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Luciano was becoming very impatient with the way Masseria was
handling business. He saw many opportunities slip by that could have
brought immense profits for the organization. In order to get a
piece of this delicious pie, he felt Masseria had to expand and
diversify his business. This, unfortunately, would not occur because
the bull-headed Masseria didn’t do business with non-Italians.
Masseria undoubtedly was aware of Luciano’s ambitions and felt he
was threat to him. He later committed an act that would prove fatal
to him, and launch Luciano to gangland superstardom.
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Lucky
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Luciano was standing one day on Six Avenue in New York when a limousine,
with curtains drawn, rolled up beside him. Three men leaped from the vehicle and prodded
Luciano in the back with gun muzzles and forced him to the back of the limo. This was the
beginning of the long ride. |
The adhesive tape was applied, then came the kicks and
punches and knife wounds. Luciano thought for sure he would die and felt himself get
weaker and weaker until the lights in his brain went out. Hours later he woke up on the
beach, staring unbelieving at the waves rolling in from lower New York Bay. His head was aching from fist and gun butt blows and there was a knife wound on
his chin. He tore off the tape and staggered almost a mile before he reached the police
booth at the Tottenville Precinct. "Get me a taxi," Luciano pleaded.
"I’ll give you fifty bucks if you do and let me go on my way." One of the
cops ignored the offer and took Luciano to the hospital instead.
At the hospital the detectives began to ask a series of questions. Suddenly, Luciano
became mute. He remembered the code of Omerta and kept his mouth shut. The cops
wouldn’t give up, relentless, they asked, so it seemed to Luciano, a thousand
questions. He finally blurted out in anger, "Don’t you cops lose any sleep over
it, I’ll attend to this thing myself later."
He refused to say any more and denied that he had recognized the men who had taken him
for the ride and wearily insisted that he had no enemies. The cops were inclined to the
theory that Broadway racketeers had thrown Luciano on the beach in a belief that he was
dead.
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Sal Maranzano
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Initially, Luciano had no idea who would want him dead. He was fully aware
of the infighting and rivalries that existed in the ranks and what a good way for some
young maverick, looking to make it big, take him out. |
Luciano turned to his wise and
trusted friend, Meyer Lansky, for an answer. It didn’t take Meyer long to come up
with not only the answer, but a solution that would be beneficial for
Luciano, and also
himself. Meyer explained to him that Masseria was behind the plot and it would be wise to
think about joining forces with Masseria’s arch-enemy, Salvatore
Maranzano. Several months later, after recovering from the beating, Luciano did just that.
He met secretly with Maranzano and agreed to betray Masseria. This put in motion one of
gangland’s biggest purges or as some like to call it, the war of attrition. History
would call it The Castellammarese War.
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