Gang That Couldn't Shoot Straight

by Jimmy Breslin

  “DeLauria,” Angela said. “Chew!” She spat at the air.

  The scowl on her face surprised Mario. He didn’t think the girl was this tough. He immediately made his eyes wide and he let the rest of his face hang. He was pretty sure he looked like an orphan with sad eyes.

  Angela looked at him and sighed. “Come on in and we’ll have coffee and figure out something,” she said.

  She bought a copy of the Village Voice at the hotel newsstand, and they sat in the coffee shop while she read the ads. She went to the phone booth and made several calls. She came out smiling. “There’s one down on Eleventh Street that’s cheap.”

  The apartment was at 23 East 11th. The superintendent, a red-faced man in a dirty woolen shirt, led them up scarred staircases to the top floor. Pale afternoon light came through a skylight. The superintendent opened the door to number 20. It was three rooms in railroad-car alignment. There also was a small dusty kitchen and a crumbling bathroom. The wooden floor squeaked. White plaster showed through the dirt-streaked blue wall paint. The apartment was $36 a month. The superintendent wanted one month in advance and a month’s security. Mario grimaced and took money out of his pocket.

  “What can you do?” Angela said. The least DeLauria could’ve done.”

  She spat at the air again. Mario paid the superintendent and was handed a key and a scrawled receipt. “It’s yours as of now,” the man said. “What do you want on the mailbox, Mr. and Mrs.?”

  “What business is it of yours?” Angela said.

  “I couldn’t care less,” the superintendent said.

  “Well, then, don’t ask,” Angela said.

  Downstairs, Angela looked at her watch. She had to get going.

  “Good luck,” she said. “I have a lot to do now.”

  She started down the stoop and turned to say good-by to Mario. He was standing on the top step with his face saying “War Orphan.”

  Angela stopped. “What are you going to sleep on?”

  He shrugged and looked even sadder.

  “Well, come on with me, you can’t sleep on the floor,” she said. He bounded down the steps. They walked up to First Avenue and went past coffee shops and bars filled with young boys and girls wearing bell-bottom pants and Saint-John-the-Baptist hair styles. Two blocks up there was a store called Cheap John’s. Angela left Mario on the sidewalk. She went inside and came out with a pillow.

  “At least for your head,” she said, holding the pillow out to Mario.

  Two boys stopped on the sidewalk and watched. “We hope you’ll be very happy together,” one of them said.

  Angela buried her face in the pillow. She was flushed with embarrassment. Mario was surprised to see her react this way. But when her face came out of the pillow it was straight and cold again. She handed Mario the pillow.

  “All right,” she said, “take care of yourself.”

  “When do you come again?” he asked her.

  “In a couple of days,” she said.

  She was frowning as she went down the subway steps.

  “No miss!” Big Mama said to Tony the Indian. He nodded.

  “No miss!” Big Mama said to Big Jelly.

  “Nobody miss!” she hissed at everybody.

  They were crowded into the kitchen and the living room, thirty of them, standing around with plates in their hands, and when they came up to the stove Big Mama would plunge a serving spoon into this big aluminum restaurant pot of lobster fra diavolo and heap it on the plates, all the time muttering, “No miss!”

  They were going to shoot everything they could. The trouble had started predictably and easily. Kid Sally Palumbo, chewing a toothpick, leaned against the wall in Baccala’s office. Kid Sally had been summoned because of the bike-race failure. The Water Buffalo and two black suits stood by the door. Baccala sat at his desk and looked at his hands in his lap.

  “I like-a lunch,” Baccala said.

  Kid Sally said, “You wanna eat and talk? Good.”

  Baccala kept looking at his hands. “I said, I like-a lunch. I no say you like-a lunch. So you shut up-a you face!”

  “Hey you!” Kid Sally said.

  “Shut up-a you face,” the Water Buffalo said. The two black suits stirred. Kid Sally bit his bottom lip.

  Baccala looked up. His eyes were so narrow he could barely see through the slits. “What you do,” he said to Kid Sally softly, “you drive-a me to lunch. You wait-a outside. When I finish-a lunch, I come out and you drive-a me back here.” Baccala’s voice rose. “Every day you come here and you drive-a Baccala.”

