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WHAT'S GOOD
You're reading GangsterMealz. Every issue, one man. One meal. One story that earns it. This week we're going to New Orleans. And we're staying a while.
"If Kennedy had been assassinated in my state, I would have been blamed." — Carlos Marcello, to an FBI informant, 1962
The Story
Mosca's sits on a two-lane highway in Avondale, Louisiana, nine miles outside New Orleans. No sign out front. You either knew about it or you didn't.
Carlos Marcello knew about it. He had a table. He came most Sundays — with family, with men whose names didn't appear on any payroll, with politicians who kept their eyes on their plates. The Moscas were friends. The back room was private. The shrimp arrived whole, swimming in garlic and olive oil, and you ate with your hands and sopped the rest with French bread.
He was five foot two. Born Calogero Minacore in Tunisia, to Sicilian parents who brought him to Louisiana as an infant and never quite made it back. By 1947 he ran the Gulf Coast. Gambling. Extortion. Shrimp boats and tomato farms as cover. A network of sheriffs, judges, ward bosses who operated inside his orbit the way planets orbit something they can't see but always feel.
Robert Kennedy came for him in 1961. Had him seized and physically deported to Guatemala on a government plane — no hearing, no warning. Marcello was dropped in the jungle. He made it back through the woods of Central America two months later, walked into the federal building in New Orleans, and announced himself. His lawyers were waiting.
On November 22, 1963, John F. Kennedy was shot in Dallas. In 1979, the House Select Committee on Assassinations concluded that the murder was probably the result of a conspiracy, and that Marcello had the motive, the means, and the opportunity. No direct evidence that he ordered it. He denied it for the rest of his life. An FBI informant reported a confession in 1985. The tape was disputed.
What is documented: that afternoon, Carlos Marcello was in a New Orleans courtroom, being acquitted on federal charges.
He died in his home in 1993. Eighty-three years old. Never deported.
Mosca's is still open. Cash only. Same highway.