A Bloody Business Page 6

  Benny says, “Whadya say, can we pass the peace pipe and scurry home like good little choirboys?”

  “Do what you want,” the Schmatte says. “You’ll always be a Jew bastard.” He looks at Sammy and says, “I was the best thing ever happened to your sister. The bitch really puts out. I’d never’ve married the whore though. I couldn’t bear the idea of a bunch of dirty little kikes running around my house.”

  Benny says, “You dumb Mick bastard.”

  He grabs his pocket knife and drags it hard across the tough cartilage of the Schmatte’s neck. It slices deep into the windpipe.

  Benny says, “That’s one way to shut him up.”

  The Schmatte gurgles a last breath. A dark stream of blood runs from his neck to the boat’s deck. Benny kicks the limp body in a fit of rage. A crimson thread runs to the drain and out into the ocean. Sammy hurls over the stern.

  “I’m O.K.,” Sammy says, bobbing up to wipe his mouth with the corner of his sleeve. “I’m sorry, Red. When he said those things about Hannah, I wanted to kill him, but when it happened, something awful took over inside. I couldn’t move.”

  “Don’t worry, Sammy. Not everybody’s cut out for this work. There’s no shame. You stick with souping up jalopies and boats.”

  “That’s not it,” Sammy says. “I didn’t think I was like you and Benny. I didn’t think I had it in me. But now I know I do and I’ll have to live with that. I guess realizing that kinda scared me, that’s all.”

  Benny hefts the dead body onto the bow. The Schmatte’s head dangles to one side. Benny sticks the knife deep at the base of the Schmatte’s ribs then pulls it down along his gut. Entrails fall from the carcass, slide across the bow, and fall into the sea.

  Benny says, “If you don’t cut them open, they bloat and then they float. Now tie the weights on. The fish will do the rest.”

  The body drops into the ocean.

  “That’s the last we’ll see of him,” Red says.

  Chapter Three

  Survival of the Fittest

  SUMMER 1921

  The world looked rosy in January of 1921. The Times was so taken by the balmy weather that it announced New York was “in the throes of a Southern California winter.” Temperatures were beyond mild; they were downright merciful and had been ever since November.

  But the compassion was a fraud, Mother Nature’s dirty little trick to lure the unwary into a false sense of security. With everyone off guard, she let loose the full force of her fury. Cold fronts rolled down from Canada and slammed the city hard, blanketing streets and buildings with a heavy layer of snow and ice. Hell froze over for weeks on end. Moving bootleg through the country became a test of endurance and natural selection took its course.

  In this environment, gangs wither and die like mayflies at sunset. Whenever Meyer hears of a gang’s collapse, he mocks: “Survival of the fittest.”

  It is a notion the streets of New York are no stranger to. The streets get harder daily. The fitter gangs mature and take more to themselves.

  “Attrition,” Red says.

  Sammy says, “Charlie’s truck inventory is disappearing faster than Arnold Rothstein’s bankroll.”

  “He’s not using Harvard graduates,” Meyer says.

  The jokes ease the pain of reality.

  The winter finally ends, and a too-short spring with it. August rolls around. A wave of heat and humidity strong enough to sweat wallpaper from the walls. Life is again unbearable. Arnold Rothstein makes an exodus to Saratoga where all-night poker games become his ritual. When a streak of bad luck drains his pockets one night, he heads to the hotel for a bacon-and-eggs breakfast. After that, he calls Waxey Gordon. Despite Meyer’s warning, Rothstein has chosen to go into business with the two shtarkers.

  “Has our ship come in?” Rothstein says.

  Rothstein has cut out the middleman by chartering a freighter to shuttle hard liquor and wine from Europe to America. Gordon has the job of making sure the shipment, once it gets to St. Pierre, makes its way to the designated drop-off where he’ll distribute the contraband to his dealers.

  Waxey says, “You some kinda mother hen? It’ll get here when it gets here. Your buggin’ me ain’t gonna make it happen no sooner. I told ya I’d call when I heard from Greenberg that the captain came through with the goods.”

  Rothstein drums his finger nervously on the small desk in his hotel suite.

  “Have me paged if I’m not in my room,” Rothstein says.

  “Yeah, yeah,” Gordon mutters.

