Читать книгу Crime Incorporated - William Balsamo - Страница 11
ОглавлениеA mean March wind whipped in from Gowanus Bay, an icy reminder that one of New York’s worst winters was reluctant to make its departure.
Nine weeks had gone by since Frankie Yale had sworn vengeance on Denny Meehan. That was far too much time to let pass without having dispatched the White Hand gang’s leader to another world, as the Black Hand boss had vowed to do.
Some of Frankie’s lieutenants were getting restless, but he didn’t become aware of that until his little brother, Anthony, jogged his memory.
“Hey, Frankie,” Anthony said through widely spaced teeth that produced a whistle when he spoke. “What do you think if we have a little meeting to figure out that thing which has been bothering…?”
“What thing?” Frankie interrupted, glaring at his ugly-faced brother. Frankie abhorred that habit of Tony’s—talking about “that thing” as if other people could read his mind and know what he meant.
“I’m talking about Denny Meehan.” Tony laughed to ease the tension he’d created by raising the subject. Figuring out a fitting finale for the White Hand chieftain’s lease on mortality was something that had been grating on Frankie day and night since Crazy Benny’s leaded corpse had been fished out of the Lower Bay.
“You got some ideas, smart brother?” Frankie demanded gruffly. He began swivelling impatiently in the desk chair.
“Don’t get mad, Frankie,” Tony whined. Ever since they were kids, Frankie, the handsome son of the Domenico Ioele family, was Tony’s unrelentingly tyrannical adversary. Frankie had always poked fun at Tony’s gap-toothed mouth and his crooked, hooked nose, and Tony, who was three years younger and still three inches shorter than Frankie, simply took the abuse. He was too frightened of Frankie’s strength to fight back with fists or words.
Yet Frankie harbored an undemonstrated respect for his smaller brother because of his value in the organization. Frankie counted on Tony as the sounding board for the gang, who seemed inclined to confide their complaints to him.
So Frankie’s upbraiding of Tony for bringing up “that thing,” was more theatrical than real, but that was Frankie’s style.
Of course, his question wasn’t answered when he wanted to know if Tony had any ideas. Tony had never been allowed to think for himself. Yet Tony’s suggestion that they hold a meeting was deeply significant to Frankie.
Since Tony never had an idea in his life, the thought obviously had come from some of the boys in the mob.
“So they’re getting restless, eh?” he asked Tony with a demanding stare. “They want me to move, is that it?”
“Yeah…yeah, Frankie…that’s kinda what the picture is like…you know what I mean?” Tony stammered, relieved that his brother had not made it hotter for him.
For several seconds, Frankie glared at Tony as he kept swivelling in his chair. Then he stopped abruptly and leaned forward, his face creased as though in pain, elbows resting on the desk, and hands elapsed tightly together.
Tony recognized the pose. Frankie always struck it when he was on the verge of some monumental pronouncement.
“I want you, little brother, to get your ass out of here,” Yale began slowly, each word forced through tightly drawn lips. “I want you to go get hold of Two-Knife and have him come see me right away.”
Tony was out the door as though he’d been fired from a rifle. He responded with swift and unswerving obedience to every command from Frankie, for Tony wanted nothing more out of life than to be his brother’s loyal lackey. The fear Frankie instilled in Tony early on had made his demeaning subservience a part of his nature.
Twenty minutes passed. At 2:45 p.m. Willie Altierri walked into Yale’s office and stood stiffly in front of Frankie’s desk. Willie curled his lips in a half-smile.
“Don’t give me that shit-eatin’ grin, Willie,” Yale said sharply. “Wait till you hear what we’re gonna do. Go over there and sit down.”
Yale pointed to the chair beside his desk. Two-Knife walked over and settled himself squarely on the hard wooden seat. He crossed his legs and lit a cigarette with a trembling hand. Altierri always shook like a vibrator in Yale’s presence. Even though he was a killer without peer, Two-Knife was terrified of Frankie, although not for the same reasons that had made Frankie’s younger brother so slavishly submissive to him. lo Willie, Frankie Yale represented power—the ugliest kind of power, which could dispatch other exterminators upon him if he ever made a mistake or pulled a double-cross.
Two-Knife exercised extreme care to stay on Frankie’s good side. Much as he relished carving a victim into eternity, Willie had an awesome fear of his own death.
