The Mark of Cosa Nostra

Three

Hawk turned his back on the exercising girls. He looked to the north where mountain peaks were dusted with snow. The black cigar stub was still clenched tightly between his teeth.

“We’ve learned a few things about Rozano Nicoli,” he said. “For one, he commutes regularly by plane from Palermo in Sicily back and forth to Istanbul. Before our agents were killed, they each had the same thing to report. Nicoli is the head of a family, or branch, of La Cosa Nostra in Sicily.”

Tanya said, “Then he must be the one behind all that heroin going into Saigon.”

Hawk kept looking at the mountains. “It’s very likely. He spent five years in America some time ago. It’s been reported that he was once a high-ranking member of the old Capone family in Chicago, then he was connected with Raoul (The Waiter) Dicca, who followed Frank Clitti as boss when Capone went to jail.” He paused long enough to look at me steadily, his wrinkled, leathery face showing no expression. “Some of these names won’t mean anything to either you or Tanya. They are before your time.”

He pulled the cigar stub from his mouth and held it at his side as he talked. His eyes looked at the mountain peaks again.

“It was Nicoli who went with Joseph Boranko from Brooklyn to Phoenix, Arizona. Boranko put a lid on most of the Southwest, and Nicoli thought he was going to get a slice of it. He was sadly disappointed. There was an ambitious young man in the organization by the name of Carlo Gaddino, who handled nineteen contracts for the Cosa Nostra. He operated out of Las Vegas, and it was he who put an end to Boranko’s life and career. A double-barrel shotgun was used, one barrel removing the forehead and left eye, the other eliminating the chin and half the neck.”

Tanya’s green eyes flinched a little.

“Gaddino made his aims clear,” Hawk went on. “He was taking over every operation in America, and he was coming after Nicoli because Nicoli had been connected with Boranko. Nicoli figured the climate in America was getting too warm. He left for Sicily the day after Boranko’s large and lavish funeral. The idea was for him to lay low long enough to make his peace with Gaddino.”

“And he hasn’t been back in America since?” I asked.

Hawk shook his head. “No. After he left, Gaddino really began to move. He left a trail of bodies all over America. Contracts were issued for family bosses in Los Angeles, Brooklyn, Philadelphia, Chicago, and just about every major city in the nation. Within two years he was the unquestioned leader of the national La Cosa Nostra. He could afford to be generous, so he did not push the contract against Rozano Nicoli. Everybody prospered, including Nicoli.”

There was a pause. I noticed the girls had completed their exercises and were jogging off the field. Hawk continued to look at the mountains. Tanya was looking at me.

The cigar was dropped on the grass and mashed with Hawk’s shoe. He turned to look at me. His eyes looked deeply concerned.

“Many people don’t realize, Carter, how truly far-reaching the powers of La Cosa Nostra are. The methods used by Carlo Gaddino to take over simply would not work today.”

I nodded in agreement. “There would be too much publicity now if the boss of every major city was killed. The FBI would be on him so fast he wouldn’t know what hit him.”

“Precisely. There is something else, too. While the Cosa Nostra has expanded in most areas, there is one in which they have retreated. Narcotics. The Bureau of Narcotics has had a get-tough attitude toward the families trafficking in drugs. So, although controlling much of the importing of heroin, the families have increasingly left the wholesale market of drugs in America to the Negro and Puerto Rican underworld.”

Tanya frowned. “Then why are they pushing heroin into Saigon?”

“Not they, my dear, just Nicoli.”