by Nick Carter
This time excitement had overruled any qualms Louie might have had before. The race of battle does that to men, even to the Louies of this world.
* * *
We hit the Garden Park Casino in New Jersey that night, eight of us in two comfortable limousines. The guard dressed as the elevator starter in the lobby of the Garden Park Hotel was no trouble; neither was the operator of the private elevator that went only to the Casino on the supposedly non-existent thirteenth floor. We herded the guard into the elevator at gunpoint, knocked them both out and ran the elevator ourselves.
We stepped off the elevator at the ready, submachine guns poised in front of us. It was a glittering scene. Crystal chandeliers hung from the high ceiling while plush draperies and deep carpeting helped to hush the croupier's sing-song, the click of the steel ball in the roulette wheel and the underlying hum of subdued conversation punctuated by occasional exclamations of excitement. It was the biggest gambling room on the East Coast.
A handsome man in a precisely cut tuxedo turned with the beginnings of a genial smile. He was in his middle 30s, a bit on the stocky side but dashing with jet black hair and bright intelligent eyes — Anthony Ruggjero, Don Gaetano's cousin.
He took in the significance of our entrance in a millisecond, spun on his heel, and made a diving leap for a switch on the wall. Locallo's machine gun ripped angrily, a staccato of violence in the charming atmosphere. Ruggiero's back buckled, as if snapped in two by an unseen giant hand, and he collapsed like a rag doll against the wall.
Someone screamed.
I leaped on a blackjack table and fired a burst into the ceiling, then menaced the crowd with my gun. At a dice table ten feet away, Manitti was doing the same thing. Louie, I could see out of the corner of my eye, was standing just outside the elevator, staring at Ruggiero's body.
"All right," I yelled. "Everyone be quiet and don't move, and no one will get hurt." Off to the left, a croupier made a sudden ducking movement behind his table. One of the other hoods who had come in our party shot him neatly in the head.
Suddenly, there was a deathly silence, with no movement. Then the Franzini men began moving through the crowd, cleaning cash off the tables and out of wallets, loading up with rings and watches and expensive brooches. The large crowd was in a state of shock, and so was Louie.
We were out of there in less than seven minutes and back in our limousines heading for the Holland Tunnel and our Greenwich Village hideout.
"Jeez!" Louie kept saying all the way back. "Jeez!"
I clapped him on the shoulder. "Take it easy, Louie. It's all part of the game!" I felt a little sick myself. I don't like to see men gunned down that way, either, but there was no point showing it. I was supposed to be tough. But this time the responsibility was squarely put on me, since I had set up that phony telephone call. I couldn't let it bother me too long. When you're playing the kind of game I was playing, someone is going to get hurt.
And by the next day, a lot of people started to ache.
First, the Ruggieros raided the Alfredo Restaurant on MacDougal Street where, contrary to orders, four of Popeye's hijack specialists had sneaked out to eat lunch. Two gunmen came in the back way, sprayed them with machine-gun fire as they sat, and left quickly. All four died at their table.
Franzini struck back. Two days later, Nick Milan, the aging consigliore of the Ruggiero family, was kidnapped from his Brooklyn Heights home. Two days after that, his body, trussed with heavy wire, was found in a junkyard. He had been shot once through the back of the head.
Then, Chickie Wright was shot down on the steps of his doctor's office, where he had gone to get some pills for his hay fever.
Frankie Marchetto, a longtime underling in the Ruggerio operation, was next — he was found at the wheel of his car, shot four times in the chest.
The naked bodies of two of Franzini's men were found in a rowboat adrift in Jamaica Bay. Both with their throats cut.
Mickey Monsanno — Mickey Mouse — one of the leaders of the Ruggiero mob, escaped injury when he sent one of his sons to get his car out of the garage. The car exploded when the kid turned on the ignition, killing him instantly.
The final straw came on Friday when six Ruggiero men, armed with shotguns and submachine guns, stormed into the Franzini Olive Oil Co. By sheer luck, Philomina had just taken Popeye for his daily walk through the park. Four other men in the office were shot to death, but two women clerks were untouched.
We were putting the finishing touches on a bizarre plan of Popeye's to raid Ruggiero's estate in Garden Park when suddenly it was called off. Word had come that the Commission, disturbed as much about the sudden limelight being thrown on Mafia affairs as it was about the daily mounting death toll, had called a meeting in New York to arbitrate the situation.