  Coldly, almost offhandedly, Baccala was perpetrating the worst of all crimes against a gangster. He was trying to kill Kid Sally’s ego. He was telling Kid Sally face to face—worse, in front of others—that from now on he was not the leader of a faction of a gang. He was to be a chauffeur for Baccala. Chauffeur, errand boy, footman, and lackey. And Kid Sally Palumbo, his face stinging, had to stand against the wall and take it without a sound. The Water Buffalo and the pair of black suits were only a few feet from him. The Water Buffalo had his eyes on the ceiling and he was praying to a saint whose name he knew, in hopes Kid Sally would say something fresh so Baccala would let the Water Buffalo kill Kid Sally right in the office.

  The toothpick in Kid Sally Palumbo’s mouth moved up and down. He said nothing. When he walked out of the place he took a deep breath because he was glad to be alive. Then he took a second deep breath. He would be back in that office someday with all of his people and they would make headlines because of the way they would kill Baccala and the Water Buffalo.

  Kid Sally Palumbo stood alone, looking out the kitchen window. He trembled a little. Over the centuries, revolts in the Mafia have always been heavily sanctioned affairs. Just as no smart political legislator brings his bill to a vote unless he knows beforehand that he has the votes to win, so does an ambitious Mafioso operate. A revolt normally consists of the ambitious one becoming restless with an old boss, then subtly asking around the organization to determine if he has any support. If enough people in command tell him, “Old men, sometimes they better off they die,” he knows he has assent. He then invites his boss out to dinner, and on the way home he drops the boss off in the nearest sewer.

  But in this revolt Kid Sally Palumbo was starting, he had no official sanction at all. Instead, he was shaking the structure of the entire organization. This, he knew, normally was as sure a way to get killed as sky-diving from the Empire State Building. He had a group of, in all, 125 hoodlums from Marshall Street and the adjoining blocks. They were going against an organized Mafia family of perhaps 1000 members, full-and part-time. But Kid Sally Palumbo’s group had youth and hunger for the money which Baccala had been denying them. And the Baccala Family, like any other institution in the country, was old and essentially sick with success. A small, determined group could topple it. The victory would require close teamwork and extensive brainwork. But the rewards could be incredible. If Kid Sally won control of the Baccala gang, all the other Mafia families in the country would automatically recognize him. He could get at millions. And there would be something so much more important than money. Revenge. As Kid Sally stared out the window, the wind gusted off the docks and the telephone lines began waving in the streetlights. Kid Sally could see Baccala hanging from the wires, his head flopping over on his broken neck, the wind blowing the body like wash.

  “No miss!” Big Mama was saying. She was calling it out now.

  Kid Sally knew she was right. It is not too good when you shoot at a guy and miss him. Sometimes the guy comes back and finds you asleep in your bed. Kid Sally also knew that it does not matter what you do in life, as long as you do it effectively. The people who shoot and miss are the ones who get in trouble. In a city like New York, failure is the real crime. But for those who shoot straight and get the job done, the rewards are immense. Society not only approves but gives adulation. They still write of Lucky Luciano as if he had been a fine Mayor of New York. Willie Moretti, who could
have been as big as Luciano but happened to mess up a couple of key murders, was classified as a cheap hoodlum when he died.

  “When you’re broke, you’re a joke,” Kid Sally said. He took out a pack of cigarettes. He flicked the lighter deliberately. He took a drag on the cigarette. Everybody in the room watched him: young guys with dark hair and mean faces and cigarettes hanging from their lips. Kid Sally blew the smoke out in a stream. His lip curled. He began to giggle. Everybody in the room began to giggle with him.

  “Old fuckin’ greaseballs,” Kid Sally said.

  “I put out his mother’s eyes,” Big Jelly said.

  “He don’t give me nothin’, I take it. I take it over his fuckin’ dead body,” another one of them called out.

  Big Mama stood in the kitchen doorway, drying her hands on her apron. Angela leaned in the doorway with her. Big Mama put out a hand to push her away. “Shoo. Go to your room.”

  Angela pushed Big Mama’s hand back. “I spit on their graves,” Angela said.

  Big Mama clasped her hands and looked up at the ceiling. “Madre di Cristo.”

