The Secret (7 page)

Oddly, though Frank Costello and Meyer Lansky were in our house from time to time, as was once or twice Jimmy Hoffa, no one ever seemed to recognize them. We were damn lucky about that.

Today I am proud of the business Giselle and I built. Why I wasn’t proud from the beginning, I don’t know. It is something from our past, that is from the culture of our past. When I was growing up in America, a photographer was prosecuted for pornography after he showed photographs that displayed a model’s
underarm
hair. When the first bikinis appeared on public beaches, girls were arrested. In television studios, silk handkerchiefs or silk flowers were fastened to the necklines of dresses, lest the audience should see on those black-and-white sets the shadow in the cleft between a woman’s breasts. Faye Emerson was condemned for refusing to tolerate this and so showing a modest little suggestion of cleavage. Audiences ogled—supposedly—a blonde called Dagmar because her breasts were big. Operators of carnivals attracted crowds by arranging for jets of air to blow up women’s skirts, and in many towns the law closed shows down for that—this, of course, before Marilyn Monroe laughed before the cameras while air from a grating blew up her skirt and showed her panties.

I could go on. We were an uptight society. By the time we opened the first Cheeks store the country was well on its way out of that, but remnants of old attitudes hung on—and, though diminishing,
would
hold on—and sometimes cause us worry.

I’ve said before that launching Cheeks wasn’t easy. Worry about anal-retentives was the least of our problems.

Acquiring merchandise to stock the stores was a far bigger problem. For the most part, the kind of stuff we wanted just wasn’t manufactured in America. Not in any quantity. Not so that you could place an order and expect delivery.

For the first year or so, almost everything we sold came from France. The merchandise came in through Idlewild Airport, as it was then named. That is to say, 90 percent or so of what we bought in France arrived at our stores in Manhattan. Some 10 percent was pilfered at the airport. Not just ours. Everybody’s.

If you didn’t like the cost of air freight, you could use ocean freight—and pay the cost in pilferage off the Jersey docks.

For decades, maybe for a century, the longshoremen had lifted what they regarded as their share of every shipment they handled. They took a relatively modest percentage and heard few complaints. When freight shifted to the airports, the freight handlers there mimicked the old dock custom.

It was a “tax” for doing business in New York, just as protection was another tax, and every business understood it. You paid more for having your trash hauled than a business in, say, Scarsdale paid—and in Scarsdale you paid more than someone in, say, Springfield, Illinois.

If you wanted to do a little remodeling or have part of your store repainted, the contractors ripped you off for inflated labor costs, plus a little extra profit on the side for the contractor himself.

How many times did I hear something like this?—“That’ll come to twenty thou, even. ’Course, if you could give me fifteen by check and, say, three in cash, the eighteen thou will cover it.” That meant he was going to pay income tax on fifteen. It also meant that I was going to pay eighteen and be able to claim only fifteen as a business expense. Another tax on doing business in New York.

All you could do was raise your prices to cover this element of the cost of doing business.

But my losses on air freight rose and got out of hand.

I talked with Buddy. I always talked with Buddy. Since the day not long after my parents’ death when he had mysteriously appeared and made himself my friend and mentor in street smarts, I had always talked with Buddy.

“Your problem is like this,” he said. “Stock of
your
merchandise shows up in a shop in, say, Philly, how’s anybody, including the cops, going to lay an identification on that an’ say, ‘Hey, these here scanties belong t’Cooper!’ Y’follow me?”

“I follow you,” I said bitterly.

“’Nother thing. You ain’ got no
affiliation.
I’d like to affiliate with you, but affiliation with me is gonna bust no balls at Idlewild or on the Jersey docks. You got two ways of doin’ business, Jerry. One is straight, an’ you gonna get ripped off good. The other is affiliation.”

I knew what he meant. All I wanted from Buddy was confirmation of what I already understood.

I had two options, just like he said. I could work straight and take my lumps, be ripped off by every two-bit racketeer that preyed on business in the city, or I could—as Buddy put it—affiliate.

Well, what the hell? Tens of thousands of businesses survived without affiliating. Some, actually, were pressured into affiliating. Most were not. They paid their tribute and raised their prices and made a profit.

