by Bill Russo
“Just watch for a minute. If he bolts for the door we will follow him. If he sits down –“
Carmine didn’t have a chance to finish, because Collucci himself cut him off! Standing not three feet from the table occupied by the Russo boys he said, “Excuse me guys but I see that there are four chairs and only three of you. I had a table when I went to wash up, but it seems to have been taken. Could I sit with you?”
Talk about the mouse walking right into the mouth of the cat! Carmine couldn’t believe the luck. To smooth things out with Lucca he said, “Sit right down pal. My brothers and I are going to have a couple chop suey sandwiches. I don’t know if you’re from the area, but if you’re new here, I can tell you that this exciting new ‘Chinese Food’ is the best thing to come to the United States since the Pilgrims landed in Provincetown!”
Carmine ordered two sandwiches for himself and two for Meo. For big Lucca, he told the waitress to bring three chop suey sandwiches, a large side of fries, onion rings, and fried rice with chicken.
The man suspected of being Charles Crown/Cardenio Collucci, ordered two chop suey sandwiches. Carmine nodded his head to his brothers to confirm that he stranger was indeed Collucci. He had been given a complete description and was certain that the man at their table was the fugitive who was going to earn them $50,000.
Collucci introduced himself as Artur Cezar. He said that he was from a Portuguese Import/Export firm and was on his way to Providence where he had passage on a ship bound for South America.
“Chicle, gentlemen. I’m big in chicle. Are you familiar with it?”
“Our late brother Billy was a great baseball player – the best ‘switch hitting’ outfielder on the North Shore, and during the games he used to chew some white tablets called Chiclets – is that the same thing,” asked Carmine?
“Well yes and no. Chiclets are based on the raw ingredient chicle which is found in trees in South America. I’m on my way there to lock up a European distribution deal that will make millions. I might be able to cut off a little slice for the right people. Oh, I see that our food is here, we’ll talk more after we eat.”
Meo thought it was hilarious that Collucci was trying to hustle the very guys that were going to capture him. Carmine on the other hand was so angry, he had to force himself not to pounce on Collucci right in the middle of his chop suey sandwich. Lucca speculated that this ‘chicle’ might actually be a good investment for them once they pocketed the rest of the $50,000 reward.
The chop suey sandwich might seem to be a very unlikely choice for the youthful Italian-Americans whose daily diet was pasta, meatballs, and more pasta – but the whole North Shore had recently become enchanted with the “Chop Suey Sandwich” – available in a small part of New England and nowhere else!
The sandwich was invented by a Chinese immigrant who fell in love with the American hamburger, but also retained a great fondness for his native food – chop suey.
When he combined his chop suey with a hamburger bun, the fusion created an ‘end product’ that was somehow entirely new, as well as delicious, and unexpected. He opened a small stand in Salem Willows in 1904. It was an instant hit. The restaurant became the most successful business in the city. Never ending queues of hungry patrons lined the willow walk from open to close. He never opened a second location and only a few other places copied his creation, so it became localized in a tiny pocket that extended from Salem, the city of witches towards the city of Fall River - made famous by whales and a parent killer named Lizzie Borden. (Lizzie Borden took an axe and gave her father 40 whacks. When she was done she gave her mother 41.)
Whenever their business took them to the ‘witch city’ the Russo brothers would find an excuse to get to Salem Lowe’s. The crooked Collucci was as good an excuse as any!
There was little conversation during the eager masticating and swallowing of the first helping, but by the time they started working on the second sandwich, Carmine began the flow of talk.
“So, Mr. Cezar, my brothers and I have a thousand dollars in cash with us right at the moment and we have access to more, what kind of an investment could we make with that?”
Cezar/Crown/Collucci’s eyes lit up at Carmine’s mention of the money. He replied, “In my suitcases, I just happen to have some shares of my new firm , the Portugal-Guatemala Chicle Exchange. I could let you have a hundred shares at only ten dollars each – the opening price when they go public will be about four times that! Are you interested?”
