The Mobster’s Lament

by Ray Celestin

  ‘Oldest trick in the book,’ said Glaser. ‘Start a shit-storm and sell people mops.’

  ‘If Genovese’s offering himself up as a solution,’ said Costello, ‘he must have something concrete to offer them.’

  ‘An ace up his sleeve?’

  Costello nodded. ‘You know what it is?’

  Glaser paused, shrugged. ‘Maybe he’s got a man on the inside.’

  ‘Inside HUAC?’

  Glaser considered it. Shrugged. ‘Maybe,’ he said.

  Costello mused, looked up, saw Glaser staring at him, hawkish, ravenous.

  ‘Well, it was nice talking,’ said Costello. ‘I’ll speak to Jules somehow. I’m sure we can all figure out a way of dealing with this.’

  Costello rose from the space-ship seat with a groan, slipped his hat onto his head. Paused. Looked at the bizarre painting on the wall, a field full of spades in white smocks playing banjos and singing. He was reminded of the blue blob painting he’d seen in the gallery the other night.

  As he rode down in the elevator, he thought about Los Angeles and Chicago, Genovese and the studios, the FBI, all of it, and he tried to think how he could use the information he’d gleaned, and what way it could be used to give him greatest advantage in the war that now seemed inevitable with Vito Genovese.

  PART SEVENTEEN

  ‘The waterfront now competes with the city’s most depressed slum areas as a spawning place of crime. This unhealthy condition, qualified authorities agree, results largely from the antiquated method of hiring labor, long since abandoned in the world’s other great ports but still in use on New York’s docks. The lack of any assurance of regular employment and the complete dependence of the men on the favor of gang and dock bosses who do the hiring perfectly “set up” the industry for control by racketeers.’

  REPORT OF THE DISTRICT ATTORNEY,

  COUNTY OF NEW YORK, 1946–1948

  43

  Sunday 9th, 9.15 p.m.

  Four days left till he was supposed to be leaving town and Gabriel was still no closer to finding the money. All his leads had come up short, petered out into dead ends and frustration, anxiety and waiting games. Waiting for the detectives, waiting for Salzman, waiting for Tomasulo, waiting for his own drug-addled, jittery brain to conjure up a breakthrough.

  And then, just as he was heading out to the Copa, one of his leads sputtered back into life via a phone call from Salzman.

  ‘I looked into those murders for you,’ Salzman said. ‘Girls cut up over the last six months that match Faron’s style.’

  ‘And?’

  ‘I found something,’ he said. ‘Plenty of cut-up girls. I’m surprised there’s any left on the streets. But there’s one – a hooker by the name of Pearl Clayton. Her body turned up in a wrecker’s yard out in Hell’s Kitchen back in July. Sliced up. Matches Faron’s MO. The interesting thing is what happened next. Two homicide cops working the graveyard shift caught the case ’cos her body was found early morning. When the shift change happened a few hours later, the case was re-assigned.’

  ‘To who?’ asked Gabriel, though he already had a feeling on the answer.

  ‘To Detective Lieutenants Doyle and Higgs,’ said Salzman. ‘Lately of the East River.’

  The two cops who died chasing Gabriel in the car. The ones who were partnered up with Faron.

  ‘From the bureau squawks it sounds like they were the ones that pushed for the re-assignment,’ added Salzman.

  ‘Figures,’ said Gabriel.

  Faron had killed the girl. The two cops he was working with asked to take over the case so they could make sure Faron didn’t get pegged for it.

  ‘How did the investigation work out?’ Gabriel asked.

  ‘They shit-canned it.’

  ‘Can I have a look at the case files?’

  ‘Sure,’ said Salzman. ‘But there’s something else. I checked to see if the girl had any raps of her own. She did. She’d been picked up in street-walker sweeps a couple of times, and again a month or so before she disappeared, this time the victim of an assault. I spoke to some friends in Vice. Looks like the perpetrator of the assault was John Bova. She didn’t press charges and it was dropped.’

  Bova. The rat in Costello’s organization, the scar-faced pimp. Gabriel thought back to the last time he’d seen the man, at the breakfast at Costello’s when Gabriel had been given the job of finding the missing money. He remembered Bova fishing for information, pointing at Jack Warner, making Jew jokes.

