In the course of the years, many lawyers handling real estate in these deals went on into politics. Joseph DeLauria always came around with good campaign contributions. They usually were accepted with deep thanks. Gullible Italians regarded the Mafia as a Knights of Columbus that got mad. They believed that if there were no Mafia, the closest many Italians would come to holding office in this country would be supervisory jobs in the Department of Sanitation. Of course the Mafia gave Italians a bad name. Their money, which was supposed to go to Italians to fight the prejudice the Mafia fed, was being grabbed by Irish and Jewish politicians who didn’t like Italians. Frank Costello, the Italian mobster who did the most in politics, did his political fixing through Jewish bagmen and Irish judges. His pushing of Italians for judges was mainly done out of pride for his people. If one of his Italian judges could handle a contract, that was fine. But it was more important that they were Italians and they were judges and that their children would be the children of Italian judges.
But his love for his own dissolved when he and Baccala, if presented with a choice between a fine, highly promising Italian candidate and a dislikable, shifty Irish thief, would at all times go for the Irishman. Baccala’s political theories were simple. He had Joseph DeLauria try to bribe every public official in Brooklyn, but he did not expect an inordinate number of breaks to come his way as a result of the bribery. He learned over the years that when it is important, a politician performs for the Mafia about as well as he performs for the public. The popular story is that every big Mafia boss owns one or two appeals-court judges, a few Congressmen, a raft of prosecutors, and, for important contracts, one Supreme Court justice. Now maneuvers with quite a bit of sophistication always do occur. An assistant United States attorney in New York deliberately made reversible errors during a trial so that the Mafia defendant would be certain to win an appeal on a case which was hopeless to win with a jury trial. But endless tales of the Mafia reaching everybody in the world are the result of rumors and fantasies and false promises as much as anything else. Baccala was a political realist. Sure, he’d love to get to a judge. Even higher than that, if possible. But he settled for full ownership of one freshman New York State Assemblyman. The moment the Assemblyman took office, he introduced a private bill which would allow Joseph DeLauria to purchase most of the land under the Hudson River.
In personally vetoing the bill, the Governor remarked to people in his office, “The last person who tried a thing like this was my grandfather.”
The drive to the office on this morning took Baccala forty-five minutes. He used the parkway to get to Brooklyn. He came off it onto narrow, puddle-filled streets of warehouses. On one dull street he pulled the car into the empty loading space in front of the dingy two-story Lancer Trucking Company building.
When Baccala came into the building, chairs scraped on the floor of the first-floor office. Four guys jumped to their feet.
“Hey!” Baccala said to them.
The faces of the four screwed into deep thought. Finally one of them said something.
“Hey!” he said to Baccala.
“Hey!” Baccala answered.
“Hey!” another one said.
“Hey!”
“Hey!”
“Hey!”
“Hey!”
The four black suits stood at attention while Baccala started up a flight of narrow wooden stairs. Baccala stamped his Cuban heels on each step as he came up. The noise sounded through the stairwell. A water buffalo in a light blue suit with silver threads appeared at the top of the stairs.
“Hey!” Baccala called out.
“Hey!” the Water Buffalo said.
Baccala walked into the morning silence of his office, which is a sea of snake plants, lamps with ancient frilled shades, and a large wooden desk. Religious statues were everywhere. When Baccala flicked on the light, the room was alive with multicolored lights arranged around the statues. A bank of red imitation candles glowed in front of Saint Anthony. In cream face, brown robes, yellowing Easter palm tied around the waist in big loop knots, Saint Anthony stood directly behind Baccala’s desk.
Baccala whipped his hat off for Saint Anthony. “Buon’ giorno,” he said.
He held his hat against his chest. He bowed his head and started praying out loud.
“Saint Anthony, let me make the good-a living today. And Saint Anthony, let me tell-a you something. I know they a lot of people, they tell you that Baccala is no good. Tell you that I'm bad. Well, you listen to me, please? You remember one thing. Baccala he’s on your side. You need, Baccala he goes out and gets it for you. Don’t worry about Baccala. He’s with Saint Anthony. So Saint Anthony, you be sure you on Baccala’s side. Don’t listen to these-a creeps. You understand? All right. Amen.”
