“Tell me somethin’,” Sammy says over a bowl of clam chowder. “How come everybody is talkin’ about Chicago and the Unione Siciliana? I mean, I know Charlie is Meyer’s friend and all, but what’s that got to do with us? Why should we care?”
Rosen is stymied.
“Because,” he says, stalling for time. “It’s these old greasers. It’s like…the Jews in Brooklyn were getting hassled by the Black Hand, who were a bunch of greasers trying to control the chicken market. They wanted the Jews to raise their price but the Jews wouldn’t do it because people need the chickens, you know, for religious reasons. The Black Hand was going to blow up their joints until Charlie stepped in.”
“We care about Chicago because of Charlie?”
“No,” Rosen says. “Not exactly. I mean, I think it has something to do with Charlie but, well, the Unione Siciliana has something to do with all these greasers. Meyer has it all figured out. Maybe you should just ask him.”
“Sure,” Sammy says.
Hours pass before speedboats roll in. The boys load the booze into the gang’s trucks. The rain is falling steadily now. Tabbo pulls up his shirt collar and gives Rosen a look.
“I’ve got a bad feeling,” Tabbo says.
Rosen says, “I told you not to eat the clams.”
Twenty miles north of town, the gang encounters agents of the Bureau of Prohibition stopping traffic. Uniformed men wave lanterns at the oncoming traffic. Chase cars flank the stop sign planted in the middle of the street.
Sammy creeps along, suspicious of the barricade and using traffic as his shield.
“Something’s fishy,” he says.
Rosen shakes his head. He gives the uniformed men the once-over but it is too dark to make out details. The men look legitimate enough. Sammy slows to a crawl. The trucks behind him close ranks.
Sammy says, “Legit or not, I’m bustin’ through.”
Rosen leans out the window and points a flashlight at Niggy Devine’s window. He flashes it three times. Niggy gets the signal but Tabbo, tight on the rear of Niggy’s truck, does not.
Sammy slams down the accelerator. He frees the clutch. The truck squeals into action. The uniformed officers unload rifle fire into the first two trucks as they bulldoze the barricade. Tabbo tries to catch up. He swerves to avoid an agent running for a chase car and loses control. The truck rolls over and slides along the highway in a flurry of sparks.
“Tabbo is down,” Rosen yells.
Agents take after Sammy and Niggy. The Ford truck is rattling apart from the speed. Cases of scotch and Cognac clatter and crack in the back of the truck. At $65 a case, it’s going to be an expensive night.
Sammy swerves wildly onto a dirt road. The load shifts to one side. Sammy overcompensates, jerking the steering wheel hard right. The load shifts again. More bottles shatter. The countryside reeks of lost revenue.
Running at full speed, the truck sprays rock and debris at the chase cars dogging them from behind. Sammy cranks his neck around. Headlights bounce behind him.
“When I stop, make a run for it,” Sammy yells.
“What?” Rosen yells back.
“Just do it,” Sammy says.
He slams on the brakes. Niggy Devine rams into the back of the halting truck, catching the corner of the rear panel and slinging the truck sideways. The two trucks join together like Siamese twins. Sammy sees the inevitable coming fast. He braces himself. Nig Rosen flies around the cab. The first of the Prohibition cars slams into the back of Niggy Devine’s truck, forcing it toward the ditch alongside the dirt road. The truck tumbles over. Niggy rides the rocky road on his shoulder.
The inertia of the crash sends Sammy’s truck headlong into a tree. The second of the agents’ cars swerves to miss colliding with the booze trucks and plunges into the ditch.
Rosen jumps out the passenger window. Sammy is close behind. Under a barrage of bullets, they hobble into the darkness. Niggy Devine punches out the front window of his truck with his boots and escapes into the marshland after Sammy and Rosen.
The agents lay down a blanket of fire. The boys huddle close to the ground while their pursuers kick through the debris. Dismayed at what little is left to salvage, they set the shipments ablaze and leave the fractured mob to fend for themselves.
Cognac lights up the night sky.
“I knew it,” Sammy says. “Prohibition agents don’t walk away from a bust. Let’s find Tabbo before the cops do.”
Rosen stands and brushes the debris from his clothes and shakes the fog from his head. Who organized the ambush? That’s the question of the hour.
