A Bloody Business Read online

  Contents

  Cover

  Some Other Hard Case Crime Books You Will Enjoy

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Foreword

  Introduction

  Chapter One: “Shhhh! Speak Easy!”

  Chapter Two: Trust Your Mother but Cut the Cards

  Chapter Three: Survival of the Fittest

  Chapter Four: Don’t Get Involved

  Chapter Five: Build Capital

  Chapter Six: Play It Low Key

  Chapter Seven: Always Touch Base

  Chapter Eight: Part of Something Is Better Than All of Nothing

  Chapter Nine: We Stick Together, No Matter What

  Chapter Ten: Never Let Your Guard Down

  Chapter Eleven: The House Always Wins

  Chapter Twelve: It’s All How You Spin the Story

  Chapter Thirteen: If At First You Don’t Succeed, There’s Always Gehinnam

  Chapter Fourteen: We All Sign on the Dotted Line

  Chapter Fifteen: Let Slip the Dogs of War

  Chapter Sixteen: In Vino Veritas

  Chapter Seventeen: Yoo-Hoo, Is Anybody?

  Chapter Eighteen: Winner Takes All

  Chapter Nineteen: Now Is the Summer of Our Discontent

  Chapter Twenty: Oh, Come All Ye Faithful

  Chapter Twenty-One: A Clean Conscience Makes a Comfortable Pillow

  Chapter Twenty-Two: Play Nice with Others…or Else

  Chapter Twenty-Three: A Snowball’s Chance

  Chapter Twenty-Four: What’s Yet to Come Is Always a Gamble

  Sabella is not Italian. He’s Sicilian and part of the clan that has settled in Brooklyn.

  “Why are you meeting with this guy?” Rosen says.

  “Respect,” Charlie says. “If I’m going to make moves in his town…”

  “Since when is this his town?” Rosen says.

  “You gotta show respect,” Charlie says. “That’s how the Italians handle things. These Sicilians got hair triggers. Joe the Boss is breathing down their neck in Brooklyn. We let him know we ain’t interested in taking over his territory. Just play along.”

  Rosen shakes his head. Meyer lights another cigarette.

  “It’s America,” Meyer says. “There’s plenty for everybody. When we were kids, we were all robbing and stealing. It was the Wild West. We’ve been handed an opportunity on a silver platter. If we play it right, we all get rich.”

  “Ha!” Rosen says. “And if we don’t?”

  “You want to open up gambling in Philly?” Meyer says. “You’re going to need Sabella’s cooperation. Cut him in for a piece. It’s cheaper than a war…”

  SOME OTHER HARD CASE CRIME BOOKS YOU WILL ENJOY:

  JOYLAND by Stephen King

  THE COCKTAIL WAITRESS by James M. Cain

  ODDS ON by Michael Crichton writing as John Lange

  BRAINQUAKE by Samuel Fuller

  THIEVES FALL OUT by Gore Vidal

  SO NUDE, SO DEAD by Ed McBain

  THE GIRL WITH THE DEEP BLUE EYES by Lawrence Block

  QUARRY by Max Allan Collins

  BUST by Ken Bruen and Jason Starr

  SOHO SINS by Richard Vine

  THE KNIFE SLIPPED by Erle Stanley Gardner

  SNATCH by Gregory Mcdonald

  THE LAST STAND by Mickey Spillane

  UNDERSTUDY FOR DEATH by Charles Willeford

  CHARLESGATE CONFIDENTIAL by Scott Von Doviak

  SO MANY DOORS by Oakley Hall

  BROTHERS KEEPERS by Donald E. Westlake

  A Bloody

  BUSINESS

  THE RISE OF ORGANIZED CRIME IN AMERICA

  by Dylan Struzan

  A HARD CASE CRIME BOOK

  (HCC-139)

  First Hard Case Crime edition: April 2019

  Published by

  Titan Books

  A division of Titan Publishing Group Ltd

  144 Southwark Street

  London SE1 0UP

  in collaboration with Winterfall LLC

  Copyright © 2019 by Dylan Struzan

  Cover and interior illustrations

  copyright © 2019 by Drew Struzan

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including photocopying, recording or by any information storage and retrieval system, without the written permission of the publisher, except where permitted by law.

