After Midnight

by Joseph Rubas

  In 1966, the family’s consigliere, basically second-in-command, died, and Don Mortanno passed over every Italian in the family (his brother included) and gave the job to Joey the Kraut. This was a pretty unprecedented move. Shit like that just didn’t happen.

  Joey was good in the role, so whatever. Then the unthinkable happened.

  In early 1981, Don Mortanno got sick, real sick. They said it was cancer, but a lot of people now think it was AIDS. He had a shitload of young playthings, and at least one of them definitely had it, ‘cause she died in 1983 after years of illness.

  Before he died, Don Mortanno retired. His brother was in jail serving a fifteen year sentence for mowing down a guy in Newark while drunk, so Joey the Kraut inherited the family.

  The mob is a very...ethnic institution. If you aren’t full Italian, you can never be made, or become a full member. You can be an associate, whatever, but you can’t rise up the ranks. Joey the Kraut was the first non-Italian boss of a crime family ever. And that didn’t sit well in New York. The boss of the Genovese Family at the time especially.

  Don Mortanno died in September. Less than a month later, Don Joey (or Don Adolf, as the guys knew him) was shot as he and Marie were eating dinner in this Italian place in Queens.

  The bullet hit him in the arm and he was fine, but, boy, was he pissed. He knew who it was right off the bat, and he started planning revenge.

  On October 31, Don Adolf called a meeting of all capos and basically ordered us to decimate the Genovese Family.

  The war officially began at noon on November 15. A carful of guys opened up on a pizzeria owned by a Genovese capo, killing three.

  Next, the same car rounded a corner and sprayed a social club owned by another Genovese guy, wasting two more guys.

  That alone probably would have been good enough, but Don Adolf was on the warpath.

  Around two’o’clock, three made Genovese guys were climbing into their studebaker in Flatlands when a bomb under their car went off, killing all of them. An hour later, a team of wiseguys pretending to be feds kidnapped another capo in Midtown and blew his brains out. Ten minutes later, a grenade flew through the window of a Genovese-owned bar in Hell’s Kitchen and blew a few limbs off.

  All through this, I was at the cabstand I operated out of. At ten that night, I was ordered to take a bunch of my soldiers to a Genovese bar down the street and kill everyone I found. It was Thursday, and apparently the bar closed early and a bunch of made men played cards.

  There were ten of us. We piled into a van, me at the wheel, and drove on over; everyone was packing AK-47s, Uzis, pistols...it was crazy.

  We parked a few streets over and went the rest of the way on foot. Around back, we found a loading dock and were gonna go in, but some asshole opened up the door, you know, coming out with a bag of trash. I was in the lead, so I shot him in the head. (I forgot about that until just now).

  After that, we stormed in like the S.W.A.T team or something.

  In the back, we found seven guys around a table, playing poker, smoking, that sort of thing. We caught ‘em off guard, so they couldn’t even reach for their guns.

  I had a guy pat ‘em down and take their pieces, then I made ‘em stand up against the wall. Once they were all in a line, two guys massacred their asses. Then, before we left, we lit the place on fire.

  That was pretty much it for me. We went back to the cabstand and waited for a retaliatory strike.

  It never came.

  Overnight, other crews throughout the city broke into the homes of Genovese capos and murdered them and their families. There were thirty crews in the Genovese Family at the time, meaning there were thirty capos. By three in the morning, we’d killed ten of them.

  Around dawn, one of our guys sneaked out to the Genovese’s boss’s estate on Long Island and hit it with a rocket launcher. He was ordered to hit the boss’s bedroom. Instead, he blew up the front of the house, collapsed it into a pile of rubble. I heard they killed him for that.

  Less than an hour later, or so I heard, the boss called Don Adolf and begged him to call his guys off.

  Later that day, I got it through the chain of command that Don Adolf and the Genovese boss were gonna meet and discuss terms for a truce.

  The meeting took place at a restaurant the family owned on the tip of Long Island. The Genovese boss was told to come with his underboss and a team of bodyguards, but no one else. On the other hand, Don Adolf came with two full crews of made guys (about two dozen heads), while a bunch of us went undercover and watched from afar.

