by Jim Fusilli
Though he heard of their exploits at least once a week, conveyed by Benno like he was repeating a gangster tale he saw in a serial at the Avalon, Bell could hardly tell one big shot in the crew from the next. He wouldn’t recognize Gigenti the Killer—apparently the only time he’d seen him was when he was throwing Maguire off St. Matty’s years ago. He hadn’t seen Corini the Politician, the guy who talks to newspapers, either. Or the other guys Benno spoke of—Geller the Miami Jew and Ziggy Baum out in California, also a Jew, no doubt. Maybe they existed, maybe not. All of Benno’s stories had the aura of legend.
To his great disappointment, Benno had never seen Carlo Farcolini, his hero like other kids admired Einstein or Edison. Downtown Narrows Gate was stuck with Frankie Fortune and Mimmo. Why Benno looked up to the people who would employ them was a mystery to Bell, who challenged his friend, the issue being you can’t approve of people who torture and kill, who sell narcotics. Benno pointed out nobody was selling drugs on Polk Street and somebody deserves credit for getting rid of the dirty cop Maguire.
“They skim from your uncle,” Bell argued.
“He raises the price to cover the hit,” Benno replied, failing to see that the scam landed on working Italians. “All I can tell you,” Benno once said, “is when I was a little kid I used to think that some wicked fuckin’ giant, some McSomebody with a nightstick or a fire axe, was going to lift Polk Street and everybody who got off the boat would slide uptown and into New Jersey Bank and Trust we’d go, its gray columns the giant’s monster teeth. But I don’t think that no more.”
“How about this?” Bell said now. “How about for tonight there’s no more Bebe and Farcolini and Mimmo and King Kong and whoever the fuck else they bring in? How about we talk about, I don’t know, the moon. See the moon, Sally?”
“Listen to me,” Benno said. “Pretty soon Farcolini is finished with the killing and the drugs and the whores. Corini’s setting him up nice for when he leaves Sing Sing. Bebe and the radio is the start. Mark my words.”
At the corner of Cleveland, a woman in a navy suit stood under a streetlamp alongside an Oldsmobile, its front passenger-side whitewall flat as an anvil. To Bell, she looked desperate, like she no more knew how to change a tire than to lift the car over her head.
Passing the bike to his pal, Benno veered toward the worried woman.
She nodded gratefully as Benno retrieved the jack, telling Bell with a wink and a wave that it’s no two-man job, making a thing right.
Later, as they sat on a stoop, Benno said, “Now maybe she goes and tells everybody we all ain’t crooks.”
Which confused Bell good and deep, even when he was learning how to slice watermelons so you could profit off the ones the ants had invaded. He also thought it was a pretty good trick Benno learned, how to wink over a blind eye.
PART TWO
CHAPTER NINE
Of course, on December 7, 1941, everybody’s plans were blown to shit along with the Arizona, the West Virginia, the Oklahoma, the Nevada and our other battleships, light cruisers, destroyers, seaplane tenders and repair vessels at Pearl Harbor. Everybody’s plans, that is, except Bebe’s. He was enjoying the high life on the road and didn’t give a good goddamn for nobody. That famous trumpet player came into the Lakeside Inn in ’39 and seen the boy singer he needed. Bebe had answered his questions, saying that what the guy heard about Carlo Farcolini and Anthony Corini was bullshit: He knew them as a kid from the old neighborhood. This is something all Italians face and it’s un-American. Meanwhile, Bebe met with Enna and told him he’d like to quit the Lakeside—in the long run it’s better if Bill Marsala moved up: A dime on big is better than a dime on a little. Besides, Enna’s man Klein would be along for the ride. Enna conferred with Fortune, who knew this day was coming the moment he realized Bebe never again mentioned the Ear, his conscience as cold as his mother’s when she made up her mind somebody should go to hell. Fortune pushed the idea up to Corini, who approved. “Book them in our joints,” Corini added, “and tell Enna to find another kid for the radio.” A year later, Bebe ditched the trumpet player and joined a band with a bigger national reputation, the leader in a couple of movies. “Fuckin’ Bebe,” said Mimmo.
