Word: luciano
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...horse-track touts, drug peddlers and plain tourists who winter in Cuba were reading the Broadway columns with closer interest. Every now & then they found a nice little item about "Lucky" Luciano, and in Havana it was pretty common knowledge that Lucky was wintering in Cuba...
...Mobster Luciano, pimp and drug peddler, was beginning to look like a nice guy -if anybody believed the columns. Since he had been sprung from prison and deported to Italy, some of the columnists had discovered a heart of gold beating under his silk shirt. Somehow, said the keyhole-peepers, Lucky from his prison cell had helped the U.S. win the war. The Mirror's Walter Winchell solemnly assured his readers that after Lucky died, the Congressional Medal of Honor would be awarded...
...newspaperman who was incredulous about all this was Scripps-Howard's Robert C. Ruark. Last week Ruark was in Havana, and when he saw the swarthy face of Luciano he headed for the wire office with anger in his heart...
Ruark's column had most of the sordid story next day. Luciano had been in Cuba since October. He had a bodyguard, and otherwise lived in the manner to which his earnings from women and the dope trade had accustomed him. Among the folk he had been seen with in Cuba were such divergent characters as Ralph Capone (Al's brother) and Frank Sinatra...
...intelligence from Cuba stung one U.S. agency into prompt action. The U.S. Bureau of Narcotics notified the Cuban Government that while Luciano was on the loose no more narcotics for medical use would be sent to Cuba; Lucky might get them and peddle them. Cuba's new Interior Minister Alfredo Pequeno got the point. He called in burly Benito Herrera, chief of the secret police, and told him to go get Lucky. At week's end Lucky Luciano, no war hero at all, was locked up and had an ultimatum: go back to Italy...