Читать книгу Crime Incorporated - William Balsamo - Страница 9
ОглавлениеAugust 4, 1919, was an unbearably hot, muggy day. The temperature reached 95 degrees at high noon—just the time two sinister-looking figures, dapper in Palm Beach suits and Panama hats, strolled off busy Flatbush Avenue and entered the Mount Olympus Restaurant, in the heart of downtown Brooklyn.
“Hello, my good friends,” a voice encumbered by a heavy Greek accent greeted the two men, who needed no introduction to many of Nick Colouvos’s gathering lunch crowd. Frankie Yale was one of the underworld’s fastest rising gang leaders; his squat muscular companion and chief lieutenant, Anthony “Little Augie Pisano” Carfano (also known as “Augie the Wop”) was equally well known.
“Here, let me give you a table near the big fan in the back where you will be cool,” Colouvos offered. The soft-spoken, personable restaurant owner had looked up to Yale as a hero since the dreary winter’s night in 1918 when a young boy, no older than ten, hawking evening and morning newspapers from a makeshift stand outside the restaurant. That night the stacks of papers were still piled high at an hour when they should have been depleted. It was indoor weather and the streets were deserted.
Nick watched as Yale went over to the boy, bought out his newsstand with a crisp fifty-dollar bill, and commanded him to “Go home to your mama.” Nick never forgot that episode. To the immigrant from a poor Spartan village who had known only poverty until he came to America and lifted himself up by his bootstraps by washing dishes, then working as a chef until he scraped enough savings together to open his own restaurant, the underworld hoodlum’s gesture to the newsboy was an example of true generosity.
He sat his guests down and took their orders, then went off into the kitchen to make certain the meals were prepared to Frankie’s and Little Augie’s satisfaction. Nick wasn’t his usual smiling, ebullient self, Yale remarked to Pisano. “Something is bothering him,” he said.
When Nick brought the food out and served it to his guests, Yale asked what was troubling him. Nick simply shrugged and said everything was all right. Yale didn’t believe him.
“Nick, something is on your mind, my good friend. What is it? Somebody bothering you? You having trouble with the help around here?”
Nick shook his head. “Nah, nothing like that. It’s a personal thing…”
His voice trailed off and Yale sensed a deep problem gnawing at Nick.
“Let’s go to the back room where we can talk,” Yale suggested. He stood up, dug a hand into his pants pocket, and pulled out a wad of cash. He peeled off a ten-dollar bill and dispatched Little Augie to fetch a bottle of Scotch from a nearby liquor store.
When Augie returned, the three retired to the back room. After the drinks were poured, Frankie and Augie settled back to listen to Nick’s plight.
Speaking with considerable hesitation, Colouvos managed to say, “It’s…my daughter…Olympia…You know her, Frankie…You gave her twenty dollars two months ago for her birthday…”
Yale knew the girl. She had an angelic face and long auburn curls that hung down her back. He also remembered that she was eight years old.
Nick explained that for the past several weeks Olympia was extraordinarily melancholy, often crying for no apparent reason, refusing to eat.
“This is not at all like my daughter,” Nick said. “We finally took her to the doctor, but he could find nothing wrong with her. He thinks she is going through a phase, but my wife and I just know something is not right.”
Lately the little girl was awakening in the middle of the night, screaming from nightmares. “I can’t see my child in tears,” Nick protested. “It depresses me. And worse, she won’t even talk about what is bothering her. We don’t know what to do anymore.”
Yale thought of an immediate solution.
“You know what I’m gonna do for you?” He paused briefly to give emphasis to his words. Then, with a grand sweep of his hand, he laid out his blueprint to get into the little girl’s head:
“I’ll get Mary Despano to take Olympia to Coney Island this weekend. Maybe after she goes on a few rides and has some ice cream, she’ll open up for Mary and tell her what’s bothering her.”
