Operation Underworld (30 page)
Doc back-pedalled and pushed over a row of garbage cans to slow the second opponent. However, he was not prepared for the third man emerging from the shadows of the alley to his left.
“Oh good! Now we can play bridge.” The words had no sooner left Doc’s mouth when he saw the third man reaching into his breast pocket. Probably not for his ID, either, Doc figured.
Picking up a trash can lid, Doc was able to ward off several punches from the second man. As the man rubbed his sore fist, Doc connected with several square hits to the face, using the garbage can lid. The man slumped to the ground and McKeowen bear-hugged him in case the third man beat him to the draw and fired.
On the way down, Doc struggled with the second man’s shoulder holster and managed to withdraw the .38 special. Rolling onto his right side, he emptied three rounds at the third man, deliberately missing him, but saving the last three rounds in case he didn’t get the message. He did. Doc watched as the man ran serpentine up Prince Street, holding his hat down, and vanished onto West Broadway.
Doc lay there in between the two unconscious men, breathing heavily, eyes wide open and unaware that his face was bleeding from the cheek and forehead. After what felt like an eternity, he lowered the pistol and rolled onto his back, holding his head.
God-damned perfect ending to a perfect evening. Jesus! Nikki
,
tell me you don’t have any brothers!
As he rolled over and rose to his knees he realised he was in pain. He grabbed his right shoulder in agony and watched as blood dripped from his cheek and jaw onto the guy’s overcoat.
Walking on his knees to mystery man number two, Doc emptied the guy’s pockets. He did the same for the other would-be attacker and came up with a second .38 special, two Treasury agent ID’s, two sets of house and car keys and over $1200 in cash.
Christ! I’m in the wrong racket!
Doc was pleased with his night’s wages. He stuffed his pockets with the items, then took a handkerchief from one of the unconscious men and held it to his bleeding cheek. Picking up his ball cap, Doc stood up and began to limp away, until he glanced into the alley and smiled at some discarded wine bottles on the ground.
Afew minutes later, after crossing West Broadway, Doc ran into a cop walking the night beat.
“Excuse me, officer. I think there’s something strange going on in the alley over on Prince Street, just before Wooster. You might wanna take a look.”
“What happened to your face, pal?” the officer asked sympathetically.
“Cut myself shaving.”
McKeowen continued towards Christopher Street, and when the cop found the two men a short time later, locked in a passionate embrace, smelling of cheap wine and both holding empty wine bottles, he immediately went to the police call box on the corner and rang for the Paddy Wagon.
By the time Doc reached Christopher Street, Harry was cleaning up and was surprised to see him come through the front door.
“Evenin’, Doc. How was your… man, oh man! She musta said no!”
Doc still held the hanky to his cheek trying to stop the bleeding. With a wince, he reached into his pocket and produced the newly acquired bank roll. Peeling away a fifty and laying it on the counter, he asked Harry if Redbone was still around.
“Yeah, I think so. He was just locking up about ten minutes ago.”
“Do me a favour, will ya? Have him run around to Jimmy’s and get me a bottle of Jameson’s. You guys split the change. Deal?”
Harry looked down at the fifty. “Hell, Doc! Deal!”
Doc went upstairs and fifteen minutes later Harry, Redbone and Doc were in the office having a late night baptism.
“Well, you gonna tell us what happened or do we have ta drink it outta ya?” Harry finally broached the subject of Doc’s injuries. McKeowen didn’t answer but reached into his pockets and emptied them onto the desk. Redbone and Harry stared in disbelief.
“Damn, Doc! I thought you was the muggee, not the mugger!” Redbone was the first to give his impression. Harry leaned forward and looked more closely. He looked at Doc, then picked a fifty out of the roll crumpled it up, tore it in half and then held it up to the light. As everyone watched, he pulled a cigarette lighter out of his pocket and lit the note on fire and watched it burn.
“Damn, Harry! That mustard gas shit finally gettin’ ta you, man?” Redbone had only seen pictures of fifty dollar bills.
“Doc, that fifty you give me come outta this bank roll?” Harry asked.
“Yeah. Why?”
“I think your credit just ran out at Jimmy’s.”
