Bloodline: A Novel

by Warren Murphy

  As far as Tommy could tell, Birchevsky’s main organizing technique was to sit in coffee shops and diners, endlessly reading the Daily Racing Form, complaining that all the races at Yonkers were fixed, and buying coffee for all the Adelson workers who wandered in.

  It did not seem like terribly effective union organizing, Tommy thought, but since a majority of the workers had asked for the election, it appeared to be a foregone conclusion that the same majority would vote to be represented by Mishkin’s union.

  Then, in the week before the election was to be held, an independent union that no one had ever heard of said that it would also seek to represent Adelson’s workers.

  No one knew who was behind this new independent union, and Tommy only figured it out one day when he was walking along the street and saw Nilo talking to a half-dozen goons who had taken to hanging around the Adelson factory’s front door, where they badgered and threatened workers to vote for their union.

  Again, personally, Tommy was outraged. He had come late to the fight against the gangsters, but the last year had made him a zealot. The mobsters seemed to think they could get away with anything and now they were trying to prevent a free election by working men.

  Harry Birchevsky’s organizing response to the goons’ threats seemed to be to buy more coffee and to read more racing forms. At night, Tommy went out of his way to talk to some of Adelson’s workers, and it was clear that they were frightened, afraid that they would get their heads busted if they didn’t vote for the independent union supported by Maranzano and Nilo.

  The day before the election, Tommy knew that Mishkin no longer had the votes to win. Something was needed, some last-minute fireworks, and that night, he had an idea and called Captain Cochran.

  The next morning, just as the workers were arriving, a police wagon pulled up in front of Adelson’s factory. Lt. Tony Falcone, spiffy in his dress blue uniform, and a squad of a half-dozen policemen jumped from the vehicle and marched up to the thugs who were loitering around the entrance.

  “You’re all under arrest for loitering,” Tony announced.

  “Get outta here. We’re union organizers.”

  “You’re vagrants,” Tony said. “We’ve had a complaint.” He waved to the cops. “Bring them in.” The police handcuffed the six hulking goons and pushed them into the back of the wagon. The workers milling around cheered as they entered Adelson’s.

  The votes were counted at 9:00 A.M. From a restaurant across the street, Tommy saw Nilo show up for the tally. He learned at lunchtime that Mishkin’s union had won by a vote of 35 to 32. He felt as good about it as about anything he had done in the past year. He just resented a little bit that he could not gloat to Nilo that he had beaten him. Maybe some other time.

  * * *

  THEY CAME BY TRAINS and by limousine. Even though air service was being flown into nearby Philadelphia on a regular basis, none of the gang chieftains who descended on Atlantic City on May 15, 1929, was willing to trust his life to such an untried invention as airline travel.

  The mobsters had the two top floors of the President Hotel, right across the boardwalk from the Atlantic Ocean beach. Every morning for three days, a gaggle of waiters came up to the top-floor conference room and set out an arsenal of coffeepots, water pitchers, trays of sandwiches and fruit and pastries, and then left, with strict orders not to set foot back on the top floor unless they were called. Ten girls, recruited from the very best brothels in the city, were on service around the clock in the two “hospitality lounges.”

  More than twenty gang lords from all over the United States came to the meeting, but they did not include either Joe Masseria or Salvatore Maranzano.

  Maranzano had heard through the grapevine, in a story planted by Luciano, that the meeting was being called just to discuss what the mobsters would do after the war with Masseria ended. He told that to Nilo and said with a chuckle, “When the war is ended, they will do what I tell them to do. They can hold meetings from now until hell freezes over.”

  For his part, Masseria had been notified of the meeting by Luciano and had demanded that he participate.

  “I’m the boss of New York. I ain’t supposed to be there?”

  “Joe, we’ve been losing guys to Maranzano, right?”

  “Yeah?” Masseria said suspiciously.

  “These guys I’m meeting with have a lot of influence. What I’m going to do is tell them that you’re going to win out over Maranzano. They’ll listen to me and they’ll listen even better if you’re not there.”

  “So what?”

