“Let’s cut right to it,” McDuffie said. “When you walk out of here, you better damn well know what has to be done.”
“So give it to us, boss,” Sharkey said, “that’s what we’re here for.”
“The Beacon wants a bigger piece of the Third Ward and is already moving in from Frank Marsucci’s office on Kinney. What we don’t know is what Marsucci’s up to right now when it comes to the numbers.”
“He ain’t into the numbers, not yet,” Sweeney said, “but it’s comin’, you can bet your sweet ass on that. He ain’t blind, he knows how we worked over those five coon runners they tried to squeeze into our turf.”
“Those three fake, nigger barbers thought they could actually pull it off,” Spencer said. “But when we kicked the hell out of the five jigs they sent our way, things got changed real quick. So now they’re going after white kids from St. Mark’s, really scraping the bottom of the fucking barrel, if you ask me.”
“I hear it ain’t just the three nigger barbers,” Sharkey said as he tapped out four fags from a pack of Luckies, passed out three of them, and lit the fourth for himself. He leaned back on the couch, took a deep drag, and sensed McDuffie’s eyes boring in.
These three young punks were McDuffie’s information pipeline. All had juvie records, had families with police rap sheets, and as school dropouts for more than a year had learned the hard way how the Third Ward worked.
Gino Sharkey got an education when he sat in with his dad during dominoes at the Sicilian-American Club on Tenth. He quickly learned how the old goombahs hated Zwillman. There might be a truce, but Richie the Boot and Longy’s handshake didn’t mean shit. Every wop in Newark knew that each wanted mobster control of the city for himself. Arguments at the club, usually oiled by juice glasses of grappa, convinced Gino that Longy’s Third Ward was ripe for the picking.
“So what the hell else did you hear?” McDuffie demanded, knowing that he was asking the kid to dishonor a code that said whatever was heard inside his old man’s club stayed inside.
“Only that the Boot wanted to take it slow, didn’t want to make no waves,” Sharkey said. “Even has one of his soldiers working with the three jigaboos to make sure they don’t go crazy.”
McDuffie decided to push it a little further, hoping that greed would be the tipping point. “Slow, I still don’t get what you mean by slow.”
“Shit, I don’t know, maybe one runner nosing into our turf to test things. Jesus Christ, how the hell am I expected to know?”
“Who gives a damn whether it’s one punk or more, they know we’ll be waiting,” Sweeney said. “First time nearly broke that big coon’s arm, howled like a baby. Won’t be so easy on them this time.”
“The dumb fucks even had two bimbos collecting,” a smiling Spencer said as he rubbed the knuckles of his right hand. “Thought it would make things smooth. I got that notion out of their heads real quick.”
“So this is the way I see it, and it’s the way you’re going to see it,” McDuffie said. “You got that!”
The battle plan was simple, with the exception of only one apartment, all newspaper deliveries were made via a service staircase or elevator. Excellent ambush territory. The coast must be clear of other deliveries. They didn’t want the milkman or daily delivery guy around when they moved in. Make it fast. Don’t pull any punches. Then take the Beacon and throw it in the apartment trash bin. McDuffie steered clear of giving any cautionary advice when it came to violence. He knew these kids, what they were capable of when angered, and that’s exactly what he was looking for, unbridled anger.
He searched their faces looking for any sign of doubt. He discovered more than he had hoped for. All three were leaning forward, elbows on their thighs, as they waited impatiently for what he had to say.
“Nothing out in the open, let’s get that straight. Let them push that shitty rag out on the street, but they’re not getting into the apartments. If we let them in, they’ll be picking your pocket and mine, and I’ll be fucked if I let that happen. Agreed!”
McDuffie walked the three kids to the door of his office, watched as they unchained their bikes from around a lamp post, and pedaled away. He knew they were supporting their families up to a point, and salted away a tidy sum for themselves each week. Like him, they had a lot at stake and had already shown how far they would go to protect their turf.
Things are getting too god damn complicated, McDuffie thought. Can’t really bitch about the protection. Switzer said it would be there, and the palooka was right. Longy has the cops in his pocket, there’s no doubt about it. If Richie the Boot is moving in like Gino says, things could get ugly.
