Father Divine's Bikes

by Steve Bassett

  “So Richie, you got another big collection day coming up,” Andy said. “Make sure those three deadbeats who stiffed you last week pay-up. Can’t let them think that because you’re new they can slide.”

  “Don’t worry, dad, I ain’t about to let anybody stiff me.”

  “Don’t say ain’t,” Alice admonished.

  “I see all your Parade magazine inserts are bundled and waiting on the landing,” Andy said. “I’ll help you stuff them tomorrow so you’ll be ready to go on Sunday.”

  “Thanks, dad. Maybe next week I’ll have the routine down so I can do it myself.” Left unsaid but always on his mind was how best to meld in his policy pickups, and the daily bike ride to the barbershop with his Beacon chores. And with Thelma Boyd and Riviera Hotel now part of the mix, things were sure to get even more complicated.

  Across the street, after checking to make sure his bike was securely chained and locked to the heavy first floor banister newel, Joey joined his mom and dad at the kitchen table. He could feel a definite change in attitude from the night before. It seemed as though his mom and dad, and even his grandfather, had been waiting for him before starting a dinner of ham hocks, turnips, onions and carrots.

  “It’s one of your favorites,” Catherine said as she ladled chunks of vegetables and a meaty hock into Joey’s bowl. “Fishbein had a special price today, and when I told Abe you were starting your Beacon route in the morning, he threw in a big bone with all that wonderful marrow. It flavors everything so good.”

  Josef looked up from his bowl, scanned the table, and thought hard about what to say. The words had to come out right. He had walked the neighborhood the night before, trying to understand his outburst. He knew he had been wrong, but how could he make it right with Joey and Catherine when he had so little to offer. Starting tomorrow our boy will be out in the dark every morning and for what? A few dollars each week? God almighty, when was the last time I brought in even a few cents. Right now for him, I’m not even here. I have to make him know that things have changed from last night.

  “Josef, you’re not eating,” Catherine said. “Is anything wrong? I gave you the big bone. It’s stuffed with marrow, and you haven’t touched it.”

  “And I won’t,” Josef said. “Here, Joey, this is for you. Will give you the strength you’ll need in the morning.”

  Josef inserted his fork into the marrow cavity making sure none of the precious fat spilled out, and reached over and placed it in Joey’s bowl.

  “It’s all yours. The best part is digging it out. Makes it taste even better. Get started, before it gets cold.”

  “Thanks, dad. This is the first time for me,” Joey said, then looked around the table and saw that all of them, even grandpa, were watching his every move.

  “And it won’t be the last,” Josef said. “Worth the wait wasn’t it.”

  “I’ll say it was,” Joey said as his father self-consciously lowered his gaze from his son’s face and went back to work on the food in front of him.

  On Monday, Nick Cisco offered a lazy wave to the smiling young blond at the desk, then pushed opened the door with “Captain Anthony M. Gordo” stenciled on its glazed glass window.

  “Tony, things have looked up around here since you took over,” Cisco said. “What is it now, about two years?”

  “You got it right, and only two months more and I’m outta here.” Gordo motioned to one of two leather-padded chairs in front of his desk. “What’s on your mind?”

  “As you probably already know, those three Third Ward homicides have been dumped into our laps. Got mob written all over them.”

  “Jesus Christ, Nick. You too? You and your partner have been in homicide for what, less than a year, and you already see Richie the Boot’s or Longy’s name pinned to every stiff in town?”

  “Lay off, Tony. Do you wanna hear what I’ve got to say, or don’t you?” Cisco knew he had to measure every word, that Gordo’s three-bedroom, double garage shack and beachfront cottage didn’t come from hitting the lottery or a cop’s paycheck. “Rumors, just rumors, have it that the Boot thinks the Third Ward’s ripe for the picking.”

  “Where the fuck did you hear that? Nobody wants a shooting war, and that sure as shit will happen if what you’re saying is even halfway true.”

  “More than halfway true. You’ve seen our report. Ruby West and her pimp boyfriend were freelancers who crossed the line, and Longy cleared that up real fast.”

  “Bullshit rumors, that’s all you’ve got,” Gordo, his jowly face now flushed, almost shouted. “You need more if you want my help!”