  So much for going to the Copa. Gabriel had four days left, and finally, a lifeline.

  ‘Where can I meet you?’ he asked.

  He was uptown in twenty minutes. He was sitting in his car flicking through the case files in thirty. Salzman was right, Doyle and Higgs had hardly bothered investigating the murder, although there was not much to go on from the start. Pearl Clayton, twenty-three, identified by an ID card in her purse, a prostitute of no fixed address. The photos showed a young, skinny red-head. Pretty. Her naked torso was found mutilated and dumped between two wrecked cars in a breaker’s yard. Cut marks everywhere. Faron hallmarks. Aside from the ID card there wasn’t much else on her. Some change, a handkerchief, a packet of gum, a ticket stub from a diner.

  Gabriel paused on the last. The Greenspot Luncheonette. He knew it. An all-night diner just south of Columbus Circle. Not far from the breaker’s yard where the body was found. Opposite one of John Bova’s cathouses. Popular with the local streetwalkers.

  It was worth a shot.

  He thanked Salzman. He handed over the wedge of money he’d promised the man. Salzman whistled through his teeth. Gabriel headed back downtown. Through the cold and ice. Through Times Square’s neon sweep to the Greenspot Luncheonette. The road was quiet, dark. The diner seemed to be the only place open. On the street opposite, walking up and down, or in groups at the corners of the blocks, were the girls.

  Gabriel parked up near the diner and headed over to talk to them, to ask if they knew Pearl. Some pretended they didn’t know her, some pretended they did. When he offered them money some of them gave him scraps of information that all contradicted each other. Pearl worked for Bova. Pearl didn’t work for Bova. Pearl was OK. Pearl was a troublemaker. It was Pearl’s fault Bova had assaulted her. It was Bova’s fault. Bova had cut Pearl loose after the assault. Bova hadn’t cut her loose.

  When he asked about who might have killed her, he hit a wall of silence. Girls clammed up, walked away, shook their heads. He was at it about an hour, tried corners blocks away from the Greenspot, even the diner itself. He could find nothing definite so weaved together the conflicting strands as best he could, came up with a story that might explain it all – Genovese and Faron. Faron wanted a girl, Genovese got him one via Bova. Bova picked a troublemaker girl from his stable he’d had a recent bust-up with, a girl he was going to cut loose anyway, a girl he wasn’t bothered about. He tossed her to Faron like he was throwing a steak to a lion. The idea of Faron being fed girls by his partners in crime reminded Gabriel of something, some story or myth maybe he couldn’t quite put his finger on.

  When he’d done as much as he could, he headed back to the Cadillac, sat, smoked, planned. Decided not to return to the Copa. He was sick of the place. Instead he drove through the city, going to places he thought Faron might be, New York’s underbelly, its hinterlands.

  Time passed. Anxiety swelled. By Thursday night he would be on the run, one way or the other. If he survived till then. It was enough to induce terror and madness in anyone, running away from the Mob’s extermination machine. A fear manifested in him, an anxiety-rattled realization that if he didn’t make it to Mexico, he’d be going to hell.

  He checked his watch. It was nearly four. In a few hours eight million alarm clocks would rattle the city from sleep and the empire of night would relinquish the sidewalks for another shift, and Gabriel would carry on being out of step with it all, another few hours closer to perdition.

  He drove back to the apartment and took two N
embutals and tried to sleep, and in the moments before the blackness, the myth he couldn’t remember came to him – the minotaur, the beast at the center of a maze who was fed with girls. Then he slept, and dreamed of Manhattan as a giant labyrinth, the skyscrapers its walls, Faron at its center, roaming, bloodthirsty.

  The phone woke him. How long had he been asleep? He looked out of the window and saw snow falling through the darkness. He checked the clock on the bedside table and was shocked to see it was late evening. The Nembutals had knocked him out for over twelve hours. Panic and fear pulsed through him. Four days left and he’d wasted half a day of it passed out. How stupid was he? How careless? How sloppy?

  The phone continued its clamorous ringing; he tried to move and all his muscles felt weak. It was a strain just to turn, to move his arm over to the phone.

