Читать книгу Crime Incorporated - William Balsamo - Страница 12
ОглавлениеWhen Wild Bill Lovett was crowned overlord of the White Hand gang’s empire on the Gowanus dock that early April day in 1920, the Roaring Twenties had just begun their riotous, raucous ascendancy.
Yet his predecessor, Denny Meehan, had not even begun to hone the mob’s greedy claws for a piece of the action in the lucrative new racket foaled by the Volstead Act, which for the fourteen years of its loosely enforced existence was more popularly known as Prohibition.
There are historians of that underworld era who are convinced Meehan was so thick-headed and deficient in imagination that, had he lived, the Irish mobsters probably never would have ventured into the Klondike spawned by the bootleg booze business; they might have been content to keep their franchises on the waterfront extortion, loan-shark, and hijacking rackets, while letting others in the underworld mine the rich nuggets bubbling up from the sea of illegal hootch that was inundating America.
Not since the abolition of slavery in the middle of the nineteenth century had any issue been so widely debated, so bitterly contested, or pursued with so much determination and idealism as Prohibition. The ban against liquor became the law of the land on January 16, 1920.
In the ten weeks between the beginning of Prohibition and the demise of Denny Meehan, the man who did Denny in had already demonstrated the alertness and innovativeness that a mob leader must possess to stay up front. No sooner had the last drink been served in Brooklyn on January 16th than Frankie Yale, inordinately endowed with the sense of when to retool for change, led his Black Hand troops almost overnight into bootlegging.
Although Prohibition hit the whole of America with stunning force, some citizens, alert to the forthcoming ban, had prepared for it. In Brooklyn, as elsewhere, many liquor lovers—and opportunists—readied themselves for the cut-off of supplies by building their own distilleries.
Stills sprang up in cellars of private homes, in warehouses, in garages. But the distillation of hootch was a time-consuming, often risky venture. Some underworld groups of no particular significance in Brooklyn undertook the manufacture of illicit booze for sale to speakeasies and private consumers, but Frankie Yale disdained the idea. Aware of the bother and dangers of operating a still, Frankie preferred to leave the brewing to others and stick to a sophisticated, trouble-free bootlegging operation. That was why he decided the Black Hand would only peddle booze.
To start, Frankie sent out about thirty members of his mob in the roles of “salesmen” to solicit business from the hundreds of saloons condemned by the new law to sell drinks containing no more than one-half of one percent alcohol—which meant only the weakest-tasting. Every hair tonic had a higher alcohol content in those days.
The orders poured in. And Yale, flushed by the initial success of his sales force, searched for a source that could supply him with the large quantities of alky being demanded in his territory. He found a willing supplier in Detroit: the Purple Gang. The Michigan mob had begun the manufacture of hootch on a grand scale and was marketing a whiskey that was generally regarded as the best illicit booze produced in the United States. Connoisseurs of that era who sampled the product say the legitimate pre-Prohibition whiskey was virtually indistinguishable from the contents of the bottles shipped by the Purple Gang with their fraudulent labels: Old Granddad.
Yale’s coup with the Michigan mob and his ability to supply Brooklyn’s speakeasies with that hootch was the envy of Wild Bill Lovett who, unlike his predecessor, had a full awareness of the great potential in bootlegging.
Despite the late start, Lovett was unable to establish a quick, big market of his own in bootlegging. Many of the old gin mills in South Brooklyn were operated by sons of the auld sod. Though many of them already had begun to receive bootleg hootch from Yale’s Black Hand suppliers, when Wild Bill Lovett’s emissaries finally came around and solicited their business, large numbers of them agreed to switch their business to the White Hand suppliers.
Even though the Irish innkeepers were sympathetic to Lovett and his brigade of Irishmen, the hootch the White Hand began to deliver to the bars couldn’t maintain the bond. Scores of saloons stopped buying Lovett’s booze and went back to the Black Hand’s suppliers.
It was easy to understand: the White Hand’s bootleg was of the local variety, brewed in cellars, warehouses, and garages. It had none of the body, bouquet, or potency of the product trucked from Detroit. The drastic loss of clientele grated Lovett until mid-November, when he finally struck upon a course of action destined to have extensive ramifications on the White Hand gang’s simmering feud with the Black Hand.
