The last time we spoke he threatened me. Now he is dead.
I first met Tony Napoli at a meeting of Ring 8, the Veteran Boxers Association of New York, at the Waterfront Crab House in Long Island City in Queens. He looked every inch a mobster and had been nurturing a story about boxing, the mob, and his father, James (Jimmy Nap) Napoli. I had not heard of Jimmy Nap; the mob was of passing interest. But others had.
A longtime federal agent said he was ?a real gentleman. He didn?t need a movie to show him how to act in public.? A former special prosecutor named Robert Simels, who tried to put him behind bars in 1977, said Jimmy Nap had ties to every major crime family in the nation. ?He was bright, shrewd, well respected and had no enemies,? observed Simels. ?His high-gambling operation insured he could do business with anyone.?
In Five Familes: The Rise, Decline, and Resurgence of America?s Most Powerful Mafia Empires, Selwyn Rabb wrote, ?Jimmy Nap was no small-time bookie or amateur gambler. A big-time Genovese earner, he had a lengthy yellow sheet for trying to fix boxing matches, for murder conspiracy, for felonious assault, for loan-sharking, and for heading a $35-million-a-year-policy and horse-race-betting network in Manhattan.?
Jerry Capechi and Tom Robbins, authors of Mob Boss: The Life of Little Al D?Arco, the Man Who Brought Down the Mafia, wrote that Jimmy Nap was a ?Genovese crime family stalwart?a dapper capo in the family serving a sentence for running a $35 million betting ring? Napoli was cut from somewhat different Mafia cloth. He lived in an east side town house with his wife Jeanne, a songwriter and theatrical producer. While he was in prison, a musical about Marilyn Monroe, written by Jeanne Napoli and financed by her husband, was playing on Broadway.?
Tony Napoli invited me to his home. ?I wanna bring you to my house here in Forest Hills where I live where I?m associated with,? he said. ?I have something to show you.?
I visited Tony Napoli that weekend. I followed him from his makeshift office in the front of the house to the big screen TV in the living room.
Tony Napoli got to one knee. He selected a video and put it in the VCR.
?This is what I want to show you,? he said. ?It?s from The Untouchables.?
The Emmy Award-winning The Untouchables, starring Robert Stack as Eliot Ness, G-man deluxe of the Treasury?s Bureau of Prohibition, graced America?s TV screens in the 1960s. Agent Ness was a square-jawed, single-minded, two-fisted crusader and his crusade in the Roaring Twenties was to nail Al Capone.
?I don?t know if it was my father who told Al to leave Brooklyn,? Tony Napoli said. ?Because he was a fugitive, they had to throw him in the back of a truck to go to Chicago. But I don?t know if my father was involved in that. We?re talking about a young Jimmy Nap. I don?t know that man. I wasn?t born then. You can?t get much information from me, except that my family watched TV and heard his name and read the newspapers. We never confronted him. We never said, ?Dad, look at what they said about you in the Daily News.? We were controlled. We were disciplined. He never opened the door to conversation of what he did when he was young with his immediate family.?
Tony Napoli pushed the PLAY button on the VCR. Then he sat on the sofa to my right.
The staccato voice of Walter Winchell, aka Mr. Broadway, the archetypal gossip columnist of his day, establishes the tone.
?On the night of November 7, 1929, a meeting took place in the office of Frank Nitti above the Montmartre Caf?. The reason for the meeting: What to do about the special squad? What to do about Eliot Ness??
Cut to Frank Nitti. He is swarthy. He looks mean. He says to his crew, ?We?re going to take a vote right now to see if we?re willing to take a chance on killing this Eliot Ness.?
The men vote by flicking their fingers. It?s unanimous. Ness has to go.
?Eliot Ness and his squad were succeeding in their job of choking off the most important of all Capone?s revenues. But time was working against Eliot Ness, time that had been measured by days, weeks and months by a man a thousand miles away. Finally on March 19, 1930, having served ten months in a Philadelphia jail for carrying a gun, Al Capone returned to Chicago and a very critical situation.?
