by James Dargan
Purcell rekindled the relationship, naturally. Clearwater, who had begun working at the Arlington plant as a junior quality-control engineer thirty years before, was now top dog. Most business decisions in the plant went through him – it was only on the major issues that he was supposed to report back to his bosses in Detroit. It was regarding the case of the 202 Buick Electras that one day, over a game of golf in Fort Worth, that Clearwater had a proposal for his long-time friend:
“You interested in making some money?” Clearwater asked Purcell as he was about to drive a ball off the 7th hole.
“Always.”
Purcell had had it hard of late: the business was not as profitable as he had been expecting and there was the added pressure of his wife, Martha, who was high maintenance. He needed cash. And fast.
“I got something coming up. Something big.”
“Big?” Purcell said as his friend took a swing at the ball with his club.
“Yeah, but don't tell nobody shit. It's our secret.”
“So, what, are you gonna tell us the 'secret' before I get involved?” Purcell said, placing his ball on the tee.
And it was a big deal, this 'secret' – the engine mounts on 250 '59 Buick Electras were deemed faulty. Forty-eight had already been shipped off and sold. Fourteen accidents had occurred, resulting in three fatalities, when the engine mounts had collapsed, torqueing the engines out of their usual position. This caused stress on the throttle body linkage, which caused the cars to accelerate unintentionally.
“So where are these cars?” Purcell asked Clearwater, the car salesman's eyes wide with greed and the possibility of this being his ticket to paradise.
“In a warehouse, near Fort Worth... You want ‘em?”
“Who knows about it?”
“Just me and the quality control director and a few others. Detroit doesn't have a clue.”
“You won't get away with it.”
“Who says I won't?”
“Me.”
“Listen, Bernie, I rule the roost when it comes to decisions here. Nothing's gonna happen... Now, are you gonna hit that thing or are we gonna be on the 7th all day?”
They finished their round with Clearwater slotting the ball on the 18th hole with a triumphant smirk on his face. Purcell was nine shots behind by the end of the game. They were in the clubhouse soon after, where they went over the finer details of the ruse as well as Clearwater bragging about his skills on the green. Purcell was knee deep in reservations – he was doubtful Clearwater could get away with the disappearance of over 200 automobiles without somebody of importance noticing.
“I'm not convinced.”
“I won't tell you again,” Clearwater began, glass of expensive single malt Scotch in his hand, “the deal's safe. I want $50,000 off you to take ‘em off my hands. You interested?”
Although he was almost broke, Purcell could do the math: it made sense. More sense than anything in his life up to that date. It was fifty thousand – it wasn't a fortune: he could take a loan from his bank, The Arizona First National. He was on good terms with the manager at his Tucson branch, Rudolph Spittle.
“I need to see ‘em first before I make a decision.”
*****
A few days later, Clearwater took Purcell to the warehouse where the defected cars were being stored. All the Electras were hardtops. At least three quarters were black. The rest, a mixture of red, green and brown.
“So whatcha think?” Clearwater asked with bated breath.
“Impressive.”
“I reckon you won't have a problem shifting ‘em. They're beauties, aren't they?”
“Yeah.”
The car salesman walked around the warehouse that the GM Texas factory used for storage in a most pedantic manner, inspecting some of the cars' interiors. With others, their body work or tires. Though no mechanic, years in the business had turned and forced Purcell into one, of sorts. Almost no car went unchecked. The warehouse was about the size of two football fields, so Purcell's effort lasted a long time.
“So, do we have a deal or not?” Clearwater asked as Purcell took his hand off the final car's wing mirror on the last row.
The Tucson car salesman already had a prospective customer in mind.
“Yeah, we do... When do you need the cash for?”
A few days later Purcell got the money required from Spittle to buy the 202 cars off Clearwater.
The logistical task, of getting the cars to Tucson from Fort Worth, was another problem, and one which Purcell had considered even before he went to see the cars in the warehouse and to The Arizona First National on his knees begging for the money.
