His Way_ The Unauthorized Biography of Frank Sinatra - Kitty Kelley [99]
“The Mafia is a shadowy international organization that lurks behind much of America’s organized criminal activity,” he said. “It is an organization about which none of its members, on fear of death, will talk. In fact, some of the witnesses called before us, who we had good reason to believe could tell us about the Mafia, sought to dismiss it as a sort of fairy tale or legend that children hear in Sicily, where the Mafia originated. The Mafia, however, is no fairy tale. It is ominously real, and it has scarred the face of America with almost every conceivable type of criminal violence, including murder, traffic in narcotics, smuggling, extortion, white slavery, kidnapping, and labor racketeering.”
During the committee’s investigation, Senator Kefauver handed Joseph L. Nellis, one of the committee lawyers, a package containing eight eight-by-ten glossy photographs and told him to arrange a meeting with Frank Sinatra. “I almost fell off my chair,” recalled the lawyer. “I opened the envelope and saw a picture of Sinatra with his arm around Lucky Luciano on the balcony of the Hotel Nacional in Havana; another picture showed Sinatra and Luciano sitting at a nightclub in the Nacional with lots of bottles, having a hell of a time with some good-looking girls. One picture showed Frank getting off a plane carrying a suitcase, and then there were a couple pictures of him with the Fischetti brothers, Lucky Luciano, and Nate Gross, a Chicago reporter who knew all the mobsters. Kefauver wanted to know more about Sinatra’s relationship with Luciano, who was running an international narcotics cartel in exile. So I called Frank’s attorney and arranged a meeting.”
Sol Gelb, the New York lawyer Frank retained for this meeting, knew that a public appearance by Sinatra in the company of Albert “The Executioner” Anastasia and the henchmen of Murder, Inc., would finish him in show business. Even the news that the Kefauver committee was interested in Sinatra’s Mafia relationships might be fatal to his faltering career, so Gelb agreed to produce his client only under the most clandestine circumstances. He insisted that Nellis conduct the interview at four A.M. on March 1, 1951, in a law office on one of the top floors of Rockefeller Center so that the press would never find out.
“It was an ungodly hour, but I was there with a court reporter when Frank arrived with his attorney,” said Nellis. “He was very nervous. I remember, he kept shooting his cuffs, straightening his tie, and he smoked constantly. He knew that I was going to ask him about Willie Moretti and Lucky Luciano, but he didn’t know about all the photographs that I had. He also didn’t know that I had a report about a rape he had allegedly been involved in and the blackmail that had reportedly been paid to keep that story from ever being published.”
Nellis began by asking Frank about his friendship with Joe Fischetti and his trip to Cuba in 1947 to see Lucky Luciano, whom the Kefauver committee had publicly pronounced as reprehensible. “There are some men who by their conduct in their life become a stench in the nostrils of decent American citizens, and in my judgment, Lucky Luciano stands at the head of the list,” Senator Charles W. Tobey, a member of the committee, had said. Staff investigators had been informed by the U.S. Bureau of Narcotics that Frank Sinatra was suspected of delivering money to Luciano, so Nellis asked him about the luggage he carried on the plane and what it contained. Frank said that he was carrying an attaché case filled with his razor and crayons. Nellis tried again.
Q: There has been stated certain information to the effect that you took a sum of money well in excess of $100,000 into Cuba.
A: That is not true.
Q: Did you give any money to Lucky Luciano?
A: No, sir.
Q: Did you ever learn what business they were in?
A: No, actually not.
Nellis broached