His mother came in and hugged Tommy, who couldn’t take his eyes off Tony. “I’m sorry, Papa,” he said.
“I’m not.”
“Huh?”
“The last couple of years, I thought you had lost your ambition and turned into sort of a bum, and it turns out that you were doing something worthwhile after all. I’m proud of you.”
“You’re not mad? That I didn’t tell you?”
Tony shrugged. “I had enough to keep me busy without worrying about you.” He stared at his son for a moment, then grinned. “I talked about it yesterday with Cochran. He said it was his decision, that if anybody had told me, I’d spend all my time trailing you around to make sure you didn’t get into trouble. I can’t argue. He’s right. I would have. No, I’m not mad. Well, maybe a little mad, but mostly proud.”
Anna hugged her son more tightly. “I’ve always been proud,” she said.
“You know how I decided what to do?” Tommy asked, looking at his father. “I asked myself what would my father do, and then I did it.”
“I hate you wise-guy college boys,” Tony said.
Tommy had been there only ten minutes when he received a phone call from Rachel. When he hung up, he looked at his father quizzically.
“Captain Cochran called my house. He wants to see me,” he said.
* * *
COCHRAN WAS IN FULL DRESS uniform when Tommy arrived at his office a little later.
“We’re not usually so formal around here,” Cochran said. “I’ve got to talk to the chamber of commerce at lunch. But I wanted to thank you for what you did. I know how hard it was.”
Tommy grinned. “Oh, you were talking to my father, too.”
Cochran sighed. “Now that he’s a civilian, he called me every son of a bitch in the book. But he’ll get over it.”
“He already has.”
“Do you remember the first time we met?” Cochran asked.
“Yes, sir.”
“I offered you a promotion and you turned it down.”
Tommy nodded.
“I’m doing it again.” Before Tommy could reply, the dapper officer said, “With Tony’s retirement, the Number Two job here is open, and I don’t know anybody who’d be better in it than you. I couldn’t make you a lieutenant right away, but I could give you sergeant now and lieutenant probably in eighteen months.”
Tommy sank down in a chair. “I came in expecting to be told to get lost,” he said.
“Not a chance. I need somebody and I don’t know anybody who I think would be better than you. It’s no bed of roses. You know what’s going on. City hall wants to look good, so they want us out there arresting everybody we can. But then they don’t want to offend any of their ‘friends,’ so most of the cases get fixed in the courts. But it won’t always be that way. If we keep arresting them, sooner or later, they’re going to jail.”
Tommy shook his head. “I wouldn’t be any good at dealing with politicians.”
“You wouldn’t have to.” Cochran grinned. “That’s why they sent an Irishman like me down here in the first place. Nobody will interfere with you. You run the place for me, just like your father did. The political problems are mine.”
“A free hand?”
“I wouldn’t offer the job to you any other way,” Cochran said.
“I’ll take it.”
“I—” Cochran stopped. “You’ll take it?”
“If my wife says it’s all right.”
* * *
“HOW I’VE COME DOWN IN LIFE,” Rachel said. “I thought I was going to be married to a millionaire lawyer. And now I’m stuck with some flatfoot.”
“I’ll practice law someday,” Tommy said weakly.
Rachel smiled and threw her arms around her husband. “Oh, Tommy, you sap, of course I want you to take the job. Go arrest those bastards.”
* * *
THIRTY DETECTIVES FROM PRECINCTS ALL over the city came to the offices of the Italian Squad. While they were not technically members of the squad, the primary responsibility of each of them was gangland crime, and they filed reports of all their investigations with Cochran’s office.
They waited in a big squad room on the second floor of the building, sitting in small school-size chairs, and they looked up when Cochran and Tommy, both in uniform, entered the room and walked to the front.
Cochran was brief and blunt. “This is Sergeant Falcone. He will be my second in command, running the day-to-day operation of the anti-gang squad. What he says goes.” He nodded to Tommy, who looked around the room.