Altierri blew a puff of smoke up to the ceiling and turned to Yale, who was scribbling names on a piece of note paper. When he finished, he pushed the sheet toward Willie and asked him to read it. The names included his own, Tony Yale, Augie “The Wop” Pisano, Don Giuseppe Balsamo, the caporegime in the Red Hook sector’s Little Italy, known affectionately as “Battista,” after John the Baptist, and Balsamo’s personal bodyguards, Vincenzo Mangano and Johnny “Silk Stocking” Guistra.
“What time you want the meeting, Frankie?” Altierri’s eyes lit up. Without being told, Two-Knife could feel in his bones that Yale was marshalling the troops for a hit on Denny Meehan. Frankie was in the habit of making out a list such as this when he wanted to hold a council of his top lieutenants on important business. And the killing of the Irish gang’s top dog was the only matter of any importance that could warrant convening that particular group of leaders.
As a rule, it was Altierri’s job to round up the men when Frankie wanted them for a meeting. Yale never had to tell Altierri where the gathering would be held. Without exception, all such high-echelon Black Hand get-togethers took place in the Adonis Club overlooking Gowanus Bay on Twentieth Street. The Adonis was run by Fury Argolia—when he wasn’t engaged in the more violent pursuits of his underworld calling.
Meeting there, the gang could also participate in the ultimate pleasantry of stuffing their stomachs with some of the finest Sicilian gastronomic delights this side of Palermo. Many an Italian family from as far away as the Bronx and even the eastern fork of Long Island preferred to book a wedding reception at the Adonis rather than the Astor because of the mouth-watering cuisine whipped up by Argolia’s master chefs.
Two-knife had just one question for Yale.
“What time you want them?” he asked.
“If they wanna eat, tell them be there at eight,” Frankie replied with a flamboyant gesture. “Fury’s getting up a good spread. But the meeting is ten sharp, you tell them.”
Yale suddenly shot a look through the partly opened door. He had heard a stealthy movement on the stair landing outside the office.
“What the hell you doing there sneaking around corners?” he roared. “Come in here so Willie can tell you to your face what you’re supposed to know, ya creep!”
Tony Yale flew into the room and bounded over to Altierri who, knees crossed, was ditching his cigarette in the ashtray. Thoroughly cowed, Tony mumbled to Two-Knife, “What’s for me…tell me.”
Willie told him, then rose from the chair and left the room without another word. Tony shadowed him down the stairs.
The Adonis Club’s wooden and shaky-legged tables were so antiquated that even the red-and-white-checkered tablecloths couldn’t hide their condition. The chairs had cane seats and backs so badly shredded that matrons at banquets invariably got their silk gowns shorn on the rough edges. The walls and ceilings were decorated with murals that combined religious figures and scenes of Mount Vesuvius and the Coliseum. The murals were executed in 1912 by an immigrant Florentine artist who gorged himself on Fury Argolia’s food and drink while he painted and was paid nothing. He had been in hock to the Black Hand’s loan sharks, who had wanted to kill him until Fury Argolia interceded with a merciful plan to have “Michelangelo,” as the artist was cynically nicknamed, work his debt off with paint and brush at the Adonis Club.
Argolia never expected a Sistine Chapel, but the Florentine came perilously close to giving the waterfront social club such a pseudo-appearance.
If the atmosphere inside the club left something to be desired, the outside was worse. The buildings along the rest of the block were prime candidates for a slum-clearance program; the grimy facade of the Adonis itself was no invitation to good dining. Worse still was the rotten-egg aroma that wafted from the shore at every low tide on Gowanus Bay.
It was 8:10 p.m. on March 15th when Frankie Yale arrived at the Adonis Club in his black limousine, chauffeured by his brother Tony. Riding with Frankie in the back seat was Willie Altierri.
A second car, a maroon Pierce Arrow, bearing Don Guiseppe Balsamo and his two bodyguards, Mangano and Guistra, pulled alongside the curb right behind Yale’s limo.
“Hey, compare!” Yale greeted Balsamo as he stepped out of the car, throwing his arms affectionately around the beefy Red Hook gangland boss. “How’s the family? How’s my little godchild?”
Yale had become Balsamo’s infant daughter’s godfather the previous summer. By then the menace of the White Hand gang’s retaliation upon the Black Hand’s newly-acquired territories had become reality. Balsamo’s continued control of the Little Italy sector in Red Hood was a vital factor in the impending war with Denny Meehan and his army of killers.
