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Authors: Pete Hamill
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young Italians among them believed that
it was foolish to abide by the old Sicilian traditions of excluding non-Sicilians in the name of honor and respect. Luciano,
after all, was from Naples, not Sicily. Those traditional notions, the strict and narrow codes of men now patronizingly called
Mustache Petes, were too vague, too old-fashioned, too rigid a part of
la via vecchia
. This was America; you worked with any nationality if it was in your common interest.
Prohibition gave them that common interest. The model for a criminal enterprise could no longer be a local racket, safely
lodged within the boundaries of a neighborhood; it had to be organized like any large capitalist corporation, able to cross
state lines and national frontiers. That common interest also gave the young Mob guys enormous profits, of course, and bootlegging
provided capital for widening their interests into the more traditional underworld enterprises of gambling and prostitution.
The overhead was high; it took a lot of money to pay off thousands of cops, Prohibition agents, and prosecutors. But it was
better to make payoffs than to go around shooting guns like a bunch of cowboys. Murder had to be an absolutely last resort;
wild shooting sprees would only bring down the heat. If the scene was peaceful, you only had to get the law to look the other
way, and that was a simple matter of paying off the politicians.
“You know what we all thought growing up?” Sinatra said. “We thought
everybody
was on the take. We
knew
the cops were taking. They were right in front of us. But we thought the priests were on the take, the schoolteachers, the
guy in the marriage license bureau, everybody. We thought if God came to New Jersey, he’d get on line to get his envelope.”
In New Jersey the most important members of this confederacy were Waxey Gordon (Irving Wexler) and Abner (Longie) Zwillman.
Years later there were people in Hoboken who claimed that Gordon was a regular in Marty O’Brien’s. But Sinatra once told me,
“The first time I ever saw his face was in a newspaper, when he got out of jail in the 1950s. He was an old man then.” Still,
his name was known; he controlled many rackets in Philadelphia and most of the liquor supplies in Hudson and Bergen Counties,
and he had even established stills around Hoboken to manufacture beer. “Sometimes the stink was unbelievable,” Sinatra remembered.
“The hops, I guess. Whatever it was, it made you gag.”
Zwillman was much more important than Gordon, who always deferred to him. Tall, young (born in 1899), and tough, Zwillman
affected an urbane public image. His base was Newark, where he was born and served an apprenticeship as a numbers runner.
He helped set up overland routes through New Jersey, assembled a fleet of thirty ships to pick up booze in Canada for delivery
along the Jersey Shore, and standardized distribution in the cities. If he needed muscle, he turned to an associate named
Willie Moretti, sometimes known as Willie Moore. In the early years of Prohibition, muscle was most often needed to convince
the Mustache Petes that their time was over. Some were persuaded to retire. Others were shot in the head. In New Jersey this
work was usually left to Moretti and his enforcement squad of about sixty men. By the time Frank Sinatra was ten, the rackets
in New Jersey had settled into a routine business. Years after the end of Prohibition, Willie Moretti would play a role in
the Sinatra saga too.
III
. Against the cynical backdrop of Prohibition, Frank Sinatra was on his own. On the street the most admired men were tough
guys. The bootlegger could be seen as a glamorous rebel, one who reaped the rewards of fine clothes, shiny cars, and beautiful
women. At the movies the heroes were often cowboys, silent men, handy with guns, who rode in and out of town alone. Each taught
the lesson that one solution to perceived injustice was violence. The
it was foolish to abide by the old Sicilian traditions of excluding non-Sicilians in the name of honor and respect. Luciano,
after all, was from Naples, not Sicily. Those traditional notions, the strict and narrow codes of men now patronizingly called
Mustache Petes, were too vague, too old-fashioned, too rigid a part of
la via vecchia
. This was America; you worked with any nationality if it was in your common interest.
Prohibition gave them that common interest. The model for a criminal enterprise could no longer be a local racket, safely
lodged within the boundaries of a neighborhood; it had to be organized like any large capitalist corporation, able to cross
state lines and national frontiers. That common interest also gave the young Mob guys enormous profits, of course, and bootlegging
provided capital for widening their interests into the more traditional underworld enterprises of gambling and prostitution.
The overhead was high; it took a lot of money to pay off thousands of cops, Prohibition agents, and prosecutors. But it was
better to make payoffs than to go around shooting guns like a bunch of cowboys. Murder had to be an absolutely last resort;
wild shooting sprees would only bring down the heat. If the scene was peaceful, you only had to get the law to look the other
way, and that was a simple matter of paying off the politicians.
“You know what we all thought growing up?” Sinatra said. “We thought
everybody
was on the take. We
knew
the cops were taking. They were right in front of us. But we thought the priests were on the take, the schoolteachers, the
guy in the marriage license bureau, everybody. We thought if God came to New Jersey, he’d get on line to get his envelope.”
In New Jersey the most important members of this confederacy were Waxey Gordon (Irving Wexler) and Abner (Longie) Zwillman.
Years later there were people in Hoboken who claimed that Gordon was a regular in Marty O’Brien’s. But Sinatra once told me,
“The first time I ever saw his face was in a newspaper, when he got out of jail in the 1950s. He was an old man then.” Still,
his name was known; he controlled many rackets in Philadelphia and most of the liquor supplies in Hudson and Bergen Counties,
and he had even established stills around Hoboken to manufacture beer. “Sometimes the stink was unbelievable,” Sinatra remembered.
“The hops, I guess. Whatever it was, it made you gag.”
Zwillman was much more important than Gordon, who always deferred to him. Tall, young (born in 1899), and tough, Zwillman
affected an urbane public image. His base was Newark, where he was born and served an apprenticeship as a numbers runner.
He helped set up overland routes through New Jersey, assembled a fleet of thirty ships to pick up booze in Canada for delivery
along the Jersey Shore, and standardized distribution in the cities. If he needed muscle, he turned to an associate named
Willie Moretti, sometimes known as Willie Moore. In the early years of Prohibition, muscle was most often needed to convince
the Mustache Petes that their time was over. Some were persuaded to retire. Others were shot in the head. In New Jersey this
work was usually left to Moretti and his enforcement squad of about sixty men. By the time Frank Sinatra was ten, the rackets
in New Jersey had settled into a routine business. Years after the end of Prohibition, Willie Moretti would play a role in
the Sinatra saga too.
III
. Against the cynical backdrop of Prohibition, Frank Sinatra was on his own. On the street the most admired men were tough
guys. The bootlegger could be seen as a glamorous rebel, one who reaped the rewards of fine clothes, shiny cars, and beautiful
women. At the movies the heroes were often cowboys, silent men, handy with guns, who rode in and out of town alone. Each taught
the lesson that one solution to perceived injustice was violence. The
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