A Bloody Business

by Dylan Struzan

  Joe says, “This is some bicycle, eh?”

  Mineo clears his throat and replies in kind, “I am thinking for my son. All the boys want one.”

  Joe says, “Walk with me.”

  The bloated blister on Mineo’s heel pops. The pain is terrible as his heel continues to rub against the stiff leather. For the sake of his self-esteem, he tries to ignore the pain.

  Joe the Boss prods his paesan for news of the Brooklyn Italians.

  “Please, may we sit while we talk?” Mineo gestures to his foot. “New shoes.”

  Joe says, “Never wear new shoes. I have a man who breaks them in for me. I will give you his name.”

  They stop at the Sabatini bakery. Signora Sabatini hustles a plate of sweet rolls to the table. Joe the Boss eases his large body onto the round seat of the bentwood chair. He makes sure that he maintains a proper view of the street outside. Mineo is left with his back to any trouble that might arise. Instantly, he is nervous. His boss, should he see them together, would certainly see the meeting as treachery.

  Mineo’s boss openly opposes Joe the Boss. He has sided with Castellammarese in rebuffing the moves Joe is making to take control of the Brooklyn rackets one mob at a time. The wake of opportunity that followed Frankie Yale’s murder has left everyone ambitious and more than a little paranoid.

  Joe the Boss says, “Signora, you have any more of those little cheese pigs you get from your hometown? You must try these, Alfredo. They are delicious. Now, what is it that brings you to Mulberry Street?”

  “Can I be frank with you?” Mineo spits out carefully.

  Signora Sabatini brings a pair of the cheese pigs. Joe grabs a little porker, pinching it hard between his stubby fingers and bites off the little head.

  “Try one,” he insists.

  Mineo manages to nip off the snout before spilling his guts. He does not agree with his boss. The Brooklyn Sicilians are making a mistake pledging loyalty to Salvatore Maranzano. Maranzano is too ambitious, too eager to take control.

  The words tickle the ears of Joe the Boss. He latches onto Mineo’s private question.

  He says, “I understand your concern but you are not alone. Now that Frankie Yale is gone and Anthony Carfano is in place, Brooklyn will remain ours.”

  “Do I have your blessing to do what must be done, Don Masseria?” Mineo says.

  Joe the Boss examines Mineo’s sincerity, detects no deception.

  “I give you my blessing,” Joe says at last, “but let me give you a word of advice, my good friend.”

  Mineo glances out at the street to make sure he is in the clear before he leans closer to hear the words Joe the Boss is about to utter.

  “The Lindy bicycle is too expensive,” Joe says. “Do not spoil your son. I have a friend. He will get you a nice bicycle for much less.”

  Mineo stands and thanks the fat man for his good sense. He puts enough change on the table to cover the expense of eating at the bakery and bids Joe the Boss good day.

  On October 10, just as the lamps are being lit and the neighborhood begins to take up residence on the stoops for a bit of cool air, Alfred Mineo makes his move. He stations himself along with two accomplices near the corner of Avenue A and Thirteenth Street.

  The fifty-year-old boss that rules over Mineo drives up with his family. He and his wife are being treated for heart disease by the local doctor. This has been their routine for weeks now. Mineo’s boss steps from the car. Before he can open the car door for his wife, Mineo draws him into a quarrel.

  They squabble. Mineo’s cohorts rush in and open fire.

  Three bullets lodge in the boss’s back, one in his left eye, one in his chest, one in his abdomen, one in his groin, one in his right shoulder and one in his leg. Nine bullets in all. He drops to the ground and bleeds to death. His wife sits frozen in fear, unable to move or open the car door. The sight of her dying husband is too much for her to endure. The four children crouch on the back-seat floor screaming, their older sister draped over the younger ones protectively.

  A crowd forms but no one can identify the killers.

  The police arrive and take note of the murder and then they dig into the gangster’s life. They wonder what a cheese importer with a record of two arrests is doing with three cars and a fine home in the Bronx. Further digging reveals that the family lived in the Bath Beach section of Brooklyn. This neatly ties the cheese importer to Frankie Yale’s murder and the murder of Yale’s lieutenant, who was buried only yesterday.

  Mineo reads the newspaper satisfied that the spotlight has not landed on him. He plots moves on the waterfront. Joe the Boss celebrates his good luck. One less Sicilian mucking up his dynasty.