Yale had looked upon Balsamo as a weak link in the organization. He felt that while Don Giuseppe still maintained control over his area, he was losing some of his power in the territory. Perhaps, Frankie thought, at the age of forty-eight Don Guiseppe was becoming complacent.
But Balsamo’s past record as a boss in the Black Hand was exemplary, and Yale felt there was no reason Don Giuseppe couldn’t regain all of his old power in Red Hook. But something had to be done to reinvigorate Balsamo—to give him a greater sense of “belonging” in the Black Hand family.
So when Don Giuseppe’s wife, Nancy, who was forty-five years old and a grandmother seven times, brought home their ninth child, a daughter named Gina, Frankie Yale decided to infuse the spirit he thought Balsamo needed by offering to be little Gina’s godfather.
Yale’s ploy worked wonders. In the eight months since the christening, Balsamo’s sector accounted for three “accidental” deaths of White Hand mobsters. They were all killed in identical fashion: by the booms of cranes that crushed their skulls while they were standing on the Gowanus docks extracting tribute from the pier operators.
Followed by his entourage, Frankie Yale strolled into the Adonis Club, his arm still around Balsamo. A familiar voice greeted them:
“Good evening, gentlemen, we have prepared a banquet to satisfy a king.”
Fury Argolia laughed as he mouthed the words, perhaps because he had sensed how trite they were. Yet the six-foot-long smorgasbord table on which the Italian feast had been spread was anything but laughable.
“Mamma mia!” Yale enthused as he gazed at the table. “This is unbelieveable.”
The table groaned under the weight of forty platters of food, including seven selections of salad, a seemingly endless variety of antipasto, lasagna, baked clams, calimari, veal rollatini, and many other choice preparations. A side table had been loaded with more than a dozen bottles of fine Italian wine.
“Eat up, boys,” Yale said. “Eat good. We got lots of time to talk business.”
They gorged themselves on the epicurean spread for two hours. Then the meeting was convened.
Frankie Yale stood up. The room became quiet.
“What we are here for is to decide how we are going to get rid of Denny Meehan,” he said somberly. “Now let me hear from you the ideas…”
“What ideas you got, boss?” asked Balsamo.
The question caught Frankie by surprise. But he had a reply. “I was figuring maybe we hit the mick bastard when he’s leaving his favorite hangout, the Strand Dance Hall,” Yale offered.
“He’s gonna be protected by his bodyguards when he goes to the Strand,” Balsamo suggested. “Besides, we should try to do it without witnesses—”
“I agree! I agree!” Augie the Wop called out. “We make it a nice private execution. It will have the same effect because those dirty micks will know that it was us who gave it to Denny.”
Yale scowled at the lieutenants who had poured water on his plan. The silence in the room was heavy. Frankie probably knew that his idea was precipitate, but he wasn’t about to admit it. Doing the number on Denny at the Strand was, in fact, something that had come off the top of his head. The fact was that while he had had more than two months to mastermind the execution, he wasn’t yet able to make up his mind as to just where Meehan should be gunned down.
Finally, he snickered in amusement and broke the silence.
“All right, you wiseasses, if you wanna do it private tell me how you’re gonna pull it off,” he challenged. “Do you wanna invite him to come over to one of your houses or something like that…?”
“Better than that, Frankie,” Altierri snapped, jumping out of his chair. “We’re gonna burn him in his own house.”
“You crazy?” Yale pounced on Two-Knife.
“Listen, Frankie,” Altierri cut in, his enthusiasm increasing visibly. “It’s gonna be a setup. One of his own boys will help us—”
“Madonn’!” Yale exclaimed. He took in Altierri with a level, measured gaze. “Now I know you’re loco. What you say, Willie, we gonna get an Irisher to help us?” He shook his head in disgust.
“Yeah, that’s right,” Altierri persisted, undaunted by Yale’s put-down. “Let me tell you why, okay?”
Yale was still shaking his head. “Speak—but make it fast. We don’t have time to listen to such shit.”
“It ain’t shit, Frankie,” Two-Knife protested. “Because…you know that Patrick Foley—well, he’s…in my pocket.”
Now the words came out of Altierri’s mouth hesitantly and in a whisper. He looked apprehensively at Yale and the others because he sensed how suspicious they had suddenly become. How could he have a White Hander “in his pocket”?