“Most of you men worked with my father. He had a reputation for being a tough, honest cop. That annoyed some of you. I’m just here to tell you that I’m no improvement.” He stepped down off the platform and ordered, “Everyone stand up.”
The detectives, all of them in street clothes, shuffled to their feet.
“Hold your hands out in front of you like this,” Tommy said, stretching his hands before him, palms down.
As the puzzled detectives did so, Tommy walked up and down the aisles among the men, looking at their hands, then came back to the front of the room.
“Put your hands down,” he ordered. When the detectives complied, he said softly, “Now all of you wearing diamond rings, get out of here. Go back to your precincts and tell them to reassign you. You’re not working the gang squads anymore.”
He looked around the room. The detectives stood in stunned silence; not one of them had moved.
“What are you waiting for? Written orders? Go on, get out of here.” Slowly men started to shuffle away from their seats toward the door. In all, fourteen detectives left the room.
When they were gone, Tommy looked at the men who were left. “The rest of you get back to work. You’ll hear from me one at a time. And one standing order remains in force: If you see Charlie Luciano so much as spit on the sidewalk, run him in.”
Cochran stepped forward, smiling broadly, and said, “Better move it, men. The sergeant is not a patient man.”
• Inevitably Luciano heard about the high priority Tommy Falcone had placed on his arrest. He seemed unworried. “I screwed the father, I screwed the girl, and I’ll screw this snot-nose kid before I’m done,” he said.
• The stock market went into free fall at the end of October. From its high of 381 on September 3, the Dow Jones average plummeted and ended the month at 240, down over 35 percent. The market would continue to fall until the summer of 1932 when it bottomed out at 41—a three-year drop of almost 90 percent.
• On America’s favorite radio show, Andy asked: “Is you been keeping yo’ eye on de stock market?” Lightnin’ replied: “Nosah, I ain’t never seed it.” Said Andy: “Well, de stock market crashed.” Asked Lightnin’: “Anybody get hurt?” Everybody got hurt. By year’s end, stock market losses would be more than 40 billion dollars.
• While Sofia was still away with her children on vacation, Maranzano made a telephone call to Chicago to talk to a young man who looked like a college student and always carried a violin case.
• At the end of 1929, the most popular entertainment in America was miniature golf. New York City alone had a thousand courses. The fad soon faded. The first pinball machine, Baffle Ball, was invented. Jukeboxes became popular in small speakeasies that could not afford to hire house bands.
• With Birchevsky fired from the garment makers’ union, Nilo’s attempt to unionize the truck drivers failed. Slowly, Lev Mishkin’s union began to expand. Tommy had not forgotten Eddie Cole, the young truck driver who had been missing since the night he had turned down Birchevsky’s offer. Tommy assigned one of the squad detectives to try to trace Cole’s last movements after leaving the speakeasy where he had been drinking.
• On December 2, 1929, Matteo Mangini died after suffering a massive stroke in his restaurant. Sofia was still in Sicily with her children, visiting Nilo’s hometown of Castellammare del Golfo. Father Mario and Tina stood with Nilo at the graveside services. Nearby was Luciano
, the knife wounds on his face and throat beginning to heal into ridged, white scars. Neither Tommy nor his father attended the funeral.
• A twenty-one-year-old Long Island girl quit her secretarial job for a role in Gershwin’s Girl Crazy on Broadway, and when she held a high C in “I Got Rhythm” for sixteen measures, Ethel Merman became an instant star.
• Despite the market crash, Americans welcomed in 1930 by singing “Happy Days Are Here Again.” On New Year’s Day, Rachel Falcone suffered a miscarriage.
CHAPTER 11
1930: The War
No one knew his real name. He was just “Buster from Chicago.” He looked barely twenty years old, and like a college boy he wore plaid sports jackets and light-colored shoes. He came to New York City from Chicago by train at the end of 1929 and rented a room in a cheap uptown hotel, where he registered as Leo Brothers, locked himself in his room, and carefully unpacked and cleaned the tools of his trade: a Thompson submachine gun, a twelve-gauge shotgun, and four pistols of varying calibers.
