The Deadly Don: Vito Genovese, Mafia Boss by Anthony M. DeStefano

Author:Anthony M. DeStefano [DeStefano, Anthony M.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780806540931
Google: PjZLEAAAQBAJ
Publisher: Kensington Publishing Corporation
Published: 2021-11-15T00:12:19.467523+00:00

Chapter Thirteen

BACK IN NEW YORK AFTER THE HAVANA CONFERENCE, things seemed to have quieted down for Genovese. A check of the newspaper headlines after the Boccia case ended in 1946 revealed virtually no mention of Genovese through the end of the decade. Now and again, the Boccia case would garner a mention but always in a historical context and with the perfunctory mention of Genovese’s name as the big fish who beat the case.

The absence of Genovese from the newspapers didn’t mean that he wasn’t busy. It was just that there was nothing for law enforcement to hang its hat on for an arrest. True to his word when he talked about having legitimate businesses, Genovese tended to his Lower West Side Colonial Trading Company on Hudson Street, which dealt with waste paper and rags. There was a second such company on the same street. Then there was Erb Strapping on Thompson Street, a business that he would take an interest in during the next decade.

Genovese also maintained a foothold close to home in New Jersey. He had an interest in a poultry farm in Middletown, New Jersey, from which he sold chickens. Genovese sold the farm in 1948 for about $38,000. Records also show that in July 1948 he and some partners established the Atlantic Highlands Wharf Company. The company handled freight and passenger transportation at the yacht harbor in the coastal town, which happened to be were Genovese had a home. It wasn’t a lucky venture. Genovese would later remember that the steamship company had to be liquidated after two years because of a lack of business, particularly after he and his two partners couldn’t get approval to have gambling on the vessel.

The businesses—while they lasted—enabled Genovese to show legitimate income. But he didn’t become the man Judge Leibowitz once called the “overlord of crime in New York” by recycling scrap paper and rags. Cops were aware that Genovese and others in the New York mob had their hands in gambling operations, notably the Italian lottery, which was a staple for years in the immigrant community. In essence, the lottery worked as a numbers operation in which customers bet on which combination of numbers, usually three digits, would come up randomly.

As explained in a congressional memo found in old government files, the lottery in the U.S. was composed of a number of companies, each of which has a “bank,” an entity that had no fixed location but moved around each week. For years, the New York lottery was keyed to a legal lottery in Italy, where each Saturday in each of the Italian provinces five numbers were drawn randomly. The resulting numbers, a total of fifty, were then transmitted to the U.S., where the various banks contributed to a “take” in each business, the memo stated. Genovese’s role in all of this was to settle territorial disputes among the various banks as they vied for customers.

But with the advent of World War Two, the numbers from the lottery based in Italy weren’t obtainable.

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