“What do you think Lucca? Would you care to get involved in this?”
“Big Lucca, working on onion rings with one hand while holding his third sandwich with the other, was too busy to answer Carmine’s question. He merely nodded.
“Let’s do it!” chipped in Meo, barely able to stop laughing as the brothers were conning the con artist.
“Excellent. We can draw up the papers right after we finish our meal,” said Cezar.
“Are you taking the train to Providence?” wondered Carmine.
“No, I would rather take advantage of the Indian Summer weather and travel by boat. I’m going to go to the dock soon to see if I can hire one.”
“Yes. The trains are a problem right now,” Meo said, looking directly at Cezar. “I’m told that they are being delayed. State and local police are searching all the cars. They’re looking for some guy who stole money from a factory on Cape Cod.”
“No matter about that Meo. Mr. Cezar, we’ll save you a trip to the boat landing,” smiled Carmine, with the look of a grizzly bear that has just speared a spawning salmon. “My brother Meo has a fine fishing boat that will get you there in no time. If you come with us, we can talk more about the investment. We only have one thousand with us, but we have about $50,000 available if we find the right investment.”
So greedy was the crooked Cezar that he failed to see the glint of steel underneath this ‘bait’. He bit, and the hook went in so hard that he fairly sprinted to the boat landing where Giovanni and Antonio were already seated on deck and waiting.
Under a beautiful early afternoon sun, Meo released the land line and they set sail. The wind was from the East at 20 knots. Full sails were set to get the most speed possible from the ‘Lucky fisherman’.
“We’re making 15 knots an hour through calm seas Mr. Cezar. That means this boat can get you to Providence in just three hours.”
“That’s wonderful gentlemen. Shall we discuss our business deal now?”
“Just a minute,” said Carmine, with his brow scrunched up in rolls that looked like waves. “Meo told you that the boat ‘could’ get you there in three hours, but it won’t! Our destination is not Providence but Beverly. And when we get to Beverly we are going to take a train trip. We know who you really are, Mr. Collucci. You’re going back to Sandwich to face trial.”
Colllucci blanched from the shock of the announcement. He sank back in his seat on deck and shook like a swimmer at Beverly Harbor beach in December. Mumbling incoherently, he twisted around and appeared to be ready to jump overboard.
“Go ahead and jump Collucci,” shouted Lucca. “We’re in the most dangerous part of the harbor. There’s an undertow between here and the shore that’s strong enough to pull a shark down to the sandy bottom. Plunge in! We won’t mind watching you drown.”
Collucci abandoned the thought, if indeed he actually was thinking about it. Slowly, the crafty old scam artist began to regain his wits. The brothers knew that like in a chess match, he was planning to make a move. He’d try to bribe them, to scare them, or recruit them. They did not know for certain what his mind was brewing but they figured he would try something.
Giovanni stood up and drew a harmonica from his blue shirt and began playing “Old McDonald”.
Carmine joined his little brother and said, “I just love harmonica music don’t you Mr. Cezar, Crown or Collucci. Who are you now Cardenio? Who are you now?”
Lucca, Meo, and Antonio stood up a
nd got in a line with the other brothers. With Gio’s harmonica providing the accompaniment, the Russo Brothers vocal quartet taunted their captive with a serenade….
“Old con man tried to fool the Russo brothers
E-I-E-I-O
With a quick step here and a dirty trick there
E-I-E-I-O
Here a con, there a scam, a flim-flam everywhere
Old con man tried to fool us like all the others
E-I-E-I-O
“Just my luck, I had to get captured by the Italian version of the Marx Brothers,” moaned Collucci who seemed resigned to his fate. He said little else during the rest of the crossing and maintained his silence even as the Cape Cod bound train pulled into the Beverly Station.
Carmine dictated that he, Lucca, and Meo were to accompany the crook to Sandwich while Tony and Gio would take care of the family business.