Mary Despano, a saintly forty-hve-year-old widow, lived alone in a tenement at the corner of Union and Henry Streets in the center of Brooklyn’s Little Italy. Her husband and son were victims of the great flu epidemic of 1917 and since then Mary had worn nothing but black mourning dresses.
Children adored Mary and many of them made her their confidante. They could tell her things about their personal lives and their weightiest problems that they didn’t dare discuss with their own mothers.
That Sunday Mary took Olympia to the famed summer playground on the Brooklyn shore where, after a round of rides, and hot dogs, french fries, frozen custard and cotton candy, the little girl’s tongue loosened.
After depositing Olympia safely at home, Mary Despano sought out Yale and told him what had been causing Nick’s daughter so much unhappiness and nightmares. Frankie shouted a litany of epithets and slammed his hand against the dining room wall with such force that the picture frames rattled and a crack was left in the plaster.
After Mary departed, Yale phoned the restaurant and asked Nick to have his wife prepare dinner for the following Sunday.
“I want to eat with you and Maria. And be sure to ask your brother George over, too. That is very important. But the children will not eat with us. Mary will take Olympia and your two sons to Coney Island for another treat.”
Nick’s apartment was located in a brownstone on Clinton Street, not more than eight blocks from the restaurant. Nick greeted Frankie Yale at the door and ushered him into the living room where Coulovos’ wife, Maria, and brother were already seated.
After a period of small talk, Mrs. Colouvos excused herself to prepare dinner. Twenty minutes later she brought the roast leg of lamb and all its trimmings to the table, and summoned Yale, her husband, and brother-in-law into the dining room.
The conversation was simple and unencumbered during the meal. After she cleared the dinner dishes, Nick’s wife served the traditional Turkish coffee, the Greek after-dinner delicacy, baklava, and little jiggers of ouzo.
Until this moment, none of the Colouvoses seemed to have an idea of why Frankie Yale had arranged this get-together. Then Yale took the last sip of his ouzo and turned to his host.
“Nick,” Yale began, with a grim face. “I have very bad news about Olympia. The reason she has nightmares is because…”
Frankie’s words trailed off. But only momentarily. His eyes were afire now and he could no longer hold back the stunning secret about Nick’s daughter’s problem that Mary Despano had unearthed.
“…Listen closely, Nick,” Yale began anew. “I have very bad news for you about Olympia…”
Again Frankie hesitated as he spoke. He was measuring his words and seemed to want to deliver the message he had for Nick in precise language.
“Frankie,” Nick blurted after so much anticipation, “what are you trying to say?”
“Okay, my friend, I will stop beating around the bush,” Yale rasped. “I’m going to tell you what I found out…”
Yale turned and glared at Nick’s brother George, little Olympia’s uncle.
“This man,” Frankie said through tightly clenched teeth, pointing a finger straight at the now-startled George Colouvos, “has been screwing your daughter—and that is why she has been having nightmares and been so depressed—”
Nick’s face suddenly became a dark mask as he turned and glared at his brother in total shock and disbelief.
George sat bolt upright in his chair at the table, stupefied and speechless.
Before Nick could utter a word, Yale continued to relate what Mary Despano had learned from Olympia.
“This thing has been going on for two months—ever since your brother’s ship went into drydock for repairs and he came to visit you. Olympia told Mary how George lured her to the cellar with the promise of giving her chocolates. He did vile things with her. Then after he had satisfied himself with her he warned Olympia that he would kill her if she told anyone what he was doing to her.”
Nick again turned and glared at his brother in disbelief. George Colouvos became terrified. He leaped out of his chair and started to run for the door. He froze in his tracks when Yale yelled, “Sit down, you disgraziato degenerato bastard!”
George obeyed, went back to his chair on trembling legs, and seated himself. He broke out in a cold sweat as he waited for Frankie Yale’s next command.
His eyes popped wide open as Frankie opened his jacket and unlimbered a .45-caliber revolver from his hip holster.