Then he took a cab to Midtown to talk to his new employer, Salvatore Maranzano. The meeting with Maranzano and Nilo was brief and businesslike.
“Nilo will tell you who we want done. You do it at your own speed, your own way. No one else will even know you are in town.”
Buster smiled. He had heard such promises before and he knew that they were never kept. His presence in town would be known before nightfall. Still, it did not bother him; a little notoriety was good for business.
“All Masseria men?” he said.
Maranzano nodded. “His men are coming to our side. We want to give them even more incentive to do so.”
“They’ll be dying to join up with you,” Buster said with a smile.
“Where will you be staying?” Nilo asked.
“It’s better that no one knows that. I’ll call in here every day at nine and five. If you have anything for me, you can tell me then.”
After Buster left, Nilo told Maranzano, “We don’t need him. I could have done this work for you.”
“Nilo, Nilo, Nilo, are you ever going to stop being a shooter? Already, we have had enough trouble with that Jew killing that truck driver.”
“It’s all taken care of,” Nilo said sullenly.
“Well, just let it go,” Maranzano ordered. “We’ve got other bigger businesses to take care of. It was not smart to try to do dope. Or to muscle into the garment business. We are winning the war the way it is. Why change the rules?” He stared at Nilo. “And don’t hang around with Birchevsky anymore. He is a hothead and will cause you trouble.”
“Yes, Don Salvatore,” Nilo said.
* * *
BUSTER FROM CHICAGO went to work, and it was immediately clear that the reputation he had gained in the bloody wars in Chicago had been well earned.
He was not inclined to rush into a place and start shooting it up, hoping that he would somehow hit his chosen target. Instead, he carefully followed his intended victims, made sure he knew their schedules and when they would most likely be alone. And then he struck.
Occasionally, he would need help in making the initial identification of a target, and those times Nilo sent a talky young hoodlum named Joe Valachi to act as Buster’s spotter.
Buster from Chicago took his time and did not miss. Almost every week, some underling of Masseria was found shot dead in the street. Although they still outnumbered Maranzano’s forces, Masseria’s thugs began to live in terror.
The war went on. Meyer Lansky assigned an extra bodyguard to stay with Luciano.
* * *
SOFIA HAD RETURNED HOME from Italy shortly before Christmas, convinced that the vacation trip had changed her life.
Nilo had not even bothered to meet his family at the pier and, in fact, did not come back to their apartment until the day after Sofia had returned home. When he did, he seemed contrite and told Sofia in great detail about her father’s death and funeral, how Mario and Tina had both attended, as had Luciano.
Of course, Tina was at the funeral. What would you expect your whore to do? she thought. She said nothing, however, and listened attentively as Nilo told her about Luciano’s brush with death at the hands of assassins.
“He calls himself Lucky now,” Nilo said. “Lucky Luciano.”
“And no one knows who assaulted him?”
“There are a lot of rumors out on the street. That it was Legs Diamond’s gang. Or Dutch Schultz. It wasn’t us so I don’t know, and Luciano’s not saying anything.”
“It was not Masseria himself?” Sofia asked. “A falling-out between him and Charlie?”
“No. Word is that when Luciano survived, Joe the Boss promoted him. Charlie is top dog now, right under Masseria, so I don’t know who might have wanted to get him.”
Sofia nodded. You might not know, but I know. It was Tony Falcone, because I sent him those pictures of your puta singer. And Charlie really is lucky because if I had been here, instead of in Italy, I would have drawn out Tony’s anguish, day after day, until he had no choice but to kill him.
She was disappointed that Luciano was still alive. It had become obvious that he was the only brain left in Masseria’s organization, and if he had been killed, in weeks Maranzano would have conquered Joe the Boss.
Nilo was still jabbering on about how Tony had retired from the police department and Tommy had taken his place, how Tina was keeping the speakeasy packed every night, how her mother was coping with the death of Matteo Mangini, how kind Mario had been at the funeral.
