Those of us who grew up in the industrialized river valleys of Western Pennsylvania never needed a crime commission or a Hollywood movie to tell us about the mob. It was a part of our everyday lives.

The daily number. Football bets. Video poker. Pinball machines. Backroom poker games at the pool hall or social club. Almost everyone partook of one or more of these vices, or knew someone who did.

Russell Shorto perfectly captured this milltown milieu in his delightful memoir, “Smalltime: A Story of My Family and the Mob.’’ The story focused on his grandfather, an Italian immigrant who ran a gambling operation in Johnstown.

Paul N. Hodos offers a more sinister take on the local mob in his provocative new book, “Steel City Mafia: Blood, Betrayal and Pittsburgh’s Last Don.’’ Hodos confirms Shorto’s memory of Johnstown’s organized crime scene as comparatively tranquil. But he says that was not the case in other communities, like Altoona, Uniontown and New Kensington.

“Many people were beaten, killed, robbed, assaulted, wronged by corrupt officials and turned into addicts, thieves, prostitutes and debtors, all so the men who ran the Pittsburgh mob could live lives of leisure, wealth and adventure,’’ Hodos writes.

Pittsburgh’s Cosa Nostra traces its roots to the early 20th century, when warring immigrant factions vied for control of the city’s bootlegging and gambling. There were more than 200 organized crime-related murders in Pittsburgh from 1926-1933, Hodos reports.

The city’s first recognized godfather, Stefano Monastero, died from shotgun blasts outside a city hospital in 1929. His successor, Frank Amato Sr., tamped down the violence and amped up the profitability during his reign from 1937-1956. He retired with a kidney ailment.

Amato’s successors, John LaRocca and Michael Genovese, were similar low-key operators. LaRocca, a Sicilian native who died in 1984, worked out of his Allegheny Car Wash. Genovese conducted business out of the Holiday House in Monroeville before moving to a used-car lot in Verona. Both men raked in millions of dollars a year while keeping a lid on violence.

One reason the mob flourished from post-prohibition until the 1970s was because law and the public generally viewed gambling-related activities as petty crimes – “smalltime,’’ to borrow Shorto’s description – and, so, looked the other way.

Everything changed in the 1980s. The steel and coal industries collapsed, taking gambling receipts down with them. To make up for the lost revenue, Genovese dropped the mob’s historical aversion to narcotics. Almost overnight, Genovese and his wise guys became the biggest drug dealers in the region. They flooded the river valleys with thousands of kilos of cocaine, according to Hodos.

They also moved to expand their service territory. They waged a bloody war with Ohio mobsters for control of the lucrative Youngstown rackets. Nine men died in the mayhem, which ended in 1983 with a Pittsburgh victory.

The violence wasn’t confined to Youngstown.

Melvin Pike, a mob enforcer from Uniontown, was shotgunned to death while watching his daughter practice at a gymnastics studio in Washington, Pa.

Gerald “Snooky’’ Walls, a mob informant, testified that Pike was whacked on orders from Wheeling, West Virginia, kingpin Paul “No Legs’’ Hankish, who suspected that Pike was encroaching on Hankish’s Fayette County drug operations on behalf of New Kensington crime boss Gabriel “Kelly’’ Mannarino, a Genovese associate.

The local mob’s nine-decade run effectively ended in the 1990s when state and federal law enforcement flipped mobsters like William “Eggy’’ Prosdocimo and Charles “Chucky’’ Porter, and got them to testify against their associates. Notably, while underbosses like Porter testified against each other, they never flipped on Genovese.

With most of his gang behind bars, Genovese decided to let his organization die of old age rather than initiate new members, Hodos writes, thus making Genovese the last don. Genovese died of congestive heart failure and kidney cancer at his West Deer home on Oct. 31, 2006. He was 87.

“He beat us at the game,’’ said FBI agent Roger Greenbank.

Clocking in at 170 pages, “Steel City Mafia’’ moves as briskly as an old episode of “The Untouchables.’’ If only Walter Winchell were still around to narrate the audiobook.

Steve Halvonik is a former Post-Gazette reporter and editor.

First Published: May 11, 2023, 9:30 a.m.