“You’re surprised?” Fortune replied.
Then came the band’s big hit, Bebe’s singing about how he couldn’t smile no more because his girl dumped him. He was on the radio everywhere in the country, a household name, and the bandleader better be alert because sooner than later, a shiv is going to land between his shoulder blades, courtesy of Bebe Marsala.
But none of this meant nothing to nobody on that Sunday in December. “We interrupt this program to bring you a special news bulletin. The Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, by air, President Roosevelt has just announced,” said John Daly on the radio. The church bells started ringing, their deep, solemn resonance shaking the sparrows from the trees, and people began to pour out onto Polk Street, a sense of foreboding moving like fog. “Che cosa significa? What does it mean?”
Somebody said there was going to be a lot of work at the shipyards because the Americans had to rebuild and these Japanese fucks were going to pay, and then everybody went away quiet, realizing that soon their sons and brothers were going to go off to die. And then Roosevelt got on the radio again and a few days later, that weak fascist bastard Mussolini, who already took it up the ass from Hitler, declared war on America, too. Which was a dumb play, because if he thought Polk Street was going to run and sign up to fight for Italy, he learned fast he was an idiot. The war effort went into high gear. American flags were everywhere and the Sons of Italy marching band changed its name and learned the right songs. Sal Benno, 18 years old, put himself and his glass eye to work to build the “Arsenal of Democracy” like FDR wanted, selling bonds and collecting scrap, using his uncle’s truck, new scents competing with the aroma of cured meats, chunk cheese and fresh fish.
Leo Bell had spent most of December 7 in the back room at Benno’s with an atlas and a globe showing everybody where was Pearl Harbor, where was Hawaii. As the radio flooded the room with news, he pointed to Malaya, Hong Kong, Guam, the Philippines, Wake Island and Midway and showed them how Hitler had swept across Europe and how Mussolini went into North Africa to control the Mediterranean. “And there’s Sicily.” Bell tapped it with the point of his pencil. Scratching his day-old growth, Pooch the Grocer was thinking everything is a long way from Narrows Gate, but who knows what kind of super airplanes and submarines the Japs and the Nazis got. Pretty soon we could be surrounded.
On December 8, Benno came back a few minutes late from the produce-and-fish run to Manhattan, slowed down by eavesdropping on those guys at the markets shouting opinions, this frigid morning especially. Though it wasn’t even sun up yet, Leo was waiting outside the store, wearing a suit and tie under his topcoat. On his way to enlist, he had brought with him a little duffel bag with his toothbrush and toothpaste, a comb, a rag to clean his glasses and a couple of books he grabbed off the nightstand.
Benno parked on Polk rather than backing the truck into the alley and even though the fresh fruit and vegetables were in the cab and the fish in the icebox, he jumped out and ran around the truck, the engine running. He stood right in front of Bell, both of them knowing maybe this could be the last time they’d be together. Jesus Christ, Sal Benno was thinking. Oh, Jesus Christ.
“I figured you’d do this,” Benno said, his breath rising. Frost hung from the telephone wires.
“Sal…”
“But you’ll outsmart those Japs.” He noticed Leo was shivering a little bit.
Bell smiled. “In this corner, Imperial Japan. Over there, Leo Bell.”
“And me. I’m with you. Ain’t I with you?”
“Always, Sally. Always.”
They took off their gloves and shook hands. And then they gave each other a big hug, right there on Polk Street.
About a month into his hitch, Bell was lying on his bunk, muscles aching, but feeling worse for the s
tate of his unit. The Army had been engaged in a military-preparedness program since ’39, but drills at Fort Dix were accompanied by the sounds of the Corps of Engineers hurrying to build barracks, an administration building, hospitals, storage warehouses, additional mess facilities and housing. New equipment was in short supply. Training with World War I weapons, Bell wore an oversized tin doughboy helmet, the chinstrap keeping it on his head. A few regular Army infantry divisions were close to combat-ready and the National Guard and Army Reserve had been called to active duty. Morale was high and no one doubted President Roosevelt, but it was hard for Bell to believe that the ragtag bunch he bunked with, men who could barely fall in without stumbling over each other, could go up against Hitler’s war machine, the world’s most powerful army. It would be damned funny if it weren’t so damned sad.