McDuffie had turned away just as Sweeney motioned for his two buddies to follow him. Fifteen minutes later, they were on the back porch of the Sweeneys third-floor tenement flat.
“Wait here. I’ve got something to show you,” Al said as he turned and went inside. Gino and Tommy shrugged. You never knew what to expect from Al.
“Take a look,” Al said as he untied the strings from around a red and white kitchen towel, and tugged it open. “It’s a Beretta, an eight-shot beauty, and this little box has extra ammo. I counted twenty bullets.”
“Where the hell did you get that?” Gino said as Al gripped the pistol and waved it back and forth in front of them.
“My uncle smuggled it back from Italy in his duffle bag. It’s what the Italian officers used. Here, take a look.”
The small black pistol was passed around. Gino and Tommy examined it from every angle. “Not much to it. Not heavy at all,” Tommy said. “There ain’t no way your uncle gave it to you. Does he know you’ve got it?”
“Nope. I saw where he hid it under all sorts of stuff in his basement. Grabbed it the last time we visited him and Aunt Lizzie in Nutley. Be a while before he misses it.”
“It’s not loaded is it?” Gino said.
“Bet your sweet ass it is. What good’s an empty gun?”
“Jesus Christ, we’ve been passing it around like it’s a toy, and all the time it was loaded! Are you nuts or something!” Tommy said.
“Not to worry, the safety’s been on.” Al rewrapped the Beretta in the towel and string.
“So what are you gonna do with it,” Gino asked. “Ain’t no fuckin’ way you’re actually going to use it. I’m right, ain’t I?”
“Just insurance, that’s all,” Al said. “Only comes out if those Beacon punks cross the line. Just wave it, that’s all. They’ll shit their pants and run like hell.”
Richie was surprised at how smooth things went with Frank Marsucci. The circulation manager was a punk who picked his carriers’ pockets and everyone knew it. But driving around with him in his Plymouth that first weekend, you’d never know it. He helped roll and rubberband the Saturday papers, and inserted Parade magazine in the Sunday editions. Marsucci even joked about the printer’s ink on both of their hands before sharing a bar of Lava soap with Richie at the grimy office sink. They had spent two mornings together going up and down tenement stairs, apartment hallways, front porches, and assorted shops spread over four square blocks.
“Okay, kid, from here on out, you’re on your own,” Marsucci said handing over a four-inch locking steel ring that was inserted through cards bearing the names, addresses and amounts owed by each of Richie’s fifty-five customers. “This is your bible, don’t lose it. If you do, it’s extra work for me, and it’ll cost you five bucks.”
Richie ran his belt through the ring to secure it to his waist at the same time giving him easy reference to addresses he hadn’t yet memorized. In his back pocket was a small manila envelope that, at the completion of his daily route, would contain markers picked up from twelve numbers writers along the way. No names, no addresses, each stop had to be memorized before Wilber Fontaine, a.k.a. God’s Tall Timber, would let him out the door.
The circulation manager never let on that he knew anything about the policy slips he collected each day, and Richie thought it was strange that a b
low-hard like Marsucci didn’t know what was going on.
“We’ll keep a nice little kitty for you,” John Travers, a.k.a. Righteous Reckoning, informed him at the end of the first week. “That’s four bucks twenty. Not bad on top of your Beacon bread, and your folks don’t have to know a thing about it.”
It took no more than a couple of days for the gang to overcome their eye-popping surprise when Richie showed up on his Columbia Military long enough for each of them to pedal up and down the block before coming to a skidding stop in front of Milt’s. The Pump bitched about how her jumper got in the way the first time around, so came back the second day wearing dungarees and had them all wowing as she zigzagged down to the corner and back.
“Now that’s a fucking bike!” a panting Pump extolled. “Like brand new. How’d you get your mitts on it? Bet your sweet ass it cost a mint.”
“Yep, you got it,” Richie said as he steadied the bike on its kickstand. “Started my Beacon route. Got a deal with Simon, paying it off a little each week.”