The dirt road runs parallel to the main highway. The boys double back for Tabbo and find him hunkered down covered with gashes and bruises. Tabbo shakes himself awake. Nobody, not even Tabbo, knows if he has been beaten or simply injured from the crash.
The local police are slow to show up at the crime scene. They comb the accident for clues and come to the obvious conclusion: rival bootleg gangs. It’s just another headline that nobody needs except for the likes of Eliot Ness.
The boys hitch a ride in the back of a farm truck.
Rosen says, “You can drop us at the first food shack that shows up. We can use a good meal.”
It is Rosen who drops a nickel in the phone to call Meyer. Tabbo heads for the bathroom to wash the crusted blood from his face. He raises his collar high and pushes back his hair. In the early morning gloom, the ruse almost works. Rosen sends Niggy in for hot coffee and pie.
The waitress studies Niggy’s worn leather jacket and raw skin as she hands him coffee to go. The coffee and pie fill the empty hole of their conversation while they wait for Benny to arrive. Then the four of them slide into Benny’s two-tone beige Chrysler and ride silently back to New York.
“They torched the trucks. The Camp Fire Girls on the Jersey shore,” Rosen mocks.
“I think it was the Diamond brothers,” Sammy says at last.
“How can you be sure?” Benny says.
Sammy laughs. “The hat.”
Benny says, “Not again.”
Sammy says, “I’m just kiddin’ with ya. They had the drop on us from the start. When we ditched the trucks, they couldn’t see us but we could see them. It looked like Jack Diamond that was swaggering around lookin’ to see what was left. The truck’s headlights lit him up pretty good. He started hollerin’ about all the broken bottles. He was madder’n hell, and Irish for sure. Eddie, sounded like Eddie, kept tryin’ to calm him down. Eddie wanted to salvage what was left. Even with the breakage, they coulda made a good haul but Jack wouldn’t have it. He wanted all or nothing so he set fire to what was left.”
Tabbo says, “You know what they say. God invented whiskey to keep the Irish from conquering the world.”
They roll into the Cannon Street garage. A doctor is on the spot. Everybody is exhausted. Meyer takes stock of the injuries as the doctor peels Niggy’s jacket away from the bloody flesh.
“Hold still, son,” the doctor says, digging at the embedded debris.
Satisfied that no injuries are life threatening, Meyer and Benny head to the back of the garage and to the quiet of Meyer’s office.
“Irish guys,” Benny says. “Sammy thinks it was the fucking Diamond gang. Aren’t they running dope with Charlie? Ain’t they satisfied with dope, they gotta make a move on our business, too? What the hell is wrong with these guys? It ain’t like they don’t have the cash. Son of a bitch pays more for a suit than he woulda made off our booze.”
“I’ll talk to Charlie. His business with Legs doesn’t involve bootleg. If it is them, they’ve crossed the line.”
Benny, enraged, paces back and forth, ready for action.
“Just be sure you know they did it before you act,” Meyer warns. “We can’t enforce the law unless we toe the line.”
Benny leans close, “I’ll be sure. And you can be sure I’ll take care of it in a way they won’t forget.”
* * *
The Diamond brother
s, Jack and Eddie, frequent a saloon in the Bronx. Jack celebrates his twenty-seventh birthday with a pint and a handful of stories not the least of which is the latest snafu just outside of Atlantic City. Eddie, the younger of the two, keeps his mouth shut while Jack takes credit for their near score on the mob the Daily News has dubbed the Bugs and Meyer mob.
“The Jews have this city tied up tighter than a gnat’s arse. They want to control Jersey and Philadelphia, too. I guess we showed them a thing or two.”
Sammy, Tabbo, and Niggy Devine push into the bar followed by Benny. Jack looks up long enough to smirk at the Jews entering the saloon.
“You Jew boys are a little far from home,” he says.
Benny cozies up to the bar.
“Beer,” he says.
The bartender draws a pint of near-beer. Benny takes a swig and spits it to the floor.
“Is this what the Irish call beer? No wonder micks rob from Jews.”
Jack grins. The joint is quasi-segregated. Irish on one side, guineas on the other. The Jews don’t have a side.
Benny says, “You got any sacramental wine back there? In a few hours, it’s Shabbat. I’d like to get a jump on Kiddush.”
