A Bloody Business

by Dylan Struzan

  Meyer glares. “Talk to him, Benny.”

  Benny smiles. It isn’t often that Meyer gives his O.K. this quickly. Benny looks at Charlie and then at Zwillman. Everybody agrees.

  “Maxey’s set up in the Carteret Hotel. You know the place? In Elizabeth?” Abe says.

  Benny goes to Elizabeth and confronts Maxey in his Carteret suite.

  “You still kickin’, kid?” Maxey says, deliberately mocking the twenty-four-year old.

  “Big Maxey Greenberg,” Benny says. “Some of your guys are putting some of our guys outta business.”

  “Must be some mistake,” Maxey says.

  “No mistake,” Benny says. “Fix it or I’ll fix it.”

  “What got into you?” Maxey says. “I never saw you as the negotiator type. You shoulda joined up with us when you had the chance, kid. You could be livin’ the high life by now.”

  The calm of the Carteret does little to soften the antagonism between the men. Gordon, Greenberg, and Hassel own the local politicians and run their business through an endless chain of tunnels that snake their way under the county and beyond. Maxey sees little need to bend to Benny’s demand.

  Benny smiles, “I never liked your mob.”

  “Ya got me right here,” Maxey mocks, pounding his chest.

  Benny turns on his heel and leaves Maxey to contemplate his future.

  Waxey gets off the elevator just as Benny gets on. They pass each other in silence. Waxey, the big, round-faced thug with the cheap haircut and snarling face, pounds his way down the hall and into Maxey’s suite.

  “What did he want?” Waxey says.

  “Cocksucker,” Maxey says. “Come up here pushin’ his weight around.”

  Gordon tugs at his collar, loosening the stranglehold of his tie.

  Waxey says, “Ever since they bumped off them old dons, they been prancin’ around Manhattan like the cock of the walk.”

  “So we cut ’em down to size. We ain’t got no use for them no more,” Maxey says.

  “Easier now than after Prohibition ends,” Waxey says.

  * * *

  Meyer’s growing family moves to a spacious Boston home with a view of the Charles River.

  The days are long in Boston, longer than they are in New York. Perhaps Einstein is right, time is relative. Meyer is restless. He calls Benny at the Claridge.

  “Need any help?” he says.

  Benny laughs. “WASPs got you down?”

  “My wife believes in Jesus,” Meyer says.

  “Costello has a beef with that Kennedy he’s been dealing with. Some deal gone wrong,” Benny says.

  “That’s it? I was thinking of taking the train down,” Meyer says.

  “Something’s going on in Brooklyn. Red and I are heading over to check it out. I’ll touch base with you when I know what it is.”

  That’s the extent of the conversation. Nothing serious. Benny and Red Levine head to Brooklyn and drop in at the home of one of their Brooklyn distributors. The apartment is small, a tenement joined to other tenements. The sum total of rooms is two, with one window to the outside world. That’s it. A sash window divides the rooms so that light can filter through the apartment and so that the room can be closed off to create the illusion of privacy when necessary.

  The distributor, a guy named Bernie, is a tall Jew with swept-back hair and blue eyes. His wife is nervous. She wipes her hands on a flour-spotted apron and smiles. The house smells of freshly baked bread, cinnamon, and chocolate.

  “I made babka,” she says. “And coffee.”

  She gestures at the small table in front of the fireplace where another man, named Izzy, stands sentinel over the sliced bread. Izzy nods.

  “Esther is my wife,” Bernie says.

  “Esther?” Benny says. “I’m married to an Esther.”

  Benny’s smile softens Esther’s uneasiness.

  Esther removes her apron, folds it neatly, and lays it across the inner windowsill. She retrieves the coffeepot from the small stove and fills the four cups sitting next to the four plates on the table in front of the fireplace and then places the pot on a thick crocheted square.

  “I hope you like the babka,” she says. “It’s my mother’s recipe.”

  She departs quickly out the door and down the hallway, leaving the men alone to do whatever it is men do. Benny and Red sit at the small table next to the cleanly swept hearth. They talk over the rumors circulating about Waxey and Maxey and Max Hassel.

  “You ask me, it’s Max Hassel that’s the problem,” Bernie says.

  “What’s Hassel got to do with it?” Benny says.

