A Bloody Business

by Dylan Struzan

  The police turn the weapons over to a ballistics expert and track the paper trail of the abandoned car. The vehicle that pursued Yale is traced to Knoxville, Tennessee. Through wires to the local police, they discover that the car had been written off as stolen.

  News articles wallow in the grisly details. They point to the present murder ‘wave’ and use it as evidence that the good effect of the Baumes law, which dictates an automatic life sentence to any criminal convicted of more than three separate felonies, has lost its luster. Homicide is on the rise. Even Frankie Yale, who managed to wiggle free from most of his arrests, save the charge for carrying a revolver, isn’t immune. The gangster is buried like a big shot which is exactly what he wanted. The two women claiming to be his wife didn’t change a thing.

  Three days after Yale’s demise, the Commissioner and Inspector reveal the role of a Thompson .45 machinegun in the murder. That’s when they begin to speculate that gangsters driven out of Chicago are bringing their brand of brutality to New York. The revelation is devastating to everyone involved.

  “The news sells papers,” Meyer says to Charlie.

  Within days, Police Commissioner Whalen announces that he knows the name of the man responsible for Frankie Yale’s death. He accuses the “leader of a powerful group of Italians” but withholds the name saying only that the man knows Johnny Wilson and “Little Augie” Pisano and is responsible for a man named Marlow being expelled from a secret order in Brooklyn.

  Joe the Boss hears the news and laughs. Two weeks later, the Boss is picked up for questioning. A week after that, Yale’s wife, one of them, accompanied by her lawyer, turns up to claim Yale’s personal effects. The newspaper lists the widow’s assets as a belt buckle, a diamond ring, and $2,000 in cash and checks.

  A ripple of rumors circulates among the boys on the streets. Graft has just gotten more expensive.

  * * *

  A new play by Sophie Treadwell, Machinal, debuts at the Plymouth Theater in September. It uses the sensationalized homicide case that made Ruth Snyder, a housewife from Queens, the first woman since 1899 to ride Sing Sing’s Old Sparky.

  Esther Krakower, Benny’s girlfriend, talks Anne into pressuring the boys to see the play. What could a woman have done to deserve the electric chair?

  Benny says, “Why the hell do I want to listen to some sad sap tale with some broad moaning about how tough her life is because she hadda make dinner? This is New York, for Christ’s sake. All you gotta do is make reservations.”

  But Esther doesn’t back down.

  Esther says, “I want to see it. If you don’t want to come, don’t.”

  Benny moans, “What’s it gonna cost me?”

  “Five tickets and then we’ll do whatever you like,” she says.

  “Anne and Meyer?” Benny says. “That’s four.”

  Esther smiles, “And the lawyer.”

  “What lawyer?” Benny says.

  “The one Meyer brought in. The one that got a million bucks outta Henry Ford. This guy I gotta see.”

  “Can we skip the play and just go to dinner?” Benny says.

  Anne glares. Society types love this kind of thing and Esther is looking to fit in. She hopes Aaron Sapiro, the lawyer who won Henry Ford’s apology, will add a glint of sophistication to their group. Benny relents. The fivesome head out for a night on the town.

  “This guy didn’t come all the way to New York to see a play about the Dumbbell murder trial,” Benny nearly apologizes.

  Esther clamps Benny’s arm, “He’s a lawyer.”

  “It’s a play, not a murder trial,” Benny says. “Besides, Aaron works for corporations, not murderers. Ain’t that right, Aaron?”

  Aaron ducks the question. Esther hustles Benny through the open doors of the theater. The play is noisy, an exposé of the irritation and frustration centered on Treadwell’s view of the deplorable state of female oppression. Adding machines clack and filing cabinets clang until the girl marries her boss whom she cannot stand. Eventually she takes to slumming through New York’s speakeasies and succumbs to the advances of a stranger who agrees to help her kill her husband.

  “I killed him to be free,” she declares.

  Like Ruth Snyder, the protagonist is executed in the end. Unlike Ruth Snyder, no reporter observing the electrocution smuggles in a camera under his pant leg to snap a photo for the Daily News. The photo, which displays Ruth Snyder’s sagging body still strapped to Old Sparky, filled the front page the next day. The paper had to go into a second run to fill the demand. New York hasn’t stopped talking about the case since.

