Part 6 (1/2)

Comito did his best to remain calm. The plates were too small for the press, he explained. They could not be printed unless they were mounted on blocks, and there were no blocks in the house.

Cecala seemed to think that this was mere dissembling. ”It is time we perhaps told you more of who we are and how we work,” he replied.

There are twenty of us who have organized this affair. Others higher up in famous places know of it. They will receive their share. Should anything slip and we get into trouble there will be thousands of dollars for lawyers and we will be freed.We will respect you as one of us, and Katrina shall have respect at all times. When we have made millions, she will be sent to Italy with money of her own. But you, Don Antonio, you will stay with us for life.We are big, bigger than you know. ... You will know perhaps, later on, about the many branches of our society, and how it is possible for us to do things in one part of the country or world and have the other half of the affair carried out so far away that no suspicion can possibly come to us. After you have obeyed and seen some inkling of our power, you will be glad to become one of us.

The printer listened miserably as Cecala went on. The Sicilian talked for about ten minutes, setting out what was required and how it should be done. A hundred thousand sheets of paper had already been purchased, in various qualities and different sizes. The correct inks had also been procured. He himself would help to mix them.

Comito could only sit and nod his head. He would do his best, he said.

IT TOOK FIVE MORE DAYS to fetch the blocks, and when Cecala returned to the stone house he had another stranger with him. to fetch the blocks, and when Cecala returned to the stone house he had another stranger with him.

The newcomer was tall and muscular, with quartz-flecked hair: in his mid-forties, Comito guessed, and ”apparently a Sicilian of high birth,” since he dressed well and wore expensive jewelry. Cecala introduced him as Zu Vincenzo-”Uncle Vincent”-and explained that he had come to help with the printing of the notes. The newcomer had once run a small bank on Elizabeth Street. He was ”very capable,” Cecala added, and could be relied on for advice when he and Cina were not there. Zu Vincenzo brought the number of people living in the house to six.

The arrival of the blocks meant that there was no reason to delay the printing any longer, and the first proofs were struck off that night-though only after Comito had protested one last time and felt the full force of Cina's violent temper. The men worked steadily until dawn on Christmas Eve, and it was only when the sun came up that they at last found the correct shade of green for the Canadian five-dollar note. That afternoon, Cecala and Cina selected the best of the samples and departed for New York, where the notes were to be ”shown to persons qualified to judge them,” and three days later they were back, this time with orders to print new proofs in a darker color.

Work on test printings of the counterfeits continued throughout the first week of January 1909. To Comito's relief, Cecala and Cina stayed away from the stone house for much of the time, leaving Giglio and Zu Vincenzo to help him with the work. The three men soon settled into an unvarying routine-mixing inks, running proofs, adjusting the press-and the work proceeded largely in silence. The few conversations that Comito did overhear only encouraged him to say as little as possible. ”They would tell me stories that made me s.h.i.+ver,” the printer recalled, ”laugh roughly and tell how much [money] they had frightened from someone, or how neatly they evaded the carabinieri carabinieri in the old country, or the fool police here.” in the old country, or the fool police here.”

Comito knew by now that he had been brought to Highland by a well-organized group of criminals. He knew, from Cina's bragging and the stories Giglio and Zu Vincenzo told, that most of the men holding him had police records in Sicily. But he still had no clear idea of who exactly the men were or to which society or gang they owed allegiance. He guessed that they were members of the Black Hand, the group his uncle had warned him so adamantly against, and saw and heard nothing to change that opinion until one day in January when Giglio was absent and Zu Vincenzo told the printer more about the story of his life.

”While working,” Comito would recall, Uncle Vincent told a thing that I shall never forget. He said that he had been a cattle raiser in his native town. That one day while in the country he had been approached by two men who stated that they desired to buy some oxen. He said that he wanted to see whether they had much money, so stated that he would not talk business unless he knew they meant business. One of them thereupon showed some money. Without a word of warning, Uncle Vincent stated that he threw his rifle to his shoulder and shot the man dead in his tracks. The companion had run when he had fired and he followed him, chasing him some distance. Upon catching up with him, as the man kneeled and cried for mercy, he swung his rifle by the barrel and ”scattered the fool's brains all over the field.” Having killed them both, he returned to his first victim and rifled his clothes, taking 250 lire from the body.

