A Bloody Business

by Dylan Struzan

  The waiter brings onion rolls and bowls of vegetable soup.

  “What makes you the expert?” Lepke says.

  Zwillman says, “Newsreels. It’s amazing what you can learn at the movies.”

  Charlie says, “Yeah. It’s got Joe the Boss nervous. He knew a lot of them guys in the Old Country.”

  “Who do we know in Brooklyn?” Meyer says.

  “I know a lot of guys in Brownsville,” Benny says.

  “Italians,” Meyer says.

  “There’s a guy with Frankie Yale named Joe Adonis,” Benny says. “You know him, don’t you, Charlie? Tough as nails. You want something done, he’s the guy to call.”

  Zwillman butters an onion roll. At the next table, a couple of vaudevillians argue the comparative merits of challah vs. the onion roll, working the argument into a comedy routine.

  Zwillman says, “We’ve got a golden opportunity just like the Russian Jews who revolutionized the rag trade into ready-made. Before that everything was a one-off. They spun gold out of those machines.”

  “Goldene Medina?” Meyer says.

  Zwillman says, “We’re a bunch of little mobs all over the place. We can do better. We’ve got allies from Cleveland to Boston but we haven’t leveraged that strength. If we pooled our strength, we could move mountains.”

  Benny chimes in, “The trouble is that guys on the street are undercutting each other. Some guys are selling the real thing. Other guys are cutting the whiskey two, three times. Fix the price. Make it affordable. Everybody gets rich. That’s just good business. Just look at Wall Street or the kosher chicken market.”

  Charlie says, “Dalitz has the railroads, doesn’t he? He ships as much as we can move. We’ve got the clubs. Bring the little mobs in with us. It’s protection for them.”

  Meyer says, “But protection only goes as far as our combined interest. The more they work with us, the more strength they have.”

  Charlie hovers over a bowl of borsht and a plate of potato pancakes.

  The more the gang talks, the more the business grows. Over soup and blintzes, fried kreplach and onion rolls, reputations merge to take collective aim at amassing enough power to conquer anyone that might rise against them.

  Charlie’s mind goes to the Italians. The Americanized guys are scattered through a loose association of families led by Sicilians. Many in the Italian mobs don’t even speak English. Then there is Chicago where the strongest Italian mob belongs to Big Jim Colosimo who is not the least interested in bootlegging. Diamond Jim, charming whore-master, married a madam and then worked a prostitution ring and gambling houses. When that got old, he divorced the madam and married a singer. He brought in Johnny Torrio and had the bad luck to include Al Capone at Frankie Yale’s behest. It’s plain the Outfit will dethrone the old-timer blocking the way into bootlegging. Johnny Torrio will be left standing with Al Capone as right-hand man.

  The Ratner’s crowd dwindles. Meyer pays the tab. Zwillman heads back to Jersey. Lepke and Gurrah bid the gang “Shalom.” Meyer and Charlie leave by the back door that leads out to the alley.

  Charlie says, “Jews don’t think like Italians. Italians are all about family. A guy will appoint his son even if the kid don’t know nothing about the street. I’ve seen it a million times. For you guys, it’s all business.”

  “You don’t run it like a business,” Meyer says, “before long you’ll be out of business.”

  Charlie says, “Benny is right about Joe Adonis. Here’s the thing he don’t know, Adonis is close to Capone. They knew each other in the neighborhood when Capone was part of Yale’s mob. I just don’t trust the guy.”

  “He could be useful,” Meyer says.

  Charlie nods, then walks away.

  Later that night, Meyer strolls over to Pell Street, a hotbed of opium houses, to make a naysayers investigation. He stands across from the house Charlie frequents and watches. A drizzle of dragon chasers come and go from the den, lost in the sweet haze of forgetfulness. Meyer winds through the addicted and ventures inside.

  The place resembles an exotic apothecary. A wooden case with glass doors is mounted on the wall. Inside are stacks of pipes, lamps, curved spoons that look like keys. Copper and bronze boxes. Stacks of silver containers, opium boxes. Around the room smokers and dreamers lounge on the thin mattresses atop wooden bed frames. Some pause to look at the newcomer before returning to their haze. More smokers are stacked in sleepers along a wall divided into compartments resembling a Pullman night train with double-level bunks. The sleepers have already left the station, destination unknown.