  Benny cannot get out of the theater quickly enough.

  “Come on,” he says, grabbing Esther’s hand. “We have a table at the Grotto.”

  The Puncheon Grotto is a dozen blocks from the Plymouth, an easy stroll through the mild September evening. The Grotto, an epicurean haven, is Jack Kriendler and Charlie Berns’ second club since the days of the Red Head on East 4th.

  The Grotto’s success is, in part, the result of the closure of New York’s great dining halls which, devoid of their wine and alcohol-based sauces, couldn’t manage to stay in business. The Grotto’s chefs are free to practice their trade on consenting adults. Everything is open to interpretation from fresh crab, brook trout, and spaghetti with tomato-and-black-truffle sauce, to patisserie with Viennese coffee and thick whipped cream. Tonight, the crab sports a delicate Champagne sauce and the whipped cream is doused with Brandy.

  Esther passes her mink stole to the hatcheck girl who runs her fingers through the deep fur.

  Benny slips the maître d’ a sawbuck. The party is escorted to the best table in the house, not because of the ten dollars but because Jack Kriendler relies on Meyer and Benny to help stock his illustrious cellar with the finest European wines.

  The waiter brings a bottle from Charlie Berns’ private stock. Berns uncorks the bottle personally.

  Aaron Sapiro raises his glass. “Next year in Jerusalem,” he says. “L’chaim.”

  The table resounds: “L’chaim.”

  Charlie Berns says, “May we never be stuck with nothing but Mevushal wine!”

  Anne leans forward and settles her elbow on the table. Her cigarette hangs limply between two fingers. She catches Aaron Sapiro with her deep, dark eyes.

  She says, “I just wanna know one thing. Why does Ruth Snyder fry while a guy like George Remus goes free? It’s nuts. You know? He killed his wife. Snyder killed her husband. What kinda double standard runs our justice system?”

  “What kinda double standard lets a wife throw her husband’s business away?” Benny says. “Remus was dead in the water the minute he emerged from prison. His business was long gone.”

  He casts a knowing smile in Meyer’s direction. The business had moved on from George Remus. Pharmaceutical certificates don’t wait for those serving time. Connections change. Business goes on, as usual.

  “Justice? What’s that got to do with justice?” Sapiro says. “The emollient that allowed Remus to wriggle free from his conviction was not justice or even acquittal on the grounds of insanity. The jury was all male. They could relate to George. A good trial lawyer knows it’s all in how you spin the story. Think about it. George Remus is sent to the pen for crimes against the Volstead Act. He does his time. Two years, right? His wife takes up with another man and not just any man but a Prohibition agent. That’s adultery. Tsk, tsk right there. The wife and the lover sell George’s businesses, spend the millions, and leave Georgie a hundred bucks for his trouble. One of the jurors said if they could have acquitted him clean, they would have. ‘We decided that the man had been persecuted long enough.’ Ruth Snyder is a different story. In her trial, she was the trollop and her husband the victim. The play seeks to tell a different story, a more compassionate tale of the Ruth Snyders in this world. Maybe one day women will become jurors and have a say about what justice might look like to them.”

  “Ha,” Anne says. “We just got the vote eight years ago!
”

  Sapiro says, “It wasn’t the why but the how that convicted Snyder. She tried to kill her husband seven different times and failed. The lovers garroted the husband, stuffed his nose full of chloroform-soaked rags, and tried to make it look like a burglary. He was executed, too, the lover. Henry Judd Gray, I think was his name. George Remus on the other hand, in a fit of rage, got out of his car, walked over, and shot his wife. People understand that action. Planning and deception are different.”

  Esther says, “She was desperate. She wanted the insurance money.”

  Anne says, “Snyder made the cover of the Daily News. The paper sold half a million copies but her kid didn’t get one penny of that money. His mother was a spectacle for all of New York see but he’s still left an orphan.”

  Sapiro shrugs. Tell that to the judge.

  * * *

  Summer fades and with it the memory of Frankie Yale and the press’ insistence on the new danger to New York’s streets. Brooklyn settles into a new rhythm with Anthony Carfano managing Yale’s gambling and bootleg businesses while Albert Anastasia, another Calabrese and leader of the International Longshoremen’s Association, becomes ever more aggressive at taking control of Brooklyn’s docks, and why not, now that Frankie Yale is out of the way.

