by Jerry Weber
“Vic you are under no circumstances to look into or ever open the package but simply start the cremation process and wait the two hours for the cycle to complete, after the retort cools you are to gather up the remains and dump them into the nearby Lackawanna River. Further, involve no one else to help you. It goes without saying that ‘loose lips sink ships’ and the first one to sink will be yours if you ever divulge a word of this to anyone.
“When the entire mission is completed you are to dial 201-666-7887 and leave the code word “fire stopped” on the answering machine. With that, the mission is over until you hear from Vinnie again. Is that clear Vic? Now, repeat all of this back to me.”
Vic complies and again is feeling shaky as he is this close to an evil he only thought existed in TV shows. “One final thing Vic, this is not going to be an everyday or even once a week thing, but when we do call, you had better be there. Because the only way this thing stays together is that there be no down time between any of these steps. We can’t have vans with dead bodies circling around waiting to make their drop, kabish Vic?”
“Sam, I’ll do my part, not to worry.”
Vic returned home knowing the real show will begin shortly; this was just the dress rehearsal. The only reason he wants the phone to ring is that he is almost through the $10,000 that Sam wired him. He will soon need another cash injection to survive. The compromises we make to stay alive, thought Vic.
CHAPTER 21
Charley Jones
Charley Jones was born in Bayonne, New Jersey, just across the Hudson from New York. After high school he migrated to Brooklyn in search of better opportunities. Charley wasn’t one for books at school or any strict discipline at work. Therefore, he was always a short timer with many different low skilled jobs clogging up his resume. He would go through jobs in a month or two. He was: a driver, kitchen helper, dock worker, and janitor and many other titles in his career. He is now thirty-nine and finally found a home with the syndicate as a low level runner and collector. While not a great fighter, at six feet and two hundred pounds he exuded some authority on the street.
Charley has a route which has him meeting gambling clients for his boss Joey Torchia, who is a Lieutenant for the DellVeccio family. Charley either picks up the bets or delivers the winnings in his area. Contacts are made by cell phone and meetings can be anywhere from a subway station to a local bar. Charley then meets Joey usually once or twice a week depending on business at Joey’s favorite watering hole The Blue Dragon. In the back room they settle up and Charley is usually given $300 to $500 in cash for his work.
All was going well for Charley as he was making more money than his low level dead end jobs of the past. Charley on his way to making some heavy payoffs to high roller gambling customers of Joey is sometimes carrying over $10,000 cash in winnings. He would like to be one of those winners, but he has no seed money to make the bets. So, he comes up with a plan to get some folding money to make some bets on horses and sporting events.
Charley has a friend in his apartment building, Jack, who as a longshoreman is as strong and tough of a guy as you will find in this neighborhood of Brooklyn near the docks. Charley meets up with Jack at their favorite bar, Orgo’s. He approaches Jack at the bar and casually says, “I will give you $100.00 if you give me a non-bone breaking working over some night.”
Jack looks at Charley and says, “Why do you want this”?
“It’s better you don’t know Jack.”
They finish their beers and leave with Jack thinking, Charley had a few too many tonight. But the next week, Charley finds Jack once again at Orgo’s and says, “It’s time for me to get roughed up.”
The reason he is asking Jack now is that Charley has just come from meeting Joe Torchia and is carrying $28,000 cash, the largest amount he ever carried. All of this was to be delivered to five different winners that night.
After buying enough beers for Jack, Jack agrees to do this fool’s errand in the back alley behind the bar. The beating results in Charley losing a tooth, getting two black eyes and plenty of other facial and body bruises. Charley is already regretting what he thought was an ‘easy’ way to make money. Already through the bad part, he figures he has to go through with the scheme. He first goes to a nearby cemetery, and puts the $28,000 in a coffee can and buries it under a large oak tree, so that is would be easy to recover.
Next he searches out Joey while he is still looking his worst. “Joey, I don’t know how this happened, but I got jumped up in Bay Ridge Parkway on the way to making my first payoff. I can’t believe it but these guys got my ‘er your cash.”
Joey has seen all of this before, but has to be sure if Charley is playing him or if he’s legit. Joey says, “Charley get in my car and the two of us will think this through.”
“Sure Joey, anything to help get your money back.”
While Charley is walking towards Joey’s Cadillac, Joey is making a cell call. Joey then drives Charley around making some stops and inquiries along the way. The pair ends up at an abandoned house in one of the bad parts of Brooklyn. Joey leads Charley up the steps and into the darkened house. Charley is immediately grabbed by two of Joey’s enforcers thrown in a chair where his arms and legs are tightly secured with plastic ties.
“What’s this? It’s not my fault that the money is gone, we should all be outside looking for the bad guys.”
“That is what we are here to find out Charley, just who are the bad guys.” Joey leads off with “Now tell me again just where and when did this unpleasant incident occur?”
“I told you all I know, it happened so fast.”
Wham! Charley takes the first blow of a second and much worse beating to come. After a couple of minutes of pummeling over his face and body by the two enforcers, Charley is limp in the chair.