His solution was simple:
“Hey, Harry, you after a big pay day?” Purcell said to Harry Wells, owner of the trucking company Purcell used for his transportation issues. Wells was sitting at his desk in a checked shirt and blue dungarees, chewing on tobacco.
“Yeah, I'm always after that... Whatcha got for me – another two to Flagstaff?”
Wells was Purcells' usual contractor for all in-state transportation issues - he was in for a surprise:
“How about picking up a delivery from Texas for me?”
“Texas,” Wells said, scratching his armpit, “where exactly in Texas?”
“Fort Worth.”
Wells did jobs out of state all the time: southern Utah, Nevada, California. Western New Mexico and the Texas panhandle, near El Paso.
“Goddamn Dallas, you gotta be kidding me?!”
“I'll pay you good.”
“How many cars you gotta move?”
Now this was the question he had to get right. Wells was a small-time hauler with enough trucks to get the job done. Would he say yes? Purcell hoped so.
“Two hundred and...”
Wells stopped scratching his armpit and sat up straight in his chair. He was a modest Arizonan with thirty years' hard work behind him. Maybe his luck had changed, and he would be able to throw it all in and retire to St Petersburg, Florida now.
“That's gonna be costly, Bernie, but doable if the price is right. When do you want 'em in Tucson?”
“By next week.”
“Okay.”
THE ACCIDENT
After Quatrocchi had one of his own mechanics flown in from Brooklyn to look over a few of the cars, the deal was sealed. Minus the $50,000 loan plus the interest, Purcell was about $40,000 richer. Not a vast amount, but enough to see the car salesman all right. He now intended to buy a new home and a nice holiday to Cancun. The rest he would just have to think about.
The hundred and one grand Quatrocchi had handed over, meanwhile, was chump change to the mobster – he had a plan to make four times that selling the cars on the streets of the five boroughs of NYC through some of the car dealerships he had a hand in and through third-party contacts.
What Quatrocchi and his mob didn't like was being cheated on a deal and being made a fool of. Sicilians were a proud race and they took themselves seriously when push came to shove. Purcell and his scam were going to slap him back in the face far sooner than he ever expected, two weeks after the last of the cars had been transported to Brooklyn.
*****
Valentina Parrino, mother of Paul Parrino, a Quatrocchi family capo working out of Brooklyn's Bensonhurst neighbourhood, was driving the car her son had bought her for her sixtieth birthday along the newly finished Brooklyn-Queens Expressway at a steady fifty when she suddenly lost control and flipped over, rolling a dozen times before coming to a standstill. Valentina Parrino was killed instantly. A witness to the accident, in a car directly behind Valentina Parrino's, reported to police the car 'mysteriously gained speed' seconds before the fatal accident. Parrino, on hearing the news of his mother's death from a friend in a Bensonhurst pool hall, wept like a child before beating the poor guy he had been playing eight ball with into a coma. Parrino, let Consigliere Vincent Fortunato know about the accident in no uncertain terms:
“Vinny, I want some answers?” Parri
no said.
Fortunato would usually deal with an underling disrespecting him in such a manner swiftly, but Parrino had lost his mother and he understood his pain.
“I'll ask Frankie,” Fortunato said.
“Dimissio's a cocksucker!”
They were in one of Fortunato's crew's haunts, The Palermo Cafe, on 18th Avenue, in Bensonhurst.
“He's one of us, Paulie.”
“So, what, he sold me the fucking car through you!”
Parrino had had a grudge with Dimissio ever since the latter had jumped ship and landed in the desert four years before. The two had gone to high school together. Their bond had been strong – not anymore. Parrino's angst was all jealousy. The Don had favoured his childhood friend to deal with his business interests out in the desert rather than him.
“I'll speak to him,” Fortunato said.
“You better. Can you get him on the phone?”
“Not now, no.”
“Why not?” Parrino slammed his expresso on the table. “I need to know what the fuck happened.”
“Calm yourself, Paulie, please.”
“I gotta know what happened.”
“I'm with you, and we're gonna find out.”
