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for the mob. It was the start of the mob’s Golden Age, when gangsters in New York held sway with politicians, judges, and prosecutors in a way that would become unthinkable—and impossible—in the twenty-first century. Bonanno, the consummate Castellammarese who combined a business acumen with a political shrewdness, did well in this halcyon time, even though he kept out of the limelight.
    In its own way, World War II was a fortuitous event for the Mafia and allowed a number of American bosses a cushion of several years from legal trouble. Though it was a well-kept secret at the time, it is now well documented that U.S. officials turned to some of New York’s mob bosses for help in the war effort. The first approach came after the passenger liner Normandie burned and foundered at its mooring on the West Side of Manhattan. Anxious to combat sabotage on the waterfront—something suspected of having caused the Normandie to burn—military and government officials turned to Joseph “Socks” Lanza, a Genovese man on the waterfront along the East River, including the Fulton Fish Market. Though under indictment for extortion, Lanza was seen as the right man for the job. While it is impossible to say if his efforts thwarted any sabotage or scared away any Axis spies, nothing akin to the Normandie incident happened again during the war.
    Officials also turned to Luciano, who during the early part of the war was serving his sentence for prostitution-related offenses in the tough Dannemora prison in upstate New York. Luciano agreed to help and used his influence with his associates to help security on the West Side docks. But the really important help Luciano gave the Allied war effort came when from prison he established contact with his amici in Sicily. He instructed them to serve as spies and guides for the invading U.S., British, and Canadian forces who landed on the island in the summer of 1943.
    After the Allies were able to take Sicily in five weeks, they leapfrogged to the Italian mainland with the invasion of the Salerno-Naples area. Again, the Allies had the help of another New York Mafia boss, Vito Genovese. Living in Naples since he fled New York following his indictment for murder of an old business partner, Genovese had become something of a stellar citizen. He even reportedly arranged for the murder on a Manhattan street in 1943 of one of dictator Benito Mussolini’s most vocal opponents, Carlos Tresca. For the Allies, Genovese worked as a translator and, as Talese later reports, was able to provide information about the Italian black market profiteers.
    Genovese’s wartime efforts didn’t insulate him from problems. The FBI had him extradicted back to New York to stand trial for the Fernando Boccia murder. But conveniently, the key witness against Genovese was poisoned to death in the Brooklyn jail cell where he was being held as a material witness. Deprived of the witness’s crucial testimony, prosecutors dropped the case against Genovese. He was free to live and work at his pleasure in New York.
    The war assistance by some of the mob bosses didn’t give them carte blanche to do business as usual. Luciano had Washington’s gratitude and won his freedom from prison when New York Governor Thomas Dewey, the very man who while working as Manhattan’s district attorney secured Luciano’s conviction, signed an order commuting his sentence on February 2, 1946. But as part of the deal, Luciano had to agree to voluntarily depart the United States (he was not a naturalized citizen), which he did shortly after Dewey signed the commutation order. Before setting sail on the Laura Keene, an old Liberty ship, Luciano, in another example of how the mob guys could get one over, was able to leave the immigration station at Ellis Island and attend a farewell party in his honor at the Village Inn in Greenwich Village. Mafiosi, judges, and politicians attended and reportedly gave Luciano thick envelopes presumably stuffed