Sammy laughs. It’s the most Yiddish he has ever heard Benny utter in a single breath.
Jack glowers. He pulls a revolver and sets it next to him on the table. Red Levine plows through the pub door and gives Benny a nod.
Benny says, “Forget it. It tastes like piss and reminds me of an Irish brothel.” He raises a limp finger.
The bartender says, “Take it outside, boys.”
Jack tries to stand but he’s drunk and unable. One of his boys rushes in from the outside. He is sweating, red-faced. His eyes dart back and forth between Jack and the Jews at the bar. He whispers something in Jack’s ear that flushes Jack with adrenaline and sobers him quickly.
The crowd passes around glances. Benny drops a quarter on the bar for the near-beers and then the boys from the Cannon Street garage leave. Outside is an idling car with Nig Rosen at the wheel. The boys pile in. A few seconds later, they pass the assemblage of the Diamond gang hunched over the dead body of their lookout.
Jack and Benny lock eyes as the Bugs and Meyer mob rolls past the scene.
Rosen ditches the sedan. The boys make their way back to the garage independently.
“Looks like the Irish are dropping like flies,” Charlie says, entering the garage.
“Better watch out for the Italians,” Meyer says. “The police put Frankie Yale at the scene of O’Banion’s murder. You should get Joe A. out of Brooklyn for a while. We don’t need them making the connection between Yale and Joe A. as murder suspects.”
“I got that covered,” Charlie says. “Now that Bloody Angelo took over the Unione, he wants to be sure the Irish know that the Italians ain’t gonna be pushed around no more like they was with the other guy.”
“The Irish aren’t intimidated by the Sicilians,” Benny says.
Charlie finds newfound respect for Giuseppe Antonio Doto, Americanized as Joe Adonis, and now known as Joe A. They have been spending time together. Joe A.’s ease among the theater crowd pays off in new business for their bootlegging enterprises. Like other Americanized guys, Joe is tired of the old greasers and their tirades over tribute. Yale, grown in the Calabrese criminal world, is ’Ndrangheta to his core: honor, secrecy, violence, solidarity, and mutual assistance. He tolerates this alliance between Joe A. and Charlie Lucky but maintains a disapproving eye. Joe A. borrows a lesson from Yale’s play-book, deciding to wait out Yale’s conflicts with his rivals to see who winds up on the top. In that way, Joe A. assures himself he will move up the ladder of success bullet-free.
Meyer ticks off the list of greasers like notches on the grip of a .38. They are becoming numerous. Maybe that explains Costello’s acceptance of allying himself with Charlie Lucky and Joe the Boss. Between Joe A. and Costello, the ties with Tammany have already proved useful for keeping the heat off the mob.
Nig Rosen says, “The sheriff in Atlantic City is eager to play ball. Why don’t we put one of our guys down there where we can make better use of his city? We bring our booze in there, load it into a freight car outside of Philadelphia and ship it all over the Eastern seaboard.”
Meyer likes the idea. So does Charlie.
“See what you can do,” Meyer says. “Who have we got in Philadelphia?”
* * *
Wednesday, September 23, 1925, looks like any other day. Low clouds buffer the bright sun. The temperature is a mild 75 degrees. Emory Buckner, a clean-shaven, Bible-toting, legal eagle, becomes the new United States Attorney for the Southern District of New York. He has been hired to clean up the city. His first job, as he sees it, is to clean up the bureau. Buckner calls it reorganization. The wisecracking rumhounds, Izzy Einstein and Moe Smith, are the first to go. It isn’t their record Buckner rejects, 4,932 arrests of which ninety-five percent ended in convictions and five million gallons of confiscated liquor worth an estimated $15 million, but their costumes that gets them early dismissal.
Buckner hires the same sort of man that he sees daily in the mirror, then plants the men as spies everywhere liquor might slide through the cracks. When one of his undercover customs agents gets word about a “rum vessel,” Buckner’s men are at the ready.
The prime suspect, the Nantisco, creeps along the Hudson River heading for the docks controlled by the Irish. Before she can weigh anchor, she is boarded by Buckner’s new breed of Prohibition agent. All paperwork onboard is confiscated as ordered by the U.S. Attorney of the Southern District of New York. Buckner intends to establish a paper trail that will allow him to identify all the major bootleggers in New York. The Nantisco could be his ticket to ride up the career ladder.
