The Rise of Three-Finger Brown

In the course of the Kefauver committee investigations, the U.S. public became well acquainted with the modern racket boss, a suave fellow who invests his money in the most respectable enterprises, patronizes a fashionable psychiatrist, and takes pains to meet all the best people. The first well-publicized specimen of this new breed of gangsters was New York's Frank Costello. Last week, with Costello safely tucked away in Atlanta Federal Penitentiary on a contempt rap, New York's four-man State Crime Commission opened public hearings in Manhattan, and soon flushed the man billed as Costello's heir, another sample of the new breed named Thomas Luchese (rhymes with "too lazy").

"An Agreeable Little Man." Until last week many New Yorkers had never heard of Tommy Luchese, a stocky, 52-year-old immigrant from Palermo, Sicily. Others knew him only as a prosperous, well-tailored manufacturer of ladies' coats and dresses, who lived in a ranch-type home on Long Island, had a daughter at Vassar and a son who had gone into the Air Force from West Point. He could always be counted on for a fat block of tickets to such eminently respectable affairs as the dinner for the Friendly Sons of St. Patrick and the Alfred E. Smith Memorial Fund. Socially he had impressed one federal judge as "an agreeable little man who rarely said anything."

Behind Luchese, however, lay an eventful career. His acquaintances included Costello, ex-Vice Lord Charles ("Lucky") Luciano (see INTERNATIONAL), and a host of real, gun-toting hoods, among them "Trigger Mike" Coppola, Joe Stracci alias Joe Stretch, and Costello's man Friday, "Big Jim" O'Connell. Luchese was convicted of possession of a stolen automobile in 1922, but he managed to beat two arrests for murder, one for vagrancy and one for receiving stolen goods. It was while being fingerprinted during one of these brushes with the law that he got his alias. As a young man, Luchese had lost the index finger on his right hand in an accident. Noticing this, a detective suddenly remembered the Chicago Cubs' famed three-fingered pitcher, Mordecai Brown, and pinned on the new name: "Look who's in now--Three-Finger Brown."

Throughout the crime commission's first sessions, Luchese remained a shadowy figure, little more than a name, as the commission flailed away at an old but far from dead horse: underworld influence in Tammany Hall, the nerve center of Manhattan's ailing Democratic organization. Some of its findings:

Alfred L. Toplitz, onetime chief clerk of the New York City Board of Elections, admitted that he knew Luchese and was also acquainted with Costello, Coppola and "Little Augie" Pisano, but "never socialized with them." Asked how a $7,500 salary could stretch to cover his expensive tastes (one pair of blue suede oxfords cost him $100), Toplitz dabbed nervously at his palms with a paper handkerchief and replied that he occasionally won some money on the horses.

Francis X. Mancuso, former general sessions judge, crisply admitted to his longtime acquaintance with Costello and Luchese. His suave self-assurance unshaken, Mancuso also admitted that he had decided not to run again for leadership of an East Harlem assembly district after two local hoodlums had "advised" him to resign.

L Daniel Neustein, another former district leader, testified that Tammanyites frequently referred to Costello as "the Boss." Neustein also said that when he expressed his ambition to become a judge, onetime Tammany Boss Clarence Neal told him: "Well, there's no reason why you can't if you pay for it like the other fellow. Your money is as good as his."

"I Wouldn't Say That." For most of the second day of its hearings, the crime commission concentrated its fire on Luchese. From Supervisor George White of the New England Division of the Bureau of Narcotics came testimony that Luchese was believed to have succeeded Costello as "coordinator of the narcotics rackets" and was, in effect, a policymaking chairman of the board of a nationwide dope ring.

Though he had attended the opening sessions as a spectator, Luchese did not show up the second day. As a substitute for Three-Finger himself, however, commission attorneys read portions of 600 pages of testimony which Luchese had given them in private hearings. He dodged direct answers to most questions. To a question on his financial affairs, Luchese would give no answer at all. "Your grounds of not answering is that it will incriminate you?" he was asked. "I wouldn't say that," replied Luchese, "because I don't like to use that expression."

Evasive though it was on many subjects, Luchese's testimony nonetheless produced some surprising revelations. By his own statement, his acquaintances, social or otherwise, included Mayor Vincent Impellitteri, the late Mayor Fiorello La Guardia ("I used to talk with him like I was his son"), ex-Congressman Vito Marcantonio (who appointed Luchese's son to West Point), Myles J. Lane, the U.S. district attorney, Federal Judge Thomas Meaney, and Federal Judge Thomas Murphy, the man who prosecuted Alger Hiss. Also brought out during the reading of Luchese's testimony:

P: His wide acquaintance among the city's narcotics peddlers. Under questioning, Luchese replied with high indignation: "You get so disgusted you don't go any place any more. I say 'Gee, I still got to meet people like that.' "

P: His failure to admit to four of his five arrests in his application for naturalization papers (he was granted citizenship in 1943).

A good part of the social rise of Three-Finger Brown proved to have been accomplished with the aid of tiny (5 ft., 118 lbs.) Armand Chankalian, administrative assistant to U.S. Attorney Lane. Chankalian testified that not until 1950 had he come to realize that his good friend, Tommy Luchese, had so lurid a past. Then, said Chankalian, he had told Luchese, "I introduced you to some very nice people, and I owe an obligation to them . . . I'm sorry, I can't see you any more . . ." Informed that his car had been seen in front of Luchese's home four times after he last admitted to having seen his three-fingered friend, Chankalian was dumfounded. Said he: "I don't recall . . . why I should have been there."

This week the crime commission began focusing its attention on some of the less savory tricks of the politico's trade--the buying of judgeships, the salary kickback and the use of party funds as private bank accounts. The commission's shift in emphasis, however, was cold comfort to three-fingered Tommy Luchese. Agents of the FBI, the Internal Revenue Bureau, the Treasury Department's Narcotics Bureau, the New York state income tax division and the New York state parole board had all started nosing around in Tommy's past, and Attorney General James McGranery had begun proceedings to strip Luchese of his citizenship as a first move toward deportation.

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