Part 7 (1/2)

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 leaders.h.i.+p, 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 Was.h.i.+ngton, 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, s.h.i.+fty, 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.