It was unusual for him to talk so much, and she let him wind down before she gave him her own sad news: that his father had died three years earlier, but his mother seemed to be well and did not appear to lack for money.
Nilo took the news stoically. In truth, he had not thought of his family for many years. It was as if Castellammare del Golfo were in another universe.
Later in bed, she saw the faint traces of healing bruises on his body, and eventually he told her about being thrown down the stairs at the union building and about being beaten afterward. More than his body had been hurt; his pride had been badly damaged, too.
“And Don Salvatore says do nothing,” he complained.
“And what would you do?”
What he wanted to do was to go back to the union building and take his vengeance, first on the muscle men who beat him, then on Mishkin and Tommy too.
“I still have scores to settle with the Falcones and a lot of people,” he said.
Sofia counseled patience. “The time for action is not yet. Wait for the first keen edge of their alertness to pass.”
“But Tommy won’t let it die,” Nilo said. “He has men nosing around all over, trying to pin a crime on me.”
“What crime?” she asked.
“Aaaah, somebody turned up missing in the union business. He’ll try to stick me with the guy’s murder.”
“If it happens, then it’s time to act,” Sofia said. “But not you. Somebody else must do it, so no suspicion falls on you.”
Nilo was silent a long time, finally lit a cigarette, and said, “I missed you while you were gone. You’re very smart, Sofia. I am happy you are my wife.”
And I am happy you are my husband, because I know better than you what your future will be and why it is so. And I will do anything to make it happen.
* * *
“THESE CRAZY BASTARDS ARE KILLING each other all over the streets.” Meyer Lansky was clearly outraged; he paced up and down the living room carpet in Luciano’s hotel suite. “We’re going to have to do something.”
“Yeah. What we got to do is make sure nobody kills us,” Luciano replied. He was wearing a silk bathrobe and sipping coffee at a small glass-topped table.
“Well, you didn’t do such a good job when you wound up in Staten Island,” Lansky snapped. “Next time maybe you’re not so lucky and you’re just a memory.”
“Meyer, relax. Have a cup of coffee.”
“I don’t like your goddamn I
talian coffee.”
“Have American coffee. I’ll get some sent up.”
“I don’t want coffee.”
“All right. Then listen without coffee. First of all, we don’t have any worries with the cops or city hall. That’s taken care of. Second of all, I don’t care if Masseria and Maranzano are shooting at each other twenty-four hours a day. If it goes right, one of them will get hit. If he does, we’ll take care of the other one.”
“And suppose neither of them gets hit?”
“Then they’ll have everybody so disgusted with them that when we do what we have to do, nobody’s going to complain about it,” Luciano said. “You’re the one who told me you can’t rush history. Meyer, we’re making history.”
“I just don’t want to make the obituary pages.”
“It’s going just the way it should. You just be careful out on the street. How’s it going with the businesses?”
“We’re buying them up right and left. It’s like we own a business on every block in Manhattan.”
“Prices are right?”
Lansky grinned. “My Jewish landsmen are all in hock from the stock market. They’re selling for a song. We’re bigger than U.S. Steel.”
“Why not? We’re smarter than U.S. Steel.”
“I think I will have that coffee,” Lansky said. “What the hell, we probably own the coffee company.”
Luciano smiled. He knew that Lansky was not nearly so worked up as he had pretended to be but simply wanted to make sure that Luciano was aware of what was going on and had a plan to deal with it. But Lansky knew that asking a question like that directly would have been insulting to Luciano, so instead he launched into his tirade to get the information and at the same time to make Luciano feel leaderly.
Meyer is very clever. He will live a long time, Luciano thought.
* * *
SOFIA WENT TO VISIT HER MOTHER, who insisted on taking her to Brooklyn to the graveyard where Matteo Mangini was buried. Although she had no desire to be part of a wailing graveside death scene, Sofia called Nilo, who sent a car and driver to take them to the cemetery.
The two women stood wordlessly by the grave for a long time.
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