Thursday night, November 18, 1920. Ten men arrived separately at Prospect Hall on 17th Street and gathered in one of the meeting rooms that Lovett had reserved for the occasion. They were Richard “Pegleg” Lonergan, Danny and Petey Bean, Pug McCarthy, Ash Can Smitty, Jack “Needles” Ferry, Charleston Eddie McFarland, Aaron Harms, and Irish Eyes Duggan. The tenth man was Wild Bill.
“I called you here tonight to tell you about bootlegging,” Lovett rasped. “I have been hearing that we should make our own liquor because the stuff we’re buying is so lousy. But let me tell you that isn’t the way to make a profit. And we can’t get anywhere selling the bathtub booze we’re pushing now…”
Lovett looked at his “sales managers” who’d been supervising the White Hand’s booze peddlers, studying their faces for reaction. What he saw pleased him. “I can see you agree with me,” he smiled. “Now let me tell you what I want to do…”
His next words had the effect of a bombshell.
“We’re going to sell the stuff that the fuckin’ ginzo Yale has been supplying to the speaks.”
There was a stunned silence. Then Lovett detected a derisive murmur.
“All right, I know what you’re thinking—that we can’t buy the Purple’s booze because they won’t deal with us,” Wild Bill speculated. The Detroit mob was predominantly Jewish and they’d sooner pour their Old Grandad into Lake Michigan than sell it to the micks.
“But who’s talking about buying it?” Lovett asked with a meaningful grin. Then some of his “salesmen” began smiling. They had gotten the drift of Wild Bill’s pitch.
“All I’m saying is we’re gonna get involved in something we’re old hands at doing,” he went on. “We’re going to hijack the wops’ liquor, just like we do the stuff that’s going and coming from the docks.”
A wild spontaneous burst of applause and rousing cheers welcomed Lovett’s plans.
“Good,” Wild Bill said, pleased at the quick endorsement. “We start the hits with the next delivery.”
“You mean tonight?” Charleston Eddie asked, pointing to the clock on the meeting hall wall. All were aware that the truck delivering the Black Hand’s liquor always rolled into Yale’s garage on Fourth Avenue and Second Street.
It was now 11:30 p.m., just about the time the shipments arrived. Yale had instructed Detroit never to make deliveries before 11:30 p.m. or after 12:10 a.m. Frankie considered that forty-minute period the safest for hauling the illegal cargo into the garage. Any other time might attract the cop on the beat.
Frankie knew that patrolmen who pounded the pavement in that sector invariably abandoned their posts at 11:30 and shuffled to the Fifth Avenue police station in slow time so they’d get there just a minute or so before midnight. That enabled them to go off duty just as soon as the lieutenant had read their orders to the 12:00-to-8:00 a.m. shift and turned them out. And since it took the flatfoot on the lobster shift about ten minutes to reach the post on Fourth Avenue, the time span between 11:30 and 12:10 was the safest to open the garage doors and let the truck with its cargo in.
Lovett gave McFarland a quick answer.
“No, not tonight,” he said flatly. “We have to do a little planning on how we’re going to pull the caper. Next week is plenty soon enough.”
Shortly before 11:00 p.m. the following Thursday—Thanksgiving—a gray LaSalle sedan pulled out of a small garage on Baltic Street and cruised north. In the car were four men wearing dark lumber jackets and armed with enough artillery to equip a regiment.
Lovett had a desk and phone in that garage, which was a storage depot for the domestically-brewed bootleg hootch and the kegs of beer being supplied by Arthur “Dutch Schultz” Flegenheimer up in the Bronx for distribution in Brooklyn’s speakeasies.
Ten minutes before the LaSalle bearing Petey Bean, Charleston Eddie, Ash Can Smitty, and Needles Ferry left the garage, Lovett had received a call from Irish Eyes Duggan, who was in a speakeasy phone booth on Manhattan’s West Street, where he and Aaron Harms had been staked out in their car near the West Street Ferry to spot the truck from Detroit.
