The Gangster (8 page)

Charlie Salata made his boys prowl Elizabeth Street for an hour.

“They’re here,” he kept saying, anxiously scanning the street, sidewalks, wagons, pushcarts, windows, rooftops, and fire escapes. “I can’t see ’em, but I feel ’em. Like I can smell ’em—what’s that kid doing?”

“Pasting playbills.”

The gangsters watched the kid plaster posters to walls, the sides of wagons, and even shopwindows when the owners weren’t looking. They advertised a performance of
Aida
at the nearby Mincarelli Opera House, which catered to immigrants. The bill poster crossed Houston and plastered his way uptown and out of sight.

An unusually tall Hebrew caught Salata’s eye when he emerged from a tenement dressed head to toe in coat, trousers, shoes, and hat as black as his beard. Salata studied him suspiciously. The Hebrew dodged the organ grinder’s monkey plucking pennies from the pavement, and hurried inside the next tenement. Only one of the many Jewish needlework contractors who recruited Italian housewives to sew piecework in their kitchens.

“Why don’t we just bomb the bank?” an underling asked.

“Why don’t you shut your mouth?” It was obvious to anyone but a
cafon
two hours off the boat. Blowing the windows out of Banco LaCava was the easy part. Pawing through the wreckage to get the money out of the safe would take time. They’d have a few minutes before the cops and firemen arrived, but no time at all if Van Dorns were close enough to mob them. Plus—a big plus not to be ignored—the Boss had given orders to make an example of the Van Dorn apprentice.

“
There!
Richie Cirillo.”

The kid was trotting past Banco LaCava with a clothes sack almost bigger than he was. Salata grabbed the
cafon
. “Stick that skinny little rat.”

Richie Cirillo saw the killer coming after him, running in a low half crouch like a barrel-chested dog. Fiery eyes bored into his as the man shoved through the dense crowds.

The boy panicked. He dropped his clothing sack and ran across the street toward the Kips Bay Saloon, forgetting that Mr. Bell was no longer watching from the bar. His vision contracted. All he could see through a path of moving obstacles, rushing people, carts, and wagons was safety inside the saloon. All he had to do was reach the front stoop, leap over the drunk sprawled on it, and get inside.

People saw the fear on his face, and the path opened wide. They scrambled out of his way. He burst past them—they couldn’t help if they tried—skidded on the greasy cobblestones, and fell on his face. Before he was back on his feet, the killer had halved his lead. A stiletto gleamed in his fist.

Isaac Bell bolted from a tenement in black Hebrew garb and ran after the thug chasing the apprentice. The block was packed with innocents, too many people for gunplay. An empty delivery wagon blocked his path. As he vaulted over it, he saw Archie Abbott, his hair dyed dark like Bell’s, drop the reins of a horse cart heaped with rags and jump from the driver’s seat. Harry Warren leaped from a second-story fire escape, slid down a canvas shop awning, and hit the sidewalk running.

The killer caught up six feet from the front stoop of the Kips Bay Saloon.

Richie’s senses were heightened by fear. For a second, he could see and feel and hear everything at once—the drunk blinking awake at his feet, the shadow of the man behind him, the stiletto hissing as it parted the air. He twisted frantically from its path. Aimed at the back of his neck, the blade slipped past and tore through his ear. The pain stopped him cold, and, in that instant, the killer thrust again.

Richie heard a startled grunt.

The stiletto fell on the sidewalk, ringing like a chime. The killer doubled over, clutching his groin. A fist rose from the sidewalk like a pile driver in reverse and smashed the killer’s face. Richie heard bones snap. Blood spattered the drunk, who sagged back down on the stoop and closed his eyes.

The man who had tried to stab him reached to pick up his knife. Bell stepped on his hand, and Abbott clamped manacles on his wrists.

Isaac Bell seized Richie’s shoulder and clapped a handkerchief over his ear. “O.K., boy?”

“I think so. Thanks to this guy.”

Bell knelt beside the drunk. “Wish, where did you come from?”

“Philadelphia,” said Aloysius Clarke. “Sorry I fell asleep.”

“Heck of a disguise.”

“I’ve been practicing my whole life.”

A loud explosion showered them with glass.

“Mano Nera! Mano Nera!”

Gold coins, ten-dollar bills, and broken glass flew from Banco LaCava’s show window and cascaded into Elizabeth Street. Dust and smoke gushed from the shattered bank and the front of the tenement in which it was housed.

“Mano Nera! Mano Nera!”