  Cisco knew that divulging anything to Gordo would be in the pipeline to either Zwillman’s Third Ward Political Club or Boiardo’s Vittorio’s Castle, depending on whose ass he was kissing.

  “Just playing hunches, right now,” Cisco said. “We’re working a lead out of Atlanta that we’re hoping goes somewhere. Got three names, one’s the brother of our stiff, Clyde Barton. His name’s Buck Barton and he skipped out of Atlanta with two partners. The other two are John Travers and Wilber Fontaine. They had quite an operation, a bookie barbershop up front and a policy parlor in the back. They were also running women. They were tied in big with the mob in Atlanta. The authorities in Georgia have long rap sheets on all three of them, and believe they were headed this way.”

  Gordo’s reaction was more than Cisco could have hoped for. The big man shifted uncomfortably in his padded chair. His face was now scarlet, and the fingers of his right hand tapped out a steady tattoo on the desk.

  “The three names don’t ring a bell. Have anything more to go on?”

  “Does the name Jimmy Rossi ring a bell? He’s a made man who handles the mob’s gambling and vice operations in Georgia. And Atlanta cops say our three guys were his wire into the black precincts. They’re here in town, I can feel it.”

  “I think I got it straight now,” Gordo, almost composed, said. “And believe me Nick, I’ve been playing hunches for more than twenty years, so I understand where you’re coming from. Right now we’ve got nothing on your three niggers. But you’re still a homicide dick, and you’re asking me to cut loose uniform manpower I don’t have. Give me a little bit more, something with meat on it, and we’ll see where it takes us.”

  “Can’t ask for more.” Cisco got up and reached across the desk to shake Gordo’s hand. “And congratulations to you and Veronica on your daughter’s marriage. Lucia is a beautiful girl and deserves the best.”

  “Thanks, Nick.” Gordo still grasping Cisco’s hand arose and accompanied him to the door. “And our best to that beautiful wife of yours. You couldn’t have done better than Connie.”

  Gordo tried to suppress the painful twinge that surfaced in the back of his neck when he felt threatened. He should have known from the start that nothing good comes out of a phone call from that son of a bitch, Vinnie Scarlatti. The punk’s call that night had oozed with phony deference.

  “Vinnie Scarlatti here. We need to talk.” After several months, murderous rage arose when Gordo recalled that late night conversation. “Hope I didn’t wake you up, Captain.”

  “I’m awake. Get on with it.”

  “Passing it along from you know who that there are some things you should know about.”

  “I’m listening.”

  “I want to be sure you’re wide awake now, Captain,” Scarlatti made no effort to hide his contempt. “I know I’ve interrupted your beauty sleep, Captain, so don’t doze off on me. It’s real important what I got to say.”

  He was about to explode when Veronica reached over and placed her hand on his chest. His wife knew him like a book, his heart was pounding, as it did during all the nocturnal calls. Her instincts had sharpened over the years and Tony’s terse replies told her that it was the mob.

  “Easy, honey, don’t let them get to you,” she whispered as the fingers of her right hand feathered his chest. He cupped her hand in his, tightened it into a fist and gently squeezed. He felt fear and Scarlatt
i would pay.

  “You’ll be getting a call from Atlanta from a very important fellow,” Scarlatti said. “His name is Jimmy Rossi. He’s a made man. He’ll give you the lay of the land, filling you in about three jiggaboos coming to town. We don’t want any toes stepped on, you can understand that, can’t you, Captain?”

  “And that’s it? Three more crooked coons coming to Newark, no names, no nothing?”

  “You’ll get them soon enough, no need to worry, Captain. It’s all right if I call you Captain, isn’t it? If this isn’t a good time for you to talk, we’ll pass it on to Rossi. We don’t want you to give up any of your beauty sleep, do we Captain? Arrivederci.”

  If Scarlatti had been in the same room with him that night, Gordo would have smashed his face into a bloody pulp. His hatred for the mobster had been seething out of control ever since. A mere beating would not be enough. A solution must be clean and complete, his honor demanded it.

