Boardwalk Gangster (7 page)
Read Boardwalk Gangster Online
Authors: Tim Newark
Maranzano had a grand vision for organized crime in New York and he wanted to lay it out so everyone knew where they stood. Joseph Valachi was witness to it.
“I didn’t know until later that he was a nut about Julius Caesar,” said Valachi, “and even had a room in his house full of nothing but books about him. That’s where he got the idea of the new organization.”
Maranzano addressed the hall in Italian and declared himself
Capo di tutti Capi
—“Boss of all Bosses.” From now on, every one of New York’s major Sicilian gangs would be organized into five families. Each family or
borgata
would be headed by a boss with an underboss. They would be advised by a
consigliere.
Beneath them were ranked lieutenants and they would command the ordinary gunmen known as “soldiers.”
Capo di tutti Capi
—“Boss of all Bosses.” From now on, every one of New York’s major Sicilian gangs would be organized into five families. Each family or
borgata
would be headed by a boss with an underboss. They would be advised by a
consigliere.
Beneath them were ranked lieutenants and they would command the ordinary gunmen known as “soldiers.”
The bosses of the five recognized families were Charlie Luciano, taking over from Masseria, Joseph Bonanno, Joseph Profaci, Tom Gagliano, and Vincent Mangano. Vito Genovese was named as Luciano’s underboss.
“Whatever happened in the past is over,” said Maranzano.
“There is to be no more ill feeling among us. If you lost someone in the past war of ours, you must forgive and forget. If your own brother was killed, don’t try to find out who did it to get even. If you do, you pay with your life.”
Maranzano’s rules stated that no member of a family could touch a member of another family without first clearing it at a meeting of the heads of the families. Senior members of the Cosa Nostra—“our thing”—were untouchable.
A separate celebration was organized by Maranzano on August 1, 1931, at the same Coney Island restaurant where Masseria was killed. It turned into a three-day banquet to which all the top mafiosi from around the country were invited.
“On a costly and sumptuously decorated immense table towered a majestic tray,” recalled Nick Gentile, “in which, those who came, placed handfuls of dollars. A group of highspirited boys provided to receive guests greeted them with ‘Long live our Capo’ and conducted the guests to the tray, watching the offering. Many of them, trying to look like noblemen, did not make offerings of less than $500. On that night, Maranzano picked up $100,000.”
Gentile was careful to listen to Marazano’s conversation to a fellow Mob chief. “This victory has intoxicated me,” said Maranzano. “I feel like I am in a ball of fire. I wish I were going to Germany to be more secure.”
It was an odd statement to make—only fully explained by later revelations. Gentile interpreted it as a sign of weakness from someone positioning himself as capo over everyone else. At the end of the feast, the donated sum of $100,000 was supposed to have been distributed to relatives of victims of the gang war, but Maranzano pocketed it all.
As far as Luciano was concerned, the assassination of Masseria had been very good for him. It placed him among the top six gangsters in New York, but having risen so high in organized crime, he was very tempted to press on and eliminate Maranzano to become boss of bosses. The momentum that had begun with the killing of Masseria was hard to stop. Maranzano might be good at speeches, but it was Luciano’s gunmen who ended Masseria’s rule. The setup was too attractive—just one more slaying and Luciano would be top of the pile.
On a personal level, Luciano had never liked the posturing Maranzano. He was too imperious and had brought old-world manners to New York City. Among these was a Sicilian prejudice against Jews. Lansky had warned Luciano of this attitude, and when Maranzano invited Luciano to accompany him on a trip to visit Al Capone in Chicago to explain the new regime, Luciano asked him if Lansky could come along, too.
“All right,” said Maranzano, “but he can’t be in the room with us when we meet.”
This profoundly irritated Luciano. Not only was Lansky an old friend from the Lower East Side, but he was also a much valued criminal ally and financial partner. There was no room for this nonsense in Luciano’s modern world of crime.
This personal animosity was not lost on Maranzano, who revealed his own anxiety to Valachi.
“I can’t get along with those guys,” he said of Luciano and Genovese. “We got to get rid of them before we can control anything.”
He also added Frank Costello, Willie Moretti, Joe Adonis, Dutch Schultz, even Al Capone, to his list of undesirables.