  “He’s got everything to do with it,” Bernie says. “You don’t think the other two goons know what’s going on, do you? Waxey’s squirreled away in his castle behind a moat. Maxey stays in the hotel surrounded by bodyguards. What’s he afraid of, I’d like to know. Mob full of ex-cons. What the hell is he afraid of?”

  “What’s that got to do with Max Hassel?” Red says. “He’s a numbers guy. He’s bought up a bunch of little breweries in Philadelphia. Wants to be some kind of beer baron.”

  Bernie says, “Waxey is still a big goon. When he wants something, he sends his guys in blasting. Greenberg can’t get out of his own way. Hassel figures the numbers, right? He’s the one calculating the odds. Goddamn gunsels want to take over the beer business. That’s what this is about. I’ll bet my last dollar on it.”

  “They’re making millions,” Benny says.

  “Hassel screwed the government out of the taxes he owed. You know how he walked away from his tax lien?” Izzy says.

  “What lien?” Benny says.

  “The lien the government put on him for over a million bucks in unpaid income taxes. Hassel ignored it. Bought himself the Berkshire Hotel instead. That’s why the government came after him. The lawyers went back and forth for years. In the end, Hassel got off for under five grand. Five fucking grand. He’s brilliant, I tell you.”

  “He’s lucky,” Benny says.

  Bernie says, “He’s using that lawyer guy Meyer uses. Sapiro.”

  “Sapiro is a corporate lawyer,” Benny says. “What does he know about tax evasion?”

  “He’s a lawyer, ain’t he?” Izzy says. “Lawyers got a lot of tricks. They’re born negotiators. This guy…”

  There’s a rattle in the chimney and then a clang on the hearth. Benny sees the bomb and jumps from the table as the bomb explodes. Bricks fly through the room like missiles. The window explodes, piercing the living with glass shards. The concussion of the blast rattles brains and causes ears to ring. The wall between Bernie’s apartment and the neighboring tenement blows out completely. The floor gives way. The boys fall into the apartment below, pinned under a mountain of bricks and furniture. They scratch their way through debris. They are bleeding and half-deaf.

  The entire neighborhood has been rocked. Benny, barely able to walk, manages to disappear into the gathering crowd as firemen and police arrive at the scene. Neighborhood men are frantically digging for survivors. Nine people are pulled from the debris and then shuttled to Gouverneur Hospital for care. Red Levine is among the battered survivors. The names of the wounded, minus Benny, are collected and appear in the newspaper article the following day.

  It takes nearly two weeks for Benny to track down the bombers. They had followed Benny and Red to Bernie’s tenement and then carefully and stealthily climbed the fire escape, found the chimney that rose from Bernie’s apartment, and dropped the bomb, making their escape across the tenement roofs.

  Benny takes the two men to an open field in New Jersey and shoots them dead.

  The War of the Jews shifts into high gear.

  Two of Abe Zwillman’s runners are shot and killed. He calls Benny and hisses into the phone.

  “I’ve got two more widows on the payroll. And then I find out that the holy trifecta is in bed with a guy from the State Beer Control Commission. You know what that means? As soon as Roosevelt is elected and makes beer legal, th
ey’re going to roll over everybody. They’re arranging a fucking monopoly.”

  Benny massages Zwillman’s wounds with words of revenge. Before Benny can formulate a plan for New Jersey, Nig Rosen is at the Claridge with complaints of his own. Waxey and Maxey are making moves on Rosen’s beer business in Philadelphia.

  Charlie Luciano and Joe Adonis enter the Claridge suite just as Nig Rosen spews, “They think they’re too powerful to be taken out.”

  “Who?” says Charlie.

  “Waxey, Maxey, and Max Hassel,” Benny says.

  “I know a couple greasers thought the same thing,” Adonis says.

  Adonis says, “Knock ’em outta the box. They won’t be so rich after that.”

  Benny rubs the back of his neck and cocks his head back and forth. “Those bastards. My ears are still ringin’.”

  “You talk to Meyer?” Charlie says.

  Benny says, “He’s got his own troubles.”

  Rosen says, “They’ve got the fucking Piccadilly, don’t they? Seven hundred fucking rooms in the middle of Times Square. All the guys hang out there. That ain’t enough for them?”

