L.A. Noir: The Struggle for the Soul of America's Most Seductive City

      MEANWHILE, back in Washington, D.C., Robert Kennedy was puzzling over a question. In keeping with Hamilton’s suggestions, the investigations subcommittee had taken a close look at the behavior of Teamsters Union officials in the Pacific Northwest. They had uncovered disturbing evidence of stolen funds, including evidence that implicated Teamsters president David Beck. They had also discovered that Kennedy’s friends in the New York press had been right: Certain unions—the Operating Engineers, the Hotel and Restaurant Employees, and, again, the Teamsters—did have long histories of involvement with organized crime. There was also evidence that tied emerging Teamster leader Jimmy Hoffa to organized crime figures in Detroit, Cleveland, St. Louis, Minneapolis, and Chicago. As he considered these connections, Kennedy found himself mulling over a larger question: Was the Mafia a national, coordinated criminal enterprise, or did the phrase simply refer to the hierarchy of Italian organized crime in any given area? On November 13, 1957, Kennedy put that very question to his old acquaintance Joseph Amato, a Mob specialist with the Bureau of Narcotics.

“That is a big question to answer,” Amato replied. “But we believe that there does exist today in the United Sates a society, loosely organized, for the specific purpose of smuggling narcotics and committing other crimes…. It has its core in Italy and it is nationwide. In fact, international.”

The very next day, Kennedy and the world received definitive proof that Amato was right when New York state police decided to investigate an unusually large gathering of luxury cars and limousines at the home of Joseph “Joe the Barber” Barbara outside the little town of Apalachin (pronounced “Apple-aykin”) in western New York. When the state police officers arrived, Barbara’s guests leapt into their cars and fled—running straight into a state police roadblock. Other gangsters ran into the woods, including (most likely) James Lanza from San Francisco, Sam Giancana of Chicago, Tommy Lucchese of New York City, and Joseph Zerilli of Detroit. Fifty-eight men were arrested. Only nineteen of the men (all of whom were Italian) were from upstate New York. The rest of the guests appeared to have come from cities all across the country and even from as far away as Cuba. John Scalisi had come from Cleveland. Santos Traficante had come from Havana. James Lanza had come from San Francisco. Frank DeSimone (the Dragnas’ longtime attorney, now the family boss in his own right) had come from Los Angeles. Twenty-three of the men came from New York City and northern New Jersey, including Joseph Profaci, Joseph Bonanno, and Vito Genovese. All told, the group’s members had been arrested 257 times, with more than a hundred convictions for serious offenses such as homicide, armed robbery, trafficking in narcotics, and extortion. In their pockets the police found $300,000 in cash.

It was clear that New York state police had stumbled across what appeared to be a board meeting of the Mafia. Newspapers across the country trumpeted the arrests. As astonishing as the fact that a massive international crime organization existed (and was meeting at some wiseguy’s house in upstate New York) was the list of legitimate businesses these men controlled. They included “dress companies, labor organizations, trucking companies, soft drink firms, dairy products, coat manufacturers, undertaking parlors, oil companies, ladies’ coat factories, real estate projects, curtain, slip cover and interior decorating, ships, restaurants, night clubs, grills, meat markets. Also vending machine sales, taxi companies, tobacco distributors, awning and siding firms, automotive conveying and hauling firms, importers of food and liquor, grocery stores and food chains, labor relations consulting firms, cement firms, waste paper removal, strap manufacture, liquor and beer distributors, textiles, shipping, ambulances, baseball clubs, news stands, motels, hotels, and juke boxes,” to name just a few. In short, the underworld had burrowed deeply into the fabric of American business.