Louie was excited again as we left our Houston Street apartment and headed for home, Louie to his bachelor pad in the Village, me back to Philomina's."
"Boy, Nick! You know, they're all supposed to come in! Tough Joey Famligotti, Frankie Carboni, Little Balls Salerno, all the big guys! Even Allie Gigante is coming in from Phoenix! They're going to hold the meeting Saturday morning."
He was like a kid talking about his favorite baseball heroes coming to town instead of seven of the most important crime figures in America.
I shook my head in disbelief, but grinned at him. "Where's it going to be?"
"The Bankers Trust Association board room up at Park Avenue and Fifteenth Street."
"You're kidding? That's just about the most conservative, established bank in town."
Louie laughed proudly. "We own it! Or, at least, I mean we've got shares in it."
"Fantastic," I said. I should have read those papers I had taken from the Counting House more carefully, but there had hardly been time. I clapped Louie on the shoulder. "Okay, paisano. I've got a date with Philomina tonight. You going to want me?"
He frowned. "No, not tonight. But on Saturday, each Commissioner gets to take two guys to the bank with him. You want to go with Uncle Joe and me? It might be a lot of fun."
Oh sure, I thought. Great fun. "Count me in, Louie," I said. "Sounds like a great idea." I waved and got into a cab, but instead of going directly to Philomina's, I went uptown to the Banker's Trust Association on Park Avenue. I wanted to see what it looked like. It looked formidable.
I went to the bus station, picked up my 17B kit and went back to the Chelsea to ponder my problem. The opportunity to be present at the Commission meeting was a stroke of luck, but I had to figure out some way to make the most of it. It wouldn't be easy. The Banker's Trust Association building was going to be crawling with Mafia hoods tomorrow, each fanatically concerned with protecting his boss.
It was Philomina, oddly enough, who gave me an idea that night after dinner.
She snuggled in my arms on the couch and yawned. "Do me a favor when you go to meet Uncle Joe and Louie tomorrow, will you?"
I cupped one hand around her breast "Of course."
"Now, stop that!" She removed my hand. "On your way down to the office, would you stop and pick up a new hot water bottle for Uncle Joe?"
"A hot water bottle?"
"Don't look so surprised. You know… one of those red rubber things. Whenever Uncle Joe starts shaking so badly he can't control it, a warm hot water bottle to put his hands on seems to help. He always carries one in that little rack underneath the seat of his wheelchair, so it's handy whenever he wants it."
"Okay, if you say so. What happened to the old one?"
"It's getting leaky," she said. "He's had it a long time."
I went down to the drugstore on the corner of Ninth Avenue and Twenty-third Street that night and picked one up. Then, later that night when I was sure Philomina was sound asleep, I got up and packed it carefully with plastique.
It was difficult to set the detonator and timer fuse in the water bottle, but I finally managed it. The meeting was supposed to begin at ten o'clock the next morning, so I set the timer
for ten-thirty and kept my fingers crossed.
I was going to have to figure out some way not to be in the vicinity when that damned thing blew, because when it did blow, it was going to blow big. But I would have to play that by ear. As it was, I'll admit, I was quite restless in bed that night.
Chapter 16
Locallo drove Popeye, Louie and me from the office to the Banker's Association, and helped us unload Popeye from the car and into his wheelchair. Then, with Louie pushing the wheelchair and me walking alongside "riding shotgun," we entered the big building.
The board room was on the thirtieth floor, but we were stopped in the ground-floor lobby by two very efficient goons who courteously checked us for guns. Popeye wasn't carrying any iron, but Louie had a ridiculously small Derringer and I had to surrender Wilhelmina and Hugo. The two hoods gave me a numbered check for my weapons and we went on up in the elevator. No one paid any attention to the hot water bottle in the rack under the seat of Popeye's wheelchair.
Gaetano Ruggiero was already there, along with two of his henchmen, when we arrived in the large anteroom outside the actual board room. He stood tall and austere at the other side of the room, younger than I would have guessed, but with gray flecking the blackness of his sideburns. Hijacking and gambling were his major interests, the so-called clean crimes, but he was into narcotics, too, and murder was a way of life. It was on Gaetano's orders that old Don Alfredo Ruggiero, his uncle, had been killed so that the younger man could take over the family.
