Standing at the Scratch Line (26 page)

Minetti sat up straight. “Are you calling me a liar?”

“No, Don Minetti, I’m not disrespecting you in any way,” Marco answered carefully. “I just wanted you to know that I checked their weapons before they left and they had no explosives.”

Minetti demanded, “Then how’d their car blow up?”

“The colored targets had hand grenades. They must’ve—”

“Are you shitting me?” Minetti interjected. “Niggers again? You must have balls the size of a mouse if you’re having this much trouble with niggers! I don’t know what to do with a guy who fucks up and has no balls. What do you do with him?” Minetti looked around the room at the men from both sides, asking for their judgment.

“These men had hand grenades, Don Minetti. Our people don’t have hand grenades!”

Minetti turned to his driver. “Hey, Vince, give me one of your surprises!” Vince came forward and pulled a hand grenade from his pocket and placed it on the table. Minetti barked an order to Marco. “Pick it up!” Marco picked up the grenade and felt its weight in his hands. “Is that what you’re talking about?” Minetti demanded. Marco nodded silently. Minetti continued with an evil smile. “I bought five boxes of these about three months ago when all that army surplus was being sold on the black market. I’ve just been waiting for the right time to use them. I bet the Milanos bought some too.” Marco was speechless. Minetti asked again, “What do you do with a punk who fucks up and has no balls?”

Marco saw his world cave in. The question’s answer was his death verdict. There was nowhere for him to turn. He saw Vince take a long, narrow piece of cord out of his pocket. Marco realized that begging would not save his life, nor did he have a chance of reaching Minetti before he was intercepted. He spat in Minetti’s direction. “You’re a fool. A good Don would have known that I have been loyal—” The words he was about to hurl at Minetti were interrupted by a tremendous explosion and a searing pain in his left shoulder as he was thrown forward. He started to get up and felt more than heard a dull, slapping sound against his earlobe. The pain shot across his consciousness as blood spattered on his hands. Through the red haze he saw a red hole appear in Minetti’s chest as the man’s torso jerked backward. Marco fell facedown on the floor as a hail of bullets tore through the apartment, killing everyone in their path. The bullets continued to splinter through the walls for fifteen seconds, but it seemed like hours.

When the firing stopped, Marco staggered to his feet, unable to use his left arm. Blood was running down the front of his jacket. He stumbled over to the table and saw that Pascarella was also wounded in the chest. He was checking the extent of Pascarella’s injuries when he heard a snapping sound. Marco looked up and saw that Vince was leaning against the door, snapping the garrote taut in his hands. Marco saw that Vince had been shot in the thigh and could not stand without the support of the door. He did not need to be told that Vince intended to kill him. He could outmaneuver Vince, but he could not wrestle with him. Vince had the use of both of his hands.

Vince hopped toward the table in an attempt to block the path to the exit. Marco watched, silently cursing the injury that caused his left arm to be useless to him. Marco had one chance and that was to get to the bathroom. He remembered that Lefty kept an additional gun behind the water tank over the toilet. Vince smiled at him and snapped the cord taut a couple of times. Marco waited. Vince stood at the opposite end of the table and pushed it toward his victim. He knew that if he could get his hands on Marco, it would be over in minutes.

Marco surprised Vince by shoving the table hard, using his legs to drive the table into Vince’s injured thigh. Vince fell to the floor with a grunt of pain. Marco rushed around the table, heading for the bathroom, but Vince with a superhuman effort lunged across the floor, tripping him. Marco stumbled headlong into the hallway leading to the bathroom and fell into a heap. As he struggled to his feet he heard a sound like something being dragged across the floor. Just before he shut and locked the bathroom door behind him, he saw Vince pulling himself into the approaching hallway. Marco immediately climbed upon the toilet seat and began thrusting his hand behind the tank, searching for the gun. Behind him, he heard Vince slamming his body against the bathroom door. Marco stared over his shoulder and saw that the door would not withstand much more. It quivered each time Vince threw himself against it. He redoubled his efforts, seeking the gun. Finally, he discovered an object, on the left side of the tank, that was awkward for him to reach with his right hand. He got a grip on it and pulled it free. It was a small-caliber revolver wrapped in tape. He fought to remove the tape from the trigger using his one good hand and his mouth, trying to bite through the tape.

Vince threw his shoulder against the door with all the force he could muster and it trembled and gave way. He fell into the bathroom and landed by the tub. The pain from the fall made his vision go dim but he did not lose consciousness. He saw Marco standing on the toilet seat chewing on something. He laughed. It would not be said that Vincent Gatti did not finish an assignment. He snapped the cord a couple of times as he pulled himself erect. He stared at his intended victim and discovered that Marco was pointing the barrel of a small gun at him. He saw the weapon discharge and threw back his head to laugh at the idea that a woman’s gun would be effective against him. His laugh was stopped by blackness and there were no further thoughts.

In the living room Marco knelt down beside Pascarella. The Don was fading. “I’ll get help,” Marco volunteered. “We’ll have a doctor up here in no time.”

“No! You get your ass out of here!” Pascarella hissed. His eyes opened but flickered and blinked with pain. “There’s a ticket waiting for you at Grand Central Station. Get to Chicago. My cousin’s expecting you. If I live, I’ll call you when things quiet down. Otherwise, stay in Chicago. Go now! I owe this to your father who saved my life many times! Go!” The Don closed his eyes and breathed shallow breaths. He opened his eyes and looked directly at Marco. “I know this wasn’t you. I know it was that black soldier, like you’ve been saying all along.” The words hissed out of Pascarella’s mouth liked air leaking from a tire. “I should have foreseen this turn of events. We should have expected that the war would have trained the blacks to kill with strategy.” Pascarella groaned; his face was sweaty and pale. “Go! Go!” he whispered as he passed out.

