“Weegee”, I called out as I walked down, “been here all night?”
“Hello, Stone. No, just since eight this morning when I got the wire you’re wanted for questioning in the Spillazzo murder.” That news brought a chill.
“What are you saying, Weegee?”
“I’m just saying what I know. It came over the police net to bring you in. I figured as soon as you got word, you wouldn’t go around the Taft. I figured you’d be back here. Here you are. What do you want the readers to know?”
“Weegee, I been set up. Somebody thinks they got the bulge on me.” I pushed a sawbuck his way on the bar.
“You know Crazy Joe Gallo’s address in Queens?” The sawbuck disappeared.
“Shu-wa. If you let me take your picture.” I lifted my glass in a toast and POW! The room exploded in white tinsel when the flashbulb blew. He pulled a battered notebook out of his coat pocket as my vision returned.
“Gallo parks it at 54 Hampton Street in Woodside. You going there, Stone?”
“Do fish screw in water? Thanks, Weegee.” I threw back the rest of the Jack Daniel’s and grabbed my lid.
I hailed down another ride and headed for T & J Auto Repair on Delancey. I’d be needing my bucket. I had the cabbie drop me a block over; I worked my way back to the alley garage where my Stude Hawk was parked. I had the key and no one was in sight.
I headed the Hawk west on Delancey. I was on my way to Mazzella’s Steak House on East First Street. The rumble had that as Joey Gallo’s business address. I walked in the front door and spotted a couple of palookas slurping pasta to my right. A good-sized ape was sitting on a stool at the far end of the bar on the left. I walked over and told that one I was looking for Crazy Joe. He barely glanced at me.
“Go see where you got ‘a go. You look like a flatfoot”.
“Is Gallo in the back room?” I restated my purpose.
I heard the ’SNICK’ of the switchblade under the bar. I cleared leather with my heavy automatic and delivered it in an arc against the wop’s temple. He folded like a Chinese laundry. I pointed the half-inch hole in the direction of the diners. They continued to dine.
“Tell Gallo that Woodrow Stone is coming to kill im.”
That got them looking at each other, but they avoided eye contact with me. I holstered the gat as I went out the front door. I was sure Gallo was already prepared, but that stunt might keep him closer to home in Queens.
Ten minutes later, I was driving east on the Williamsburg Bridge. When I spotted the Domino Sugar Factory on the Brooklyn side, I punched it just to let those horses gallop. I admired the machine tooled aluminum dash. Studebaker had been first to deliver the goods with a modern-styled automobile in 1947. I got a close-up look at a Starlight Coupe in Louisville in 1948. That crystallized a little more of the reason I wanted to get off the river and better myself - to be able to own one of those jewels. If that Hawk had wings, it could’ve flown across the East River.
I turned the Hawk’s rocket nose straight up Grand Ave to Broadway traveling into the Woodside Neighborhood of Queens. I drove past Calvary Cemetery where Ed Kowalski, Gina’s brother, was buried. Woodside had always been the largest Irish community in Queens. I had no idea why Gallo felt safe to relocate there. One thing, it wasn’t hard to find a drink.
I turned right on Roosevelt Avenue under the elevated train. I could feel the rumbling of either the Long Island Railroad or the subway passing above. It was a commercial, industrial area, but as you moved away from Roosevelt, it got residential real fast. It was around four in the afternoon and pushing ninety degrees. There the youngsters had popped the cork on a hydrant, and they were having a ball running through the spray. I turned south on 79th Street.
I didn’t know the area well enough to get around on my own. I interrupted a game of stickball. It looked like fun. All you needed was a quiet street, a broom handle and a ‘Spaldeen’, that little pink rubber ball made by Spalding. That bunch was in tall cotton; they had outlined the bases and strike zone with chalk. I pulled up and a boy trotted over eating a lemon ice. I held up a silver Liberty half pinched between my fingers.
“Hey, bo, tell me where Hampton Street is.”
“Cheez, Mister. Nice car!”
“Thanks, kid. Hampton Street?”
“Yes, sir. Turn left at the end of the block. You’ll be on Baxter. Before you get back to Rosey Ave, just turn right on Hampton.”
I didn’t have to offer the cartwheel. He was there to get it.
“Thanks, Mister!” Smart kid.
