Martin figured it for a test, whether he was a go-along, get-along yes-man. Raising his voice, he said, “Rea had enough to beat Anticcio, which I’m guessing was a surprise. Even though he’s a little caught up in the title, he’s not assuming it guarantees his success. You’re seeing that with the tax.”
Bielakowski worked two fingers in a circle for him to continue.
“On the surface, coming north of Spring Garden looks thick, like he was rushing to make money. Here’s the thing—Rea planned the entire dance. That production in Lou’s was scripted to get the troops focused on an enemy outside the neighborhood because all they’ve been doing the last twelve months is shooting each other.”
Bielakowski was disappointed for not diagnosing the maneuver sooner. Rea was unifying his family by rallying them against an adversary the younger Italians no longer respected or feared. “Where are you in this scheme?”
“Top producers have always been valuable commodities, even when we don’t have the pedigree. Wars only increase our importance. I make money and I’m level-headed, so I’m rising in rank.”
“How did you begin?”
Dehydrated and exhausted, Martin struggled to recall those long ago details that now felt as if they belonged to another man. “The plan,” he said, “was to start small. We figured that if I built the right résumé they’d come looking for me. My first racket was a sports book in Cherry Hill. Once that had wheels, I started handicapping at the racetrack. That took almost four years. With those plates spinning, I sponsored a weekly poker game for high rollers and wannabes. Nothing major, just enough to introduce and integrate. Another couple years until I finally got close with a guy from South Philly who was connected.”
“Who?”
“Jimmy Zoots.”
Bielakowski shrugged his shoulders. “I know the man.”
“Then you know Zoots isn’t the cousin of a guy. I’m running with a made man, paying my dues, collecting chits. You know the routine.”
“Building your case.”
“Yeah, right, building my case. And then Monte gets arrested.”
Bielakowski asked why that wasn’t enough for him to get pulled.
“I had nothing to do with that. Some mobster already doing time gave Monte up for parole considerations. I heard about the arrest same time as everyone else.”
“So the plan changed,” said the old man. “They kept you available for the upcoming power struggle.”
Martin saw an opportunity, the second Bielakowski had provided. “History repeats itself,” he said. “Unlike the suits at the U.S. Attorney’s Office, we knew the mob wasn’t dead. There was still plenty of talent on the bench, and the money didn’t evaporate just because of the plea deal. We figured Anticcio would step forward and his campaign wouldn’t go unchallenged. The bet was on Rea.”
“How did you get aligned with Rea? I remember Zoots being with Anticcio.”
“That move was a calculated risk,” said Martin, wondering whether he was earning trust or delaying the inevitable. “My gut said Rea was going to be the aggressor and win any shootout. Didn’t hurt he needed manpower and was open to building his ranks with outsiders like the War Boys. When I proposed defecting, he knew I was a big earner and saw the move as confirmation.”
“Confirmation of what?”
“His destiny.”
Bielakowski wobbled a half step before steadying himself against the table. “Greed was the weakness that plagued Anticcio, Monte, and before them Anastasia. And that craving will cripple Rea.”
“Obsessions provide leverage. They are an exploitable weakness,” said Martin, remembering his psychology lectures at the Academy.
His belly groaning, Bielakowski popped two more antacids. “The criminal mind isn’t that complex. It comes down to what it has always come down to—chasing dollars.”
Martin shook him off. “Knowing and proving are two different things. You make it sound like the cops can drop money into the street and stand by with lassos. Look at me, I’m living proof it’s more difficult. I did six months in Ocean County lockup to keep it real. And now I’m here, with you, and greed had nothing to do with any of this.”
Bielakowski spread his arms like a tent preacher. “We all choose the chairs we sit in. Some part of you is getting exactly what it wants.”
Martin lifted his chin like a belligerent child. “They seduced me. How they sold it, I never had a chance.”
A whistle from a passing barge filled the next fifteen seconds. Both men used the break to process what they’d heard and reset their boards.
