The Valachi Papers Read Online Free Page A

Finally I couldn't stand it no more. "If I done anything wrong," I said, "show it to me and bring me the pills—meaning poison—and I will take them in front of you."
    He said, "Who said you done anything wrong?"
    There wasn't anything I could say.
    Then he said to me that we had known each other for a long time, and he wanted to give me a kiss for old time's sake. Okay, I said to myself, two can play the game. So I grabbed Vito and kissed him back.
    After I did this, he asked me, "How many grandkids you got?" I said, "Three. How many you got?" I think he said six. So I said, "It's good to know." In other words, if he's going to be concentrating on my grandkids, I'm letting him know I'll concentrate on his.
    I went to my bed, and Ralph, who was in the next bed, mumbled, "The kiss of death." I pretended I didn't hear him and just laid on my bed. But who could sleep?
    I didn't go for this "kiss of death" stuff. But I knew that just before a guy was going to be hit, the thing to do was to be very friendly with him, so as not to put him on guard. Now in the old days when you met another member, the habit was to kiss him. Charley Lucky* put a stop to this and changed it to a handshake. "After all," Charley said, "we would stick out kissing each other in restaurants and places like that."
     
    On June 16 Valachi took a last desperate step to save himself and asked to be put in the "hole," prison lingo for solitary confinement. When the guard he had approached demanded to know why, he replied, "Someone's going to kill me, or get killed. Is that good enough reason for you?" Once in solitary, Valachi informed the prison's chief parole officer that he wanted to speak to George Gaffney, currently Deputy Director of the Bureau of Narcotics and former head of its New York office. Valachi's message to Gaffney —that he was "ready to talk" —was never relayed. In the inquiry that followed, the parole officer said that since Valachi refused to elaborate, he took no action on the ground that Gaffney would not make the trip to Atlanta without more information. Next Valachi wrote a letter to his wife. Through her he hoped to send word to another Cosa Nostra boss in New York, Thomas (Three-finger
     
    :> The late Salvatore Lucania, also known as Lucky Luciano, one of the chief architects of the modern Cosa Nostra.
    Brown) Lucchese,* that the way in which he was being summarily judged violated the Cosa Nostra code. His frantic letter read:
     
    I advice [sic] you that just as soon as you will receive this drop everything and come and see me. Don't let money stand in your way. It is most important. Don't waste one day. Understand. Then I will never bother you any more. When you come make sure you get in. Remember don't lose any time.
     
    What Valachi planned was to fence with Gaffney at least long enough to allow Lucchese, who had been friendly to him over the years, to intervene in his behalf. But the letter never left Atlanta. Instead, according to Associate Warden M. J. Elliot, it was returned to Valachi for rewriting on die chance that this might give prison officials some insight into why he had requested solitary confinement. Valachi would not do it. By now he had concluded that he no longer could trust the prison administration. And from his standpoint the idea was perfectly reasonable; to him the power and influence of a Vito Genovese were limidess.
    Ordered out of solitary because of his continued silence, Valachi decided to act on his own. He would die, perhaps, but he would take with him as many of those in the cabal to kill him as he could. High on his list was a veteran Cosa Nostra enforcer and Genovese crony, Joseph (Joe Beck) DiPalermo. At no time, however, did he consider striking directly at Genovese. For Valachi,
     
    "Such aliases are common in the Cosa Nostra. Lucchese, now dead, acquired his in 1915 when he lost his right index finger in an accident. At the time there was a well-known major league pitcher called