Gang That Couldn't Shoot Straight

by Jimmy Breslin

  There was, a little while later, a tangle of bumping cars and people threading their way through the cars and sprinting for their lives away from the Clean-Brite Car Wash on Carroll Street. An immense, prolonged roar came from inside the car wash. The bon was tied to a stanchion. The water came on and hit the lion from all sides. The lion came up on his hind legs, fighting against the rope and shaking his head in the water spray. After five minutes, Kid Sally pushed the lion into the rear of the panel truck. Ezmo the Driver was driving, Big Jelly sat in the middle with a shotgun, and Kid Sally was crushed against the outside door. The truck pulled away from the deserted car wash with the lion in the back growling and shaking himself dry.

  Chapter 15

  NEARLY ALL THE PEOPLE in South Brooklyn play the policy numbers. And within close range of Kid Sally’s headquarters there were a considerable number of places used as drops for the numbers gambling. The numbers play from these places belonged technically to the Baccala gang. But loyalty dips as chances of death rise. Kid Sally knew there was a chance, if proper strength was displayed, to grab the numbers play from these places. It amounted, each week, to a figure large enough to support a gang in a war. Once a week people handed a numbers runner anywhere from $1.50, to cover a quarter bet each day, to $12 and $18, to cover $2 and $3 play per day. Kid Sally knew his presence, or the threat of it, would not hold these places in line permanently. People figured, correctly, that Kid Sally was so busy defending himself against Baccala’s mob that he couldn’t concentrate on them. Kid Sally knew he needed something that would produce lasting fear.

  The biggest numbers drop was Herman’s Luncheonette on Fourth Avenue. It was around the corner from two big taxicab garages. The place was always filled with drivers who left their numbers business with Herman, the owner. Herman stood ready to turn over his numbers each week to the collector who frightened him most. “Yell, shout, scream, but don’t get physical,” Herman kept saying. Herman was at one end of the counter, smoking a cigarette, when Kid Sally came into the place with the lion. Herman did not move. He stood with his cigarette held out and his eyes bulging. He then wet his pants. Ida, the waitress, had her back to the counter. She was looking in the refrigerator for sandwich meat. The lion’s nose twitched. He jumped up on the counter. The customers at the counter, all male, wet their pants. The lion teetered on the counter, reached out with a paw and brushed it against Ida’s shoulder, and pulled an eye round out of the refrigerator. Ida glanced at the lion and fainted. Herman was too frozen to look. He could hear the lion chewing on the eye round. He retched. He thought the lion was chewing on Ida the waitress.

  “Are we friends?” Kid Sally said to him.

  Herman, between trembles, was able to nod yes.

  Kid Sally spent the next couple of days building a numbers route. At Jack Goldfarb’s candy store, Mrs. Jack Goldfarb was bent down behind the counter looking for a box of El Productos. When Mrs. Jack Goldfarb looked up, she saw a lion eating her Hershey bars. Mrs. Jack Goldfarb went home later that day and was not to come out again for six weeks. In Ackerman’s Bar, the lion gauged his distance and leaped onto the bar and began eating peanuts. Mickey, the bartender, broke a quart soda bottle off at the neck and stood with it in his hand, ready to fight for his life. His legs buckled and he passed out.

  At the end of a week Kid Sally had things lined up. The numbers route was just large enough to support his outfit, and it was just small enough to be safe for a few weeks. By the time the Baccala people were ready to react to the loss by throwing in a large number of gunmen, Kid Sally expected to have Baccala dead and be in charge himself. Kid Sally was going to take over everything on Monday, the big day in the numbers business. On Monday people leave their bets for the week.

  Early Monday morning, Kid Sally felt better. He stood in front of the mirror, flipping his tie and making faces.

  “I’m starting to put things together now,” he said.

  “I hope so, I’m tired of goin’ to funerals,” Big Jelly said.