Chapter 4
AT MIDNIGHT THAT NIGHT, twenty miles away from Baccala’s big house, on Marshall Street in Brooklyn, smoke from the first cigarette of the day came against the film of toothpaste on Kid Sally Palumbo’s capped teeth. He had just gotten up. Kid Sally straightened his collar. His shirt collar came halfway up the back of his neck. It grazed his ears and came around to a powerful silver tie. He smoothed his hair back. His hair was black and gleamed with brilliantine. It was cut in Madison Avenue button-down. The day Kid Sally saw Artie the Chink, one of the big guys in the East Harlem outfit, walking around with a button-down, he went into Manhattan and got his hair cut at the same barbershop Frank Sinatra uses. The button-down seemed a bit off-center for Kid Sally’s face. He has a scar running through his right cheekbone. High cheekbones give his deep brown eyes a hard look. His square chin toughens the look of his mouth. He took another drag on the cigarette. It was an English Oval. Frank Costello smokes English Ovals.
He blew the cigarette smoke at his face in the mirror. His top lip came up in a careful sneer. He giggled. It was a terrific interpretation of Tommy Udo. Tommy Udo is a gangster in an old movie called Kiss of Death. Richard Widmark played the part. The big scene in the movie is when Tommy Udo, sneering and giggling, pushes an old lady in a wheelchair to her death down a tenement staircase. Kid Sally Palumbo loved the movie the first time he saw it. He loved it so much that he came back to the movie house that night and saw it again. The next day he was first in line when the movie opened. Kid Sally was fifteen at the time. For the next fourteen years, less twenty-two months in various prisons, Kid Sally Palumbo saw reruns of the movie wherever it played, so he could learn to imitate Tommy Udo. It was not a waste. As Kid Sally looked at himself in the mirror now, he thought he was seeing Tommy Udo, he was giving such a terrific imitation.
One of Kid Sally Palumbo’s main men, Tony the Indian, was standing in the bedroom doorway. Tony the Indian is called the Indian because he looks like an Indian. He has olive skin and black hair that combs straight back on either side of his part. Tony the Indian also acts like an Indian. When he is out collecting gambling debts, he comes into a place with a knife between his teeth.
“So what’s doin’?” he said to Kid Sally.
“What’s doin’, I’m getting’ dressed,” Kid Sally said. He fingered the tie. He craned his neck to make sure the tie knot and shirt collar sat just right.
“You got a real good eagle,” Tony the Indian said.
“What should I do, go around thinkin’ like I’m a ragpicker?” Kid Sally said.
“That’s what I mean,” Tony the Indian said. “You got a real terrific eagle. You let yourself know you’re somethin’.”
“You got to get respect off of people. You can’t get no respect if you come around actin’ like you’re just a guy in off of the street. You got to have some class.”
“Well, you could axt anybody, Sally Kid, they all tell you, that Sally, he got a real eagle.”
Kid Sally tilted his head to look at himself from another angle.
He and Tony the Indian are always talking to each other. They have stirring conversations, particularly on any telephone they suspect is tapped. Three weeks ago the two spoke ove
r Kid Sally Palumbo’s line, which is jointly tapped by the New York City police, the Treasury Department, the FBI, and the Immigration and Naturalization Service.
The phone rang, and a voice the lawmen could identify as Kid Sally Palumbo’s answered.
“Yeah,” Kid Sally said.
“Hey! What’s doin’?” the other voice said. The wiretappers did not know who it was. Kid Sally knew it was Tony the Indian.
“I know you,” Kid Sally Palumbo said.
“You do?”
“Yeah, I know you,” Kid Sally said.
“All right,” the other voice said.
“How we doin’?” Kid Sally said.
“What’s goin’ on?” the other voice said.
“Did you see that other fella?” Kid Sally said.
“Yeah, I seen him.”
“Do you want to see me for somethin’?” Kid Sally said.
“Yeah.”
“Meet you right where we was the last time,” Kid Sally said.
