Five Families

Dewey lined up sixty-eight witnesses, almost all hookers, pimps, madams, bookers, and jailbirds who admitted they had been promised lenient sentences, immunity, or probation for aiding the prosecution. Dewey’s main strategy was to depict the prostitutes as desperate victims of the Depression, exploited and terrorized by the Combine’s ruthless sentries.

When Dewey became the Special State Prosecutor, Schultz’s gang was the only non-Italian organization left in New York that was not subservient to the Mafia. Underworld cognoscenti referred to the five Cosa Nostra families and Schultz’s outfit as “the Big Six.”

Seeking to ingratiate himself with Lucky Luciano and gain the support of the most respected Mafia leader, Schultz converted to Roman Catholicism. He apparently believed that religion would bond him with Italian bosses and make him more acceptable to them as a coequal. One of the underworld dignitaries invited to the convert’s baptism was Charlie Lucky himself.

Among the American Mafia’s original leaders, there was unanimous accord that incorruptible law-enforcement officials and investigators—straight arrows—were immune from underworld revenge and violence. Murdering Dewey, the bosses reasoned, would only unleash more Thomas E. Deweys and law-enforcement fury against all of them.

A stylish dresser, bachelor, and party animal, Lucky registered under the assumed name Charles Ross at the elegant Waldorf-Astoria Hotel, where he lived year-round in 36C, a posh three-room suite. The apartment rented for $7,600 a year, the equivalent of more than $100,000 in today’s money.

When he suspected that one of his longtime trusted lieutenants, Bo Weinberg, was plotting against him with Italian mobsters, Schultz personally encased Weinberg’s legs in cement and dumped him into the Hudson River while still alive.

Schultz’s death eliminated the last big-time non-Mafia gang and automatically expanded Lucky Luciano’s empire. Without opposition, Lucky appropriated Schultz’s numbers banks and took charge of the Dutchman’s restaurant shake-downs.

Capone made a fortune from his rackets, but his reputation among the shadowy New York godfathers was diminished by his penchant for publicity. His fame was greater than his actual influence and power. At the end, Capone’s exaggerated underworld importance became a fatal liability for him.

Bonanno’s underlying capitalist philosophy rested on a basic theory that guided him and other bosses: eliminate all competition. “One must remember that in the economic sphere one of the objectives of a Family was to set up monopolies as far as it was possible,”

The ingenious Bonanno was said to have used specially built two-tiered or double-decker coffins with a secret compartment under the recorded corpse that allowed two bodies to be buried simultaneously.