San Diego Siege Read Online Free PDF Page B

ruling council,
La Com-missione,
stepped in to administer the syndicate's interests in that area.
    Ben Lucasi had been a DiGeorge underboss. He and "Deej" had been longtime friends. He'd hated to see Deej have to go that way ... but in his secret moments, Lucasi would admit that even the darkest cloud usually carried a silver lining.
    Under the new setup, Big Ben was practically autonomous — reporting directly to the Commission of Capo's at the national level of government.
    San Diego was no longer an "arm" of anything or anybody. San Diego now belonged to Big Ben Lucasi, period. And, yeah, Big Ben (who measured 5'4" even in elevator shoes and weighed-in soaking wet at 120 pounds) liked things a hell of a lot better that way.
    He was not, of course, a full-fledged
Capo.
Not yet. But that honor would come, just like all the other good things had come. The whole California territory was reorganizing itself around San Diego.
    One of these days the boys all around the country would be referring to this arm as
The Lucasi Family.
And why not? Where the money was, that's where the power was — and now that he was no longer getting a lot of jealous bullshit from L.A., Ben Lucasi was mining the San Diego gold like it hadn't been mined since the forty-niners.
    What with
Agua Caliente
a few minutes south and with Las Vegas just a hop over the mountains by plane — hell, a guy would have to have his mind in his balls not to make a goldmine out of that happy circumstance. And the whole goddam fuck-in' U. S. Navy sitting out here at his right hand, running back and forth to the Orient — what kind of a lamebrain wouldn't turn a thing like that to his profit?
    Some of the locals were starting to snicker about his "seagoing Mafia." Which was okay. Let them make jokes. Lucasi owned also a "khaki Mafia." Let 'em laugh — that was okay. As long as everybody was laughing there'd be no worry. Meanwhile San Diego was fast becoming the underground capital of the western world, and Ben Lucasi was becoming the most powerful non-Capo anywhere.
    The Lucasi home was an unpretentious but modern split-level situated in one of the new neighborhoods near Mission Bay Park. He lived there with his third wife, Dorothy — a 23-year-old ex-showgirl from Las Vegas. Lucasi was 56. He had a daughter, 35, and a son, 32, from his first marriage. The son worked in a casino in Nassau; the daughter, at last report, was somewhere in Europe "with another lousy gigolo."
    The first Mrs. Lucasi had died under mysterious circumstances while the children were still quite young, during that era when Bennie was scrambling everywhere for the buck. His criminal record from those early days reveals arrests for pandering, rape, felonious assault, theft, gambling, arson, extortion, intimidation, black-marketeering, manslaughter, and murder. The official FBI report on this very busy criminal enumerated 52 specific charges… with but 2 convictions and 2 suspended sentences.
    He had spent a combined total of 66 days behind bars.
    His last arrest had occurred in 1944, on a black-marketing charge.
    Lucasi had come west at the end of the war, settling first in Reno, Nevada for a few years, then on to Las Vegas when the boom began there. In the late fifties he relocated to San Francisco, later gravitating to Los Angeles for a lieutenancy under Julian DiGeorge, who eventually sent him on to San Diego to boss that arm of the family.
    So, sure. Except for a few nervous moments here and there, the world was looking rosy indeed for this late-blooming syndicate boss. The nervous moments came from increased anti-crime activity at the federal level — the damned Strike Forces — and a growing awareness among local citizens regarding the interconnections between the straight and the kinky communities.
    And, of course, there was that Bolan bastard.
    Bolan had almost torn things for good when he went on the warpath against Deej. The repercussions from that conflict had been felt clear down