There was no George Washington Bridge, no Lincoln Tunnel, nor such other gateways to or from the West as the New York State Thruway or the Verrazzano-Narrows Bridge then. Construction had just begun on the Holland Tunnel, and it was seven years from completion.
While a number of ferry lines were carrying cars, trucks, and commuters across the Hudson in 1920, the principal crossing—because it was the most convenient—for the traffic of the Lincoln Highway was the boats that trudged between Jersey City and Wall Street. So there was no doubt that the truck from Detroit would come by that ferry route.
The truck had no signs to alert Duggan and Harms that it was loaded with the Purple Gang’s liquor. The Michigan license plates were a dead giveaway.
After he phoned Lovett, Duggan hurried out to the car, got in beside Harms, who was behind the wheel, and said, “Bill wants us to be sure and stay on their asses.”
Harms caught up with the truck on Canal Street in less than two minutes. He tailed it over the Manhattan Bridge onto Flatbush Avenue in Brooklyn, then stalked it until it turned into Fourth Avenue.
Duggan’s and Harms’s roles as bloodhounds came to an end as the gray LaSalle bearing Petey Bean, Charleston Eddie, Ash Can Smitty, and Needles Ferry pulled out from the curb and made a wide sweeping turn just after the truck had passed the stopped car. In a matter of seconds, the car cut in front of the truck, forcing the driver to jam on the brakes to avoid a collision.
Petey Bean and Charleston Eddie leaped out of the sedan with sawed-off shotguns pointed menacingly at the cab of the truck.
“Out! Get the fuck out!” screamed Eddie.
The driver and his helper scampered out of the cab meek as mice.
“Scram!” commanded Eddie. “Get your asses on the run!”
The two men sped up Fourth Avenue.
“Get in there and start driving!” Eddie commanded. Bean climbed into the cab and gave the gas pedal a heavy foot. The truck roared off. He steered it around the corner into Smith Street, then turned into Baltic and drove the rig into the White Hand’s garage. It was a minute before midnight.
It was a considerable haul: $30,000 worth of Prohibition Era Old Granddad. Charleston Eddie was ecstatic as the gang unloaded the cases from the truck.
“Jesus, Bill, what a hell of an idea you had,” he bubbled. “This is the goddamnedest way I see to beat buying the shit we’ve been scrounging around for here in Brooklyn.”
Eddie had already cracked open one of the bottles and taken a swig.
“This is great stuff, maybe better than what Old Granddad himself used to make before Prohibition,” he raved.
Lovett yanked the bottle out of Charleston’s hands and sampled its contents himself.
“By Christ, this is fantastic!” he echoed with a racking cough. “This fuckin’ booze can burn a guy’s throat.”
When the truck had been emptied, Lovett directed Needles Ferry and Ash Can Smitty to “dump it.” According to prearranged plan, Ferry and Smitty were to drive the rig to Fourth Avenue and Second Street and abandon it at the curb in front of Yale’s garage. That was Lovett’s idea—the ultimate “kick in the ass to the ginzo bastard.”
Lovett had it all plotted in his mind. He was as much aware as Yale of the foot patrolmen’s habits of goofing off on their last half-hour of duty, and that it took the cop on the next shift some ten minutes to reach his beat after he was turned out at the station house.
Lovett also reasoned that the hijacked truck’s driver and helper would head straight to Frankie Yale’s garage after they’d been bushwhacked by Charleston Eddie and Petey Bean. And after the bad news about the heist had been broken to Yale, there’d be no reason to stick around the garage. Lovett had plotted it ingeniously.
As Charleston and Petey rolled along Fourth Avenue in the empty truck, they kept a sharp eye rivetted on the gray LaSalle cruising some fifty feet ahead of them. Irish Eyes Duggan and Aaron Harms, in the car, were the scouting party. Harms was in the back seat, and his job was to flick a flashlight on through the rear window to let Charleston and Petey know that there were no lights or activity at the garage and it was okay to carry out Wild Bill’s little joke. But if there was no signal from the rear window of the car, Petey was to drive on past the garage and discard the truck wherever it was convenient.