  The freighter lands in St. Pierre behind schedule. Maxey Greenberg meets the ship with a flotilla of speedboats. With the cargo accounted for, Maxey spreads the goods among the speedboats and the trek to Montauk Point begins. What was supposed to be a daylight crossing turns into a late-night expedition. It is impossible to see where you are, where you’ve been, or where you are going. Maxey tries to keep the fleet together using only a searchlight but the swell of the ocean bobs the beam in and out of visibility. The boats bunch together, bumping each other. Fights break out among the captains. This is no well-oiled machine.

  Waxey waits at Montauk Point to oversee the disposition of liquor from speedboat to truck. The trucks are lined up along a quiet country road. Rothstein has designated Meyer as distributor for Capitol Wines and Spirits. Benny and Sammy wait in line for their share of the goods.

  The local sheriff shows up. Waxey passes him an envelope. They chitchat for a good hour and still the speedboats have not arrived. The sheriff decides he’s had enough of the mosquito population and moves on. Two hours later, Waxey catches sight of the flotilla. Maxey signals the truck brigade with two flashes of the searchlight followed by one minute of darkness then two more flashes. The signal almost seems ridiculous now. The waves alone could cause anyone to make the ‘appropriate signal.’

  “Load ’em up, boys,” Waxey says.

  The trucks file along the shoreline. Benny and Sammy slog to the bow of the boat carrying Capitol wines and spirits and then slog back and hand off the cases to the boys in their truck. It is nearly ten o’clock in the morning before they pull into the Cannon Street garage.

  Red is stretched out in front of an oscillating fan that sways back and forth over a bucket of ice. The cool air waggles his hair and dries his sweat-soaked face. The cheap paper from the pulp magazine he is reading sags from the dampness transferred by his fingers. He strips off his shirt and swabs his face with it. Sweat runs down his back and rings the top of his trousers.

  Meyer walks from his office and dips a handkerchief into the bucket’s ice water. He slaps the handkerchief on the back of his neck. Red pulls bottles of cola from the bucket and chucks two to Benny and Sammy. Red rolls the cool cylinder of his bottle across his scorching face.

  “Can you beat that?” Benny says, envious of Red’s setup.

  “What the hell happened to you guys?” Red says, noting the water-stained clothes and muddy shoes.

  “We didn’t know we were going deep-sea diving,” Benny says.

  “The kid’s got chutzpah,” Red says to Meyer.

  “Is that what you call it?” Benny says. “I call it a sore ass and not enough sleep.”

  Benny and Sammy go to unload the truck.

  “Bring him in closer,” Meyer says to Red.

  “He’s still young,” Red says to Meyer. “Tough as nails. Thinks he can solve everything with a gun or a knife. I guess I can’t blame him for that. But his temper still gets the better of him.”

  Meyer says, “Test him. See if we can depend on him.”

  “He’s got a sharp mind for business,” Red says. “He likes giving things to people. He gets a kick out of making them happy. He gets heated up over ingrates, though. I’ll tell you that. He’s fierce about loyalty. Fierce. Ask Moe Sedway, the new guy who I put in the front office to run the rentals. He and Benny are close. Friends from the neighborhood.”

  Meyer lights a cigarette and looks around.

  “Test them both,” he s
ays.

  The whiskey business has squeezed the rental business to half its former size. The grease monkeys who tend to the endless maintenance of the cars and trucks no longer laugh when the booze arrives. In fact, they got downright rebellious when the crates of liquor inched up the wall and covered the poster of Olive Thomas. Olive is a grease monkey’s wet dream. She performed in Ziegfeld’s Midnight Frolic, an extravaganza set in the roof garden at the New Amsterdam Theatre where girls dance through the audience wearing nothing but balloons. Cigar-smoking customers make short work of their costumes.

  Alberto Vargas captured Olive in all her frisky delight, the perfect playmate in kissproof lipstick and a black satin negligee falling seductively from lily-white shoulders. Olive grabs her bare breast tenderly, head tipped back and panting for the red flower held above parted lips. The grease monkeys love her, and don’t love the crates covering her up.

  But there are crates coming in and it’s not a democracy.

  “Moe,” Benny yells, “get over here and help out with this load of booze.”