  The matron, dressed in plain black pants and frog-button silk jacket, gestures to an open bed. Meyer shakes his head.

  “I’m looking for someone,” he says gesturing to the bodies strewn about the place.

  There is nothing fancy about the Pell Street den. The smoking equipment is humble in decoration: a pipe, a lamp, and a needle.

  The matron walks toward Meyer, her body parting a sea of smoke. She looks worn. Old. Smoking opium is a messy process. Cooking the chandoo, stuffing it into the bowl of the pipe for the smoker who then puffs the sputtering pellet, leaves sticky bits of the drug scattered everywhere. The eerie underworld of dreamers euphoric with blank stares requires her constant attention.

  As for the congregant, a funeral service at Temple Emanu-El has more life than an opium den.

  “Nobody here you know. You no smoke?” she says. “You go now.”

  Meyer has seen all he needs to see. He leaves the matron to her masses.

  Chapter Six

  Play It Low Key

  FEBRUARY 1924

  Charlie sinks deeper and deeper into the great oblivion of an opium dream. In this dream, he stands on a small bluff. On one side of the bluff is an open field; on the other, a cliff that plunges to a hellish abyss. A woman calls. Charlie looks around to see a floating figure, a woman dressed in black. Her features are delicate. Her long, black hair blows in the wind, at times framing her face like a hood and then floating free. If it weren’t for her delicate nature, she could be the Harbinger of Death. She beckons Charlie to her side. He tries to take a step toward her but can’t move. His legs are frozen beneath him.

  He is at the pipe again, drawing clouded breaths. The woman on the bluff transforms into a dark angel sitting at the foot of his bed. The angel takes the pipe, tends to the bubbling chandoo, and then extends the mouthpiece to Charlie. She smiles, then shifts, slowly moving away from the dreamer’s bed.

  She says, “Fire monkey, you rest now. You have good dreams.”

  Charlie peers out of opium-stained eyes. The angel in black leaves with the smoking bamboo stem. Charlie watches her go. She pauses to look back. Her angelic face dissolves into a grotesque worthy of St. Patrick’s Cathedral.

  Charlie rides his dream and finds he is floating on a watery surface, maybe the Hudson River, maybe the Atlantic Ocean. He rises above the churning waters. The dread he carries leaves him. The water transforms into the streets of the Lower East Side. A little girl jumps rope next to the dead body of Umberto Valenti sprawled on the sidewalk. A street sweeper works at erasing Valenti’s bloody stain to no avail. Valenti looks up from his deathbed and winks. He is free.

  Charlie drops his gun, no regrets. He is chasing the dragon in the paradise of opium-eaters and it feels good.

  “Charlie,” Meyer says to the half-conscious Charlie. “Did you forget? It’s Benny’s birthday.”

  Charlie’s eyes are glazed, his pupils tight.

  Madam Chang says, “You no bother Mr. Charlie. You go now. Nobody want you here.”

  Meyer ignores the old lady.

  “Charlie, you’re not going to miss Ben’s birthday?”

  Charlie smiles and closes his eyes.

  A squat, brick-house of a man appears from nowhere. His bare chest is an accumulation of solid muscle sharpened by the discipline of Kung Fu and adorned by a massive dragon tattoo that wraps around his back and creeps down his left arm. Clouds and w
ater compete with the dragon for the canvas of his flesh. His coolie pants billow over muscular legs and massive feet bulge from black satin slippers.

  The Chinaman says, “You go…now.”

  Meyer looks at Charlie. The small brown lump processed from the dried milky juice of unripe seedpods has killed the pain and all conscious thought. By far the worst consequence of Madame Chang’s delight is Charlie’s eventual return to reality, a return that won’t be happening anytime soon.

  Meyer steps outside and hails a cab. The first stop is Benny’s flat. Benny is sitting on the stoop…waiting. He rushes the cab and piles in.

  “Where’s Charlie?” Benny says.

  “Not in this world,” Meyer says.

  Benny’s disappointment is palpable.

  Meyer barks out Polly’s coordinates. The cabbie smiles and hustles the boys to the uptown apartment.

  Lion answers the door.

  “Right this way, Mr. Meyer and you, too, Mr. Benny. My, but them girls do have a surprise for you. We fixed up the bedroom all special like. Miss Polly says all the girls is just for you tonight. All you got to do is relax and let them do all the work.”

