A jury thought otherwise. Garza was sent to prison for five years. And Muno Pena? He had lost another round to Dave Ellis, but he continued his operations on a smaller scale. Customs agents are waiting for the day when he places one foot across the border—and then he’ll be out of circulation for quite a while.
11
A DIRTY BUSINESS
A cunning and ruthless hoodlum, two crooked Customs employees, two Greek narcotics peddlers in Shanghai and a supporting cast of killers, goons and dupes formed one of the greatest narcotics syndicates the United States has ever known. Over a span of less than two years in 1936–1937, this gang smuggled into the country narcotics believed by Customs agents to have had a retail value of at least $10 million. Their system was so simple that it was almost foolproof. Almost ... but not quite.
The prime mover in this profitable operation was Louis “Lepke” Buchalter—a name which perhaps doesn’t mean much to the younger generation. But in the prohibition era and the years of the depression, Lepke built a fantastic financial empire on a foundation of terror, violence and murder combined with a genius for organizing. He was, in many respects, more powerful and more successful than “Scarface” Al Capone and dozens of other hoodlums of the times who were more publicized in the nation’s press.
Louis Lepke Buchalter rose to power in the shadow of the Jazz Age, the era which evokes sentimental memories for so many Americans. But Lepke’s world was about as sentimental as a tommygun.
He was a small, slender man—5 feet 7—with a dark complexion and black hair which he parted on the side. He was soft-spoken and seemingly humble in manner. He had large brown eyes that appeared as soft and gentle as the eyes of a fawn. But his eyes only masked the evil in this man who schemed and killed until he ranked at the top of the list of U.S. criminals.
By all odds, Lepke was the most brilliant—and the most dangerous—of the criminals. It was Lepke who showed the underworld how to infiltrate and take over control of labor unions, and how to become silent partners in the management of industries. It was Lepke who put murder on a wholesale basis with an organization that became known as Murder, Inc. It was Lepke who found the chink in the U.S. Customs Bureau’s defenses against narcotics smuggling—and who made narcotics smuggling almost a pleasant pastime.
Lepke is worth at least a footnote in any history of our times because he symbolized an era of graft, corruption and violence the likes of which the nation had never known before. He was born on February 6, 1897, in Manhattan’s Lower East Side, one of a family of eleven children. The family lived in shattering confusion in a small, crowded apartment over the hardware store owned by the father, Barnet Buchalter.
Lepke’s mother called him “Lepkeleh,” the Jewish diminutive for “Little Louis,” and his friends shortened the nickname to Lepke. He was not a bad student in grade school. But he quit school after finishing the eighth grade and for a time worked as a delivery boy at $3 a week.
His father died when he was thirteen. The family broke up and scattered. The other ten children went on to become respectable, useful citizens. But not “Little Louis.” He rented a furnished room on the East Side and turned to crime. He organized raids on pushcart peddlers, stole from lofts, picked pockets, and lived by his wits. He was sent to the reformatory and to prison for short terms for larceny, but he always returned to the old life. He had ambitions to become a big shot in New York’s underworld.