This write-up is based on the book with the same title, it was written by William Balsamo & George Carpozi Jr. All efforts to reach them has proved abortive but, nevertheless, due credits go to them. (all necessary permissions have been sought)

The book would make a great read, and that's why I'm giving nairalanders the chance to actually read without stress.
The first chapter is coming soon, watch out for this space.

CHAPTER ONE: Amorte... He deserves it.

August 4, 1919, was an unbearably hot, muggy day. The temperatures 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" Carano (also known as “Augie the Wop" was equally well known.
“Here, let me give you table near the big fan in the back where you will be cool," Coulovos 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 newspaper 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 streets were deserted.
Nick watched as Yale went over to the boy, brought 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 guest, Yale asked what was troubling him. Nick simply shrugged and said everything was all right. Yale didn't believe him.
“

CHAPTER ONE: Amorte... He deserves it.

August 4, 1919, was an unbearably hot, muggy day. The temperatures 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" Carano (also known as “Augie the Wop" was equally well known.
“Here, let me give you 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 newspaper 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 streets were deserted.
Nick watched as Yale went over to the boy, brought 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 guest, 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 help 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 way of cash. He peeled off a ten-dollar bill and dispatched Little Augie to fetch a bottle of Scotch from the nearby liquor store.
When Augie returned, the three retired to the back room. After 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 am 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 unlike 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-five-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.

To be continued.....

Continued...

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 in 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 Colouvos' 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 seem 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 into 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."

To be continued.

More pls. Thanks.
Btw where can I buy this book.

Jeez!! So sickening,ride on.

I apologize for the delay.Nairaland's server has been acting up recently.

Continued....


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 cold sweat as waited 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'm 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, no was 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 not 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 out 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 weed-covered illegal dumpsite at Lyndenhurst close to the Passiac 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!"

To be continued......

Can't wait..This is gonna be sweet.

Continued....

CHAPTER TWO: Those Dirty Black Hand Ginzos

January 5, 1920 was a Monday. A chill winter day.
The wind swirled in twenty-five-mile-an-hour gusts. The leaden grey skies threatened to disgorge the season's first heavy snowfall.
On the Brooklyn waterfront, crews of longshoremen were busily shifting crates and bales ,loading freighters bound for foreign ports, unloading cargoes shipped across the Atlantic
PIER 2. The new sign had just been hung over the long, rectangular, narrow-fronted warehouse jutting out over the East River from the foot of Furman street. Bright red block letters against as white background heralded the proprietorship of the Gowanus Stevedoring Company, a proud firm that had been doing business on the Brooklyn docks for more than fifty years.

Gowanus had just expanded its dock operations by taking over the Pier 2 warehouse. The new foreman, Jimmy Sullivan was a monstrous man with huge forearms etched with gaudy tattoos of exploding bombshells--- reminders of his hell as a doughboy in the trenches of the Marne and Belleau Woods during World War 1. He was put into the job because he'd given honest sweat as a dockhand for Gowanus since 1902. When he'd come back from two years in the army the company needed a tough thumper to hustle the crews on the new pier. Jimmy was their boy. From the first day on the job, Sullivan showed who was boss. His thick, cracked lips and his blue squinting eyes never smiled. His flat face and the nose busted from countless pier brawls carried a message to the men: they'd better not mess with him.

At forty-eight, Jimmy Sullivan did not know what had to be done on the wharf. The respect he commanded from the dockers made him a good man to run Pier 2.
One of his duties as pier superintendent was paying the weekly extortion to Deeny Meehan's White Hand collectors. Shelling out protection money was a way of life on the waterfront. It prevented the wholesale theft cargo from the company's warehouses and spared their merchandise-laden trucks from hijackings.
The handful of companies that had balked at coming under Meehan's thumb were paying through the nose now. Cargoes were constantly pilfered from their piers and their truvks were constantly waylaid in the middle of the night.

