Bimbo nodded. “Yes, sir. Scarlet fever.”
“I’m sorry about that, lad. You Italians are all mama’s boys, eh? It’s quaint. Tell me, are you gonna knock out every man who calls you a Dago?”
“You’re damn right I am. Sir.”
“Well, you’re gonna need a new set of hands every week then, and you’re gonna have the shortest career in PD history if you don’t wise up. This is an Irish world we live in. Even the Inspector and the Detective will vouch for that. You better learn to love potatoes, lad, and fast.”
“Maybe,” Petrosino said, “but you forget that America was discovered by an Italian.”
“The fun’s over, lads,” Piper said. “You children go outside and let us adults have a word. Me and the Inspector and Detective Sergeant. Go on now.”
Piper’s guards each hefted an arm and helped The Whale out. Bimbo followed them.
“Do you believe in God?” Piper asked.
Schmittberger and Petrosino hesitantly nodded.
“Well, see, that’s where you’ve gone astray as policemen, lads. This isn’t about right and wrong. It’s a game, and the sooner you realize that, the sooner you might win.”
“Duff,” Schmittberger said, “you had a man butchered because of a crime racket. They cut off his cock and put it his mouth! And now you’re in with Big Tim Sullivan to boot!”
“I’ve been in this game a long time, lads. Only on the losing end, and I’ve seen honest men with nothing to show for it. The rich fight over the fattest pieces of meat while the poor never even get a sniff of the bones. Does that seem fair to you?”
“Listen to yourself. Talking just like a goddamn Tammany man now.”
“I certainly am not. I’m Republican to the end. But thanks to men like you, Reformers and Fusion Goo-Goos, we’ve all changed our ways. We’re a bipartisan board now, and we all play along. Now we have the shrewdest Tammany and Republican men aboard, and Italians are ‘getting out the vote’ for our politickers. You must render unto Caesar what is Caesar’s, lads.”
“I loved you like my own uncle, Duff, I always did,” Schmittberger said, sagging into a chair at the dinner table. “But if I can prove this, I’ll put you down myself and throw dirt on your coffin. I’ll even swallow my pride and go to McClusky if I have to.”
“Chief Inspector McClusky despises you both now,” Piper said. “I made sure of it. I couldn’t lose either way with that gambit. Either no one would notice, and Primrose would catch the charge, or you’d make a pig’s ear of it, which you did by being ‘honest,’ and McClusky got egg on his face. No, lad, McClusky likes you very little and trusts you even less. The amusing thing about it is that he was trying his best to solve that murder, to build his stature as the Chief. And you crossed him from the start.” Piper reached inside his jacket and took out a rolled-up document bound at the top. He pushed it on the table to Schmittberger. “Consider that service on you personally, Max. It’s a Police Court complaint, something about insubordination, assaulting a citizen, intemperance, and other sundry derelictions of PD duty. It’s got statements from the Chief and from a Detective Sergeant McCafferty against you. I held onto it because, as Deputy Commish, I’ll be the judge at the misconduct hearing, and I want to give you a chance to redeem. But I think we’re past that path in the rose garden, aren’t we?”
“I knew this was coming, Duff. You’ll have to do better than this. I won’t chuck up the sponge easy. I’ve got lawyers that circle vultures to death, so you and McClusky can go to hell.”
“And we’ve got the goods on you, Duff,” Petrosino said, pounding his fist on the table.
Piper’s terrier bolted from Piper’s lap and disappeared.
“Do you? I’ve done nothing. What have you really got, lads? Think it through. You two are going to make a report against the Deputy Commissioner of the PD? For what? You’ll say I’m some kingpin named ‘The Fox’? And you’ll make up some nonsense about Caesar Code and Italian counterfeiters and grafting from a crime ring? What kind of weight would your word have against me, a decorated veteran of the Union Army and PD, wounded in the line of duty? A real American. This city was made for me and my kind. You Jews and Italians are grist that comes through our mill. Lads, I like you both, but you’d ruin yourselves.”
“But what we’re saying is true, and you know it.”
