Gang That Couldn't Shoot Straight

by Jimmy Breslin

  They ran a funeral for Frankie Yale that was bigger than the Democratic National Convention. The great moment in the wake came when Dominic Monzalulu, the man who had coupled the bomb to Frankie Yale’s car, stood in front of the casket and began crying and held out his hands and wailed to the flowers over the casket, “You got no idea of the respect I had for this here man.” On the day of the funeral there were 21 flower cars and 103 limousines and 225 private cars following Frankie Yale’s body. It was terrific, and all good undertakers have a mimeographed copy of the order of Frankie Yale’s funeral just in case they get lucky with a bombing victim who was rich.

  The funeral of Julie DiBiasi was different. Usually a gangland murder occurs as part of a drive by the established organization. A man drifting away from the fold is the target. The action is both approved and carried out by organization members. All attend the funeral. But for Julie DiBiasi’s funeral, there was no way for the Baccala people to attend. Nobody likes to kneel in front of a casket if he knows somebody from the bereaved family is likely to open fire from his folding chair.

  Campion, the undertaker, had an easy time with the funeral. Usually he has to spend a lot of time making up the deceased’s face so everybody can say how good he looks. But after what the Water Buffalo did to Julie DiBiasi, Campion needed Rembrandt to straighten it out. It would be a closed coffin. Campion also had no argument about the clothes. Usually Campion pushed for the family to buy a new suit for the body and then Campion would pull the suit off the body just before the burial and go out and sell the suit or wear it himself. But with the closed coffin, Julie DiBiasi could be buried in his underwear. The problem of flowers was easily solved too. At an event like this, the prospect of a bomb in the middle of a cluster of roses is disturbing. But Campion had not had the body for an hour when a florist’s delivery truck pulled up across the street and a deliveryman came in with a twenty-dollar piece. Campion didn’t have to look up from the desk to know that it was a rat cop delivering the flowers. Only the Irish would send such a cheap piece of flowers to a funeral. The delivery-man went back to the truck. The truck did not move. This meant there was a camera in the back of the truck, taking movies through a peephole. This also meant that many strangers, more cops, would be attending the wake. Everybody in the Kid Sally Palumbo gang could now come to the wake. The Baccala mob would know the cops were on the scene, and Baccala’s people would not do anything that might get a cop hurt.

  The wake for Julie DiBiasi started officially at four o’clock in the afternoon, when Ezmo the Driver picked up old man Toregressa’s wife in front of her house on Marshall Street and took her to Campion’s. Toregressa’s wife is called Mrs. Toregressa. She is the finest mourner in all of South Brooklyn. People from all over get in fights over Mrs. Toregressa so they can have her at their wakes.

  Now Mrs. Toregressa sat quietly in the car while Ezmo the Driver drove the car to the funeral home. Mrs. Toregressa had a black shawl over her head and rosary beads twisted in her wrinkled hands. She had stayed up all night so she could have some good coffee circles under her eyes. She started warming up.

  “Gesù,” she said softly.

  “Gesù.”

  “GESÙ!” She was quite loud this time. Her hands shook. She was ready.

  She came into Campion’s walking just behind Julie DiBiasi’s brother-in-law and two of his sisters-in-law. There were eleven of Julie’s cousins in the place already. The mourners walked in the pale sunlight coming through the windows of Campion’s lobby and then into the dim hallway choking-sweet with the smell of roses. When Toregressa’s wife came into the chapel with the flickering candles showing on the wallpaper, Toregressa’s wife let out a wail which started low in her throat and then came higher and louder. It became a wonderful pitched scream.

  “GESÙ! GESÙ!”

  “A BONOM’ JULIE!”

  Julie DiBiasi’s sister slumped against her cousin. The sister’s legs buckled. Both women fell on the casket in screams. Mrs. Toregressa was directly behind them, screaming.