When the barge’s call dissipated, Martin spoke first. The onus was on him to make a case against the status quo. “I’m close, you know,” he said. “A little more time and I can get the indictments. Rea would be off your border and out of the tax business.”
“How far north will the indictments reach?”
Martin hated the old man’s technique. Each question took him in a fresh direction, eliminating his ability to massage the narrative. “You talking North Philly?”
“North Jersey,” said Bielakowski. “And New York.”
Martin shook his head. “Philly is my focus. But Rea has mentioned using me as his liaison with New York.”
“When you bring the indictments, will other families be included?”
“Bit players, none of the management. So far, Rea has handled most of the diplomacy stuff, and there hasn’t been much dialogue. I think the other families are waiting to see if he can hold power.” Martin did his best to make the partial truth sound complete. The honest answer was that being Philly’s go-between with New York was his idea, not Rea’s. If he could infiltrate both criminal enterprises, they’d commission a bust of his head for the Hoover Building. It was an ambitious play, the type necessary to make his ten years worth the sacrifice.
The sun’s edge dipped below an adjacent building, cutting natural light away with each passing second. Twilight and then darkness would soon define their environment. Bielakowski looked over his shoulder at the sun’s position. “Our time is growing short. My wife is expecting me.”
The old man had made his decision, Martin was sure of it now. The knife won. It was the easiest of the options. Captured and restrained, his whereabouts unknown, a dead Martin came at no additional expense. The thought had Martin pawing at his wallet, fighting for one last chance to see his son’s picture. If he asked the old man to pull it now, it’d be seen as surrender, as if nothing he’d said was valuable. He curled his fingers into a fist and pressed against his restraints, the fibers in his shoulders stretched to their breaking point. “You’ve been asking me questions,” he said with a rising voice. “Give me a last chance. One more run to explain what I can do. Please, on my kid’s life, I’m begging you.”
Bielakowski told him to stop sounding like a pleading whore. His decision didn’t hinge on the pledges of a man in the midst of a countdown.
Martin couldn’t help thinking of the lengths any other mobster would travel to acquire what he offered. Perhaps that explained why Bielakowski outlasted them. “Forget what I can do. Let me say what I want and everything else is yours,” he said, blinking fast from a final surge of adrenaline. “First, I want out of this chair. I want to live.”
The comment didn’t register on his captor’s face.
“And second,” he said, “I want to finish off Rea. I’ve given it my life. Let me get to the end and I won’t hold anything back. I won’t kill a man or hurt a civilian, but everything else is yours. As long as I’m FBI and I’m allowed to close my case, you own me. I swear it. You own me.”
“Save your oaths,” Bielakowski said with a wave of his hand. “How many promises have you broken to get yourself in this warehouse?”
A silence built between the two. Bielakowski used the pause to weigh his options and double-check for false bottoms. The offer wasn’t perfect, or even as good as Martin believed. His disappearance and reemergence could be a problem. Rea might think his missing
associate had been arrested, flipped, and put back on the street. If that idea took hold, Martin wouldn’t survive the next twelve hours. But even with that possibility—or likely outcome—the opportunity to have a federal agent inside the South Philly crew was still worth the move. If war was on the horizon, Martin could tilt the scales in his favor. If the fighting never materialized, Bielakowski could sit back and wait for the indictments against Rea.
While his men might wonder why he freed the Italian, Bielakowski was a pragmatist. Rule number one was survival. Silly rituals or hyped notions of duty were distractions for other men, not him. Staying alive and protecting Port Richmond were the only guidelines, and he wouldn’t deviate now that he’d been gifted such treasure.
“Okay, then,” Bielakowski said, picking up the knife. “Let’s remove the ropes. And then we’ve got to come up with a good story for your car. Maybe I should smash your face so you can claim you were robbed.”
10.
WHEN HIS PLANE TOUCHED DOWN early, Sonny Bonhardt ran the numbers and figured he had enough time to visit the old neighborhood. He checked into his hotel on Broad Street and hailed a cab for the five-minute ride up the Benjamin Franklin Parkway. East on Fairmount Avenue to North Twenty-third Street, he peeked through the windshield, handed up a hundred, and exited without change.