“What the hell you talkin’ about?”
“This dough is phoney.”
Doc sat back and slowly smiled. Redbone downed his drink, sat back in his chair and offered his assessment of the situation.
“Sumbitch!”
There’s little mystery about why authors such as James Fenimore Cooper and Washington Irving chose the mountainous terrain of upstate New York as the locale for their classic legends. The spectacular cliffs, magnificent waterfalls and plush forests combine to create a fairytale landscape.
The breath-taking scenery, however, was completely lost on the official messenger cautiously making his way by motorbike through the frozen mud of the winding mountain roads. Intermittent towns and villages offered the only relief from the unpaved roads, and the icy drizzle which began to gently fall greatly hampered the likelihood of his reaching his destination before dark.
An hour after dusk, mammoth courtyard spotlights reflected the mud-splattered 1939 Indian and its frozen rider as they pulled in through the twin steel doors guarding the main gate of Great Meadows Prison. A short time later, a sealed plain manilla envelope was pulled from one of the brown leather saddlebags and handed to Medford T. Childs.
Warden Childs was a third generation correctional facility employee, and Southern Baptist. In the unlikely event a prisoner assigned to his prison had any doubts about whose playground they were in, Childs considered it his ‘God appointed’ duty to take any and all remedial measures.
“Lawson!” Childs called out. One of Childs’ many rules was that an armed guard would be posted to him twenty-four hours a day regardless of where he was. His wife wasn’t very fond of this rule, but what the hell, they had been in separate beds for nearly twelve years.
Lawson entered the office. “Yes, sir?”
“I got us a couple new memos here from the Coo-missiona’. Says here one of ’em, dat we’s no longa allowed ta give solitary for more than thuty days at a time. Take note.”
“Yes, sir.”
“From now on, solitary will be thuty days on, one day off, followed by thuty days on.”
“Sounds fair to me, sir.”
“Get me that Luciano fella up here, and close da doo. Don’t let nobody in here ‘til I’s finished.”
“Yes, sir.” Lawson left to find Lucky and Childs had opened the red envelope which was also contained in the delivery. It was a follow-up memo to the one he had received only a few days prior instructing him that Luciano would be permitted visitors other than those usually allowed. However, this memo was more direct.
Dated: 6 March, 1942
To: Warden Medford T. Childs
From: Commissioner of Prisons, John A. Lyons
Warden Childs, you are hereby directed to obtain, in a discreet manner, the names of all persons who make contact with the prisoner known as Luciano. You will then, via special courier, send me said names, dates and times of visits. If you have any questions please contact my office.
Childs filed the memo in a locked filing cabinet drawer and sat back in an uneasy frame of mind to wait for Luciano.
It was suppertime so Lawson knew right where to find Lucky, and as he entered the large noisy dining hall, he headed for the front of the room, and made his way to the centre of one of the thirty-two seat dinner tables. Lawson spoke in a general manner, avoiding eye contact, despite the fact he stood directly in front of the head of the Unione.
“Luciano, you are requested to report to the Warden’s office.” Following his announcement, Lawson moved to the centre aisle to wait for his charge. Lucky took his time finishing his food, as several other inmates seized the moment.
“How the hell is a man gonna get his nutrition if you Screws keep on interuptin’ us durin’mealtime?”
“Hey, errand boy, go tell Childs Mr Luciano is utterwise occupied dinin’ wit his esteemed enterage.” In a matter of seconds, everyone at the table was involved to one extent or another in the growing ruckus. Two shotgun-toting guards patrolling the overhead catwalk closed in towards the disturbance.
There was never any real threat of trouble. The inmates were simply practising the time-honoured tradition of harassing the guards.
Lucky moved as slow as he could and still be considered in motion, to give his crew maximum exposure time at the guard, and as he pushed away from the table he overheard a muffled conversation in progress, to his immediate right. A slightly built inmate was talking to another.
The man spoke softly, but in the lulls of the harangue party occurring around him, Luciano’s ear picked up the words, “secret meeting”.
By way of attracting his attention, Lucky made eye contact with a man at the end of the table whose nose pointed in several directions at once. Lucky nodded to the covert conversation, the nose nodded back and Lucky accompanied Lawson to the exit door.