Jimmy Sullivan liked everything about his job except handing over the weekly envelope to Meehan's torpedoes. Although it wasn't his money, Jimmy felt it was wrong. So did his boss, John O'Hara, the president of Gowanus. Jimmy's salary as pier superintendent was a respectable $150 a week, fifty percent more than he'd been making as a dock laborer. In a sense, then, the extortion O'Hara was paying to the White Hand gang was money coming out of his pocket--- and the dockworkers'
Jimmy never let on how he felt to Meehan's ambassadors. Generally he received them in his warehouse office--- and always tried to get them out of his sight in as little time as it took to hand over the envelope containing the $1500 in cash which O'Hara sent over every Monday morning.

Pleasantries, if exchanged, were as short as Jimmy could cut them. He felt like taking Ernie “Skinny" Shea and Wally “The Squint" Walsh, Meehan's regular collectors, and pulverizing then in his bare hands. He often wondered how two scrawny punks like these could fit into a group with such reputation as Deeny Meehan's organized mob.
Shea got his nickname for a very apparent reason---he was five-foot-four and weighed in at under 120 pounds. He looked even skinnier: his high cheekbones and hollowed cheeks gave him the appearance of someone who routinely siphoned gasoline out of a car and drank it.
Jimmy Sullivan could swear he never got a glimpse of Wally Walsh's eyes. His gaunt, pale face didn't differ from Shea's. But it had a distinctive feature: his eyeballs never showed. Even in Sullivan's drab office, where the forty-watt light bulb couldn't even make a bat blink, Walsh squinted as though the high-noon sun were blazing into his eyes.

It's eleven o'clock on that Monday morning of January 5, 1920, when Shea and Walsh arrived at Pier 2. Sullivan was standing on a crate which contained religious plaster of Paris statues of St. Anthony shipped from Milan which had just been unloaded from a freighter.
As he shouted orders to the longshoremen to guide the boom lowering cargo from the freighter's hold,a corner of his eye caught a black LaSalle that had just pulled to a stop outside his office door.
“All right, keep the jig moving," he shouted. He hopped of the crate and scampered into his office ahead of Shea and Walsh. Sullivan always tried to be sitting behind his desk when he encountered Meehan's collectors. It gave him a feeling of superiority.
“Hi, Jim," greeted Shea as he entered the office.
“Yeah," Sullivan snorted, opening the lap drawer of his desk.
Wordlessly, he handed the envelope with the $1500---in hundred dollar bills---to Shea.
“No need to count it," Shea said, his thin lips curled up to his ears in an ingratiating smile. “The amount is always right."
Sullivan had no doubt that Shea and Walsh knew that neither was half the man he was and that without those guns they carried they'd be nothing. He could crush the two bums with his hands, even with their roots on them. But he had no intention of going out of his way to make trouble with the men who represented the White Hand gang; it could be ruinous for his company.
“That's it, eh, fellas," Jimmy said. He lifted himself from his chair behind the desk.
“Yeah, that's it," echoed Walsh. “See ya next week, okay?"
“Okay," Sullivan said deadpan as he strode out of his office.

To be continued.

Nice Job there.

This story is da bomb. The plot and the storyline remind me of "The godfather, the sicillian and the omerta" all written by Mario puzo..pls I want to buy the full novel for reference purpose. pls any hint on where I can get it. Thanks.

Henryman27:
This story is da bomb. The plot and the storyline remind me of "The godfather, the sicillian and the omerta" all written by Mario puzo..pls I want to buy the full novel for reference purpose. pls any hint on where I can get it. Thanks.

The book is quite old. It was published by Virgin Books, I'm not sure if it's still available in bookshops. you might probably get in soft sell book stands.

Continued.....

An hour and half later Jimmy Sullivan was still directing the unloading of the Italian freighter when he spotted a black Model-T Ford pulling up to the dock. He concentrated his gaze on the three husky men who climbed out of the car and strolled toward him.
“You run the dock?" asking the one with blond hair neatly combed back from his narrow forehead. He had large, cold, blue eyes and thin lips that twisted into a mean-looking smile when he spoke.
“Who are you? What do you want?" Jimmy demanded, annoyed at the interruption.

“I'm Willie," the answer came.

A squat five-foot seven, 170-pounder, Willie “Two-Knife" Altierri carried the secret of where perhaps as many as thirty bodies were buried. None were in cemeteries. The final resting places were in weed-covered culverts, hastily-dug shallow graves along the shoulders of deserted highways, and under the concrete poured for newly-built roads. He was responsible for most of them. He was one of Brooklyn's most feared underworld hit men.