  Moe leaves the front office, and he and Sammy finish unloading and stacking. As for Benny, he has a few things to say to Meyer.

  “Waxey oversaw the whole goddamn job. We waited for hours for the ships to come in and then we had to wade out to the boats. You ever try to walk through that shit lugging a case of booze? A monkey coulda done as good a job as that. Why the hell didn’t he use the docks? He coulda put all the cases on the docks and we coulda done the job in half the time. He already paid off the sheriff up there. What was the big deal?”

  Red gives Meyer the “I told you so” look.

  Benny says, “He’s got a good bullshit line about the Jews sticking together. He rants on and on about how you can’t trust the Italians and how he should be the big man to bring us all together.”

  Red says, “Living in the same hellhole doesn’t make us allies. Waxey is no better than the Italian dons. Besides, bootlegging is bigger than the Lower East Side.”

  A Hassidic kid stops to press his face against the plate glass window that fronts the garage. He wants to get a look at the famous gaunefs that saved the winery.

  Meyer says, “You know the expression frontschwein? It’s German for frontline pigs. That’s what the German soldiers called themselves, frontschwein. Waxey wants to make us all his frontschwein.”

  “I thought this was Rothstein’s operation,” Red says.

  Meyer says, “Rothstein can’t control Waxey Gordon. Waxey Gordon came out of Benny Fein’s gang. While Rothstein was sitting around poker tables, Waxey was out labor slugging. Once Waxey gets a whiff of the money he can make from bootleg, you can bet he’ll take control. I’m thinking of bringing Charlie Lucky in as a partner. Charlie has a good lineup of guys. By bringing him in as a partner, we gain his strength.”

  “And Charlie gains ours,” Red says. “And we come under Joe the Boss.”

  “Not so fast,” Meyer says. “We have nothing to do with Joe the Boss. Put yourself in Charlie’s shoes. Joe the Boss would have killed him by now if he didn’t make an alliance. The alliance gives Charlie strength, too. Charlie’s had plenty of opportunities to run us out of business over the years and he’s never once taken advantage.”

  Sammy returns with half a dozen fresh cola bottles clenched between the fingers of both hands and a headlock on a brown bag filled with pastrami sandwiches.

  “Those bastards kept us waiting out there all night,” Sammy moans, dropping the brown bag to the floor and the sodas into the bucket of ice. “The Coast Guard caught up to ’em before they got to the Point. Did you know that, Benny? One of the guys told me. If they’d a had Curtis engines in those boats, that would’ve never happened.”

  Meyer says, “The Coast Guard?”

  Benny says, “Maxey paid ’em off. They helped some of the other guys unload their liquor. Everybody has their hand out nowadays. Nobody cares.”

  Sammy says, “Did you hear what I said? Curtis engines. Do you know what those are? They’re the engines that powered the war planes. Now that the war’s over, the government has fields of planes…and Curtis engines. They’re happy to sell them for a song. I read about a guy in Detroit that put one in his racing boat. He hasn’t been beat in any race he’s entered yet. A Curtis in our boat would put us ahead of the competition and the Coast Guard.”

  Red says, “Detroit?”

  Sammy says, “What do you think, Meyer? If you want to check it out next time you’re at the library, the guy’s name is Gar Wood. He’s a big-time racer. I’d sure like to get a look at that boat. You think the Purples know him?”

  A million thoughts explode across the landscape of Meyer’s mind. First among them is Charlie’s warning. Big Jim Colosimo is on his way out. Johnny Torrio and Al Capone are on their way in and Capone wants to own the Detroit River. That won’t sit well with the Jewish gang that has been ferrying booze from Canada across that very river.

  “I’ll see what I can do,” Meyer says, turning away from the conversation, but Benny has the last word.

  Benny says, “The real game is getting in a position where you control the price of booze, like Wall Street does. That’s how those traders all get rich. Supply and demand, only you control the supply and then demand the price you want. What we need for that are exclusive distributorships.”

  Jake Lansky, Meyer’s brother, whistles his way through the garage. Jake, who likes to be called Jack, wants a roadster. He wants to modify the seat into a stowaway compartment where he can hide whiskey. He wants to be like Larry Fay who runs a taxi business that delivers booze to the big hotels. Meyer figures the job is harmless and asks Sammy to help Jack with the modifications. Benny and Red head out; Benny off to get some sleep, Red to find a connection to the Purple gang. It can’t be that hard in a population of Yids.