Still a block from Eastern State Penitentiary, he needed the distance to take in the abandoned prison’s looming gun towers and stacked granite. Throughout the prison’s hundred years of operation, the surrounding homes—some as close as fifty feet—were occupied by guards and beer makers from nearby Brewerytown. When the last prisoner transferred out in ’71—and all the breweries closed—the local population transitioned to city workers, graduate students, and Olympic-hopeful rowers training on the Schuylkill River.
As much as anywhere, Sonny considered the prison neighborhood his home turf. He’d lived on its streets after fleeing his last foster home, scavenging to survive before discovering local bartenders would give him a nickel or beans-and-bread for sweeping floors and cleaning the johns. The rest of the day, he passed time by tossing rocks at the prison walls, daydreaming his father was inside, hearing and understanding the tap tap tap as his son’s code. Sonny pictured his old man as a stand-up guy, the kind who wouldn’t have abandoned him unless there wasn’t a choice. The kind who’d know what his rock tossing meant and track him down after being released.
One frigid day, fifteen minutes shy of the noon whistle, a prison guard on his way into work barked at Sonny to stop tossing dem fucken rocks at dem walls or he’d get a boot in the ass. Instead of emptying his hand and wandering away, Sonny reared back, threw one high at the granite wall, and asked the guard for whatever he didn’t like in his lunch pail. The guard’s answer was the back of his hand.
The blow—short and well practiced—dropped Sonny to his knees, where his suffering doubled with the guard’s humiliating laugh. Just because there wasn’t another person in the world shedding a tear for his pain didn’t mean he’d given up on himself. Before the guard strutted ten feet, Sonny grabbed a dozen stones and fired them like buckshot from a scattergun. For all the anger in his heart, he wished they were. A jagged piece caught the guard at the base of his skull and drew blood.
Knowing the guard’s reaction, Sonny figured his best chance was finding cover in the woods. Running west toward the Schuylkill River, two blocks of blurred stoops was all he needed to know he’d never make it that far. No decent food for a day left him little chance of outstriding the guard.
At the corner, Sonny faked crossing Fairmount and headed north into the heart of the neighborhood. He could hear the guard’s boots hitting the sidewalk, mismatched echoes of his own soles. Just past Aspen Street, the guard narrowed the distance, grabbed Sonny’s collar, and flipped him onto the sidewalk. His shoulder hit first, followed by his left eyebrow, which split wide.
“Little pisser,” said the guard, huffing as he kicked Sonny toward the nearest stoop. “Like tossing rocks, do you? Maybe you won’t be so worried what’s in my lunch pail when I knock them teeth out of your head, eh?”
The guard closed his hand around Sonny’s neck. Living on the streets half his life, Sonny caught his share of beatings, most from boys his own age or teenagers striking fast and quick. Injuries sustained in those altercations were rarely enough to send him to the hospital. But looking into the guard’s eyes, Sonny knew he was dealing with a different species.
The guard pulled him close. His breath smelled like rotten herring and black bread. “You know how some of the fellows in the prison make their point? They’ll have a man mouth the railing and kick him in the back of his head.”
“Please…”
“Now with the politeness?” The guard’s words were packaged inside another laugh. “Open up that hole and put it on the first step.”
Sonny swung both elbows and whipped his legs forward to brace against the stoop. The guard had little trouble slamming Sonny onto his belly and dragging him forward.
Seeing the guard’s aiming point, Sonny narrowed his mind. He figured the most important factors for surviving were picking the right spot of stone—like maybe a raised ridge was better than a depression—and the aftermath. Would he have the strength to walk ten blocks to the hospital? How much blood would he lose? What would the kick do to his jaw? And beyond that, when the bleeding stopped and he was back in the orphanage, who would ever adopt such damaged goods?