  “So, they will tell their people to make sure nobody supports Maranzano. They won’t want to back a loser. And if they start putting a little heat on Maranzano, he’ll be gone and this damned war will end. Joe, you got to trust me on this. I know what I’m doing.”

  It took a whole evening’s discussion in Asti Restaurant on Twelfth Street before Luciano convinced the old gang boss that it was in his best interests to stay away. Finally, when dinner was over, Masseria clapped Luciano on the shoulder.

  “Ahhh, do what you want to do, Charlie. I suppose you’re gonna have all those Jews there, too, right?”

  “We’ve got to deal with them.”

  “You do; I don’t. I don’t meet with Jews. Or Irish either, for that matter. You go do it. You tell them Joe the Boss will always be Joe the Boss.”

  “I will,” Luciano promised. “I know what I’m doing. Trust me.”

  What he and Lansky had been planning for more than two years was a national crime syndicate. America would be divided into districts, and each district would have a boss who would be in charge of all the crime in his area. But no boss would go against another boss without approval from the syndicate’s board of directors.

  Luciano had not expected it to be easy, especially when he opened the first meeting and looked around the room at a who’s who in American crime. Capone had come from Chicago, with his top advisor, Jake “Greasy Thumb” Guzik. There was Abe Bernstein of Detroit’s Purple Gang and Moe Dalitz from Cleveland. Abner “Longy” Zwillman drove over from New Jersey, picking up Boo Boo Hoff of Philadelphia on the way. From Boston came King Solomon. The biggest contingent was from New York and included Costello and Adonis and Lepke, Dutch Schultz, Lansky, Albert Anastasia, and Johnny Torrio.

  It took three days of meetings, many of them among small groups walking along the beach with their pants rolled up to keep them dry, but in the end, Luciano and Lansky got everything they wanted. Nobody believed that violence would be ended, but each agreed to talk to the other syndicate bosses before doing anything outside their own franchised area.

  At the final night’s meeting, the two big questions that had been avoided for three days came up. “All that shooting in Chicago is killing us,” a Kansas City boss said. “The cops are going apeshit.”

  Luciano looked down the table to where Capone sat. The Chicago boss nodded and rose slowly to his feet. “You have to understand,” he said. “I hit those Irishers not because they was Irish. Everybody knows I get along with everybody. I mean, look at Jake here,” he said, pointing to his assistant, Guzik. “He’s a goddamn Jew from Russia and I don’t have no problem with him or nobody else for that matter. I had to hit them Irish ’cause they kept trying to hit me. But I know it’s stirred things up. So what I’m planning on doing is taking a little vacation.” He grinned.

  “Book me a room, too,” Frank Costello yelled out.

  “You don’t want this room,” Capone said. “I’m gonna go and get myself arrested for a nickel-and-dime charge and spend a little time in the can. That’ll give things a chance to blow over.”

  Luciano smiled. “I think you’re doing the right thing Al,” he said. But he wondered, Whoever gave him that lamebrain idea? Once he goes to jail, he’s going to be doing nothing but be in jail. He looked at Lansky, who rolled his eyes, clearly agreeing that Capone had lost his senses. But everybody else at the table thought it was a great idea, and Capone sat down with applau
se ringing in his ears.

  There was still one piece of business left and Chicago’s Guzik brought it up. “We’re talking a lot about ending all the violence, but what about it, Charlie? What about Maranzano and Masseria in New York? Is this going to be one of those stupid guinea vendettas that never ends?”

  Luciano got back to his feet. He looked around the room slowly, meeting each man’s eyes before he answered.

  “No.” There were no more questions.

  • On May 17, 1929, Al Capone was arrested in Philadelphia, only an hour’s drive from Atlantic City, when he turned himself over to a policeman and announced that he was carrying an unregistered gun. He was sentenced to one year in a Pennsylvania county prison by Judge John E. Walsh. From then on, until his death from syphilis, he spent most of his life behind bars.

  * * *

  SOFIA LOOKED UP from the ledger books she was working on, in a small back office at the Falcon’s Nest speakeasy, to see Nilo in the doorway.

  “How’s everything?” he asked. “Kids okay?”

