Gang That Couldn't Shoot Straight

by Jimmy Breslin

  The cameramen were at the bottom of the stairs, and the doors behind them were open to the morning rain. Angela held her head high and started down the stairs. She looked over their heads, at the rain in the doorway, but her eyes caught the cameras being held up. An arm in a blue rain jacket held a television floodlight high over the heads of the other cameramen. Angela was halfway down the stairs when the floodlight came on—glaring, bare light that brings up the rust on the railings and the cigarette butts and gum wrappers on the steps and the soot coating on the walls and the stale faces and the municipal smell of a police station when you are in trouble. Angela’s head was high and she felt herself coming down each step and there were no more steps and the cameras were all around her and her ears became filled with the shhhhhhh shhhhhhhhh shhhhhhh of the cameramen shuffling backward while they kept filming her, and then there was nobody around her and she was in the morning rain on the steps of the police station. It was a winter rain. The wind blew it in gray sheets. The cold touch of the rain came through her hair and to the scalp.

  “Miss Palumbo, Miss Palumbo,” a woman’s voice said.

  Angela kept her head high and came down the steps to the sidewalk and she heard the footsteps coming alongside her.

  “Miss Palumbo, are you going to your classes at college now?”

  Whoever she was, she was on the left. Angela’s left shoulder came up in self-protection.

  “Miss Palumbo, I went to NYU myself, and I was just wondering …”

  Angela kept walking, controlled, erect, the rain coming into her face and soaking through the shoulders of her cloth coat. She could feel the presence on her left going away. Angela’s left shoulder came down.

  “Artie, she won’t say anything,” the female voice behind her was calling out.

  They had let Angela go first. It was 7:30, and she walked up to the corner and into the rush hour on an avenue in Brooklyn. The street was a wall of trailer trucks and buses with steamy windows. The sign hanging from the corner drugstore squealed while it swung in the wind and rain. A light changed, and the traffic in the street began to move. The Diesel trucks and buses shifted gears with a roar, and the squeal from the drugstore sign mixed in with the roar, and Angela walked in the heavy rain with the noise hurting her ears and her back in a little bunch against the hand she felt would touch her, a cop’s hand, a cameraman’s hand, somebody’s hand, and nausea started in the back of her head and ran to her stomach. She swallowed against it and kept walking, controlled and erect, and people began brushing against her as they ran in the rain to the subway. She slipped into the middle of a crowd going down the steps. The train was packed and hot, and the smell of wet clothes was thick. People dressed in rainhats and raincoats stared at Angela. There had been no rain when the detectives came the night before, so she was not dressed for it. Her blue coat was dark with water, her wet stockings stuck to her legs, and her hair dripped. Angela stared out the window and was motionless all the way to Manhattan. She did not notice the stations, or the people getting on and off the trains. She thought about nothing. She was frozen. Vacantly, automatically, she got off at Second Avenue and began walking in the rain. At Mario’s corner the sewer was stopped up and a puddle was spreading into the middle of the street. A cab ran through the puddle and threw a spray of water. A sheet of dirty water splashed into Angela’s face. She walked through it.

  Mario was in a T-shirt and his shorts when he answered the door. He said something to her, but she didn’t hear it. “I’m wet,” she said. She walked past him. “I just want to get dry,” she said. She picked the hotel towel off the doorknob. She started into the bathroom, then went over to a chair and picked up his raincoat. In the bathroom she took off her coat and hung it on the door hook. Her plaid shift was soaked. She took it off and hung it on the shower-curtain rail. The bra felt damp. She took it off. She reached down and began to unhook her stockings, but her fingers fumbled. She peeled the girdle and stockings off at once and threw them over the rail. She put on the raincoat and started rubbing her hair with the towel. She gave a little shudder and fell on her knees and began vomiting into the toilet. Her body shook all over. When she began screaming, Mario opened the door.

  He helped her to the couch and she buried her face and Mario could see her body shaking through the raincoat. He ran his hand on her back in a slow circle. She lay on her face on the couch for a half-hour and sobbed. She twisted around to look up at him. Her mouth was trembling with shock. Mario’s face came down to her. He kissed her, and she was whimpering and moaning in shock and fear, and then all the trouble inside her came out in a wave of need and she had her mouth on his and her legs stretching and moving and her fingernails digging into his back while she drew in a sharp breath through clenched teeth.