“Lemme explain,” Altierri said defensively. “You see…Foley…well, he’s…he’s been dating my sister.”
The statement hit the gathering like a shot.
“You better make this real good. Willie,” Augie the Wop murmured under his breath.
“I’m tellin’ ya the truth,” Altierri stammered nervously. He forced a smile. “It’s a real hot romance. I didn’t know about it until last Christmas when he came over to the house. I almost shit when I saw him there. Then I found out he was going with Anita for a whole year. Foley wants to marry her…”
“And Denny Meehan wants to give the bride away, right, Willie?” Yale interrupted hoarsely, his glare now more intense.
The sarcasm irritated Altierri. His thin lips pressed together in an angry line. “Goddamn you, Frankie, what the fuck am I to do if my sister goes with Foley? I got no control over that. But what I’m trying to tell you is I had a talk with Foley and he told me he was fed up with Meehan and some of the other boys. He wants to call it quits. He swore to me that he was going legit…”
“Did he kiss you, Willie?” Balsamo wanted to know.
“I don’t get you, Don Giuseppe,” Altierri said, puzzled.
“Because,” Balsamo said slowly, “you shouldn’t let nobody jerk you off without kissing you.”
“All right, let’s cut the friggin’ crap!” Yale snapped pounding his fist on the table. “We don’t forgive Willie for letting his sister hook up with a mick, but if that’s gonna help get Meehan in a setup, I wanna hear how.”
Turning to Altierri with a benevolent smile, he demanded, “Draw us a picture, Willie.”
Altieri sighed, relieved. “I told you I talked to Foley. He filled me in on the layout of Denny Meehan’s flat on Warren Street. Believe me, I pumped him plenty and I got a pretty good picture of the place. Denny and his wife live on the second floor in the back. What makes this a real trap is they got a window which looks out into the hall. What better do you want? Somebody goes to the window when Denny’s in bed and puts him to sleep permanent.”
“You kill his wife, too?” Balsamo wanted to know, his interest now aroused.
“We don’t have to,” Altierri replied casually. “But if she’s gonna happen to see what’s happening…well, what are you gonna do? Too bad, that’s all. So Denny has a wife with him when he goes to heaven…”
“I like it, Willie,” Yale said, nodding his head. “Very good. Smart boy. We have a drink and make a toast to your beautiful mind. You are a genius.”
As Yale poured red wine into everyone’s glass, Altierri turned to him to solicit more praise. “You don’t think I’m crazy anymore, eh, Frankie?”
“A genius, I called you, a genius you are, Willie,” Yale said as he lifted his glass for the salute to Two-Knife. “Here’s to Willie, viva Willie!”
Everyone joined in the toast, which was followed by several moments of banter—mostly questions about Anita and Foley: how they met, and how Altierri’s sister managed to keep the boyfriend a secret from Willie for so long. Yale put an end to the small talk soon enough. He was itching to get on with the plot to execute Denny.
“What boys go on this job?” Yale asked. “Any volunteers?”
“Sure, Frankie,” Balsamo said quickly. He turned to Johnny “Silk Stocking” Guistra, who was seated next to him, and wound a fat arm around the slender bodyguard whose nickname came from the unique way he dispatched his victims into their next life. Guistra didn’t believe in stabbing or shooting a condemned man, because he had no tolerance for the sight of blood. He believed strangulation was a potent yet pleasant way to put people out of the way. And the tool of his trade was a silk stocking.
“It’s soft and pleasing to the touch,” he’d say. “I wrap the stocking around the neck and I whisper, ‘Bye, bye, sleep tight.’ I never got one complaint from any customer. It work every time.”
Being selected by his boss to be one of the hit men pleased Guistra, who turned to Balsamo and smiled, “Grazie, Don Giuseppe, I will not let you down.”
“Who else you say, Frankie?” Balsamo prodded Yale.
“I been thinking,” Yale replied. “You are very generous to offer Johnny and I appreciate. But this ain’t a silk-stocking job if we go by what Willie said. If Denny Meehan gets it through the hallway window, we need a gun. But that doesn’t mean we don’t use Johnny. He goes, but only to show the way and make sure there’s no fuckup.”
Yale leaned back in his chair, and gazed at the murals on the ceiling.
“Hey, whatever happened to Michelangelo?” he asked, lowering his head and looking purposefully at Fury Argolia.