“Shall we continue” says Joey.
“No, please, I don’t know any more than I already told you.”
Thump, he is hit again hard in the solar plexus, and is now with good reason more afraid than he has ever been before. Charley thinks fast to avoid the next round he knows is surely coming. “Look, I think one of the guys was this Jack, big dockworker who hangs around Orzos on Third Avenue. For the other two I can’t be sure, it happened too fast for me to get a good look at them.”
“Well I’ll tell you what Charley, we are going to pay a little visit to Jack and get our money back.”
“Sure Joey, that’s the quickest way to end all of this.”
The three mobsters leave Joey soaked in blood and urine and go out to find Jack. After some questioning of bar patrons and the owner of Orzos, they get Jack’s address and go to his apartment.
As soon as Jack answers his doorbell, he is pushed inside by the two thugs, “What’s this, I don’t know you guys.”
Joey emerges behind the two goons. “No, but you know where our $28,000 is and according to Charley Jones, you were one of the perps.”
“I know nothing.”
With that Joey pulls out his Smith & Wesson snub nose thirty eight and points it at Jack’s temple while the other two thugs are restraining him.
“Now one time and one time only, what happened between you and Charley and where’s my $28K?”
“Look, honest guys you have no fight with me, Charley came and gave me a hundred bucks to be worked over just enough so that he would look bad. He never said why, but I got my hundred and I left, that’s all I know. I should have figured Charley was up to something, but I was half in the bag from too many beers to care. He never told me nothing, I swear.”
“Let him go guys,” Joey says as he holsters his gun, “I think I know where the problem is.”
“Look Jack, no hard feelings, here’s another hundred for your troubles,” Joey says as he stuffs the “C” note into Jack’s shirt pocket. “Oh, and by the way, we were never here.”
“Thanks guys, glad to have never known ya.” With that Joey and his two enforcers head back to the abandoned house where they left Charley.
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“Is it alright Joey, did Jack admit to beating me up?”
“Yes, Charley, as a matter of fact he did, but there is still a little matter of the missing money. He doesn’t have it.”
“Oh, see one of the other shorter guys must have taken it.”
With that Joey gives Charley a backhand across the face the force of which turns the chair on its side ending with a huge crash that sends Charley to the floor with the chair on top of him. He is screaming with pain.
Joey says, “Now here’s what’s going to happen. We are going for a little ride wherever you say to go and at the end of this drive you are going to produce the money, Kabish?”
Charley knows there are no more evasions he can use and he can’t stand the pain of more beatings, so he directs the driver to St. Gabriel’s Cemetery. After being dragged into the cemetery, he points to a large oak tree. “Go get it, Joey bellows.”
With that Charley limps to the spot, falls to his knees and starts digging with his hands, soon unearthing the coffee can.
“Now wasn’t that easy Charley?”
“Sure Joey, I must have lost my mind for a brief moment, but I was going to deliver the money tomorrow.”
“Throw this piece of shit in the trunk and head for the docks.”
Charley is so scared he stops feeling the pain from his multiple beatings, and he knows better than to make any noise in the trunk. After arriving at a darkened warehouse, the electric roll up door rises and slowly closes behind Joey’s Cadillac as they drive into the cavernous empty space. Joey gets through to Carlo for permission to off Charley. He gets the green light plus some new instructions for disposing of the body.
They pull Charley from the trunk and frog march him to the far windowless wall. Without any further exchanges, Joey pulls out his pistol and puts two slugs in Charley’s head. In the old days it would be up to the executioner to come up with a way of disposing of the body, but now a new order has come out from Carlo. A call is made to Vinnie, the contact man for the new disposal service. In thirty minutes Vinnie is in the warehouse with his black suburban. He reaches in and pulls out a vinyl disaster pouch. This is a pouch with six handles and a full length zipper made to hold one body. It is used primarily for mass casualty situations like airplane crashes. The others help Vinnie, place Joey’s body in the pouch and zip it up. After the suburban is loaded, the pouch is covered with some eight-foot long 2 x 4s. Vinnie makes his first historic call to Victor in Duryea. Charley after all needs a proper disposal.
By 9:00 p.m. Vinnie is helping Vic load the pouch into the retort. He hands Vic his envelope and promptly leaves to go back to New York. By midnight the cremation is finished and the retort has been cleaned out and a short trip to the Main Street Bridge sees the remains slowly drifting down to the roaring river below. Vic certainly didn’t like the disposal part, but the $10,000 was the easiest money he ever made. He didn’t fall asleep for the longest time that night. But by the next morning it was just like a dream from the past.
CHAPTER 22
Euphoria at Rosselli’s
Back in New York, the weekly dinner meeting of Carlo’s family has good reason for celebrating. After years of frustration with prosecutions and convictions from DNA and other evidence bedeviling the family, finally there is something good to report. The first disposal by cremation has occurred and it is a success. While the subject of this project one Charley Jones was a really minor player, it is a fact that this new crematory works and that bodes well for the future. The report of Sam Giannetti makes him the star of the show tonight. For a minimum expenditure of less than $50,000 the family has a permanently installed facility to use into the foreseeable future. Its location, one hundred miles from New York, is far enough away from any local jurisdictions, that it should be next to impossible to connect Duryea, Pennsylvania with Brooklyn.