  Obviously, I wasn’t inside, so I don’t know what happened. I heard that Don Adolf had the Genovese’s boss’s guys searched, took their guns, then had ‘em stood up against the wall and shot. I also heard he made the boss beg for forgiveness on his knees, and then shot him in the head. Either way, the entire Genovese administration died that day.

  And Don Adolf?

  No one ever fucked with him again...until I turned state’s. Once all of his capos and made men were gone, he lasted maybe an hour; they found him in a dumpster.

  Stupid Kraut, didn’t know shit about family business.

  Artie’s Last Show

  Arthur Hoyt’s last broadcast on March 28, 1984, has since morphed into Radioland legend, along with Uncle Don’s “little bastards” comment and Harry von Zell’s comic mispronunciation of Herbert Hoover’s name. The entire two hour show (three hours on a regular night) has been posted somewhere on Youtube.com and the broadcast has been profiled in several books and on dozens of websites devoted to urban legends.

  It simply amazes me how the myth’s persisted. It’s taken on a life of its own. No matter what I or anyone else who was there that night says, it will never die.

  For almost thirty years we’ve pretended it was a hoax, that we were injecting a little dark humor into a somber night. Well, I’m done lying, I’m sick of it. At the time it seemed like the best thing to do, but in retrospect it really wasn’t. We got together over beers and decided it would be better if we looked like a band of morbid pranksters than liars or worse. Little good that did us. We all still lost our jobs, and the media industry blacklisted us. Everyone knew our faces from the papers and the nightly newscasts, and we all became pariahs. It took me four years to get back in the biz, hosting a metal show at a small-wattage station in Newport News, and I only got the job after the boss extracted a written statement from me that I wouldn’t pull any “funny business” like Hoytgate.

  I’ve come a long way since then. I host a nationally syndicated conservative talk radio show, on before Rush Limbaugh in most markets, and have written several bestselling books. But the Hoyt affair still haunts me today. Sometimes at night, as I lay with my fingers laced behind my head, I look into the darkness and wonder if it actually happened. But even then I know it did. I lied to the world, and that was hard, but I can’t lie to myself.

  Arthur Hoyt was a walking controversy from his first day on the air in 1962. He got fired and driven out of cities every year or so and one time even spent a few days in jail on obscenities charges in Atlantic City (he was doing a show with Lenny Bruce, and wasn’t about to let some pinko commie bastard upstage him).

  But that none of that ever really hurt him. He was always the most popular radio host no matter where he went or what he did. Remember, all this was long before Howard Stern and The Grease Man, and people had never heard anything like it. He was the original rude, aggressive, shrill, crass smartass. He was so big, a lot of guys tried to emulate him, but they could never get his sound and style right. A few are still in local radio, but no one really knows or cares who they are.

  In 1969, Hoyt was offered the chance to appear at Woodstock, but he turned it down and supposedly drenched the guy who came to him with a Coke. He was in Tampa then. He got let go in ’71 after dropping the S-bomb, and wasn’t even out the door when a rep from D.C. asked him to take over the morning drive-time. Hoyt accepted, and did his first show in September.

 
The problem was, no one listened. I guess he was too much to swallow that early. He lingered there until ’75, when he was moved to an evening slot. He did pretty damn well, actually, so in hindsight it seems moving him to midnight was a risky move. But to midnight he went in ’78, and there he stayed. He drew an enormous listenership, which exploded when he started taking calls, and in ’81 he was nationally syndicated.

  I entered the picture in 1984 as a young intern fresh from a failed tenure in college. I had been in love with radio from my earliest days. I don’t know what it was about radio, but I was captivated with it and, when I flunked college, I immediately started looking for a crack in the biz to slide through. I was home for two months before I found it in the paper. I knew going in that I would be a go-fer (go-fer this, go-fer that), but I didn’t care. I just wanted to be a part of the crew in a real live radio station.

