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Should Galante and Dellacroce destroy each other, waiting in the wings is Anthony ("Tony Ducks") Corallo, 64, who earned his nickname by beating almost every rap against him, including grand larceny, possession of narcotics and bribery of public officials. Imprisoned for extortion on one of the few occasions when he failed to duck the prosecutors, Corallo lost control of his family to one Andimo Pappadio. He regained it last September by arranging—with Galante's help—for Pappadio's murder.
A remote candidate to become New York's crime czar is Galante's former boss, Joseph Bonanno. His age (71) works against his ambitions. So did the murder in February of Frank ("Bomp") Bompensiero, who was Bonanno's chief ally on the West Coast—and an FBI informer. Bomp was one of the 20 people who have been executed over the past two years by professional hit men armed with silencer-equipped .22-cal. pistols (TIME, April 18).
A different sort of generational struggle is going on in Chicago, where the 250-member Mob, known as the Outfit, is still nominally in the hands of Anthony ("Big Tuna") Accardo, 71. He spends most of his time at his $126,000 condominium in Palm Springs, leaving day-to-day operations in the hands of Underboss Joseph Aiuppa, 69, nicknamed "Doves" because he once slaughtered hundreds of the birds while hunting in Kansas. But Aiuppa's grip is shaky—some authorities say he has no executive ability—and eager young thugs are on the warpath against the old guard. So far, they have not gone after Accardo or Aiuppa but have settled for promotion by gunfire to the Outfit's middle and upper echelons.
A few of the war's 21 victims over the past 3½ years have been police informants and potential prosecution witnesses. But most have been mobsters. Among those killed were Sam Giancana, who abdicated as the Outfit's leader in 1965, and Richard Cain, an ex-cop who served as a top aide to Giancana. The latest to die was top Triggerman Charles (Chuck) Nicoletti, 62, an Accardo protégé. He caught three .38-cal. slugs in the head on March 29 while sitting in his blue Oldsmobile sedan outside the Golden Horns Restaurant in suburban Northlake. For good measure, the assassins fire-bombed his car.
Among the Chicago Mob's rising stars is James ("Turk") Torello, 46, a native of Cicero, Al Capone's old base. According to the FBI, Torello did so well as an executioner for Giancana that he was given several West Side bookmaking rings in the early 1960s. Moving swiftly into other neighborhoods, Torello now supervises all of the Outfit's gambling operations. He lives modestly in Cicero with his wife "Doodles."
Torello revels in the sadistic side of his work. An FBI wiretap once recorded him plotting in Miami to murder a Chicago union boss by taking him out to sea in a powerboat, slitting his throat, chopping up his body and feeding the pieces to the sharks. The FBI intervened. Another FBI wiretap overheard Torello telling how he had hung William Jackson, a 350-lb. loan shark, on a meat hook and tortured him with an electric prod. "He was on that thing three days before he croaked," Torello said excitedly. "He was floppin' around on