  Kid Sally put the lion in the back of the truck and started out with Ezmo, Big Jelly, and Beppo the Dwarf. Beppo held a sawed-off shotgun and sat on Kid Sally’s lap. They stopped at Herman’s Luncheonette first. Kid Sally held the back door of the truck open so the lion could stick his head out. Which was all Herman had to see. He reached behind the counter and came up with a big shopping bag holding slips and money. The shopping bag is the carrying case of the numbers business. Numbers is the racetrack of the poor, and many women serve as runners. A shopping bag is their best disguise. Kid Sally took the bag and had a cup of coffee and left Herman’s. At ZuZu’s Bar and Grill, Kid Sally took the play, stuffed it into the shopping bag, and had a beer. At Ackerman’s they all went inside and had a shot of whisky and a beer. Big Jelly went next door to the butcher and bought chopped meat. When he came back they had another drink and left. At Zanetti’s Saloon they all had another round of shots and beer. By the time they hit the Cameo Lounge, three hours and five joints later, they all were shaky from drinking.

  The Cameo is not much of an afternoon place. It has a barmaid whose name is Del.

  “Hello, Del,” Beppo the Dwarf said.

  “Don’t even talk to me, you’re too small for me,” Del said.

  “I got a five-and-a-half-inch tongue,” Beppo the Dwarf said.

  Ezmo the Driver gripped the bar and began jumping up and down. Kid Sally sat Beppo the Dwarf on the bar. Del spilled water down the front of his pants. Beppo kissed her in the ear with his tongue. Big Jelly reached for a bottle of scotch. They all kept laughing and drinking and they were still laughing an hour later, when Ezmo was driving them back to Marshall Street. In the back of the truck, the lion was growling. Kid Sally remembered the lion hadn’t been fed. “I put the meat on the floor,” Big Jelly said. Kid Sally, still giggling, reached down and felt the paper bag. He threw it back over his shoulder. The lion fell on it.

  Back on Marshall Street, everybody fell out of the truck, laughing, and Kid Sally reached down for the shopping bag. He felt the paper bag and fumbled for the handles. He didn’t feel any. Instead, his fingers touched waxed paper from the butcher store. In the back of the truck, the lion was coughing to clear his throat of a ten-dollar bill.

  Kid Sally did not remember coming out of the truck. He was unable to breathe, hear, or see. He went upstairs, like Stalin, locked himself in his room for two days.

  Big Jelly sat downstairs with his eyes closed. “Calamare” he said to himself. “Zuppa di mussels.”

  “You’re makin’ me hungry,” Tony the Indian said.

  “Shut up, I’m imaginin’ I’m out eatin’,” Big Jelly said.

  That night Georgie, who was Tony the Indian’s cousin, became uncomfortable staying on the block. He was uncomfortable because, as he complained, “My thing don’t know we got troubles, all my thing knows is that it’s good and ready.” At 10:30 Georgie wandered from Marshall Street and got in a cab to go to his girl friend’s house in Bensonhurst. Bensonhurst was a bad place for Georgie. It was Baccala’s home grounds. Georgie didn’t care. “I follow my thing,” he always says. “I trust it.”

  A guy got into the apartment elevator with him. Georgie stood facing the guy, just in case. In a one-on-one situation, Georgie was not afraid. Georgie’s girl was on the fifth floor. The guy pushed the button for the second floor. Georgie relaxed. The guy was all right. When the elevator door slid open at the second floor, Georgie just did catch a glimpse of the four black suits before they came in on him.

  At this point there were six dead and the situation was beginning to reach people beyond the Brooklyn South Homicide Squad. The matter by now had come to the attention of M. E. Landsman, a reporter on the Times. Mr. Landsman is in charge of the “Crime, Organized” department of the Times city desk. Mr. Landsman’s first name is Morris, but the Times, German-Jewish oriented, apparently seems not to like the Eastern European “Morris” or “Abraham” to be used in its bylines. Landsman and all Abrahams on the paper either u
se initials or go on home relief. He has been writing stories about organized crime for three years. Landsman was born in White Plains and lives in Larchmont. The only real Italians he ever saw were atop a garbage truck.