  My day ended officially at three, since I wasn’t on the payroll, but, of course, I hung around, usually staying until after midnight. Some of the afternoon guys were cool enough to let me sit in while they broadcast. John and Mike, who did their show from 5 to 7:30, never did more than let me watch from the production booth, where I was a giddy child surrounded by wonders greater than anything Willy Wonka had to offer. But Joe and Dukes, who spiced up the Washington region’s dull evenings with commentary, stories, jokes, stunts, and the hilarious like from 7:30 to 11:30, actually had me on their show a few times, mainly to poke fun at me on slow nights.

  I usually left this heavenly world at 11:30 with Joe and Dukes, because Hoyt would blow like an A-bomb if he came in and had to suffer my shiny, unlined mug peering wide-eyed from the production booth. My day pretty much ended when Joe and Dukes left, but I was always reluctant to return to my trashy little apartment in Southeast, so I would stay on for the first half hour or so of Hoyt’s show.

  That night, Joe and Dukes were hosting some kind of special or something, and their time slot was generously expanded to twelve, replacing the half hour newscast that separated theirs and Hoyt’s shows. It was about five after midnight when they finally left the studio. I was in the lobby in a thin, uncomfortable waiting room chair listening to rock ’n’ roll on my transistor radio and gazing at the portraits of popular radio personalities, past and present, which lined the gray walls.

  They passed me by, mumbling something and snickering, one (Joe) a plump meatball, the other (Dukes, of course) a tall, black-headed pretty-boy type.

  “Take it easy, Eddie,” Joe said without turning his head; as he walked his double chin jiggled like Jell-O.

  “See you tomorrow, Ed,” Dukes said, jerkily glancing at me as if I were nothing more than a homeless man on the street, and he ashamed to pass by without a dime or a quarter for my grubby, outstretched hand.

  “See ya, guys,” I eagerly ejaculated, hating the juvenile quality of my voice.

  Not too long after they left, as Krokus was “Screaming in the Night” on 96.9, the elevator doors pinged! open and Hoyt came click-clacking down the marble hall, dressed in dirty slacks and a tan trench coat, shoulders black from the pouring rain outside. His face, as usual, was tightly puckered, as if he’d just gone down on a lemon.

  He passed briskly by in a swish of gin-and-ashtray smelling air which made me retch, barged into the studio, and slammed the door so hard that it quivered fearfully in its frame.

  I sighed. He was in a really bad mood, just great. I hoped to God that he wouldn’t come out into the hall before I left. He usually didn’t, but when he did he always glared at me like I had killed his mother.

  Not too long after Hoyt arrived Johnny Marcus and Nadine Mann came strutting down the hall like they were God’s gift to humanity. They passed me, softly discussing something, and disappeared into the break room. They regularly appeared on Hoyt’s “Today’s Panel,” where various topics were debated, lampooned and disparaged. Johnny was tall and wiry with wavy brown hair and tiny glasses, and wore the same tweed jacket with leather patches day in and day out. Nadine was short, midnight black with a bushy afro, and as liberal as they come.

  They both wrote op-ed pieces for the Washington Star, and spent every waking moment out of the office in each other’s company. Dukes would often say that he wasn’t sure if she was his faghag, or he her dyke tyke.

  I switched from 96.9 to 106.7, W.E.F.T., just as Hoyt’s show was beginning. The news and the weather finished, Hoyt’s theme music swelled, and the canned announcer took off. “Welcome to the freewheeling Arthur Hoyt Show. He’s the devil’s advocate, the Red Chairman, the angry, white, apolitical Elvis, the grand poobah and the FCC’s worst nightmare; hated by the SDS, the KKK, and everyone in-between. Heeeereeessss Arrrtieeeee!”

  Over the music, the lemon sour whine of Arthur Hoyt issued forth: “Tonight I’m sore at EMTs, police officers, idiot drivers and wrecked vehicles, so watch out.”

  I rolled my eyes; he was always sore at something.

  “See, some retard wrapped his car around a telephone pole in front of my building tonight. I was almost late because the inconsiderate slobs who call themselves first responders were clogging up the street taking care of this idiot. Anyway, like I said, I’m mad at the world, so call up and share – or take – my wrath; no morons need apply.”