“You’ll find what you’re looking for in the lumber cargo,” the undercover agent had told Buckner.
Unlike Elliot Ness’ Chicago brewery bust, the Nantisco pays off big-time.
The news of the seizure spreads through New York faster than the influenza of 1918. Buckner collects names of bootleggers, smugglers, and conspirators the way Larry Fay collects a potential client list from the Social Register in the newspaper. This case just might be the career-making investigation of the decade.
“Sir,” the voice on the other end of the phone says, “you better come down.”
That is how the coroner summons Buckner to view his informant, Edward Starace, the undercover customs guard. Buckner makes his way from his office to the coroner’s side where Starace lies in cold storage. The smell of formaldehyde and decomposing flesh swarms over Buckner like the East River over a double-crosser in cement boots.
Buckner’s knees wobble.
“This isn’t a funeral parlor,” the coroner says. “The body isn’t, what you might call, viewable.”
The skin on Starace’s face is black from stagnant blood, the discoloration a result of subdural hematoma.
“Starace was beaten unconscious before he died,” the coroner says. “The crosses were carved into his face with a razor blade. Some sort of Irish death ritual.”
Buckner steadies himself. He examines every wound and mark. Though the crosses are typical Irish warnings, nothing Buckner uncovers ties Big Bill Dwyer, the biggest Irish bootlegger, to the murder. Buckner is stymied. The investigation comes to a halt. Then one day the phone rings.
“Hello?” a voice says. “I wanna talk to the man in charge. He’ll be interested in what I have to say, believe you me. Tell him it’s Captain Hans Fuhrmann on the line.…You bet I’ll hold on.”
Hans Fuhrmann tips Buckner to Waxey Gordon’s place in the scheme of things. Buckner’s zeal for righteousness rises to a boil. He garners a search warrant, collects his men, fortifies them with the local police and heads for the Knickerbocker where Irving Wexler, aka Waxey Gordon, purportedly sells real estate, the same place where Benny and Sammy watched Waxey prove he was Rothstein’s superior.
Waxey Gordon kicks back in his Knickerbocker offic
e and leafs through the latest issue of Time magazine. He flips back to the cover and stares at the photo of George Gershwin. It is an odd photo for the cover of a magazine. Gershwin’s smile curls in disgust. His dark eyes harbor resentment.
Waxey says to his partner, Max Greenberg, “He ain’t got a care in the world and still he can’t crack a smile. Me, I got plenty of trouble and I’m smilin’ all day long.”
He throws down the magazine and buzzes his secretary.
“Send him in,” he says of the man who has been waiting nearly an hour to see him.
The rather impatient Broadway producer clears his throat and starts to pitch his latest idea for a show. The tall, thin man nervously spins the brim of a straw hat. He spots the cover of the magazine.
He says, “We can get Gershwin to do the music.”
Gordon says, “You gonna take his salary out of your pocket?”
The producer offers to cut corners with the costumes and save by keeping the musical numbers to a minimum. He says he knows a set designer that owes him a favor.
Gordon says, “I ain’t hiring Gershwin. I don’t need no over-paid tin pan piano player on the payroll. Throw a rock and you’ll hit ten guys can do the same thing for half the price. The audience won’t know the difference.”
“They know the difference,” he says. “Gershwin is box office.”
“You gonna argue with me and then ask for my money? I ain’t interested in no Broadway musical. You’re taking this show to boys in the can. Got it? Good-looking broads that know how to entertain is all you need. Keep the music loud and it don’t matter if the girls can sing or not. Give the boys a good show. You hear what I’m telling ya? Somethin’ they can laugh at and drool over. If you ain’t got that, get the hell out of my office.”
The producer nods and forces a hollow smile.
Gordon says, “Don’t look so glum.”
“He wrote ‘Fascinating Rhythm,’ for God’s sake,” the producer says. “You can’t beat that. It’s a real toe tapper. It’s the best advertising around. His name guarantees…”
Gordon says, “I ain’t payin’ for Gershwin. You mention him one more time and I’ll crack you one right across the face. Get the broads. That’s what sells where we’re going.”
A Bloody Business Page 14