  “Nothin’ means nothin’ until we give them a present,” Kid Sally said. “We give them a present of somebody’s head in a box.”

  “Maybe they don’t like it and they quit,” Big Jelly said.

  “We’ll see what kind of chops they got,” Kid Sally said.

  Chapter 12

  JOEY MIRANDA, A GOOD car thief, and his best friend, Julie DiBiasi, who does all sorts of evil things from his base as a gas-station attendant, were standing together and remembering certain things. This was a herculean thing for them to be doing. Joey Miranda had an IQ of 67 in grammar school and since has retrogressed to the point where he forgets his home phone number. And Julie DiBiasi always sneers at people and says, “At least I know I’m a dope.”

  With their heads together, the brain worms pulsed with great information. The much-hated Water Buffalo, Baccala’s chief aide, always parks his car at night in the same spot on Bushwick Avenue. The spot is always open for Water Buffalo’s car because there is a fire hydrant there. The cops put a $25 ticket on the car each night. The Water Buffalo uses the tickets to pick his teeth. When he parks the car at night, the Water Buffalo is well covered by another car, which pulls alongside him, the people in the back seat holding machine guns at the ready. The Water Buffalo lives in a two-family house around the corner from the fire hydrant. When he gets to his house, the cover car leaves him, and his wife, Mrs. Water Buffalo, takes up the coverage. She peers out the door with a shotgun.

  In the morning the Water Buffalo has no coverage. However, he walks on the street very close to people. He usually picks out a lady wheeling a baby carriage and he walks alongside her. If he sees any suspicious car, he bends down and kisses the baby. “Who could shoot if they thought they might hit a baby?” the Water Buffalo says. “The only person I know of who would do a thing like that is me.”

  “What happens,” Julie DiBiasi wondered, “if he starts driving away in his car some morning and then the car stops on him and he has to get out and see what’s wrong?”

  Joey Miranda thought about this. “So many things could happen to you when the car stops and you have to get out and look at what made the car stop,” he said.

  “He could get his throat strangled,” Julie DiBiasi said.

  “No strangle!” Big Mama said. “It takes too long. Everybody walks by and see what you do. Just shoot-a him.”

  “The Water Buffalo gets hit right in the head,” Kid Sally Palumbo announced.

  Early the next morning Julie DiBiasi, working very carefully with a knife, started a slow leak around the valve of the Water Buffalo’s left rear tire. At 11:30 the Water Buffalo came out from behind a lady who had twins in a stroller and got into his car and drove it off and turned a corner and went down three blocks and turned another corner. He felt the car pulling on the turn and he slowed down and stopped at the curb of a street that had garages and a factory on it. The car following him was driven by the best driver on Marshall Street, Ezmo the Driver. He was terrific at trailing people and not being noticed. Julie DiBiasi and Joey Miranda were in the back seat. They got out and strolled up to strike a blow for freedom.

  The Water Buffalo was crouched over and feeling the flat tire. Joey Miranda and Julie DiBiasi swaggered up to him. The Water Buffalo saw them and he dove under the car and came up on the other side like a guy coming out of the pool. Joey Miranda and Julie DiBiasi bent over so they could shoot the Water Buffalo while he was under the car. But all they could see was the Water Buffalo’s $110 Bostonians on the sidewalk on the other side of the car. They fired twice at the Bostonians, but the Bostonians were clomping up and down so fast that the bullets pinged off the cement sidewalk, and the Water Buffalo raced down an alley. Joey Miranda and Julie DiBiasi came rushing around the car and started into the alley. There was this big puddle in the way. The Water Buffalo, who had his adrenalin pumping because it was life and death, had taken the puddle in a big leap and hadn’t gotten his $110 Bostonians wet. He was beating down the alleyway. But Joey Miranda pulled up short at the puddle in his $120 Footjoys, and Julie DiBiasi stopped dead in his $115 Johnson Murphys. They tiptoed around the puddle. Then they started down the alley in a fury. Running, running, running with guns in their hands and the fury of centuries racing through their blood. The alley was quite short, and the Water Buffalo had gone beating to the end of it. He skidded on his leather heels around the turn. Joey Miranda and Julie DiBiasi came around the turn flying, guns straight out. They ran into a ramshackle fence made of rotting wood. The fence closed off an area between two buildings. Joey bounced up and looked on the other side of the fence. Nobody was there.