Al Capone, played by Neville Brand, makes his appearance. He steps from a black sedan. There?s a cigar in his mouth, a scar on his face, and a fedora on his head. Music in a minor key accompanies Al?s entrance into a crowded speakeasy, before giving way to the frothy strains of dozens of well-wishers singing, ?For he?s a jolly good fellow/ for he?s a jolly good fellow/ for he?s a jolly good fellow/ that nobody can deny.?
?Capone went first to the organization headquarters in the Caf? Montmartre where his offices were on the second floor. Here Capone presided over a meeting of the heads of his organization.?
With Capone seated at the head of a conference table, the organization?s private accountant, Jake ?Greasy Thumb? Guzik, approaches the boss and hands him a piece of paper.
?I?ve got some bad news, Al,? he says. ?We?ve had some breweries knocked off. Eight to be exact. Three on the South Side, including two new ones we set up while you were away. One in the Heights. Two on the North Side. One of them we took over from Moran?s. A big one out on Diversity. And another new one we set up on the county line.?
Capone asks, ?What does that add up??
?We lost 3850 barrels a day,? says Guzik. ?But we?re setting up big new one by the stockyards, big enough to replace the loss.?
?How ?bout the equipment?? Capone says. ?How much we lost there??
?I?m carrying that loss at $3,500,000.?
Capone is thinking about the crooked cops on his payroll. ?What about our protection??
?Well,? says the accountant, ?Frank can tell you about that.?
Capone snarls at Guzik, ?You tell me!?
?Our operating loss is going to make us have to cut down on the local graft,? he says. ?But we ought to be able to keep ?em looking the other way. It?s these other guys.?
?What other guys??
?The Feds have gotten up this special squad.?
Capone turns to Frank Nitti, his chief lieutenant, and aims an index figure at his face.
?You tell me.?
?It?s a special squad, like Jake says,? says Nitti. ?From all over the country, just to knock off all our stuff.?
?How big is that squad??
Nitti nervously adjusts his necktie.
Capone raises his voice and repeats, ?How big??
Nitti says, ?Seven, eight guys.?
?Seven, eight guys,? mimics Capone disdainfully. ?Seven, eight guys.?
Capone looks at his men like he wants them dead.
?Ponz!? barks the crime boss. ?You two-bit ponz. You lousy, stupid, yellow, stinking ponz. I?m away for ten months, ten months,? Capone pounds the table, ?and we gotta problem with this Ness. Well I?ve had plenty of problems and I took care of them. So now I?m back and I?ll take care of Ness.?
The men are terrified. Capone laughs maniacally. The men looked relieved. Capone laughs again, louder this time, and his men laugh with him. Suddenly he stops laughing, catching his men off-guard. Capone looks at them and says, ?Io, Io Al Capone. I took care of O?Banion, and Weiss, and Drucci, and Genna and all the rest.?
Capone stands, grabs a bottle of bootleg whiskey with his right hand and smashes it on the table. Broken glass flies everywhere.
?And that?s what?s a-gonna happen to Ness.?
Capone and his boys have another good laugh.
?Just seven, eight guys. While the mob heads met, Eliot Ness and his squad gave Capone their own welcome to Chicago. These men, specially selected from thousands in the Prohibition Bureau, were preparing to wreck still another Capone brewery. This effect of this raid would soon be felt by the mob and by Eliot Ness.?
The Untouchables segues into a segment featuring The Stranger, played by Frank De Kova. Accompanied by portentous music, we get a close-up shot, ground level, of The Stranger?s feet stepping into a puddle of water. The Stranger shakes his cuffs, steps from the camera, and heads toward a building in the distance.
Inside the building, we see The Stranger stride into a bar. He is all business, wearing a dark shirt, white tie, light suit and matching fedora. He is dressed to kill. A clumsy old waiter carrying a tray of glasses accidentally bangs into The Stranger. The Stranger grabs the old man by the shirt. If looks could kill, the waiter would be a dead man.
?Scusate,? pleads the waiter. ?Scusate.? The Stranger pushes him aside, smoothes the lapels of his jacket and disappears into a backroom.