“Papa says that he’s going to come out of retirement for a while and work with you guys,” Carmine reported. “When we get back, our pockets will be stuffed with fifty thousand dollars. Our dad can go back to retirement and we can join him.”
Getting on the train was going to be more difficult than expected because President William Taft was expected to be riding on the Beverly train. Taft, who was elected in the winter of 1909, had summered in Beverly that season and had brought a lot of his troubles to the peaceful little city of 22,000 people.
Following the assassination of President William McKinley just a few years before, congress had directed the Secret Service to protect the country’s top elected officials. In addition to local, state, and federal police searching railroad stations on a tip that Crown/Collucci might try to board, there were dozens of secret service men surrounding the train.
The brothers had no intention of giving up their prisoner to anyone other than the Chief of Police of the Town of Sandwich.
Security was beefed up because Taft was in hot water with his mentor, former President Roosevelt, for changing Teddy’s policies on conservation. By executive order, Teddy had claimed millions of acres of land and put them in the public domain where the coal and oil people couldn’t touch them. Much of this acreage was in the distant territory of Alaska.
Roosevelt was livid when Taft fired Roosevelt’s interior secretary and put the lands back up for grabs among the mining companies.
Further difficulties for Taft revolved around his anti-trust suits against big business. In just four years, Taft would launch 70 court cases against the nation’s largest employers, such as U.S. Steel, Standard Oil, and American Tobacco. In seven years, Teddy had just forty suits.
Then there was Taft’s stand on racial issues. Teddy had supported appointing African Americans to federal jobs; but Taft publicly said he would not employ any such person in posts where their appointment would cause racial friction – which meant that all of the South and a good part of the rest of the nation was off limits to any person of color aspiring to government service – unless such service was at the end of a mop or accompanied by latrine buckets. Then Taft intensified the situation by firing those people who were already in desirable federal positions.
Shortly before the train was due at Beverly’s main depot, Taft changed his mind and decided to board further up the line at Montserrat. This moved enough police and Secret Service people away from the downtown terminal to allow the brothers to get on the train with their prisoner, without incident.
When checked out by the local police walking through the railroad car, they showed identifications and passed Collucci off as a visiting uncle. For his part their prisoner did not utter a single contrary syllable, for Lucca had demanded total silence. The brothers didn’t know exactly what Lucca had said to him, but when they saw the terror on the guy’s face, they knew that they didn’t have to worry that he would spill anything.
The ride to Sandwich went smoothly, though it took five hours and required changing trains twice. The first train, from the Boston and Maine Railroad steamed into Boston’s North Station. From there they had to take the subway, the first in America, to the Kneeland Street station where they picked up their second train. It took them as far as Taunton, where they left the New Haven Line and transferred to a Cape Cod Central combination that would steam directly to the Sandwich station, right next to the freight siding of the glassworks.
When they arrived in Sandwich they went directly to the glassworks. Met by the factory’s security chief, the group was directed to the office of the President Jim Davis, where they turned over their prisoner.
In abject humiliation, Crown/Collucci/Cezar, the man who had built the famous Sandwich Glass Company, was promptly handcuffed and carted off to jail by the local police.
“Gentlemen, I guess you know that all of Cape Cod is in your debt today,” said Davis. “I can’t thank you enough, nor can the hundreds of families who would have been left destitute and in many cases, homeless if this company had failed.”
“The stolen funds that you recovered will rekindle the fires of production that were doused when Crown absconded with the million dollars. It was not just Sandwich that was affected, but he also sopped up all the working capital of the businesses in Boston, New York and as far west as Chicago. I’ll be wiring out money to them today and by noon tomorrow, thousands of displaced working people will have their jobs back – thanks to the Russo brothers of Beverly.”
He opened one of the suitcases and counted out the $49,000 reward which he sacked in a Cape Cod Five Cent Savings Bank currency bag and handed to Carmine, who for once was at a loss for words.