He called his father whenever he had time. “Be resolute, Leo,” his father said. “Look what they did to Poland. The Blitzkrieg was our Pearl Harbor.”
He could see his father over on the Lower West Side, surrounded by typewriters at Kreiner’s shop, tiny tools in his shirt pocket, ribbon ink smeared on his fingers. Bell said, “Maybe now is the time we come out from under our shell, Pop.”
“Leo, I could not imagine a worse time for a man to admit he is a Jew.” He reminded his son what they had seen in the news-reels at the Avalon and in Life magazine: Kristallnacht and the September Campaign, the Nazis marching along the Champs-Élysées, the Blitz in London and the Imperial Army’s Rape of Nanking. There was no reason to think the Axis powers wouldn’t hesitate to attack the U.S. mainland with the same savagery and lack of moral code.
Now, as he revisited the conversations, Bell lay with an arm across his eyes, his glasses on the cold floor. He was about to drift to sleep when he heard a man clear his throat.
“Private Bell.”
He sprung out of bed, almost whacking his head on the top bunk.
“Come with me,” the lieutenant said.
Bell groped for his glasses.
The scent of fresh-cut wood permeated Lt. Tyler’s office, which had newspapers for shades and was as cold as the new barracks. The desk was uneven, as was the chair in which Tyler sat. Trying to give the place a sense of official decorum, Tyler had requisitioned a green blotter, a pen and pencil set and an in-and-out box. A U.S. flag, along with the company colors, was in a corner.
Keeping his trench coat on against the cold, Tyler took off his gloves and pulled a folder off the top of a pile. “Leonardo Bell,” he said.
Bell stood at ease. “Yes, sir.”
As he sat back, Tyler slid the folder against his stomach. He was blond, bland, tall, fit, maybe 30 years old. It was hard to tell. Bell had a sergeant who was rumored to be 50, another said to be 22. They looked the same to him: living blocks of gristle with flatheads and leather lungs. In comparison, Tyler looked like he spent much of his time behind a desk.
“They want you to go to Fort Benning for OCS, Private Bell.”
“Sir?”
“Officer Candidate School. Or are you asking where Fort Benning is.”
Bell knew it was in Georgia, but he said nothing.
“OCS,” Tyler repeated. “But I said no.”
“Yes, sir,” Bell replied.
Tyler looked into the folder. “You speak Italian and Polish fluently. You speak German?”
“I studied German in high school, sir.”
“Why?”
“Hitler, sir.”
“Hitler?”
“I figured he’d be coming.”
“You did?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Too bad you didn’t study Japanese.”
“They didn’t offer Japanese, sir.”
Tyler flipped a sheet. “Says here you were first in your class.”
“Yes, sir.”
“A believer in independent study.”
“Sir?”
“You spent hours in the school library,” Tyler said. “Apparently the curriculum wasn’t satisfying.”
“Sir, I—”
“But you didn’t apply to any colleges.”
“No, sir.”
“Why not?”
“I hadn’t decided, sir. I was thinking of traveling. Or joining the Armed Forces.”
“Tojo made the choice for you.”
“I suppose you could say that, sir.”
“Why Polish?”
“Sir?”
Tyler closed the folder and dropped it back into the pile. “Why do you speak Polish?”
“My mother’s family was Polish. My father studied it and he taught me.”
The lieutenant leaned his elbows on the desk, which rattled under the weight. “You love your father, don’t you?”
“Yes, sir.”
“You’d like to be the kind of man he is.”
“What kind of man is that, sir?”
Staring up, Tyler said, “This isn’t a conversation, Private.”
“Yes, sir.”
“You admire him.”
“I admire my father, yes.”
“Explain.”
“Well, he does what he says he’ll do. If you need a friend, he’s…” Bell let the thought drift. It wasn’t a conversation. Nor did Tyler want to know if Abramo Bell was forthright and reliable or had a wry sense of humor—though Bell wasn’t sure what the lieutenant was looking for.
