by Andrew Gross
Oscar sniffed in his nose loudly. He massaged his face. He reached for another cigarette. He lit it and tossed the match in the ashtray. “I’m listening.”
They did bring in a lawyer. Not Oscar’s, of course. He couldn’t trust that his own lawyer wouldn’t be on the horn to his bosses the moment Oscar hung up from him. A court-appointed lawyer. A fancy one, to work out the details of their plea agreement.
The real interrogation began the next day.
“How many of these special assignments did you personally participate in, Mr. Hammerschmitt?” Thomas Dewey asked him.
“Maybe ten, fifteen.” The gangster shrugged. “We didn’t exactly keep records on that sort of thing. Hard to keep track.”
“And how much were you paid for your work?”
“Paid? Fifty to sixty thousand a year,” Oscar said. “Plus money for outside labor, if we needed it.”
“Outside labor?”
“Additional personnel. Slammers. Sometimes the situation required it.”
“Kind of funny,” Dewey said, smiling, “the union enforcers having to use outside labor.”
“Yeah, hilarious,” Oscar chuffed. His dress shirt was sweated through and opened to the chest, over a sleeveless undershirt. A two-day growth was on his face. At least seven Old Gold butts lay crushed in the ashtray.
“Anyway, it was highly profitable work, it seems. And who would alert you that such an action was necessary?”
“We’d get a call. It could be from a couple of people. The orders always came from above.”
“Names, Mr. Hammerschmitt.” Dewey tapped his index finger on the table.
“Gurrah. Jacob Shapiro.” Oscar flicked his cigarette.
“Lepke?”
“If it came from Gurrah you could assume it came from Lepke too. Those two are like butter and bread.”
“And what about from the union?”
“What about the union?” Oscar asked.
“Who would alert you from the union that your kind of work was needed for a recalcitrant client?”
“Re-calcitrant . . . ?” The gangster screwed up his eyes.
“Someone who didn’t want to play the game, Mr. Hammerschmitt.”
“Oh. There were a couple of them.” Oscar shrugged again. “There was one I worked with mostly.”
“And who was that?” Dewey pressed.
“This guy, Cy Haddad.”
“Haddad. Write that down if you please, Mr. Hammerschmitt.”
He described how the situation would generally proceed. A company would refuse to comply with some aspect of the agreement. Often it took just a phone call to convince them to fall in line. Other times, a visit. To wave the flag, as it was called. Usually the guy got back in line quick. Once in a rare while someone was just stubborn enough that they needed to do some real work. “Those were the calls we liked best.” Oscar grinned. “We got to show off our skills.”
“Your skills?” Dewey asked for clarification.
“Yeah,” Oscar said, lighting up a new smoke, “at persuasion.”
“And you’re certain your superiors were aware of these actions?” Dewey asked. “Mr. Shapiro? And Mr. Lepke?”
“ ’Course they were aware,” the gangster chortled. “They’re the bosses. We talked about it many times. They paid us bonuses based on how good we’d done.”
“How good you’d done . . . ?”
“Whether or not the company got back in line.”
“And how good were you at what you did?”
Oscar nodded and grinned crookedly. “They always got back in line.”
Irv and Dewey pressed him in detail about specific conversations. What was Mr. Gurrah’s reaction? What did Mr. Buchalter say?
“What did they say?” Oscar bunched his thick lips and shrugged. “Once he may have said, ‘Good job’? Another time, ‘Here’s two tickets to the Yankee game.’ Or ‘Go take a week in the Bahamas.’ ”
They went over it and over it again until they had enough. Enough to confirm Lepke’s and Shapiro’s day-to-day control of the fur dressers union. And the use of intimidation and violence to enact their illegal schemes. Extortion. Restraint of trade. Price fixing. Not just one count. Several. If Hammerschmitt talked on the stand, it was enough to put them away for years.
After three days of spilling his guts, he was done. Oscar stamped out maybe his hundredth cigarette in the ashtray. “So I don’t have to spend no jail time? This is all good, right? You got enough.”
“It’s all good,” Dewey said. “But still not quite enough for that, I’m afraid.”