Word of this hit list got to Luciano, and he prepared his response with a degree of irony. If Maranzano so undervalued the importance of Jewish gangsters, then it was they who could deal with him. Luciano recruited a crew of Jewish gunmen from out of town led by Samuel “Red” Levine. An observant Jew from Toledo, Ohio, Levine saw no conflict between his faith and his
job, and if he had to carry out a hit on the Sabbath he would simply wear a yarmulke under his hat.
job, and if he had to carry out a hit on the Sabbath he would simply wear a yarmulke under his hat.
In the meantime, says Gentile, whenever Luciano visited Maranzano he always made sure he was accompanied by five bodyguards, and if Maranzano asked him for his home address, Luciano said he did not have a permanent residence.
While Lansky oversaw the instruction of Levine and his team in the Bronx, Maranzano also went outside the Sicilian community to hire an Irish gunman—Vincent “Mad Dog” Coll. When Luciano and Genovese got the call to see Maranzano at his smart new office suite above Grand Central Station at 270 Park Avenue in September 1931, Luciano activated his own assassination plot.
Just after lunch, on September 10, four men arrived at Maranzano’s office and identified themselves as Internal Revenue Service agents. Maranzano had been having trouble with his tax records, and Tommy Lucchese, an associate of both Maranzano and Luciano, had passed this information on to Luciano. Expecting a call from the IRS, Maranzano’s bodyguards let in the men. The guards were unarmed because their boss had told them to leave their guns at home in case of just such a surprise audit. It was a fatal mistake.
“When I arrived at the Park Avenue office,” said gang member James Alascia, “I found Maranzano and others lined up with their faces against the wall. I was told to face the wall.”
Maranzano was asked to step into an office by himself, which he did, still considering the men to be IRS agents. With the door closed behind them, Levine and a second hit man pulled out knives to kill him quietly, but Maranzano was strong for his age and fought back. Alongside six stab wounds, the Jewish assassins had to shoot him four times before he fell. They then cut his throat to make sure he was dead.
A stenographer who worked for Maranzano told a slightly different story to the police. She was in the office suite at the time and said she saw three men pin him against the wall—“one
of the trio slashed him with knife. Then the three backed away and fired five shots at him.”
of the trio slashed him with knife. Then the three backed away and fired five shots at him.”
The assassins left the building with no one daring to stop them. A little later the same day, Vincent Coll arrived at the Park Avenue offices to see Maranzano but was told he was dead. He shrugged his shoulders and quickly departed, keeping the cash advance he had been given to kill Luciano. Five months later, Coll was shot dead by Bugsy Siegel in a telephone booth.
In the subsequent police investigation, it was discovered that a main source of Maranzano’s wealth was not the usual business of the Mafia but the smuggling of illegal immigrants into the country on a massive scale. The majority of documents in his Park Avenue office revealed a ring of corrupt officials and human traffickers that led all the way to Germany—finally explaining his earlier statement about feeling safer in that country. Several associated gangsters were arrested there. They were responsible for easing the entry of eight thousand illegal aliens into the United States at a total price of $20,000,000. It was a staggering sum and with this money Maranzano had been able to bribe judges and immigration officials in Washington as well as provide counterfeit documents.
Alongside Luciano’s transatlantic drug network, this people-trafficking business was an indication of the global stretch of organized crime in New York in the early 1930s. The pot of gold available to ambitious mobsters was growing by the day. It also put the lie to the perception that Maranzano was an old-fashioned gangster. His many rackets were a vast and sophisticated operation. In the end, it just came down to a face-off between two distinctly different criminal characters.
Even Joseph Bonanno, who had been so impressed by Maranzano when he first arrived in America, agreed that his personal attitude did not suit New York in 1931. “Maranzano represented a style that often clashed with that of the Americanized men who surrounded him,” said Bonanno, who shortly after the man’s death made his own peace with Luciano.
The night after Maranzano’s death, according to Mafia legend, several gangsters closely associated with him were also slaughtered. This has subsequently been dubbed “The Night of the Sicilian Vespers,” after a notorious massacre in medieval Sicily. Although the number of killings has been estimated at forty, just a handful of murders have been actually identified, and it appears that few underlings had to be eliminated to ensure peace. Maranzano’s henchmen were more than happy to escape death and join the enterprise of their new boss, and that included gunmen like Joe Valachi.