“All of a sudden, ain’t it,” a disturbed Joey said. “Didn’t know you even wanted a route. Marsucci’s had my name for months. Still waiting.”
“Don’t blame me,” Richie said, “that’s the way the ball bounces sometimes.”
From the get-go, Richie was surprised how smooth things were going. But Marsucci had clued him in that a circulation war with the Clarion was brewing, and that he’d better be ready. In addition to his paying customers, for two weeks Richie would be dropping off twenty freebies at the doors of non-subscribers. He would get fifty cents for each new customer that signed up.
“It’s as new to you as it is to me,” Marsucci scanned the faces of the twenty kids who had packed into his office that Saturday afternoon. “It’s simple enough, for two weeks you’ll be getting extra papers with a list of names and addresses where to drop them off. Then you hit each of them for a subscription. You get fifty cents a pop and a new paying customer to boot. Now that ain’t too bad, is it.”
“Easy for you to say,” a tall, pimple-faced redhead, who Richie didn’t know, said. “Ain’t no way I can see any new customers along my route.”
“That’s the point,” Marsucci said, “you’ll be pushing out into new territory, Clarion turf. It’s not going to be easy, and there’s some job security at stake. Get what I mean?”
“What a bunch of bullshit, if you pardon my French,” a stocky older kid said. All eyes turned to where he was seated on a bundle of papers near the front door. Richie guessed he was not much younger than Marsucci. “Bosses like you come and go. You’re number four. We’ll be the ones bumping heads with the Clarion, and who the hell knows if you’ll even be around.”
“You can bet your sweet ass that Sweeney, Sharkey and Spencer will be waiting,” another one of his older carriers challenged. “We all know what they got going, and what they’ll do to hold on to it.”
“They made god damn sure everyone got the message when they pounded the hell out of those five coons,” pimple-face said. “And two of them were skirts.”
Marsucci swiveled his chair, propped his feet on the desk, and with feigned indifference leaned back to absorb the bitching and moaning that filled his office. Who the hell do these kids think they’re yapping at, he thought. Five hours of grilling by the MPs and provost in Cherbourg didn’t break me down, so they can just shove it. There’s a big meal ticket waiting to be punched and I’m going to punch it. He held up both hands to signal for silence, got up and walked to the front of his desk. “Close your traps and listen.”
It took less than five minutes for Marsucci to outline all they needed to know. They’d be getting extra papers, a list of where to drop them off, and how a special Beacon promotion would give each new customer twenty-six weeks of the paper at half-price. He suggested they take care of their subscribers first, then drop off the freebies. If any of them were caught dumping the freebies into trash cans or down the storm drain, they could take a hike. He let them know that he had a list of more than a dozen kids waiting to take their routes.
Marsucci waited until Richie was about to clear out with the rest of the carriers when he motioned him to stay behind. “Maxwell, I think it’s time we talk.” He slumped into his desk chair, fished his pocketknife out, flicked it open, returned his feet to their usual spot on top of the desk, and began cleaning his fingernails.
“Looks to me you’ve got a sweetheart deal going with those three jigaboo barbers,” he said. “Don’t know how you got it, but from here on I’m in on it.”
“I don’t get it.”
“Easy enough. The big one, God’s Tall Timber, Wilber Fontaine, or whatever the fuck you call him, stopped by this morning and we had a talk.”
“And….”
“Seems you’re Richie the Boot’s guinea pig. He’s been wanting a piece of Zwillman’s Third Ward, and figures that starting small to test the water is the way to go. He’ll see if you sink or swim.”
“Still don’t get it.”
“Up to now it’s been nice and neat, running from one safe policy writer to another. All tucked away outside Longy’s territory. Today I got word that’s gonna change.”
“How so?”
“Got a new name for you,” Marsucci said. “Name’s Thelma, Thelma Boyd, runs the newsstand and coffeeshop at the Riviera.”
“The Riviera! That’s solid Clarion. From what I see, there’s not one Beacon subscriber in the whole place. So that’s what you mean by guinea pig.”