  Adonis says, “If we bury them they won’t give us no more trouble.”

  Just then, Meyer comes through the door.

  “What trouble?” he says, taking a seat.

  Benny fills him in on recent events.

  Joe Adonis says, “He’s givin’ us the finger, plantin’ the Piccadilly on 45th Street. Look out the window. What do you see?”

  Meyer says, “Waxey is giving Emory Buckner the finger with the Piccadilly. It’s revenge for shutting down his operation. Everybody goes to the Piccadilly, celebrities, politicians, you, me. This isn’t about the Piccadilly.”

  Benny says, “Then what?”

  “Waxey wants it all. Always has. I didn’t see it before. He was up there in Jersey building his empire. Prohibition is about to end so he’s making his move. He’s a clever son of a bitch. He means to take us all out.”

  “That’s what I said,” Adonis says. “They gotta go. All of ’em.”

  Rosen says, “I heard Hassel has been trying to get citizenship so he can travel to Germany and hire brew masters. His guys are all over the layout in Pennsylvania.”

  Abe Zwillman steps in and joins the powwow.

  Meyer smokes and runs through the facts. The government is intent on taking Waxey down for tax evasion. He is the latest Al Capone. The beer war has the president’s attention. Police now see the beer war as a territorial fight between the Dutchman and Waxey Gordon.

  Jimmy Alo pops in. Catching sight of the group, he turns to leave.

  “Stay,” Benny says, realizing Jimmy has a thriving beer business. “Are you having any trouble with Waxey Gordon’s guys?”

  “Yeah,” Jimmy says with a shrug. “They’ve been making moves in White Plains and the little towns around it. I got a lot of business in those towns. They’re trying to take over.”

  Meyer says, “Do these guys know that you’re with us?”

  Jimmy says, “I didn’t bother to ask.”

  “How much trouble you got?” Charlie asks.

  “Me and Moey Dimples had a few run-ins. The troublemakers won’t be bothering anybody anymore. I’ll put it that way.”

  Charlie and Meyer exchange a glance.

  Benny says, “Take the head, right, Meyer?”

  Meyer says, “Right, but we have to do this the right way since the government is all over Waxey’s business.”

  “I got a guy who’s friendly with Max Hassel,” Zwillman says.

  “How friendly?” Meyer says.

  “They pal around together,” Zwillman says.

  Meyer says, “See what you can find out.”

  “The time for findin’ things out is over,” Benny says. “I got this covered.”

  And so, the conflict escalates.

  Waxey saunters around Broadway and the Piccadilly with a broad smile, a new wardrobe, a new haircut, and a brand-new image but money has only changed him superficially. When Franklin Delano Roosevelt swept the election in November, he threw an epic party at the Piccadilly, a meet-and-greet with potential political allies.

  Back in the Carteret Hotel, Waxey Gordon keeps in earshot of his Brown Bakelite Egyptian Air King Sky Scraper tube radio. He is waiting for the news that FDR has begun the process of legalizing beer. He intends to be first in line for permits. He’s sure the Dutchman, Jimmy Alo, and all the Irish dubs have not taken advantage of the law to legalize their business. If he can squeeze in ahead of them, he can corner the market.

  Maxey Greenberg sits on the couch in Waxey’s suite listening to Roosevelt’s first fireside chat. Waxey, still in his silk pajamas and wearing his leather slippers, pads through the room in search of coffee.

  “Who cares about banking?” Waxey says. “When’s he gonna get down to legalizing beer? I thought that was gonna be his priority. Where’s the goddamn coffee?”

  Greenberg says, “It’s on the cart in the corner.”

  “You’re going to D.C. with that shyster lawyer Sapiro to make sure he says the right things to the right people. You got that? He’s got a silver tongue but we still ain’t got our permits. Go to Washington and make sure we get beer permits for our operations in Pennsylvania and Jersey. And don’t come back ’til you got them in your hand.”

  Greenberg says, “How hard can it be to get a bunch of beer permits?”

  “We can’t move forward in Newark or Paterson until we get them permits for brewing and distribution. Got that? I want this set up before Repeal. I want the whole goddamned thing on my desk yesterday.”

  “Sapiro’s gotta file papers. There’s protocol,” Greenberg says.

  Waxey fumbles a cigar from the wooden box on the side table. The stubble on his face says he hasn’t been out in public for a day, maybe two.