It was Nick Gentile who claimed to have devised what should happen next to avoid any further bloodshed among the Italian Mob. Instead of conferring the title of boss of bosses on one man, “who might become inflated with importance and therefore commit unjustified atrocities,” he recommended the setting up of a commission of seven top mafiosi. These included the heads of the Five Families—Luciano, Mangano, Profaci, Bonanno, and Gagliano—plus Capone in Chicago and Ciccio Milano of Cleveland.
“With the administration of the Commission,” said Gentile, “a more confident air was breathed. Peace returned and everybody could peacefully perform their individual labors. Everybody remained satisfied because justice had been done. The administration or governing body, so composed, gave assurances of confidence because each person was able to turn to them without being coerced as to their own ideas and free to be able to ask for their proper rights.”
It all sounded like the League of Nations, but Luciano was not that interested in such lofty ideals. He always hated the pretensions of the traditional Sicilian mafiosi and was more interested in exploiting his business connections among the wider underworld community.
The Castellammarese War and Luciano’s triumph is usually portrayed as the victory of a modernizing American Mob over the Mustache Petes. Yet many of the traditional Sicilian mafiosi,
such as Bonanno and Profaci, remained in charge of their families for decades afterward. Luciano had not and did not seek to remove all these old-style Sicilian mafiosi from New York. He simply wished to stop them interfering with his own criminal enterprises. In that he succeeded spectacularly. No one would mess with Luciano for the next five years. He was in his thirties and it was time for him to enjoy his success.
such as Bonanno and Profaci, remained in charge of their families for decades afterward. Luciano had not and did not seek to remove all these old-style Sicilian mafiosi from New York. He simply wished to stop them interfering with his own criminal enterprises. In that he succeeded spectacularly. No one would mess with Luciano for the next five years. He was in his thirties and it was time for him to enjoy his success.
As for Nick Gentile, he was cut out of the new order, ending up as a narcotics smuggler.
“The men of importance of the Mafia, old foxes of New York,” he lamented, “had monopolized and cornered the positions that were most profitable. These men had forgotten me, whom they had used to resolve many risky situations, and risking my life especially during the struggle against Maranzano, during which I had played an important role and for which I was threatened with death many times … Oh ingratitude of humanity!”
That was just the kind of flamboyant Sicilian statement that irritated Luciano.
TOP OF THE PILE
C
harlie Luciano was a multimillionaire, but unlike his teenage friend Al Capone, he chose not to live in a palatial mansion protected by an army of bodyguards. He preferred the luxurious anonymity of plush hotels. In the early 1930s, Luciano lived first at the Barbizon-Plaza and then at the Waldorf Towers, part of the Waldorf-Astoria. Possibly the finest hotel in the world at that time, the new Waldorf-Astoria was the height of luxury living and was the tallest and largest hotel in the country. Replacing the old Belle Epoch building—which had been demolished to make way for the Empire State Building—the hotel opened at 301 Park Avenue in October 1931. When the Waldorf-Astoria first opened its doors, President Herbert Hoover delivered the welcome address. Its interiors included entire rooms taken from English country houses and refashioned into private clubs and dining suites. The Starlight Roof supper club had a retractable roof so you could dance under the stars, while the grand ballroom was the only four-story dance floor in the
city—but it was the modernity of its Art Deco interiors that marked it as something extra special.
harlie Luciano was a multimillionaire, but unlike his teenage friend Al Capone, he chose not to live in a palatial mansion protected by an army of bodyguards. He preferred the luxurious anonymity of plush hotels. In the early 1930s, Luciano lived first at the Barbizon-Plaza and then at the Waldorf Towers, part of the Waldorf-Astoria. Possibly the finest hotel in the world at that time, the new Waldorf-Astoria was the height of luxury living and was the tallest and largest hotel in the country. Replacing the old Belle Epoch building—which had been demolished to make way for the Empire State Building—the hotel opened at 301 Park Avenue in October 1931. When the Waldorf-Astoria first opened its doors, President Herbert Hoover delivered the welcome address. Its interiors included entire rooms taken from English country houses and refashioned into private clubs and dining suites. The Starlight Roof supper club had a retractable roof so you could dance under the stars, while the grand ballroom was the only four-story dance floor in the
city—but it was the modernity of its Art Deco interiors that marked it as something extra special.