  “What do we do?” Julie said.

  “We’re in some trouble,” Joey said.

  “Yeah,” Julie said.

  “We could go back and say we got him and then we could go out tonight and get him for real,” Joey said.

  “What about Ezmo out in the car? He knows we didn’t get him,” Julie said.

  “I know what to do,” Joey said. He pointed his pistol at the fence and closed his eyes and pulled the trigger twice.

  “Now run like we just done somethin’,” Joey said.

  The two of them came racing back out of the alley. Ezmo the Driver had the car rolling just slow enough for them to dive into the back seat. He hit the pedal, and the car was doing 60 by the time Julie pulled the door shut after him.

  “Right in the head,” Joey said loudly.

  “Boy,” Ezmo said.

  “Right between the ears,” Julie said.

  “Boy,” Ezmo said.

  “What blood,” Joey said.

  “Boy,” Ezmo said.

  There was a large but quiet celebration at Big Mama’s that night. There were fifteen guys sitting there like pirates but saying nothing about anything and Big Mama cooked zuppa di clams and spaghetti alla Carbonara and veal scaloppine alla Romana. There was Soave Bolla on the table, and after it was finished, everybody went to the Bardolino. They toasted Joey Miranda and Julie DiBiasi without saying what they were toasting them about because it was one of those things you don’t talk about, and Joey and Julie looked at each other with nervous glances and then Julie decided the only way out was to go to the Bardolino heavy, and pretty soon his head was hanging in the spaghetti alla Carbonara and he was saying to himself, “I’m Al Capone.”

  The story of the Water Buffalo’s murder was not in the Daily News when Beppo the Dwarf brought the early edition up at 9:30 p.m. And the story was not on the eleven-o’clock news on television. Big Mama stood in the doorway, drying a pot, and her eyes narrowed.

  “Hey, Joey, what you do?”

  Kid Sally Palumbo got up and walked over to Julie DiBiasi and slapped his face, and then he walked over to Joey Miranda and slapped his face.

  “What is this?” he said.

  “The body was in a alley, maybe nobody looked yet,” Julie mumbled.

  “Yeah
,” Joey said.

  Kid Sally looked at them. “Maybe they’re all keeping it quiet to see if we do anything stupid.”

  “That could-a be,” Big Mama said. She glared at Joey and Julie. “It better.”

  “We seen the blood,” Joey mumbled.

  The party broke up and Joey Miranda was so drunk he got into the car and fell asleep at the wheel. Julie couldn’t feel a thing and he stumbled along the street and tried to take in deep breaths to clear his head, but the wine was still coming up from his stomach and exploding in his head. He walked over to the gas station and passed out in a chair at the desk. You could have stuck pins in Julie, and he would not have felt anything. Which was a good thing because at 4:30 in the morning the Water Buffalo and three other guys walked into the gas station, and the Water Buffalo dragged Julie into the grease pit and it was a good thing Julie couldn’t feel much of anything. The police-emergency-squad guy observed, “Dracula never did anything as bad as this.”

  At 9:30 p.m. the Daily News did carry news of the gang war. It read:

  DI BIASI—Julie. Very suddenly. Beloved son of Carmela and Ralphie DiBiasi. Dear brother of Frankie, Anthony, and Salvatore DiBiasi. Dear brother of Mrs. Laura Ruocco. May he live forever in a thousand hearts. Reposing CAMPION’S Funeral Home, Inc., 56 Lockman Street, Brooklyn. Interment Thursday 9 a.m. private.

  All over South Brooklyn, in every railroad flat, there could be heard the sound of hangers clicking while people took good black funeral clothes out of the closets. They began to get ready for as good a gangland funeral as Kid Sally Palumbo could put together under the circumstances of not having the big money to blow on the kind of funerals all gangsters dream of for themselves.

  All major funerals in New York, including the funerals of some people who may have led legitimate lives, such as a Cardinal, basically are copies of Frankie Yale’s funeral. Frankie Yale was a very good guy who lived in Brookyn until 1932, and then he became a very bad guy and somebody put a bomb in his car motor. The bomb worked.