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual events or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  Print edition ISBN 978-1-78565-770-2

  E-book ISBN 978-1-78565-771-9

  Design direction by Max Phillips

  www.maxphillips.net

  Typeset by Swordsmith Productions

  The name “Hard Case Crime” and the Hard Case Crime logo are trademarks of Winterfall LLC. Hard Case Crime books are selected and edited by Charles Ardai.

  Visit us on the web at www.HardCaseCrime.com

  Foreword

  by Tommy Sobeck Jr.

  You should know how this book came about and that it isn’t purely fiction. I knew both Meyer Lansky and Jimmy Alo personally. These are the guys who lived through all the events in this book and influenced the way things were done. Charlie Luciano was their friend and partner. They shaped the world of crime.

  I met Jimmy back in the ’70s and Meyer sometime after that.

  We used to gather at the house of one of Meyer and Jimmy’s associates—Meyer’s family, Jimmy, me, a few close friends that differed from time to time. The food was always terrific and plentiful. Wonderful family. Very hospitable. They had a big house, a big Florida room where we would play gin before dinner. The dining room was big, too. They had a big table that was always loaded with food. Very spacious compared to the condo Meyer lived in at the time.

  I remember the occasion when The Gangster Chronicles came on. We all gathered around the TV week after week to watch the series…all 13 episodes. That was the spring of 1981. I got a lot of insight from Meyer and Jimmy about the way life was for them back in those days.

  One evening, Meyer’s granddaughter said, “Tommy should do the movie about you guys.” At that time, I was a union field rep for the film industry. I got small movie parts for some of the people we knew, but doing a movie about Meyer and Jimmy, well…I knew I would be out of line even thinking about such a thing in those days so I didn’t. Meyer told his granddaughter, “He can do whatever he wants after I’m dead.”

  Meyer was a man of few words. Those were the rules.

  At the end of The Gangster Chronicles, he said, “That’s the way it really was.” That’s some endorsement for the show. We all enjoyed it.

  I was around both men for over a decade before Jimmy told me to meet him for breakfast at the Singapore Hotel in Miami. After that, there were many breakfasts there, lunches at Vincent Capper’s Italian Restaurant on Biscayne Boulevard and 80th Street, meals at Wolfie’s Deli, Christine Lee’s, Thunderbird, the Fontainebleau, as well as other places around Miami.

  Jimmy would always introduce me as “this is my friend.” In that way, I met many of their associates and friends. I lived with Jimmy for a year and half while my house was being built in Florida while my wife lived with our daughter in Ocala. This is how this book came about.

  Jimmy and I would sit on the benches around the bay and chat. I’d go through books from the library and dog-ear the corners of pages that had things on them I wanted to ask Jimmy. Then we would talk. Nobody had talked about these things in my lifetime.

  I wanted to ask Jimmy if I could write down what he said but I kne
w I had to approach that question gingerly. It was hard for me to do because it required a lot of trust on his part. I could be anybody. When it seemed a good time to ask, I did. He must have realized I would never do anything to hurt him so he agreed to my request. I’m no stenographer so that was a disaster. I told Jimmy that I can’t write all this down, so “Can you please let me tape this?” I also wanted to authenticate this so people would know it’s not BS. I promised no one would ever hear these tapes or read the book until ten or fifteen years after he was gone. Again, he gave me permission. Initially, I had seventeen tapes but we just kept talking and I kept reading new books until, eventually, there were nearly fifty taped conversations that occurred over a period of ten to fifteen years. I lost track.

  Jimmy was still alive when I first talked to Dylan. We chatted on the phone and developed a rapport. By then, Jimmy was comfortable with what we were doing and allowed me to give her a few tapes to listen to so she could tackle the story. At first, she was reluctant to write the book but eventually she decided she wanted to take a crack at it. She came to Florida to meet me and Jimmy. This, too, had to be cleared with Jimmy first but I thought Jimmy would trust her once he met her.

