Any man who owns 2 per cent is a millionaire. The principal participant is said to own 7½ per cent and he is now the richest man in Italy. He is, of course, Charles "Lucky" Luciano.
When Luciano, a swarthy Sicilian with a drooping eye, who had been a pickpocket, a pimp, a collector, a gun-toter for his betters and in time the top racketeer of the United States, was convicted by District Attorney Tom Dewey, it was said that he was railroaded and that he was guilty of everything except what he was convicted for—peddling women.
He was guilty of them all and that, too. But Dewey, with his eye looking far ahead, realized that this was the most spectacular path and he took it and followed it through.
It was the same Dewey, as governor, who shortened Luciano's sentence at Dannemora under circumstances never plausibly explained. It was published that Luciano had provided the government, then at war, with priceless information about the Italian underworld, which had helped us in the invasion. It was even bruited that he would get a medal of honor. This was all pure hokum, invented by the paid press agent of the syndicate in New York, which maintains a year-round public-relations employe who earns his $300 a week if he manages to get in one choice item, such as the above, in a year.
It was no political deal, which also was intimated, but which is as erroneous as the balderdash about Luciano's service to his adopted country.
Luciano got an excessive sentence, running up to 30 years. It was not contemplated that he would ever sit out all of that. The Italians, who are rapidly overtaking the Irish as the leading power in Tammany and in Republican councils as well, had put on heavy pressure to get amnesty for the little mug, who was the head of the Sicilian Society in the United States, a branch of the ancient Mafia.
After Luciano was deported, he turned up in Havana.
This was kept out of the newspapers for a while, but the entire syndicate was notified and there was a concentration in the Cuban capital, where 36 rooms had been engaged in Havana's leading hotel.
Meanwhile, the FBI and Federal Bureau of Narcotics tapped his phone-calls to the mainland and definitely established that he was still in undisputed command of the multifarious and nefarious operations of the infamous Unione Siciliano.
Columnist Robert Ruark sprung the story in a column which appeared in the second section of his newspaper and was treated as minor information. But the fact that he had seen Luciano holding court in the Havana Casino, surrounded by glamor gals, underworld and Hollywood celebrities, including Ralph Capone, the Fischetti Brothers and Frank Sinatra caused a national sensation, as a result of which the United States government formally complained to the Cuban government that Luciano's presence on the nearby island meant a big development in the dope business of the United States. Washington had the goods.