Word: nostras
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...Genovese proved himself a tough and shifty "soldier" and then "capo" (officer) in the Mafia ranks. Over the years he was indicted 13 times, including a conspiracy-to-murder rap he beat when the state's key witness was found poisoned. In 1957, Genovese assumed the Cosa Nostra throne after the barbershop slaying of rival Albert Anastasia (no indictment returned), but two years later the Federal Government finally nailed him with a 15-year narcotics conviction. For a time in Atlanta Federal Penitentiary his cellmate was Joe Valachi, a suspected informer. Genovese planted the "kiss of death" on Valachi...
...Thug version of Cosa Nostra might have gone on for more generations had it not been confronted by William Sleeman, who came out to India as a Bengal army officer in 1809 at age 21. He didn't smoke, and he soon became a teetotaler. His only known thirst was for work, and that was regarded by his compatriots as unquenchable. In that wilting climate there was something of the untemptable Anglo-Saxon saint about Sleeman, as well as "something near to ruthlessness...
...VALACHI PAPERS, by Peter Maas, recounts one man's career in the Mafia. The tale is made all the more fascinating by the author's observation: "If the Cosa Nostra's illegal profits were reported, the country could meet its present obligations with a 10% tax reduction instead of a 10% surcharge increase...
Second Government. A number of Cosa Nostra families, including Valachi's, outlawed drug trafficking because it brought too many federal agents around. Still, Joe found the profits irresistible. When he began importing heroin from France (purchase price-$2,500 per kilo, U.S. selling price-$11,-000), he brought down on his head both the Cosa Nostra and the Bureau of Narcotics...
...Valachi Papers does not always rise above its detail. But for those who still dismiss the Cosa Nostra as the fanciful creation of ambitious D.A.s and over-imaginative hoodlums, the detail serves a purpose. Out of all the dates and curiously businesslike statistics, there finally emerges the dark outline of a state within a state-"a second government," as Valachi calls it. In the words of a member of the Justice Department: "He showed us the face of the enemy...