  The immediate family, which includes to the fifth cousins, sat on the right-hand side of the front of the room. The father and mother sat on cushioned chairs facing the doorway so they could wail at each person coming in. The rest of the family sat on wooden folding funeral-parlor chairs with the stenciled CAMPION FUNERAL HOME on the backs. Toregressa’s wife sat on the left side of the casket, in the third row, so she could generate mourning that would run through the entire room. All people came in black. The only person who would wear a gray suit to a wake would be a rat cop. The conversation in the funeral chapel was standard. Between the wailing, a mourner observes that God took the deceased. He has six machine-gun bullets in him, or, in this case, was strangled by the Water Buffalo, but God took him. The only alluding to the manner of death is done with a gentle, “At least he didn’t suffer.” And in recounting the life he led, one sentence suffices: “He had a good life.” Nothing else is said. If you begin to search for nice things to say about Julie DiBiasi you stumble onto the ten guys he helped to kill.

  The big moment in the wake at Campion’s came when Kid Sally Palumbo arrived. Entrances signify rank at gang funerals. A big shot does not walk in from the hallway and stand in front of the casket like any other mourner. A big shot forms up in the hallway with his bodyguards and he waits until the front of the room is clear and the seats are filled. Then he sweeps in. The level of murmur in the room attests to his rank. A buttonman gets a little gasp. A lieutenant gets a louder gasp. A captain gets tears. A don beppe or generalissimo creates screams. If you come in front of a casket and create only silence, it usually means that you too could be on the road to the cemetery.

  Kid Sally Palumbo came into the lobby of Campion’s at 9:15 p.m. to make his entrance. In the absence of the Baccala organization, Kid Sally Palumbo now was the highest-ranking person at the funeral. When Kid Sally came through the door, he was with Big Jelly. He waited in the lobby while Big Jelly ambled down the hall to check the room. Campion asked Kid Sally if he wanted to sit down. Kid Sally shook his head no. He didn’t want to crease the thighs of his black Italian-silk suit. Big Jelly stuck out his head and waved. Kid Sally came down the hallway, brushing against floral pieces. Big Jelly held him up for a moment in the hallway. Kid Sally stood clenching and unclenching his hands, waiting to go onstage. Big Jelly tapped him on the shoulder. Kid Sally Palumbo walked into the room like Maurice Evans.

  His head was high and his chin was out and his shoulders weaved as he walked. He stood in front of the casket with his hands clasped in front of him. His feet were apart. He kept shifting from one foot to the other.

  “Che peccat’,” Toregressa’s wife screamed.

  “O Dio.”

  Kid Sally Palumbo looked down fondly at the body.

  “È con Dio!”

  A woman in the back of the room picked it up. “Gesù!”

  An old man in the center mumbled, “A bonom’ Julie.”

  “Gesù!” Toregressa’s wife screamed.

  The father and mother came up and threw themselves, wailing, onto the casket, and Kid Sally Palumbo put his arms around them and rosaries were twisting in almost every hand and crying men kissed each other on the cheeks and bit their knuckles and women flung up their arms in despair. The wake of the beloved Julie DiBiasi, New York City Police Department identification number B-765379, FBI file number 129368742, United States Immigration and Naturalization Case 112-20-7143, was a great success.

  Chapter 13

  AFTER THE FUNERAL MASS, Angela did not go to the cemetery. She took the subway to school. She came up the subway stairs reluctantly and dawdled over a cup of coffee in a place on the corner. She started toward the school building and stopped. She felt like walking instead of sitting in a classroom. There was no use in going to school. Her nerves wouldn’t let her concentrate. Nor was there much sense in going on any other day, as long as this business was going on. She began walking down truck-clogged streets toward the East Side.
She knew vaguely where she was going, but she didn’t think about it until she was on 11th Street and walking toward Mario’s. It was all right to look in on him, she told herself. She didn’t know anybody else she could stop to see at this time of day.

  She was almost to Mario’s building when he came out the door and stood on the top of the stoop. Mario had been up since seven o’clock, working on his painting. Since he had no easel or table in his apartment, he worked on his hands and knees, the art paper spread on the floor under him. Mario worked with his head hanging down like a collie’s. After many hours of doing this, he became accustomed to having the inside of his head filled to the brim with downrushing blood. When Mario couldn’t work any more, he stood up straight and the blood went rushing down from the inside of his head so quickly that his eyes rolled and he had to put his hands against the wall to keep from falling down. Now, outside on the stoop, he was still swaying. He held out his arms to make airplane wings for balance.

  “What are you doing, exercising?” Angela called to him.