“Couple of years ago he went to Cleveland,” Argolia replied. “I don’t know if he’s still there. Why?”
“I like that you mentioned Cleveland,” Yale smiled. “That is where my thoughts are now…”
“Hey, Frankie!” Augie Pisano blurted as he caught onto what Yale was driving at.
“You capish, eh, Augie?” Yale said, pleased at his lieutenant’s alertness.
“What an idea, Frankie,” Pisani chortled. “Two of the best hit men in the business—Ralphie DeSarno and Giovanni Sciacca! Oh, you are using your head, Signore Yale!”
That was Frankie Yale’s cue. He stood up and bowed slowly from the waist. The gathering clapped enthusiastically.
“Please,” Yale smiled, extending the palms of his hands, “no more applause.” Then he sat down and asked everyone to pay close attention to what he had to say.
“I wanna have a real good laugh on Denny Meehan when this comes off,” Yale began, his face lighting up at the thought of what he was planning. “We burn him April first and what a laugh we all gonna have on that Irish son of a bitch.” Yale smacked his lips as if savoring a tasty morsel of pasta. “I’m gonna send him an April Fool’s card. And you know what I’m writing to him?”
Yale looked around impatiently for an answer. There was none.
“It’s going to say on the card, ‘Buona sera, signore,’” Yale said, bellowing with laughter. The others joined in.
When the snickering subsided, Pisano said, “Frankie, that mick bastard don’t understand Italian.”
“That’s my little joke, Augie,” Yale parried with distinct edge of pleasure in his voice. “His wife reads Italian. She translates for him. But he don’t know even then what the fuck the message is all about—until after he go to bed. Then he find out because, for sure, it’s gonna be for him, Good night, mister…”
Shortly before six o’clock on the evening of March 31st, Willie Altierri and Augie Pisano posted themselves near Gate 16 in Grand Central Station to await the arrival of the Spirit of St. Louis, one of the era’s crack cross-country trains. They had checked at the information desk and were told the train bringing DeSarno and Sciacca from Cleveland was on time.
At exactly 6:10 p.m. the passengers began emerging from the gate—the two killers among them. Altierri didn’t know DeSarno and Sciacca, but Pisano did: he had performed a contract killing in 1917 in Columbus with them.
Pisano nudged Altierri. “There they are,” he said just as DeSarno and Sciacca spotted him. They greeted each other with warm handshakes.
Pisano introduced Two-Knife, and the Brooklyn mobsters ecscorted their Cleveland brothers out of the marble terminal to a black Packard sedan parked on Vanderbilt Avenue with the motor running. Frenchy Carlino was in the driver’s seat. Yale had assigned Frenchy to chauffeur the assassins to Warren Street when they paid their visit to Denny Meehan.
But the exact hour for Meehan’s execution was still unsettled. The timetable couldn’t be plotted until Denny and his wife had departed the Strand Dance Hall, their nightly hangout. A pair of spotters had been staked out near the Strand to phone Yale the instant Meehan and his wife left; another two henchmen had been planted on Warren Street to report when the couple arrived home.
The messages were relayed to Frankie via Fury Argolia’s private office number at the Adonis Club. Yale ordered this arrangement, because he wanted DeSarno and Sciacca brought to the club for a final pre-execution briefing. And he wanted to show the hired guns good fellowship: Argolia had been prevailed upon to have another banquet table of his finest food and drink prepared.
It was mostly chitchat during the period given over for eating. Then the sudden switch in Frankie’s mood dictated the change in the tenor of the conversation.
One of the means by which Yale had ascended to the leadership of the Black Hand gang had been the demonstration of his ability to keep iron-fisted control over his men. He fought, bullied, even killed his way to the top. And he retained his grip on that leadership because he never let down the pose of the tough guy, the man in charge.
Thus, when DeSarno and Sciacca had been feted and were filled with Fury’s epicurean enticements, Frankie Yale quickly transformed the hail-fellow-well-met atmosphere in to one of deadly seriousness.
“I want to see your pieces,” Yale demanded of the Cleveland sharpshooters. “I gotta make sure they’re in shape.”
He tapped his finger on the table, indicating that he wanted DeSarno and Sciacca to put their guns there.
“What is this, some kind of gag?” Sciacca questioned, instinctively suspicious.