“He’s what, Private?”
“He would boil Hitler in oil if he could,” Bell replied.
“I see.”
Bell remained silent as Tyler sat back again, the chair squeaking. “Interested in typewriter repair, Private Bell?”
“No, sir.”
“You see bigger things for yourself.”
“I hope so, sir.”
“I assume you intend to return to Poland one day.”
“Italy, sir. Irpino.”
Tyler glanced at the folder, but let it lie. “You intend to return to Italy, then.”
“If I could put one in Mussolini’s brain, yes, sir.”
Tyler nodded. Then he stood. “All right. We’re done.”
Bell saluted, turned and left the office.
Nine weeks later, as the members of his unit were waiting to be reassigned, Bell was told to report to Tyler’s office. A Corporal O’Neill intercepted him and said he was to be in Washington, D.C., tomorrow at 0800.
So began Leo Bell’s recruitment into the Office of the Coordinator of Information, which was organized by Gen. William J. Donovan. Its mission: to collect and analyze information and data that might bear upon national security; to collate it and make it available to the president and government departments as the president may determine; and to carry out such activities that may facilitate the securing of information important for national security.
Bell had spent 13 weeks learning to kill. A good shot with an M1 despite his eyeglasses, he was looking forward to nesting in a tower in France or under brush in a Pacific jungle and cutting down the enemy. But the U.S. Army had decided Leo Bell was going to be a spy. In late 1942, after indoctrination and class work in Washington, he was assigned not to Berlin or London, not to Corregidor or elsewhere in the Pacific theater.
Bell was assigned to the New York Public Library, the 42nd Street main branch.
Cy Geller was sitting outside his office in Coral Gables as the palm trees’ long shadows craned across the width of his swimming pool. For the moment, he was lost to the complexity of his calculations. The flow of heroin through Sicily to the United States would be interrupted when the Navy took control of shipping lanes in the Atlantic. The cache stored in Cuba would soon be depleted. Suppliers in Latin America had raised their prices to the level of extortion. From Los Angeles, Ziggy Baum reported that his Mexican sources were running dry. Shipments from Asia were impossible. No other segment of the business, no matter how prices or events were manipulated, could make up for the shortfall in income.
“Mr. Geller. Excuse me.”
Geller shaded his eye
s from the setting sun.
“There is a man to see you,” said the jockey-sized Cuban who went by the name Felipe. Geller’s wife thought of him as their houseboy, but he carried a pistol under his white jacket. “He says he is from the FBI.”
Geller greeted his visitor and offered him a lawn chair. The agent, who said he preferred to stand, was middle-aged with gray hair, a pale complexion and a wool suit.
“We have a proposal for Mr. Farcolini,” the agent said, peering over his shoulder at Felipe, who hovered nearby.
Geller didn’t reply. To deny he knew Carlo Farcolini would be absurd. To admit that they could communicate would expose him to conspiracy charges.
“We’re having problems with New York Harbor,” the agent said. “The shipyards, the docks, the unions. We’re at a standstill again. Nothing is moving.”
“Why come to me?” Geller asked.
“We can’t figure out if it’s Corini or Gigenti we should talk to.”
“Why not see Mr. Farcolini? I believe he’s still in federal custody.”
“Now he wants a free pass. That’s impossible.”
“You want to negotiate,” Geller observed. “What would you propose?”
“Let’s be frank,” the agent replied. “All priorities have changed.”
“Even for the newly elected governor of New York?”
“For everybody, Mr. Geller.”
“Maybe you should approach Mr. Farcolini in a day or so. He may come up with an idea that would be acceptable to Governor Dewey and Mr. Hoover.” Geller gestured for Felipe to lead the man to his car.
The gray man in the gray suit brightened a bit. Charged with the task of recruiting Farcolini’s growing empire to back the war effort, he’d flown to Miami with two assumptions: that the Farcolinis, as ruthless as they were, would support the defeat of totalitarian regimes and that Cy Geller was a reasonable man. He’d return to New York with a sense of mission accomplished.