Willie Altierri's specialty was performed with two slivers of steel, never less than six inches long. He carried them in leather scabbards strapped to his waist by a thin leather belt. The knives were as much a part of Willie's body as any of his vital organs. Altierri couldn't function without the knives; it felt unnatural not to have the knives on him. He wore them when he slept.

There were times when Willie had to part with one of his knives; that was when, inadvertently or otherwise, he had plunged the blade so deeply into his victim that he couldn't pull it out. His technique had much to do with the high replacement rate for the tools of his trade. Willie invariably went for the heart and lungs,but he was seldom satisfied to merely stick the knife in and yank it out. He had a compulsion to twist the handle while the blade was still in his prey because it gave him special delight inflicting the horrendous pain that extra turn of the wrist caused his victim to suffer. But that technique very often got the blade caught in the rib cage and no amount of pulling could extricate it. So Willie would have to inter the victim with the knife embedded in the corpse.

Only once, it was said, did Willie lose both knives in carrying out an assignment for the Black Hand mob. That was when he knocked off Mario “Greaseball" Pignatore, one of the gang's own. It was a very special rubout because Pignatore was suspected of squealing on the gang to save his own skin.

Detectives from Brooklyn's Butler Street squad had grabbed him from behind the wheel of a hijacked truck loaded with Fisk whitewall tires being delivered to the Bush Terminal dock for shipment to England. Mario's release on a piddling $500 bail by Magistrate Thomas Gibson was a dead giveaway that the Greaseball had become a pigeon for the Kings County District Attorney's office. No hijacker caught as red-handed as Pignatore ever broke away from arraignment for less than $10,000 bail. But that wasn't the only giveaway that the Greaseball might have become a canary.
One afternoon, one of Frankie Yale's boys, Joe “Squats" Esposito, who worked inside keeping the books for the Mob, caught sight of Pignatore coming out of the elevator of the County Court Building in downtown Brooklyn. There was only one place that Squats figured Pignatore could have been in that building: the D.A.'s office. Perhaps even the grand jury room.

Mario Pignatore immediately became the very special referral for the honor of extinction which Altierri dispensed so professionally. And this extermination had to stand as an example to all the other members of the Mob. So Willie made it a showcase production. He not only jammed both knives into the Greaseball's ribs and twisted them; he added a novel and ritualistic touch by breaking the handles off while the blades were still buried in Mario. These were then presented to Frankie Yale as mementoes of that significant execution.

Yale had the handles mounted on a shiny foot-square mahogany board that had been bevelled and made to look like plaque, and it was going on the wall of Yale's garage office at Fourth Avenue and Second Street in the borough's Red Hook section. A gold nameplate engraved by a local jeweler carried a simple but meaningful message to all who pilgrimages to Yale's office on social or business calls:

IN MEMORY OF THE GREASEBALL

The jeweler who performed this engraving, gratuitously of course, was Robert Corn, whose store was on the east side of Columbia Street, between President and Union Streets, in downtown Brooklyn. Outside his store on the sidewalk next to the curb was a fifteen-foot-tall cast iron clock that was a landmark for more than a half century.
It was under this clock that the members of the organized crime gangs conducted their public assemblages for purposes of assigning “hits" or whatever other business had to be dealt with in the protection rackets, bootlegging, and the other illegalities the Mob engaged in. Standing there beside that sidewalk timepiece many of the roaring, raging episodes of Mob violence were masterminded or hatched by the Mob's braintrusts.

“Two-Knife" was never long in getting a replacement when he lost a knife in the line of duty. For the distance between an empty scabbard on Willie's waist and the the next knife that would supplant the one abandoned in a victim's rib cage was as far away as the trunk of his shiny black Model-T Ford. The brown leather suitcase that Willie kept in the back of his car didn't contain a wardrobe for travel, although he often took out-of-town assignments to Newark, New Jersey, Wilmington, Delaware, or Springfield, Massachusetts, among the other locales.

