(2 of 3)
"I said, 'What was it about?' "He said, 'It's Panto, some guy Albert had a lot of trouble with down on the waterfront, and he was threatening to get Albert into a lot of trouble. He was threatening to expose the whole thing, and the only thing Albert could do was to get rid of him. He tried all sorts of different ways to win him over and quiet him down, but he couldn't do anything with him. He had to kill him.'"
So Panto was killed, and life for workmen in Brooklyn's six "Camarda locals" of the International Longshoremen's Association—so-called because of their ironhanded rule by a hoodlum named Emil Camarda—went on as usual. Anastasia was not even brought in by O'Dwyer for questioning. Rank & file members of the A.F.L. union, witnesses testified, had to pay their dues to gangsters who simply appropriated them. They were rarely allowed to hold meetings. They not only had to "kick back" up to 40% of their salaries for the privilege of getting work, but to contract for haircuts at a certain shop (which they were not allowed to enter) and to pay exorbitant prices for wine grapes from certain favored dealers whether they wanted to make wine or not.
What did ex-cop, ex-judge, ex-district attorney, ex-general, ex-mayor, now ex-Ambassador O'Dwyer have to say about this? Safely south of the border in Mexi co, last week, he cried: "If they're so goddam interested in Anastasia, then why the hell don't they prosecute the —!
Ordeal of a "Reformer." The commission also heard of bribery, corruption, larceny and sudden death across the Hudson in New Jersey. When Jersey City's "reform" mayoralty candidate, John V. Kenny, ended the 30-year rule of Boss Frank ("I Am the Law") Hague in 1949, there was dancing in the streets. But last week "Reformer" Kenny was accused and re-accused of being hand in glove with platoons of racketeers.
Albert Jordan, his former chauffeur, testified that he frequently drove Kenny to the home of a Jersey gangster and gambler named Charlie Yanowski, who was later stabbed to death with an ice pick. Kenny, it developed, also had a deep interest in the waterfront and held a secret midnight meeting last March with moonfaced, heavy-handed Anthony Strollo—prisonbound Joe Adonis' successor in the Jersey rackets. For reasons never explained, Entertainer Phil Regan, an ex-policeman known as the "Singing Cop," furnished them his room in Manhattan's midtown Warwick Hotel for the rendezvous. Mayor Kenny denied the whole business before the grand jury. But six days later he admitted all. He had dealt with Strollo after all, but he had only gone to see Strollo for civic good—the way "Roosevelt went to see Stalin," he said. He had been ashamed to admit it, "because all my life I have been clean." Chauffeur Jordan had a different story: the mayor had wept on his shoulder, and moaned: "They've got me dead to rights —they must have had a bug [microphone] in the room."