  Gordo had begun putting together dossiers on the three bookies immediately after the Rossi phone call. He didn’t like what was going down. Richie the Boot had his eyes on Zwillman’s Third Ward. The Boot was convinced that Longy was moving on from his old stomping grounds, and why not take a shot at it. But Longy wasn’t giving away anything, not to The Boot and not to the pimp and whore working his turf.

  “The boss wants it taken care of tonight,” Benny Switzer growled over the private line to Gordo’s home late last Monday. “Don’t care how the slut and her pimp get it, just get it done. And clean, nothing to connect.”

  After closing the door behind Cisco, Gordo returned to his desk and punched in a number on his interoffice phone. “Hillary, see if you can run down Sergeants Gamba and Maroni. I want to see them right away.”

  Had a gut feeling about those three coons from Atlanta, Gordo thought. Setting up the slut in the Third Ward was dumb, really dumb. And the pimp is the brother of one of the bookies, Jesus Christ, what the fuck were they thinking. This was after I laid it all out for them, so what do they do, they slap me in the face.”

  Fifteen minutes later, Lou Gamba and Fabio Maroni were facing Captain Gordo as they took seats in front of his desk.

  “Just had a visit with Nick Cisco, and he wondered if I had any thoughts about the Broome Street job,” Gordo said. “Thinks it’s connected to a Third Ward turf battle that ain’t started yet. Wants my help.”

  “That’s a fucking laugh,” Maroni said. “What’d you tell him?”

  “Said I needed more than rumors to go on,” Gordo said. “Now getting back to your job. Fill me in.”

  “Got a little messy when the whore started running, she didn’t get far,” Gamba said. “Got it done nice and quiet.”

  “I saw in the report that Cisco had Frank Gazzi staking out the apartment that night,” Gordo said. “He wasn’t a problem?”

  “Frank Gazzi a problem, you’ve gotta be kidding,” Gamba said. “Spotted him right off keeping dry in the doorway across the street. Already had our trash collector coveralls on. We circled the block and slid into the apartment through the backdoor and waited. Took us about ten minutes, then we got out the way we got in.”

  “Could just as well’ve gone out the front. Good ol’ Frank was nowhere in sight. He just can’t help fucking up,” Maroni said. “Still too dumb to handle a stakeout. Never could understand why you keep him around.”

  “Stupido Siciliano. Sua moglie, Maria and my Veronica are very close.” Gordo said. “And with your Theresa and Julie, you know how it can be when your wives are calling the shots.”

  Gordo pushed back from the desk and clasped his hands behind his neck.

  “Let’s get back to why I called you in. I don’t like what’s going down. Cisco and his partner are nobody’s fools. He’s right when he says the pimp and the whore didn’t just wander into town like two dumb hicks. And that it’s no coincidence the pimp was the brother of one of the nigger bookies.”

  “So what’s it all mean?” Gamba said.

  “It means we have to tie up some loose ends.”

  “What in hell are you talking about?” Maroni shot a quick glance at Gamba before turning to Gordo. “And ‘we’, where does the ‘we’ fit in? Unless Lou knows something I don’t, it’s the first we’ve heard about loose ends.”

  “It’s the first fuckin’ time for me, too,” Gamba said.

  “Get used to it. We’ve had a nice run, about twenty years,” Gordo’s face was tight and grim. He held up his right hand to stifle any bitching from the two rogue cops. “And I got less than two months to go before my pension. You two are right behind me. But before I go there’s a couple things eating at me I got to take care of. I want you with me. So why not go out together.”

  The three crooked cops found it impossible to acknowledge that they were no different than the mobsters they hated and had served so well. The same code of silence that governed the underworld also sealed the lips of the honest cops who looked the other way when the trio planted evidence, falsified reports, justified fatal shootings, inflicted beatings that left victims paralyzed, and when ordered, murders. It was time to get out.

  “Are you in or out?” Gordo said.

  “If we’re in, where the hell does that take us?” Gamba said.

  “Scarlatti, I want him to disappear,” Gordo said. “And Buck Barton, I want him roughed up real bad, and I mean real bad.”

  “Why Scarlatti?” Maroni said. “He’s nothing more than an over-dressed punk with a big mouth. Is there something we should know?”