Upstairs in the warden’s office, Lucky sat in front of the desk listening to Childs while he was told, for the second time since his arrival, that his status in gangland meant absolutely nothing at Great Meadows, and Lucky had better get used to it.
Medford T. Childs was attempting the well-known intimidation tactic. He may as well have asked Adolf Hitler to attend synagogue.
Lucky got his name after being discovered by Staten Island police late one afternoon, staggering down a roadway severely beaten and bleeding. His nickname, as well as his droopy right eyelid, were a result of having been one of the few known individuals to have survived a gangland ‘ride’. The authorities knew who he was when they found him and, after two days of grilling, he couldn’t be intimidated by the police into telling them who had done it.
What chance did Childs have?
“And let’s get one more thing perfectly clear, Mr Luckiano, I won’t stand for any trouble in dis here prison! I don’t want no problems!” Childs’melodramatic presentation was interrupted by a knock on his door.
“Come in!” It was Lawson. “What is it?”
“Sir, we have a problem.” Childs glanced at Lucky.
“What kind of a problem?”
“There’s a party here to visit the prisoner, but they won’t comply with the visitor’s regulations.”
“You got any friends that don’t make trouble, Luckiano?!”
Five minutes later, Childs was downstairs in the visitors’ area consulting with his supervising guard while sporadically staring through the thick glass of the monitoring booth at the three would-be visitors. The guard explained the source of the problem. Staring back at the warden were Polakoff, Lansky and Lanza, all three with cigarettes hanging from their mouths.
“Send the lawyer up to my office,” Childs instructed the guard.
Unfortunately for Medford, on inviting Polakoff to his office he failed to take into account how annoyed Polakoff was by the forty-five minute wait he had already endured, by the fact he was haunted by the late night drive back to the City, and that, to cap it all, he was now being told he had to go to the warden’s office just to get permission to see his ex-client for which he was being paid absolutely nothing. When he was invited to sit down in front of the warden’s desk, Polakoff refused and considered the mandatory invitation the last straw.
“Now look here, Childs! I been a lawyer a helluva lot longer than you been a prison warden, and I don’t give a damn about your excuses!”
“Mr Pole-acoff, I am truly apologetic about your dee-lay. However, we have polocies in place foo your protection.” Childs’ response reflected a demeanour which was as transparent as it was comical.
“Bullshit! Understand one thing, Childs. I and my guests are gonna get in to see Luciano, and we’re gonna do it tonight and we’re gonna do it without you getting our fingerprints! And you can take that to the bank, god-damn it!” Polakoff surprised himself with his own outburst and walked across the room to sit down. Then watched as warden Childs placed a phone call on his private line.
Lansky and Lanza were still in the waiting area and working on their second pack of smokes. The two were increasingly uncomfortable with spending so much time in a prison and although neither one wanted to say it, both toyed with the idea that it might be a set-up.
Polakoff could not be sure of whom the call was to, but he listened attentively to the short conversation.
“Is he in your office now?” the voice on the other end of the line enquired.
“Yes sir, he is.” Polakoff knew instantly, it was Childs’ boss. The warden was talking to Commissioner Lyons.
Unknown to Polakoff, everything had been arranged. Or so Lyons led everyone to believe. Lyons calculated that if he were going to be strong-armed into playing this high stakes game of allowing high-profile criminals to visit the boss of the high-profile criminals, he had no intention of entering into it without a trump card. He wanted a name on which to hang blame when the day came. And Polakoff was as good as any.
“Tell him we’ll waive the fingerprints but not the register. Tell him he has to sign in and out, and he will be required to accompany all visitors from now on. And he takes full responsibility for their actions. Any other questions?”
“No, sir. I’ll make it all perfectly clear to him.”
Childs terminated his conversation with Lyons and proceeded to top off Polakoff’s evening by making “it” all perfectly clear. As he spoke in a regimented, bureaucratic tone, Polakoff resolved to make something perfectly clear to the New York City District Attorney when he returned downstate, in the morning.
Around half past eleven that evening they finally got to talk to Lucky, but there wasn’t much time before they had to leave, so a date was set for another visit in a few days.
