I know I've said that this empire of vice fueling the world beneath us was so vast that

it was managed by Meyer Lansky's architecture of offshore banks and profit distribution via

wire transfers, not by bags of cash, being dropped on a boss's desk like in the movies.

But Roy Cohn, cut bags of cash, dropped on his desk like in the movies.

In 1984, after Roy Cohn had pressed the signature of Meyer Lansky's business front Louis Rosen

Steel onto a cardinal or last testament, granting Cohn control over Rosen Steel's remaining

assets from his liquor empire, but before Cohn was disbarred for it, another one of his

clients delivered a bag to his desk with $175,000 in cash.

It was payment for a sudden reduction to Mario Giganti's prison term, approved by Judge

Charles Stewart on the recommendation of Senator Al D'Amato.

Mario Giganti was the brother of Vinnie the Chin, boss of the Genevieve's crime family

at the time.

The call from D'Amato had reached Judge Stewart after making its way through the new U.S.

attorney for the Southern District of New York.

A prosecutor who, himself, was the son and nephew of men in Frank Costello's territory

when he was running things for Lucky Luciano.

The father and uncle Harold and Leo were enforcers, loan sharks and gamblers who ran their

operation out of Leo's restaurant, Vincent's, named after a grandfather who'd been shaken

down and then folded in by the black hand mafia.

Contemporaries of Paul Costelano, the father and uncle operated in the neighborhood that

was Costello's.

It's unclear if they were captains of his or even had an official title, but the connections

...