The neighborhood was typical for Queens, narrow row houses, then single detached houses, mostly brick. I parked after I got on Gallo’s block and took a walk on down to pipe Number 54. Brick, three story, driveway on each side. The sidewalk trapped fifteen feet of grass between itself and the front stoop. There were trees spaced along the curb up both sides of the street. No one around, nothing was moving. There seemed to be yards behind the houses.
I got my car, drove past the house and over to Gleane Street. I pulled into an Esso station back out on Rosey Ave. I had to use the facilities, might not get another chance at a head call for a while. As I closed the door of my black rocket ship, I noticed I had landed on the planet, Finnegan’s Pub, which seemed to share a small parking lot with the planet, Esso.
Laughter and flying darts filled the smoky darkness. I leaned on the far end of the bar and told the bartender to bring me a slug of Jack Daniel’s, make it a double. He stopped wiping his hands and threw the bar towel over his shoulder. He parked both his reddened mitts on his edge of the bar top in front of me. I stared at the caterpillar over each of his eyes as he turned his head sideways to look at several customers sitting on bar stools. They were looking at me. He leaned slightly in my direction.
“Not sure we have it in the house. I’ll see if there’s any”. His brogue was so thick, maybe he said, ‘You look just like Mickey Mouse, a little bit like Minnie’. He slid the glass of hooch across the bar in my direction and glanced to make sure he still had witnesses to the blasphemy. I threw it back and laid a silver cartwheel on the bar. I tapped it - no change. I got my business done in the back room, returned and handed my flask to the barkeep and told him to top it off.
“No use a fine boy like yourself drinking of the rotgut. Let me make it Tullamore Dew”. I think that’s what he said.
“Jack’s good”, and I pushed three aces to him and told him to keep the change.
I retraced my route on Gleane and parked four houses up on the opposite side of Hampton Street. I had a clear view of everything coming to or leaving Number 54. Nothing was moving in either direction. I lit a Lucky and loosened my tie. It was hot so I skinned off my coat. At least the sun was going behind the buildings. I had to pick up on Gallo’s habits quick. My New York PI ticket was at stake, maybe my freedom, maybe more.
I popped the aluminum glove compartment and felt around. I found the pint I kept for emergencies and let it lay. I wanted Gallo to tell the truth about who dusted Spillazzo. If not, he was going to find himself wearing a 55-gallon overcoat in the bay off Red Hook and I’d figure another way to take the finger off me. I took a pull from my flask, pushed my hat a little lower and settled in to watch.
***
Those boys playing stickball on 79th made me think of my brother, Ronnie. I was about eight years old; Ronnie and I spent the weekend at Pop Gilliam’s over in Collierville. Pop always walked us across the street to Powell Road Park, although he’d let us run around his backyard unsupervised. He said it wasn’t safe for us to rat around in his garage - sharp tools and weed killer. Of course, that Saturday when we found him snoring in his easy chair, that’s exactly where we headed. We slipped in the side door thinking we’d have another look at his Spanish-American War uniform. We found it in his old footlocker.
In addition, we found a real treasure. It was a shiny blue revolver in beat up brown leather. Ronnie unholstered it to take a close look, then he stuck the piece in his belt and put hi
s hands on his hips like a pirate. Eight years’ experience as the junior partner had taught me to assert myself to stay in the game. I grabbed at the gun, but his hand beat mine. As he jerked it from his belt - BLAT! The gun went off. Saucer eyed, we turned to see where the bullet struck the wall just above the concrete floor. We moved some wooden crates to the left to cover that tiny black hole.
Holstered, the gun went back to the bottom of the footlocker. Then I saw the speckled burn holes in Ronnie’s red and white striped boat-neck shirt. We were so scared, that made us giggle our asses off.
Ronnie pushed that shirt deep into Pop Gilliam’s trashcan and told Mama he lost it playing in the park. We held that secret over each other’s heads so long, we couldn’t even remember if it had really happened. We hoped it hadn’t and never got the nerve to go look for the bullet hole. Our double-spit oath was that no one would ever know that story.
Guess I’d have to say we were a lot luckier than most families around during the 30’s - what they called ‘The Great Depression’. That was owing to the kind of people Mama and Daddy were, and to the fact that Daddy had a good, steady job with the Mason Barlow Advertising Agency in Memphis.