The others came in after us, each with two bodyguards.
Joseph Famligotti — Tough Joey — from Buffalo. Short, squat, with a dark greasy-looking face and a huge paunch that overwhelmed his waistband. He waddled as he walked, his suitcoat open to accommodate his stomach. He smiled benignly at Ruggiero and Franzini, then went directly into the meeting room. His two bodyguards stayed respectfully in the anteroom.
Frankie Carboni of Detroit. White-haired, prosperous-looking in a beautifully cut suit of gray worsted, sharp pointed gray shoes, a gray silk shirt, and white silk tie. He had inherited the old Purple Gang of Detroit and directed its bloodthirsty tactics into a ruthless but efficient protection racket that was the envy of all organized crime. He looked like a merry gentleman.
Mario Salerno — Little Balls Salerno — from Miami Bird-like, a wizened little man, head darting back and forth suspiciously, deeply tanned skin stretched grotesquely over sharply defined bones, a big beak of a nose, and sharp-pointed chin. He had started with the gambling dens in Havana, moved to Miami, then stretched his bloody tentacles deep into the Caribbean and west to Las Vegas. At seventy-six he was the oldest active gang boss in America, but he wouldn't retire. He enjoyed his profession.
Alfred Gigante of Phoenix. As tanned by the sun as Mario Salerno, medium-sized, neatly dressed, hunched over, each move slow and deliberate, showing every one of his seventy-one years, but his startling blue eyes cold and piercing in the hairless head. It was whispered that his sexual pleasures ran toward little girls. He had made his way up the Mafia ladder as one of the first major heroin importers in the United States.
Anthony Musso — Tony the Priest — from Little Rock, Arkansas. Tall, slim, and graceful with a rich, benevolent look about him. Diamond rings flashed on his fingers and a diamond stickpin sparkled from his tie. He wore blue-tinted dark glasses that hid the acid scars around what had been his left eye before he lost it in the gang wars of the early 1930s. At seventy-one he was still the King of Prostitution, though he claimed to have made more money in stolen property than in any of his other operations.
One by one they filed into the board room. I could see them through the open door, shaking hands over the table, exchanging pleasantries. The seven most venal men in America. Popeye Franzini was the last one to enter, pushed in by Louie. I could see the hot water bag under the wheelchair as they went in.
The rest of us, about fifteen or so, stood around restlessly in the anteroom eyeing each other suspiciously. No one was talking. Then the door to the Board Room closed.
My fist tightened spasmodically. I hadn't counted on Louie staying in the Board Room with his uncle. Dammit! I had come to like the guy! But of course, you can't afford to do that in my business.
I was just turning to go, when the door opened and Louie came out, closing it behind him. He walked over to me.
I looked at my watch. 10:23. Seven minutes to go. "Come on," I said with assumed nonchalance. "Let's take a walk and get a little air."
He looked at his own watch and grinned. "Sure! Why not? They'll be in there for at least an hour, probably more. Jeez! Isn't that Frank Carboni something? Boy, that guy just looks rich. And Tony the Priest! I saw him once when…"
He was still talking as we took the elevator down to the main lobby, where we collected our guns from the checkroom, then strolled out onto Park Avenue.
We had just crossed the street and were looking at the fountains flowing on the plaza of the big office building there when the explosion blew out most of the thirtieth floor of the Bankers Association Building.
Louie spun, one hand on my forearm, staring up as black smoke belched from high up on the side of the building. "What was that?"
"Just a guess," I replied casually, "but I think you just became head of the second biggest Mafia family in New York."
He never heard me. He was already running, dodging Park Avenue traffic like a football halfback, desperate to get back to the building, to his Uncle Joseph, to his responsibility.
I shrugged mentally and hailed a cab. As far as I was concerned, the job was over.
All I had to do was pick up Philomina at her apartment and head for the airport. I had the two tickets in my pocket and I figured that the two of us could use about three weeks in the Caribbean, just resting, loving, and relaxing. Then I would report back to Washington.
She met me at the door of the apartment, just as I let myself in, throwing her arms around my neck and pressing her body against me.
"Hi, darling," she said happily. "Come on in the living room. I have a surprise for you."
"A surprise?"
"A friend of yours." She laughed.
I went into the living room and David Hawk smiled at me from the couch. He stood up and came forward, his hand outstretched.
"Good to see you, Nick," he said.