Business Faces
Brotherhood of Evil : The Mafia. By Frederic Sondern. (Gollancz, 21s.)
V t
ej f
of it A.
1- st.
is rt "I r. (I.
n- or )y a' it- n-
eeM :nr) be
ON the 14th November, 1957, sixty men or so of criminal affiliations and of Italian or Sicilian origin were revealed around a barbecue at the house of Joseph Barbara, who lives at Apalachin in New York State and whose formal interest is the bottling and distribution of soft drinks: A detective saw the big, questionable cars assembling and took the gtieSts into custody as they dispersed gravely into the woods. The guests, who were nation-wide, with two from Italy and Sicily, explained that they just happened to be passing. Mr. Barbara just happened to be able to regale them with 200 lb. of meat. This discovery of organised crime in conference is a sizable event in American social history, though no convictions have issued from it so far. The Attorney-General has recently arrested them all over again on a collective charge of conspiracy to obstruct the course of justice, but the prosecution is expected to run into trouble on technicalities. Apalachin is the starting point for this expose of the systematic. business-like nature of major American crime: It is marked by the belief that the Mafia is still the fountainhead, that the bar- becue- was one of about half a dozen grand councils of the • Mafia since Capone achieved something like a national s■ndicate. and that it was convened to consider questions of jurisdic- tion, associated nerhaps with the Anastasia mur- der, and quest— is of reorganisation, associated perhaps with the Federal ('rime Commissions and the diminished trade in drugs. He names nearly all the famous gangsters as eapi mahosi..Fhe whole range of crime from drugs, prostitution and gambling to the infiltration of legitimate concerns like local government and the unions is laid at the Brotherhood's door, as the established items on their agenda which now require to be revised.
It is no news that the business of crime in America is business. that-its bats have ihe baby- laces of salesmen, and that it is very richly organ- ised. But it is still unusual to have the Mafia con- nection so' bluntly stated in a book which is less -sensational and more accurate than most. The author has been helped by the Narcotics Bureau and he has studied the proceedings of the Kefauver Commission, which admitted the con- nection, and the later commissions of Daniel and McClellan. The evidence for the Mafia connec- tion is hard to conic by, of course-- - omem) and the Fifth Amendment were. made for each other --and none of the evidence he presents seems Properly conclusive. But there is an. overWhelm- ingly probability that it does exist, as much as ever, that the Italian Mafia. for example, main- tains its fraternal contacts with the US and that the now of drugs depends on this. If it exists it must be wonderfully effective : even this righteous account contains due record of their qualities of character and flair. On the other hand, even if Mr. Sondern's book carrihe infor- mation currently available, and I don't think it does, it is not clear how ?Mich this.would really enhance our understanding of the criminal situa- tion in America. The Mafia emerges as a bare, streamlined affair of cohesion, silence and family, almost entirely taken up with making money; and as such it tends to disappear into the general character of American crime as it is already known. In fact one of the modern trends in Mafia has been to merge in this way, Jo be like other criminals. Mr. Sondern's book is somewhat spoilt by its civic unction and by its atmosphere of impending justice and new brooms. If the Mafia exists, it can only be presumed to be doing very well con- siders of consider- able and vigorous interest, however, and his piety is not afraid of stories and colour. The indi- viduals in their good suits seldom come to life; the line of clever, sullen, sentimental men con- tinually vanishes into the one figure of some com- posite Johnny Friendly, of Frank Costello, say, grinding out his monosyllables on the witness stand. Still there are moments—like the wiretap of Luciano in his Waldorf days or blue period: 'Whores is whores. They can always be handled. They ain't got no guts.'
KARL MILLER
Previous page