Sonny opened his mouth and took the rounded edge of the stoop between his lips. The discord between enamel and stone vibrated up his brain stem. Expecting the next sound to be the guard’s heel peeling off the sidewalk, Sonny flinched at words mortaring in from across the street.
“That’s enough, you son of a bitch,” said a man’s voice on a closing trajectory. “Hell’s wrong with you, Dickie?”
“Piss off,” answered the guard, standing tall in his uniform jacket. “I was just putting a scare in the boy. I wasn’t going to boot him.”
Wanting to dash, Sonny was held down by muscle spasms and nausea. Diagnosing himself with a busted rib, the boy focused on his rescuer—a short, stout man with a great-sized belly wrapped in a black bartender’s apron. His hair was thinned into a horseshoe pattern; an iron pipe hung from his right hand.
“Nonsense you were.” The man’s voice had a forced resonance, as if his vocal cords had been nicked and required twice the air. “I was watching from the tavern window. That’d kill him, sure as anything you could do.”
The guard matched the bartender’s volume. “Don’t come charging at me, Bonnie. This here is none of your business.”
“Anything happening in front of my tavern I’ll stick my nose in.”
“We’re not in front of your tavern,” said the guard, pointing at the ground. “We’re across the street. And you didn’t see my head.” He touched his wound, hoping to produce damning evidence. “Anyway, he hit me hard enough that I saw stars.”
The bartender tossed his chin in Sonny’s direction. “For Christ sake, I’m trying to keep my patience, but he’s a boy. You got enough licks to even the score. Time to tie it off.”
“Aw, he hasn’t even started paying for my blood.”
The barkeeper rolled the pipe on his shoulder like a batter after one too many brushback pitches. “You’re about to find out how much I hate bickering. Get yourself to work. Could change my mind, though I’m thinking I don’t want you in the bar for a week. Go drink at Schmidt’s or the Hellcat. For all I care, stay at home with the wife and kids.”
When a few seconds passed without a response, the bartender figured his argument had taken hold. Leaning on the pipe, he extended his free hand to Sonny. The guard grunted, “Fuck you,” and kicked at the offering. True to his word, the bartender whistled the pipe into the guard’s left arm and delivered a second blow to remove any doubt. The snap of bone was muted by the guard’s wool uniform.
“I warned you,” said the bartender. “The pipe’s a finisher.”
Tobacco dribbling down his chin, the guard cursed the bartender and damned his bar to ashes. We’re not through, not by a long shot. When he pledged revenge a fourth time, the bartender chased him away with a couple of quick swings.
Pressing both hands to his injured side, Sonny mustered enough strength to rise. He wanted off the street and out of the neighborhood before the cops showed. Not that the bartender wasn’t in the right, or didn’t have the grapes to handle the questioning. Sonny needed to maintain a runaway’s profile. “I’ll be on my way,” he said, backpedaling toward Fairmount Avenue. “Thanks for what you did.”
The bartender stood with one foot on the curb, the other in the street. “Don’t go running off. Follow me and I’ll stitch that cut. Wait too long and it’ll never heal—look like an oyster sitting above your eye.”
Feeling the blood trickling down his face, Sonny knew he had little choice. He couldn’t wander in that condition without attracting the wrong kind of attention. He nodded and followed the man across North Twenty-fifth Street into Bonnie’s Whiskey Room. Through the front door he found exactly what he’d expected from the narrow little tap house—walls of exposed brick, fifteen stools at the scrolled bar, a nickel-framed mirror behind the bottles, and three fans hanging from a pressed tin ceiling. Wood shavings and peanut shells covered the scuffed red oak floor. A pool table weighed down the back room.
The bartender pointed to a stool while he slid behind the bar. “The name’s Bonhardt. Horace Francis Xavier Bonhardt. Friends call me Bonnie. You can do the same.” He finished the introduction by tipping a nonexistent cap.
“I’m Sonny.”
“You got a last name?”
“Just Sonny. Beginning, middle, and end.”
The Friendship of Criminals Page 6