  She listened to the rain against the windows for a few moments. She held up her arm and squinted at the watch. It was 2:30. Mario was sitting at the easel, which he had set up in front of the windows. She put her head down and pulled the blanket up over her shoulders.

  “Don’t tell me you went out and bought a blanket,” she said.

  “People help me,” Mario said. He smiled. He wished Sidney could hear that. He got the blanket one day by waiting until Sidney was stuck in the bathroom and then whisking it off Sidney’s bed. Sidney heard the movement and knew he was being robbed, but he couldn’t do anything about it except to scream from the bathroom, “Thief fuck!”

  Angela put her head back and stretched. The police station started in her stomach. She closed her eyes against it.

  “What are you doing there?” she said.

  He grunted something. He had been working for five hours, using Angela’s face to make up for the torn face on the painting he was copying.

  “You’ve been working too long,” she said. She shook her head against the light. He stood up and stretched. Now all I have to do is finish this painting and find some old lady and make her buy it, he said to himself. He had everything else he needed. He walked across to the couch.

  They woke up in darkness. Angela stiffened. “My God, what time is it?” He got up and pushed the light switch. She squinted in the light from the bulb in the ceiling directly over her head. “Oh, five o’clock.” She fell back. “I thought it was late, I didn’t know what time it was. I have to call home. They’ll be crazy if I don’t call them soon.” She yawned. “The light. Don’t have one bulb in a room like this. Get a lamp. You’d be surprised what one lamp would do for you. We’ll have to get one. But right now I’m starved.” She sat up quickly. Oh, I don’t know what I have in my purse.”

  She pulled the blanket around her and slid off the couch and went over to the kitchen table and began going through her purse. The blanket slipped from one shoulder. Mario’s eyes followed her back slanting in from the shoulder and then rolling, white, into the top of a long leg.

  “I hope you have some money, because I have exactly two dollars and some change,” she said.

  “Nothing, I have none,” he said. He swung onto the floor and went for his pants. He put them on carefully, so the change wouldn’t jingle in the pocket where he had the money.

  She ran a hand through her hair. “Well, what are you going to live on? I mean, you’ve got to eat.”

  “I have no money,” he said. He put his hand in the pocket that had the money.

  She went into the bathroom and dressed. She was running a comb through her hair when she called out, “Get dressed.”

  “I’ll stay here,” he said.

  “Just get dressed,” she said. “I can’t leave you here like this.”

  “To go where?” he said.

  She came out to him and kissed him. “Come home with me and get something to eat. And if anybody asks you, I met you after school.”

  Chapter 16

  IN THE CITY OF New York, in the ninety minutes between six and seven-thirty p.m. each weekday night, there occurs the greatest flood of information directed at man in the history of the world. On the major television chan
nels, a group of men who appear to be either studying or teaching undertaking appear on the screen with the news of the day in words and film. The film, running from talking heads in a hallway at the Board of Health to F-4 planes dropping napalm canisters into trees, comes into nearly every house, apartment, furnished room, saloon, and office in the city. And on almost every evening this television news, merely by displaying a subject, can raise the level of annoyance over a minor matter to the point where it becomes a major crisis.

  Which is what was occurring around the city when, after the billboarding and commercials, the first set of straight-faced television newsmen came on camera to give all New York the lead story of the day’s news.

  “Good evening. Police early this morning conducted a lightning raid on a gang of Brooklyn hoodlums who were alleged to be at the bottom of the series of Cosa Nostra murders which have occurred in that borough in recent weeks. Sixty-three of the men, and two women, were brought to the 91st Precinct and questioned for several hours by homicide detectives under command of …”

  The Mayor kicked his wastepaper basket, spilling it across the red carpeting of his office at City Hall.

  “Shit!” the Mayor said.

  “… gang, which operates in Brooklyn, is said to be under the control of Salvatore (Kid Sally) Palumbo …”

  Harold Downing stood up. He smiled. “I wish I could be the mayor, so everybody would do exactly as I tell them.”