As the LaSalle approached the garage, a light from the rear window flashed on.
“The coast is clear,” Eddie said to Bean. “Let’s dump it.”
Petey gave the steering wheel a slight jerk to the right and braked the truck to a stop directly in front of the garage entrance.
“Scram, Petey,” Charleston rasped as he jumped out of the cab and ran to get into the LaSalle. As Bean followed Charleston into the car, Duggan Hit the accelerator so hard that the car lurched forward for an instant then went dead.
“The fuckin’ car stalled!” Irish Eyes screamed in a rage.
“What the hell’s wrong with you, you asshole?” Charleston thundered. “Don’t you even know how to drive?”
Duggan flicked the ignition key and the motor coughed to a hesitant start.
“Easy does it,” yelled Eddie. “Less choke! Less choke!”
Duggan threw the car into first gear, and this time the car responded to his urging. They were on their way back to tell Bill Lovett that their mission was accomplished.
“Don’t tell me nuthin’. I seen it,” Frankie Yale bellowed at Augie Pisano the next morning. The gang chieftain was now in the burnout stage of his hour-long rage. Sixty minutes ago he had arrived at the garage and seen the empty truck out front, and his fury had hit heights never before witnessed by his associates. He hurled every epithet in the book and then some Yale originals, at his rival.
His lieutenants grieved with Frankie over the lost liquor, but their anguish over the humiliation inflicted on them by the White Handers was far greater.
“Parked the fuckin’ truck outside here,” Yale said for the fifteenth time, his voice now reduced to a mere roar. “Well, I’m gonna fix them micks good. I know what I gotta do.”
He grabbed the phone on his desk and leaned back in his swivel chair. Suddenly he was calm again. His mood was almost mellow as he lifted the receiver and placed it against his ear, waiting for the operator. Several seconds went by.
“Come on, what the hell ya waiting for?” he snapped edgily. “The goddamn telephone people,” he complained, “they charge you an arm and a leg and they don’t give you no service.”
Augie the Wop was sitting in the chair beside Yale’s desk. Two-Knife Altierri was standing with his back to the window overlooking the alley, cleaning his nails with one of his knives. Don Giuseppe Balsamo, who only came to Frankie’s office in dire emergencies, was ensconced in the plush maroon cut-velvet armchair in a corner of the office. The expensive, ornate chair was totally out of place amid the plain, scratched wooden furniture. It had played a dominant role in the decor of Frankie’s living room until his father-in-law had suffered a heart attack and died while sitting in it. Frankie’s wife was superstitious, and she had him remove it from the house. Rather than leave it on the sidewalk for the junkman, Frankie toted the chair to the garage and installed in in his office.
At first he derived sadistic satisfaction out of using the chair as a prop to unnerve his boys. When one of them had sat in it a while, Yale would say, “Hey, how you like that chair? Comfortable?”
Nothing but compliments for the chair. Then after a few minutes Yale would say, “You remember my father-in-law, eh? Well, the poor fella, he died in that chair.”
Some of the Black Hand’s toughest cutthroats squirmed, fidgeted, and looked around for any excuse to evacuate the chair.
“Oh, you back from lunch so soon?” Frankie said sarcastically when the operator finally came on the line and asked for the number.
“I wanna talk to somebody in Chicago,” Yale continued, “but I want to ask you which is quicker, if I take the train or if I use the phone?”
Yale generated a crescendo of laughter in his office, but only silence came through the receiver. He gave the operator the number and waited with characteristic impatience for the two minutes or so it took to route the call. Finally he said quietly, “This is Frankie Yale in Brooklyn. Is the big guy there?”
Another wait. Then, “Hello, Al, it’s good to hear your voice. How’s your mama and the rest of the family?” Yale’s voice was mellow, undeniably humble. He was talking with an old friend from earlier Brooklyn days who had followed Horace Greeley’s advice and gone west and who was now well on his way to becoming the nation’s most feared underworld boss.