The old waiter stoops to pick up the glasses and tray which The Stranger knocked from his hands, but the bar owner tells him, ?Never mind that. Take this in,? and gives him another tray. The old man follows instructions and enters the backroom. As kettledrums boom ominously on the soundtrack, the old man sees Al Capone and three of his men?as well as The Stranger?engaged in something important.
Capone looks to his three men and nods his head. Frank Nitti walks to The Stranger and kisses him on the lips. The others follow suit. Walter Winchell explains: ?The mafia ritual known as the Kiss of Death. The man being ceremoniously kissed by the others in this room is the man who has been chosen to commit a murder.? The man chosen to commit murder, aka The Stranger, walks toward Al Capone and looks him in the eye. Capone stands, removes the cigar from his mouth, and gives The Stranger the Kiss of Death.
The Kiss of Death was real. It foretold violence. It sanctioned murder. The mafia custom of men kissing on the lips was banned by Lucky Luciano in 1931. ?After all,? he said, ?we would stick out kissing each other in restaurants and places like that.?
In the next scene of The Untouchables we see Eliot Ness and his partner, Joe Fuselli, played by Keenan Wynn, talking in a car in front of Ness? home after a long day at the office. Their banter is interrupted by the sound of screeching tires. A black sedan is coursing down on the agents. A machine gun spits a volley of bullets in the direction of Eliot Ness. Fuselli shouts, ?Watch out!? and throws Ness to the side. Bullets shatter glass and thud into Joe Fuselli. Eliot Ness can?t believe it. Joe Fuselli is dead.
?While Joe Fuselli was dying on a Chicago street, Al Capone was dining, visible to scores of people in a Chicago nightclub.?
Living it up in a world of his own creation, Capone has an ironclad alibi.
Cut to the waiter. He is on his knees, looking toward heaven, making the sign of the cross and praying. ?Joe was my friend,? he says. ?Never laugh at me. Never push me around.? The old waiter is heartbroken. He is also a reluctant eyewitness.
Eliot Ness asks him, ?What did you see, Picco??
Picco is delirious. ?I ain?t going to let them get away with the killing, Joe. If I?d a knowed they were going to kill Joe, I?d have grabbed the knife and ripped it myself.?
?Who were they?? asks Ness.
?It was Nitti, Frank Nitti, and Volpe and D?Andrea. And the big fellow was there.?
?What did they do??
?Bacio di Morte. You know what that is?? Without waiting for a reply, Picco says, ?Kiss of Death.?
?Which one did they kiss??
Picco pauses. ?Jimmy Napoli was the one,? he says. ?They send Jimmy Napoli.?
I glanced at Tony Napoli, Jimmy Nap?s son. He was bursting with pride. He looked pleased as punch.
One of Ness?s boys steps from the shadows and asks the waiter, ?Who?s Jimmy Napoli??
?From Brooklyn,? says Picco. ?The Torpedo.?
This was before the dawn of a witness protection program, but this was one witness the Feds were programmed to protect. ?Picco, we?re going to take you somewhere where you?ll be safe,? Ness says. ?C?mon,? says another agent. ?We?ll take good care of you.?
Medium shot of a dark bedroom. Door flies open, light bathes the room, and Napoli fires a shot from his bed. Ness grabs Jimmy Nap to restrain him. Ness stares at Jimmy Nap. He spits out the words: ?Joe Fuselli.?
?Who? Say, who are you guys, anyway??
Ness asks Napoli, ?Where were you all night??
?You ruin my life,? says Jimmy Nap. Elliot Ness slaps him across the face.
Another agent examines the bed. ?Hasn?t been slept in,? he reports.
?C?mon, Napoli,? says Ness.
?What?s the rap??
?C?mon.? Eliot Ness and his boys drag Jimmy Nap to the door.
Napoli says, ?Wait a minute. I gotta get dressed.?
?Just get your coat on.?
?You got nothing on me,? says Jimmy Nap. ?I was playing poker with six other guys until an hour ago. I was playing poker with my friends an hour ago. I?m telling you. They?ll back me up. You can?t touch me.?
?C?mon.?
?Say,? says Jimmy Nap. ?Who is this Joe Fuselli??
