Operation Underworld

by Paddy Kelly

  “Socks, it don’t matter what I think…”

  “Look me in the fuckin’eye and tell me you think I’m a fuckin’ fink!” Lanza was leaning over the table now, only inches from Frankie’s face and staring him straight in the eyes.

  Jimmy instinctively reached under the left breast of his jacket. Frankie reached over to lay his hand on Jimmy’s forearm. Frankie kept eye contact with Socks, and pointing his index finger, replied, “I don’t think you’re sellin’ out Joey. I wouldn’t never peg you for a fink. Never. But lettin’ this DA in on operations is bad business.”

  Lanza at last felt some relief and fell back in his chair. He took a deep breath, let it out and peered across the table at Jimmy. “What the fuck was you doin’? Scratchin’ ya tit?” he asked with half a smile.

  “Socks, look here. You want the Camardos involved, you know whose okay you gotta get? Right?” Lanza didn’t answer right away. “Are we okay? Socks! Are we okay or what?” Frankie prodded.

  “Charlie would never deal with these bastards. Not after what they done ta him in court,” Socks replied, reaching for the check. “Yeah, we’re okay. But do me a favour, will ya?”

  Frankie nodded a ‘What?’

  “Next time leave this big prick at home, will ya? He eats like a fuckin’ horse!”

  Chapter Ten

  For the first time since the turn of the century the overall labour situation in America was stable. The violent union wars of the twenties were replaced by the violent labour wars of the thirties and the Depression, which in turn gave way to the retooling and re-employment required by the war effort. There was an unwritten ‘no strike’ agreement for the duration of the war amongst the waterfront labour force, and virtually every individual or entity involved in labour utilised this time to posture and jockey for political position in preparation for the day when things would return to normal.

  A significant piece of the union pie was being sought after by the American Communist Party, represented by the Industrial Workers of the World labour union. In 1942, the CPA were a legitimate political party and, in contrast to any other party, stood on a platform composed almost entirely of labour issues. They held sway with large segments of the labor population of America owing to their earlier victories against vicious factory owners in New England and New York, and until the witch hunts of the Late Forties there were no widespread fears of Communists taking over the country and eating all the babies.

  The labour union leaders of other factions, however, were very afraid. The Communists offered members of the labour force something the other parties would not even talk about, a share in the pie. However unsuccessful this would prove to be in later years, at the time it was a difficult enticement to ignore.

  The party had gained considerable momentum on the West Coast and the man out there doing all the talk about pie sharing was a man named Harry Bridges.

  Harry made the mistake late that February, of coming to New York. He compounded this error in judgement by letting his intentions be known, before leaving the West Coast, that the goal of his pilgrimage would be to organise labour in New York.

  Officially, he was functioning completely within the law, as a duly elected representative of a legitimate political party and an international labour union.

  But that was in California. Seems way out there on the sunny West Coast, Harry hadn’t gotten the word that New York labour was already organised. By some Italians.

  From LaGuardia Field, Bridges took a taxi into mid-town and arrived at the Hollywood Hotel about mid-morning, across from one of Luciano’s former favorite night spots, the Paradise. Although the Hollywood did not boast the elaborate floor shows of the Paradise, the service was good, the rooms spacious and it suited Harry’s love of comfortable surroundings. After all, if one were to battle the bourgeois, one had to understand its ways.

  The effeminate desk clerk saw nothing unusual in the dark-haired, medium-built man in the dark grey suit and as Mr Bridges registered, the desk clerk rang for a Front, and then handed the new guest his metal tagged room key. The bell boy, who had been leaning against the wall reading a comic book, took his time getting to the desk and Harry headed for the elevators. Waiting for the guest to be out of earshot, the desk clerk, in his lispy dialect, addressed the Front.

  “Franklin! I’ve told you time and again about that gum! Take it out of your mouth this instant or I’ll report you to Mr. Carlson!”

  The bellhop made an exaggerated gesture of swallowing the offending confectionary.

  The frail little desk clerk, about half the size of Frankie the bellhop, did not think it a good idea to push his luck, so when Frankie approached, the clerk turned and occupied himself at the back desk.