  “Yes. They’re with Mama.”

  Nilo nodded and turned to walk down the hallway to another office. He was followed by a dumpy man in a disheveled suit who seemed to waddle when he walked. Sofia had seen him around a lot lately, as he came in several afternoons a week to spend time in Nilo’s office, but beyond introducing him as Harry, Nilo had pointedly failed to identify him. She wondered idly who he was. All she knew was that she did not like him. He had a leering look, and the several times she had passed him in the hallway, he had eyed her as if he were starving and she was a particularly succulent steak.

  Probably another gangster. Gangsters are all we know. And we live in fear that we’ll be shot by some hoodlum because we work for some other hoodlum.

  And Nilo, she knew now, would never quit. Maranzano had told him to foster his new identity as Danny Neill so he could front all the organization’s legitimate businesses, but Nilo paid no attention to business at all. He admitted one night that the reason he had hired Tina for the speakeasy was because she had experience in running one and she could manage the place while he was busy elsewhere.

  “Elsewhere,” she knew, meant out on the streets. Others of Maranzano’s men often called for him late at night, and he was always eager to join them. Once, he had come home with blood on his hands and clothing. At first she thought he had been injured, but it was someone else’s blood. He refused to talk about it; the next day, she took the clothes from his closet and incinerated them. When Nilo found out what she had done, he shouted at her angrily.

  “They were bloody and ruined. What the hell would you want them for?” she demanded.

  Nilo smiled in his disarming way and said dreamily, “A souvenir.”

  Recalling the incident, she thought, My husband is a crazy man. We all belong in asylums. If it weren’t that my children and I need Nilo to live, Tina could have him.

  Sofia checked the clock over the door. It was five thirty. She would finish up the bookwork quickly and leave. Tina came in at six to oversee the club and get ready for her nightly performances, and while it had never been mentioned or arranged by either of them, when Sofia came in daily to do the books Tina was never there. And Sofia made sure to leave before Tina arrived. Their lifelong friendship was indeed ended; they had not seen or spoken to each other in six months, and Tina had never seen Salvatore, the new baby.

  It took Sofia longer than she expected to finish her bookkeeping work, and when she looked up, she saw it was six o’clock. She hurriedly put on her coat to leave, but in the hallway outside, she met Tina, who was just arriving.

  “Hello, Fia. How are you?” Tina said with a smile.

  Sofia coldly turned her face away and walked past Tina without a word. A few minutes later, Nilo walked into Tina’s office and found her standing in front of the desk, crying.

  “What’s the matter?” he asked.

  “I just met Sofia. She wouldn’t even talk to me,” Tina said, turning a tear-streaked face to him. And then she broke down and started to weep openly. Nilo walked to her and put his arms around her.

  “Don’t let it bother you,” he said. He tried to joke. “Hell, most times she won’t even talk to me. She gets over it. Forget it. Come on, you know you want to.”

  Sofia had been almost at the front door when she realized she had left her purse on the desk. When she went back to get it, she saw Tina’s office door was ajar. From inside, she heard Nilo’s voice. Despite herself, she stopped to listen.

  “Come on,” she heard him say. “You know you want to.”

  Unable to stop herself, she pushed the door open a little farther and peered inside. She saw Tina and Nilo standing in front of the desk; her husband had his arms around the woman.

  Quietly, Sofia walked away. I’ll get her for this, she thought. I’ll get her if it’s the last thing I do.

  * * *

  “IF IT WEREN’T FOR THE FACT that you think some kind of smoked pink fish served on a cement doughnut is a decent breakfast, you would be a perfect wife,” Tommy said.

  Rachel, who had been standing in front of the kitchen stove in the small apartment, apparently willing the coffeepot to percolate, came around behind Tommy, slid her hands down into his open shirt, played with his chest, nuzzled his neck, and said, “You really think so?”

  “Without a doubt. But I’d really like bacon and eggs once in a while.”

  “Bacon comes from pigs and how disgusting is that? Smoked salmon comes from the sea, beautiful clean fish swimming around in the beautiful clean ocean. You’ll thank me when you’re ninety years old.”