“No, I don’t, Inspector. I’m the Deputy and I swore an oath to do my job.” Piper looked into his hat on the table, admiring himself in the mirror. “This is the truth I see, the way I figure the barrel murder case. You, Max, went back to your old grafting ways. You took Big Bill Devery’s place in this so-called Syndicate. I’ll have proof of it, too. Down the line, someone will find a stack of dirty money, maybe in your desk at Eldridge Street or in your wife’s coal bin or even Max Jr.’s toy chest. It won’t matter. Once a rotten cop, always a rotten cop. The good folks of this city know you from Lexow as the squealing crooked cop, and they’ll have your head on a pike this time. T.R.’s gone, and not even Lincoln Steffens will save you.”
Petrosino turned and looked at Schmittberger. Max’s bristly moustache sagged into a despairing frown, and wrinkles gouged his forehead, making him look ancient.
Piper continued, “But this time, Max, you brought in your chum, Petrosino. He’s I-talian, and, of course, like all I-talians, he has an evil, lying bloodthirsty streak in him. He can’t help himself, nay, it’s Eugenics. So he’s the one who got mixed up with the Morello gang, he’s the one that wrote notes in code or Italian or whatever gibberish it was, and he’s the reason Petto’s escaped and poor Madonnia’s dead. See, Madonnia was going to expose the two of you.”
Petrosino’s veins boiled as he poked Piper in the chest. “You’re worse than the goddamn devil himself. You’re no cop. You don’t even deserve to wear a White Wing’s uniform-”
“There’s that Italian temper again. This isn’t personal, Joe. It’s a game.”
“It got personal when they threatened me and my woman. That Vito Cascio Ferro and his thugs. Is he your godfather, too? Is that how you got the Secret Service to turn a blind eye?”
“High stakes, lad, high stakes. Maybe he’s the fox among us hens? Imagine if the mafia had a charismatic leader and if he ‘unionized’ the crooks in the lingo of the socialist labor movement. That would create a gang of Italians that could hush up any man in a minute. What did I tell you before? That I could beat you at any game, straight or crooked, underground, overhead, or on the level. Which I could and did. Get me? I said back of your back and I’ll repeat it in front of your face – you two ain’t going nowhere unless you bend to what we want.”
“The hell you say.” Schmittberger stood up, wringing his fedora in his hands. “We’ll go to the Mayor if we have to, Duff.”
“The elections are nigh upon us, and Mayor Seth Low will be gone soon. We’ve handpicked our candidate. General McClellan’s son, George Jr., is running as a 10-9 favorite over Low. You’ll like Georgie Jr., he’s a Princeton man, speaks I-talian. Doesn’t know a damn thing about the game though, which is why we like him. And Junior’s already told the press that, if he’s elected, he won’t continue General Greene as Commissioner. Hell, he may not keep anyone in office: commissioners, captains, or even a certain Inspector and Detective Sergeant of the Central Bureau. We’ll tell him who to keep and who to send to the sticks.”
“You’re a real cocksucker, Duff. I mean that sincerely.”
“That’s the spirit, Max. That’s putting ginger and Tabasco in you!”
“You’re gonna lose this fight, I promise you that.”
“No, we’ll win, and it will be a credit to the Reformers. You taught us that the last system didn’t work. All the matter with police business was that it was mismanaged, too democratic, every cop in on it somehow. We fixed it, concentrated it so only a few are in charge now. The system’s cinched up so squealers like you, Max, won’t even know there’s anything to squeal at.”
Petrosino studied Piper in the can
delight. If the old codger had a conscience, it had given up the ghost a long time ago. There was nothing but a smile beneath his red beard, light and airy, as if he were laughing at saloon jokes.
“So what’s it gonna be, lads? Bend like limber trees until the storm passes. That’s all we ask of you. It’s the smart play.”
Schmittberger heaved an enormous sigh, nearly blowing out the candle on Piper’s flickering dinner table. Petrosino looked at his friend, and they mulled it over with their eyes. Petrosino could feel the rage churning inside of him, and he recognized it in Max, too.
Piper laid a cigar on an ivory ashtray, the smoke dancing in his smiling eyes, waiting.
“Well,” Petrosino said, “I guess we’ll go after every crook in the game, one by one.”
“You will, will you? You’re a chessmaster then? Start with the pawns first?”
