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But servants at Anastasia's home seemed unmoved at the news (although a maid did set the dogs on reporters), and Al's family decided not to ask the Roman Catholic Church to bury him (another brother, the Rev. Salvatore Anastasio, is a Bronx priest). He was put away quietly in a plain old $900 coffin—although another brother, Joe, got a $6,000 box when he passed on (of natural causes) last year, and $15,000 worth of flowers to boot.
On the Way Out. Only the New York cops seemed genuinely stirred. Al had hardly been lugged out of the hotel before they were questioning the first of hundreds of underworld characters. The two killers had dropped their pistols on the way out; one was a .32 Smith & Wesson, the other a .38 Colt which originally had been sold in the Middle West in the 1930s. That was all anybody knew. The police were intensely curious as to why Al's bodyguard, one Anthony Coppola, was in a drugstore across the street when Al was ventilated. Anthony was just doing what his kind always does; he was having a cup of coffee.
There were dozens of theories: that it was Al who had ordered Frank Costello shot last spring and that he had paid the price; that a new, young mob was responsible for both the Costello and Anastasia shootings; that Al had declared himself the new "boss" of Manhattan garment-district rackets and doomed himself in the process.
At week's end it was only possible to wonder who in what city tenement or guarded country home was laughing hardest at the joke on Al—who had gotten the chair at last.