  “Don’t spoil the surprise, Lion,” Polly says.

  The house bursts with a collection of gangsters and society types. Polly sets out a devil’s food cake and lights eighteen candles as the crowd breaks into the “Happy Birthday” song. They are quickly interrupted by a Turkish tune on the wind-up Victrola.

  A harem worthy of Mata Hari streams from the corridor into the living room. Someone in the crowd weaves the song “Leave Me With a Smile” around the Turkish tune, and the crowd joins in on the refrain. Whiskey sours flow from the kitchen to the guests.

  The girls, in pink and peach gauze baggy pants, shimmy and shake their way through the house. Their tops consist of metal medallions strung together with bronze chains that jingle as they walk, fantastic costumes on loan from a theater courtesy of one of Polly’s regulars. The crowd breaks out in cat calls and wolf whistles. Polly dons finger cymbals, and summons the house belly-dancer, keeps the rhythm going while the girls surround Benny.

  Polly’s Mata Hari grabs Benny’s hands, places them on her hips, and leads him to the “forbidden quarters,” followed by the girls. Heavy purple curtains hang from the ceiling. Satin sheets line the walls. The floor is covered with bolsters and pillows. A bronze dragon atop a short Asian chest belches jasmine smoke while candles light small “alcoves of delight” where the harem retreats to entice Benny to new experiences. The belly dancer shimmies around Benny blocking his view of the other girls. Her belly undulates, a slow series of waves crossing a naughty sea. She rolls her hips in graceful circles while pushing Benny down on the Moroccan wedding blanket cushion. Nervous laughter slips from Benny’s lips. He’s never had it like this before.

  The girls come out from the alcoves and wrap Benny’s wrists and ankles with scarves, a mock ritual holding him captive while Mata Hari strips away his clothes and then strips away her costume leaving only the sparkling headpiece, arm bracelets, necklaces, and two medallions that cover her nipples. Benny is transfixed. Nothing on the Lower East Side ever looked like this.

  In the living room, Polly assures Meyer that he is getting his money’s worth.

  “It’s all the rage in Paris,” Polly says. “You should try it sometime. It’s kinda crazy. The Hindus say it’s the anticipation of sex that makes a person go wild. If you wait long enough, your whole body starts quiverin’. Worth waiting for, they say. I don’t know. I never tried it myself.”

  Back in the bedroom, Benny has had enough. The sexual alchemy of Kundalini energy escapes him. This divine sublimation is all slow and no go. Mata Hari moves in again but Benny is determined that he has been tantalized for the last time. He jumps up, grabs Mata Hari by the hips, spins her around, and lets loose his frustration.

  “Jesus,” he says panting from his ejaculation. “What kind of fucking thing was that?”

  * * *

  Charlie rambles through his office spinning regrets over the forgotten birthday.

  The phone rings.

  “Yeah?”

  It is Willie Moretti, a big-mouth Italian from Brooklyn, the guy who tried to muscle in on Abe Zwillman’s Jersey operations a few months back. He is the elected mouthpiece of the new greaser in town, dispatched to spread the news that Salvatore Maranzano has arrived in America from Sicily. He says Maranzano wants Charlie to come to Brooklyn for a meeting. He says it is of the utmost importance and that it would be bad judgment on Charlie’s part to ignore Don Maranzano’s request.

  With some disgust, Charlie says, “How can I refuse?”

  Willie says, “This invitation is just for you. Maranzano don’t want to meet with Joe the Boss. Don’t worry, Charlie, I personally guarantee your safety.”

  “That’s reassuring,” Charlie says, but he will rely on Vito Genovese for security.

  “He’s at the restaurant at the foot of the Manhattan Bridge. You know the one I mean? He’ll be waiting.”

  Charlie calls Vito, his underboss, to drive him to Brooklyn.

  Vito says, “I don’t like it Charlie. You can’t trust these Sicilians.”

  “If I come out feet first,” Charlie says, “make sure I get a decent burial.”

  Vito says, “I’ll do better than that.”

  Vito’s Neapolitan pedigree places him outside the Sicilian orbit. He waits outside while Charlie goes in to greet Maranzano. Charlie winds his way through twenty, maybe thirty, guys. Most of them he knows. Some he doesn’t. Those he doesn’t know have apparently come to town along with Maranzano.