“No gag, fella,” Yale narrowed his eyes. “This is very serious to me. I pay you ten thousand apiece for this job and I gotta make sure your equipment is working. So, if I am not satisfied what you gonna deliver, I send you home and get somebody else to wipe out that mick. Get it?”
Sciacca turned to DeSarno with a questioning gaze. Nodding that it was all right to show their guns, DeSarno slipped his hand inside his jacket and removed a .45-caliber Colt revolver with a maroon grip. He placed it on the table, warning sarcastically, “Be careful, Frankie, it’s got bullets in it. Don’t hurt yourself.”
“Thanks,” said Yale coldly, “you just save my life.” He snatched the gun, emptied the bullets from the revolving cylinder, pointed the barrel at the ceiling, and squeezed the trigger. He smiled when he heard the click. Then he pumped the trigger a dozen times more.
“It’s in good shape,” Yale proclaimed, returning the bullets to the chamber and handing the weapon to Sciacca. Then he performed the same ritual with DeSarno’s piece.
“Now I’m happy,” Yale smiled benevolently. “You boys pass my test. You are ready. Only thing now is we gotta wait and see when Denny Meehan will be ready for his bye-bye.”
At 2:30 a.m. the phone in Argolia’s office jangled. Chootch Gianfredo was calling from his observation post near the dance hall.
“He just left here,” the lookout told Fury, who’d been waiting impatiently for the call. Argolia went to the corner table that Yale and the others were occupying and relayed the message.
“Good,” Yale rubbed his hands. He turned to the assassins. “Get your coats on.”
DeSarno, Sciacca, Pisano, and Carlino hopped out of their chairs, walked briskly to the hatcheck room, slipped into their garments, and returned to the table. Yale pulled his watch from his vest pocket and muttered, “Any second now we should get the call…”
No sooner had he spoken than the phone in Argolia’s office rang again.
“They just went into the house,” reported Nick “Glass Eye” Pelicano, who was staking out Warren Street.
“Anybody go in with them?” Argolia asked.
“Naw, they were dropped off in front of the house and the guy who brought them—I think it was Eddie McCarthy—drove away,” said Pelicano, who had worn a glass orb in his left eye since he’d lost it in the ring when he was boxing as a middleweight in the amateurs.
“How’s the street look?” Argolia wanted to know.
“Clean,” was the reply. “Only thing moving is the gutter rats and they ain’t paying attention to nuttin’. They’re busy eating out the garbage cans.”
Argolia hurried from his office.
“Frankie!” he shouted even before he had passed the door, “Okay! Okay! Send ’em!”
Yale turned to the four executioners. “You heard him,” he snapped gruffly, “what’re you waiting for?”
They rushed in quick, urgent steps toward the door. But before they were out of the club, Yale jumped to his feet and yelled almost as an afterthought, “Give Denny my best regards!”
It was nearly 3:30 the morning of April 1st when Frenchy Carlino turned into Warren Street and eased the Packard to a stop in front of Meehan’s residence, a three-story, six-family red brick apartment building that was one of the few habitable dwellings in a neighborhood of encroaching decay and rot.
With the riches that gang leaders like the Meehans were ripping off from their illicit ventures, they could easily have afforded the most luxurious living accommodations. Yet a good many of the moneyed mobsters then—and later—seemed content to remain in the decrepit environments that had spawned them, to raise families in the same filth and squalor that not only bred rancor against society but also debased men into the enemies of that society.
DeSarno and Sciacca leaped from the car and hurried through the door of the apartment house with disciplined precision. They were already halfway up the stairs to the first floor before Augie the Wop had made it into the building.
The Cleveland hit men waited for Pisano to catch up at the foot of the stairs leading to the second floor. They had their guns out.
“Don’t wait for nuthin’ after we drill him,” Sciacca whispered. “We fly like birds because this whole fuckin’ apartment house is gonna wake up when the cannons go off.”
He turned and led the way up the last few steps on tiptoe. At the top of the landing was a long hallway, just as Willie Altierri had said. They walked slowly and silently on a wooden floor whose boards were so old and warped that they no longer creaked.
Finally, in the dim light of a small bulb burning at the end of the hall, they saw a window—again as Two-Knife had said. They approached with extreme caution, Sciacca leading the way. When he finally reached the window, he saw a iight shining through a white sheer curtain. He wheeled around to DeSarno and Pisano.