Mama would always point out, God helps him who helps himself; our blessings were because Daddy had gone to school. Daddy would add that he had gone to West Tennessee State College because Grandpa Stone would have it no other way. During World War I, after Daddy’s cousin was killed driving an ambulance in France, Daddy told Grandpa Stone he wanted to quit high school and join the Army. Grandpa Stone had simply said no, and offered to break Daddy’s arm to disqualify him. Daddy always laughed telling the story, but I got the impression that he was truly sorry he didn’t get the chance to go.
Daddy was so full of life that sometimes it seemed that he and Ronnie and I were the three Stone kids. Our Daddy was a laughing bear of a man, full of hugs and good words for everybody. He loved music and he was a guitar picker. Mama used to cut a watermelon on a warm summer night and we would sit on the back porch eating that cold fruit while Daddy would pick and sing in the flickering light of a Coleman. He’d sit there for an hour just making up new verses to ‘Frankie and Johnny’. Sometimes the neighbors would walk over and Mama would serve everybody sweet tea.
I now understand that Daddy maintained high spirits, in part, thanks to a secret hiding spot in the garage. Ronnie and I found his pint of Wild Turkey when I was nine. Two packs of Camels a day and Spearmint gum kept anybody from having a clue that a drop of liquor ever passed his lips.
One time Ronnie and I took a taste from that bottle. It was a dreadful dose to us. We were sure that Daddy couldn’t possibly like that stuff; but that bottle, in that garage crevice, kept refilling itself year after year.
Mama was a Southern Belle, no other way to put it. She pretended to be long suffering from the shenanigans of the three Stone boys. In mock desperation, she would say she rued the day she ever married a ‘city feller’. You don’t see much ruing of the day anymore. Mama never argued, but she could turn a cold shoulder that would make you beg to be on her side of the matter.
Now, I look back and see that Mama was quite a practiced manipulator, probably a trait born of necessity and perfected in a bygone time when a woman’s opinion was expected to be that of her husband.
Pop Gilliam, Mama’s Daddy, passed away in the spring of 1948. I was working on the river and it took Mama two days to get hold of me. The steamboat I deck-handed on had just tied up in Hannibal, Missouri when she reached me through the Gorsage Packet Company, the owner of the Avalon. She told me Pop left me his house in Collierville. Pop had lived alone since Grandma Ruth died in 1934. Her memory wasn’t strong, but I did remember she was always by Pop’s side.
Pop had been alone for 14 years, but the church was overflowing with friends and neighbors. An endless line of people took the podium and spoke of him and to him. Mama was her stoic self and barely said a word all day. Standing behind that crowd, the thought first occurred to me that the world conspires to take away the things we love, and that is just the way it is. It took a few years before I decided what I was going to do about it. I didn’t know it on that muggy Memphis day, but that future decision would begin my spiral into alcohol Hell.
CHAPTER TWELVE
In the summer of 1953, our Navy transport ship approached the mouth of San Diego Harbor early on a Saturday morning. My platoon’s month-long transit from Korea by way of Hawaii was done. The war was behind us. The awakening sun was sending its first rays skyward to our direct front. Coronado Island lay to our right. The big gray ship slipped past the south-pointing finger of land on our left, Point Loma. An old stone lighthouse sat high up on top, the first to witness our homecoming.
To tell you it was a thrill to see the US of A again would be an understatement. We Marines lined the ship’s rail, jumped up and down, slapped backs and hugged one another. Pasternak said, ‘the second thing I’m gonna do when I see Lucille is... drop my seabag’. We all laughed like that was the funniest thing we’d ever heard. The ship stayed in the deep water, inched right around the curve of Coronado Island and steamed south in the harbor.
The North Island Naval Air Station was off on our right, starboard the squids called it. We looked left at the San Diego skyline bathed in the clean red glow of morning light. God had never created a more beautiful sight, and the sight was crystal clear and textured. We could feel it with our eyes. Everyone was now quietly standing at the rail.
Young Marines who had been reduced to unfeeling gristle in a war in a foreign land now stood reverently. Tears without shame ran down our faces as we were reunited in spirit with this lady we loved. It was a mass reaffirmation of wedding vows.
An hour later, the ship was being snugged to a pier at 32nd Street Naval Base. The eighteen Marines that were left of my platoon were crowded in a troop-berthing compartment below decks. Our acting Platoon Commander was passing the word. Staff Sergeant Robert E. Holeman was an eleven-year veteran of the Corps.