  “Respect, it’s a matter of respect. How many times did I have sit downs with the top capos and get nothing but courtesy and respect. We did a job for them, got their thanks in an envelope and moved on. And now this little bastard Scarlatti comes along, and shows no respect….”

  “Jesus Christ, Tony, this punk ain’t worth it,” Gamba said. “I remember him in juvie court for boosting car radios.”

  “Always smiling, that dandy sticks in my throat like a fishbone,” Gordo said. “You know me, never take things personal, but this is different, he’s got to go now.”

  “Word on the street is that Scarlatti is stepping up in class,” Maroni said. “That he’s been tapped to handle the three spooks running numbers for his boss.”

  “I don’t think you got my meaning,” Gordo said. “When I walk away, I want to walk away with respect. I want Scarlatti long gone.”

  “Okay, Tony, we both get it about Scarlatti,” Gamba said. “But why the black bookie?”

  “I’ll tell you why. I get a call from Jimmy Rossi in Atlanta. He tells me that three nigger bookies had just spent two weeks kissing Father Divine’s ass in Philly. Gave him a bundle for his okay to open a Peace barbershop in Newark. Just like in Atlanta, the shop’s a front for their bookie operations. He tells me they got big plans for them.”

  “The coons are moving real fast.” Maroni said. “Ain’t been in town too long and already their runners are squeezing Longy. I don’t get what you’re pissed off about.”

  “It’s about respect. I warned them their nuts would be in a grinder if they even thought about freelancing. Buck Barton kept shooting off his fucking mouth. That black son of a bitch was laughing at me all the time, he knew that his pimp brother and the slut were on the way.”

  “Leave them to us,” Gamba said.

  The times, places and methods were uncertain, but when Gordo escorted Maroni and Gamba to the door one thing was crystal clear in his mind, that without respect, a man was no more than a piece of shit.

  The following Friday morning, the Clarion’s Joe Lucio dropped several pages of mimeographed police reports in front of the Beacon’s Jerry Saunders, then took his copies over to his desk in the press room and began reading. It was the daily chore for one or the other veteran police reporters to go to the front desk at headquarters and return with proof that there was still enough criminal ugliness in Newark to justify their weekly paychecks.

  For a decade and a half, they had competed for headli
nes that would put their stories above the fold on their respective front pages, and had used every trick to get it done. After a few minutes of reading, Lucio looked across the press room and saw that Saunders had also completed the scrawled report at the top of the pile.

  “What do you think, Jerry?” Joe said. “Are they at it again?”

  “Christ, I don’t know. I sometimes wonder if our fair city’s thugs don’t simply sleep walk from one killing to the next, then wake up patting themselves on the back for a job well done.”

  “And forgetting what the whole fucking mess was about in the first place.”

  Saunders and Lucio had survived several city desk coups largely because their editors realized there were no other reporters who knew the city’s dark side as well as them. Both were single, profane, drank too much, chased the skirts, but never violated a confidence. A tip given behind the green painted windows of a North Ward Italian social club was treated with the same respect as an inside scoop provided by Police Chief Patrick Riley.

  “I see that Cisco and McClosky have the honors again,” Jerry said. “Cisco writes a pretty good report.”

  “He ought to, with all the practice he’s been getting,” Joe said. “What do we know about the stiff? The moniker, Vinnie Scarlatti, rings a bell, but I can’t place it.”

  “He’s one of Richie the Boot’s low-level soldiers,” Jerry said. “I bumped into him a couple of times, a sharp dresser who fancies himself another Jimmy Cagney. Heard he was moving up the Boiardo food chain, but that’s about it.”

  “Says he got it in the back of the head,” Joe said. “Then stuffed him behind the driver’s seat of his Buick, and pushed it off that small pier just south of the Harrison Avenue Bridge. Pulled him out yesterday, and it looks like the crabs had been at him for at least two days. Sure looks like a mob hit.”

  “Could be, I hear that Longy’s Third Ward is back in play.”

  “Heard that both sides are using paperboys as numbers runners to get their points across,” Joe said. “Nothing new there, did it myself while still in knickers. How ‘bout you?”