To what did he owe the pleasure of this call from Frankie Yale, Big Al wanted to know. Frankie told him in the briefest terms, what had happened the night before. Yale was aware that Scarface Al was a man of few words and demanded that others follow his example. He had no patience for windy explanations.
Yale got to the point. He wanted to know if Capone could spare a couple of his executioners from their busy Chicago practices to perform a little extracurricular work in Brooklyn.
No sweat, Big Al told his old buddy. He’d put two of his best triggermen aboard the next Twentieth Century Limited leaving Chicago. These were, he said, two Sicilians from Cicero named Albert Anselmi and John Scalise. These Sicilians never played out-of-town engagements for anything less than $15,000 apiece.
“But, good brother,” Yale protested in his mildest, most polite voice. “Cleveland charged only ten big ones for the compito on Denny Mee—”
Capone cut off Yale in midsentence. Frankie listened for several seconds, then began laughing. It was forced laughter, but he had to show the Big Guy that he enjoyed his humor.
“Okay, good friend Al,” Yale said, “you are justified to ask for that. I will pay it.”
Yale hung up and pushed the phone away in disgust.
“How you like that?” he asked.
“Why’s he putting such a big bite?” Augie the Wop asked.
“Because,” Yale replied, shaking his head resignedly, “Al say the train fare from Chicago cost more than from Cleveland.”
When Al Capone told Frankie Yale he’d put Anselmi and Scalise on the next train to New York, that was merely a figure of speech. Underworld contract killings never come off that quickly. It takes skillful and time-consuming conniving to plot the successful rubout of a rival gangster, mainly because the intended victim is constantly alert to the dangers of assassination. Consequently, he takes precautions to protect himself.
So a number of long-distance calls between Brooklyn and Chicago followed in the days after Yale’s first talk with Capone. The prickly details of the demanding assignment had to be ironed out.
Yale had decided he wanted to hurt Wild Bill Lovett in the worst of ways. But the most severe punishment the White Hand leader could suffer would not be his own death, Frankie decided.
“We gotta hurt his people,” Yale said on the phone to Scalise. “I know just how to do it.” Frankie proceeded to tell Scalise about the forthcoming Valentine’s Day dance that the White Handers were to hold in Brooklyn’s Sagaman’s Hall.
“I have in mind an ambush,” Frankie suggested. “What do you think?”
Scalise wanted to know who Yale wanted killed.
“Anybody!” Yale shouted. “Shoot crazy! Hit the crowd! You don’t have to aim. Just shoot. Make a big score!”
Scalise got the message. He told Frankie that he and Anselmi would show up at Frankie’s garage at seven o’clock on the night of February 14th.
“I’ll send my boys to meet you at Grand Central,” Yale offered.
No need for that, Scalise replied. When he and Anselmi go on a job, they make their own way.
And at precisely the hour promised, Scalise and Anselmi walked into the garage. They introduced themselves to Yale, and then Scalise asked, “Who’s the wheelman?” Yale pointed to Frenchy Carlino. “The best driver in the whole world,” he said with a wink.
“Yeah,” smiled Anselmi, “if he’s that good how come he ain’t working in Chicago?”
When laughter abated, Scalise turned to Carlino.
“What you driving?”
“Nineteen-twenty LaSalle,” Carlino replied.
“Not bad,” Scalise said. “You got it ready?”
Carlino assured the Chicago gunmen that the car had just been tuned up, that it had a full tank of gas, and was raring to go.
“Good,” Anselmi grinned. “If the wheels don’t move, you don’t move. And that could be very bad…”
Thirty-six members of the White Hand gang were whooping it up in Sagaman’s Hall. Thirty-three of them had their wives with them; the other three had brought their best girls.
Frankie briefed the killers on what had to be done.
“You see,” he said with a frown, “when you go in there you gotta make sure you get them at the tables, when they are sitting…”
“Hey, Frankie,” Scalise interrupted. “You trying to tell us our business? We know what we gotta do. We don’t need no instructions. Capeesh?”
Yale was taken aback.
“Listen, John,” he said, stiffening, “you are in strange territory here, and all I am trying to do is help you. Remember, you came here to do the job for me…”
“All right, wise guy, what you want to say?” Scalise demanded gruffly.