  * * *

  Meyer packs the small duffel that has been gathering dust in his closet. It is just big enough to hold the necessities for a three-day trip but not so big that he can’t schlep the contents around Detroit. He stops at the garage to give Red final instructions, just in case. One of Larry Fay’s cabbies picks up booze for his afternoon run. Meyer hops the ride back to Penn Station.

  Penn’s pink granite structure clings to the summer heat and humidity. Travelers scatter in odd bunches under the steel framework fashioned after the baths of Caracalla. The sun saturates the building sending shards of light through the rising steam of the engines. Meyer boards the Limited and socks himself away in the sleeper car. At last, he can grab a little rest.

  The train groans out of the station. Interior lights flicker across the black walnut paneling. The city gives way to an endless series of small towns that eventually turn into farmland.

  The train clacks rhythmically. Meyer, a Yid from the Lower East Side without an Ivy League to call his own, travels to Detroit to negotiate what might be the biggest corporate deal of his existence.

  From Newark to Youngstown, Meyer nods lazily in the bobbing seat. After three sandwiches and too many cups of coffee, the train pulls into Cleveland. Meyer stretches his legs. The train clacks on the remaining 179 miles of track to Detroit.

  He is not in search of Gar Wood. He has heard, from Red, that his old nemesis, Charles Auerbach, is the brain behind Detroit’s toughest Jewish mob. Auerbach is the festering wound of a bad memory that refuses to be expunged. Auerbach is the reason for an arrest record when Meyer was sixteen. That it ended in nothing but a two-dollar fine doesn’t change the fact.

  The Professor, as Auerbach is known because of his obsession with rare books, leaves nothing to chance. His gang consists of winners from the life-and-death game of murders, beatings, and the shifting odds of shtarking. Through a few of Red’s connections, Meyer finds the Professor running business from the Shady Lane Roadhouse just north of Detroit. It is an old log cabin, well past its prime, but it serves Auerbach’s needs. The roof sags. Antlers hang over the door. Meyer braves the makeshift overhang to see what’s inside.
>
  In the middle of the smoke-filled room, with a piano going in the corner and figures seated in the shadows here and there, sits a man in a white suit absorbed in a book. He is clinically clean with newly manicured nails. Meyer recognizes him right away. Not much has changed.

  Auerbach looks up and stares at the apparition in front of him. He springs to his feet.

  “Lansky? Is that you? Are you on the lam?”

  A prostitute scurries over, her long hair dyed red. A soft cotton dress falls off her shoulder and plays peek-a-boo with the nipple of her right breast. The Professor waves her away. Somebody moans painfully in an adjoining room. The piano player beats a little harder on the melody of his favorite song.

  Auerbach gestures to a seat, but Meyer remains standing.

  Auerbach says, “Thank God for the Eighteenth Amendment. Everything freezes around here in winter. People used to go ice skating. Now they drive across the lake to Canada and fill their trunks with whiskey. The trouble is that they aren’t very smart. These yahoos don’t realize how much weight they’re carrying. Do you know that a man can go through the ice around Windsor and by the time they fish him out, he’s made it to Amherstburg?

  Maybe even Lake Erie?”

  Meyer says, “Are you the guy selling Old Granddad to Frankie Yale?”

  “Same old Lansky. Get right to the point. What is your interest in Old Granddad or Frankie Yale, for that matter?” Auerbach says. “Yale is as cheap as his cigars. He’ll cut the stuff two, three times before he sells it. As I recall, you’re something of a purist when it comes to crime. You only steal the best.”

  Meyer says, “Why would Yale come to you?”

  Auerbach says, “The history of Brooklyn reads like a regular Roman tragedy. There’s no love lost between Yale and Capone. Maybe Yale just wanted to get rid of Capone so he sent him to Torrio. Ever think of that? Capone has his eye on the throne. Yale doesn’t need that kind of competition or trouble.”

  The Professor flips through the pages of the leather-bound book he’s been reading. An ornate woodcut of soldiers in battle frames the title: The Arte of Warre, written in Italian by Nicholas Machiavel, and set forth in English by…