“No, we’ll start with your queen. We’ll find your precious Ox and bring back his head.”
“We’ll get you, Duff,” Schmittberger said.
“Not till I’ve got you first, lads.”
Chapter 39
“He’s right, you know,” Schmittberger whispered into the chill of night as they walked north on the Bowery. “They’ll massacre us if we go against him with what little evidence we got. He’s dangerous, Joe, and cagey. ‘The Fox’ was the right name for that fucking turncoat.”
“And you were right about Tammany coming back on us,” Petrosino said. “You’ll never let me hear the end of it now, will you?”
“Nope. Hell is empty, and the devils are here.”
“Let’s even the score. What if I went to the mines in Pittston?”
“Like when you went to Jersey before the Pan-American Expo?”
Petrosino nodded, thinking of the weeks he had spent undercover in immigrant mining camps in 1901, breaking his back over a pick and shovel, spying on suspected anarchists. He’d told T.R., who was Vice President then, that he’d heard of an assassination plot against President McKinley. But McKinley brushed it off, saying that the anarchists were gunning for monarchs, not men elected in a free democracy. One month later, Leon Czolgosz walked up to McKinley at the Pan-Am Expo in Buffalo, pistol hidden under a handkerchief, and shot McKinley twice.
“No one listened to us then either,” Petrosino said.
Schmittberger shook his head. “Pennsylvania is outside our bailiwick.”
“We’ll play the anarchist angle. They’re worse now than they were then. There’s Italian terrorists talking about setting off bombs on New York ships.”
“I know you think you’ve got a roving commission, Joe, but you can’t just set off without orders. Someone’s gotta fend off McClusky.”
“Max, if I get Petto, then we get two birds with one stone. He’s the killing hand of the Morello gang and he’s Piper’s… I don’t know what you call it… his paramour. We strike at the heart of the gang and the Deputy at the same time.”
Schmittberger sighed, squeezing the Police Court complaint in his hand. “What the hell. I might as well detail you myself since I’m getting the boot. But I don’t see how you can roam that far. The last time you were working with Federals.”
“Now that everyone’s treating the barrel murder as a lost cause, we have other cases, right? I’ll send you my report that informants say Italian anarchists are plotting to bomb ships at port here, which is true. I know of talk that the steamship Umbria is a target. The word is that the anarchists are operating in the mines on the border of New York and Pennsylvania. So it only makes sense that you handpick me and Bimbo for the job.”
“You want to go to Pittson with that rookie?” Schmittberger mulled it over. “I suppose a six-foot-five Jew would stick out in the mines like a naked gal with tits the size of honeydews?”
“I’ll say. The kid’s Italian, speaks the language, and I need the extra muscle. Remember the last time we pinched The Ox? If we find him, we’ll say we pinched him in New York.”
“You’ll fib that you nabbed him in New York? You’ll sign that affidavit?”
“I’m not signing it. That’s what rookies are for.”
“Once you cross those lines, Joe, they fade away. It’s easier to cross ‘em next time. Trust me, I know. And if we start a war with Piper and these Sicilians, it may never end.”
“This isn’t just about the barrel murder anymore. Sure, I want Petto to roast for it, but they came after me. And Adelina, too. One of them showed at Saulino’s in a mask. I think Petto. Who knows what might’ve happened if her father didn’t scare him off with a shotgun?”
“You didn’t tell me about that. Maybe you’re not thinking straight here.”
“I want that bastard. You’d feel the same way if they threatened Sarah and the kids.”
Schmittberger looked at a trio of Ghetto urchins sleeping on a stoop under flaps of burlap. He nodded. “You’re right, I would feel the same way. This may be the last thing I do as a cop before Tammany gets me, so it might as well be for a lost cause. I’m in.”
“You’re real police, Max. And a true friend.”
“Don’t get blubbery, you little Dago. They haven’t chucked us in the East River yet. Some have greatness thrust upon them, Joe. If that ‘some’ ain’t me, it better be you.”
Petrosino looked up at Max’s blue eyes, wet from the chill in the air maybe, and he wondered if the Green Machine would push them both out of the PD. “What will you do?”