“I want you to shoot in the left side of the dance hall because that’s where all the big-shot micks sit, get me?”
“All right, Frankie, you wanna give me floor plan?” Scalise asked with a disdainful stare.
Yale sensed that he was up against a breed of underworld killer who wasn’t about to take orders from him. But at the same time he held to a confidence that since Scalise and Anselmi had been sent by Al Capone, they could be depended on to do the job.
“Okay,” Yale finally yielded, “this is gonna be your show.”
Forty minutes later, Scalise and Anselmi were driven by Frenchy Carlino to the corner of Schermerhorn and Smith Streets.
“There’s the hall,” Carlino rasped. “Remember, up the stairs on your right to the balcony. And don’t forget—come out fast because I’m gonna drive my ass off if I don’t see you after I hear the shots.”
Scalise and Anselmi left the car without a word and walked into Sagaman’s Hall. The party was in full swing. Hardly anyone noticed the two Chicago mobsters, dressed in light-brown overcoats, dark fedoras, spats, and brown leather gloves. The gloves came off as Scalise and Anselmi climbed the flight of stairs to the swinging doors which opened on the empty balcony. The gathering that night was modest in comparison to the crowds that jammed the hall on other festive occasions: this was a special affair, limited to the White Hand gang. And they had all been seated on the main ballroom floor.
Scalise and Anselmi pushed past the swinging doors and entered the darkened balcony. There they had an unobstructed view of the celebrants. For a moment, they stood at the edge of the balcony rail, unnoticed in the darkness, and surveyed the activity. The orchestra had just finished playing an Irish jig and the revelers had gone back to their tables.
Anselmi nudged Scalise.
“The left side, isn’t that what Yale wanted?” he muttered.
“What the hell’s the difference?” Scalise shrugged. “This is a snap whatever side you wanna hit. But if Yale wants the left side, then let’s make him happy.”
The two killers whipped out the nickel-plated revolvers they were carrying in holsters under their coats and took aim at the crowd of men and women sitting at the tables. An instant later, a steady fire began to pour a deadly fusillade of .45-caliber bullets into the crowd.
Women’s screams pierced the haze of cigaret and cigar smoke and the steady bark of the bullets. Both men and women instinctively dove under tables. Others stood or sat, too paralyzed either by surprise or fear to seek cover. Still others fought and clawed their way through the panic-stricken crowd for the emergency exits and the front entrance.
Scalise and Anselmo reached for the second revolvers they carried as backup when the supply of bullets was exhausted in the weapons they had first used.
Then the triggermen raced down the balcony stairs and out the main entrance almost before the last echoes of gunfire had faded.
Carlino had opened the doors of the LaSalle sedan the instant his ears picked up the first explosions inside the hall. Before the last of the bullets had been spewed into the crowd, Frenchy moved the car directly to the front entrance.
Their coattails flapping behind them, Scalise and Anselmi sprinted across the sidewalk and leaped into the car. Carlino didn’t even wait for them to close the doors before gunning the engine. The car bolted forward, and the whining squeal of tires was louder than the roar of the eight cylinders as Frenchy turned the corner from Schermerhorn into Smith Street. He kept the gas pedal floored until he was assured by Scalise, who was in the back seat peering through the rear window, that no one was following them.
At Sagaman’s Hall, pandemonium reigned. The crescendo of wails and cries was deafening. Blood was splattered everywhere on the left side of the ballroom: on tables, chairs, the floor, and even the wall.
It looked like a battlefield. Hands, faces, bodies, legs were covered with blotches and streaks of crimson as though it had been poured on them from buckets. A dozen men and women were sprawled on the floor, some writhing in agony, others lying absolutely still. Others knelt beside the fallen ministering to their wounds or comforting them until they could be removed to a hospital.
Several frantic calls had been made to the police, but Irish Eyes Duggan had the coolest head. He phoned Kings County Hospital and pleaded for help.
“Send all the ambulances and doctors you got!” he said urgently. “Send nurses! This is a major disaster. Everybody’s been shot. They’re dying! Please, send them right away!”
