Word: costelloe
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...professed to be a happy burgher and well content with his lot. But at other times he seemed like a restless man. He said: "We all got just a certain number of hours to live ... I don't understand why people waste time." Frank Costello, who had once lusted for wealth, lusted for respectability. He was steadily thwarted. He had lived by stealth and secrecy, had avoided newsmen like the plague, but his power and influence had brought him torrents of publicity...
...storm broke on him just before a municipal election in August 1943. District Attorney Hogan, who had tapped Costello's telephone, reported the conversation which had ensued when one Thomas Aurelio called Costello the morning after Aurelio had been nominated for New York's supreme court...
...Costello: Congratulations. It went over perfect. When I tell you something is in the bag, you can rest assured...
After that Frank Costello was poison in the big city. This year when he gave a $100-a-plate charity dinner for the Salvation Army at the Copacabana, eight judges, including Aurelio, a Congressman and all the top Tammany politicos turned up in dutiful droves. But the newspaper headlines that bloomed largely and blackly the next day had the same, exultant horror that might have been expected if he had spent the night plotting to cart off the City Hall...
...Like a Rabbit." Frank Costello took the lesson to heart. Every man has his own secret portrait of himself, and Costello fancies himself a man who keeps his word, sticks by his friends ("I know a lot of people who are not exactly legitimate. But that don't mean I'm in bed with 'em, does it?") and does countless good deeds. After all, wasn't he supporting a boys' town in Italy, didn't he quietly give away thousands to charity every year, including some run by papers which damned him, and didn...