  “All right. I’ll eat your stupid fish. But this thing it’s on…”

  “That’s called a bagel.”

  “I know it’s called a bagel. That’s the Jewish word for ‘concrete,’ right?”

  She licked his ear and whispered, “It’s the Jewish word for ‘sex.’ See the shape of it? Does it remind you of anything?”

  “You’re disgusting,” Tommy said.

  “I’m pregnant.”

  Tommy rose from his chair as if he had been prodded and spun toward Rachel.

  “You sure?” he said with a broad smile.

  “Positive. You have bageled this poor little Jewish girl one time too many.”

  “Yahoo,” Tommy yipped. “When?”

  “I’m going to the doctor today, but I think around the end of the year.”

  “Does your father know?”

  “I saw him last week and he told me that I looked pregnant. Lev knows everything.”

  Tommy thought about that remark as he took the streetcar downtown to the union offices near Greenwich Village. His daughter might think that Lev Mishkin knew everything, but neither Lev nor Tommy had been able to figure out what was going on with the garment makers’ union. Since their success in unionizing the Adelson factory earlier in the year, union organizing activity had ground to a halt.

  While Tommy had seen signs that Lepke was trying to strangle the industry through his control of the cutters’ union, Lev had been unperturbed.

  “It’s a good chance for us, Tommy,” he said. “Up till now, the owners always figured their choice was between a union or no union. Now they’re going to see that it’s between a union run by that thug Lepke and one run by us. They’ll support us.”

  “I hope you’re right.”

  “Of course I’m right.” He paused. “You’ve been doing good work for me. I still have a spot on my payroll if you want it. Lawyer, organizer, whatever you want.”

  “No thanks,” Tommy said.

  Mishkin fiddled with his cup. He seemed nervous and Tommy said, “Okay, Lev, out with it.”

  “It’s about Rachel.”

  “She’s pregnant.”

  “I know. That’s not it. She wonders about you, Tommy. You don’t take the bar exam and you don’t have a job. You tell her you’ve been living off your savings, but she’s never seen any sign of those savings. You spend most nights ou
t. She thinks you’re involved in something, but she doesn’t know what.”

  “And you?”

  “I don’t know,” Mishkin said. “I don’t think it was just a coincidence that the police showed up at Adelson’s to arrest the galoots, just before the vote there. Sometimes I wonder how that happened.”

  “You think I’m a criminal?”

  “I think you’re still a cop,” Mishkin said.

  “I wish I were. Then I’d be able to afford this baby.”

  “Okay,” Lev said. “We’ll just let it drop.” The two men smiled at each other.

  Over the next two weeks, Tommy received regular reports from Mishkin. Harry Birchevsky was having no success in getting workers to sign up to join Mishkin’s union. “Something funny’s going on,” Mishkin said.

  Tommy agreed. Sooner or later, I’m going to find out what it is.

  * * *

  IN THE AFTERMATH of the revulsion at Capone’s Valentine’s Day slaughter, New York City cops had gone on a full-scale attack against the bootleggers and other criminals. And Tony Falcone, spurred on by Captain Cochran’s seemingly inexhaustible supply of inside information, was in the middle of it.

  He had no illusions. He knew that city hall was still protecting the mobsters and that most of the arrests were routinely tossed out by corrupt courts and prosecutors. But the arrests had, at least, harassment value and let the thugs know that someday, somehow, society would hand them a due bill for their crimes.

  The highlight for Tony came after midnight on June 13, when the bodies of Red Cassidy and Simon Walker were found lying on a Midtown street, shot to death. Cassidy was a lower-echelon hoodlum, Walker apparently nothing but an innocent who wandered into the line of fire. Police quickly established that the two men had been shot in the Hotsy Totsy Club, a speakeasy on Broadway near Fifty-fifth Street, which was owned by Legs Diamond, a notorious mob gunman.

  Tony took over the investigation. Eight people, both employees at the club and patrons, told police that the two men had been shot in a wild fight by Diamond and his sidekick, Charles Entratta, and that another man who was there and might have been involved was Charlie Luciano.