The sound of Duggan’s voice convinced the night superintendent to dispatch two ambulances to Sagaman’s Hall. Minutes later, when the police phoned in their request for medical assistance and officially confirmed the full extent of the disaster, two more ambulances appeared at the hall.
The four doctors aboard those ambulances that responded were hard put attending to everyone. They worked first on the most critically wounded. Then they pressed some of the White Handers and their women into service, directing them to tie tourniquets around victims’ arms or legs to stem the flow of blood until the medics could attend them.
There were three who were beyond assistance.
Kevin “Smiley” Donovan was obviously a dead duck. There was no need even to feel for a pulse. He had caught at least three slugs on what had once been his forehead. The .45s did a good job of proving to some of his life-long kibitzers that Smiley really did have a brain.
Jimmy “Two Dice” O’Toole had been sitting with his back to the gunmen. Several bullets aerated his skull just above the neck, and the doctor who looked at him turned to one of the fifteen policemen now in the hall and said, “He goes to the morgue.”
Mary Reilly was the third and final passenger for the meat wagon. Richard “Pegleg” Lonergan’s sweetheart, she was known as “Stout-Hearted Mary” because she had raised seven younger brothers and sisters after their parents were drowned in a 1916 boating accident off Sheepshead Bay. But Mary’s heart wasn’t stout enough to withstand the impact of the .45 bullet that passed through it, exited from her back, and did an encore number on the forearm of Fred Mclnerney, who’d been seated at the same table.
Tears trickled down Pegleg’s cheeks as he knelt beside Mary’s lifeless body.
“I’ll get them for you, Mary, so help me, I’ll get them…” he choked through trembling lips.
Other men, hardened by their professional calling to regard violence and bloodletting as routine phenomena of their day-to-day lives, wept unashamedly.
Not everyone had stuck around to mourn the dead and give solace to the wounded. Wild Bill Lovett, who’d been sitting at the same table as Pegleg and Mary, miraculously escaped the bullets, and sent Ash Can Smitty, Peg McCarthy, and several other boys in pursuit of the killers.
In trying to pick up the cold trail, Ash Can and McCarthy drove past Frankie’s garage on Fourth Avenue on the chance that they might pick up some trace of the getaway car or its occupants. But the garage was closed tight and all the lights were out.
Frankie Yale hadn’t doubted for a moment that he and his gang would be suspected immediately of pulling the ambush at Sagaman’s Hall. So, as Carlino drove away with Scalise and Anselmi on their mission, Frankie, Augie the Wop, Two-Knife Altierri, and a dozen other ranking Black Handers all went to a wedding. It was an iron-clad alibi.
The reception was at the Adonis Club. While weekday weddings were a rarity, that particular one was held on a Monday night because the bride and groom had chosen to be married on Valentine’s Day.
Yale and his boys were strangers to the newlyweds, their families, and the guests, but Fury had reserved two large tables in an out-of-the-way corner of the dub for the mobsters. This was standard practice for every reception at the Adonis. Any banquet Argolia booked was arranged with the understanding that the two corner tables were reserved for “some very special customers of mine.” Fury also assured whoever was paying for the reception that there’d be no intrusion by his special guests on the party that booked the hall.
Yale and his pals didn’t occupy the tables at every banquet—only when they had to have an alibi. When five detectives walked into the Adonis a few minutes after eleven o’clock that night and spotted Yale and his boys at the corner tables, they knew they had wasted their time coming over from Sagaman’s Hall to question the Black Hand leader and his underlings about the shooting.
“Hiya, Frankie,” one of the detectives greeted. “No need to ask where you and your boys were tonight, is there?”
Yale looked up and feigned surprise. He quickly pointed a finger at the plates around the table littered with scraps of meat, pasta, and salad. “Hey, you kidding?” he asked, cocking an eyebrow at the detectives. “Can’t you see what we got here? You think we just sat down for dinner…?”
“Yeah, I know what you’re saying. Frankie,” the detective said derisively. “And I suppose every person at this reception will vouch that you and your boys were here since long before ten o’clock tonight, isn’t that right?”
