The First Family: Terror, Extortion, Revenge, Murder and the Birth of the American Mafia by Mike Dash Page B

before Morello’s whispery voice replied: “Shut up, Mother. They have gone on the wrong scent.”
    Zangara knew enough about Morello and Terranova to say nothing to the police, but Anna Di Puma was much less cautious. She told several of her friends what she had seen, adding that she would gladly give a statement. She was prepared to testify in court as well.
    It did not take much time for word of Di Puma’s intentions to reach Morello, and it took less for the Fratuzzi to dispose of her. Even in the nineteenth century, even in a place like Sicily, where personal honor supposedly counted for so much, the Mafia never balked at killing women, and Di Puma’s intransigence convinced Streva and Morello that she had to be silenced, and quickly. Two days later, as Vella’s neighbor sat chatting on a friend’s front step, someone shot her in the back.
    With the irritatingly honest Di Puma out of the way, Morello had little to fear from the authorities. He was so obviously the chief beneficiary of the woman’s death that the police arrested him again and questioned him for several days, but the investigation went nowhere. There were no witnesses to the murder—if any of her neighbors had seen or heard anything to suggest who Di Puma’s killers were, they had the sense not to say so in public—and Morello himself produced a solid alibi: He had been in Palermo, he said, at the time of the murder. This was probably the truth; with Streva arranging matters on his subordinate’s behalf, the Clutch Hand had no need to do anything so risky as shoot the woman himself. To make quite certain that no charges would be pressed, however, the Fratuzzi brought influence to bear once again. Two eminent lawyers, members of the fraternity, came forward to support the Clutch Hand’s alibi, signing affidavits stating that they had seen him in the capital. There was also another killing. Pietro Milone, one of the few policemen in Corleone who believed in Ortoleva’s innocence, met his death in another darkened alleyway before he had the chance to pursue his investigations. His assassin, too, was never caught.
    The murders of Milone and Di Puma ended any prospect that Morello might be brought to justice for Vella’s killing. Francesco Ortoleva was not so fortunate. After four long years on remand, Ortoleva finally came to trial in 1893. Even then, the Fratuzzi took no chances. The defendant’s attorneys were bought off, and, having recommended to their client that neither Streva nor Morello should be dragged into the case, the defense team unexpectedly resigned en masse just before the trial was scheduled to begin. A replacement lawyer, brought in at short notice, had little time to grasp the case’s numerous complexities. Ortoleva was found guilty and sentenced to life in prison.
    GIUSEPPE MORELLO RETURNED to his old haunts in the autumn of 1889 with his reputation burnished. Vella’s murder had improved his standing within the Fratuzzi, and so had the way he had handled himself under questioning; there had been no betrayal of Streva or any of the other bosses in the town. The Clutch Hand also had proposals to make—schemes for making more money than the local Mafia had imagined possible.
    Morello’s new idea was counterfeiting. It made considerable sense. For one thing, it was an urban crime rather than a rural one, and the Vella affair had shown how much easier it was in Corleone to deal with the carabinieri than the Field Guards. For another, it seemed relatively safe; counterfeiting was not then a federal offense in Italy, which meant that responsibility for suppressing it fell squarely on the shoulders of small-town police who were poorly equipped to tackle such sophisticated crime. Most important, they had access to a steady supply of notes produced by a Mafia counterfeiting ring that had begun to operate in Palermo at about this time. The Palermo counterfeiters worked under the protection of Francesco Siino, one of the most