“You mean the place where that guy—”
“No, not that place. The other place,” Kid Sally said.
“What place?”
“The place where we went after the place you’re talkin’ about.”
“Oh, I know that place. Yeah, I was in that place with you.”
“What time you be there?” Kid Sally said.
“The same time we was in it last time,” the other voice said.
“All right, that’s a meet,” Kid Sally said.
“We got a meet,” the other voice said.
“Take care,” Kid Sally said.
“Take care,” the other voice said.
When Kid Sally hung up, he stuck his chin out proudly. “Now let them rat mothers, they think they all so smart, let them figger out what that was about.”
“Who was it?” one of his men, a dwarf named Beppo who is called Beppo the Dwarf, said.
“Tony the Indian. He seen the guy Levy from Thirty-eighth Street what owed the twenty-five hundred. I got to meet Tony at Ciro’s at ten-thirty tonight.”
The bug the New York police had put into Kid Sally’s desk picked this up. That night two detectives were at the bar when Kid Sally and Tony the Indian came in. The next day a marginal dress manufacturer, David Levy, was brought in for questioning by the District Attorney. Levy said just enough to provoke a new investigation into shylocking.
Kid Sally always seemed to have troubles of this sort. Baccala gave him a clear field in the jukebox business in a few busy sections. Kid Sally established the Ace Vending Machine Company. One of his main men, Joe the Sheik, was in charge of supplying records. Joe the Sheik detested any loud, fast music that reminded him of niggers. “There ain’t enough of niggers in the world, people havin’ to go around soundin’ like them,” Joe the Sheik said. Ace Vending jukeboxes carried only Italian numbers. Many people say this is what led to the resurgence of weekend piano-players in Irish bars. Ace Vending went broke, and Baccala laughed openly about it.
Baccala did not laugh so much when Kid Sally Palumbo, without official sanction, tried to take over businesses by using only muscle. This style went out with Al Capone. The Mafia today tries to emulate Protestant bankers. First, loan money. Then collect souls as interest. Kid Sally Palumbo tried to do it with beatings and acid and terror.
He became particularly attracted to Weight Watchers clubs, which were springing up throughout Brooklyn. The clubs were run at great profit by reedy Jewish women who warned clients, mainly fat Italian women, that “your husband is going to get himself a little girl friend so he can feel her ribs.” Weight Watchers profits soared and pasta sales slumped. Soon Kid Sally Palumbo began making visits to the Jewish women running the clubs. He dropped veiled hints: “You could be dead in a bomb accident.”
The most faithful member of the Weight Watchers club on Saypole Street was Carmela Russo. At thirty-five, she was 5-foot-2 and weighed 217 pounds. When Carmela Russo bent over to touch her toes, her breasts hit the floor before her fingertips. She regarded Weight Watchers as the last chance for her marriage; two months ago her husband, Tony, had started buying dirty books. One afternoon Carmela Russo was in the Weight Watchers club, exercising very hard. She glanced up and saw Kid Sally Palumbo and two of his group swagger in and begin shouting at Mrs. Millie Lewin, who ran the club. Carmela Russo picked her chest off the floor and let out the first of many loud hollers, the last several of which were heard by the District Attorney’s office.
However, as a gangster, Kid Sally is very good at some of the basics. The big thing was his knowledge of Good People. In his circles, you say, “He’s good people” when you speak of anybody who has at least one legitimate extortion murder under his belt. Kid Sally is the Walter Winchell of the Good People. When he goes to the jukebox he always plays a record by Phyllis McCarthy because she goes out with Sam Giardine, who is the big guy in Chick-ago. He knows that Gigi from the Bronx takes out a barmaid from the Silhouette Lounge. If Kid Sally is in the area he stops in at the Silhouette and leaves the barmaid a $10 tip and says, “My regards to your friend.” He knows the barmaid will describe him to Gigi and Gigi will say, “That’s-a that nice-a kid, Sally. He’s a real nice-a boy.” And Kid Sally knows other important things, such as that Georgie Brown from Mott Street lives in Seaview, Long Island; Johnny Brown from Bath Beach lives in Greendale, Long Island; Jackie Brown from East Harlem lives in Pelham Park, Westchester; and Tommy Brown, Eddie Brown, Tony Brown, and Jimmy Brown all go to New Jersey to play golf. Kid Sally never met, but knows all about, Rocky from Detroit, Rocky from Buffalo, Rocky from Cleveland, and Rocky from Topeka.