Having committed a double murder for such a paltry sum, Zu Vincenzo had little option but to flee his village. He wrote his family a letter, explaining what had happened and telling them not to worry about him, then took a train to Palermo. In the harbor, Vincenzo found a sailing boat skipper willing to take him to Tunis for one hundred of his 250 lire, and there he stole sufficient money to book a pa.s.sage first to Tokyo, then to Liverpool.

It was, Zu Vincenzo told Comito, not until March 1902 [that] he sailed from there to New Orleans. He knew that on arriving here he would have no trouble, as he had so many friends who would help him because of what he knew about them. In fact he explained that this was one of the greatest secrets of success: ”Find out something about someone and then hold it over their heads and you need never work.”I was tremendously interested in this story and asked: ”Have you worked while you have been in America these last six or seven years?””Never,” he stated emphatically. ”Nor do I ever expect to. It is too easy to live in this country without work. If I knew the man who invented 'work,' I would kill him with pleasure.””Then how do you manage to live?” I asked, remembering my struggle for work in New York.”You are too new among us to know certain things,” he replied in a mysterious way. ”When you have become so deeply interested in the affairs of our society that you cannot stop, you will then know how to live without work.””Then you belong to some society?” I asked. ”That gives you money?””Yes, but it is not like your Foresters or Sons of Italy. Nor is the money given to me in the way you think.””How then?” I asked.”When you know of our [society] and its powers and wonderful workings, how it protects its members at all times, and the many other things that make it so valuable, you will forget all about these others you call societies now.””And what is the price of initiation?””Nothing.””No money?” I asked, astonished.”No,” he replied, ”no money, but there is a price.””And what is it?””A courageous deed will be given you to do.””For instance what?””Well, Don Antonio, you have heard of tyrannical people who oppress and make laws, of rich men who have so much wealth they cannot spend it, of children of such people or of traitors?””Yes,” I replied, wondering what this had to do with courageous deeds.”Well, it might be necessary to punish them for their greed or arrogance. ... Perhaps they may have done something to hurt this society or one of its members, and you would be picked to punish them in secret.””And what is this society called?””It has no name.””Is it a mutual aid society?” I asked.”No.””Where are its headquarters?””There is no one place. In all parts of the world except j.a.pan.””In Italy?””Yes, in Italy.””But the president and other officers, who are they?””Few of the members really know themselves. But that there are heads is certain. [Just] question an order once. [You] will be heard and punishment follows. Then too, when we are in sore need of funds, should the police become active, it is never hard to find money to protect the members.””Perhaps,” I ventured, ”it is the Masons?””No, it is a society with no end to its power. It is bigger than the Masons and will last as long as man.”

This talk of living without working plainly appealed to Comito, who said: ”I must enter soon, for all here are members but me, is that not so?” Zu Vincenzo a.s.sured him that they were-”Yes, and all trusted members too, powerful in this country”-and explained that new members of the society could not be admitted until they had met its bosses and shown them ”respect.” Only then, he said, would they ”christen you.”

”Christen me?” [Comito] cried. ”I have already been baptized in the Roman Catholic religion, and now you would baptize me again?””Certainly, but this would not be a matter of religion. That amounts to nothing. This is more serious. Something you shall never forget.””More serious than religion?” I gasped. ”That cannot be.””Is that so?” he asked laughingly. ”That is what you think.”

Initiation into the mysterious society, Uncle Vincent went on, took time. First a prospective member would be tested. Next came the bestowal of ”a t.i.tle from us which you will bear in secret.” But Comito was left in little doubt that the ”test” of which Vincenzo spoke was murder: It is so arranged that if you succeed in doing what we [set] as a test, that you cannot afford to do other than stick with us for the rest of your lifetime. It is protection for us and [means] an easy life. That is why there are so few traitors. All over the world you will find our work flourishes, and it is because of the way in which we christen you that it is so. Some fools who know nothing say there is no such organization, and they cannot be blamed. They know so little. There is one, and a big one, stronger than countries and police. Some day, Don Antonio, after this work at hand is done, you will be given a test. Then you can learn much. None of we members ever do know it all.