  “I’m getting old,” he says. “I deserve respect.”

  The Irish, who have long dominated the docks, sense the Italians breathing down their necks. A man named Umberto Anastasia, also known as the “Mad Hatter,” heads up the International Longshoremen’s Association, but his ambition reaches beyond the maritime union. His resume includes an eighteen-month stint at Sing Sing for brutal attacks on his fellow workers.

  Salvatore Maranzano seizes on current events to fan opposition to Joe the Boss.

  “Nobody is safe until we deal with this monster,” he says.

  The ears of the Brooklyn Castellammarese perk up.

  Chapter Thirteen

  If At First You Don’t Succeed, There’s Always Gehinnam

  NOVEMBER 1928/1929

  Arnold Rothstein’s mind is having trouble connecting the sound of the gun blast with the pain in his abdomen. He looks down at his bloodstained shirt then up at the smoldering .38 Detective Special and wonders if his father had it right. All his stern, forbidding words. Was this the recompense for ignoring the old man’s advice?

  Blood soaks the front of his trousers. He tries to sit down but his legs don’t seem to bend. His ears ring. He can’t understand the words coming from the mouth of George McManus, the guy who has, for the last fifteen minutes, insisted Arnold pay his gambling debt.

  George stands in the middle of Room 349 of the Park Central Hotel, frozen with fear. Sweat rolls down his round face. He swipes at it with the cuff of his shirt and wonders what went wrong. Not thirty minutes earlier Rothstein had agreed to meet him here to work out the details of the past-due debt incurred in a poker game.

  “You stupid mick,” Rothstein says, insisting that forty-six is too young to die. He presses his hand hard on the hole in his abdomen and says again, barely audible, “You stupid mick. What the hell are you doing with a gun?”

  George’s brother Tom, a retired Detective Sergeant, looks on in disbelief. George wipes the sweat blurring his eyes.

  “I’m sorry, Arnold. It just went off,” George says.

  The smell of burning flesh hovers in the room. Tom grabs the towel hanging from the rail above the washbasin and scrubs the .38 of any evidence that might implicate his brother.

  “Don’t just stand there,” Tom says. “Go on before the paddy wagon comes. You get as far away from here as you can. You got that? Hide, George, and don’t tell nobody where you are.”

  “You dubs,” Rothstein sputters as his eyelids flutter.

  Tom pitches the .38 through the rotting, soot-ridden screen, a pitch worthy of Lefty Grove himself.

  Rothstein’s heart pounds. His head aches. Like a cheap truck with a worn-out gasket, he continues to leak. He grabs the back of the desk chair for support. It tumbles sideways under the pressure. Hotel stationery spills onto the floor, blotting the deep red goo that once kept Rothstein running.

  “You shouldn’t a made me do this,” George hisses. “You shoulda paid up!”

  “The game was rigged and you know it,” Rothstein says.

  Tom grabs George’s arm. “It’s spilt milk,” Tom tells Rothstein. “If you’d a given him what you owe him, none of this would have happened.”

  The brothers dart from the hotel room. Rothstein stands alone sucking in short, painful breaths. His body begins to co
nvulse. He staggers into the hallway and then struggles down three flights of stairs. Blood trails him. He finds himself in the hotel’s service corridor. It is nearly 11 P.M. The elevator operator, on his way to work, takes him for drunk until he recognizes this is Arnold Rothstein. Everyone at the Park Central knows that the Big Brain doesn’t drink, not even socially.

  “Are you sick?” the operator says, only then noticing the crimson track on the floor.

  “Get me a taxi,” Rothstein says. “Get me to Polyclinic Hospital.”

  Rothstein leans against the wall and then sinks, slowly, to the floor. His voice is barely a whisper. He rewinds September’s poker game in search of the moment when things went wrong: the $322,000 he owed Nate Raymond, the gambler’s agreement, the revelation that Nate owed Titanic Thompson. That’s it, he thinks. Thompson owed everybody. Then tonight, the McManus clan all present and accounted for in room 349. George McManus had lied about being alone when he phoned Lindy’s and interrupted late supper with Inez. The phone call, yes, the goddamned phone call from the dub who took a rigged poker game seriously.

  “Mr. Rothstein?”

  “Hello?” Rothstein says.

  “Mr. Rothstein, are you O.K.?”