When Luciano stepped out from suite 39C in the Waldorf Towers, he would descend to the ground floor of the Waldorf-Astoria in a wood-paneled elevator fronted with nickel-plated doors portraying ancient Greek muses. He then strolled across a golden yellow Wheel of Life mosaic floor, past palm trees and giant silver urns, into the Park Avenue lobby adorned with French neoclassical murals portraying heroic men hunting animals and hauling in fish. It was a long way from the tenement blocks of the Lower East Side.
Sometimes, however, rich hotel living bored Luciano and he yearned for simpler pleasures, like home cooking. Peter Ross was in charge of room service at the Barbizon-Plaza between 1934 and 1935 and on one occasion noted that Luciano had ordered a table, dishes, and silverware to be sent to his room but, unusually, no food. Puzzled and wanting to ensure first-class service for his guest, Ross knocked on the door of the room. When Luciano answered, the two spoke in Italian, as Ross was a Florentine Jew. As he stepped in the room, he could see Luciano was entertaining two friends and in the middle of the table was a large dish of Italian spaghetti. Luciano explained that the pasta had been brought over by one of his guests, whose mother had cooked it in Brooklyn for them.
The anonymity of living in hotels suited Luciano very well, especially as he gave alias names when he registered with them. It protected him from rival gangsters, he said. Whenever he was arrested, he invariably gave his home address as that of his parents living at 265 East Tenth Street. Luciano claimed to have lived there after he left school at the age of fourteen, so from about 1912 onward. His parents lived there until 1933, and this address is the only one that can truly be connected with him as a family home. The five-story tenement building still stands today, painted green on street level and redbrick above. A police investigator visited it in 1935 and spoke to the superintendent
of the building, who said that the Lucania family had lived there for some time prior to 1933. The superintendent had never seen Charlie Luciano but regularly saw his mother and father, Rose and Antonio, and a girl, presumably his sister. They lived in apartment five, paying from $24 to $30 a month rent.
of the building, who said that the Lucania family had lived there for some time prior to 1933. The superintendent had never seen Charlie Luciano but regularly saw his mother and father, Rose and Antonio, and a girl, presumably his sister. They lived in apartment five, paying from $24 to $30 a month rent.
In 1933, the Lucania family moved to a more modern apartment, 205 East Tenth Street, where Luciano’s younger brother, Bartolo, signed a lease for them at $960 rent per year. The superintendent there said he saw Luciano visit his parents several times late at night. By this time, his older sister, called Fanny, had married a plumber and moved to White Plains. Bart Lucania lived in Brooklyn and was the secretary and treasurer of the Associated Master Barber’s Chapter 629. In early 1935, Luciano’s mother became seriously ill and left the building, dying in the hospital. His father then quit the building in September of that year, owing two months’ rent, to live with his daughter in White Plains.
Generally, Luciano lived the life of a man about town, calling on a variety of girlfriends, some coming from the brothels he was connected with. He never got married and never seems to have yearned for that kind of intimacy or long-term friendship with a woman—certainly not when he was young. He never expressed the wish for a family and acknowledged no children. He loved straight sex with young women, but sometimes he was slowed down by venereal disease that reoccurred throughout his life.
For such a wealthy and powerful man, rubbing shoulders with politicians, businessmen, and show business stars, Luciano sometimes chased after high-profile women, but, generally, he didn’t like to be outshone by his girlfriends. One woman closely associated with Luciano was Gay Orlova—the stage name of a twenty-year-old chorus girl in a Broadway show. Luciano, reputedly, fell head over heels for her. Born in Russia, she had left with her family during the revolution. Luciano met her in 1934 after she performed in a show at the Palm Island Casino in
Florida. He was staying with Al Capone’s brother, Ralph, in his mansion. After that first meeting, they were smitten with each other and seen around town together. Lee Mortimer, a gossip columnist, asked her what she saw in Luciano.
Florida. He was staying with Al Capone’s brother, Ralph, in his mansion. After that first meeting, they were smitten with each other and seen around town together. Lee Mortimer, a gossip columnist, asked her what she saw in Luciano.
“How can you go for that gorilla?” he said.
“I love Charlie because he
is
so sinister,” she replied.
is
so sinister,” she replied.
For Charles Luciano, being a gangster was all about business and making money. The raw adrenaline of robbing, fighting, and killing had energized him in his teens and twenties, but by the time he hit thirty he had a more sober approach to criminality. With his like-minded associates, Lansky and Costello, he adopted the persona of a businessman. A businessman who used the ultimate persuasion of personal injury and murder to get what he wanted, but a businessman nevertheless, more interested in managing his commercial interests than in running around the streets shooting people. As Joe Profaci, head of one of the five Mafia families, was heard to say one day: “We were just interested in business, and going legit someday so our kids wouldn’t have the gangster curse. We didn’t really care who was boss.”
