, who was then living incognito in Brooklyn. To Flynn"s irritation, his men had lost track of the Wolf some days before, and he continued to evade pursuit for almost two months, only to be trapped when a characteristic piece of opportunism went badly wrong. Detectives from Hoboken had been investigating the theft of an upright piano and succeeded in tracing their suspect to a rented house in fashionable Bath Beach. The man they were after turned out to be Lupo. When the detectives recognized their quarry, they called the Secret Service bureau and invited Flynn to send an agent to a.s.sist in their planned raid. Flynn sent Peter Rubano, and Lupo was picked up without incident on the morning of January 8 as he strolled along the street outside his home. The Wolf was unarmed, and his pockets proved to contain nothing but a nail file and seven dollars in cash.
Lupo joined nine other prominent members of the Morello family in jail. Bail had been set at unheard-of levels: $10,000 for Morello, $7,500 for Cecala and Boscarini, and $5,000 apiece for the other members of the gang. None of the Mafiosi could raise such sums, so Morello and his men stayed in the cells while Flynn began preparing for his day in court.
THERE WAS STILL ONE yawning gap in the Secret Service case: the lack of a confession from a member of the Morello family. Flynn was not optimistic of obtaining it, nor was it strictly necessary; the Secret Service had obtained plenty of convictions in the past without the a.s.sistance of admissions from any of the defendants. A confession, though, would make it vastly easier to guarantee a guilty verdict, and though the Chief was certain none of Morello"s men would talk, there was one member of the counterfeiting gang who might. yawning gap in the Secret Service case: the lack of a confession from a member of the Morello family. Flynn was not optimistic of obtaining it, nor was it strictly necessary; the Secret Service had obtained plenty of convictions in the past without the a.s.sistance of admissions from any of the defendants. A confession, though, would make it vastly easier to guarantee a guilty verdict, and though the Chief was certain none of Morello"s men would talk, there was one member of the counterfeiting gang who might.
It"s not certain when Flynn first heard Comito"s name. He had not realized that the printer so much as existed when he raided the Morellos" tenement in mid-November. By the middle of December 1909, Flynn had discovered that two men working together had produced the Clutch Hand"s counterfeits, and by Christmas, thanks to an informant, he knew about Calicchio. But as late as the first days of January, as his reports to Washington attest, the Chief was still referring to the second of Morello"s printers as a mysterious "Calabrian," and he had no idea who he was or where he lived.
It was luck, pure chance, that led the Secret Service to Comito only a week or two before the gang was due in court. Charles Mazzei, one of the Italian informants so carefully cultivated by Flynn, knew Calicchio, and it was Mazzei who pa.s.sed Flynn word that the master printer had been working for Morello. Through Calicchio, Mazzei then heard that there had been a second man printing notes at Highland. But though Flynn hung back in the hope of learning more, his new lead yielded little more than that until, one day early in January, Calicchio unexpectedly saw Comito scuttling toward him down a Brooklyn street. The two men exchanged wary greetings; they had not seen each other for six months. When Calicchio spoke critically of Cecala and Cina, though, Comito, suddenly emboldened, supplied his colleague with his new address. That crucial sc.r.a.p of information, pa.s.sed by Calicchio to Mazzei and by Mazzei to Flynn, led almost immediately to a raid.
The Chief, by his own admission, had no inkling that Comito was an unwilling accomplice, and he expected to discover evidence that his new suspect was heavily caught up in the counterfeiting scheme: "bundles of [forged notes] in his rooms," perhaps, "together with letters and other evidence connecting him with Lupo, Morello and the others." Certainly Flynn antic.i.p.ated trouble; he sent nine men to make the arrest. It was a surprise when they found nothing. A careful search of the Calabrian"s apartment revealed "not a single bogus note, nor any blackmail letters," and Flynn began to change his mind.
Comito, Mazzei had already told him, was an even-tempered little man derisively known to the Morellos as "the Sheep." That name, the Chief decided, appeared well deserved; his prisoner was simply too timorous to be a full-fledged member of the Mafia. Comito, he admitted, "had [not] profited at all by the counterfeiting scheme" and "was not at heart a criminal." This discovery was a surprise but also an opportunity. If the Sheep had been coerced into working for Morello, there was a chance that he might talk.