Comito was transfixed by these accounts, and Zu Vincenzo seemed inclined to explain further, but at that point in the conversation Katrina called out from the kitchen and the Mafioso fell silent. ”I had heard enough,” Comito concluded his recollection. ”The papers are full every day of such tests and deeds, [though] they do not read as such.” And, frightened though he was, the printer began to think that he should seek acceptance by the nameless society. He was terrified-at least, so he explained it later-that he and Katrina would be murdered when the work was finished if the Sicilians decided they could not be trusted.

ORDERS FOR THE COUNTERFEITS were coming in from all over the country. A Brooklyn banker wanted to purchase fifty thousand dollars' worth of currency, and Mafia families elsewhere in the United States had been advised that they could buy two-and five-dollar notes at the rate of fifty cents on the dollar. This was a substantial increase on the price that Morello's forgeries had commanded eight years earlier, and one that reflected the increasing professionalism of his counterfeiting operation. The gang now planned to run off twenty thousand of the Canadian bills and fifty thousand two-dollar notes in all-a total of two hundred thousand dollars in bad currency. were coming in from all over the country. A Brooklyn banker wanted to purchase fifty thousand dollars' worth of currency, and Mafia families elsewhere in the United States had been advised that they could buy two-and five-dollar notes at the rate of fifty cents on the dollar. This was a substantial increase on the price that Morello's forgeries had commanded eight years earlier, and one that reflected the increasing professionalism of his counterfeiting operation. The gang now planned to run off twenty thousand of the Canadian bills and fifty thousand two-dollar notes in all-a total of two hundred thousand dollars in bad currency.

They printed the Canadian notes first. The zinc plates engraved by Antonio Milone for the five-dollar bills consisted of five pieces, corresponding to the colors needed for each bill: dark and light green, violet, red, and black. For all the forger's efforts, they were far from perfect; even with practice, Comito found it all but impossible to stop ink blotching between the finer lines. The first three thousand bills were run off, nonetheless-a long and tedious process, since each one had to pa.s.s through the press five times, after which the sheets were separated from their fellows and spread out on the floor to dry, a process that took longer in the cold. All in all, the job took Comito and his companions in the old stone house a month to finish, and by the time the last of the five-dollar notes had been cut, counted, and stacked in an empty macaroni box, it was the end of January.

Cecala appeared and took away the counterfeits a few days later. ”There were seventeen thousand five hundred and forty five dollars,” Comito remembered, ”[and] I understood that [he] was to take them to the people with whom he had arranged for their distribution throughout the entire country. I heard it said also that their distribution had been so arranged that the whole lot would be put out on the public within an hour of a certain day to be set and arranged for beforehand”-a highly implausible suggestion, but one that certainly ill.u.s.trated the soaring confidence within the Morello family.

The first proofs of the two-dollar bill were struck on the first of February. The American note was easier to print, at least in theory, since it had only three colors, but Comito soon discovered that the job was harder than it looked. The greens of the genuine note were particularly difficult to match. The next morning, after an entire night of fruitless experiment, the Sicilians conceded defeat. They needed the help of a specialist in printing inks, Cecala said, and Comito should go to New York to find one.

The counterfeiters had, it seems, correctly judged the s.h.i.+ft in their companion's mood; Comito could now be trusted not to run straight to the police. Presented with five dollars to pay the fare, and driven to the nearest railway station two days later, the printer stepped off his train in Manhattan at noon. He was unaccompanied and could have gone directly to the nearest station house. Instead he took the El, the elevated railway, north to a rendezvous with Cecala at 630 East 138th Street. This building, though Comito did not know it, was one of the tenements erected by the Ignatz Florio Co-Operative. It had been built by Giuseppe Morello.

Two and a half months had pa.s.sed since Comito had left New York, and he had been given little reason, in that time, to suppose that Cecala was not the leader of the counterfeiting gang. Now, though, he found his adversary waiting on the first floor of the building, fl.u.s.tered and considerably concerned. There was someone else that he must meet, Cecala said, as he ushered the printer up a second flight of stairs.