  As a reporter, however, he is considered an expert in what is known as Italian Geography. This is a practice of such as the FBI, various police intelligence units, and newspaper and magazine writers. Italian Geography is the keeping of huge amounts of information on gangsters: the prices they pay for clothes, the restaurants in which they eat, the names of all relatives out to the fifth cousins, their home addresses, and their visible daily movements. All this information is neatly filed and continually added to. It is never used for anything, and the gangster goes on until death. But Italian Geography keeps many people busy and collecting salaries, and thus is a commendable occupation. M. E. Landsman, just by digging into the cabinet behind his desk, could tell you the home address of Baccala (55 Royal Street), the number of guests at Anthony (Tony Boy) Boirado’s wedding (732), the birthplace of Lucky Luciano (Lercara Friddi, Sicily), and the favorite dining spot and meal of dock boss Mike Rizzuto (Delia Palma; veal marsala). All these little facts always add up to nothing in the geographer’s mind. And every evening, sitting over a martini in the Oyster Bar at Grand Central Station, M. E. Landsman waits for his train to Larchmont and he says to himself, “I wonder what these people really do.”

  In the security of his office, however, he was without doubt. He submerged himself in his geography and wrote authoritative stories about the Mafia. Now, with the bare police details of the six recent murders in front of him, M. E. Landsman went to work. He went into his cabinet for the M’s and brought out Joe Mangoni’s file. It showed that Joe Mangoni had a cousin who married Carlo Gambino’s niece in Saint Fortunata’s Church in Bensonhurst. M. E. Landsman studied this information. He reached for the phone and called Sergeant Paul DiNardo at police headquarters.

  Sergeant DiNardo was on the streets as a precinct patrolman for the first month of his first year on the New York City force. A desk lieutenant found DiNardo knew how to type, and for the next seventeen years DiNardo typed reports in offices in the Police Department. Because of the wave of talk about organized crime, the Chief Inspector, George Glennon, looked around headquarters one day and announced that DiNardo would be the department’s expert on the Mafia.

  “Why are you picking him?” The Commissioner, Michael McGrady, asked Glennon.

  “Because he’s a guinea,” Glennon said. “He’ll be able to spell the names right.”

  DiNardo grabbed the phone. “Organized Crime Special Attack Unit, Sergeant DiNardo speaking.” Sometimes he said “Enforcement Unit,” and other times he said “Investigation Unit.” It didn’t matter. He was alone in his office and whatever he said was all right, as long as the names were spelled right on the records.

  “This is Morris Landsman at the Times. All these murders in Brooklyn. Could you tell me anything about them?”

  “Like what?” DiNardo said.

  “Well, take the Mangoni killing,” M. E. Landsman said.

  DiNardo pushed a button. It caused a file drum to rotate. DiNardo stopped the drum at M. He grabbed the folder for Joe Mangoni. “Well, Mangoni cousin married Carlo Gambino’s daughter.”

  “I know that too,” Landsman said smugly.

  “Well, what else can I tell you?” DiNardo said.

  “What do you think about it?” Landsman said.

  “You know I can’t talk,” DiNardo said. “There’s an investigation.”

  DiNardo hung up and went through a newspaper to see if there was a movie he could see that afternoon. Morris Landsman pushed open the typewriter well on his desk and went to work. He turned his head, as he always did, while his fingers typed out: BY M. E. LANDSMAN.

  His definitive story read in part:

  High police officials today are investigating a series of murders in Brooklyn to determine if they have some connection to the operations of the criminal organization known as the Cosa Nostra, or Mafia. Police officials pointed out that the murder victims, six within two months, all had police records.

  The story was put on page one under a headline saying: POLICE PROBE 6 MURDERS IN BROOKLYN.

  The next morning the pale sunlight came through the bare trees on the lawn outside Gracie Mansion, and the wind blew the branches, causing their shadows to flick across the newspaper the Mayor was reading at breakfast. The Mayor closed his eyes. They were red-rimmed and hot. He had been up until three a.m. unwinding after a two-hour session with 2500 angry people in a Jewish Center in Flatbush. He opened his eyes and ran them across the headlines on the Times’ first page. There were three stories out of Washington, one out of Tel Aviv, others from Tokyo, Bombay, and Paris. The only New York story was M. E. Landsman’s piece on gang murders.

  “Shit!” the Mayor said. “Who the hell cares about gangsters? I mean, you’d think … Here I’m out all night arguing about housing, and what do they put on the first page? Gangsters. Shit!”

  Harold Downing, his chief assistant, sat across from the Mayor. “He’s got six murders to talk about, and he’s the expert on gangsters. Maybe he’ll try and stretch this out. Run one every day.”

