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with cash. After sailing back to Italy on February 9, Luciano had to work through his emissaries, chief among them being Genovese, who was out from under the yoke of his legal troubles.
    The war years had emboldened the mob, having seen how its effective power on the street and the docks had worked to its advantage. Crime families, including that of Joseph Bonanno, also developed rackets by trading in rationed goods, including precious gasoline stamps. But other core (and illegal) Mafia businesses in New York such as the docks, labor unions, and the garment industry were also prospering. Despite prosecutions by Dewey, the Mafia families also enjoyed a tremendous amount of connection to New York politicians and judges.
    By the end of the war, Luciano had control of his family through Genovese and was a major force. Rounding out the leadership of the New York families were four other bosses from the time Maranzano was deposed: Joseph Profaci, Vincent Mangano, Thomas Gagliano, and, of course, Joseph Bonanno. However, Genovese had an ambitious Frank Costello to contend with and that created problems. It was Costello who had cultivated friendships and allegiances at a time when Genovese had been ducking prosecution in Italy. Profaci, Mangano, and Gagliano all had aspiring and power-hungry underbosses and associates to deal with. But Bonanno had no such complication of leadership and command. He was the sole power in his crime family, unchallenged by any upstarts or intrigue.

CHAPTER 3

The Toughest Kid on the Block

    Traveling east along Metropolitan Avenue from Williamsburg where Joseph Bonanno got his start as a criminal, you will soon cross into the area of New York City known as Maspeth. The origin of the neighborhood’s name is obscured within some mix of the old Dutch and Indian languages. It was once a swampy area, the Indian name meaning “the place of bad waters.” In the nineteenth century, it contained large trout ponds that were drained over a century ago. Today, the largest body of water in Maspeth is the Newtown Creek, an estuary officials have been gamely trying to clean up for years.
    When western parts of what is today known as Queens became accessible by the railroad and ferries in the nineteenth century, industry grew and Maspeth saw a large influx of working families. Factories sprung up where workers spun hemp into rope and processed fertilizer and flooring. The neighborhood became another magnet for immigrants. The cheap housing and residential character of the place drew Italian, Irish, and Polish immigrants. Well into the twenty-first century Maspeth was one of the main residential areas for firefighters, sanitation workers, laborers, and truck drivers who traced their ancestry back to Italy.
    It was immediately after World War II that an Italian immigrant family with the surname of Vitale took up residence close to Maspeth. Giuseppe and Lilli Vitale had emigrated from the village of San Giuseppe, some forty miles south of Palermo in the western part of Sicily. Life in the old country had not been easy, particularly when faced with the infant mortality rates that Sicilian families experienced. Like most Sicilian households, the Vitale family had hoped for a son. They already had a name. The boy would be called Giuseppe or “Joseph” in English.
    Male offspring were favored by parents since they could guarantee the family name would be passed on. But the Vitale family was not going to be blessed with a son, certainly not while living in the hardscrabble hills of the Sicilian countryside. Two baby boys died, either in childbirth or shortly after. Twice the Vitale parents had to bury the tiny bodies as their three daughters watched.
    In Maspeth, the Vitale family lived in the kind of working obscurity that immigrants found as their niche. They weren’t rich but they had by all accounts a quiet, nurturing home life where the three daughters—Anna, Betty, and the youngest Josephine—thrived. Giuseppe,