  As Frankie watched the new guest walk towards the elevator, he squinted his eyes in a gesture of faint recognition. Turning the register around, he read the name and smiled. He carried the two suitcases to the elevator, which had already taken Mr Bridges up to his room. Setting them aside by the large fern, he went across the lobby to a bank of phone booths.

  “Lemme talk to Mr Lanza.” Frankie felt like a kid at Christmas when he pulled the door shut.

  “Who the hell is this?”

  “Frankie. I need to talk to him.”

  “Frankie who?”

  “Frankie, over at the Hollywood. Tell him I got something for him.”

  “Hold on.” The bellhop knew he had a chance to start establishing his reputation in The Unione. Frankie reckoned that if his guess was right, he would no longer have to wait for his piece of shit brother-in-law to get him connected.

  “Yeah, who am I talking to?” Lanza asked impatiently.

  “Mr Lanza! This is Frankie. Frankie the bellhop, uptown at the Hollywood Hotel.

  “Frankie the bellhop?”

  “Yes sir. I think I got somethin’ for ya.”

  “Yeah, like what, Frankie the bellhop?”

  “You know that Commie Pinko labour guy from California?” He had trouble containing himself.

  “Harry Bridges the Commie? What about him?”

  “Guess who just checked into room 1017?” By now, the diminutive desk clerk had swished across the lobby and was heading towards the phone booth.

  Lanza asked in a low, slow controlled voice, registering increasing satisfaction as he spoke. “He’s there, at the Hollywood?” There was a momentary pause on Lanza’s end of the line. “Room 1017, is dat right?” Lanza reconfirmed.

  “Yes sir. I’m supposed ta take his bags up right now.”

  “Well, nice job, Frankie the bellhop. You still want in at the union?”

  “Hedy Lamarr got nice tits?”

  “Go down to Fulton Street on Monday morning. See Joey DiTorrio. Tell him I sent ya. Hey kid, what the hell is that bangin’ sound?” Lanza held the receiver away from his head and looked at it. The desk clerk had found Frankie.

  “Nuthin’, Mr Lanza. I’ll take care of it, thanks.” Frankie hung up and slid open the bi-fold door. The clerk stopped his banging, and took a step back from the phone booth.

  “Did you put Mr Bridges’ bags in the elevator?” Frankie the used-to-be bellhop gave no verbal response. Instead, he walked back over to the fern, lifted the two suitcases and threw them into the open elevator. He reached in and pushed several buttons, and the cases disappeared behind the closing doors.

  Removing his small, round, blue and gold cap, he walked over to the reception desk, and after tossing the cap over the desk, Frankie magically produced the gum from his mouth he was supposed to have swallowed, and spat the wad on the open register book. Giving a broad smile to the clerk, who prudently remained across the lobby, he slammed the book closed and pressed firmly, being sure to smash the gum flat.

  Bravely, from his safe position by the phone booths, the clerk called out that Frankie had better find another job because he was never going to work at the Hollywood again.

  Oh yeah. He was going to report him to Mr Carlson, too.

  Lanza’s luck that
morning ran thin after Frankie’s phone call. Although he immediately dispatched a reception committee, by the time they arrived uptown, Bridges had left his room. Next, he called Commander Haffenden’s suite at the Astor, but there was no answer.

  Lanza instructed the three men to hang around the hotel and call when Bridges returned. Their wait was short. About an hour later, Harry walked across the lobby and took the elevator up to his room. Socks picked up the phone on the first ring.

  “Yeah, who’s talking?”

  “It’s me.”

  “Commander! I was just tryin’ ta call you!”

  “Have you got something for me on the other dock situation?” “No. But we got an out of town visitor.”

  “Who?” Haffenden’s anticipation quickly peeked as he harbored hope that someone had finally caught a saboteur.

  “Harry Bridges.”

  “The labour organiser?” Haffenden was seriously surprised.

  “Yeah!”

  “So?” He did not attach the same significance to this development as did Lanza. Then again, Haffenden was not involved in illicit labour manipulation. Not technically.