  “Fuck that,” the Mayor said. “There’s problems in this city a little more important than gangsters. The biggest one is me getting re-elected.” He picked up a phone attached to the table. “Give me Commissioner McGrady,” he said.

  He waited a moment, cursing under his breath. “Michael, how are you? … That’s right, that’s exactly what I’m calling about … Yes, yes, yes.… Well, you see, I couldn’t care if they killed each other forever. But I have this housing bill and, shit, I can’t have gangsters on the first page. You know.… Oh, good. All right, thanks, Michael.”

  Commissioner McGrady put the phone down. He stood up and walked around the immense desk Teddy Roosevelt had used when he was the city’s Police Commissioner. He looked down at the thick rug for a moment. Then he pushed a buzzer. His secretary, a detective, walked in.

  “Tell Gallagher to meet me at Emil’s,” he said.

  Emil’s is an old, dark-walled German restaurant a block and a half from City Hall and Police Headquarters. A corner table in the rear is always reserved for the Police Commissioner.

  The place was empty. It was only 9:30. McGrady was on his second scotch by the time Gallagher walked in.

  “I know what this is about,” Gallagher said. “One fuckin’ story in a newspaper.”

  “I just wanted to congratulate you on your dead guineas,” McGrady said.

  “Thanks,” Gallagher said. “And I’d have more of them if I had my way.”

  “You can do two things for me,” McGrady said. “First, you can have a drink. Second, you can get them to go some place else with their troubles. I had the Mayor on the phone the minute I got in this morning.”

  The waiter brought two shot glasses of scotch, with water on the side. “Here’s how,” Gallagher said. He threw a shot down, Irish style, his tongue showing as it went into the shot glass. He put the glass down. “It’s this fuckin’ punk Sally Palumbo,” Gallagher said. “He’s pushin’.”

  “What does Baccala have to say about that?” McGrady said.

  “Well, what do you think the shootin’ is about?” Gallagher said.

  “Well, get on him,” McGrady said.

  “I’ll get on that fuckin’ Palumbo, that’s what I’ll do,” Gallagher said.

  “I don’t care what you do, just do it,” McGrady said. “Just keep the Mayor off my back.”

  At three a.m. the squad rooms and all the offices of the 79th Precinct were filled with detectives talking to Kid Sally Palumbo’s people. Gallagher, his eyes bloodshot, walked from office to office, conferring with detectives out in the hallway. Gallagher liked the way it was going. His men had grabbed the Palumbo outfit after midnight. By the time lawyers could drive in from Long Island and scream about civil liberties, he would have the Palumbos exhausted and bothered.
Gallagher had told his detectives to abuse them. “It takes them a week to get over it when you treat them like shoeshine boys,” he said. “Their guinea egos suffer.”

  A week would give him time. He could take it up with Baccala and see if there was a way to end it. But that was for later. Right now, all that counted was abusing everybody.

  From each office, Gallagher could hear a voice saying the same thing.

  “What could I tell you?” Kid Sally Palumbo was saying to two homicide detectives.

  “What could I tell you?” Big Jelly was saying.

  “What-a could I tell-a you?” Big Mama was saying. When she saw Gallagher, her thumb and forefinger shot out in horns.

  Gallagher smiled. “Dead guineas and niggers, that’s what I like,” he called out. “The more I see of dead guineas and dead niggers, the better I like it.”

  He looked into one small office. A thin smile came onto his face and he stepped inside. “Good evening,” he said.

  Angela sat in a chair with a cigarette in her mouth and no make-up on her face. She inhaled and put the cigarette carefully in the ashtray. She let the smoke come out of her nose slowly.

  “Get cancer,” she said quietly.

  “What’s that?” Gallagher said.

  “What could I tell you?” Angela said.

  “You weren’t this way the last time I saw you,” Gallagher said.

  The young detective talking to her was sitting on the other side of the desk. Gallagher motioned with his head for the detective to come around the desk and sit alongside her. The young detective frowned. He didn’t know what Gallagher meant.

  Gallagher smiled again. “Be nice to her, she’s a nice college student,” he said.

  Angela sat and stared at the ashtray and said nothing. She was reminding herself that once you say anything except the one rote line, “What could I tell you?” you open yourself up for a slip.