“What are you talking about? I got him lined up on a silver platter for you.”
“On union violations. Maybe some antitrust charges, yes. Each carries a maximum prison term of only five years. The actual physical assaults will be harder to prove.”
“Wait a minute! You said if I told you what I know, you’d set me up somewhere. After the trial. I got it in writing.”
“What I said, Mr. Hammerschmitt,” Dewey elaborated, “was that that depended on what you know.”
“I told you what I know.”
“That’s up to you, Mr. Hammerschmitt. If you want to find yourself on some beach somewhere, instead of upstate, I’m hoping there’s more.”
Oscar sat, rubbing his face. Dewey waited. The gangster got up. He went to the wall and leaned on it with his palms outstretched. Finally he turned around. “I know stuff.”
“Then let’s hear it, Mr. Hammerschmitt,” Dewey said. “We’re all ears.”
Oscar came back to the table. He let out a breath and sat back down and laughed. “How you guys gonna keep me alive?”
“You let us worry about that.”
“You worry about it, huh?” He snorted. He took a long sip of water and looked at them like he was signing away his life with what he was about to say. “I was once a driver,” he said. “Back in ’28. I drove them out. Both of them.”
“Drove who?” Dewey pressed. “Where?”
“Lepke. Gurrah. They did this job. I’m not sure who it was for. I heard Albert Anastasia. It was this candy store owner. Maybe you heard of him. Blinky Cohen.”
“I know of Blinky Cohen.” Dewey nodded and looked at Irv. Pictures of Cohen’s bloodied body had made the front pages of all the local papers. The crime was still unsolved.
Oscar grinned. “Then maybe you also heard he ain’t around no more.”
Dewey looked at Oscar sternly. “You’re sure it was them? Lepke, Shapiro. They did the killing?”
“ ’Course I’m sure. I was the driver. They even came back out with a box of Cracker Jacks and laughed about it.”
“Cracker Jacks. I like that.” Dewey smiled, got up, and plopped down a pad of paper in front of Oscar. “Start writing.”
An hour later, they had eyewitness testimony to first-degree murder, a crime that could put Lepke and Gurrah away for good, not just a few years. Maybe even get them the chair. Oscar Hammerschmitt finished and pushed the tablet back across the table, ashen, empty. He looked at Dewey. “There.”
“All right, one last question, Mr. Hammerschmitt. And then you have your deal.”
“You guys don’t give up, do you?” He took a drag on his cigarette. “What’s that?”
Dewey leaned in close. His eyes were fixed and alive. “Who killed Abe Langer?”
Chapter Fifty
Louis Buchalter was worried sick.
In the back room of Rose’s Steak House, a Kosher restaurant off Ocean Avenue in Brooklyn, he sat, finishing up a bowl of borscht. A plate of herring and a bowl of kreplach, potato dumplings, sat nearby.
There was one other place set at the table.
Buchalter knew the special prosecutor was preparing indictments against him. Charges related to his union activities. Buchalter had the finest lawyers; informants wherever he could spread a buck. He had people who could intimidate anyone who even thought about raising their right hand. But this time he had a troubled feeling. It was funny, he t
hought, with all the shit he’d done, that what he could end up going to prison for was union fraud. Extortion. Price fixing! He knew he couldn’t be like Schultz and propose to kill Dewey. It would be like killing the president now. He’d end up just like the Dutchman, and that’s not the way he wanted to go. When these kinds of situations arose, his instincts told him to go on the offensive. If they were going to nail him for something, he laughed, let them get him for something big. Not for cracking a few kneecaps. Or throwing a stink bomb in a few warehouses. But with the union, there were too many people involved. People left evidence, witnesses who would talk. The days when you could just solve a problem by bashing a few heads were over. Phones were tapped. Underlings were promised deals if they’d roll over. The tide was shifting. Government spies were everywhere.
That’s what tonight’s meeting was about. He had to find a way to change that tide.
There was a knock, and Moe Stein, one of his men, stuck his head in. “Our guest is here.”
Louis wiped his mouth with the napkin and stood up. “Show him in.” He buttoned his double-breasted jacket.
