Free The Everything Mafia Book by Scott M Dietche

the threat. He hired four hit men to go to Maranzano’s place of business, in midtown Manhattan, and take him out. The gangsters posed as IRS agents to gain entry in to the building. They disarmed Maran-zano’s security guard and stabbed the elder don. The era of the Mustache Petes was over, and Luciano was now the Boss of all Bosses.
    The Dream
    Luciano, perhaps having been influenced by American democracy and corporate structure, rejected the title. He resolved that the five families would remain intact and, along with Meyer Lansky, formed the National Crime Syndicate, also known as “the Commission.” But Luciano’s vision of a multiethnic Mafia did not last that long. Pretty soon it was apparent that the Italians would take center stage in the ruling commission, leaving little room for anyone else. But other forces were working. Jewish immigrants were moving out of the teeming ethnic slums at a steady clip, leaving few recruits for the ranks. The Irish were moving uptown and splintering into smaller criminal gangs, while many were taking the opposite route and becoming police officers and municipal employees. But they were never totally out of the scene. While the Mafia remained strictly Italian, there was plenty of room for other ethnic groups to work, and profit, with them.

CHAPTER 7
Charlie “Lucky” Luciano
    Lucky Luciano is credited with being the architect of the American Mafia. He took the old Sicilian organization, expunged the Old-World thinking, and created the modern Mafia. He envisioned an organization run more along the lines of a business than its Sicilian counterpart was at that time. Had he been a businessman he would have made millions—legitimately. He rose to prominence during the Castellammare War. Luciano survived the bullets and lived a long life as one of the most ruthless and successful gangsters of the twentieth century.
    Luciano—The Early Years
    Lucky Luciano was born Salvatore Luciana in Sicily in 1897. Like so many other millions of Europeans in the nineteenth century, who heard tales of a promised land where the streets were paved with gold, his family set sail for America only to learn that the hype did not match the reality. Nevertheless, it was a land of opportunity for those on both sides of the law.
    Charlie got his first arrest when he was ten. It was for shoplifting. Not a particularly glamorous start. He also ran a juvenile “protection agency,” offering to protect the weaker boys for a few pennies. It was a no-win scenario for the boys—if they did not pay Charlie for protection, he promptly pummeled them.

    The immigrant Mafiosi that came to America as boys and adolescents were raised in this atmosphere and were more willing to interact with other ethnic groups. In some ways this breaking down of the barriers enabled law-abiding immigrants to better assimilate into American culture, while it helped the criminals gain a stronger foothold in the existing American underworld.
    While his protection racket was expanding, Luciano was getting involved in more serious crimes. While still a teen, he was on the New York Police Department’s short list as the suspect in several gangland murders. He was well known to the local beat cops. And he was a member of the infamous Five Points Gang.
    Getting All the Boys Together
    While Luciano was shaking down kids on the street corners for protection, one of the kids refused to pay up. This kind of bravery was one way for anonymous kids to get noticed, and also a way for them to make sure they didn’t remain a victim. This particular kid was another immigrant child, a Jewish kid from Poland named Meyer Lansky. Meyer stood up to Luciano, and they became fast friends and lifelong partners in crime. From this fateful meeting sprang the most successful crime outfit in American history.
    Drugs and Booze
    Lucky Luciano did time in a reform school for dealing heroin and morphine in 1915. This early foray into the business would expand in the