Luciano was always happy to take tips on management techniques from those with more experience. Johnny Torrio, who had retired from the underworld in Chicago, handing it over to Al Capone, was living in New York and gave advice to Luciano over games of cards at the Barbizon-Plaza. It was his idea of a national convention to settle points of conflict between the leading gangs. Luciano had attended such a gathering in May 1929 in Atlantic City—one of the first of several sit-downs where criminal bosses tried to bring a more businesslike tone to their activities.
All the leading gangsters agreed to work together to ensure they didn’t compete with each other and thus lower the price of illicit booze. Most important, Al Capone attended the meeting.
Calling it a “peace conference,” he accepted the need to reduce his incessant killings in Chicago after his headlining St. Valentine’s Day Massacre three months earlier. As a result of the meeting, Capone handed himself over to a friendly policeman so he could serve a brief ten-month period in jail for possession of a gun in order to allow other cooler heads to run his business empire more efficiently. Typically, neither Maranzano nor Masseria attended this conference because they would not sit down with Jewish gangsters on an equal footing.
Calling it a “peace conference,” he accepted the need to reduce his incessant killings in Chicago after his headlining St. Valentine’s Day Massacre three months earlier. As a result of the meeting, Capone handed himself over to a friendly policeman so he could serve a brief ten-month period in jail for possession of a gun in order to allow other cooler heads to run his business empire more efficiently. Typically, neither Maranzano nor Masseria attended this conference because they would not sit down with Jewish gangsters on an equal footing.
With the killings of Masseria and Maranzano and the establishment of what was dubbed the Commission, Luciano had abandoned a dictatorial vision of organized crime and settled on something more discreet and collaborative. He discouraged the old Sicilian manner of greeting fellow mobsters with a kiss—a simple handshake would do—drawing less attention. Negotiation, not fighting, was the preferred way forward, but that didn’t stop Luciano and his associates from using guns when necessary to settle any business problems—that’s what gave them their competitive edge against regular corporations.
Aping Rothstein, Luciano made sure he developed his own political contacts and firmed up a strong relationship with New York State governor Al Smith, ensuring the appointment of several friendly politicians in his administration. In 1929, Smith was succeeded as governor by Franklin Delano Roosevelt, and there is no reason not to expect that Luciano also had links to him, as he did with all leading Democrat politicians in New York at the time. It was the historic legacy of the Lower East Side gangs and their assistance to Tammany Hall. Luciano’s go-between in political matters was Albert Marinelli. During the early years of Prohibition, Governor Smith had appointed Marinelli port warden of the city, a position that allowed him to ensure the unloading of bootleg whiskey was carried out without intervention.
In July 1932, Luciano and Marinelli, along with Lansky and Costello, attended the Democratic convention in Chicago. Both
Smith and Roosevelt were the leading presidential contenders. Eventually Roosevelt was chosen, partly because he was less tainted with Tammany Hall than Smith, and the next year he became president. It was a new era for the United States.
Smith and Roosevelt were the leading presidential contenders. Eventually Roosevelt was chosen, partly because he was less tainted with Tammany Hall than Smith, and the next year he became president. It was a new era for the United States.
The Wall Street Crash of 1929 had brought an end to the heady postwar boom and reduced some of the money that flowed into criminal coffers during Prohibition. With the Great Depression taking hold of the country, citizens wanted an end to the discredited period of rapacious capitalism headed by the Republicans and wanted someone to clear up the mess. That person was Roosevelt. Three weeks after becoming president, on March 23, 1933, he signed into law an amendment to the Volstead Act, which allowed the manufacture and sale of certain kinds of alcoholic beverages. By the end of the year, Prohibition was repealed and the business of bootlegging was at an end. Luciano and his fellow gangsters had known the end was coming to this lucrative trade and were already prepared for it.