Ness is enraged at the remark and lands a hard right to Jimmy Napoli?s unprotected mug.
Long shot of Picco being led to jail for his own protection. Walter Winchell provides the narration: ?To safeguard the only witness who could link Capone to the murder of Joe Fuselli, Ness made arrangements to keep Angelo Picco under guard in a cell in Chicago City Jail.?
?Please,? pleads Pico, ?don?t keep me too long.?
?Just until you testify against Napoli and Capone.?
The steel door clangs shut. Picco falls to his knees and start to pray.
?Within two hours of the arrest of Jimmy Napoli, Al Capone forestalled his own arrest by appearing at the office of Deputy Police Commissioner Howard. With him were the mob?s attorneys.?
Two plainclothes detectives flank Deputy Police Commissioner Howard.
?Well, Commissioner,? says Capone genially. ?I heard you was looking for me.?
?That?s right, Al. We have a few things to ask you.?
?That?s why I?m here.?
The two men are chummy, old pals.
?Before you ask any questions,? says one of Capone?s lawyers, ?it?s understood that Mr. Capone is here of his own free will. Just what is the charge in connection with which you want to question Mr. Capone??
?About the murder of a federal agent,? one of the detectives says.
?When did this alleged homicide occur??
?One-fifteen this morning.?
?At that hour Mr. Capone was dining at the 318 Club.?
?How do you know??
?We can produce a number of reliable witnesses to attest to that.?
?We got a witness too,? the first detective says. The second detective asks, ?You didn?t kiss Jimmy Napoli for fun, did you, Al??
Capone laughs and asks, ?Who?s this Jimmy Napoli?? He looks amused, indifferent, above the fray, a mobster without a care in the world.
Segue back to jail. The turnkeys open the cell door for Eliot Ness. Picco lies motionless. He was stabbed through the heart to keep him from talking.
?Once again,? says Walter Winchell, ?a man who could have testified for the state had been silenced. There now could be no way to prove that Capone hired Jimmy Napoli to commit murder.?
It was curtains for Picco. It was curtains for The Untouchables. But it wasn?t curtains for Eliot Ness.
Tony Napoli handed me a tattered paperback. Described as an ?Unforgettable crime saga? (Boston Herald) and ?Hair raising? (Los Angeles Times) on its lurid cover, the book was Eliot Ness?s memoir, The Untouchables, written with Oscar Fraley and published in 1957, ?The explosive inside story of the Capone empire?as told by the man who smashed it.?
I started browsing though the book, Joe Fuselli, according to Ness, wasn?t his partner in fighting crime. Fuselli?s real name was Frank Basile and he was Ness?s chauffeur. In the book, Basile, like Fuselli on the TV show, died in a volley of gunshots. But his body was dumped in a ditch where it was found several days later. Ness said he was nowhere near the chauffeur at the time of his death. The agent did, however, identify his driver in the morgue.
I started to read aloud. I figured Tony Napoli would enjoy it.
?Lying there was a lifeless husk which had been Frank Basile! I had expected it, I suppose, and in the course of my career I had often witnessed the ravages of violent death. You think, eventually, that nothing can disturb you and that your nerves are impregnable. Yet, looking down at that familiar face, different somehow in its final repose, I realized that death is something to which we never become calloused if that person is someone close? Carefully I drew the clammy rubber sheet up over his immobile face and thought of how much I owed this big man lying there on a slab meant for me.?
Eliot Ness searched for an eyewitness to the shooting who was known around town as the Clown. ?Eventually we traced him to a grubby little room in the basement of a tenement apartment.?
Ness asked the Clown, ?Did you hear about Frank Basile??
?Yeah, I heard,? said the Clown.
?Well, what do you know about it??
?That Basile was my friend. He never laughed at me cus I was ugly?or pushed me around. He even buy me a drink and sit with me. He was my friend, Frank was. Sure I?ll tell you something.?
Ness was all ears.
?Yesterday, I?m walkin? past Pete?s poolroom, y?know, the one where the Unione meets. So I looks in the window and I sees three or four guys kissin? each other,? said the Clown. ?Y?now what that means, Mr. Ness??