  “So? He’s a Commie!”

  “Socks, being a Communist isn’t illegal.” It never occurred to Lanza that Haffenden would give him any opposition on this.

  “What if he starts talking some of that Commie shit out here? What if he came out here to disrupt the unions? What about if he’s in cahoots with some German spies or somethin’? Then it would be illegal! Right?” Haffenden knew what Lanza was driving at. He wanted Haffenden’s okay to take care of Bridges.

  If he gave the nod, and anyone ever found out he sanctioned violence against an elected representative, the operation, as well as his career, may be over. On the other hand, if he told Lanza to lay off, he might not have as much co-operation as he was presently enjoying. Haffenden’s long silence ended.

  “Do what you gotta do. Only, I don’t need to know how. Just let me know when it’s done.” There was nothing more to say. He hung up.

  Socks called the hotel and gave his men their instructions. Then he placed a second call and arranged for a flight.

  Harry didn’t know it yet, but his pilgrimage was over.

  A block away from the Fulton Street Fish Market, there stood a three storey brick warehouse, circa nineteen twenties. The two hobos standing at the side door were surprised when they saw the bright yellow sign nailed to the door: CLOSED BY ORDER OF NEW YORK CITY BOARD OF HEALTH. INFECTED RATS FOUND ON PREMISES.

  “What’s it say?”

  “What’sa matter? Can’t you read? It says, ‘Closed… for… remodlin’.”

  “Damn! I really liked that place, too. Spacious, nice gentle ambience.”

  The two disappointed men turned and walked away in search of other accommodation, and a place to share their bottle of vintage Thunderbird wine.

  Originally used to store large shipments of dry goods, the warehouse was abandoned in the late thirties when temperature-controlled storage and the advent of more efficient trucking came to lower Manhattan. With most of the windows broken out and literally every single fixture, removable or not, having been removed, the building was of little use to anyone except some of the less desirable hobos who had been banned from the doorways, streets and sewers of the Lower Bowery.

  Of course, New York being New York, the building might have been abandoned but that didn’t mean it wasn’t occupied. Voices could be heard emanating from the basement. They were the voices of Lanza and Haffenden. The words, however, had a Marconian crackle to them.

  In a small room, in the basement, were two men. The room they were in was in the extreme corner of the lower level, and its door had a crooked sign hanging by one nail which read: JANITOR. The two men wore bulky headsets and were staring intently at the RCA eight inch reel-to-reel tape recorder, while listening to the play-back of Operation Underworld’s two prime players.

  “What the hell do you make of that?” one of the agents asked, sliding his bulky headset down around his neck.

  “Got me by the short ones! I figure the guys at the Hollywood belong to Lanza. But this other guy he’s reportin’ to has to be somebody pretty god-damned big.”

  “Well, it sure as hell ain’t Luciano. Must be some new boss, moved in to take over.”

  “The Commander?”

  “Where the hell do they come up with these ridiculous names?”

  That night, Harry Bridges remembered coming around the corner onto Broadway, and then the stars were swirling in front of his eyes, and his vision blurred to a haze. Now he sat in the back of a car with a huge man sitting on either side of him, and his arms were pinned behind his back.

  A short time later, he was in the back room of a restaurant, lying on the floor, still blindfolded, beaten and bruised, while sounds of banging pots and crashing dishes surrounded him. Acar pulled up outside, and he was man-handled into the back seat. At LaGuardia Field he was escorted onto a plane, shortly before take-off, and he understood that, except for in the movies, he had no reason ever see New York again.

  The next morning, even before he had eaten his eggs, Socks was back on the phone with The Commander.

  “We don’t anticipate any more trouble concerning that Brooklyn Bridge deal. He got on a plane last night.”

  “Alright. What about Brooklyn?”

  Lanza hesitated before answering. “No, nuthin’ yet.”

  “We need a meet after the weekend. Monday, the usual place, alone. If you get there first, don’t order the fish.”

  “I won’t.”