Another puzzled look crossed Frankie’s face.
“Why, what happened at ten o’clock which makes you come to me?” Yale asked innocently.
“You wouldn’t know anything about the ambush at Sagaman’s Hall, Frankie, would you?” the detective asked.
Yale turned suddenly and looked at Pisano, who was sitting across from him.
“Augie, did you hear anything about that?” Frankie asked with an extra touch of curiosity in his voice.
“How could I?” Pisano said defensively. “Ain’t I been here all the time? You didn’t see me talk with nobody, didja?”
Yale turned back to the detective. “You see, we didn’t hear nuthin’.”
“That’s what we figured,” the detective said resignedly. “But we’re only doing our job, you understand that, don’t you, Frankie?” “Yeah, sure, sure, of course I understand,” Yale said condescendingly. “But tell me something—what’s this about ambush at Sagaman’s? What happened?”
“Frankie,” the detective growled, “I don’t know who your hit men were, but you can tell them when they report back to you that they made a very high score.”
“Hey, don’t say I got hit men,” Yale protested. “I am a legitimate businessman. You know what I am. An undertaker.”
The detective turned to the other sleuths. “Come on, let’s get out of here,” he said sharply. “I can’t stand the stink.”
As the lawmen started to leave, Frankie shouted, “Hey, you forgot to tell me the score. What was it?”
The detective walked back to the table. His gait was deliberately slow. He approached Yale, looked down at him for a long moment, then took the left lapel of Frankie’s suit between his thumb and forefinger.
Frankie smiled sardonically as he craned his neck to look up at him. When he spotted the fire in the sleuth’s eyes, he wiped the grin off his face.
Running his fingers up and down the lapel he’d taken hold of, the detective drew in a long slow breath, as though trying to restrain his anger.
“Frankie if you didn’t know twelve people were shot, then I’m letting you know it now. And you might also be interested to know that three of them are dead. That’s murder, Frankie, and I want to assure you that I and these men who are with me are going to work night and day to break this case.”
The detective gave a slight tug on Frankie’s lapel and took his hand away. He had a last word to offer.
“Three murders, Frankie,” he said, “but you’re going to get a break when we nail you. Because you can only fry once in the chair.”
Yale and his lieutenants kept absolutely silence as they waited for the detectives to disappear out the door. No sooner had they gone then there was an explosion of laughter.
“Didja hear that?” Frankie asked, his voice almost cracking. “Twelve hits! Twelve hits! And three bull’s-eyes! Magnifico! I gotta call Big Al and tell him we’re gonna send his boys a bonus.”
Yale summoned Argolia to the table.
“Fury,” he said ecstatically, “how many tables over there for the wedding party?”
“Fourteen,” the reply came.
“Okay, and you got two more here, right?” Frankie said. “Put a bottle of vino on every table. It’s on me. And go tell the bride and groom I’m gonna drink a toast to their health and happiness.”
Augie the Wop began applauding Frankie, and everyone at the two tables joined in. Yale all at once called out to Argolia, who had begun instructing the waiters to get the wine.
“Angelo,” Frankie said loud enough to be heard for several tables around, “maybe I can get to kiss the bride, too, eh..?”
By then the injured at Sagaman’s Hall had all been removed to the hospital and the three bodies had been photographed by police and taken to the morgue. Detectives were still milling through the crowded hall interrogating witnesses for possible leads.
The cops were no more likely to get information from the White Handers than they could hope to develop leads by questioning Yale and his Black Hands. Even if someone in the hall had been able to identify the gunmen, he wouldn’t tell the police. The micks and the ginzos had their own code of laws, and it was incompatable with those adopted by the Founding Fathers in the Constitution.
Wild Bill Lovett and gang didn’t need the police or any court of law to arrest, prosecute, convict, and execute the perpetrators of the bloody outrage visited on Sagaman’s Hall. They had their own methods for striking back. The police knew that. The Black Hand knew that. In fact, even the public that read of the ambush chronicled in big, bold, black headlines in the next day’s newspapers knew that.
The only question in anyone’s mind was when the White Handers would mete out their punishment to the Black Handers.
