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Little Caesar. Giving orders in New York gangdom was one unwieldy bird named Antonio Corallo, known to cronies and cops as Tony Ducks—a title bestowed in praise of his ability to avoid convictions on all but two of his twelve arrests since 1929. A beefy, movie-style heavy, Tony Ducks keeps no bank accounts, buys no property in his own name, often meets his confederates at 5 a.m. (to avoid detection), assigns one of his boys to tail any detective found to be tailing Tony Ducks. One employer, said Committee Counsel Kennedy, hired Tony Ducks just to come into his shop once every couple of weeks and glare at the employees. In 1941, after he had dodged the draft by claiming that he was the sole support of his family, Tony Ducks was convicted on a narcotics rap.
When he took the stand in the Senate caucus room, Tony Ducks was not talking, beyond muttering "I refuse t'ansuh on the ground it may tend ta 'criminate me." But Tony talked anyway—on six wiretaps played by the committee. In telephone talks with a Runyonesque rogue's gallery of obsequious underlings (including his front man, natty Sam Goldstein, who also claimed protection under the Fifth Amendment), Tony Ducks showed that he is a Little Caesar among New York's labor racketeers: as a top gun, Tony Ducks snarled out advice to his hoodlums. Item: he ordered one of them to get Jimmy Hoffa, or Hoffa's St. Louis henchman, Harold Gibbons, to settle one of the many New York Teamster problems. The committee heard enough to conclude that Tony Ducks, as well as Mobster Johnny Dio, helped rig the key Teamster election in Joint Council 16, and that he even planned to offer beleaguered President Martin Lacey $10,000 a year to move over and leave the spot for Hoffa's man, Johnny O'Rourke.
The Conspiracy. As the week wound up, 74-year-old Martin Lacey showed up to verify much of the testimony. The chartering of the Teamster phony locals, he said, tears in his eyes, was the result of "fraud and deception . . . a major conspiracy." Lacey was seconded by Teamster Vice President Tom Hickey, Jimmy Hoffa's chief enemy in the Teamsters'
Eastern Conference, who told how Hoffa tried to get a charter for Johnny Dio.
"Mr. Hoffa," testified Hickey, "interceded for Mr. Dio. [Mr. Dio] impressed Mr. Hoffa no end." At a high-level meeting with Dio, Hickey and Dave Beck, Hoffa tried to win Beck's agreement to sweep Dio into the Teamsters Union with a Dio-controlled taxicab local, but, said Hickey, A.F.L. Boss George Meany (now president of the A.F.L.-C.I.O.) killed the move. In the end Hickey discovered that Hoffa had sneaked Teamster charters through to Dio anyway. Announced Hickey: he will run for the international presidency against Hoffa late next month. Asked John McClellan: "If you should be elected, would you use all power vested in you to clean out this organization?" Replied Tom Hickey firmly: "I would dedicate myself to that ambition."
With its heavy load of evidence, the McClellan-led caravan moved on relentlessly toward Jimmy Hoffa's door. Hoffa's Teamster career would depend directly on how much of the hot cargo he could touch without burning his fingers.