“Spend a lot of coin on shysters and fight to the end. We probably won’t see much of each other, Joe, till the courts decide my fate.” Max stopped outside a loud saloon and put his arm around him. “Just remember: ‘Revenge should have no bounds.’ That’s Hamlet.”
Two days later, Petrosino addressed a red envelope to Luca Perrino care of the Post Office in Pittston, Pennsylvania. Inside was the message he had written in Caesar Code:
WXWWR H VLFXUR. ULPDQHWH OD SHU RUD.
TUTTO È SICURO. RIMANETE LÀ PER ORA.
“Everything is safe,” Petrosino whispered to himself. “Stay there for now.”
Daylight was coming, but he hadn’t been able to sleep all night. He played another Edison record, the “Overture to William Tell,” while he packed mining gear in a rucksack with his .38 service revolver, a .22 Derringer, a .32 Colt he’d taken off a horse thief, two pairs of handcuffs, a leather sap, a knife, a canteen, beef jerky, and extra clothes. It had been two days since he’d seen soap, and his skin had begun to itch all over, but he couldn’t bathe. He sat on his bed with a bottle of wine now that everything was in place. The dusky room grew brighter as he drank and stared out his window at the stars softening in the dense blue horizon. Footsteps began slithering on the walks and wagons purled over cobblestones and the clock chimed.
He put on coveralls, a flannel jacket, a slouch cap, a bandana, and the rucksack on his back. He nervously rubbed granules of stubble on his face as he checked the window and the stairwell before he made his way out. He slipped out the back door of his building and into the foot traffic. Bimbo was waiting for him on Spring Street, dressed as a pick-and-shovel man. A large carpetbag dangled from the kid’s hand.
“What did you shave for?” Petrosino said.
“I forgot. Don’t worry, Joe, the way my hair grows I’ll have a beard by supper.”
“I told you not to shave or bathe, damn it. You’ll get yourself killed if you don’t fit in.” Petrosino frowned, feeling his chest tighten. “Here, keep this inside your jacket.”
Petrosino slipped him the .32 pistol. Bimbo took it carefully into a pocket.
“You know the plan. Are you ready, kid? You’re doing a man’s job now.”
Bimbo nodded, and Petrosino motioned for them to walk. He thought he’d be picturing how he was going to catch Petto, but Adelina was the only thing in his head. He circled around the block and stopped outside Saulino’s. She was dumping trash into an ash barrel when he whistled her over. She squinted at first, then suddenly recognized him and smiled at his disguise.
<
br /> She came closer, and the smile disappeared from her face. “Where are you going?”
Petrosino whispered to Bimbo, “Give us a minute. Go stick your hands in an ash can and rub soot on your face.”
Bimbo nodded and walked away, glancing back at them.
She said, “You’re going after him, aren’t you? And you’re using that boy to help you?”
He wanted to tell her that they had boys as young as six years old working in the mines, but that wasn’t her point. He reached for her hand. “I’ll be back in a day or two.”
“Will you? Is this how it’s going to be if we’re together? I haven’t seen you in days, and now you come to say good-bye with a face for a funeral.”
Petrosino looked over her shoulder and saw Vincenzo’s bent shadow in the front window. “That sounds like your pop talking. You know who I am. You know I have to do this.”
“Why? What are you trying to prove?”
“They’ll try to hurt you, Adelina. They won’t stop.”
“I don’t want you to go. Do you want to be just like them with their vendettas?”
“No.” Without thinking, Petrosino squeezed her hand too hard until she whimpered.
She pulled her hand loose. “Don’t go.”
“I have to. I’m afraid. Of Petto and the rest of them, too. I’m afraid they’ll take you away and then I’ll have nothing.”
“After everything I told you… I told you I didn’t want you to leave me, and now look what you’re doing.”
Petrosino caught Vincenzo’s scowl in the window. “Damn him… Adelina, I’m not leaving you, you know that. This is just who I am.”
“Whatever demons you have, get rid of them now. For me.” She put her hand on his cheek. “I love you, Joe.”
The first time she’d said it. He kissed her hand and let go of it.
THE BARREL MURDER - a Detective Joe Petrosino case (based on true events) Page 29