Operation Underworld (36 page)
As Nikki climbed the stairs to Mrs Paluso’s apartment, she experienced an overwhelming sensation of relief from the familiarity of her surroundings. The extra time in the taxi had allowed her to compose herself prior to Mrs Paluso’s routine culinary onslaught. Predictably armed with potatoes and sausage, the Polish neighbour was only satisfied with no for an answer after Nikki relented and told her a friend had died. She finally accepted a cup of tea as a compromise.
“Is Kate in the front room?” Nikki asked, sitting at the kitchen table.
“Yes. You vant I call her?”
“No, no. I‘ll surprise her.” Kate did not hear her mother approach and for a brief moment Nikki’s heart was once again filled with the special kind of joy as she watched her daughter content at play. From behind the door jamb Nikki could see Kate had lined up several play chairs and boxes and had dolls sitting on them to form a mock classroom. Teacher Kate was reading the class an imaginary story from a small book. As Kate turned to ask the pupils if they were enjoying the story, she spotted Nikki.
“Mommy!” She ran to Nikki with open arms.
“Hi, sweetie! Reading a story, huh? What’s it about?”
Katie took Nikki aside and shielded her answer from the class by whispering to her mom. “I’m not exactly sure. This is a weird book. So I’m telling them about the beautiful princess and the evil sheriff. But they don’t know what’s really in the book.” Nikki took the little black book from Kate and glanced through the pages. Her mouth involuntarily dropped open and her knees weakened. She knelt down and held Kate by the hands.
“Honey, where’d you find this book?” Nikki was fighting back a tidal wave of panic as she spoke.
“In the porch.”
“You mean
on
the porch, sweetie.”
“No, in the porch. There was a loose brick. We were playing there the other day and Stachie found the brick. It fell out and the book was there.”
“Do Stachie and Lydia know about this book?”
“Lydia doesn’t. But you know Stachie, he’s a boy. He probably forgot about it already.”
“Honey, listen to me. This will be our little secret. You musn’t tell
anyone
. Understand?”
Katie didn’t understand, but nodded to her mom in agreement.
At half past two in the morning ,Nikki was still sitting at her kitchen table, a half cup of cold tea at her elbow next to a full ashtray, staring at the little black book lying in front of her, trying desperately to decide what to do.
The Daily News
sports page gives the track attendance for Belmont every day, and this number is always in the five or six figures. The last three numbers of the attendance are the most important numbers in many a New Yorker’s life. These numbers are known, in the vernacular as, ‘The Number’.
A leading economic indicator of how good things are in the waterfront neighbourhoods, is how busy the bookies are. Jimmy Erickson, who fixed the bets at the track for Hoover, so he’d laid off the New York families, couldn’t keep up with the workload. Even though his wife had thrown him out of the house twice already for roping her younger brother into running the numbers for him, he risked it again. He had no choice. He even took in two more runners just to keep up.
By order of Luciano, and by virtue of the all-round increased profit margins, the Mob were directed to back off on petty crime, in order to lower their profile in the media. The decreased profile placated the public, which thereby placated the politicians and allowed the Unione to consolidate more efficiently and preserve resources to make inroads into bigger and more profitable enterprises. A primary building block of how Lucky thought an organisation should be run.
Additionally, the inter-union co-operation was breaking all records. The cloak of secrecy provided by the US Naval Intelligence service allowed the boys to run circles around anyone they felt should be restricted from sharing future dividends in the new world order of organised crime.
Slack about crime stories in the press was taken up by war news and political rhetoric telling everyone how it was only a matter of time before the Allies struck back, and when the headlines heralded the meeting of Roosevelt and Churchill at Casablanca following the taking of Africa, it became common knowledge that Italy was not far behind.
Lansky was successful in making the Sicilian connection and that Thursday night, within yards of John Roebling’s Brooklyn Bridge, a meeting of unprecedented magnitude took place on Front Street.
Meyer Lansky, in his last major act with the Unione before going legit after the war, laid out Lucky’s plan to traffic heroin into Sicily from Turkey following the Allied invasion. Lucky would provide the Navy strategic intelligence about the island in exchange for reinstatement of as many of the local politicians as he could wrangle. The OSS would be only too happy to cooperate.
These ’politicians’ would in turn help export the ’slow death’ to the United States after the war. Only one of the five family heads was against the plan to shift from prostitution, extortion and robbery to the drug trade. He objected on moral grounds. In time he would be persuaded to reconsider. The others were tripping over themselves to get involved.
The next day a trustee passed the word to Lucky that “the Dodgers were a shoo-in”. Lucky immediately ordered Lansky to donate fifty large to the campaign fund of the Honorable Judge McVay. The judge who, coincidentally, would preside over Lucky’s bid for parole in less than two weeks.