“Hey, this is easy,” he said under his breath. “I can see Denny in bed with his wife. It looks like he’s getting ready to mount her…”
Sciacca crouched near the windowsill so that DeSarno and Pisano could see. The shade hadn’t been pulled down all the way, so they had a clear line of vision through the lower panes of the window.
As the trio peered into the room, they could see Danny fondling his wife’s breasts as he lay beside her.
“Now! Now!” whispered Pisano. “Shoot him now before that fuckin’ Irishman gives me a hard-on!”
Sciacca turned to DeSarno. “I can handle this,” he said in a firm but barely audible voice. He levelled the gun until the barrel almost touched the window, sighted, and fired. Two shots rang out. The roar in the hallway was deafening.
“I got him!” Sciacca said triumphantly. “Maybe her, too. Let’s get the hell out!”
The three men raced through the hall and bounded down the stairs. They sprinted out of the building, and as they leaped into the getaway car, Frenchy Carlino floored the gas pedal. The car roared off like a shot. No one had seen them.
The two shots and Peggy Meehan’s cries awakened the entire apartment house. The neighbors rushed to the Meehans’ flat. They found Peggy clutching her abdomen, a widening crimson spot on her nightgown.
Peggy had been hit by the second bullet fired at Denny, which she stopped when she instinctively threw herself over her husband to protect him. But her gesture was in vain. Sciacca’s bullet had plowed into Meehan’s neck. Yet, it might not have killed him except for a change in the course of the bullet’s progress. The Kings County medical examiner disclosed this freakish turn after he had performed the autopsy on Denny’s body.
When the slug passed through the neck, it hit the collarbone. That caused the .45-caliber slug to ricochet upwards into Denny’s brain cavity.
Peggy was still in critical condition in Cumberland Hospital when her husband’s funeral was held. The crowd at Denny’s last rites at the Murphy Funeral Home in downtown Brooklyn was gargantuan. No fewer than nine hundred mourners turned out for the final tribute. The cortege to the cemetery was an incredible spectacle: six cars overflowed with floral wreaths, twenty limousines carried Denny’s relatives and the hierarchy of the White Hand organization, and more than two hundred cars of assorted commiserators followed.
Denny Meehan’s departure left the door open for his most trusted lieutenant, William “Wild Bill” Lovett, to take over the leadership of the White Hand gang. There were no challengers to the sandy-haired, five-foot-eight, 150-pound Lovett, who’d been regarded as the Irish mob’s roughest, toughest, and smartest member since he joined their ranks at the end of World War I.
He came into the gang after he returned to the States as a war hero who had won the Distinguished Service Cross after fighting at the Meuse, one of the last offensives before Germany’s surrender. Lovett quickly established himself as an irascible, hard-nosed, and hard-headed upstart. In the two short years that he had served in Denny Meehan’s troops, Lovett had gotten into no fewer than thirty-five scrapes with the law.
He’d been arrested for assault thirty-four of those times because he couldn’t tolerate a victim’s refusal to pay tribute for “protection.”
Meehan had often said, “If that fuckin’ Wild Bill could settle down, he’d be our best enforcer.”
The police had dubbed Lovett a psychopath “with an extremely dangerous tendency to do harm.”
That assessment was irrefutably confirmed on January 16th, 1920—the day Prohibition began. Wild Bill had gone into Guerney’s Saloon on Fourth Avenue, between Fifteenth and Sixteenth Streets, and asked for a shot of Dewar’s scotch. The bartender, Amelio Rolfi, said that Guerney’s was no longer serving drinks because of the new law.
“I don’t give a shit about the law,” Lovett roared. “You got a bottle there behind the bar and I want a slug.”
The bartender stood his ground. Lovett pulled a .38-caliber automatic from a hip holster and, in full view of the thirty patrons who were guzzling the new beer with its one-half-of-one-percent alcoholic content, he triggered three bullets into the man who had refused to serve him.
Lovett never stood trial. In fact, he wasn’t even indicted for the killing. After his arrest, precipitated by the statements of only two of the thirty patrons at the bar that evening, Lovett beat the rap. The two witnesses subpoenaed to appear before the grand jury had both been killed in auto accidents. That Lovett was behind both deaths, the police had no doubt. But they were in no possible position to prove it.
The murder case against Wild Bill Lovett went out the window—as had all the other charges against him.