  After the music finished up and Hoyt did a long monologue about idiots in all parts of society and the world, he took a call from an elderly woman who was enraged at his continued use of the word “retarded” and its derivatives, as she had a mentally-challenged son. Though Hoyt kept his language clean, I am uncomfortable repeating the horrible things that he said to the woman.

  The next call came from a former cop who fueled Hoyt’s current hatred of medical service technicians by telling him that an EMT friend of his purposefully caused trouble on the highway for a good laugh.

  “I knew it,” Hoyt said calmly, after actually thanking the cop for his bit of information. “That’s how the sick bastards get their kicks.”

  A few calls later, just when it seemed that that situation was over, an irate paramedic from the ambulance garage under the hospital phoned in, offended by Hoyt’s beef with his kind.

  “Look, we’re hard-workin’ people. We don’t wanna be out there anymore than you want us out there, but…”

  “Why must you block highways?” Hoyt asked.

  “Huh?” asked the medic.

  “You and your brethren park right in the middle of the road when you know people are trying to get through.”

  The medic laughed, a humorless sound of disbelief. “Where do you want us to park, Arthur,” he asked, “on the sidewalks?”

  “Listen here, smartass!” Art spat, “this is my show. I won’t have you insulting me!”

  “What?” the caller drew, “I didn’t insult you. I called you Arthur…”

  “Your tone!” Hoyt shouted. “The tone you said it in.”

  For a moment the medic was silent, then he chuckled. “Look, friend, you need to calm down…”

  “Don’t tell me anything! I…”

  “Why do you listen to him?”

  Startled, I turned to see Johnny Marcus standing in front of the break room door, a Styrofoam cup of coffee held loosely in one hand.

  “He’s funny,” I replied meekly.

  Johnny snorted, “About as funny as rectal cancer. It’s actually sad; he’s a bitter, lonely old man.”

  It was an oft repeated rumor around the studio that Hoyt had lost his wife and daughter during the Andrea Doria disaster in the mid-fifties. He was supposedly in America waiting for them to come home from a vacation when he was roused from his hotel room and told of the collision. When he found out that his family was dead, he was said to have had had a nervous breakdown, and had never been the same since.

  Thinking that he was spewing repressed grief and I was enjoying it the way a sicko enjoys a Faces of Death video, I began to feel a hot rise of shame.

  Having spoken more words to me than he ever had before, Johnny Marcus returned to the bre
ak room, happy to leave me with my guilt. But the show rolled on and, dead family or not, it was one of the best I had ever heard. Once, a young man roughly my age called in and actually fulfilled Hoyt’s request to start a fight with his ill-tempered mother. Even he laughed genuinely at that.

  But his negativity soon reasserted itself when a black man called in and accused him of being an old racist, and was affirmed when an airhead valley girl phoned in and giggled at his insults until his voice shook with rage.

  Finally, Hoyt needed a breather and went to commercial. I sat the radio aside and stood, a hot cramp rising in my leg. I stretched, yawned, and shambled up the hall to the bathroom near the elevator. When I stepped in one of the overhead lights flickered with an electric sound, and went out. For a split second I was hesitant to enter the horror movie atmosphere, but shook that away and did my business.

  Done, I hobbled over to one of the sinks, drew cold water, cupped my hands under the flow, and splashed it against my face. I looked up at myself in the smudged mirror, my face pale and my eyes pink.

  I needed sleep, but I hated going home. I was happy all day at the station, but when I got home my mood always darkened. I hated my dingy little apartment, the cold look of it, the dank smell of it, the…

  I was startled from my thoughts when the bathroom door slammed open against the wall. I jerked as though shot and spun my head around; for a moment I didn’t even recognize Johnny Marcus in the threshold. He looked puzzled at me, as if I couldn’t have been more out of place, and seemed to shake himself out of a trance. He rushed past me to the urinal closest to the far wall. I watched as he flung his tie over his shoulder, unzipped his pants, and went about his business.