re: Boardwalk Empire 27- Bone for Tuna

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Also, can anyone explain the situation with the italian boy and the whole heroin situation they are running.

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On January 17, 1919, the Eighteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution was ratified, and Prohibition lasted until the amendment was repealed in 1933. The Amendment prohibited the manufacture, sale, and transportation of alcoholic beverages. As there was still a substantial demand for alcohol, this provided criminals with an added source of income.

By 1921, Luciano had met many future Mafia leaders, including Vito Genovese and Frank Costello, his longtime friend and future business partner through the Five Points Gang. Also in 1921, Brooklyn gang boss Joseph Masseria recruited Luciano as one of his gunmen.[11]

At some point in the early 1920s, Luciano left Masseria and started working for gambler Arnold "the Brain" Rothstein. Rothstein immediately saw the potential windfall from Prohibition and educated Luciano on running bootleg alcohol as a business[12] Luciano, Costello, and Genovese started their own bootlegging operation with financing from Rothstein.[12]

Rothstein served as a mentor for Luciano. In 1923, after ruining his reputation in the criminal community with a botched drug deal, Luciano went to Rothstein for advice. Rothstein told Luciano to buy 200 expensive seats to the Jack Dempsey–Luis Firpo boxing match in the Bronx and distribute them to top gangsters and politicians. Rothstein then took Luciano on a shopping trip to Wanamaker's Department Store in Manhattan to buy high end, classy clothes for the fight. The strategy worked, and Luciano's reputation was saved.[13]

By 1925, Luciano was grossing over $12 million a year; however, he was netting only about $4 million each year due to the costs of bribing politicians and police. Luciano and his partners ran the largest bootlegging operation in New York, one that also extended into Philadelphia. He imported scotch whiskey from Scotland, rum from the Caribbean, and whiskey from Canada. Luciano was also involved in illegal gambling.

On November 2, 1928, a bookie shot and killed Rothstein over a gambling debt.[14] With Rothstein's death, Luciano quickly pledged fealty again to Masseria.
[edit]

Rise to power

Luciano soon become a top aide to Brooklyn crime boss Giuseppe Masseria. In contrast to Arnold Rothstein, Masseria was an uneducated man with poor manners and limited management skills. By the late 1920s, Masseria's main rival was boss Salvatore Maranzano, who had come from Sicily to run the Castellammarese clan activities. This rivalry eventually escalated into the Castellammarese War, which raged from 1928 to 1931 and resulted in 60 mobster deaths.

Masseria and Maranzano were so-called "Mustache Petes", older, traditional mafia bosses who had started their criminal careers in Italy. They believed in upholding the Old World Mafia principles of "honor", "tradition", "respect", and "dignity". The Mustache Petes were not willing to work with anyone who was not Italian or Italian-American, and were even skeptical of working with anyone who was not Sicilian or Sicilian-American. Some of them refused to work with anyone who did not have roots in the same village as they did. Luciano, in contrast, was willing to work with Jewish and Irish gangsters if there was money to be made. For this reason, he was shocked to hear traditional Sicilian mafiosi lecture him about his dealings with close friend Frank Costello, whom they called "the dirty Calabrian".[15]

Luciano soon began cultivating ties with other younger mobsters who had begun their criminal careers in the United States. Known as the Young Turks, they chafed at their bosses' conservatism. Luciano wanted to use lessons he learned from Rothstein to turn their gang activities into criminal empires.[16] As the war progressed, this group came to include future mob leaders such as Frank Costello, Vito Genovese, Albert Anastasia, Joe Adonis, Joe Bonanno, Carlo Gambino, Joe Profaci, Tommy Gagliano, and Tommy Lucchese. The Young Turks believed that their bosses' greed and conservatism were keeping them poor while the Irish and Jewish gangs got rich. Luciano's vision was to form a national crime syndicate in which the Italian, Jewish, and Irish gangs could pool their resources and turn organized crime into a lucrative business for all.[17]

In October 1929, Luciano was forced into a limousine at gun point by three men, beaten and stabbed, and dumped on a beach on Staten Island. He somehow survived the ordeal but was forever marked with a scar and droopy eye. The identity of his abductors was never established. When picked up by the police after the beating, Luciano said that he had no idea who did it. However, in 1953, Luciano told an interviewer that it was the police who kidnapped and beat him.[18] Another story was that Maranzano ordered the attack.[19] Other stories cited a jealous boyfriend and robbers. The most important consequence of this episode was the press coverage it engendered, introducing Luciano to the New York public.

[edit]Power play
In early 1931, Luciano moved to eliminate Masseria. The war had been going badly for Masseria, and Luciano saw an opportunity to switch allegiance. In a secret deal with Maranzano, Luciano agreed to engineer Masseria's death in return for receiving Masseria's rackets and becoming Maranzano's second-in-command.[20]
On April 15, 1931, Luciano invited Masseria and two other associates to have lunch in a Coney Island restaurant. After finishing their lunch, the mobsters decided to play cards. At that point, Luciano stepped out to go to the washroom. Four gunmen – Benjamin "Bugsy" Siegel, Vito Genovese, Albert Anastasia, and Joe Adonis – then walked into the dining room and shot and killed Masseria and his two men. Luciano then took over Masseria's gang and became Maranzano's lieutenant.[20]

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the guys shooting at the "kid" (aka Bugsy Siegel) were Masseria's men. Siegel was delivering heroin in his coat and hat for Meyer Lansky and Luciano.

This season is 1923, based on their clothes I would say right now in the show is the end of winter. The Dempsey/Firpo fight was in Sept 1923 so Luciano losing face in a botched drug deal and then buying 200 suits for gangsters and politicians is coming up later in the season