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MEYER LANSKY

Bugsy was, as previously mentioned, a warrior. He'd kill fast and hard, and would not hesitate to use those talents to pro- tect his friends and their earning potential, or to remove a thorn in any of their sides. Since a mob rule has always been that one cannot kill his boss and become boss, it was Bugsy, along with his Jewish cohorts, like Red Levine, who elim- inated both Giuseppe Joe the Boss Masseria and Salvatore Maranzano to make way for Lucky to take overall Mob Candy Magazine power (that rule kept John Gotti from being recognized by the Com- mission a half-century later). Lansky was not among the shooters. Instead, he was expanding the financial interests of his partners with the millions they'd made from Prohibition. While known for his gaming business prowess, Lansky also used their overflowing funds to invest in land, nightclubs, hotels, and anything else that made sense. Much of that investment was in South Florida.

The biggest erroneous story about Meyer Lansky was that he was part of the now fabled Commission of organized crime. Nothing could be farther from the truth. To understand why Meyer never made it to a seat on the Commission, is to go back to the murders of Moustachio mob bosses Giuseppe Masseria and Salvatore Maranzano and the subsequent murder of more than sixty more Sicilian old timer Mafiosi from Sept- ember 10 th to the 11 th , 1931, in what is now known as the Night of the Sicilian Vespers. The Moustache Petes, as they were called, had lived and died for vendet- tas during their rule; for wars between themselves and those of other towns and regions of Sicily. Those continuous battles cost a lot of profit to everyone involved. They also refused to do business with anyone except other Sicilians. Mainland Italians were as bad to them as Jews or Irishmen. To a group of younger, more Americanized gangsters, made up of men like Lucky Luciano, Frank Costello, Bugsy Siegel, and Meyer Lansky, not only did n't the Mustachios rule make sense, but something had to be done about it. With Bugsy Siegel in the lead, dozens of old timers across the country were murdered.

WAR WORK
RAZIN HELL
ADVERSITY INTRODUCES A MAN TO HIMSELF
In the 1930s, Meyer Lansky and his gang stepped outside their usual criminal activities to break up rallies held by Nazi sympathizers. Lansky recalled a particular rally in Yorkville, a German neigh- borhood in Manhattan, that he and 15 other hoods disrupted.	The speakers started ranting. There were only fifteen of us, but we went into action. We threw some of them out the windows...... We wanted to show them that Jews would not always sit back and accept insults.

THERE ARE A LOT OF BUSINESSES AND STRUCTURES IN MIAMI AND THE GREATER SOUTH FLORIDA AREA THAT OWED THEIR EXISTENCE TO MEYER LANSKY

Little Davey Petillo, who later went to prison with Luciano on the prostitution charges brought by Thomas Dewey, was just a boy at the time of the Vespers. When a top Moustachio escaped the first round of murders, Little Davey was dispatched to the city. He set up a shoe shine box outside the boss club and ingratiated himself to the Sicilian mobsters with glossy spit shines. When the extra cautious boss finally put a foot out for Davey to shine, the boy pulled a pistol from his shine box and shot both the boss and his bodyguard to death.

When the smoke cleared, and the new order was ready to go to work, Lucky Luciano surprised every one by claiming that though all ethnic groups would be welcome to do business, the Unione Siciliano would reign supreme. He divided the Unione into five families under Sicilian rule, and assigned other ethnic groups to Sicilians as their liaisons. To Bugsy Siegel, who had done the heavy lifting in murdering Masseria and Maranzano, this was unacceptable. When he left for the West Coast, it was to be his own boss, not, as commonly thought, to establish mob outposts. For Lansky, who was only interested in making money, it didn't matter what status he didn't receive. He would accept one of his closest friends, Vincent Jimmy Blue Eyes Alo as his man in the mob (notice that the Lansky character's man in Godfather II was named Johnny Ola, Alo backwards, as was the relationship portrayed). Lansky was forever an associate, not member, of the traditional mob, though he remained a trusted advisor to the mob's hierarchy throughout his life, a life spent in a large part in South Florida.

GAMBLING & GAMES
There are a lot of businesses and structures in Miami and the greater South Florida area that owe(d) their existence to Meyer Lansky. To this area that catered in large part in early- to mid- Twentieth Century years to vacationers and escapees from cold northern states, Meyer brought organized gambling: crap and card games, horse betting, and slot machines. With gambling came bigger hotels that brought national celebrities and beautiful showgirls. As South Florida grew it needed an economic infrastructure to support vacationers paradise: wholesalers, hotel workers, grocers, haberdashers and women clothing sales people, police, and, especially, restaurants. Some world famous hotels like the Eden Roc and restaurants like the Forge owe their very existence to the foundation that Meyer Lansky and his organized crime cohorts set down. Hospitals expanded with Meyer Lansky donations. Mobsters and Lansky front men for businesses like the Singapore Hotel threw money around like it was confetti, making locals well to do and leaving a legacy of extreme public tolerance of mobsters till today. South Beach embraced a small time gangster wannabe, Chris Paciello, until he turned rat.