Albert Anastasia came into the room, while his bulky bodyguard remained outside. “Louis.” He put out his arms, and they gave each other a warm hug.
“It’s taken you long enough to come to my neighborhood.” Louis shook his hand warmly and motioned for the Italian to sit down. “So you here for that circumcision?” Louis grinned.
“No more than you came to my neck of the woods for a shave.” Anastasia laughed. “But I am looking at what you’ve got laid out here.” He turned his flattened nose up at the soup. “What is that? It looks like pink paint.”
“It’s borscht. It’s made from beets, Albert. It’s Russian.”
“Russian, huh? What about those?”
“Herring. They’re little fish. Kinda like anchovies. You like anchovies, don’t you, Albert?”
“What is it, you Jews don’t know how to eat any more than you know how to shave? Why don’t you just bring me a steak? Medium rare. It said they had steak here on the front door.”
“The best steak.” Louis snapped his fingers and a waiter hopped out, and back to the kitchen.
“And you got a glass of wine here? You Jews drink wine, don’t you?”
“We’ll have to get you to a Seder next.” Louis chuckled. “Yeah, we got wine. Kosher.”
They drank and talked about business until the Italian’s steak arrived. About the Dutchman’s murder, and if there were any problems for him from it. Nothing yet. And how they were carving up Schultz’s numbers rackets in Harlem. Everyone, including Louis, would receive a share. It would be a nice piece of change. Then the Italian looked at him. “This is all good news. But you don’t look so happy, my friend. Is that why you asked me here?”
Louis put down his wineglass. “I got word the special prosecutor has built up some evidence against me. He may be preparing some indictments.”
“And how do you know this, Louis?” They’d all been trying to buy someone inside Dewey’s department.
“I know a lot of things, Albert. That’s my job.”
“All right. What kinds of indictments?”
“Things related to the garment union. New kinds of charges. Things called restraint of trade. Violations of the Sherman Act. Labor racketeering. Intimidation and extortion. It says we forced people to buy from our own vendors instead of on the open market.”
“And you do this, Louis? Right?”
“Of course we do it, Albert. Anyway, each carries a five-year prison term, if convicted.”
“Five years . . . We’ve all done time, Louis. It ain’t so bad in there. You can still run things.”
“Five years per indictment. There could be ten of them. That’s fifty years.”
“Ah, I see . . . ,” the Italian said, cutting into his steak, which had arrived. “Of course, the key word I heard you say was, if convicted. This is actually pretty good,” the Italian said, nodding with approval. “Who woulda guessed. So these complainants against you, Louis, they’re just who . . . ? Regular people?”
Louis nodded. “Industry people. Furriers, garment makers, a few fabric mills we pushed out.”
“And just to be clear . . .” The Italian put down his fork. “You put Dutch Schultz in the grave and you’re being taken down by a bunch of furriers and garment makers? That’s a laugh.” He snorted. “Just fucking take care of them, Louis. One falls, they all have a way of developing a faulty memory.”
“There’s too many of them, Albert. Someone’s gotten them together.”
“So, you’re saying, what, your union’s been out-organized?” Anastasia laughed again. “Kind of funny. Don’t take this the wrong way, but that directive thing you got going, you have been kind of a pig about things. Maybe you did bring this on yourself.”
“You’ll be next, Albert.”
“You know this for a fact, Louis?”
Louis cast him a sobering stare, indicating that he did.
Anastasia let a long breath out his nostrils. He cut off another piece of meat. “My sense is in these kinds of things, there’s always one person who’s out in front on it, who the rest look up to. Y’know . . . ? You make that person go away, the rest, they all kind of look in the mirror and lose their nerve. I know in the past you’ve had some success at that kind of thing.”
“There is someone . . . ,” Buchalter said. “Maybe a couple of them. He and this guy we burned up. Who are leading the others.”
“So then take care of them.” Anastasia cut into a kreplach. “You know these things ain’t half bad either,” he said. “Dough?”
“Potato.”
“Hmmph. Like gnocchi, huh? So back to what you were saying . . . This guy . . . ?”
