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The committee dismissed Frank Costello with a dissatisfied air. It had possibly trapped him into a charge or two of perjury and contempt of Congress, and it set off a lot of loose talk about deporting him to Italy, where he was born Francesco Castiglia in 1891. (Attorney General J. Howard McGrath expressed the opinion that there was no way under the law to deport Costello. Senator Kefauver was not so sure; he asked Immigration authorities to investigate the possibility.) But it had learned little more than everyone knew before of Frank Costello's shadowy role in the underworld and the upper levels of Tammany.
Curtain. The show was all but over. The committee had one more witness, a big, roughly handsome fireman named John P. Crane. Crane, president of the New York local firemen's union, had earlier refused to tell the committee anything about $135,000 he had spent from the union's treasury. But he had talked in full before a Manhattan grand jury at the insistence of District Attorney Frank Hogan, and now with Crane's secret grand-jury testimony in hand, the committee got him to talk.
He was asked about his dealings with James J. Moran, the burly, florid politician who had been at O'Dwyer's side through much of his political career, and, during O'Dwyer's term in City Hall, had risen to become first deputy fire commissioner. Moran had already told the committee under oath that the only money he ever got from Crane was $500 in payment for tickets to a dinner.
In his next few sentences, John Crane touched off the bangup ending the audience had been waiting for. Once, Crane testified, after Commissioner Moran had said he was a poor man, Crane gave him $5,000 from the firemen's treasury. That was not all. On seven later occasions, Crane made gifts of $5,000 and $10,000 in cash to Moran—a total of $55,000 in all "to promote the good will of Mr. Moran on behalf of the firemen." (Crane also contributed $3,500 to Governor Thomas E. Dewey's Oregon primary campaign, in gratitude for Dewey's signing of legislation beneficial to New York firemen.)
Moran, Crane went on, helped him patch up a bitter feud with Mayor O'Dwyer over firemen's salary demands, and as a result, he later met O'Dwyer and made a date to see the mayor alone at Gracie Mansion.
Q. Where did you see him? A. On the porch at Gracie Mansion.
Q. Will you tell the committee what transpired. A. I told the mayor at that time that I had promised him the support of the firemen, and I offered him some evidence of that support on the occasion—in the form of $10,000.
Q. Was it loose or in a package? A. I had it in an envelope.
Q. Did he say anything? A. He thanked me. He didn't look in the envelope or anything else.
The drama called for only a brief curtain speech, and Crimehunter Kefauver gave it. "I am not going to . . . pass judgment on the conflicting testimony that has been given before this committee . . ." he said. "One testified one way; the other testified the other way. These matters are under investigation by the grand juries in Brooklyn and Manhattan."
With that, the Senators from the sticks packed up their 11,258 pages of what the city slickers said, and left town. It had been a mighty interesting visit.