  Rothstein looks toward the voice. Patrolman Davis has joined the party.

  “I want to go home,” Rothstein says.

  Davis says, “Mr. Rothstein, you’ve been shot. Who shot you?”

  “Get me a cab,” Rothstein says. “I live at 912 Fifth Avenue. Get me a cab.”

  “An ambulance is on the way, Mr. Rothstein,” Davis says. “Try to relax.”

  Rothstein explores his gut.

  The hotel manager rushes in with a stack of towels. The patrolman wads them around Rothstein’s middle.

  “Take me to Polyclinic Hospital,” Rothstein says. “Call my doctor. Understand. I want my doctor.”

  “Yes, Mr. Rothstein,” Davis says.

  Three dozen employees crowd around the famous, limp body to get a glimpse of Mr. Big’s demise.

  “Is he dying?” somebody asks.

  “Well he ain’t dancing a jig,” somebody else says.

  “Who shot you?” Davis repeats.

  Rothstein’s eyes are glassy; his thoughts fade into incoherence.

  Two medics push their way through the crowd dragging a gurney behind them. They gather up Arnold Rothstein and take his vital signs. Rothstein stares blankly at the sky as he is rolled from the hotel to the waiting ambulance.

  Several blocks away, at the corner of 57th and Eighth Avenue, George McManus steps into a pharmacy phone booth to make a call. He is on his own. The boys split up as they left the hotel, each hustling away in a different direction. McManus picks up the receiver and drops a nickel in the box and calls the one guy he trusts to get him out of this jam, Tammany’s chieftain, Jimmy Hines.

  “Hello, Jimmy?” he says. “There’s been a little trouble. Arnold Rothstein was shot.”

  “Don’t say another word,” Hines says. “Where are you?”

  “Fifty-seventh and Eighth Avenue,” McManus says.

  “Stay put,” Hines says. “Understand? Stay put.”

  “I’m in trouble,” McManus says.

  “Georgie,” Hines says, “we’ll have somebody to ya in a flash. Don’t move. We’ll get through this.”

  Hines hangs up the phone and calls Frank Costello. Ten minutes later, Bo Weinberg, the Dutchman’s right-hand man, flies around the corner and slams to a halt in front of George McManus, who waits hunched at the curb with his hands stuffed into his pants pockets. McManus dives into Weinberg’s Buick sedan. The sedan speeds away.

  McManus takes a handkerchief from his pocket and swabs the sweat on his face and neck.

  “What the hell?” Weinberg says. “Somebody shot Arnold Rothstein?”

  Like a boy getting a scolding, McManus drops his head in shame.

  “Jesus Christ! You’re kidding me, right?” Weinberg says, “You knocked off the Great A. R.?”

  “Goddamn hebe,” McManus says—and then chokes out, “No offence, Bo, but I got payoffs, ya know. These guys lookin’ for their money are lookin’ at me. Goddamn Rothstein. It’s been three months! Three fucking months since the game! He’s tellin’ everybody the game was fixed. Horseshit. It wasn’t fixed. He lost fair and square. He owes me. Three hundred fifty grand. Fair and square.”

  Weinberg says, “Everybody knows Arnold is paper rich and cash poor. He’s a gambler, for Christ’s sake.”

  “He wanted me to wait for the election. Said he’s got a winning ticket.”

  Weinberg laughs. “Yeah? Well, you’re gonna have a helluva time collecting if he drops dead. Where did you hit him?”

  McManus says, “I wanted to scare him. That’s all. The gun just went off.”

  “Rule of thumb, George, never give a loaded gun to a guy who don’t know how to handle himself. In your case, never take a loaded gun when you are hot under the collar. It always winds up bein’ somebody’s funeral. Who the hell thought it was a good idea to go packing, anyway?”

  “My brother,” George says.

  “The social worker?”

  “Tom,” McManus says.

  “Leave it to a copper,” Weinberg says. “That’s all they know. There ain’t no silver bullets, Georgie. Can’t wait to see how Hines pulls this one off. You better hope Rothstein don’t die. Now I want you to listen and I want you to listen good. You’re gonna lay low for a while. You think you can handle that?”

  McManus fumbles with a cigarette. His hands tremble. The wind blows out three matches before he manages to light it. The big Irishman sucks in a lungful of smoke and lets it out slowly.

  He says, “Me and this broad got a room at the Park Central.”