But I was just hard-nosed enough to prefer
having
muscle to
being
muscled. I have never been content to be a victim. It had taken me time to settle with Uncle Harry, but I had, eventually—and found great satisfaction in it.

*   *   *

I called Frank Costello, naturally. We met again in the Norse Room, in the Waldorf. I was not entirely surprised to find Meyer Lansky with him.

“A neat little business,” Lansky said quietly, with that sly small smile that characterized him. “A lot of potential.”

“If I’m not nickeled-and-dimed to death,” I said.

“That can happen,” said Costello.

Understand that I’m sitting here with two
statesmen
of Cosa Nostra. Albert Anastasia, whom I had met once, was called the Executioner, for good reason. I’d met Crazy Joey Gallo and Tony Pro Provenzano. When you’re a hustler around New York, you do meet these characters. But Frank Costello, so far as I know, never killed anyone and never arranged a hit—and neither did Meyer Lansky. These two men were
peacemakers,
conciliators. They understood there was more money in the insidious invasion of businesses than there had ever been in violence, particularly in gang wars.

On the other hand, they represented
muscle.
It was not wise to get crosswise with men like them. They might not kill you, but they could break you, for damn sure.

“You’re looking for a partner,” Lansky suggested. “That’s how I figure.”

“You think so? Well … I suppose I am. I don’t
want
a partner, but I suppose I should have one.”

Lansky stubbed out his cigarette in the heavy glass ashtray on the lunch table. “It damages a man’s pride to have to take a partner he doesn’t want,” he said in a soft, sympathetic voice. “But pride is not all that important, Jerry. I’ve been arrested, handcuffed, made to stand in a lineup.” He shrugged. “None of that hurt me. I did a few months in jail, once. It didn’t hurt me. A man who puts too much emphasis on his pride is looking for a sure fall.”

“I’d like to keep control of my business, Mr. Lansky. I built it and…”

“Understood,” said Costello. “And that’s how it’ll be. But like you said, they nickel-and-dime you, nickel-and-dime you. Suppose you were to turn over, let’s say twenty-five percent of Cheeks to a partner with connections. And the nickel-and-diming stops. Not only that. This partner can help you expand your business. I have a man in mind who can also help you solve a problem you’re going to have sooner or later.”

“Which is?” I asked.

“You can’t always import all your merchandise. You’re going to have to start manufacturing it here. So, what do you know about the garment district, Jerry?”

“Nothing,” I admitted.

“The boys that rip you off at the airports and on the waterfront are nothing compared to what you’ll meet up with in the garment district,” said Lansky. “It’s a special culture, all its own. They have their ways that have been goin’ on for all of this century and even before. It’s more subtle, but it’s more effective.”

15

So it happened that I met Sal Nero: Salamon Nero.

I won’t play around with this the way he did with me. His name, really, was Solomon Schwartz. He was a nephew of Arnold Rothstein, one-time kingpin of New York rackets who was whacked out in the late twenties. He was also a cousin of Bugsy Siegel, who is credited with having opened up Las Vegas. Violence was part of his background. Rothstein was murdered in 1928, Siegel in 1947. They—and Lansky—were relics of the day when Jews controlled the rackets that came to be controlled by Cosa Nostra.

Sal was a sort of Lansky writ small. Well … Lansky was only five feet four and a half, so of course I don’t mean physically small. What Sal had was a trigger mind and a photographic memory. Some people compared him to Abbadabba Berman, the mathematical genius behind some of Dutch Schultz’s most profitable scams. Writ small? No, he wasn’t. He was writ large, a tall, muscular, handsome man who was irresistible to women. A flashy dresser.

I’ll add one more fact. He was hung like a horse. Like a friggin’ horse! It was amazing. I remember standing at a urinal and glancing over at Sal’s cock. Men are not supposed to do that and will deny they do, but I’ve yet to meet a man who didn’t, sometimes anyway. Sal was absolutely unbelievable!

What is more, he was connected. Officially—if there could be such a thing as
officially
—he was with the Carlino family. But he had always been careful to avoid doing things that would offend the other families, and no one despised him.

He was one year older than I was, and he had—to use words everybody will recognize but I never in my life heard seriously used—made his bones.

