Accardo never got past the sixth grade in school and his speech was more malaprop than ungrammatical but it was Murray “The Camel” Humphreys who analyzed Accardo accurately. Humphreys was a college graduate who had been with the mob from the day that Capone joined it. He said, “Tony is an ignoramus — but a very, very shrewd ignoramus.” It was an apt appraisal.
Despite his lack of formal education, Accardo accomplished what sharpies like Capone, Luciano, Costello, Lepke Buchalter, Joe Adonis, and many other couldn’t. He never served a day in jail despite a record of thirty-seven arrests. He has made mistakes, of course. He does not possess the organizational ability evidenced by Capone, Torrio, or Luciano, yet he has maintained discipline in the ranks. He once said, “Respect or fear. If I can’t make ’em respect me I can sure as hell make them fear me, and that’s just about the same thing.” The discipline he fosters is more stringent than that at West Point, and his edict of “Stay in line or die” is adhered to by everyone in the Organization with the passionate fervor of a Buddhist priest intoning his prayers.
Fate played a big hand in Accardo’s rise to the top. When Nitti took over the mob, Ricca and Campagna were his number two and three men in authority. Accardo was number four. Accardo’s chances for the top slot appeared slim.
The wily, scheming Nitti, possessor of a Machiavellian mind and the morals of a jungle cat, had killed for Capone. He was, along with Machine-gun Jack McGurn, the chief executioner. No one really knows the number of men Nitti killed. A safe figure would be fifty, give or take five or six. He wasn’t the kind of guy you could knock off easily or plot against. Accardo never let that thought enter his mind. Not for some time, anyway.
Capone was smarting under the harsh life in Alcatraz. At one time there was the chance that he would be paroled after serving a third Of his eleven years’ sentence but someone applied pressure in Washington and the federal parole board turned down Capone’s application for parole. The pressure was applied by Nitti through a powerful politico. Furthermore, after Capone was released, a broken and sick man suffering from an incurable brain disease, Nitti used the power he held in Chicago to send Al to the Cook County Jail for a one-year term on an old charge.
All this chicanery on the part of Nitti had to militate against him, sooner or later. It brought about his downfall, put Campagna and Ricca in prison, and Accardo in the top shot.
Nitti was flooded with an arrogant sense of his power, not only in Chicago but throughout the country. He moved ruthlessly and heedlessly.
Accardo tried to reason with him. “Frank, slow down. You’re stepping on a lot of people’s toes and some of them are making noises.”
Nitti waved a hand in deprecation. “Aw, crap! I stuff the pockets of them bastards with money. I gotta right to push ’em a little now and then. You just let me handle things, Tony. I’ll tell you when I want your advice.”
“It may be too late then, Frank.”
“Like I said, Tony,” Nitti retorted angrily, “I’ll ask for your advice when I need it, if then.”
It was one of Nitti’s big mistakes. Accardo’s advice could have saved his life because it was Accardo who learned, first hand, that Nitti had double-crossed Capone. Had Nitti been more friendly or less abrupt with Accardo it is possible that Accardo would have bent his principles a little in favor of Nitti, although he hated a rat and a double-crosser. He did feel a certain kind of loyalty toward Nitti, however, because it was Nitti who had given him his chance in the mob.
Tony Accardo was born on April 28, 1906, in the city of Chicago, grew to a powerful five feet ten inches packed solidly in a 190 pound frame, all of it muscle. His kindest critics said of him that most of that muscle was in his head. Aside from a prominent nose he could be considered attractive. He had black hair, brown eyes, a dark olive complexion.
When he came into the big money he dressed in the most expensive tailored clothes money could buy. A Sicilian on both sides of his parents, he was acceptable by virtue of his birth, and later, because of his integrity and his adherence to gangland principles, the rule of Omerta, eligible for election to the presidency of the Unione Siciliano, which, of course, he never attained and never really desired.
“I ain’t the kind of guy to sit behind a desk and talk,” he said. “President? Do I look like a President?”
No one argued the point that he didn’t. A member of the mob, in a not too critical appraisal of Accardo, said, “Tony coulda been president of his sixth grade class but he couldn’t memorize the sentence that went with the nomination.”
“Yeah?” Willie Heeney said. “What was the sentence?”
“I accept.”
The reply brought forth gales of laughter which were instantly silenced as Accardo came out of the elevator and walked toward the group in the lobby of the Lexington Hotel.
Accardo took an extremely dim view of any references to him, in any vein, which reflected on his academic background. He could, and did explode violently, on several occasions when he overheard, and his punishment was swift against his offenders.
Accardo quit school after completing the sixth grade and earned small sums of money which he dutifully brought home to his parents. He was big for his age at sixteen and soon learned that he could earn more money protecting street crap games and poker sessions in. private homes from heistmen. When he was twenty he met Frank Nitti and Jack McGurn. It was, for him, a fortuitous meeting which changed his entire life.
A sister, Martha, married Dominick Senese, who harbored ambitions to be a big-time hood. When Accardo became a man of importance in the mob he made Senese head of the mayhem squad at the Fulton Street Market. Senese and John Smith were also business agents and officers of Local 703, Produce Drivers Union, affiliated with the International Brotherhood of Teamsters.
An insight of how the hoodlum element, and this refers to the top men in the Mafia, control the economy of the nation, is contained in the fact that Dominic Senese and a hood named Victor Comforte, an associate of Joey Glimco, a man high in the Chicago mob, owned a controlling share of the Vernon Farm Products Company, a wholesale egg business in the Fulton Street Market. Investigators also brought to light the fact that Frank Senese, a brother of Dominick, and. Frank V. Pantaleo, another hood, were also partners in the business.
The Mafia forces itself into legitimate businesses when it can’t buy into them legitimately. Other times, a company in financial distress will borrow money from loan sharks at exorbitant interest rates and when payments lag the mob steps in and takes over. A common example of just how much money is controlled by Mafia hoods was evident in the case of Fred Evans.
Tony Accardo, investigators revealed, had invested heavily in Evans’ multiple business enterprises with Joey Glimco as a “beard” or front. Evans was an underling for Murray “The Camel” Humphreys, a member of the original Torrio-Capone mob. Evans controlled, in name only, a large chain of laundries. Union muscle-aided Evans and his associates, among them Accardo, Glimco, Cherry Nose Gioe, and the two Senese brothers, to invade and cut heavily into the lucrative business of supplying towels, coveralls, and other supplies to gas stations, garages, and auto rental agencies.
The corporation was a conglomerate which held control of, among other firms, Linen of the Week, Inc., Western Laundry Service, Infant Diaper Service, Dust and Tex Cleaning Company, and the Crib Diaper Service.