The only weak link would be the operator in Pennsylvania, and Sam assures his colleagues that Victor is as solidly committed to this as if he were part of our family. That remark is probably a stretch, given the instability of Victor’s personality. The same weaknesses that brought Victor aboard, could work against the family if pressure is ever exerted on Victor by any law enforcement authorities. Victor has been turned once, maybe he could be turned again and render state’s evidence. This is a question that no one is asking on this Friday night.
The other members of the group of twelve are only looking at the subject as a typical legit business venture they do all the time. They buy into a business; once they own it the operations will now be skewed towards the new owners. It was much like buying the Ajax garbage disposal company last month. This was the last independent hauler in Brooklyn who was undercutting the mob’s prices. Presto, the Ajax prices are now higher than the mob’s other haulers. And no one can say anything, because Sam has the deed for the Ajax Corporation in his safe.
Carlo instructs the group that after getting approval from him for a hit, Vinnie is to be contacted immediately after the hit and the transfer of the body to him will happen at one of the dock warehouses that are secure. This policy will be effective until further notice. Also, the members can put out the word to their lieutenants that we can now become more aggressive in handling transgressors. Just like with Charley Jones, we don’t have to only target problems at the higher end we can tighten up the ranks down to the runners and bag men. All agree this could put the family back to the position of strength they enjoyed in the good old days, when they could wack most anyone with impunity and walk away.
Yes, it is a new day and Carlo orders the wine steward to break out a couple bottles of the finest French Champagne for the celebration. However, this is a celebration that must stay cloistered within the four walls of this room; this was the case with most of the activities of Carlo’s family.
CHAPTER 23
Jack Cardigan
It has often been a joke among those in the know that the mob needs enforcers who turn to violence for collections because they can’t sue for payment in a court of law. Yes, the verbal contract you make with your bookie would never see the light of day in any American court. There is no redress for an illegal action. So, crime families have to employ their own enforcers to bring in outstanding debts. Sometimes special members do nothing but enforce. These are the guys who are the bone breakers and possibly even executioners. But, like all collection agencies, the mob will first resort to the regular bag men and runners whom the bets were placed with in the first place.
Jack Cardigan has been gambling with his Dellveccio “bagman” Luigi, for the last several years. Jack having no family or other responsibilities spent his extra money winning and losing each week. Jack thoroughly enjoyed himself watching the ponies run, and professional sports bets. But when Jack loses his job as a maintenance man on Wall Street, his spending and living money dries up quickly.
While he is looking for new employment, he rationalizes that only through placing heavier bets can he come up with the cash he will need to sustain himself. No gambler ever looks at his past track record to see if this theory really justifies putting in larger wagers. The thrill of the action is too great to consider this. Jack empties his savings of $6,000 and places heavy bets on a couple of games and five ponies in various races for the week. He wins one race and one game, but the losses take out half of his starting capital.
He then appeals to his man Luigi, to get him some credit from the house for next week’s gambling. Luigi tells him he is good for $10K on the cuff. A grateful Jack now bets another $5K on ponies and games. He loses $3K when the week’s tally is in. He carries on like this for two more weeks with the result he is wiped out. He now lost his $5K of savings and another $10K loan from the organization …
Jack is now spending more time at Bozos, his favorite local bar drowning his sorrows and watching games and races he can no longer bet on. Three weeks later on a Wednesday night he is returning to his apartment late when he is startled to hear a familiar voice behind him. Turning around he s
ees Luigi quickly closing the distance and coming up alongside of him.
“Watsamatta Jack, you no longer talk to Luigi? Well Jack right now you and me gotta talk. See da boss is asking me for da $10K plus the $1K interest you owe us fur last month, he tinks maybe you don’t like us anymore and took your business elsewhere.”
“No, no, Luigi, I’ve been out of work for a couple weeks, I don’t have the dough right now, but I’m working on something, and then I can get straight with you guys again.”
“No Jack, now you listen, dat is not a date or a place when da dough is coming for repayment. No bank or loan company would accept dat explanation, why shuz I?”
“Well Luigi when you strip away all of the talk here, I got no job, assets, or other income to pay you back with. You might even compare me with a very large turnip, if you squeeze it nothing comes out.”
“See Jack, dat is where your tingin ain’t holdin no water, you aint no turnip, and if you are squeezed sometin will come out, and it won’t be good for your long term healt, kabish? Please don’t insult me with dis attitude, I am only trying ta do what is best fur your future.”
“Are you threatening me Luigi?”
“You can call it what you like, but da next guy ta see you may not be like me, and he won’t have my patience wit dis very important matter. I tink you come up with some money and call me in da next couple of days so dat you and me can work dis out like gentlemen.”