A lightning bolt of a scar ran from his left eye to the corner of his mouth. He had been wounded and received a Bronze Star on Guadalcanal in World War II. He was again seriously wounded on Tarawa and recuperated for five months in the Aiea Naval Hospital in Hawaii. Aiea was gone by 1953; Lt. Logan passed through the Tripler Army Medical Center awaiting evacuation to Balboa Naval Hospital in San Diego. Before Logan got his legs crushed, Holeman had been our Platoon Sergeant.
The Company Commander made him acting Platoon Commander until we got back to the States. Staff Sergeant Holeman was a presence. A good six feet tall, always squared away, he was from the South Carolina Low Country. He said his Daddy had been a sharecropper, raised somebody else’s cotton in return for a shack to live in and a small share of the year-end cotton.
Holeman joined the Corps at 17 by hitching a ride ten miles to the small USMC Receiving Station in Yemassee, South Carolina. All recruits from east of the Mississippi arrived there by train, and then were transported twenty-eight miles by bus to the Marine Corps Recruit Depot, Parris Island. He lied about his age, signed some papers and got on the bus.
Holeman’s quiet southern voice in no way indicated how little he was willing to put up with. A few miscreants had learned the hard way that his knuckles were made of rock. The tricky thing about Staff Sergeant Holeman was that he went from, ‘Won’t y’all reconsider the error of your ways’ to playing full blown chin-music on your face in an instant. The ‘slow boil’ was not in his bag of tricks.
“Listen up”, Holeman stood in the middle of the crowded compartment. His head was half an inch from the big asbestos-insulated steam pipes hung overhead. We all sat on fold-down racks or leaned against the bulkhead. “I got a meeting with the Skipper at 0830.” Holeman looked around.
“That gives you people more’n two hours to field day this compartment and that head. I want it sparklin like a diamond in a goat’s butt. If I get a complaint from one a’ those squid sea slugs, I ain’t gonna take it too kindly. I’ll b
e back to inspect and pass the word.”
“Sarge, what news about Lt. Logan?”
“I’ll be back to pass the word after I get it. Ski, grab a sailor and get some swabs and buckets. Y’all get busy. Faster you’re done here, the more time you’ll have to stuff your pie holes.”
We were all well trained to clean up the sleeping compartment right after reveille. Course, knowing we were arriving in San Diego that morning, most were up early. Some didn’t even sleep. In truth, the space did require a little squaring away, but we were also well trained to grouse and bitch amongst ourselves. So, naturally, what followed was five minutes of shoulder shrugging, raising of palms in exasperation and a few, ‘what the hell’s he talkin about. This place IS squared away’! Ski then tracked some swabs and buckets and we all turned to on the field day.
SSgt. Holeman reappeared at 0915. We were waiting outside our berthing space for him. He handed a clipboard to Ski, a squad leader, and told him to follow. We tried to peek through the oval opening of the watertight compartment hatch, but couldn’t see much. The stanchions, girders and general layout blocked our view.
“SEKACH, getchore ass in here!” It was Ski.
We heard him direct Mike Sekach to scrub under the lip of a commode, or ‘shitter’ as they were called. We snickered, but not very loud. SSgt. Holeman returned to the center of the compartment and indicated we should join him. He stood there regally, as though he hadn’t just been peering into urinals.
“Okay, girls, here’s the scoop. Monday morning at 0900, you will be squared away in the utility uniform. You will be carrying everything you own in your seabag. You will be in formation on the pier. Ski, you will align that formation on the bow number of this ship. You will each receive your original orders and two sets of copies. Put them in your seabag. Do not lose them. The Company Commander will inspect this compartment at 0800. God help each and every one of you if it looks like the shit hole it looks like right now. Buses will be standing by to take most of you to Camp Pendleton, forty-five miles up the coast. You will be assigned to your new units there. Those whose names I’m going to post on the Platoon Read Board will get on the bus marked ‘Camp Elliot’. That’s about 25 minutes from here. There, you will be mustered out and discharged from my beloved Corps. Must be an admin error, this roster sez you’re all getting Honorable Discharges.”
The Case Of The Little Italy Bounce (Woody Stone, Private Investigator Book 1) Page 9