Within moments, hundreds of people crowded onto fire escapes, screaming,
“Mano Nera! Mano Nera!”
and thousands surged from their tenements. As the mad rush filled the sidewalks and spilled into the street, David LaCava stormed out with a pistol and a wastebasket and began picking up the money. His cheek was cut, and blood reddened his shirtfront.

“You two help him,” Bell ordered Wally Kisley and Mack Fulton, and led Archie and Harry Warren into the building. They searched for trapped and injured. Inside the front hall, broken plaster and splintered lath littered the floor. Through swirling dust, Bell saw that the bomb had blown a hole in a wall between the building and the bank and LaCava’s apartment behind it. Two men hauling sacks of money from LaCava’s safe jumped through the hole.

Isaac Bell and Archie Abbott knocked both to the floor in a flurry of fists and blackjacks. A third thug leaped through the hole, waving a gun. Harry Warren fired his pistol first and dragged the money back through the hole, while Bell and Archie Abbott carried Mrs. LaCava and her two children out of their wrecked parlor.

Cops and plainclothes detectives arrived on the run from their Mulberry Street Station House. White horses galloped through the crowds, dragging fire engines.

“What are you doing here?” asked a detective, taking charge of the prisoner Harry Warren handed over. The others had escaped.

“Guarding the bank.”

“Made a hash of it.”

“No kidding.”

Wally Kisley hurried up to Bell with a rag collector’s sack over his shoulder. Bell asked, “Where’s Richie?”

“Doctor’s sewing his ear. Don’t look now, but the Boss is here.”

“He’s in Washington.”

“Was,”
said Harry. “He looks mad enough to bite the heads off nails. Or detectives.”

“I’m afraid I know which one,” said Bell.

Sure enough, Joseph Van Dorn was shouldering a beeline for the Kips Bay Saloon. Bell caught up with him as he knelt beside Wish Clarke, who had fallen back to sleep. Van Dorn seized his shoulder in his massive hand and shook him hard.

“Wake up, Aloysius!”

Wish Clarke opened his eyes, wiped his mouth with the back of his hand, and smiled. “Hello, Boss.”

“You’re fired.”

Isaac Bell said, “He saved Richie Cirillo’s life.”

“I heard all about it. He’s drunk. Dumb luck he woke up in time and dumb luck he didn’t get the rest of you killed. Aloysius, you’re the best detective I know. I’ll welcome you back when you’re stone-cold sober and dry for the rest of your life. Until then, I don’t want to see your face.”

He stood up, turned, and hurried away. Then he turned back, knelt again, and awkwardly patted Wish’s shoulder. “Bejesus, man, I’ve known you almost as long as I’ve known Mack and Wally. I hope you can come back.”

“Thanks, Joe.”

Van Dorn stalked off.

Isaac Bell helped his old friend to his feet.

Wish said, “Sorry I let you down, Isaac.”

“You didn’t let me down. I’d have lost an apprentice without you. I’m only sorry the Boss doesn’t see it that way.”

Wish looked immensely sad and fumbled for his hip flask. “Don’t get on the wrong side of this, old son. The Boss is right.”

“What were you doing in the bank?” a police detective roared at the gangster the Van Dorns had turned over to him.

“Buy steamship ticket.”

“Where to?”

“Italia.”

“You’re lying, Pasquale. Your type don’t go back to Italy, they’d throw you in the hoosegow. What were you doing in the bank?”

“Big-a boom. Head hurts.”

“What is your business?”

“None.”

“Who do you run with? Salata?”

“Salata? Never heard of him.”

“Where do you live?”

“I’ve forgotten.”

The cop shouted, “You think I’m the soft mark, wiseacre? I’ll give you to Detective Petrosino. His boys’ll strip you down to your socks.”

“Won’t do no good,” Harry Warren muttered to Isaac Bell. “Sicilians don’t crack.”

Across the street, the killer whose nose Wish Clarke had broken insisted to the cops that he had been running into the Kips Bay for a beer when a drunk attacked him.

“Was that before or after you dropped your stiletto?”

“Not mine.”

“Pasquale, I got witnesses saw you stabbed a kid with it.”

“Nobody remember in trial.”

The cop winked at Harry Warren. “If they was Italians who saw you stick the kid, you’d probably be right, Pasquale. You’ve got the poor devils too scared to remember their own mothers. But my witnesses are Van Dorns. They got a saying. They never forget. Never . . . So let’s start over. What’s your name?”

“Pasquale.”

“What’s your name?”

“Pasquale.”

“He’s Vito Rizzo,” Harry Warren interrupted. “One of Salata’s boys, aren’t you, Vito?”

