The Last Testament of Lucky Luciano by Martin A. Gosch

Author:Martin A. Gosch [Gosch, Martin A.; Hammer, Richard]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781936274581
Publisher: Enigma Books

21.

In the years before he had gone to Dannemora, Luciano had exercised a restraining influence over some of his more volatile associates. He, Costello and Lansky, particularly, had long since reached the conclusion that violence was in most cases unnecessary, was to be shunned unless unavoidable and then used most judiciously. He and his fellow leaders of the Unione Siciliano had tried to keep a tight reign on the two major proponents of indiscriminate violence, Lepke and Anastasia, with the dictum that no killing could be carried out without the unanimous consent of the council. When he was on the scene, in control, his influence had been pervasive and few ignored his orders and disobeyed his dictates.

But now he was in Dannemora, hundreds of miles from the seat of his empire, and the surrogates he had left behind were often absent from New York, as well, unable then to exert a restraining influence on Lepke and Anastasia. Costello was often in New Orleans or elsewhere, working with Dandy Phil Kastel and others on his burgeoning gambling interests; Lansky was spending more and more time in Broward County, attempting to establish a network of casinos in the Miami area, and in the Caribbean, cementing his profitable friendship and partnership with Cuba’s Batista.

“Up in Dannemora I had enough things to bother me, like my own plans for the appeals and different ideas to help me get out. Then I began to get a lot of reports about what Lep and Albert was doin’, just because Costello and Lansky wasn’t around every day to stop ’em. Then I heard that Lepke was goin’ around tellin’ some of our guys that he wasn’t gonna use his muscle for the benefit of nobody but himself. In other words, the garment district and the bakery business, for example, was gonna be his without cuttin’ nobody else in.”

By the middle of 1937, Lepke was in deep trouble. He lived lavishly and loudly, was often in the newspapers and so became an obvious target for prosecutor Dewey. “And then the shit hit the fan when word got around the narcotics guys was buildin’ a case against Lep for somethin’ that even surprised me. The stupid jerk got himself mixed up with a shipment of junk from Hong Kong to the United States that was supposed to be worth ten million bucks — I heard later it was a helluva lot less than that. It was bad enough that I always had to worry about Vito with that hard stuff — now this muscle-headed son of a bitch Lepke gets himself involved up to his belly button in somethin’ he don’t know a fuckin’ thing about.

“So, of course, he needs help and he sends Joe A. up to see me. My first reaction was to tell Joe to let him take the rap. For years, I’d been tryin’ to help him, and it was always like talkin’ to a stone wall. But you can’t throw a guy to the wolves, so I sent Joe back to New York with an okay for Anastasia to hide Lepke.

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