Marco pressed Pascarella’s shoulder with affection and stood up. He pulled an unstained jacket off of Ricky Osso. It was too big, but it was better than a bloodstained one that fit. At the door of the apartment he heard men coming up the steps. Marco hurried up to the third floor. There was a doorway at the end of the hallway on the third floor that connected with the adjoining building. Lefty had once shown him this exit when the police were searching for them. Marco slipped through the door and entered another hallway. He descended the stairs, taking his time, trying not to hurry. He knew only one thing and that was that he would not rest until he was sure that King Tremain and his buddies were dead, no matter if it took a lifetime. Marco was the only surviving person who knew of King’s involvement in the early mafioso wars.

T
 U E S D A Y,  
M
 A Y   6,   1 9 1 9
   

Ira Goldbaum stood looking out of one of the huge windows of his office thinking of death. The morning sky was a crisp blue and there were only a few sluggish clouds gradually passing overhead. The haze that had been lying on the city like a veil of cobwebs was gone, blown away by a midnight wind. Death was on his mind. He had received a call early in the morning telling him that Jim Europe had been killed in Boston the day before.

The recurring pain in his shoulder and back distracted him. He adjusted his left arm in his sling. It seemed impossible to find a comfortable position for it. The pain never seemed far away and the sling, although it permitted him to move around more easily, had become an object of annoyance as well. But he couldn’t complain too much. He knew that he had been extremely fortunate that the bullet had missed his vital organs and just chipped off a piece of rib.

Ira took a slow, deep breath and turned his gaze back upon the beauty of his view. He was happy to be alive and back at work. For a while there when he was recuperating in the hospital, he had a sense of déjà vu, like he was back in the hospital in France and feeling once more the fear that he would die of an infection. The change in country and time made no difference. He had the same sense of foreboding when he first awoke in his hospital bed after the surgery to remove the bullet and it remained with him like a shadow. Even the daily visits by his wife and parents hadn’t gotten rid of the feeling. Then, just as he was venturing on brief journeys from his hospital bed, he heard that Darwin Morris had been shot. It had been a staggering blow to him.

There was a brief knock at the door and a shapely woman in her mid-thirties entered, bringing in a tray with a coffee decanter and cup. Under her arm she had a newspaper. She set the tray and the paper on his desk. “It’s hard finding that colored newspaper around here. If you think you’ll need it regularly, I can have one of our custodians pick it up on his way to work. Shouldn’t you be resting your arm?” There was a slight trace of censure in her voice, but she gave him a smile that was quite charming.

Ira returned her smile. “Thank you, I should be resting it more. Why don’t you have one of the custodians pick up the paper for me? I’d like to keep in touch with how Harlem is accepting the promotional campaigns of our client’s record companies.” Ira picked up the paper and said, “Thanks for the paper and the coffee, Mary.” He returned to the chair behind his desk and saw that Mary had not left and was waiting for something. “Yes?” he asked.

“I thought maybe you were looking for some mention of our law clerk Darwin in there and I just wanted to tell you that it isn’t in this edition. Moses Posey, one of the custodians, saw a big write-up about him and his friends in Sunday’s
Amsterdam Sentinel.
That little man. You’d never know from the looks of him that he ever fought in a war overseas in a suicide squad. He seemed so quiet. And I certainly didn’t know he was part owner of the Rockland Palace. That’s one of the nicest clubs in Harlem.”

“There was more to him than meets the eye,” Ira answered as he turned and faced the window. He felt a great weight on his heart. Ira had immediately recognized that Darwin was someone worthy of investment when he first met him. Prior to the war Ira had seen him struggle against racist policies to enroll in Columbia’s law school. He had reached out to Darwin then and was rewarded with a new and interesting friendship. Until he met Darwin, Ira had lived primarily in a Jewish community and had never known people of color in anything but servile roles. His experiences with Darwin made him volunteer, against his family’s protests, for an officer’s slot with the 369th. Despite his injuries at the front, he never regretted his decision. Not only had he struck a blow against his father’s oppressors, he felt that his life had been opened to a whole new world. He had become an aficionado of the new jazz music and often went to shows in Harlem.

He opened the
Amsterdam Sentinel
and there it was on the second page. Jim Europe had been killed in a Boston theater. The article indicated that he had been stabbed to death by another colored musician. The assailant was killed in a scuffle following Europe’s murder. Ira let the paper fall from his hands. He stared out the window feeling totally depressed.

While recuperating from his wound, Ira had read all the newspapers and they were full of articles concerning the war between rival underworld families. There was no mention of Negroes being involved in any way. Nor did it mention them as victims. The attempt at the Rockland Palace would have been but a footnote in the episodic killings to the readers of the major newspapers if the district attorney’s brother hadn’t been among the injured.

Two weeks passed with only a few minor incidents. The papers began to do in-depth analyses on every report that was related to the underworld wars. Then holy hell broke out: Tony the Tiger and all his bodyguards were assassinated in a machine-gun attack. Pascarella, another underworld figure, was also killed in the same attack. Across town, Cuomo and Gus Milano were also killed on the same day. A number of lesser-known underworld lieutenants and enforcers experienced untimely deaths within days of Gus Milano’s passing. There appeared to be one perspective only coming from the big dailies. One reporter coined it the “Battle of Blood” between the various families of organized crime. Several major papers, under the umbrella of objective reporting, put forth the contention that the attempt at the Rockland was the direct result of the district attorney’s crime-fighting program, that it was essentially a scare tactic by underworld figures to control the course of ongoing investigations. Various editors harangued their readership with stories about the arrogance of “Organized Crime.” The brouhaha that was generated brought the attention of the state legislators, who further declaimed that “the underworld must be stopped from growing at all costs.”