  “I ask them to get rid of it for me, and what do I get?” the Mayor said. “The police running a publicity stunt for a couple of lousy gangsters.”

  In Baccala’s office they were standing around the boss, who sat in a chair and looked at a new color set which he had set up next to the statue of Saint Anthony. On the news show there was a film clip of Angela coming down the stairs, her face set against the light glaring into her eyes.

  “That’s the sister,” one of Baccala’s black suits said.

  “Who sister?” Baccala said.

  “Kid Sally’s sister,” the Water Buffalo said.

  “I make him watch while I shoot her,” Baccala said.

  The film now showed Kid Sally starting down the stairs. On camera, Kid Sally brought his right arm up in an elaborate movement. He was just starting to slap his left hand on the inside of his right elbow when the film clip dissolved.

  “Punk!” Baccala said. His head went far back, then came forward as he spat at the television set. “Die!” He said it from deep in his throat. The Water Buffalo jumped up and spat at the television. All the black suits ran up to the set, clearing their throats to spit.

  In Kid Sally Palumbo’s front room, twenty of them were crowded in and watched the show the way big football teams look at game films. “Here I go,” Kid Sally said, looking at himself. Everybody groaned when the film was cut before his gesture. Big Jelly now appeared. “Watch me shine,” Big Jelly said. On television he came strutting down the stairs with his tongue sticking out of the right side of his mouth. One hand was on his hip. The other hand made a fist. The fist was just starting an up-and-down motion when the film clip was dissolved.

  There was a great noise in Kid Sally’s front room. There was a small noise in Baccala’s office. “Punk!” Baccala said again. In the office of the Mayor there was the most dangerous sound of all. Silence.

  The Mayor sat immobile for several moments. He reached for an old black phone which connected him directly to the Police Commissioner's office.

  “Hi. You know, I was just sitting here thinking. We’re having an Urban Task Force meeting tonight, and I thought at the end of it a couple of us ought to sit down. We’re a little out of sync. When? Oh, I’d say, let me see, somewhere around eleven o’clock tonight at the mansion.”

  At Police Headquarters, McGrady had one hand reaching for the intercom while he put down the Mayor’s call. “This Protestant bastard will have me sitting up all night on account of these guineas—yeop, get me Chief Gallagher in Brooklyn South, will you please?”

  The switchboard operators had left the Brooklyn District Attorney’s office. The patrolman at the reception desk answered the night line. “Mr. Rogin?” The patrolman checked the list in front of him. “No, I’m sorry, he left for the day. Would you care to leave a message? Oh, excuse me. The Mayor’s office. If you’ll hold a minute, I’ll get Mr. Goodman.”

  Benjamin Goodman, the chief assistant district attorney, sat hunched over his municipal green metal desk. A small round mirror, the kind women take along when traveling, was set up on top of a pile of trial minutes. Benjamin Goodman looked into the mirror while he combed his red hair.

  “Mayor’s office,” the patrolman said.

  Benjamin Goodman was on his feet in one motion. He jogged out of the office. In the hallway he began to sprint. He slid up to the phone.

  “Rogin?” Goodman said to Harold Downing, “Well, yes, he’s been working on this gang business. But …” Goodman took a deep breath. He did not need to pause. He knew what he was going to say without having to think about it. “But he’s merely been assigned to it. Actually, in view of the worsening situation, I think I’d better step into the case personally. When? Gracie Mansion at eleven tonight? Of course.”

  In the City Room of the Times, a voice came over the loudspeaker. “Mr. Landsman, please report to the metropolitan desk. Mr. Landsman …”

  M. E. Landsman walked through the long rows of desks to the front of the room, where three men in shirtsleeves, all wearing glasses, were standing in front of a television set.

  “Mersh, what do you plan to do with this Palumbo business?” one of the men in shirtsleeves said. “They were just on television. God, what despicable characters.”

  “Oh, I’m putting up something on them,” M. E. Landsman said.

  “Well, we’d like to use it fairly strong, perhaps out front,” the man said. “When can we see the lead?”