The suitcase kept his supply of knives near at hand. He never allowed the stock to dwindle to less than a dozen blades. When he ran that low, Altierri would put everything aside and drive to the Bowery in Lower Manhattan, where all wholesale restaurant and hotel supply houses were situated, and replenish his store with a couple of dozen shiny paring knives used by butchers and chefs.

To be continued...

Continued....

Jimmy Sullivan knew none of this that Monday afternoon when he first encountered the Black Hand's chief executioner. When Willie gave his name to the pier superintendent, the impatient Sullivan barked at him, “What the hell do you want with me?”

Joe “Rackets” Capolla and Joe “big beef” Polusi flanked Willie in his confrontation with the pier boss. That didn't seem to faze Sullivan. He made no attempt to size up either the short, broad-shouldered, who in his mid-thirties already had the look of middle age, or Polusi, whose beefy build on a frame almost six feet tall made him look like the dockworker he’d been until the Black Hand recruited him as an enforcer.

Irritation burned in Jimmy Sullivan’s intolerant stomach. He had a built-in prejudice against anyone Italian, and a mere glance at the trio that had interrupted his work routine grated into an attitude of total belligerence.
“Get it over with, Mac,” Sullivan said raspily. “I got too much work to do. Tell me what business you got coming to this dock.”
Altierri's hands fidgeted. He unbuttoned his heavy black overcoat ,slipped his hands underneath, and placed them over his suit jacket around his waist. Sullivan could not know why Two-Knife's fingers were drumming nervously. Nor had he any awareness of the scabbards and the deadly instruments hidden under Willie’s jacket.
“We come to ask you something,” Willie finally said slowly, every word measured and uttered with restraint. It was the way he spoke when his anger was aroused. Sullivan’s gruff attitude didn’t endear him to his visitors.

“Whaddaya want to ask me?” he snapped. “I’m waiting. Ask me.”

Willie pointed toward the door of Sullivan’s office.
“In there, if you’ll be so kind,” Willie said. “This is private.” His voice was commanding now. Sullivan wasn’t frightened, but he sensed the authority that Willie carried. This guy and his pals were after something. Maybe it was a good idea to listen to why the hell they were there.

“All right,” the superintendent submitted. “Haul your asses in there and I’ll be with you. I got a couple things to do so my schedule doesn’t get f**cked up.”
Altierri, Polusi and Capolla made their way into the office. Sullivan went back to the dock and checked on the progress his longshoremen were making. He glanced up at the sky and shook his head in disgust. It was starting to snow. He shouted commands. “Hey, let’s move it! We got to get these crates into the warehouse before we get buried under! Hurry it up!”

The forecast was for six to eight inches. The snow had not been expected until nightfall. But it had already begun, and Sullivan was afraid it would be a bigger storm. It would take at least another three hours to clear the freighter’s hold, and the only way that could be done was by riding the men relentlessly.
Now he had an interruption. Those three Italians in his office, waiting to talk with him. About what? Well, he told himself resignedly, he’d go in and get it over with.
As they reached the office entrance, he turned for one last look at the dock. The crews were hustling, just as he wanted them to. Okay. The instant he slammed the door shut, Big Beef Polusi slipped behind him and turned the lock.

“What the hell you doing that for?” Sullivan demanded, whirling around and reaching to unlock the door. Before he could touch the lock, a piece of cold steel was slapped against the back of his hand.
“You want to lose some fingers, you put your f**kin' hand on that lock,” Altierri scowled.
Sullivan was courageous but he wasn’t stupid. He didn’t survive the Marne and Belleau Woods battles by scrambling out of the trenches and charging blindly into the Kraut’s machine-gun nests. A well-aimed grenade was a much more sensible way to destroy the enemy than stupid bravery. The situation right now didn’t differ from the battlefront. Sullivan was surrounded by the enemy.

Capolla, Polusi, and Altierri hadn’t yet told the superintendent their business, but Jimmy had a good idea what he was up against. Big Beef and Rackets hadn’t even introduced themselves by name to Sullivan, but the .38-caliber automatics they were pointing at him announced their occupations more clearly than the fanciest calling cards they could have presented.

To be continued...

Keep it coming

Continued....

Altierri had told Sullivan his first name was Willie; but no one had to tell him Willie’s nickname after that introduction. The whack of steel against his hand followed instantly by the thrust of another sharply-pointed blade against the side of his thick neck signalled to Sullivan in the clearest terms that he was up against a two-knife killer.

