Canidy walked back to the beds, found the busted side table, and carried it to the window.
“Anyway,” he went on, “Luciano was already envisioning a nationwide syndicate. He not only wanted to do business with gangs that weren’t Wops but with gangs that weren’t Wops and weren’t in New York City. Despite Luciano’s pushing, Masseria was having none of it. Worse, Luciano’s hunger for even more power made him paranoid. This was October 1929, and as Luciano stood on the sidewalk in front of the Flatiron Building, there at Broadway and Fifth, a car pulled up. He was forced into the backseat, and the goons bound and gagged him. They took him out to a Staten Island warehouse, where he was strung up with rope, then pistol-whipped and stabbed. Before they left him for dead, they slit his throat.”
“But you said he’s serving time. So he’s still alive?”
“Let me finish,” Canidy said, fitting the wooden boards to the tabletop. “Charley Lucky, living up to his name, managed to work free of the ropes, then crawl to the street. Cops from NYPD’s 123rd Precinct found him. Of course they knew who the hell Charley Lucky was, and after they got him stitched up, they made all kinds of threats to get him to tell who tried whacking him. He refused to rat out the goons.”
“Omertà.”
Canidy looked up from his project.
“Omertà in a big way. The cops, having no choice, let him go. Charley Lucky found out who ordered the hit, and settled the score—without breaking the code of silence. Now, that’s goddamn tough.”
John Craig looked at the dead man.
“And you think the same about Mariano?”
“Absolutely. He didn’t tell them anything they wanted to know. If he had, he would have the bullet to the brain but still would have most of his fingernails intact. And next to none of those bruises. They wouldn’t have wasted their time and energy—the SS are lazy bastards—beating him head to toe with a cosh.”
John Craig nodded.
“You said something about this Charley Lucky helping us. We’re working with the Mafia? Those guys don’t even like each other. . . .”
Canidy nodded. “They’re cutthroat and worse. But as General Donovan told me, ‘Sometimes we have to dance with the devil.’”
“But . . .”
“But nothing. We have to do whatever’s necessary. Churchill really put it in perspective when he said, ‘If Hitler invaded hell, I would make at least a favorable reference to the devil in the House of Commons.’”
“Huh,” John Craig said, unconvinced.
“Look,” Canidy said, an edge to his tone, “the mob has its hands in everything in New York. We approached Charley Lucky’s lawyer, who passed to him our request for help hunting Nazi sympathizers there and for getting us connections here. Luciano hates Fascism—particularly Mussolini, whose vicious secret police, the OVRA, Organization for Vigilance and Repression of Anti-Fascism, swept through Sicily arresting suspected mafiosos—and agreed to help us. A mob guy named Joe ‘Socks’ Lanza—who’s the union leader who runs the Fulton Fish Market—introduced me to Francisco Nola. Lanza, by the way, is the wise guy who had the stolen Johnny guns; that’s where I got mine. Anyway, Frank Nola—whose wife is Jewish and who had relatives arrested by the OVRA and thrown in the penal colonies on those small volcanic islands north of here—helped me (a) rescue Professor Rossi and (b) in the course of that rescue, helped me discover that the goddamn Krauts had—and probably still have—plans to use nerve gas.” He caught his breath, then ended with, “So that’s why ‘but nothing.’ Sometimes we do have to dance with the goddamn devil.”
John Craig, clearly exhausted, was expressionless. He simply nodded.
Canidy then dug into his coat’s inside pocket and produced an envelope.
“And this is why,” he said, holding it out.
John Craig opened it and found a letter folded inside a handkerchief.
“Be careful with that,” Canidy said. “The letter’s a little ragged around the edges from the last trips here.”
John Craig saw that the letter was written in English and again in Sicilian. He read both, and saw that they were the same:
* * *
March 1943
The bearer of this letter is Mr. Richard Canidy.
With this letter, the bearer brings to you my many good wishes.
It is requested of you in turn that the bearer be given the same respect and considerations that would be given if I were to personally appear before you.
Your friendship is appreciated and it will not be forgotten.
Charles Luciano