  “Oh, I’ll have it coming up right away,” M. E. Landsman said.

  He walked back to his desk with a sinking feeling. He had planned to write the story the next morning. Now he was going to miss his regular train home to Larchmont. He sat at his desk and took the Associated Press copy on the arrests and began to write it in different words. There was no use in trying anything else. He had nothing on Kid Sally Palumbo in his files. And he had spoken to Sergeant DiNardo earlier in the day, and DiNardo had assured him Kid Sally Palumbo was a soldier in the Mafia family in Youngstown, Ohio.

  Landsman’s story ran on the bottom of page one. At 10:45 p.m. the Mayor had his secretary circle it on each copy of the newspaper that was on the long conference table in the basement at Gracie Mansion. At eleven o’clock the Mayor sat down at the head of the table. He nodded to everybody and then picked up a paper. The Mayor was wearing a short-sleeved blue knit yachting shirt. This made everybody at the table think of one word: Protestant.

  “Well, gentlemen, I want to thank you for coming,” the Mayor said. “The purpose of this meeting is to further the coordination of our efforts in regard to this damnable mess in Brooklyn.”

  Benjamin Goodman picked up a pencil and began to scrawl on the pad in front of him. What is this guy worrying so much about a few guinea homicides? he thought. Idly, Goodman wrote “2%” on the pad. The Mayor, running on a Fusion ticket, had defeated the regular Democratic candidate because of a shift of 2 per cent of the Democratic voters. Goodman, like any other fifty-one-year-old clubhouse Democrat, could recite the names of party defectors.

  “Look,” the Mayor said, “I don’t have to tell you people that if there’s one thing people react to these days, it’s something about crime. Hell, anything about crime. I’m up half the nights worrying about street crimes and burglaries. I couldn’t care less about gangsters killing each other. But you put just one dead body in a gutter and the public reacts. It’s an issue.”

  Goodman’s pencil tapped on the pad. Goodman began drawing rows of “2%.” He ripped the page off and stuffed it into his pocket. Carefully he printed a newspaper hea
dline.

  BROOKLYN DA GOODMAN MOUNTS INTENSIVE DRIVE ON MAFIA

  Goodman looked at Gallagher. The inspector’s pouchy eyes returned the look. Maybe, Benjamin Goodman thought, this drunken slob could help a nice alert Jewish Democrat to get 2 per cent of the vote back. Who knows? Who knows anything?

  “Am I given to understand,” Goodman called out, “that Chief Gallagher will be running the Police Department’s end of this?”

  “Yes,” McGrady said.

  “With a little less noise than in the past, I would hope,” the Mayor said sharply.

  “Fine with me,” Goodman said. “That’s fine.”

  Later the Mayor’s wife served coffee in the living quarters. Benjamin Goodman stood at the living-room windows, looking at the dark lawns that run down to the East River. The Mayor’s wife was bringing Benjamin Goodman cream and sugar and she heard him muse to himself, without knowing he was saying it aloud, “This would be a helluva place for me to live.”

  Just before they fell asleep that night, the Mayor’s wife said, “This Goodman is a slimy worm, you know.”

  “Why?” he asked.

  “Because he’s a slimy worm, that’s why,” she said.

  Mario and Angela had come into the Palumbo apartment just as the news program started. They stood in the doorway between the kitchen and front room and watched, she in silence, Mario with little noises coming out of him when he found he was so afraid that he could not inhale. When the television announcer changed subjects, Kid Sally turned off the set. Everybody in the room looked at Mario.

  “This is Mario Trantino, he is one of the boys who came here for the bike race,” Angela said.

  “How do you do, pleased,” Kid Sally said.

  “How do you do, pleased,” Big Mama said.

  They all reached out and shook hands with Mario, and Big Mama took him into the kitchen. “I want to change,” Angela said. She went down the hall to her room. Right away, Big Jelly closed his eyes and put his head against the wall. Tony the Indian sat with both hands on top of his head. He began scratching his scalp. He knew a lot of people do this when they think, and he wanted to try it out. Big Jelly opened his eyes. When he saw Tony the Indian trying to think too, it came to him.