  “I don’t give a damn. Just get it done before them yahoos figure things out,” Waxey says.

  By the end of March, the Cullen-Harrison Act makes 3.2 percent beer and wine legal. Yuengling Beer Company sends a truckload of “Winner Beer” to the White House. Nobody bothers to mention that it takes three weeks for Yuengling’s beer to brew and age but that the truck arrives instantly after legalization. Nobody cares. Happy times are here again.

  Max Hassel, fondly known as the Beer Baron of Berks County, pumps out beer from his breweries, at least twenty-three in Pennsylvania and New Jersey alone. He pushes ever harder for citizenship. The well-mannered Max is determined to make a success of legitimacy. Five days after beer is legalized, Max visits the Harrison Brewery in Harrison, New Jersey, pleased in the knowledge that he no longer has to look over his shoulder and pay out hush money while he turns a profit. He heads back to the Carteret Hotel in Elizabeth and settles into his room secure behind a door with an electronic lock.

  These are difficult times.

  Maxey Greenberg drops by to discuss business. Hassel buzzes him in. Greenberg makes himself comfortable, pouring two glasses of whiskey before taking a seat at Hassel’s desk.

  “We got it made, huh, Max?” Greenberg says. “We got our permits. We got our breweries. If only we could get rid of the Dutchman, we could take over the Bronx. Before you know it, we’d have the whole Eastern Seaboard.”

  Hassel downs his whiskey and pours another.

  “Why not leave well enough alone?” Hassel says.

  “You’re missin’ the point, Max,” Greenberg says. “How long you been fightin’ with the government for a passport? You still ain’t gettin’ one. What does that tell you? Once a criminal, always a criminal. Forget dreamin’ about becomin’ a brewer. How long we been in this business? Legal don’t mean nothin’. Why do you think all them banks failed anyway? You heard the president. Whole damn country’s a mess on accounta Wall Street. You know how many banks closed, Max? Four thousand. Four fucking thousand banks closed on accounta Wall Street. You think them shysters care? There was two and a half billion dollars of lost deposits when them banks closed. B
illion, Max. What’s our crime compared to that? Son of a bitch. I just don’t get what’s wrong with people.”

  “That’s what you tell yourself so you don’t feel like a failure,” Hassel says.

  “Tread lightly, Max,” Greenberg says. “Have you forgotten the favor we done for you when Duffy tried to muscle in on your brewery? Don’t forget your money come from the same place mine come from. A leopard can’t change his spots. Goin’ legit ain’t gonna change yours.”

  There’s a knock at the door, the secret knock known only to a select few.

  “You expectin’ somebody?” Greenberg says.

  Hassel shakes his head.

  “Who is it?” Hassel demands.

  “Joe,” the voice behind the door says, muffled by the double thickness.

  “Stassi,” Hassel says. “I forgot he was coming by.”

  Joe Stassi, the guy in Zwillman’s mob who is close to Max Hassel, lives downstairs. At Stassi’s suggestion, the two men are going to the Piccadilly for lunch with a guy that Stassi is certain will be able to secure citizenship for the Beer Baron of Berks County.

  “Push the button and let him in,” Hassel says to Greenberg.

  “Stassi?” Greenberg says. “What the fuck are you thinkin’ lettin’ in a guy from Longy’s mob? This guy ain’t changing sides, is he?”

  “It isn’t like that,” Hassel says. “Push the damned button.”

  Greenberg pushes the button that releases the electronic lock that allows Joe Stassi to enter the room, only it isn’t Joe Stassi but Benny Siegel who storms through the door waving a .38 caliber handgun fitted with a Maxim silencer marketed as the “gentleman’s way of target shooting.”

  Benny aims and fires, putting one bullet through Maxey Greenberg’s head. The .38 kicks hard. The silencer suppresses the pressure wave of the escaping gasses but does nothing about the sonic crack created as the bullet tears through the air. Greenberg falls face-first onto the rolltop desk. Hassel turns to run. Benny puts a bullet through Hassel’s head. Hassel cascades to the floor, sprawled out like a ragdoll.

  “Tough luck, Max,” Benny says to Hassel with honest regret. “You mighta been good with numbers but you were lousy at choosing business partners.”