Marsucci pulled a pack of Camels from his shirt pocket, tapped two out, took one and offered the other to Richie. “Ain’t really any of my business, and I really don’t give a shit, but do mommy and daddy know what you’ve got going?”
“You’re right, that’s none of your damn business.”
“Okay, we’ll keep family out of this.” Marsucci pulled a glass ashtray out of the top right drawer and pushed it across the desk. He studied Richie, looking for any sign the kid was in over his head. He found none. “Only want to be sure you won’t be pissing your pants when you run into trouble. I don’t mean if, I mean when. You can bet your sweet ass on that.”
The high midafternoon sun made Richie squint as he stepped out to the sidewalk and unchained his bike from a light pole, just as an unmarked police cruiser slowed momentarily in front of the circulation office before turning the corner.
“Isn’t America great,” Nick Cisco said as he cocked his right thumb back toward the Beacon circulation office. “Dime to dollar that kid we just passed is running numbers for Richie the Boot.”
“Start ‘em off young,” Kevin McClosky said. “Every business needs a good foundation.”
“And in this town, policy parlors are like candy stores,” his partner said. “Sweet and innocent. Worst thing you can get if you bite off too much is a toothache.”
“Damn Nick, if you ain’t a cynic,” Kevin said. “That kid back there can’t be more than thirteen, give or take.”
“Starting out way back when, in the Sixth Ward, they had kids as young as eight and nine,” Nick said, “running and collecting for Zwillman. Called it nigger pool back then.”
“Barely old enough to add and subtract.”
“Talk about adding and subtracting, I bet our boy Gazzi has been counting the hours he’s been staking out that tenement. My guess is the whore and her pimp won’t be back. We’ve got an APB out on them, and not a bite so far.”
“Let’s check it out anyway,” Kevin said. “And put Gazzi back on the bricks.”
McClosky idled their cruiser to a stop in front of the tenement at the same time a smiling Gazzi stepped from the entrance of the apartment across the street.
“Not raining anymore. Outside of that, nothing new.” Gazzi was still wearing his department issue raincoat.
“Neighbors do any blabbing at all?” Cisco asked.
“Not a fucking word.” Gazzi shed his raincoat exposing a uniform shirt soaked with sweat. “It’s like I wasn’t here at
all.”
“Kept those windows in sight all the time, right?” McClosky said.
“Right, no lights.” Gazzi fished a small spiral notebook from his shirt pocket and checked his notes. “The blinds didn’t move an inch. Plenty of up and down traffic in the hall, that’s about it.”
“And you’ve been here around the clock?’ Cisco said.
“You got it, that is except for twice to the call box at the corner and a quick piss and coffee at Bloom’s at the same time.”
The two detectives reacted in unison, their disbelief turning to anger.
“And how long did each of these trips take?” Cisco asked, his face reddening, the veins in his temples popping to the surface.
McClosky recognized the danger signs and decided he better take over before things got ugly.
“Bloom’s is a late night deli. Was one of your piss trips after it got dark?”
“Yeah, let me see here….” Gazzi paused to check his notebook, “It was at ten thirty, just before closing.”
“You still haven’t said for how long. Five minutes? Ten minutes? Fifteen minutes? How fucking long were you away from your stakeout?”
“Fifteen, but no more than that. It’s right here,” Gazzi tapped his notebook.
Cisco nodded slightly toward his partner indicating with a deep breath that his initial anger had subsided, but not entirely.
“Frank, does that notebook tell you it might not be wise to leave a stakeout for fifteen minutes in the dark of night in a Ward where everyone hates your guts? Don’t answer.”
The two detectives unbuttoned their coats, unsnapped their shoulder holsters, and with Gazzi in tow, walked as casually as possible across to Ruby West’s apartment. They found her door slightly ajar.
“Police, open up!” McClosky shouted. The command was met with silence. The two detectives drew their snub-nosed revolvers, and pushed their way into a room where the only light filtered through the tightly drawn blinds on the two front windows. McClosky turned to Gazzi still in the hall, “Stand right there, don’t let anyone near the door.”
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