  Moretti waves Charlie down. Moretti started as a milkman’s assistant on the streets of Harlem but quickly moved to running gambling games in Italian neighborhoods. That’s why Maranzano has given him the job as mouthpiece.

  Moretti says, “Don Maranzano is straight outta Castellammare del Golfo. He’s got the blessing of Don Vito Cascioferro himself. Imagine that? Don Vito sent him here to take care of things. Maranzano is a ‘man of honor.’”

  For a time, Vito Cascioferro worked a protection racket in Harlem and Little Italy. He was big in the Morello family until his involvement in the “Barrel Murder” of a Morello gang member sent him scurrying back to Palermo.

  Charlie says, “And he’s come for his tribute?”

  “He’s come for more than that, Charlie. He deserves our respect. Hear him out. He makes you think. He’s got ideas, big ideas.”

  Charlie suppresses his dislike of the Sicilian path to honor.

  The thirty-eight-year-old Maranzano heads a table filled with his Sicilian cousins. Two pistolas flank either side of him. Neither of them speaks English. Both make a show of their arsenal.

  Willie introduces Charlie to the great man from the Old Country.

  Maranzano gestures to the chair to his left.

  “Sedersi,” he says. “Salvatore, no?”

  “This is America. They call me Charlie.”

  “They call you what you tell them to call you,” Maranzano says.

  Charlie’s Italian is rusty. He was ten when he emigrated to America and finds little use for the mother tongue except when he is at home, which he tries to avoid as much as possible.

  “Sigaro?” Maranzano says pulling a leather cigar case from his breast pocket. “In Spanish, they call it Perfecto.”

  Charlie takes the cigar.

  Maranzano rolls the Perfecto between his thumb and forefinger, teasing out the rich bouquet. He cuts the tip of the cigar with a gold cutter and then strikes a match which he cradles in front of the cigar. He draws in the heat of the flame and releases a mouthful of smoke into the ceiling above him. Every move is part of a personal ritual to demonstrate his knowledge of all things exquisite.

  Charlie strikes a match and sucks his cigar to life with no such ceremony.

  Maranzano rests the Perfecto on the fat lip of an ashtray and says in his native tongue, “My father gave me this cigar cutter when I was fif
teen years old. He says to me, on my birthday, ‘Today you are a man, you should have the tools of a man.’ I remember it like it was yesterday. He died in the field not many years later. It was my responsibility to look after my father’s house.”

  Waiters make way for Italian coffees and Zabaione.

  Maranzano switches to English, “Let’s not mince words. Julius Caesar once said, ‘All bad precedents began as justifiable measures.’ What we should do and what we can do is not always the same thing. I’ll give you an example. Until a few years ago, all cigars were hand-rolled. The American Vice President tells the country it needs a good five-cent cigar. Right away the farmers cultivate cheap tobacco and mix it with filler. Then they make a machine to roll the tobacco. The cigar becomes shorter. Now you got a five-cent cigar but it’s no good. You find them everywhere, even in boxes with Frankie Yale’s face, eh?”

  Charlie waits for the punchline.

  Maranzano says, “The man on the street doesn’t know the difference between a Perfecto and a Frankie Yale. All he cares about is now he can smoke a cigar when before he couldn’t. He spends five cents and smokes it when he reads his newspaper. Men like you and me know the difference between the real thing and a fake, an imposter, a no-good substitute.”

  Maranzano waits for Charlie to see he is not talking about cigars but about men of honor. Charlie puffs on the fat Perfecto like the common man on a Frankie Yale.

  Maranzano says, “In Italy we have fathers. They introduce us to the finer things. America has bosses. They are not the same thing.”

  “I had a father,” Charlie says. “The title is overrated.”

  The restaurant’s owner brings in bottles of cognac. Maranzano raises his snifter in a toast.

  “Cento anni di salute e felicita!”

  The paesans around his table all raise their glasses.

  “Salute!” he says.

  The evening drags on with an exorbitant amount of back patting. Maranzano claims he has come to America to save the Sicilian family from certain doom. He inflates the value of the “old ways.” He touts the Sicilian spirit that has defeated attempts by foreign nations to take over their island and their culture. He mocks the Neapolitan decision to join forces with their enemies for the good of the country.