  After that, she talked often with Jimmy by phone. Like me, she promised not to write the book until he was “gone.” She organized the information on the tapes and did her own research. It took a lot of years to complete the study. Tapes had to be verified. Chronology had to be verified. Putting the pieces of the puzzle together was an enormous undertaking but she did it. I knew she had to feel, smell, and hear the time period of the story. She had to be there. I never pushed her. When Jimmy died in 2001, she started writing this story. It’s a helluva read and I hope you enjoy it.

  —Tommy

  Introduction

  by Dylan Struzan

  When Prohibition became law in 1919 and the following year it became illegal to make, distribute, or sell liquor in America, Meyer Lansky was barely eighteen and Ben Siegel was a kid of fourteen. Guys like them and Charlie Luciano and Joe Adonis were little more than two-bit hoods when the Eighteenth Amendment went into effect. Meyer had given up a hand-to-mouth job in the tool-and-die trade and opened a car and truck rental business in a garage on Cannon Street. The business was handy when it came to moving trucks in and out at odd hours of the night. Stolen suits, shoes, fur coats—small-time stuff, but it offset some of the agony of being poor. That’s the way things were and that’s the way things would have stayed had it not been for the opportunity the nationwide ban on alcohol created.

  The boys on the Lower East Side set off to do what they always did, satisfy people’s desires for illegal goods. They embraced the lucrative world of bootlegging and rumrunning with no idea that it would become big business and change the face of crime in America forever.

  This story takes place during the thirteen years of Prohibition, 1920 to 1933, during which time Meyer Lansky became the great architect of organized crime, strategically using Prohibition to rise to a position of power. He advised the ruthless and fearless Charlie Luciano when it came to disposing of the old dons who controlled New York’s Italian rackets.

  I know how it all went down because Jimmy Alo told me. If you don’t know who Jimmy Alo is, don’t worry, you’ll meet him. I met Jimmy in the spring of 1995 when he was a very spry 91 years of age. I knew his reputation: Vincent “Jimmy Blue Eyes” Alo, a man who’d been referred to as “Godfather,” described by U.S. District Attorney Robert Morgenthau as “one of the most significant organized crime figures in the United States.” Jimmy had come up starting in the 1920s side by side with Lansky and Siegel and Luciano. He was the last survivor of that generation.

  I found Jimmy to be at once complex and engaging, a man of immense personal integrity. I asked questions. He answered politely without ever betraying a confidence. We talked often from 1995 until his death in 2001. I gained his trust and then his friendship. I was privileged to see his world from an insider’s perspective. I got to know Meyer, Benny, Charlie, Joe Adonis, Eddie McGrath, Johnny Dunne, all the boys, as Jimmy knew them. No one of Jimmy’s stature has ever been so forthcoming and candid.

  Jimmy understood the historical significance of his life and that of his friends, and he knew about this book. The last time I saw Jimmy, as he was seeing me out his front door, I poked him in the chest playfully and said, “Jimmy Alo, I am going to write your story.” He said, “I know, honey, just wait until I’m gone.” I kept my promise.

  I thank the historians and writers who have documented the lives of these men. And the New York Times for generously putting their archives online. That was a life saver. Yes, I did years of research. But it was all in the service of telling Jimmy’s story. And I am wholly indebted to Tommy Sobeck, without whom none of this would exist.

  Forget what you know. A lot of it is bullshit anyway. That was Jimmy’s response when I told him I’d read a book about the period I thought was good, you know, lots of interesting facts. He said, “Yeah, no doubt. It has a lot of shit in it, too. Who’s gonna question them? The only guy can question them is a guy like me. I lived through the whole thing. I knew them all. I don’t think there’s anybody around that could tell you what I told you.”

  What I’m about to tell you, I heard mostly from Jimmy Alo. He wasn’t a household name, and that was deliberate. He played it so low-key most people never heard of him. He was Meyer Lansky’s best friend—not, as the Italians believe, the guy sent to keep an eye on the Jew. This is the story of Meyer Lansky and the beginning of organized crime. I’m telling it to you the way Jimmy told it to me. I’m telling you this up front so you won’t be surprised later on. You be the judge of whether or not it’s bullshit.

  Chapter One

  “Shhhh! Speak Easy!”