“Gimme lawyer.”

Warren said to Bell, “He’ll jump bail tomorrow.”

“We’ll press charges.”

“He’ll still be out on bail. They got pull at Tammany Hall.”

The cops and firemen restored order, and the neighborhood started to settle down. But even as they cleared the street of people gawking, a long line of depositors, clutching bankbooks, formed at the shattered front door of Banco LaCava.

Bell gave the cops on guard a look at his Van Dorn badge, and Harry Warren slipped each two dollars. They found LaCava stuffing his safe with the money he had scooped from the street and Bell’s squad had rescued.

“My business is ruined. People are running to my bank to take their money.”

“Why? You got your money back.”

“They can’t trust their money will be safe with me. They know the Black Hand will come again. I should have paid like my friend Branco told me.”

When Bell and Harry Warren were alone, the gang detective said, “His ‘friend’ Branco could be the guy who sent the extortion letter. First they send it. Then they just happen to show up like a friend or fellow business man, advising you to pay.”

Isaac Bell studied Antonio Branco from the café across Prince Street from Branco’s Grocery. Leaning, half seated, half standing, against a tall stool, he cut a well-to-do figure, in a tailored blue suit of broadcloth fit more for the board of director’s dining room than a bustling grocery. Ditto his custom-made shoes, polished to a mirror shine.

He was significantly taller than the clerks and drivers he was overseeing loading his wagons, an animated presence with flashing eyes, a trim mustache, and thick, curly hair black as anthracite. His face was constantly changing: a robust smile for a quick-moving employee, a harsh scowl for a laggard, a satisfied nod for a full wagon. An orange fell from a broken crate, he snapped it out of the air with a lightning grasp.

Bell crossed the street. Branco tracked him with alert eyes and a curious gaze as if instinctively aware that the tall detective weaving smoothly through the traffic had business with him. He stood up and crossed the sidewalk to intercept him, and Bell saw that he walked with a slight limp, with one foot kicking slightly to the side. It did nothing to diminish the impression of a coiled spring forged of the strongest alloy.

Bell extended his hand. “Isaac Bell, Mr. Branco. Van Dorn Detective Agency. I understand you told David LaCava to pay the Black Hand.”

Branco looked away with a sad smile. “I told David LaCava and Giuseppe Vella. Apparently, they should have listened to me.”

“But if you felt that way, why did you join their White Hand Society?”

“I was skeptical. But it was the right thing to help. Even if not wise.”

“Skeptical? Or afraid?”

When an expression of contempt hardened Branco’s face and steel glittered in his eyes, Bell was struck by an odd feeling that they had met earlier. Before he could pin the memory, Branco smiled, and the steely glitter softened to a good-humored sparkle. “There are forces it sometimes behooves us to accommodate.”

“Were you born in America, Mr. Branco?”

“No. Why do you ask?”

“You have a native’s command of the language.”

Branco beamed. “Would that were so. My accent ever marks me a newcomer.”

“It is barely noticeable,” said Bell, “while you turn a fine phrase. When did you arrive?”

“I first came as a harp slave when I was eight years old and I have lived here on and off ever since . . . You look puzzled. A ‘harp slave’ is a boy made to play music in the streets and bring his padrone the coins that kind people toss to him.”

“A slave implies a cruel master.”

Branco shrugged. “I learned my English, I learned to read.”

“All at eight? You’re practically a native.”

“I returned to Italy when my padrone died. In those days, a steerage ticket back was seven dollars. Even a boy could go home.”

“I’ve heard that now
you
are a padrone.”

“Not for children,” Branco said sharply. “I help padrones find work for grown men.”

“On the aqueduct?”

“I am privileged to help the Excavators’ Union build this important feat. Now, since you’ve come on detective business, do you have any more questions before I continue conducting
my
business?”

“One more. Will your White Hand Society disband?”

“You mean will the society continue to pay Van Dorn?”

Now Bell’s eyes flashed annoyance. “The Van Dorn Agency will work to put the gang that attacked Banco LaCava behind bars, gratis. I meant precisely what I asked you—will your protective society disband?”

“If you are not worried about being paid, why do you care?”

“Your society will be a source of information. And give strength to the weak.”

“I hope it does not disband,” said Branco. “Good men should stand together. If we did disband, why would you still hunt the Black Hand? To avenge your boy they stabbed? Or because they made you look bad?”

Isaac Bell’s vow to avenge the attack on his apprentice and restore faith in the agency by catching the dynamiters was none of Branco’s business and he answered only the higher truth. “Because they are criminals who prey on the innocent.”