“Okay, tell me what you want,” Sullivan said. His voice was more respectful, meeker.
“We gonna give you protection because we hear somebody is gonna put the torch to this warehouse tonight, Altierri said through clenched teeth. “You catch?”
“What kind of protection?” Sullivan asked, not really surprised. “We already have protection from Deeny Meehan---“
Altierri, who had been holding the flat side of his knife against Sullivan’s neck, suddenly turned the blade and pressed its razor-sharp cutting edge into the skin. The dock boss was gripped by palpable terror.

“Meehan can’t protect you no more,” Altierri wheezed. “That’s why Frankie Yale sent me to see you. He wants you to buy insurance from him from now on.”
Altierri dug the edge of the knife deeper into the fold of Sullivan’s neck. Jimmy knew that the slightest movement on his part would slit his throat down to his jugular.
“Look, gimme a break,” Sullivan pleaded, his voice almost a whisper. “Take that knife away and let’s talk this out….”
“No talk!” Altierri bellowed. “We here to make deal. We make deal right away. You ready?
“Yeah, yeah,” stammered Sullivan. “But there’s something I got to tell you first.”

Two-Knife relaxed the pressure. He turned the flat side of the blade against Sullivan’s neck again.
“What you wanna say?” Altierri pressed.
“I gotta get the okay from my boss,” Sullivan said.
“Where is he?” demanded Altierri.
“At the home office----- over on Pier 9.”
“You know the number or you want me to give you it?” Altierri asked snidely.
“Sure---sure I know it.”
“Then you call him right away, eh?”
“Okay, okay……”
Altierri took the knife away from Sullivan’s neck and let him walk to his desk. Jimmy sat in the chair and picked up the phone.
“Operator, gimme President 0321,” he said nervously.
When O’Hara got on the line Sullivan explained what was going on.
“They’re gonna kill me, John,” he said. “They’re also gonna burn the warehouse tonight…..”

O’Hara was reluctant to capitulate bit he could sense that his pier superintendent’s life was in imminent peril. He asked what the “insurance policy” would cost, a detail Sullivan had neglected to learn in his fright.
“The boss wants to know how much?” Sullivan said to Altierri.
“Two thousand a week,” Willie replied without looking up. He had holstered one of the knives by now and was cleaning his fingernails with the point of the other one.
Sullivan relayed the information to O’Hara. O’Hara hit the ceiling.
“Mr. O’Hara says Deeny Meehan is only getting fifteen hundred right now,” Sullivan told Altierri.
Willie stopped picking his nails. He edged over to Sullivan, wiped the point of the knife on the shoulder of Jimmy’s red plaid lumber jacket, then stuck the knife against the flesh of his neck.
“Tell Mr. O’Hara Meehan’s policy doesn’t cover death and fire,” Altierri said with a laugh that was joined in by Polusi and Capolla, who are standing in front of the desk with their guns still pointed at Sullivan.

The pier boss relayed Altierri’s answer to O’Hara.
There was a long pause. Suddenly Sullivan’s face brightened.
“He said okay,” Sullivan told Altierri. “The money will be here tomorrow.”
“Smart man, that Mr. O’Hara,” Willie smiled, taking the knife away from Sullivan’s neck and slipping it into the empty scabbard at his waist.
“All right, all right!” He turned scoldingly to Capolla and Polusi, who had their gun barrels still trained on Sullivan. “Dinja hear? They bought the policy. Put those heaters away, goddamn ya!”
Altierri stuck his hand out to Sullivan. “We shake,” he said. “We make a good deal and now we be friends, right?”

Sullivan’s stomach turned as he shook Altierri’s hand, which felt soft and delicate, almost like a woman’s.
Sullivan unlocked the door and led the pack of Black Handers out of the office. The snow was falling so heavy now that booms and cranes were obliterated from view.
“Somebody come tomorrow for the first premium,” Altierri said before walking off with Polusi and Capolla to the parked Ford. “Two o'clock sharp….”
“Yeah,” grumbled Sullivan as he headed out on the dock. More than anything now he wanted to speed up the unloading before the storm crippled operations.

