Майкл Бретт - Mike Shayne Mystery Magazine, Vol. 36, No. 6, June, 1975

One of the gunmen took careful aim and sent a slug thundering into Anastasia’s head. The other gunmen looked around the shop in a swift glance.

“Stay where you are or I’ll kill you!” he warned.

The two hoods turned and hurried out of the shop onto Seventh Avenue. They walked briskly down the B.M.T. subway and disappeared from view. As they escaped from the murder scene they got rid of their weapons. One of them dropped his gun in the vestibule of the shop. The other killer tossed his weapon into a trash barrel on the subway platform.

The whole thing had taken less than two minutes.

Genovese moved immediately to take over as capo di tutti capi. Gambino, quietly and without much trumpeting of his moves, took over the head of the Anastasia family.

Genovese made his next big move to establish his position as the Boss of Bosses. He called together the leaders of the Syndicate for a conference to set up guide lines and reestablish territories and a unification of operations in all the rackets.

Stefano Magaddino, Buffalo boss, suggested the meeting be held at the home of Joseph Barbara in the sleepy Upstate New York hamlet of Apalachin. It was a serious mistake, as things turned out.

One of the items on Genovese’s agenda was to be his demand to be recognized as boss of all bosses. As a gesture of their good will, he demanded the Syndicate leaders bring tribute in the form of cash, which they were to turn over to him. He demanded the authorization and compliance by all the leaders for a purge of all unreliable members. Another specific point was the organization of the drug traffic, in which he was to play a major role.

Voting on these points never came to pass. Every hood boss who agreed to attend never gave thought to the fact that some hundred expensive automobiles, most of them with out-of-state license plates, could pass through a small town and not create suspicion.

When the Cadillacs, Continentals, Rollses, and other luxury cars were on the road to the Barbara estate it aroused the curiosity of Sergeant Edgar D. Crosswell of the New York State Police. He set up road blocks around the Barbara property and waited for things to happen.

A minor member of the convention went out for a stroll a short time before the meeting was called to order, saw the police cars and the road blocks, and hastened back to the house to report what he had seen. There was immediate confusion.

What followed could have made a comedy scene in a movie. Elderly and middle-aged hoods, dapper in their hand-tailored suits, rushed through the house looking for a way out. Some climbed through windows, others fled through back doors, most of them fleeing through the woods and underbrush in their wild rush to escape arrest.

Crosswell had reinforced himself with a score of troopers and they arrested sixty underworld leaders, among them, Vito Genovese, Stefano Magaddino, Sam Trafficante, John Scalish of Cleveland, Frank DeSimone of Los Angeles, Joe Bonanno, Joe Ida of Philadelphia, Jimmy Colletti of Colorado, Joe Profaci, Jimmy Civello of Dallas, and Joe Barbara. The roundup stunned the underworld.

The lucky ones who escaped were said to be Joe Zerilli of Detroit, Sam Giancana of Chicago, and James Lanza of San Francisco, among the other forty odd who had been in attendance.

Many of those arrested refused to answer questions, took the fifth Amendment against self-incrimination. They were charged with obstructing justice, tried, found guilty, and sentenced to prison. All the convictions were later overturned on appeals on the grounds that a meeting in itself did not constitute a crime.

But the debacle brought a harsh condemnation of Genovese by all the leaders for not having provided proper protection, and with it Genovese’s dream of complete rule shattered around him in ruins.

Carlo Gambino got away clean, reflected on the disaster, and smiled. The entire affair could not have been more advantageous to him than if he had planned it himself. It hurried the timetable in his plans to become Boss of Bosses.

There were other matters to attend to, however, and Gambino gave them his attention.

The most important one was Joe “Joe Bananas” Bonanno, who ruled the smallest of the five New York families. In comparison, small was fitting, but in the size of Bonanno’s operations it was far from that. He had expanded his holdings all the way from Brooklyn to Tucson, Arizona, where he had built a luxury type home. His enterprises were in the Midwest, Canada, and the Caribbean. He had grandiose ideas, and his blueprint was to eliminate at one and the same time Tommy Lucchese, Stefano Magaddino, and Carlo Gambino.

Bonanno was not big enough to pull off such a coup, so he called on Joseph Magliocco, a Brooklyn Mafioso and leader of the lethal Profaci clan.

Magliocco believed that Bonanno could pull of the coup and take over command, in which case Magliocco would benefit greatly by having his field of operations extended. He passed the murder contract on to Joe Colombo, who said he was delighted with the idea.

He wasn’t. He just pretended to be. What he had in mind was an opportunity for a Machiavellian type double cross. He believed that Bonanno and Magliocco couldn’t carry off the plan and come out on top. Bigger rewards would be realized by a grateful Carlo Gambino. He took his information to Gambino.

Gambino, by this time, was a power on the board of the national commission of the Syndicate. As such, he was not one with whom to trifle. Plotting his murder was akin to suicide.

The commission summoned Bonanno to appear before it and explain himself. He refused. He was ordered again to appear, and once again he refused.

Realizing he was in serious trouble, Bonanno attempted to name his son, Salvatore “Bill” Bonanno, as boss of his family, saying that he was a sick man and was retiring from the rackets.

The commission refused to accede to the move and named its own boss. The Bonanno family, hard-nosed, refused to accept this and the infamous Bonanno War broke loose. Bodies were dumped all over Brooklyn streets. And suddenly, Joe Bonanno disappeared.

He had dinner with his attorney, William Power Maloney, on the evening of October 24, 1964, and the two men were saying good-night to each other in front of Maloney’s home on Park Avenue and 36th Street when two hoods appeared from the shadows. They grabbed Bonanno, fired a warning shot at Maloney’s feet to freeze him in position, shoved Bonanno into a car and disappeared into the night at a high rate of speed.

The underworld said he had been killed, then buried in a lonely field, or crushed in a cement mixer.

Yet, in January 1965, while the FBI was searching for his body, Gambino called a meeting of some of the top members of the national commission that was held in the Capri restaurant in Cedarhurst, Long Island, New York.

Attending were Salvatore “Sam Mooney” Giancana of Chicago, Angelo Bruno of Philly, Stefano Magaddino, Tommy Lucchese, and, of course, Gambino. The four men voted to kill Bonanno. Gambino was in favor of a more moderate course. The meeting ended without a definite course of action.

A week later Gambino discussed the situation with Sam “The Plumber” DeCavalcante, who bossed a small New Jersey family, and shortly after, DeCavalcante discussed the matter with his chief lieutenant, Joe DeSelva. Unfortunately for DeCavalcante, he didn’t know that the FBI had bugged his office.

DeCavalcante said to DeSelva, “The commission haven’t decided yet what to do with Bonanno. We figure we’ll take him to Florida, hit him there and bury him.”

This was the first time that the FBI knew that Bonanno was alive. An intensive search was made for him.

Another part of the conversation overheard by the FBI between DeCavalcante and DeSelva was to the effect that Joseph Magliocco did not die a natural death, but has been rubbed out.