“I’ve got nothing to say, Tony. I got the picture.”
“Okay, I’m glad we understand each other. You intend to stay longer?”
“Nope. I’m leaving tomorrow.”
“Okay,” Accardo repeated. “There’s a lot of things in Chicago that need attention. I’ll be back in a week.”
World War II broke out and Giancana was called before his draft board in Chicago. He was asked, “What do you do for a living?”
His reply was typical of his arrogance and total disregard of the law. He stared at the members of the Board and snapped, “I steal!”
The Board promptly rejected him for army duty. He was described, fittingly, by a psychologist on the Board as “a constitutional psychopath with an inadequate personality and strong anti-social trends.”
Giancana’s wife died in 1954 and left him with three daughters. They were attractive, genuinely sweet young women who knew of their father’s background and association with the Syndicate and deplored it but were powerless to do anything about it. In his favor, the only instance a thorough search of his life revealed, was that he lavished affection and love on them, protected them, kept them well dressed and gave them every comfort he could in the modest home he owned in Oak Park.
Although he lived modestly during the years his wife was alive, he ran wild when he vacationed in Miami Beach or other resorts. Then his spending rivaled that of the richest men in the world. Suites of rooms, good-looking women — some of them wives of legitimate businessmen on vacation sprees away from home and husband — others widows, divorcées or playgirls living the gay life by giving up what nature gave them for what any man with money and a willingness to spend it could give them in return.
In Miami Beach, Giancana was usually seen with three or four attractive women at the same time. His attraction to women was volatile for the good reason that he was just that, a menacing, explosive creature who generated excitement in some feminine hearts.
His ego told him that, if he had three or four women around him at the same time, they would fight each other for his favor. All he would have to do would be to crook his little finger and point to the bed and the favored one would leap into it. He wasn’t far wrong.
What he refused to consider was that he attracted as much attention from honest police officers and federal agents as he did from women. The IRS became interested in him, too. The question in their minds was how and where did he get his money and did he give Uncle Sam his rightful share under the law?
He made trips to Paradise Island, taking along a blonde, a redhead and a brunette, indicating little preference as to the color of a woman’s hair. All that mattered to him was, would she? She would and did.
When he made trips to Europe he was under the scrutiny of Interpol on the advice of the Narcotics Division of the federal government. Lucky Luciano was still alive and very active in the narcotics and hot bonds traffic. Luciano’s worldwide connections in heroin made him a continuing formidable figure in the Mafia in the United States as well as in Europe.
Giancana met with Luciano in Rome and their meetings were duly reported to the federal government’s narcotics division in the United States by Interpol.
Finally, in the 1960’s, Tough Tony Accardo stepped down as the head of the Chicago Syndicate and named Giancana as his successor. Things began to happen almost immediately as Giancana began to throw his weight around.
The mob had the feeling its members were living on the lip of destruction. No one was safe from Giancana’s imagined feelings that one or another hood was against him or plotting against him. He had become paranoid on the subject. His position as head of the mob had gone to his head.
He was now the king, all-powerful, living portrait of a man possessed by a demon. There were several killings, uncalled for, in the ranks. Ironically, the hoods and assassins who killed in cold blood lived in a state of recurring terror.
They began to fear and hate Giancana but he was too egotistical to see it. His sudden flarings of temper were more frequent now and erupted on the slightest provocation. Loyalty to Giancana had dropped to zero.
In contrast, and because the men in the mob feared him, they were anxious to please him, to execute his orders whatever they were. He expanded prostitution, loansharking, bookie joints, gambling joints, most of them crooked, set up to fleece anyone who got into the games. Opposition hoods were beaten unmercifully, many of them killed.
Following in Johnny Torrio and Meyer Lansky’s footsteps, he invested mob money in legitimate businessess, taking many of them over with little investment. But he wasn’t as smart as Torrio or Lansky, and his way of moving in on legitimate businessmen soon brought him to the attention of the Chicago Crime Commission.
Again, Accardo stepped in to dress Giancana down.
“Who the hell do you think you are, Momo? You want to take over the whole damn city, lock, stock and barrel? I got word that the Crime Commission is very much interested in you and what you have been doing? There have been complaints, a dozen of them — twenty of them. You stop that crap right now or you’re going to find every damned whorehouse, bookie joint, gambling joint, everything, locked up tighter than a drum. You got it?”
Giancana smarted under Accardo’s attack but, fortunately for him, took it without a retort.
“Okay, Tony,” he said placatingly, “maybe I did move too fast. I’ll just let things stay as they are. No more taking over any of the legit businesses.”
“There’s one more thing. You’ve got most of the boys in the Organization walking on glass chips. The word is that every guy in the top spots is dissatisfied with the way you’re running things. You’ve put too much pressure on them.
“My advice to you is to take it off. Level off. Hold a meeting and give them some reassurance that you’re with them — with them. You got the point. I’m giving you one week to put this house in order, Momo. That’s it.”
Giancana held a meeting and took off the pressure. The men running the bookie joints, gambling joints, whorehouses, and shylocking, as well as all the other rackets, began to breath easier.
At this time, in the waning days of Dwight Eisenhower’s presidency, the CIA approached Robert A. Maheu, a former aide to Howard Hughes, and allegedly asked him to contact an important figure in the underworld for the purpose of assassinating Fidel Castro, the Cuban dictator.
Working for Uncle
The CIA proposal to draw the Mafia into the assassination of a foreign head of government had a Godfather-like flavor in the fact that they actually let out a contract on Castro. Since that time a great deal of information has come out by investigative reporters who went into the matter, confirming the plot. According to documents held by the FBI, Maheu, on the suggestion of the CIA, contacted Sam Giancana. Giancana was intrigued by the idea of working for the CIA.
Giancana, according to official sources, first contacted one of the “most nimble and conniving figures in the Mafia,” Richard Cain, who had been a Mafia agent while he was a member of the Chicago police force as a detective.
Among his many other accomplishments, Cain spoke Spanish fluently. According to Intelligence sources, Cain, with the consent of the CIA, began recruiting Spanish-speaking hoods on Chicago’s West Side.
Giancana then enlisted the aid of John Roselli in the plot. He made extravagant demands on the CIA which were met.
Giancana set up headquarters in a plush suite in one of Miami Beach’s most expensive hotels. His arrogance increased because he now had the tremendous power of the United States Government behind him. The truth is that the Government thought little of Giancana’s role in the Castrol plot and in 1964 he was haled before a federal grand jury which wanted information on the Syndicate’s operations in Chicago.