At two o'clock the next afternoon, activity on Pier 2 was at a standstill. The snow had stopped falling several hours ago, but the eleven-inch white blanket had wrought total paralysis. While Sullivan had managed to get the freighter unloaded and the last of the cargo stacked in the warehouse early the previous evening, none of the cargo was on its way to the consignee. The storm had played havoc with traffic and not a single truck rolled onto Pier 2 that day.

The depth of the snow on the city’s streets did not deter Benjamin “Crazy Benny” Pazzo, Frankie Yale’s ace “collector,” from reaching Gowanus Stevedoring's pier at two o'clock sharp. Nothing less was expected since Joe “Frenchy” Carlino was driving the car. The number one wheelman in the Black Hand’s ranks, Frenchy could be trusted to tool passengers to their destinations through fog and rain and sleet and driving snow. No element of nature could prevent Frenchy from making his appointed rounds.
His vehicle on this particular afternoon was a black Cadillac limousine, Frankie Yale’s personal car. Frankie had put it at his henchman's disposal because of the significance of their mission.

To be continued.....

Continued....

This was the Black Hand’s first important breakthrough against Denny Meehan’s gang in the brief war for control of Brooklyn’s waterfront rackets. Although Frankie Yale had made progress in his attempt to break up the Irish underworld’s hold on the docks, none of his gang’s advances had achieved as dramatic a turn as the coup scored against Gowanus Stevedoring.

This, Yale felt, was to be a turning point in his drive to seize power on the lucrative waterfront from the White Hand gang. A $2000-a-week payoff from Gowanus Stevedoring certainly was a signal step.

There was a hush on Pier 2 as Crazy Benny left the Cadillac and made his way to Sullivan’s office. Even Denny Meehan and his two executioners in their sombre black coats and black fedoras acted as though they didn’t wish to disturb his tracks, for they walked alongside him, leaving their own impressions in the snow of their ripple-soled snap-buckle galoshes.
Three hundred and twenty-five feet: that was the distance to the end of the pier where the oil-slick East River rushes by in a seeming hurry to carry into Upper New York Bay tin cans, bottles, broken crates, and the rest of the garbage people dump into the water. Crazy Benny's last walk ended at the very ledge overlooking the water.

It is believed the expression, “Why don’t you take a long walk off a short pier,” evolved from this episode.
Crazy Benny made no attempt to postpone his death. He didn’t want to die. He was afraid to die. But he also must have known how useless any plea would be. He faced his death with from look with a grim look as Denny Meehan’s executioners opened fire. The first .45 slugs tore through his overcoat and plowed his chest. Benny slumped into the snow, his face expressionless. His eyelids closed. He was a man who seemed to have gone to sleep in the snow.

Few seconds were wasted. With a practiced motion the two executioners holstered their revolvers that had pumped fourteen bullets into Benny’s body, then bent over, picked up Crazy Benny’s body, and hurled it into the river with the deftness of longshoremen pitching a bale of fertilizer into an unloading net.
Benny’s body floated several seconds on the surface amid whitecaps. It’s buoyancy only as long as it took the water to soak into his heavy woolen overcoat. And then it disappeared into the murky surf. His body would not rise again until the gases that inevitably form by fermentation after death filled it like a balloon and brought it bobbing up to surface once more.
“Very neat work, boys,” Denny Meehan praised his lieutenants of death. They were two of the most reliable gats in the White Hand organization, William “Wild Bill” Lovett and Richard “Peg-leg” Lonergan.
Lovett cast a curious eye on the flattened snow where Benny had lain.

“Funny,” he said, “there isn’t a drop of blood. Do you think the guy ever bled….?”

As they walked back toward Furman Street, Meehan, Lovett, and Lonergan sloshed over the footsteps they’d made in the snow bringing “Crazy Benny” out to the end of the dock. They disturb Benny’s tracks. When they returned to the street, Meehan called Jimmy Sullivan out of his office.

“Com’ere, Jimmy,” Denny said. “I wanna show you something.”