Meo was not - “Mr. Davis, we’d like to meet this mystery man, John Deer, who gave us the task of finding Crown, though I have to tell you it was not hard work. He literally walked right into our table while we were having lunch!”
“I wish you could, but he’s not here. He told me that he has business in Provincetown and he’s not sure if he’s going to be able to return. He owns 51 per cent of this company, and he has left me in charge. He said he’s going to keep in touch with me, but I haven’t heard from him since he departed. Gentlemen, I’m afraid that Mr. Deer is as much an enigma to me as he is to you.”
Carmine’s vocal apparatus kicked back in and he adopted his customary pretentious manner.
“As head of the Russo family, after Papa; I am declaring that we are in debt to Mr. Deer. We did a task for him, but he did us a far larger favor. I have decided that we will offer him ten thousand dollars of our reward funds in order to cancel our debt.”
“That’s a fine gesture,” agreed Jim Davis, “but Mr. Deer is quite wealthy and yet doesn’t seem to care the least bit about finances. He wants you to have the reward money – all of it.”
“We will accept the reward gratefully,” said Big Lucca who shot a harsh glance at Carmine who was supposed to consult with him before making such proclamations where big sums of cash were concerned. “I agree with my brother that we are in Mr. Deer’s debt. How can we satisfy this obligation Mr. Davis?”
“He left a message for you that will clarify that. He instructed me to read it -
‘My Dear Russo Brothers: I wish I could give you the responses you crave. I cannot tell you why I chose you to find Charles Crown. I cannot tell you how I knew your names and where to find you. I cannot tell you why I was so certain that you would succeed. I cannot tell you any of these things, for I myself am not in possession of the answers.’
‘Though I appear to be 25 or 35 perhaps, I am in a very real sense only seven years old, for it was that many years ago that I found myself in a hospital bed in Boston with my head split in two, and with no memory of who I was or how I got there. On a thin rope, I balanced between life and death for two weeks. When it appeared that the latter was the course set for me, they put a name tag on my toe that was marked “John Doe”.
‘Though I made a strong, unexpected recovery my memory did not come back. Shortly before the hospital released me, I decide
d that I did not want to carry the name of female rabbits, ferrets, deer, and rats, so the doctor agreed to change my tag from ‘John Doe’ to “John Deer”. I have lived under that label since.’
‘Set out on the streets of Boston without money, a home, or any prospects; life for me was difficult. In the various restaurants of the financial district, I washed dishes in exchange for food.’
‘The medical people had told me that I might improve and that my memory might come back at any time. They were wrong, the headaches got worse. My sight dimmed. The shaking of my limbs was so severe at times that I was unable to walk or control my arms and hands.’
‘Even the menial job of washing the dirty dishes of Boston’s top financiers had become too much for me. In desperation I stumbled from the area of The Opera House on Washington Street to Tremont Street by the entrance to the tunnels.’
‘Dragging myself along, for my right leg had become useless, I was nearly reduced to crawling, when I got close the tunnels of the subway. To tumble over the side of the platform and meet a quick death on the electrified third rail seemed preferable to the explosions rocking my brain and the spasms that left me with almost no control over my bodily functions.‘
‘I found that I had not even the strength to get to the southbound stairs that dropped steeply down to the underground. I was forced to roll myself like an inert log to the side of the street and into the dirt of the Boston Common.’
‘The lightning charges and thunder barrages that were being touched off in my brain, by the huge split in my head subsided somewhat as I lay on the sun-warmed, soft earth near three great arbors that stood like magnificent statues in the historic park of the Boston Central Business District.’
‘After a few more minutes my head cleared and the pain and shakes were washed away by an eerie warmth that started along the scar-line just above my right eye and ran quickly all the way down to my toenails.’
‘For the first time, I experienced what people call “Second Sight” – advance knowledge of things that will happen in future. I did not know much, but I was certain that all I had to do was sit at the bench under “The Great Elm” and things would be better.’