Eliot Ness said: ?Kiss of Death!? Then he calmed down and explained to the reader, ?That expression later was to lose its original meaning through popular usage. But it evolved from the fact that when a Mafia killer was selected, by tradition he was given a ceremonial ?Kiss of Death? by all those at the enclave.?
The Clown had something to add: ?When they pick somebody to knock somebody off, they always go through that rigmarole. Well, right off I figure some bird has had it. But natcherly I don?t know who.?
Ness bored in. ?Did you see the man they were kissing??
?Yeah,? said the Clown. ?It was a guy they call Tony Napoli [sic].? On the next page Ness wrote, ?Napoli hanged himself in his cell with his necktie.?
I read that paragraph aloud three times to be sure I didn?t miss something. I asked Tony Napoli what he thought about Eliot Ness. ?Maybe I should sue him,? he said.
Eliot Ness may have played fast and loose with the truth, but I wondered if Hollywood did it any better
?The Torpedo, so-called, from Brooklyn,? Tony Napoli said. ?That?s the way I talk about it. It was before I was born. I was born in 1935. My father met Al in a speakeasy in Coney Island. That?s where he met a youngster named Jimmy Nap. That?s where Capone stabbed a guy, the guy died evidently, and they got him out of Brooklyn and sent him to Chicago where he belonged. Frankie Yale was the boss of Coney Island bootlegging and Yale wanted him out of town, because he was drawing heat to the speakeasy that Yale was supplying with booze. And he got rid of him. But my father got to know Al in Coney Island.?
Capone went to Chicago, made his move, and the rest is history. He also, based on all accounts, gave Jimmy Nap the Kiss of Death, the go-ahead to clip Eliot Ness.
?That?s what they said. Not from anything Jimmy Nap told me. He never spoke about things like that. I never said to him, Was that you or everything? We were respectful in that way and well-mannered?as far as that goes.?
But it must have been a shock to see his dad portrayed that way.
?Some of the kids, my younger brothers and sisters, his grandchildren, were shocked. They figured it was someone else with the same name from the same area. I wasn?t shocked about anything of what could have happened before I was born, because in that lifestyle I?m not shocked about anything. Because, to be honest, I?m not shocked about how a guy gets to the top. It?s not by being nice.?
Others were less sanguine than Tony Napoli when it came to certain shows on TV. According to The Last Mafiosi, Jimmy Fratianno?s tell-all to Ovid Demaris, the following conversation took place between Johnny Roselli, Chicago boss Sam Giancana?s rep in Las Vegas, and Jimmy the Weasel, godfather of the California mob turned stool pigeon, regarding The Untouchables. Roselli asked, ?Have you seen that TV show, The Untouchables??
Jimmy the Weasel shook his head. ?A couple of times but I don?t have time to watch that shit.?
?Let me tell you something, Jimmy. Millions of people all over the world see this show every fucking week. It?s even popular in Italy. And what they see is a bunch of Italian lunatics running around with machine guns, talking out of the corner of their mouths, slopping up spaghetti like a bunch of fucking pigs. They make Capone and Nitti look like bloodthirsty maniacs. The guys that write that shit don?t know the first thing about what things were in those days. Eliot Ness, my ass. The tax boys got Al, not Ness. And what did he ever have to do with Frank Nitti??
?Ness was in Cleveland for a while and did nothing,? Jimmy said.
?You know, Mae Capone brought a two-million dollar lawsuit against CBS when they came out with a two-part film on Ness?s book. She lost the suit and then Desilu Productions went to ABC to do a series, and since then it?s gone from bad to worse.?
?Nobody pays attention to that shit,? Jimmy repeated. ?It?s like a comic book, a joke. Who cares??
?Jimmy, what I?m about to tell you has been decided by own family. The top guys have voted a hit. I?ve already talked to Bomp about it. We?re going to clip Desi Arnaz, the producer of this show.?
Jimmy whistled through his teeth.
Not long after that conversation, Sam Giancana pulled the contract on Desi Arnaz. Lucille Ball?s husband, the titular producer of The Untouchables, never knew how close he came to dying.