  ‘Hello?’ he said, finally picking up the receiver.

  His voice sounded groggy, his mouth felt like it had been glued together.

  ‘It’s Michael Talbot,’ said a voice on the other end. ‘I’ve spoken to my partner.’

  Gabriel tried to get his head straight, tried to concentrate.

  ‘And?’ he said.

  ‘Maybe there’s something you could help us with,’ said Michael. ‘We’ve traced another victim. An Italian who worked on the Brooklyn docks. We figured, things being what they are on the docks, it’d be hard for us to get anyone around there to talk.’

  The detectives needed information from the docks. The Mob-controlled docks. And they were smart enough to know the only way they’d get it, was by asking a mobster to help them.

  ‘You’d like me to find out what happened?’ Gabriel asked.

  ‘Sure. See what comes up.’

  Gabriel tried to think through the sleep and the last wisps of the Nembutal.

  ‘What’s the angle with the docker?’ he asked. ‘Give me something.’

  There were a few seconds of silence.

  ‘We think there’s a connection to the war in Italy,’ Michael said. ‘Cleveland and one of the other victims were both in Naples during the war. Maybe Faron was too. So was this docker.’

  Gabriel processed the information. A war connection. A link between Cleveland and two other victims. Faron in Italy during the war. The chain of information unearthing in his mind woke him up.

  ‘Hello?’ said Michael. ‘Are you still there?’

  ‘Sure,’ said Gabriel. ‘But if there’s a connection to the war and Naples, you’re gonna have to tell me more.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Because there was someone else in Naples during the war.’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘Vito Genovese.’

  44

  Tuesday 11th, 12.07 p.m.

  Ida waited at the port on 134th Street and watched as the ferry approached from Rikers Island, navigated the choppy waters, docked. The passengers exited over a jetty made slippery by the snow. Michael was the last to emerge.

  ‘What happened?’ she asked.

  She’d been hoping Michael would have talked to Tom, that they’d have settled their differences, Tom would have told Michael the truth, and they’d have decided on getting a new lawyer.

  ‘He wouldn’t see me,’ said Michael. ‘I turned up there and sat in the hall for an hour to catch the boat back.’

  Her hope evaporated, was replaced by a sinking feeling.

  ‘I guess Rutherford got to him first,’ she said.

  Michael didn’t reply. She saw the frustration and disappointment on his face, the desperation. She felt it, too. They were running out of options. They’d progressed on finding an explanation for why the crime had happened, but they’d gathered no evidence that might see Tom set free. Maybe the meeting with the witness at the docks would give them the breakthrough they so badly needed.

  ‘Come on,’ she said. ‘We’ve got to meet your man in Brooklyn.’

  They walked through the snow to Cypress Avenue, caught the Lexington Avenue line all the way downtown, then the 14th Street-Canarsie line out to Williamsburg. They exited the Bedford Avenue stop onto a tree-lined street of low-rise buildings and down-at-heel store fronts. Michael looked around, nodded to a man on the other side of the street, standing under an awning, pacing about in the cold to keep himself warm. They crossed and Michael introduced her to Gabriel Leveson. He was good-looking in a ruffled, scruffy way.

  ‘Mr Leveson,’ she said.

  ‘Gabriel, please,’ he replied. ‘Or Gabby, if you want. Shall we?’

  He gestured to the road behind him, which led back towards the docks. They turned and walked.

  ‘After you called me yesterday,’ said Gabriel, ‘I spoke to some friends. They said the murder victim had a brother-in-law called Vinnie Ferrara who we could talk to. They told me where he worked on the docks. They said he’s hard up. I figure if we offer him some money he might talk. Tell us what the murder victim was up to.’

  Ida nodded. He’d turned it around quick, making her wonder why he was in such a rush, and who these friends were he could get the information from so quickly.

  ‘You told Michael you thought Vito Genovese might be behind everything?’ she said.

  She wanted to square their own theory about Congressman Helms being behind the murders with Gabriel’s angle on Genovese, wanted to make sure she and Michael weren’t wrong about the whole thing.