  Mario felt himself falling. He rotated his arms violently to stay up.

  “My knees hurt,” he said.

  “Oh,” Angela said.

  He came down the steps, keeping his legs stiff. He resembled Frankenstein.

  They went up to a place on the corner and talked, over coffee. Mario was vague about the type of work he was doing, and Angela listened vacantly. She was still unnerved from Julie DiBiasi’s funeral. He mentioned that he wanted to see some of the museums in New York. “Modern Art is only a few minutes from here,” she said. “You ought to learn the way. Why don’t we ride up there and I’ll show it to you.”

  Mario pushed out of the booth and walked eagerly out of the coffee shop. Angela had to stop at the counter and pay the check. When they came out of the subway onto 53rd Street, Mario stooped down and pulled his shoelaces apart. He took his uncle’s eyeglasses out of his jacket pocket. He immediately plowed into a woman. Angela had to take his arm and guide him across the street.

  The museum had a weekday afternoon crowd of women in their sixties, their sagging chalk necks spilling onto the soft bristles of mink coat collars. There were a few college students, and also many men in the uniform of Wall Street retirement: black Chesterfield coat, rimless glasses, and the Times folded to the obituary page.

  Two women were standing in front of a work by Andrew Wyeth. Angela and Mario stood alongside them.

  “Simply fascinating,” one of them said.

  “God, such talent,” the other said.

  Sidney’s voice was in Mario’s ears. Pigs.

  Mario stepped up and put his face inches away from the painting. He stared intently at it. “Fromage,” he said.

  “Fromage,” he said again.

  The women stopped talking.

  Mario stepped back. His arm waved. “Fromage!” he shouted.

  The women looked at the eyeglasses sitting on his nose, and his open shoelaces.

  “Maybe this really isn’t one of his best works,” one of the women whispered.

  “Well, to tell you the truth, I really don’t see much in it myself,” the other one said.

  Mario took Angela’s arm and they walked away. Sidney was right; they all knew nothing. Now Mario was sure he would be able to sell somebody some of his work. He stuck his chin out like he was Mussolini. “Fromage!” he shouted at a group watching a Picasso.

  In one hallway there was a spot from which a painting had been recently removed. Plain wooden brackets for holding the picture frame remained. The painting which had been removed had obviously been there for some time. The wall plaster inside the brackets was covered with a thick layer of dust. Mario stopped. He poked Angela.

  A man in a Chesterfield coat and his mink-coated wife were walking along slowly.

  Mario stared at the rectangle of dust. “Magnificent,” he said.

  The man and woman stopped and began inspecting the dust.

  “Magnificent!” Mario roared.

  The woman sighed. “I wish the frame were nicer,” she said.

  “The frame doesn’t bother me,” the man said.

  “There’s just something,” the woman said.

  “Could it be hanging upside down?” the man said.

  Angela was still laughing when the subway came into the Second Avenue stop, where Mario was to get off. She pointed to the door. He got up. He looked at her sadly. She started to get up with him. Then she sank back in her seat.

  “G’by, I’ll see you again,” she said.

  He went out the doors and the train started up again, and when it left the station the day’s fun went out of Angela and Brooklyn came on her. She pulled the coat around her.

  Between visits from Angela, Mario put together a narrow standard of living. It was unsatisfying, but he felt every day brought him closer to the afternoon when he could sell his first work to one of those ignorant women at the Plaza. He worked in three-hour shifts, resting for two hours, through an entire day, and brought the results to Sidney for help. Most evenings he sat in the coffee shop on the corner and went to the cheapest price on the sign, a 40-cent egg-salad sandwich. The place was frequented by wanderers who lived in the East Village. Mario got to know Simon Krass, a writer who specialized in articles on eroticism. Simon Krass usually came into the coffee shop carrying his cat, High Yellow, under his arm. He sat and commented on the world’s latest sex habits. “Airedales are just magnificent,” Simon Krass said. He thought Mario, with his eyeglasses and untied shoelaces, would be interested.