Frankie cocked the trigger and aimed the barrel at George’s head. “You should not be so impolite when somebody is talking,” he snarled.
George sat back in his chair at the dining room table and submitted to the rest of Frankie Yale’s narrative about Olympia’s agonizing experiences.
Nick and Maria were utterly devastated as Frankie went into the most sordid details of their daughter’s abuse by her uncle, of his threat to kill her if she ever told anyone about what he was doing to her, and of how fright drove her to withdraw into a shell of fear and confusion.
When he finished Yale turned to Nick and placed the gun on the table before him.
“More than anything in this world, Nick,” Yale said in a slow, measured tone, I want to kill this degenerate bastard brother of yours. But I am not selfish. I do not want to deprive you of that honor.”
Nick gazed disbelievingly at Yale.
“…You want…me to…kill…my…my brother…?” he stammered.
Yale’s eyes narrowed to slits as he glared at Nick.
“I know you are a gentle, mild-mannered man, my friend. But I have not gone to all this trouble to find out what is bothering Olympia only to have your brother escape the punishment he deserves—from the only person who should give it to him. And that person is you!”
Nick’s hand moved slowly toward the gun on the table. All the while George Colouvos, cringing in his chair, let his eyes follow his brother’s movements.
As Nick palmed the gun, George suddenly cried out plaintively in Greek:
“Adelphi, mou…oyi!”
The plea, “Brother of mine…no!,” went unheeded.
Nick Colouvos, now as revenge-bent as Frankie Yale instructed him to be, aimed the .45 at his brother’s sweating temple.
George pleaded again. “Please, Nick…I couldn’t help myself. I’m a sick man…”
Nick glared at George and screamed, “I’m ashamed and humiliated to have a brother such as you. If Papa was alive he would kill you himself. But since he is not, I am going to do it…”
The dining room fell into an eerie silence, broken only by the condemned man’s heavy breathing—and then by the two quick shots that Nick triggered at his brother’s head.
Twin holes tore open George Colouvos’ temple, and blood spurted in torrents from them.
Maria Colouvos screamed hysterically as her brother-in-law collapsed on the table, his head falling into the baklava.
As the echoes of the gunfire subsided, Yale moved quickly.
“All right, Nick, grab his feet and help me put the body on the kitchen floor,” he instructed. “I don’t want to get blood on the carpet in here.”
Taking hold of George’s limp upper torso under the armpits, Frankie lifted the dead man out of his chair as Nick lifted his brother’s feet off the floor. They carried George’s body to the kitchen and laid it on the linoleum, which Olympia’s mother later mopped to remove the blood that still trickled from the two head wounds.
At about nine o’clock that night, as darkness descended, Yale and Colouvos carried the blanket-wrapped corpse to the street, stuffed it into the trunk of Colouvos’ sedan, and drove to the New Jersey ferry.
Their destination had already been mapped by the Mafia overlord: a weeded-covered illegal dumpsite in Lyndenhurst close to the Passaic River. They sprinkled quicklime over the body. In just days, the flesh and bone totally disintegrated.
They drove home in silence and didn’t get in touch with each other for a week—until Nick phoned Frankie.
“My very good friend,” he said. “I want to tell you how much my little girl has improved. She is talking again and smiling like she used to. And she is eating once more. Most important, she does not have nightmares…”
Nick’s voice went silent a moment as Yale listened. Finally, Olympia’s father spoke again:
“Frankie, I want to thank you. I know what you did was because of your love for children—and that you hate to see them hurt in any way.
“You are a very fine man and on that account I am proud to call you my friend.”
Yale thanked Colouvos for those sentiments, then imparted a few words himself:
“Nick, I know you are sincere in what you just said and mean every word. And because you and I are such good friends, I want to give you this bit of advice:
“Never forget. We only kill if we have to. And they die—but only because they deserve it…
“And your brother—Amorte…he did deserve it!”