Comito had no idea who the man who stood waiting in the upstairs room might be, nor what he wanted, but he was instantly struck by the stranger's air of effortless authority. ”He was wrapped up in a shawl of brown color,” the printer recalled, ”oval face, high forehead, dark eyes, aquiline nose, dark hair and mustache, about forty years old.” The first thing that Comito noticed ”was that he had but one arm visible.” The second was Cecala's trembling deference as ”with a great amount of ceremony and much display of importance,” he introduced the printer to Morello.

”I was surprised in the change in Cecala's manner when listening or talking to this man,” Comito said.

He seemed to take the part of receiving orders from one with whom he was friendly but tremendously impressed with. He at times acted as though he feared at any moment he might cause the dislike of Morello. ... The very air seemed charged with suppressed excitement. I saw from the way in which Morello acted and was treated that he was a leader, and the deference shown to him at all times was convincing of his high standing among these men.

The meeting was brief and to the point. Morello's interest, it transpired, lay solely in resolving the problems with the two-dollar notes. He asked a number of searching questions about Comito's expertise, and though he was plainly not impressed by all the answers-there was ”a bit of distrust” in his eyes, the printer realized with a jolt-he agreed that they should find an expert in the art of mixing inks. Nothing seemed to disconcert him. When Comito said that he was frightened of discovery, the Clutch Hand promised to send arms and ammunition. ”The first stranger who is suspected will be killed before he is asked questions and be buried in the wood where he will never be found,” he added. ”It is simple.” Comito thought he spoke of murder ”as though he were talking of lighting a cigar.”

Morello seemed less than pleased with Cecala's performance. ”Nino,” he murmured as the meeting ended, ”I wish that you would not have the professor come here any more. You know that I am followed night and day by the detectives, and when they see a new face they arrest him. They think much of me, but can prove nothing. So to be safe we had best have no one connect with me who might be picked up.”

”I know that,” Cecala said, stung by the reprimand. ”But what suspicions can they have of Don Antonio? We certainly have taken him with us nicely.”

”These detectives are very smart,” Morello snapped. ”Do I not take much time to plan to outwit them?” And with that he left the room through a rear exit and, with a piercing parting glance back at Comito, vanished in the direction of the 138th Street El.

WORK ON THE TWO-DOLLAR bills resumed on February 6 and continued for several weeks. The correct shade of green ink was obtained, after a good deal of experiment, by Antonio Milone, who added several chemicals to the inks and sent a technician up to Highland to explain the technique. The new arrival, Giuseppe Calicchio, was a sad-eyed man from the southern region of Puglia who was in his early fifties and had once been a manufacturer of counterfeits in Italy. Calicchio had worked before with the Morellos, who respectfully referred to him as ”Don Giuseppe,” but he had little to show for the a.s.sociation. ”He was dressed poorly,” Comito thought, ”and had a suit that made him appear as a mechanic.” bills resumed on February 6 and continued for several weeks. The correct shade of green ink was obtained, after a good deal of experiment, by Antonio Milone, who added several chemicals to the inks and sent a technician up to Highland to explain the technique. The new arrival, Giuseppe Calicchio, was a sad-eyed man from the southern region of Puglia who was in his early fifties and had once been a manufacturer of counterfeits in Italy. Calicchio had worked before with the Morellos, who respectfully referred to him as ”Don Giuseppe,” but he had little to show for the a.s.sociation. ”He was dressed poorly,” Comito thought, ”and had a suit that made him appear as a mechanic.”

The counterfeiters settled back into an unvarying routine. Comito and Calicchio prepared the plates and mixed the inks; Giglio and Zu Vincenzo took the printed sheets from the press and dried them; the guards who still wandered through the woods outside would come indoors every few hours to clap and stamp their freezing hands and feet. To Comito's relief, Cecala and Cina were absent most of the time. The two Sicilians had set to work to sell Morello's five-dollar bills and spent several weeks traveling by rail throughout much of the United States to show samples to likely customers. The two men visited Chicago, Cleveland, Pittsburgh, Boston, and Kansas City, returning occasionally to inspect the two-dollar notes that Comito was producing. Cecala complained occasionally about their progress-the U.S. bills were still not difficult to spot as fakes. But aside from their infrequent appearances, the work proceeded without alarm or incident for some weeks, until February 12 or 13, when the occupants of the stone house were startled to be woken at two in the morning by a brisk knocking at the door.