“You remember the driver we had to take care of after the Dutchman? Who took the rap for Mendy . . .”
“I remember.” Anastasia reached for another dumpling.
“It’s his brother.”
“His brother? You think it’s a personal thing?”
“No.” Louis shook his head. “We go back a long ways. This has been coming for quite some time.”
“So? Take care of it, then. You don’t look so happy about it though.”
“This guy’s pushed me a hundred times. We go all the way back to when I ran card games on Delancey Street. He was pushing me even back there. He’s kind of like me, in a way. He’s a tough sonovabitch, and he doesn’t back down from much. Not scared. He’d make a great one of us,” Louis grinned, “except he’s not. He’s legit. You know, good.”
“Good . . . ?” Anastasia stared at him blankly. “So what’s your fuckin’ problem then?”
Buchalter took in a breath. “I know what I’m gonna tell you is gonna sound a little strange. Feygeleh, as we call it.”
“Feygeleh?”
“I don’t know. . . .” Louis wiggled his hand. “Like a woman or something. You know, queer. But I was always thinking, if I wasn’t me, you know, what I do, but you know, in some other life, something legit . . . I could be him.”
“You could be him . . . ?” Anastasia stared solidly at Louis, his jaw wide. An incredulous smile crossed his lips. “Someone good, you’re saying?”
“Yeah, good. I know it sounds a little crazy. But, Albert, but yeah, the thought’s crossed my mind.”
“And that’s why you let this guy push you around so long? ’Cause he reminds you of you?” Anastasia’s lips curled into a smile. “Listen, you’re not smoking that shit we sell to the niggers, are you, Louis?”
Buchalter laughed and waved it off. “No. I told you, it’s a little crazy, Albert. You never thought about anything like that?”
“If I did, I wouldn’t tell nobody,” the Italian said. “So you know what I think? I don’t think you do ‘good’ so well, Louis. I think you oughta stick to what you know. Lemme ask, you looking for some kind of dispensation here? You know, just ’cause I’m Italian, doesn’t mean I’m the Pope.”
“No,
I was just talking.” Louis Buchalter shrugged with kind of a vague dimness in his eyes. “Forget I said it. You’re right on what you say.”
“You know you once did me a favor.” The Italian leaned forward. “With that Yid with the candy store. So maybe you want us to handle this thing for you? If it’s so tough. I’m happy to pay back the debt.”
“No.” Buchalter finished up, wiped his mouth, and pushed away his plate. “You know me, Albert. I handle my own business.”
“Then take care of your business, Louis. This ain’t like you. Make him disappear. Both of them. And without a trace, so the task force and the papers don’t get all over you. You gotta nip this thing before all these people feel they’re the ones who have the power. And you end up in the can. ’Cause once you’re in there, all kinds of shit will come out. How did you call it, this idea of yours . . . ?”
“Fegeleh,” Louis Buchalter said.
“Yeah, fegeleh. What’s fegeleh is letting this guy shit all over you, Louis. Make him disappear. And anyone else who thinks they’re a big shot. And not so noisy. The people don’t like noisy these days. Something out of the public eye.”
Buchalter nodded thoughtfully. “I’ll take care of it, Albert.” But there was something else bothering him. Something potentially worse.
Something he didn’t dare mention till he knew for sure.
One of his men, Oscar Hammerschmitt. Word was he’d been picked up by the cops.
And no one had heard from him in three days.
Chapter Fifty-One
Manny Gutman went twice a week to his club, the Young Men’s Philanthropic League, in a Victorian town house off the park on Seventy-ninth Street.
He bundled himself up, put on his hat (which hid the scars on his face), and walked the three blocks up Madison, where he would grab the afternoon Mirror and maybe a packet of gum. He always chatted with Vinnie, the newsstand owner, about the weather, the state of the country, even about how the Jews were having such a rough time of it back in Germany.
Then he would make his way to the club, read the headlines over a coffee, the Sports section too, how City College, where Manny had gone to school, was the basketball class of the city these days. Maybe he’d play a few games of rummy, if some of the other old-timers were around.
