The Case Against Lucky Luciano: New York's Most Sensational Vice Trial ,by Ellen Poulsen
I read this book after it was mentioned several times on this board (thank you, PB and others).
Most people who are familiar with Charlie Luciano's life know that his conviction and 30-50 year sentence for "compulsory prostitution" (Mann Act, so-called "White Slavery") was a trumped-up deal, managed by DA Tom Dewey (later Governor of New York, later twice GOP Presidential candidate) to get Luciano personally. Ellen Poulsen goes over the case in a rather selective way that adds little new to that conclusion.
More than a third of the book is given over to a description of how the prostitution rackets worked in NYC in the Thirties, It was a vicious but tidily run industry, in which madams paid "bookers" (not pimps, but employment jobbers) to have whores assigned to them. The bookers and madams paid "bondsmen"--busted lawyers and bail bondsmen who corrupted cops and magistrates. If a paid-up madam was raided, the bondsmen would get her and her girls out of jail, or the charges dropped. If they didn't pay, they'd have the charges pumped up and rigged against them. Non-payers also were beaten and abused. The hookers paid most: at a time when the Depression dropped the price per trick to $3 or even $2 a throw, the girls seldom kept more than $1 per john.
It was a big racket, but its operation was too diffused to allow anyone to really run it--the accusation against Luciano. While he undoubtedly profited from prostitution, he was scarcely the "kingpin" that Dewey made him out to be. The testimony against him was offered by drug-addicted hookers and other lowlifes who'd make the witnesses against Gotti look like daily communicants. Quite a few recanted their testimony after the trial. The trial record showed tenuous connections and a lot of hearsay evidence--"my booker said he heard Charlie say that he was going to reduce all madams to employees"--that kind of stuff. Nonetheless, the jury was out for only five hours before convicting Luciano and all his co-defendants.
Poulsen never takes a stand on the "justice" or "injustice" of Dewey's proceedings against Luciano--she just presents selected parts of the testimony, along with selected parts of various characters' bio, in a manner that's so matter-of fact as to be boring at times--an unusual accomplishment given the sensational nature of the case. That piecework approach left me unsatisfied. While she outlined Luciano's life and part of his career, she never invoked the broader context. For example, while describing the bare bones of the assassinations of the "Moustache Petes" Masseria and Maranzano, which Luciano organized with Meyer Lansky's help, she never tells us about the Castellemmarese War--the biggest event in 20th Century US Mob history--or the Commission that resulted.
Not a great read.