Flynn, who had conducted hundreds of interrogations, realized instinctively that his prisoner would not respond to bullying or threats.
Instead of placing him under arrest I sat down and had a long talk with him. ... I soon learned that if I could get him to talk I would have a witness who could fasten guilt upon almost every man of the band.This strange character was influenced to a remarkable extent by kindness. There were tears in his eyes when I told him that neither he nor Katrina would be arrested. ... The girl was spirited away and put under the protection of the government and Comito himself was under my own supervision. For days he was in the Custom House in New York, never leaving the building except disguised and with me.For days I worked over him, always treating him with the greatest kindness and striving to overcome the fear which at times got the better of him. ... Each night I went with Comito to some Italian restaurant and dined on spaghetti with tomato sauce and onion soup, until I felt inside like a Sicilian and added inches to my girth. At first, Comito glanced fearfully about him and only played with his food. He knew the men with whom he had to deal, and he knew their methods, but gradually he came to look on me as [someone who] would protect him even against the secret vengeance of the men from Corleone.
Bolstered by Flynn"s repeated rea.s.surances, Comito"s weak resistance crumbled. His apartment had been raided on the fourth of January. Within a week he had reached an agreement with his captors: testimony against the Morello family and, in return, protection, immunity from prosecution, and the money to make a fresh start somewhere other than New York.
With that the whole story came pouring out. Comito, Flynn discovered, had vivid, almost perfect recall. He remembered absolutely everything, it seemed: his visits to the Sons of Italy, the introduction to Cecala, the offer of a job in Philadelphia, the river voyage to Highland, and the remote house in the distant woods. More than that, Comito unpicked the mechanics of the counterfeiting operation, providing information sufficient to incriminate nearly a dozen members of the gang, and offered evidence against the gang"s princ.i.p.als, Lupo and Morello, who would normally have been almost impossible to convict. He described the Wolf"s visits to Highland, toting guns and giving frowning approval to a succession of proofs, and his fateful encounter with Morello, clearly the leader of the gang, a man who behaved as though the enormous deference that the others showed him were simply his due.
Taken down in shorthand and typed up, Comito"s testimony ran for well over a hundred pages, or nearly fifty thousand words. It was the most complete and most incriminating body of testimony that the service had obtained for years, and Flynn thought that it would be sufficient to convict every member of Morello"s family. For the time being, though, it was plainly best to keep that knowledge to himself. The less that the Clutch Hand knew about Comito and his evidence, the better.
LUPO AND MORELLO, meanwhile, were not idle. There were the usual stiff compulsory levies among Italian businessmen in Little Italy, to pay the costs of a defense led by Mirabeau Towns, one of New York"s best-known but most expensive trial lawyers. Orders went out for the destruction of the Highland printing press, and the remaining stock of counterfeits was burned or buried. There were also attempts to construct alibis for the prisoners; Cecala, for example, made arrangements for two witnesses to claim that he had been ill in bed with pneumonia on several crucial dates.
To n.o.body"s surprise, the most elaborate of these efforts were made on Morello"s behalf. Marshaled by Nick Terranova, who had been reluctantly released by Flynn when no firm evidence could be found to prove his involvement in counterfeiting, the members of the Clutch Hand"s family designed an elaborate alibi. Morello, they decided, should claim to have been ill for the preceding year. Unlike Cecala, though, whose witnesses were a daughter and a friend, the boss would call on solid, independent testimony to sh.o.r.e up his alibi: A pair of doctors, Salvatore Romano and Salvatore Brancatto, would swear on oath that he had been incapacitated.
Romano, of course, had helped the Morellos before. In January 1910 he was still practicing in Rochester, the town to which he had been obliged to flee in order to avoid the attentions of the Clutch Hand"s family, and he knew nothing of Flynn"s arrests until early in January 1910, when he unexpectedly received a letter from his mother in New York.