Books |
Frank Costello: A Novel
Ronald K. Fried
By
Published: Jan 29, 2024
Category:
Fiction
“A lot of people had to die for me to be me.”
A chilling, memorable line. And historically accurate. That’s the first achievement of “Frank Costello,” Ronald K. Fried’s novel about “The Prime Minister of the Underworld.” It’s exhaustively researched, and if it reads like non-fiction, it’s because much of it is. The reason: Fried is not only the author of two previous novels, “Christmas in Paris, 2002″ and “My Father’s Fighter,” he’s a veteran TV producer (Dick Cavett, Tina Brown).
The second, and perhaps greater achievement, is that Fried wrote “Frank Costello” in the first person. Critics talk about “unreliable” narrators in novels. How about a thoroughly unlikeable narrator? And yet so solid is Fried’s writing — only the line about people dying to make Costello and his Congressional testimony are non-fiction — that I totally believed he had stumbled upon a lost file of Costello’s memoir. (Costello’s comments in published interviews are also from the record, as are published comments by public figures. Costello’s inner thoughts and personal conversations are invented.) And even more impressive: I never thought Costello’s story was so appalling I wanted to put the book down — on the contrary, I developed at least a thimble of empathy for Costello. [To buy the book from Amazon, click here. For the Kindle edition, click here.]
Consider how unlikely that is. Frank Costello (his name at birth: Francesco Castiglia) was the ultimate image of a gangster — Marlon Brando modeled his voice in “The Godfather” on him — whose partners-in-crime included Meyer Lansky, Lucky Luciano, and Bugsy Siegel. After some early arrests, he never carried a gun and didn’t go to jail again for 40 years. When he was wounded in an assassination attempt, he retired to his Central Park West penthouse, spent his days cultivating flowers at his second home in Sands Point, and died of a heart attack at 82.
Why care about a gangster?
Because the mild-mannered New York novelist brilliantly imagines gangster-speak:
“Everybody’s weak, it just takes the right situation or the right person who knows how to bring it out.”
“You forget who you are, and the world has a way of reminding you you’re nothing.”
“Poor people never change, they can’t afford to.”
Costello knows where he comes from, and why he didn’t follow his parents’ example and work in their candy store:
“I was ashamed knowing that this was all they made of their lives, nothing more than getting up in the morning and going next door to wait to make a few bucks if they were lucky — and knowing that this was all my father could do and that he wouldn’t even do that if my mother wasn’t there to drive him. That was their life. He was working for her. She was the boss, and maybe it’s like that in a lot of families, but this was out where anyone in the neighborhood who walked into the place could see who was in charge. It was the old lady in the black dress with her oily black hair tied up behind her head. My old man looked strong with that mustache and the shoulders on him and that grim stare in his eyes, but he had lost the battle between them long ago, and he’d lost his battle with America too.”
Costello has a sense his life won’t end well:
“You get big and live big and then you get taken out. We’re all blind men driving a car down a road not knowing what’s in front of us, what’s to the sides, what’s coming towards us, what’s moving in for the kill.”
What is coming for Costello is the Kefauver Committee on Organized Crime. In 1950 and 1951, that committee summoned 600 gangsters, pimps, bookmakers, politicians, and mob lawyers for questioning. Of these, only Costello was eager to testify, even though he knew these sessions were televised and 30 million Americans were watching. His decision and his testimony are the climax of the book. They’re a psychological thrill ride.
Meyer Lansky tries to head Costello off:
“What they care about is gambling more than anything else. They’re getting headlines by exposing things that people already know about—bookies in the big cities, casinos in Broward County where the sheriff is our partner. They’re going to go after everybody—the boys in Chicago, Kansas City—everywhere. They’re going to make out like we run the world. They’re going to call me to testify, and they’re going to call you. I talked it over with my attorney. Polakoff understands all the angles.”
“Polakoff? You’re still with Charlie’s guy?”
“Why not? He’s a tough cookie. He told me there’s only one thing to do—take the Fifth.”
“I’ve already been down in Washington. It went fine.”
“These people are not your friends, Frank. Washington is not New York. People like Kefauver and that Tobey from New Hampshire, they never wanted Jews and Italians in their country to begin with. Now they’re trying to keep us in our place. That’s why they took away our booze during Prohibition. So now they’re trying this. It’s the same thing. They want to keep us down.”
“I understand that.”