  ‘Like I told Michael,’ Gabriel said, ‘Genovese was over in Naples during the war. He’d run away there back in the thirties to escape a murder warrant here in New York. He got in with Mussolini, then when we invaded, he switched sides. Got a job as a fixer for the army. Used the job to siphon army goods out of allied bases to his contacts in the Camorra. Eventually someone realized he had an outstanding warrant back here and he was extradited. All the witnesses in the trial disappeared, or died, or changed their stories, so he was freed. I was thinking maybe all these deaths are linked to that black-market scam he had going on.’

  Ida thought. A black-market operation. She tried to slot it in with what they already knew. Maybe Helms was involved in the black-market operation, too. Had been inveigled into it somehow. Cleveland knew him as a racketeer out in Naples. Then he bumped into him at a party in New York and realized he could blackmail him over it. Had some evidence he could use to squeeze him.

  She looked at Michael to see if he was thinking along the same lines. He gave her a nod, but she could see he was still distracted, still mulling over Tom’s refusal to see him at the prison that morning.

  ‘Makes sense,’ she said, turning back to Gabriel. ‘Cleveland was in a colored platoon, they weren’t allowed to fight so got given quartermaster duties in the docks. In charge of supplies and warehouses. Maybe Cleveland, Bucek and Marino were all working for Genovese’s black-market operation out there.’

  ‘Maybe Faron, too,’ said Gabriel. ‘We just need to figure out why Faron and Genovese have started going around trying to kill the people involved in it.’

  Ida nodded, stayed silent. She and Michael had agreed not to reveal what they knew about Congressman Helms till they could trust Gabriel more.

  As they walked the sounds of the docks grew ever louder. Then after a few blocks, the buildings petered out, gave way to a sprawling industrial site, ringed by a set of long barbed-wire fences on which there was affixed a rusting white sign – The Brooklyn Eastern District Rail-Maritime Terminal. There were two gates in the fence, one through which railroad tracks passed and another for cars and pedestrians, where two men in lumberjack shirts stood sentry.

  ‘Here to see Nicky Impellezzeri,’ Gabriel said to them.

  ‘Who’s asking?’

  ‘Gabriel Leveson.’

  The sentries shared a look, opened up the gate. Gabriel held up a hand to let Ida and Michael enter first. They stepped into a vast concrete enclosure which was crisscrossed with train-tracks, heading towards a row of giant hangar-like buildings which lined the waterfront. They walked to the second one along. Its gates were open, trains were movin
g up the tracks to its interior, where armies of stevedores were loading them with cargo from the freighters which floated on the sparkling river beyond. Inside the hangar, Ida could see cranes, cargo stacks, lines of trucks, seagulls swooping about, all in the shadows beneath the structure’s colossal walls.

  To the side of its doors was a fenced-off yard, in which a few dozen men were loitering, smoking, chatting, playing cards on the concrete. Behind the men was a small wooden hut, its metal flue pipe emitting thick black smoke into the air.

  Gabriel led them through the crowd of men to the hut, rapped on the door. A lean-faced young man in a sack coat opened it, looked them up and down.

  ‘Yeah?’ he asked.

  ‘Nicky Impellezzeri?’ said Gabriel.

  ‘Who’s asking?’

  ‘Gabriel Leveson.’

  The man paused, tensed, nodded. ‘I’ll go get him.’ He disappeared back into the hut, closing the door after him.

  Gabriel turned around to look at Ida and Michael. Ida watched the crowd of men hanging about the concrete yard.

  ‘They’re waiting to get picked for work on the pier this afternoon,’ Gabriel explained, nodding at the crowd.

  ‘There’s more men than work, so the men pay kickbacks to the ringleaders to get picked. See the ones with toothpicks behind their ears? It means they’re willing to pay kickbacks to get selected. By the time they’ve paid the kickbacks, and their Mob-inflated union dues, they’re lucky to take home a third of their actual pay.’

  The way he spoke about it seemed odd to Ida. She sensed he disapproved of how these men were being exploited and robbed, but he didn’t expressly condemn it. He seemed to be at peace with it as some facet of the natural order; here were the herds and predators, here was the food-chain in industrialized form.

  The door to the hut opened, revealing an obese man in a black suit – Impellezzeri.