Now, with Denny Meehan rubbed out, Lovett ascended the heights. He was in command of the White Hand gang.
The day after Meehan’s funeral, April 4th, he called a meeting of the gang in a warehouse on Pier 7 on the Gowanus docks.
“I swear to you men,” he said with all of the emotion he could summon, “we are going to get back at those ginzo bastards.” Then he shook his head.
“I don’t get this,” he said with a puzzled face, “how the hell is it that Pat Foley isn’t here.?”
“Maybe he got drunk again,” quipped Jimmy Naher, one of the White Hand’s dock enforcers.
There was a crescendo of laughter, but it died out quickly when Lovett, his face severe, said, “Somebody better go and find out where Foley is.”
Jack “Needles” Ferry and Frank “Ash Can” Smitty volunteered for the search.
“Well, get going!” Lovett roared.
Twenty minutes later, after most of the White Hands had left, Ferry and Smitty returned to the warehouse, supporting the seemingly limp form of Patrick Foley between them.
“Just as Jimmy called it,” Smitty said to Lovett, “Pat’s stewed to the gills.”
Lovett walked over and looked at Foley’s face. He glanced at Pat’s eyes, which were closed.
“This son of a bitch is faking it,” Lovett declared.
He slapped Foley’s face three times. Foley’s eyes opened wide, reflecting the pain he felt. That betrayed his actual condition.
“This bastard isn’t drunk,” Lovett cried out, “he’s putting it on. I don’t even smell liquor on his breath.”
Lovett turned to Foley.
“You dirty double-crossing bastard,” he snarled. “Do you think you can fool me, you scumbag? You’re not drunk. I don’t smell any alcohol on your breath. You’re putting on an act for a reason. Now, come out with it—you set up Denny, didn’t you?”
Suddenly Foley was wide awake.
“Bill, you’re crazy,” he protested. “How can you think of such a thing?”
Lovett grabbed Foley by the lapels of his jacket and shook him.
“Listen, you punk,” Lovett screamed, “I know you’re the Judas. I know all about your romance with Willie Altierri’s sister!”
Foley extricated himself from Lovett’s grip and slid to the floor. A moment later he struggled to his knees.
“Bill, you got to believe me,” he pleaded. “I swear to you on everything that’s holy I had nothing to do with Denny’s killing.”
“I don’t believe you,” Lovett growled. “But I’m going to give you a chance to get away. If you can make it, you’re a free man. Now, haul your ass out—fast!”
Foley fled through the warehouse and bolted out the door. He must have believed he was on his way to freedom as he raced down the pier toward the street. Then he spotted Pug McCarthy, one of the White Hand’s executioners. His bouncy steps leadened and he froze.
“Easy, Pug,” Foley pleaded as he faced the menacing twin barrels of McCarthy’s .12-gauge shotgun. “Bill just told me to take off…I’m in the clear…”
There was a deafening explosion. The pellets ripped into Foley’s face so that even the medical examiner couldn’t rely on the victim’s dental records to help in the identification of the body. The only way they were able to figure out that the corpse was Foley’s was from the tattoo of a swan that had been etched on his right calf when he was in the navy during World War I.
For Frankie Yale, the superbly planned execution of Denny Meehan had only one flaw. The April Fool’s postcard he had sent to the White Hand leader apparently had been delayed in the mail. It didn’t get into the postal carrier’s bag until late in the morning of April 1st.
By then, word was out that Danny Meehan had been killed. So when the postman, Benvenuto Itaglia, reached Denny’s apartment, he was very aware that Meehan was dead. Itaglia looked at the postcard, read its message, “Buona sera, signore,” and decided not to deliver it.
Itaglia was very superstitious about bringing greetings to any house where there was a death. He decided to do what he always did in such cases—destroy the postcard.
And that left Frankie Yale completely clear with the authorities. Had the postcard been delivered, the history of the five-year Ginzo-Mick War might have been far different. And far shorter.
His hatred for Danny Meehan was so passionate that Frankie Yale had written the April Fool’s card himself. And if it had been delivered to Meehan’s mailbox after his murder, police could have easily identified Yale’s handwriting, since he was suspected of setting up the killing.
But when Benvenuto Itaglia destroyed Yale’s postcard, he obliterated the only evidence against Frankie Yale. So the murder of Denny Meehan was fated to remain one of New York’s biggest underworld mysteries in the years that followed.