He took the pier boss to the dock and pointed at the only pair of footsteps that were still visible in the snow.
Sullivan glanced at the impressions of what must have been a size ten snowboot making one-way tracks the length of the pier.
“Crazy Benny ain’t coming back this way,” Meehan said slapping Sullivan on the back.
“I’ll light a candle for him,” the superintendent remarked and walked back to his office. He despised Meehan and the whole White Hand, but he was grateful for the service they had performed for Gowanus Stevedoring.

Frankie Yale was fit to be tied. He banged his fist savagely on the desktop in his garage office. Frenchy Carlino expected this reaction. The big coup that Willie Altierri had accomplished only the day before at Gowanus Stevedoring had been wiped out by Denny Meehan’s swift, stunning reprisal.
Frenchy had been able to get back to the boss alive and well because of the head start Crazy Benny had gotten leaving the car. The sixty-second delay gave Frenchy just the time needed to spot Denny Meehan and the two torpedoes approaching Benny. In fact, Frenchy saw the White Hand leader and his confederates even before they had turned the corner of the warehouse, which was when Benny first became aware of them. But it had been too late to shout a warning to Benny. So Frenchy took the only sensible turn under the circumstances: he drove away as quickly as he would, leaving Benny to his fate.

If Frankie Yale had any doubt as to what became of Crazy Benny, it was erased by the headlines of the morning newspapers of Saturday, January 10:
Benny’s body had been trawled out of the Lower Bay off Hamilton Parkway in Brooklyn’s Bay Ridge section, about ten miles from where the corpse was dumped.
The autopsy showed Benny had been struck by fourteen bullets, six of them had gone through the heart.
The newspaper accounts of Crazy Benny’s demise were also read at Denny Meehan’s second-floor offices in a garage on Baltic Street. Denny Meehan and his boys grinned from ear to ear.

“I always said Crazy Benny had a stout heart,” Meehan laughed uproariously. “With six bullets in it….. hey, that gotta be a very stout heart.”

Levity had no place at Frankie Yale’s office. Frankie mouthed maledictions at Denny Meehan for almost an hour, helped by a chorus of curses uttered by Two-Knife, Big Beef, Rackets, and some of his other boys.
Finally, Yale walked over to the plaque with the two broken knife handles.
“I swear on this f**kin' squealer's grave,” Yale snarled, slamming his fist into the wall. “If Denny Meehan wants war, that’s what the f**k he’ll get!”

To be continued..

Continued....

CHAPTER THREE: ”Buona Sera, Signore. . ."

A 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 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 a 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, believed 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 clasped tightly together.

Tony recognised 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 here,” Yale began slowly, each word forced through tightly drawn lips. “I want you to get hold of Two-Knife and have him come see me right away.”
Tony was out of 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 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.

To be continued...

Continued....

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 sh*t-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. To 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 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 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 to 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 flew into the room and bounded over to Altierri who, knees crossed, was ditching his cigarette on the ashtray. Thoroughly cowered, 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 table-cloths 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 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 façade 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.

To be continued....

Continued....

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 Giuseppe 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 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 f the Little Italy sector in Red Hook 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 Giuseppe 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 has 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 called 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 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 unbelievable.”
The table groaned under the weight of forty platters of food, including seven selections of salad, a seemingly endless variety of antipasto, lasagne, 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 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 kicks 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 Meehan at the Strand was, in fact, something that had come off the tip 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 want to do it private tell me how you’re gonna pull it off,” he challenged. “Do you wanna invite him over to one of your houses or something like that. . .?”

To be continued ...

Continued. . .

“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 Sally 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 f**k 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 benevolent smile, he demanded, “Draw us a picture, Willie.”
Altierri 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 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 worked 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,” Pisano 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 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 savouring 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 f**k 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. . .”

To be continued. . .

Bros where you... This tory de burst brain

Continued. . .

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 escorted 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 the hail-fellow-well-met atmosphere into 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 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 saved my life.” He snatched the gun, emptied the bullets from the revolving cylinder, pointing 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 DeSarno. He performed the same ritual with Sciacca’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” Pelican, 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 towards 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 would 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 also debased men into 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 light 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 into the room, they could see Denny handling his wife’s breasts as he lay beside her.

“Now! Now!” whispered Pisano. “Shoot him now before that fuckin' Irishman gives 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 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.

To be continued. . .