No one was expected, and the counterfeiters feared the worst. Zu Vincenzo seized his rifle and Giglio a revolver, which he c.o.c.ked as he stood waiting at the top of the stairs. It was Comito, still clad only in his underwear, who was sent downstairs to answer the knock-which he did very nervously, half expecting the door to be smashed down by the police. But the men waiting on the doorstep were friends: Ign.a.z.io Lupo, clad in a thick fur coat and radiating bonhomie, accompanied by Cecala and Cina, who dragged behind them a large bag crammed with the firearms and ammunition promised by Morello.

The guns that Lupo had brought consisted of several revolvers and a case of repeating rifles of the most modern design, each capable of firing fifteen shots a minute. The Wolf gave a brief demonstration of the weapons, to general acclaim; then, at his order, the rest of the gang settled down to modify the ammunition he had brought. Each slug was carefully scored crosswise across its tip, hollowing out the point to create dum dum bullets that, Lupo explained, ”would spread out and tear nasty holes instead of neatly boring through.” The idea was, Comito said, ”accepted with much laughter,” and the Wolf seemed pleased that any police who discovered the house would have ”a pleasant visit.”

By the time the bullets had been modified, Katrina had prepared a late supper for the gang. There were not enough chairs to go around, so she and Comito stood, ”acting as waiters to these lords at the table,” while Lupo, Cecala, and Zu Vincenzo gossiped and laughed with Giglio and Cina. The talk was of how the Wolf had evaded his numerous creditors and the New York police and spent the last three months hiding on a relative's farm not far away, and of Cecala's efforts to sell the forged Canadian bills.

”What news do you bring, Ign.a.z.io?” Zu Vincenzo asked at last. The meal was over and the Mafiosi were lounging around the stove sinking gla.s.ses of wine.

”You know all that I know,” Lupo replied, ”except perhaps that Petrosino has gone to Italy.”

Comito had never heard of Petrosino, but he could scarcely mistake the bitter hatred that Morello's men felt for him. ”He has ruined many,” the Wolf spat. ”Here's a drink to our success here, and a hope of death to him.” And they all raised their gla.s.ses in a toast.

”It is a pity,” Lupo added, ”that it must be done stealthily-that he cannot first be made to suffer as he has made so many others suffer. But he guards his hide so well that it will have to be done quickly.”

Comito thought of what Cecala and Uncle Vincent had told him of the many branches of their nameless society, of their boast that it was ”possible for us to do things in one part of the world and have the other half of the affair carried out so far away that no suspicion can possibly come to us”-and of how confident they seemed to be that retribution was about to rain down on their enemy.

Whoever this Petrosino was, he thought, and whatever he was doing in Italy, he was clearly in the gravest danger.

CHAPTER 9.

”SEE THE FINE PARSLEY”

ON THE AFTERNOON OF NOVEMBER 15, 1908, AT MUCH THE SAME time that Antonio Comito was boarding his ferry up the Hudson River to Highland, the men of Lieutenant Joseph Petrosino's Italian Squad raided a Black Hand bomb-making factory concealed in the rear of a tenement in Little Italy. The squad made five arrests and seized a total of nineteen evil-looking bombs of various designs, each of them tightly wrapped in cord or bandages and detonated by a twelve-inch fuse. Any one of these murderous devices would, the lieutenant remarked, be ”fully capable of destroying a house.” Three days later Petrosino was in the news again, announcing his solution to a kidnapping mystery in East Harlem, and over the next three months the Italian Squad was called in to investigate eight bombings, several dozen Black Hand extortion threats, and fully a score of murders in the immigrant districts, at least half of which were thought to be the work of various gangs. time that Antonio Comito was boarding his ferry up the Hudson River to Highland, the men of Lieutenant Joseph Petrosino's Italian Squad raided a Black Hand bomb-making factory concealed in the rear of a tenement in Little Italy. The squad made five arrests and seized a total of nineteen evil-looking bombs of various designs, each of them tightly wrapped in cord or bandages and detonated by a twelve-inch fuse. Any one of these murderous devices would, the lieutenant remarked, be ”fully capable of destroying a house.” Three days later Petrosino was in the news again, announcing his solution to a kidnapping mystery in East Harlem, and over the next three months the Italian Squad was called in to investigate eight bombings, several dozen Black Hand extortion threats, and fully a score of murders in the immigrant districts, at least half of which were thought to be the work of various gangs.