  Perched on the shore on the Brooklyn side of the Williamsburg Bridge, is a luxurious Italian restaurant that stretches lazily along the East River taking full advantage of a million-dollar view. The brilliance of Manhattan’s shoreline outshines the stars in the sky.

  Maranzano looks out at Manhattan and raises a glass of Chianti to his Old World friend, Joe Profaci.

  “Salute!” he says. “Frankie Yale is no longer a thorn in our side.”

  “Salute!” Profaci agrees. “Let’s hope we’ve seen the end of his five-cent cigars.”

  Yale is Maranzano’s latest example of everything that is wrong with men who lack honor. Snapshots of Yale’s life fill the conversation.

  The $50,000 funeral.

  The fifteen thousand mourners.

  The overcrowded Church of St. Rosalie.

  The 250 automobiles, 38 covered with floral tributes.

  The hearse.

  The hundred policemen lining the five-mile route from church to grave.

  St. John’s cemetery.

  The photograph in the Daily News that shows a flood of mourners and Yale’s flower bedecked coffin.

  The $7,962 that was left behind.

  The feuding wives; Yale having neglected to inform the first Mrs. Yale of their divorce.

  The diamond-studded belt buckle that the first Mrs. Yale sold for $500 to bring her take to $8,462.

  It was a crying shame and a disgrace to men of real honor.

  Maranzano says, “Fifty thousand dollars for a funeral. These thugs have no foresight. It would have been better to spend that money on soldiers. And this war between Yale and Capone, what were they fighting over? The Unione Siciliana?”

  Profaci says, “What business does a Calabrese and a Neapolitan have fighting over the Unione Siciliana?”

  Maranzano says, “They are jealous of Our Tradition. It drives them to destroy us. They will destroy the Unione so they can control all the Italians as one. Capone wants his puppet to control the Unione in Chicago. The old Calabrese didn’t like his underling’s choice. My fear, old friend, is that men such as these have corrupted the minds of our young. So many have lost sight of what it means to have honor. We must purify Our Tradition.”

  Profaci takes a fatherly tone, “It is the nature of young men. Respect has to be taught.”

  Maranzano says, “Joe Masseria is to blame. He has become the Boss, and not the Father the men need. What do you expect from a man with the table manners of a Hun? He is incomplete inside. He is greedy for what does not concern him. The glutton in him cannot be satisfied.”

  Profaci nods. “Keep clear of him.”

  Maranzano says, “He will devour us all. Stefano thinks so, too, and Giuseppe Aiello. Capone’s threats have sent Giuseppe into hiding. Joe the Boss encourages this foreigner to cut off our existence. We must come together as one if we are going to survive these wild dogs.”

  The men dip crusty bread in olive oil and speak of Sicily and the good times they enjoyed before Benito Mussolini took control. They gnaw on olives, roasted garlic, artichoke hearts, mozzarella, prosciutto, mushrooms, and marinated artichokes.

  Maranzano says, “The artichokes are fresh and plump, no?”

  Profaci says, “Business is good. We can still import what we need to eat well.”

  Profaci spends another half an hour talking about his estate turned hunting lodge in rural New Jersey. Maranzano’s longings stir. His Brooklyn house is modest by such standards. His paesan immigrated to America in 1922. Maranzano calculates how long it will take him to catch up with a mansion of his own.

  Profaci suggests that Maranzano take a break from the strain of the city by joining him for a leisurely week in the country where they can relax away from prying ears and discuss the current state of affairs.

  Maranzano eagerly agrees. His ambition to use Sicilian possibility to thwart the whirlwind known as Joe the Boss is palpable. A cool assessment of Italian rackets could be just the thing he needs to congeal the soldiers into a fighting force capable of defeating the Hun.

  The two men finish their meal and agree to meet the next morning for a week-long retreat.

  Maranzano slides into his armor-plated Cadillac and tells his driver, a young man he calls Pepito, to show him the town.

  “I want to see where the people live,” he says.

  Pepito takes him through the local neighborhoods before crossing the Williamsburg Bridge and winding through the Lower East Side and through the heart of Manhattan ending in Harlem, blocks from the Cotton Club.