  Lanza had a nervous feeling as he hung up. Not only was this operation taking away from his own business time and making no contribution to his impending case, it appeared to be rapidly gaining in intensity and scope. Worst of all, what if Jimmy The Bull was right? No one anywhere had discovered any saboteurs.

  Times for meetings were on a rotational basis per day. In other words, if a day was given over the phone, it actually meant the day after, and depending on which day the meeting was actually on, the times were previously set. For example, Mondays were always three o’clock, Tuesdays were always four o’clock and so on. If a special, unscheduled meeting was necessary, a code word was used in the conversation and special couriers were utilised. Late that afternoon Socks got a special courier.

  Lucky Luciano had a close partner, Frank Costello. Frank Costello had a top-notch bookie, Eddie Erickson. Eddie would regularly meet with Walter Winchell. Every so often, in order to get the inside scoop on ‘bigtime’ crime stories, Winchell would pass information on winning horses to a very highly placed law enforcement official. The same official who now stood at window number three of the betting cages.

  The elderly man in the cashier’s cage read the ticket the gambler had just slid across the counter.

  “Belmont. Albany Eddie to show in the third.” He looked up at the small man in the dark suit with the oval, baby face. The cashier recognised him instantly, even without the two bodyguards standing on either side of him. Double-checking the clipboard hanging next to him to confirm the results, the cashier filed the ticket and counted out the man’s $250.

  The man stepped off to one side and faced into the wall to put the money away, and one of the short, pugnacious men with him commented as he removed his wallet from his breast pocket.

  “You don’t bet too often, Chief, but when you do, you sure can pick ’em.”

  “You just have to know how to study the ponies, agent. That, and a little luck.”

  The opened bill fold showed an ID card with a red stamp across it which read, DIRECTOR and a picture of the little man, as well as a small, toy-like gold badge. The name under the photo read: J. Edgar Hoover.

  Belmont Park was the third leg of The Triple Crown and one of the oldest and largest racetracks in the country. Although races were normally restricted or suspended in the winter months, the combination of the mild weather and the wartime atmosphere persuaded the owners to extend the season
.

  Saturday was always the best day to be there. There were specials at the restaurant, happy hour started earlier, and there were more races to bet on. Whenever someone brought a friend to the track for the first time, they were careful to bring them in through the main arcade. For it was here that the excitement flowed over the lucky losers at its strongest, and the absolute sensation of privilege at being allowed to donate your money to such a fine establishment was most appreciated. It is highly probable that this is the very atmosphere that first inspired Buggsy Siegel to claim to have conceived the idea of a casino in the middle of the desert, to his compatriots a few years later.

  The awful stench of the food and cigar smoke permeated the arcade and flowed out onto the first few tiers of stadium seating, where they collided with the pleasant aromas of horse shit and damp turf.

  “What time is it?”

  Looking at his watch, short agent number one answered, “Half past five, Mr Hoover.” All three men wore identical dark suits, white shirts, Fedoras and shiny black shoes so you couldn’t tell they were FBI.

  “Alright, you two go and watch the races. Meet me by concession stand three, at six o’clock.”

  “But Mr Hoover, we’re supposed to stay with you at – ” short agent number two began to protest, but was cut short.

  “I SAID GO, GOD-DAMN IT!”

  They went.

  Hoover was the most successful bureaucrat in the history of Washington DC. From the time his father got him his first job at the Department of Justice, in June of 1917, his borderline fanaticism, which he mistakenly believed to be loyalty, grew ever stronger and increasingly self-perpetuating.

  In no time at all, J. Edgar’s ability to manipulate knowledge and information before it reached the people had grown to legendary proportions.

  During the Deportation Hysteria of the early 1920s, Hoover worked at the Enemy Alien Registration Section, appropriately abbreviated EARS, of the Bureau of Investigation. It is from the ‘reports’ of the misguided scientists who testified with ‘scientific proof’ that aliens, especially Eastern European Jews, were by-and-large undesirable, (due to everything from crime and disease to an increased tendency to display feeble-mindedness), that he first learned how easy it was to dupe the American public.