  Weinberg says, “Your blonde alibi.”

  McManus laughs. “Yeah. How’d you know she was blonde?”

  “Look around, George. They’re all blonde. Can she handle the heat?”

  McManus says, “She handles me, don’t she?”

  Weinberg motors across the Brooklyn Bridge and winds his way to the Bronx. As the distance from the Park Central Hotel grows, McManus breathes easier. Weinberg stops the car in front of a small apartment.

  “This is it,” Weinberg says. “Home, sweet home.”

  He takes McManus inside and makes coffee for them both. McManus paces. He sits. He rubs his hands together as if trying to wash them clean.

  “Relax,” Weinberg says. “And for god’s sake, stay put! There’s an old woman who’s gonna make sure you got food. I told her you were a sick friend of mine. Cough a lot. She won’t get too close. Whatever you do, don’t leave the apartment. Don’t leave the apartment! And don’t call your goddamn cop brother. Let Jimmy do the work.”

  McManus nods.

  Weinberg says, “I’ll be back later with some clothes. What size do you wear?”

  “Forty-two,” McManus says.

  “Stay calm, Georgie,” Weinberg says. “Everything’s gonna be all right.”

  Rothstein is admitted to Polyclinic Hospital. Detectives swarm the Park Central. A cabbie stumbles on the discarded Detective Special that got pitched through the window. He stops a patrolman to hand over the gun.

  “I picked this outta the gutter,” the cabbie says, waving the pistol. “Maybe you’re lookin’ for it?”

  The patrolman grabs the gun. The gutta-percha stock of the .38 special is cracked, the hammer jammed. One cartridge remains in the chamber.

  “Where’d you get it?” the patrolman says.

  The cabbie points toward the trolley tracks.

  “Show me,” the patrolman says.

  They wade through traffic. The Detective Special had bumped across Seventh Avenue’s trolley tracks and found a home against the far curb somehow. The cabbie points to the spot. The patrolman shines his flashlight along the curb. Five unexploded shells litter the ground. The patrolman scoops up the bullets and dutifully stuffs them into his pocket, the wool uniform wiping away any fingerprints that
might have been left behind.

  At Polyclinic Hospital, nurses and doctors labor over Rothstein’s body. The loss of blood has left Rothstein weak and unresponsive. The sun rises. Abe the Just, Arnold’s father, sits next to the hospital bed and watches as his son slips away. Abe bows his head and says a prayer for the deceased. It’s his duty, like the obligation, according to Jewish tradition, to have his son in the ground within twenty-four hours. The lifeless body of Arnold Rothstein is ushered to Riverside Memorial Chapel.

  Charlie Lucky has a cup of coffee and heads to the Claridge Hotel.

  “Did you hear about Rothstein?” Charlie says.

  Meyer says, “I heard McManus called Jimmy Hines, and that Bo Weinberg drove McManus to a safe house. Hines musta called Frank Costello, who called the Dutchman.”

  “Yeah,” Charlie says. “Tammany owes him. If it wasn’t for Costello, Jimmy Walker wouldn’t’ve been mayor. But where does the Dutchman come in?”

  “I don’t know,” Meyer says. “Rumor already has it that this is a hit by the Dutchman. But McManus is a gambler, not a hit man. What the hell was he doing with a gun?”

  Charlie says, “Me and George Uffner cleaned out Rothstein’s office last night. This morning detectives are crawling all over the place. They won’t find nothin’. We can follow the trail to his rackets. Costello shouldn’t have no trouble picking up the political connections. The rest we’ll sort out with the boys.”

  Rothstein’s body is dressed in a white shirt, a simple dark suit, a purple-striped prayer shawl, dark shoes and socks, and a white skullcap. The body is placed in a mahogany casket with a glass lid. That way, should God look down from heaven, Abraham Rothstein is assured He will see a devout man and a good son lying in repose.

  Rothstein is put on display in the chapel. The patriarch reads Psalms over the body of his wayward son. Rabbi Jung rips the shirts of Rothstein’s mother and father, his brothers, and his sister. Cantor Jassinowski extols God in song. If he has any aspirations for Broadway, he isn’t making them known this day.

  “Y’hei shlamah rabbah meen sh’mahyah, v’chahyeem aleynu v’al kohl yisrael, v’eemru: Amein,” he sings. May there be abundant peace from heaven and life upon us and upon all Israel.