  “In America, everybody is a King,” Maranzano says.

  “Pardone?” Pepito says.

  “The Olive Oil King. The Artichoke King. This is how we make our success, by giving people what they need,” Maranzano says. “Is everything set?”

  “Everything is set,” Pepito says.

  “Then take me home, Pepito. I am tired now and need to rest.”

  After dropping him off, Pepito heads for a back alley and a rendezvous with a neighborhood kid. At fifty cents a head, Pepito purchases half a dozen rats. Night falls. Under the cover of darkness, he and his accomplices cross the Brooklyn Bridge and then zip through the maze of warehouses known as the garment district until they come upon the building of a manufacturer that Maranzano has been muscling with little success.

  Pepito and the boys pile out of the car and slip into the building. Racks of silk, satin, and lace hang like ghosts animated by a soft evening breeze. Pepito dons heavy leather gloves and, one by one, wrangles the rats from their cage. The boys tie alcohol-soaked rags to the rat’s tails and then ignite them. The rats run helter-skelter through the warehouse spreading flames through the clothes. Spring colors burn red hot then turn to ash. Black smoke billows into the night sky. By morning, an entire season is lost.

  Maranzano packs his suitcase. He kisses his wife. Pepito takes him to Joe Profaci’s Brooklyn home. The two men then head to New Jersey to sort out the details of a Sicilian summit.

  The garment manufacturer is still mourning his losses when the cutters and sewers show up for work. Lepke Buchalter, who has had his eye on the unions long before the strikes made such a grab possible, looks on from afar. He smokes a cigarette and assesses the damage. To the union coughing up his fee, this assault strikes quite a blow.

  Lepke finishes his cigarette and hails a cab.

  “Delancey and Essex,” he says.

  Over a bowl of kreplach, he makes his complaints known to Meyer.

  Lepke says, “I don’t scare easily. I’ll get to the bottom of this.”

  Meyer says, “I had a situation just the other day. This guy had a connection but he didn’t have the money so he comes to me and Benny. We think it over. It looks like a good
investment so we give him the cash. The guy goes out and buys himself a new Chrysler. Payday comes around and he cries ‘broke.’ I tell him, ‘You’ll make payments to me weekly.’ He misses three payments. We send a couple of cops over to pay him a visit. The guy hightails it into the Claridge and starts crying on Benny’s shoulder about how tough his life is and how the deal didn’t work out and how his wife is gonna kill him if he gets rid of the car.”

  Lepke says, “And then Benny told him how he was gonna kill him if he didn’t?”

  “That’s about the size of it.” Meyer laughs.

  Lepke says, “Did you ever get paid?”

  Meyer shakes his head.

  “I’ll see if Charlie has heard anything,” Meyer says. “If it is Maranzano, see me before you do anything, will ya, Lep? The Frankie Yale affair has put us all under the magnifying glass for a while. There’s going to be changes made. You’ll get your revenge but for now, keep it under your hat.”

  “O.K., Meyer,” Lepke says, a tinge of frustration evident in his promise.

  “These things can’t be rushed,” Meyer says.

  “Yeah, I get it,” Lepke says. “I don’t want to lose what we already got. We just got Little Augie outta our hair.”

  Meyer stops in to see Charlie. Charlie listens to the story of the garment district fire. He tells Meyer about the Sicilian summit as it was told to him.

  “The Sicilians are plotting something. That can’t be good.”

  * * *

  By early fall, tensions are running high on the streets as a wave of new soldiers fresh off the boat from Italy makes a bid for various Italian rackets. An Italian, known most often as Al Mineo, strolls along Mulberry Street cursing his new shoes and the blister forming on his heel. He stops in front of a bicycle shop to loosen his laces. A row of bicycles glistens in the morning sun. The smell of Dunlop’s pneumatic tires fills the air.

  Mulberry Street is unusually quiet for a Saturday afternoon. Mineo looks at the miniature “Spirit of St. Louis” mounted on the front fender of the Lindy bicycle. He flips the propeller, amused at the commercialism. It is just the sort of thing the kids love.

  Joe the Boss strolls around the corner and catches sight of Mineo eyeing the little wonder.