The year was ending much as it had begun, with crime rates rising in Little Italy. The murder rate was up. The number of bombings was up, and so was the number of threats and Black Hand letters reported to the police-a total that scarcely reflected the incidence of extortion in the Italian districts in any case, as the members of Petrosino's squad knew perfectly well. Attempts at turning back the tide got nowhere. James March, a wealthy Italian American who lived on the East Side, set up a ”White Hand” society, consisting of respectable men willing to take a stand against the criminals, but it collapsed in only a few months, as had a similar organization in Chicago. ”I have tried,” March said, slumped in defeat, ”to get up a society among the Italians for the purpose of giving information against blackmailing Italians to the police, but n.o.body will join it. Some of them would rather pay blackmail and thus encourage the scoundrels, than give information against them.”

Italian crime was increasingly businesslike, better organized, more ambitious. When Petrosino rounded up the Black Hand gang led by one Francesco Santori, he seized account books filled with meticulously detailed entries that recorded the criminals' a.s.sociates and the names and addresses of the Italians who paid the gang protection money. ”The list covered four pages,” the detective wrote, ”and showed that at least 60 men employed in labor camps in various parts of the state were paying to someone sums ranging from $1 to $3 a week.” The greater sophistication of the gangs posed all sorts of problems. Petrosino himself found it increasingly difficult to employ his old methods of detection anywhere in Little Italy. Once it had been enough for him to adopt some rough disguise and mingle with the clientele in the right sort of saloons. Now he was swiftly recognized wherever he went. Crooks roped in small boys and street peddlers to warn them when the detective was spotted. The name Petrosino means ”parsley” in the dialect of southern Italy, and petty criminals and toughened gangsters alike soon learned to be on their guard whenever vendors' cries of ”I have some good parsley! See the fine parsley!” came ringing through the tenements.

Just as bad, in the detective's opinion, was the continuing problem of obtaining convictions in the courts. Even the relative handful of Italian criminals who were arrested, charged, and tried still all too often escaped justice because terrified witnesses would not testify against them. The only real solution, Petrosino believed, was to deport as many undesirables as possible back to Italy and stop any more like them from entering the United States.

Petrosino had been urging New York to consider deportation as a weapon for years, ever since 1905, when the Stanton Street store once owned by Vito Laduca was blown to pieces by a Black Hand bomb and the men of the Italian Squad were driven to the point of exasperation by the impossibility of pursuing their inquiry to a successful conclusion. Italian crime had become ”an epidemic,” the detective observed then, and ”the only remedy [was] deportation.” He could pick out a thousand Italians who deserved to be sent back home. Within three years, Petrosino had increased that estimate; there were now five thousand Italians with criminal records in their hometowns who ought to be deported, he remarked to The New York Times The New York Times. As for stopping such men from emigrating to the United States, the solution was to persuade the Italian government to permit the New York police to operate a bureau on its territory. American policemen in Italy could examine the credentials of would-be immigrants and bar those with criminal records from entering the country.

There was, of course, no chance that the Italian government would let a foreign police force operate on its soil, and though the immigration laws were tightened somewhat in 1907-with the result that Petrosino received from Rome a list of fifty ”notorious” criminals who could legally be deported back to Italy-the problems that the detective faced were scarcely lessened for several years. The new immigration legislation was loosely drafted, and as many as half of the men that Petrosino attempted to charge under it obtained their release before they could be hustled onto a s.h.i.+p back home. The only really positive change, in fact, was the appointment of a tough new police commissioner to succeed William McAdoo. Theodore Bingham, who took up the post in 1906, was the first head of the NYPD to publicly back Petrosino and vow to tackle the problem of crime in Little Italy.