In 1947, when I was learning the Plescassier Water business, Sal found out that a Carlino underboss was messing with his wife. He went to Joseph Carlino, as the story is told, and complained that the underboss was screwing his wife, the mother of his children. He humbly asked Carlino’s permission to whack the guy out. Sicilians are sensitive about that sort of thing: family relations. They have very little tolerance for guys who mess around with other guys’ marriages. It’s like the way Masons pledge on their souls never to fuck the wife or daughter of another Mason.

“Very well, my friend,” Carlino said, as the story is told. “I will take no offense. But you must know that Vince has friends and will be well protected.”

“I am only concerned that I do not offend you, Don Carlino,” said Sal—as the story is told; I am always skeptical of things like this.

Carlino thought little more of it, apparently. But within a week the underboss was dead.

As the story is told, he got out of his car one night at his home on Staten Island. Two men were with him: his protection. As the three of them walked toward his front porch, huge blasts erupted from the shrubbery near the steps.

Vince went down first, nearly cut in two by the blast from a twelve-gauge shotgun. As the story is told, red and yellow bits of his gaudy silk necktie were found between his vertebrae. At short range, a twelve-gauge can do that.

The second blast took off the head of the first bodyguard, and the third blast cut through the knees of the second bodyguard, leaving him crippled for life but alive to tell a cautionary tale.

Sal had bought an automatic shotgun and cut down the barrel and the stock. He drilled a hole in the remaining wood of the stock and put in a leather strap. That way he could carry the shotgun hanging under his left arm and hidden by his raincoat. It was as dangerous as any weapon ever used.

What was more, it was used once. No trace of it was ever found. The New York cops know how to find guns tossed in the saltwater, but they didn’t find this one.

Nothing happened. If the cops suspected who whacked out Vince, they didn’t care. But after that Sal Nero was known as a man who could be crossed a little but not big-time.

My partner.

16

The advantages of having Sal Nero for a partner made themselves apparent quickly.

Pilferage at Idlewild did not stop, but it went down to the standard take. Nobody said a word, but the pilferage diminished. That was just one thing. What was more, the cost of having trash hauled went down a little, as did the cost of minor repairs and major remodeling.

Things like this happened—

A wise guy came into my West Side store one morning. “Figured you’d want to send flowers as a tribute,” he said to Giselle. “Everybody else is.”

“Flowers?” she asked. “For what?”

“Well … You know Paulie died. Paulie C. All the neighbors are sending floral tributes. Figured you’d want to send—What you want to send? I mean, like five hundred. Five buys a real nice tribute. Everybody’ll notice. Everybody’ll appreciate the way you’re making your business a part of the neighborhood. Be good for your business. Be very good.”

People who didn’t know Giselle took her for an innocent because of her French accent. Giselle was as innocent as Sal. “Five hundred dollars,” she mused, frowning. “I don’t know.… Man like Paulie ought to get at least a thousand.”

She said it, though she had not the remotest idea who Paulie C. might have been—if indeed there had been a Paulie C., and if indeed he had passed to his great reward.

“Oh, yeah, well…”

Giselle nodded solemnly. “All this kind of thing is handled by my husband’s partner. Yes. You speak to him, and I am sure he will do what is right.”

“Well, lady, who
is
your husband’s partner, and where do I find him?”

“My husband’s partner is Sal Nero.”

“Uh … right. Okay. I’ll talk to Sal. Right. I’ll take it up with Sal.”

Of course, that was the last we ever heard about sending money to buy flowers for Paulie’s funeral.

Sal had a formidable reputation among the small-timers. They were afraid of him. They had heard the story of the twelve-gauge. He had a respectable reputation among the bigger fry, but his reputation among the small-timers served us well.

He was like Meyer Lansky. He wasn’t a capo, and he didn’t have any soldiers. He didn’t work that way. So far as I have ever been able to find out, he never killed anyone or had anyone killed after the incident with the Carlino capo in 1947—with one very big exception. But the word on him was that he
had
done it, so he might do it again. He was a smart man, a wheeler and dealer who made things happen by brains and not muscle—but don’t get seriously crosswise with him.