“Whatch’a readin’?” Doc talked to Louie over the screeching of steel wheels as they passed into the East River tunnel. They were on the F train to Brooklyn. Doc wanted to snoop around Bushwick Creek before approaching the Brooklyn DA. Louie carried the copy of the
New York Daily News
with the report of Ira’s death.
“Winchell’s new column. He’s slammin’ Luciano again.”
“Luciano? He’s been up the river for half a dozen years. Must be hard-up for material.”
“Winchell says they outta hang ’em.”
“Ever notice how much braver Winchell got after Luciano got tagged?”
“He says here he has sources that say Luciano’s people gave Roosevelt nearly seven thousand for his ’32 campaign. That’s how he beat Smith.”
“Ya mean Walter’s tryin’ ta say the Presidency can be bought? Say it so, Joe!”
“Says here further, that that’s why FDR let all them drug dealers go while he was still Governor. All them ones that went back to Sicily.”
“Walter’s braver than I thought.” The train slowed to a halt. “This is us.”
Ataxi from the station dropped them at 14th and Kent. Doc and Louie stared in disbelief as they exited the cab. A giant iron gate patrolled by a pair of Marine sentries greeted them.
“Son-of-a-gun!” Louie expressed their surprise. “It’s a goddamned Navy base. It didn’t used to be a Navy base.”
“Yeah, but now it is and we got a snowball’s chance in hell of gettin’ in there.”
“Unless we enlist,” Louie jokingly suggested.
“Been there, done that. I need a drink.”
“Jeez, Doc, where we gonna find a bar in Brooklyn?”
Brooklyn, although only one of the five boroughs, was the third largest city in the country and so was large enough to its own police department, fire department and District Attorney’s office.
Even during the war, the Brooklyn District Attorney’s office was habitually swamped with murder cases of every mode and description. However, at a special session of the senior investigators and prosecutors with the borough DA himself, Ira Birnbaum’s homicide was stamped a priority. The fact that he was a federal employee weighed heavy, and part of his motivation for moving as swiftly as possible was to avoid a federal investigation by solving the crime quickly.
“Justin, what have we got for sure?” the DAaddressed the head investigator at the special afternoon meeting. The investigator read from a hastily composed file lying in front of him on the large conference table.
“White male, late seventies, early eighties, found face down in the reeds at Bushwick Creek. Cause of death asphyxiation secondary to strangulation. Manhattan resident, federal employee. Survived by wife.”
“Who found the body?”
“Coupl’a guys fishin’ in the river.”
“Where’d he work?”
“Third Naval District. Mail clerk.”
“Mail clerk? What happen, somebody’s relief cheque come late? Who the hell’d wanna take out a mail clerk? Any priors?”
“Not this guy. Paragon citizen.”
“Possible motives?”
“He was close to retirement. He and the wife hadn’t saved
much. We think maybe he was in over his head. Sharks, ponies.
Who knows?”
“You think it’s Mob related?”
“Virtually certain of it. Has all the earmarks. Strangulation, dumped in the East River. Probably met the perpetrator, or perpetrators at Greenpoint on one false premise or another and that’s where they gave it to him.” The investigator, who spoke with confidence, finished his remarks and sat down.
“Gentlemen, for years the Mob has been using Brooklyn for all its dirty work. Meanwhile, whenever there’s some kind of breakthrough on the crime front Manhattan gets all the credit.” The assembled group nodded and commented to each other in agreement. “I intend to change all that. I spoke to the mayor this morning and he’s agreed to allow us to carry the ball on this one. As of right now, I’m open for suggestions.”
One of the junior investigators spoke up in the back. “Sir, I understand this may not be what you want to hear, but… realistically, we may never catch the guys that did this.” Loud objections flooded the room as the young man continued to make his case.
“In a way, it’s not all that critical that we do. But if we can parley this murder, this heinous act of violence, arrogantly perpetrated against the people of this fair city, in flagrant defiance of all that is right and just, then…”
The objections began to subside as the group began to realise where he was going. “We can dominate the headlines of all the major dailies for at least two to three days. Be a helluva boost for the campaign image.”
“I like the high profile angle.” The DA nodded his support. “John, get a hold of Patricia. Draw up a press strategy and get it out to the API and UPI for tomorrow. What else. People? C’mon, talk to me.”
“History of similar crimes in the last six months and how we have to move to curb the ever growing menace?” someone else chimed in.
“Go with it but change it to the last year. What else?” The DA was anxious to maintain the momentum.
“A special joint presentation to the widow by the mayor and the DA. Great photo op!” someone else suggested.
“I hope you mean the Brooklyn DA, Samuelson?”
“You mean there’s another DA?” Laughter circulated the room. Suggestions flowed for the better part of an hour and by late afternoon there was nearly enough material to launch a presidential campaign.
Ira Birnbaum’s murderer may never be brought to justice, but it was sure as hell gonna look like he was.
“I can’t for the life of me figure out why the hell anyone would want to kill Ira.” Doc twirled his shot glass idly as he spoke.