  One morning the superintendent put Mario into shock by announcing the $36 rent was due. All day Mario was edgy. He kept walking downstairs to stand on the stoop and look for Angela. She did not come. He went to bed heartsick over being stuck with the rent. In the morning he paid the superintendent the $36, went up to the coffee shop, and sat in the telephone booth. He looked at the names he had gotten from Father Marsalano. The third man on the list, Dominic Laviano, had two big checks after his name. The address was the Andrea Doria Club, 724 Knickerbocker Avenue, Brooklyn. Mario looked up the number and called the place. The old man who answered said Dominic Laviano was always there at seven p.m. Mario went through the classified directory and looked for religious listings. Nearly all the Catholic stores were on Barclay Street. He asked the waitress for directions.

  After a month in the apartment, Mario had $159 left, and a little fear went through him when he began ordering things in McGowan’s Religious Outfitters, 78 Barclay Street. Mario paid $85 for a priest’s black suit. He told the salesman the suit was for his twin brother, who was a priest in Italy. The tailor at home would fix the cuffs, Mario said. He also bought a Roman collar and a black shirtfront to wear with it. The salesman wanted to mail the things to Italy. “We just don’t like to give our clothes to anyone but a priest,” the salesman said. “All these impostors.” Mario sent the man to the back of the store for a cape and then ducked out of the door with the box. At 6:30 p.m., dressed as a priest, the pants cuffs dragging, Mario arrived on Knickerbocker Avenue.

  The Andrea Doria Club was next to Dominic’s Fruit and Vegetables, D. Laviano, prop. The store had crates of greens around the entrance. The greens had been washed and the outer leaves were glazed with ice. The club next door was an old storefront. The bottom halves of the windows were painted over with green and trimmed with red and black. The place had been an ice-cream parlor when Germans lived in the neighborhood. The Italians, who followed the Germans, sought out ice-cream parlors. They made fine social clubs, which are as important to an Italian neighborhood as dairy restaurants are to a Jewish neighborhood. The old marble fountain counter is perfect for holding a $1500 espresso machine imported from Milano. The wire-backed chairs and round tables are fine for card games. Even the big Coca-Cola syrup jugs have a purpose. They get filled with homemade wine.

  There were a dozen old men playing cards at the tables when Mario walked in. Dominic Laviano sat at the counter by the wine jugs. He was a bald
man with heavy-lidded eyes. Mario handed him the picture. Dominic Laviano’s eyes glistened. Mario showed him the message on the back. Dominic Laviano’s eyes narrowed. He had a basic conflict about matters religious.

  Some years ago the pastor at his church in Brooklyn, Our Lady of Mount Carmel Church, had begun pointing out that the statue of the patron saint had no crown. The old women donated their rings to be melted down for a crown. Their diamonds studded the crown. It was worth $250,000 when finished. The crown was put on display in a glass case set in front of the church. Only the pastor and the sexton had keys. An electric eye would set off a burglar alarm louder than an air-raid siren if anybody tried breaking into the case. One night, with no breaking glass or siren, the crown disappeared. The pastor knelt in church and conducted a prayer vigil for its return. The old women knelt and prayed with him. The men of the church, led by Dominic Laviano, took the matter to another authority. They went to Baccala’s office. That night Baccala appeared at the church. He walked up the center aisle and looked at the priest praying. He looked at the sexton, who was trying to hide behind a bank of candles.

  “Hey!” Baccala called out. The sexton came out from behind the candles. Baccala whispered something in the sexton’s ear. The sexton wet his pants. When the women came to the church to start praying the next morning, the crown was back in the case. It had slipped in and out without the alarm’s sounding. The women began to thump their breasts. Mirac’.

  Dominic knew otherwise. But there was a time when Dominic Laviano’s sister from Poughkeepsie, Mrs. Regina Barbella, went home to Catanzia, and it still made Dominic wonder. During his sister’s visit, Father Marsalano showed her the church doors, which were rotted. She said she would pay for new doors. The doors took so long to arrive and be hung that she missed her return trip on the Andrea Doria from Genoa to New York. The Andrea Doria sank off Nantucket. Mrs. Regina Barbella still thumps her breast and tells everybody, “Mirac’.”

  Dominic Laviano was not too sure it wasn’t a miracle. He named his club after the ship. As he looked at the picture and the note on the back from Father Marsalano, Dominic was holding a little argument with himself. He really didn’t trust priests. But he had also had a few whips of pain across the left side of his chest in recent months. Who knows?