“Nobody beats the house, Frank. You know that. Remember that when you decide what to do. Think it over very carefully. This may be the most important decision you’ll ever make.”
Costello’s rationale for testifying: “I have to say something. I have to protect my reputation.” What reputation? He’s been on the cover of Time. He’s known as America’s #1 gangster. He’s also befriended politicians — at one point, he simultaneously ruled the New York mafia and most of New York politics. But on the eve of testifying in Washington, this is how he explains his thinking to his lawyer: The stories about his mistresses will become public. He’ll shame his wife: “I’m more worried about what Bobbie is going to say when I come home.”
The tough guy has a heart? Trust Ron Fried on that.
EXCERPT
It was August 26, 1943. Thomas Aurelio was on the phone, Aurelio the magistrate who, thanks to me, was now the Democratic and Republican nominee for the Supreme Court of the State of New York. I put the whole thing together.
Pretty soon, everyone in New York knew what Aurelio and me said to each other that morning once Aurelio knew for sure that he was a lock to get his judgeship. They knew because it was in all the papers. Frank Hogan put it there. He did it to show me who was boss. It was the DA’s gang against my gang, that’s the way it works.
“Good morning, Francesco,” Aurelio said. “How are you and thanks for everything.”
Those were the first words out of Aurelio’s mouth. So then, bragging like the fool I was—but also just telling the goddamn truth—I said what I said next, and it became one of the most famous things I ever said in all my life.
“Congratulations, it went over perfect,” I told Aurelio. “When I tell you something is in the bag, you can rest assured.”
“That’s fine,” Aurelio said, “but right now I want to assure you of my loyalty for all you have done. It’s undying.”
Undying? I wonder if I believed Aurelio when he said that word. I wonder if I was fool enough to think that a man like Aurelio knew the meaning of loyalty.
A few weeks later, I picked up the New York Times and—thanks to Frank Hogan — the headline on the front page said, “Gangster Backed Aurelio for Bench, Prosecutor Avers.” There was a picture of Aurelio with his greasy hair slicked down over his bald head, and he was looking over to the side like he just robbed a bank and was waiting to get caught. America was in the middle of the war, but this goddamn story still made the front page. Underneath the headline it said, “Leaders Shocked,” but that was an absolute lie. The newspaper men didn’t understand how things worked. The leaders of Tammany Hall weren’t shocked. They understood what was going on.
The next thing I knew, Aurelio, Mr. Undying Loyalty, issued a statement.
“During my brief acquaintance with Mr. Costello of approximately six months standing, I knew him to be a businessman of good repute, and I definitely disavow any knowledge of his criminal background.”
Undying loyalty died pretty fast.
It wasn’t easy to help Aurelio in the first place. Before he came to me like I was the pope of Rome who could grant him sainthood or pardon his sins, Aurelio met twice with our mayor, Fiorello LaGuardia, to beg for the job. But there was no way that little bastard LaGuardia was going to help Aurelio become a Supreme Court judge. So now Aurelio was desperate, and desperate people knew how to find me.
But my phone number wasn’t listed with the Better Business Bureau. So Aurelio went to Dr. Paul Sarubbi, my personal physician who was also—it’s nice the way things work out—district leader for the First Assembly District. And Dr. Sarubbi told Aurelio to pay me a visit. Because if you wanted to make a connection in New York City in 1943, you came to me. Aurelio knew who I was. He knew who he was talking to.
Then one morning, there was Aurelio in my apartment waiting until I finished my breakfast and used the toilet. When he came in to see me, I was sitting there in my dressing gown like he wasn’t even big enough for me to bother putting on a suit and tie.
“Dr. Sarubbi said I should come and see you,” he said.
I gave him nothing back, so he started in about how honest he was, and how he was a proud Italian, and how important it was to have our people on the court. And I got the feeling I always had when men came to me bowing and scraping. I felt like I was a count in an old Italian village — the rich man living up on a hill in a big house high above Lauropoli where I was born, that little penniless town in Calabria with its tiny houses, old stone hovels piled one on top of another on narrow, hilly dirt streets where the peasants and street urchins scratched out their lives.
“I don’t know what to do,” Aurelio said, which was his way of saying he was helpless like a little boy. When a man makes himself weak that way, he’s offering himself up to you.
So I said, “Maybe I can help” — which Aurelio knew meant that from then on, we had a relationship.