While Kid Sally stood and looked at himself in the mirror, he began his crap-game singsong. Until he handled the Georgie Paradise contract, he was best known in Brooklyn for the way he could remember all the sayings and keep saying them, over and over, at the crap games he worked at for Baccala. Kid Sally’s job was to stand and watch and keep his right hand ready. At the first squawk from a player, Kid Sally would make a V for victory with the two fingers of his right hand and then jab them into the player’s eyes. And while he stood and waited to poke eyes, Kid Sally would singsong to the players. When Kid Sally began doing it here in the bedroom, Tony the Indian smiled. He liked Kid Sally to do this.
“Hey! The game’s not hard and nobody’s barred.… Pick a hunch and grab a bunch.… Hey! The more you bet, the more you get.… Let it go and watch it grow.… Hey! Slow it down. Bet fast and you can’t last, bet slow and you got to go.… We go every night at ten, come along and bring a fren.… Hey! The game’s not hard and nobody’s barred.…”
“Who’s got the moneys?” Tony the Indian said.
“Yeah, who got the moneys?” Kid Sally said. “I know it ain’t us.”
Kid Sally took the English Oval and put it in his mouth. He clenched the cigarette between his teeth. He wanted to see how he looked with the cigarette like this. It was all right, but the cigarette was too short. You can put your teeth on a filter cigarette. But who can smoke filters? You got to smoke English Ovals. Frank Costello smokes English Ovals. Kid Sally let the cigarette hang from his lower lip. He looked through the smoke. That’s pretty good. Kid Sally thought he looked pretty good. He felt real good.
Then, as it always happens to him, he became uneasy. Somewhere in his mind, just beneath where he is thinking of all these big things and how he looks, there is this jumbled scene that always lies there waiting for him to come on it, and he always seems to come on it and it makes him feel uneasy.
It is a rainy day in Samuel J. Morse High School. The grade adviser for the first-term boy students has gone over the charts, trying to find a class in which Salvatore Palumbo can sit for the 1:45 to 2:40 period. Salvatore Palumbo has already been placed in all the shop courses and gym periods available. The grammar-school record and Youth Court probation notice attached make it plain that Salvatore Palumbo belongs in chains, not classrooms. The grade adviser notes that Salvatore is only two months away from being sixte
en, when he can be ejected from school. “You like Spanish?” the grade adviser says finally. Kid Sally shrugs. “He says he likes Spanish,” the grade adviser says.
Kid Sally comes into the Spanish class in his sneakers and brown corduroy pants and blue windbreaker with RED WINGS S.C. printed across the back. The S.C. stands for Screwing Club. The class is made up of Jewish girls in neat blouses and plaid skirts and they peer through Chinese-slanted eyeglasses when Kid Sally comes into the room. The boys are thin Jewish kids who sit erect and with their eyes riveted on the teacher, a tall, balding man named Goldstein. Goldstein grimaces when he sees Kid Sally. Then Goldstein walks slowly back and forth in front of the classroom and starts the lesson. Kid Sally Palumbo sits down and hunches his neck inside the top of his windbreaker and goes into a trance.
“Wouldn’t you say so, Mr. Palumbo?”
There is a roar from the class. Kid Sally Palumbo looks up, and all these black-haired girls are looking at him through their Chinese-slanted eyeglasses and the boys with the bumpy noses are looking at him and everybody is laughing at him. Laughing loudly, and laughing down their noses at him. In the front of the room, Goldstein is smiling.
“Well, give us your answer to the question, Mr. Palumbo,” Goldstein says.
Kid Sally Palumbo, flustered, his face red while everybody laughs at him, pulls himself together and does the only thing he knows how to do.
Gang That Couldn't Shoot Straight Page 4