*****
Mafia funerals were a time when family members could get together for unofficial meetings. Valentina Parrino's was such an occasion.
“Sit down,” Dimissio said to Parrino, in a restaurant called Due Venti, owned by a Parrino associate.
Parrino was livid and he wanted to let off some steam:
“I want an explanation, and I want it now.”
Sitting around the table with them were Quatrocchi Junior, Quatrocchi's son and underboss, Fortunato and Raymond Todaro, another foot soldier and close friend of Parrino.
Dimissio wasn't allowed to let anybody know it was Quatrocchi's idea to buy and sell the Buicks in New York City. Quatrocchi's son, Peter, was the only party with that knowledge, naturally.
“I'm sorry, Paulie, I'm really sorry.”
“You better fucking tell me the truth, you motherfuckin' cocksucker!” Parrino screamed as he jumped to his feet. He went for Dimissio, but Dimissio stepped back just in time. “Let me at him, let me at him!”
Fortunato and Todaro grabbed Parrino, pulling him down.
“Talk to him, please!” Dimissio said to Quatrocchi Junior, knowing he was as much to blame for what had happened as his father, who wasn't at the funeral because he had decided to stay in Arizona.
“Sit the fuck down and calm yourself,” the underboss said to his capo.
Parrino knew his place – when an underboss told you to be quiet, you did as you were told, or you faced the very serious consequences.
“So, will you let me explain myself?” Dimissio began as he resumed his seat at the table, realizing he would have to come up with the biggest bullshit story of his life. And this was from a man who had been called 'King of the Boloney' at high school in the Bay Ridge neighbourhood of Brooklyn. He shifted his eyes to Quatrocchi Junior momentarily, then back to Parrino: “Will you?”
“Go ahead...” the mourning son said.
Dimissio left with Quatrocchi Junior ten minutes later. He realized if he didn’t come good with the deal he had agreed upon with Parrino, he and his high school friend were going to become mortal enemies.
“Good work, Frankie,” Quatrocchi Junior said, his arm around Dimissio. “I really think he went for it.”
Dimissio wasn't happy: Quatrocchi Junior had it easy, being the son of the Boss. Nothing mattered to him.
“Thanks.”
“When you going back to Tucson?”
“First thing tomorrow.”
“How's your mother?”
“Not bad.”
“Better than poor fuckin' Valentina, I hope?” Quatrocchi Junior said with a snigger.
His underboss's crass humour was base at best.
“I'll see you later,” Dimissio said, getting into his car, which was not a '59 Buick Electra.
BACK TO THE PRICKLY BEAR CACTI
When Dimissio got into Tucson he went straight to Quatrocchi's Catalina Vista home.
“How you doing, Frankie?” Quatrocchi said.
“Fine, sir.”
Quatrocchi's wife made their guest an espresso, and the two mobsters went into Quatrocchi's study. Quatrocchi's place, a 2,100-square-foot brick adobe with a swimming pool - which he had bought six years prior - had a stunning view of the Sonora mountains, which reminded the Mafioso of his hometown in Sicily. He also had homes on Long Island and in Florida, but for now he had no intention of moving 'back east' to resume the feud with the other four families.
“Sit down, sit down,” Quatrocchi said.
Quatrocchi's study was lined with at least a thousand books, though the mob boss had never read any of them – his English, rudimentary at best, wasn’t something he was proud of.
“I guess you already heard?” Dimissio then said as Fay Quatrocchi came in with a tray of Italian cookies.
“Yeah,” Quatrocchi answered once his wife had vacated the place. Mobsters never discussed 'business' in front of their wives – it was bad form. “Now, Peter tells me Parrino has some beef with you?”
“That's right. Where's that car salesman cocksucker? It's all because of him.”
“Don't worry about-a that douchebag – he'll be sorted out-a soon enough... I wanna know what happened to Parrino's mother?”
“Peter didn't tell you?”
“Yeah, but I wanna hear it-a from you.”