  NEW YORK CITY—1920

  Meyer Lansky likes to go it alone, especially since he gave up his former trade in favor of robbing and stealing. Trouble is, robbing and stealing is a cooperative effort. You bring your friends into it, and pretty soon it’s a small mob, and pulling little jobs here and there isn’t enough. You need to feed the fire. Plus, the other guys, the Italians, they’ve got a mob too, not so small, and no love for a bunch of tough Jews who think they’ve got as much right to build this sort of business as any man. But Meyer does think that. Now that the Eighteenth Amendment has passed, Meyer’s mind spins with thoughts of possibility. The Goyim’s Crusade is laughable, a gag, a bad joke certain to meet with non-compliance. Of this, Meyer Lansky is sure. The government presumes to govern the ungovernable. But pursuing all the possibility that Prohibition offers means branching out and becoming big enough to stave off those larger mobs. It means facing his biggest fear, becoming known.

  He steps out from his Cannon Street garage and heads to Ratner’s deli to meet a friend, Abe Zwillman. Abe got into the lottery rackets early on. He has a head for numbers. Every Friday, he comes to Ratner’s deli for lunch not only to get a proper nosh, you won’t find a Ratner’s or Katz’s in Newark, but to touch base with guys like Meyer so he can keep his finger on the pulse of the Jewish rackets.

  Meyer looks forward to the discussions. Today is no exception. He hustles along the sidewalk filled with pushcarts and shoppers and the traditional bustle of Jews tying up loose ends before sunset. Once the Sabbath commences, there will be no further work until sunset the next day.

  A Black Hat steps in front of Meyer blocking the sidewalk.

  “You are Meyer Lansky, yes?” the Black Hat says.

  Black Hats are a cliquish clan of Hasids who practice a code of ostracism toward anyone who does not practice their form of Judaism. The discrimination includes other Jews, Jews like Meyer, who clearly do not follow the ancient code. Meyer looks at the rebbe and wonders what has driven him to cross the chasm of his social divide to speak to an apikorsim. The fact that this Black Hat, a rebbe of some note, has not only spoken to him but knows Meyer by name is doubly confusing since Meyer blends into his environment with ease. The Lower East
Side is full of Russian Jewish immigrant boys who look just like Meyer; wavy dark hair cut short with the slightest lick of pomade, dark eyes, weak chin, and an absence of joy.

  Meyer nods.

  “Perhaps we can share a cup of tea.” The Black Hat gestures to the café behind them.

  Meyer follows the rebbe into a Black Hat café where customers cling to a hundred-year-old dress code of shtreimels and bekishes and gartels, which are oversized round fur hats and long black silk coats and belts made of long, black woven strands that end with fringe and, when wrapped around the waist, create a physical divide between the heart and genitalia while mentioning God’s name. The bustling café is stunned to silence as Meyer and the rebbe sit down together.

  The rebbe waves for a round of tea.

  After a pregnant pause, the rebbe says, “When you were young, you fought with the Italian boys, yes? Yet you never bent a knee to the Christian. You think I don’t notice but I see many things. It is not for us to decide our fate.” The rebbe points up. “He decides. And charity averts the severe decree. This is what we learn. This is what I believe.”

  “You didn’t bring me here to discuss religion,” Meyer says.

  The rebbe strokes his beard.

  “We have trouble,” he says to Meyer. “You understand this kind of trouble.”

  “Oh…trouble,” Meyer says, the purpose of the conversation crystalizing.

  The rebbe inches closer.

  “I heard about you since before now,” the rebbe confides, “but only now do I have to bother you with our problem. I hope you will not take offense. The laws of kashrut stipulate…”

  Meyer says, “I know what the laws of kashrut stipulate, a non-Jew cannot open a bottle of kosher wine. You have trouble at the winery?”

  “If only they would stick to the Mevushal wine,” the rebbe moans.

  For a moment, the two men very nearly see eye-to-eye. The waiter brings tea and sweet cakes. The hot tea and heavy cream and the prayer shawl peeking from under the waiter’s white shirt and black vest takes Meyer back to his childhood in Poland where heated conversations among adults sorted the threat of the Czar’s soldiers, the pogroms, and the reclamation of Israel. He reaches for the pack of cigarettes in his pocket then decides against it. The entire café is eavesdropping on the rebbe’s discussion.