In May 1933, another national convention of gangsters was arranged—perhaps by Luciano—at a Park Avenue hotel. Johnny Torrio again took center stage as the voice of wisdom. His argument for a more secretive and cohesive approach to organized crime had been proved by the jailing of Al Capone more than a year earlier. Capone’s brand of shock-and-awe gangsterism had eventually pushed the authorities to nail him for income tax evasion, and this more sophisticated method of law enforcement was not lost on the gang bosses, who also took note of Capone’s hefty eleven-year sentence. They had to stay out of the limelight for their own survival or face a more determined crackdown on their activities.
Luciano understood the virtue of working together, said Torrio. He had overseen the establishment of a successful monopoly over illicit liquor. Now that bootlegging was coming to an end, the same approach had to be taken with other rackets. When it was Luciano’s turn to speak, he carried on the theme of criminal cooperation. He argued that the major gangs should
establish a nationwide syndicate. Each city or region would belong to its leading gang and other subsidiary gangs would recognize their supremacy. It didn’t matter that they were not a hundred percent Sicilian or Italian, as in the old Mafia. Any ethnic gang that had fought its way to the top had earned its title. But if those gangs started messing around in the business interests of another gang in another city, then a meeting should be called of the national syndicate to discuss the misdemeanor and sort it out before it ended in war.
establish a nationwide syndicate. Each city or region would belong to its leading gang and other subsidiary gangs would recognize their supremacy. It didn’t matter that they were not a hundred percent Sicilian or Italian, as in the old Mafia. Any ethnic gang that had fought its way to the top had earned its title. But if those gangs started messing around in the business interests of another gang in another city, then a meeting should be called of the national syndicate to discuss the misdemeanor and sort it out before it ended in war.
If one gang wanted to carry out an enterprise within another gang’s sphere of influence they had to ask permission before barging in. They should also share any of their valuable assets, such as corrupt politicians who could help out other gangsters. It all operated on a currency of favors owed and repaid. Some territories were to be considered open and gangs could come together to invest in developing criminal interests there. This would include areas such as Nevada or Cuba, where gambling casinos were built with Mob money. Luciano repeated his assertion there would be no boss of bosses—just an association of key gangsters who would work together to oversee the peaceful development of the underworld. The presence of Meyer Lansky, Louis Lepke, and Longy Zwillman reassured the large Jewish contingent that this syndicate was not a purely Italian club.
As he surveyed the underworld around him, Luciano was pleased to see how many of his teenage associates had prospered alongside him. This satisfied him, for he felt that everyone should have a slice of the pie and not lord it over the others, as Masseria and Maranzano had tried to at their cost. This really was the secret of Luciano’s success. Through good fortune and the power of his personality, Luciano was at the center of a group of friends who had all established themselves in various aspects of New York crime. Their strength was their friendship and the money they channeled into their various enterprises.
It should also be emphasized that although much of the
literature about Luciano portrays him as a master criminal in New York in the early 1930s—with him presiding over gangster conferences like a chairman of the board—this is probably more legend than reality. It is partly a construct of the crime busters who later confronted him, as they needed to show him as a master criminal to justify their own expensive crusades against him. Luciano was too interested in managing his own moneymaking rackets—and the countless day-to-day problems with them—to devote much time at all to overseeing a national syndicate, if it ever really existed. Most Mafia enterprises were local businesses operating in specific parts of cities. They liked to emphasize the importance of their personal contacts and this gave them considerable reach throughout the country if they needed it.
literature about Luciano portrays him as a master criminal in New York in the early 1930s—with him presiding over gangster conferences like a chairman of the board—this is probably more legend than reality. It is partly a construct of the crime busters who later confronted him, as they needed to show him as a master criminal to justify their own expensive crusades against him. Luciano was too interested in managing his own moneymaking rackets—and the countless day-to-day problems with them—to devote much time at all to overseeing a national syndicate, if it ever really existed. Most Mafia enterprises were local businesses operating in specific parts of cities. They liked to emphasize the importance of their personal contacts and this gave them considerable reach throughout the country if they needed it.
In the same month as the Park Avenue conference calling for an end to gang warfare, there was a spectacular gunfight on Broadway that somewhat undermined the pacifying words of Luciano and Torrio. On the evening of May 24, as crowds were coming out of movie theaters, they came under fire from two expensive sedans racing northward along Broadway. Bullets flew everywhere and wounded three bystanders, including a forty-five-year-old nurse who was taken to the hospital in critical condition. At West Seventy-ninth Street, one car drew abreast of the other and the fedora hat–wearing passengers inside sprayed it with bullets.
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