Dimissio told his boss what had happened. Although the NYPD was on the case, they were less than enthusiastic: a mobster’s mother dying was the least of their worries when there were hundreds of Puerto Rican, Italian and Irish hoods to deal with on the streets causing mayhem on a daily basis.
“So, this Purcell, are you gonna invite him over?” Dimissio asked.
“Yeah, he's in for a real fuckin' surprise.”
Quatrocchi's wife came back in again:
“Is everything all right, boys?”
“Yeah, honey, yeah... Whatcha want?” Quatrocchi asked, impatiently.
“Have you eaten my homemade cookies?”
“Very nice, Mrs Quatrocchi,” Dimissio said as he picked one up, out of politeness more than anything else.
“You aiyn't touched none,” she said to her husband.
“Stop busting my balls, honey – you know we're in a meeting.”
“Ah, meeting-smeechin,” Fay Quatrocchi said, who had been married to her beloved mobster for more than thirty years.
“Where we going?” Quatrocchi said in Sicilian to his best friend and partner in crime, Lorenzo Mantegna, as they were walking down Flatbush Avenue in the Williamsburg neighbourhood of Brooklyn.
It was September 1928: Quatrocchi and Mantegna were both hardworking bootleggers and proteges to New York mob boss Salvatore Maranzano, who - like his boys - hailed from the western Sicilian town of Castellammare del Golfo.
“You fancy catching a movie?” Mantegna answered.
Williamsburg was a cauldron of nations: Jews, Italians, Irish, Poles – the Sicilians, unfortunately, were outnumbered by their mainland brethren five-to-one, something Quatrocchi and Mantegna didn't like and wanted to change.
“Yeah, you know what's playing?”
The two gangsters didn't go to the picture house to be entertained, anyway, they went for the girls. There were always nice Italian girls at the matinees.
“Charlie Chaplin, I suppose.”
It didn't matter that they had seen The Gold Rush twice already. What was important was they got themselves some broads for the afternoon.
“Do you fancy going to the Avalon again?” Quatrocchi asked.
The Avalon Theater was a newly-opened movie house on the Kings Highway in Brooklyn's Madison neighbourhood, closer to Brighton Beach than their own territory, but a broad magnet as it showed all the latest movies.
“It's gonna be after four by the time we get there.�
�
“Let's go, we aiyn't doing shit else this afternoon.”
They got to the Avalon an hour later in Quatrocchi's 1936 black Chevy Sedan.
The usher – a fat, bespectacled man with a sad face – led the young Mafiosi-in-waiting to their seats, near the front. It was always that way when the house was full, or near full.
“Can you spot any?” Mantegna asked, looking behind him.
Quatrocchi turned to his right: a beautiful girl was sitting two seats away from him, between two other broads.
All through the movie Quatrocchi could do nothing else but focus on the dark-haired girl sitting close by, which made the girls next to him a bit uneasy.
“I need to take a leak,” Quatrocchi said as they were walking out of the screen room. “Do me a favour, those three broads there, keep an eye on 'em till I get back... If they try to escape, follow 'em. I'll find you, don't worry.”
Mantagna didn't need to tail them, because his friend was out of the restroom like a greyhound out of the traps.
“She's still there,” Mantagna said, munching on a bag of popcorn.
“I betcha she's Sicilian,” Quatrocchi said.
The three girls were dark-haired and with dark complexions, sixteen to eighteen-years-old with the kind of faces that told you their fathers were not mobsters but rather hardworking, respectable cab drivers or longshoremen.
“Why don't you goddamn say something to her?” Mantagna asked, unaccustomed to his best pal being so reserved in the presence of the opposite sex.
The reason for Quatrocchi's lack of bravado was simple: he was in love. At twenty-three he had met the woman he wanted to marry.
“Shut the fuck up, Enzo!” Quatrocchi snapped. “I'm looking at her. Show some fucking respect, will you?”
Mantagna backed off. The three girls walked out of the movie theater.
“You better hurry up if you wanna make a move,” Mantagna then said.
And so Quatrocchi did:
“Hi.”