A change of pace is always welcome, especially when writing a column about politics. The latter can be as boring as writing about cooking, and the only newspaper that used a cookery writer as a political pundit is The New York Times. I think he’s called Frank Bruni and he’s reported to be going blind due to his loathing of Donald Trump.
Never mind. When your correspondent was still in shorts and newly arrived in America, the greatest and most feared gangster was one Frank Costello. Brought up in front of a Senate investigating committee, his lawyers managed to keep his face out of camera range and only his hands were televised. Somebody at home figured out that his nails were manicured and polished. He lost a few points among us after that.
Years later at a chic nightclub I watched as some greasy-looking fellow kept running his fingers up and down my wife’s naked back. I stood up and punched downward. All hell broke loose. The owner, Oleg Cassini, Jackie Kennedy’s couturier and JFK’s procurer, demanded I apologize to the slob I had hit as he was Senator Williams of New Jersey. The year was 1966. I did nothing of the sort but instead went to the bathroom to wash my hands as I had cut my knuckle during the fracas. That’s when I heard the following from a man speaking on the telephone: “Yeah, his name is Taki, and he lives in the Sherry-Netherland.”
“When your correspondent was still in shorts and newly arrived in America, the greatest and most feared gangster was one Frank Costello.”
Although he was a mincing rat of a man, I took what I was hearing rather seriously. In fact his words had an elegiac sense of doom—gangsters spraying the 18-year-old wife’s face with acid and other such horrors. This, I said to myself, is real; cancel culture for good. So, with no time for heroics, I called on my friend Tom Corbally, man about town, lady-killer par excellence, decorated rear gunner on more than thirty missions over Germany, and among the best-looking men in New York City and definitely connected with the city’s most powerful but criminal members. “Don’t worry, kid, we’ll go see Mr. C,” said Tom when I visited him at 530 Park Avenue. Mr. C was the way people in the know referred to Frank Costello, retired head of the Cosa Nostra, but still no one to disrespect, and then some.
We met at Childs, on 79th Street and Madison Avenue, where Mr. C lunched and dined daily. His voice was gravelly, more like Robert Kennedy’s today, and his accent was not exactly upper-class, but neither was it Brooklynese, as my father used to call it. After I explained my predicament, Mr. C asked only one question: “Were you in any way out of line?” “No, sir,” I answered truthfully. “I’ll see what I can do,” said Mr. C.
A few days later at P.J. Clarke’s, another popular city hangout back then, the rat man spotted me and came up with his hand extended. “Hey, Taki, no hard feelings, everything’s fine,” said the rat. “And the senator said you had a hell of a right.” Obviously Mr. C’s magic wand had done the trick. Incidentally, Senator Williams, having survived a right cross, did not end well. Like a more recent senator from New Jersey, he was indicted in something called Arabgate and disappeared from view. My problem was how to thank Mr. C for services rendered. My finances were tight, so I went to my mother and spilled the beans, and she came to the rescue. “Just don’t tell your father you know people like this gangster,” she warned.
Alas, more problems ensued. My mother bought a pair of Cartier cuff links that if memory serves were green and very chic and expensive. They did not register with Mr. C, who told Tom Corbally that “your friend Taki is a cheapskate.” Size mattered to those gents, and the cuff links I gave him were understated to say the least. But then we made up for good. Tom had told Mr. C that Gianni Agnelli and I were great friends, and Mr. C told me he’d like to meet the Fiat heir and chairman-to-be. Costello had a daily morning shave at the Waldorf Astoria barbershop, and Gianni Agnelli kept a suite at the Waldorf Towers. I pleaded with Gianni to come down to the barbershop for two minutes, and he finally said yes. Mr. C called him Giovanni, while Gianni called him Mr. Costello. “I wanted to meet you and tell you my first car was a Fiat,” said Mr. C. “I won it in a raffle in Atlantic City when I was a kid. I told the man holding the mic that No. 9 wins. He told me to get lost. Then I showed him the rod and repeated that No. 9 wins. And it did.” “How amusing,” said Agnelli, “I don’t think our advertising department can use it.”
Yep, those were the days, and they all came back because of a new movie, The Alto Knights, that features Frank Costello played by Robert De Niro. In this film Mr. C is shown as an uxorious husband. In real life Mr. C was married but spending three nights a week with Thelma Martin, his mistress, whose apartment was a couple of blocks down from where he lived with his wife. Movies always show life to be worse than it really is.
This originally appeared on Taki’s Magazine.
