A BUSINESS OF CONSEQUENCE

the second part

Photo by Meriç Dağlı on Unsplash

In the time since Jimmy shot that geezer in the restaurant, we never looked back—except for maybe looking over our shoulders to see who was gunning for us. Word got out right quick that we were making a move against Kelly and the Five Points Gang, and for a time it looked like as if everyone was after us—from the last of Monk Eastman’s rubes, to the newest of Kelly’s guinea gophers fresh off the boat from Palermo. We weren’t nothing more than a nickel and dime crew–barely a dozen of us in total–but we made sure not to take no guff from no one. We fought hard, and we played hard; and there was never no shortage of girls we could have if we wanted. If they didn’t wanna give it to us, Jimmy wasn’t shy about taking what he wanted from them. I’d rather pay a girl her two bucks and have her pretend she liked me than have her screaming and crying under me while I tried to get my pecker in her. Jimmy’d always been different that way.

But the Eastman crew were in a desperate war with Kelly’s Five Points gang—and had been since back in ’08—which was the only reason we thought we might try muscling out our own turf. Most of the time we were left pretty much to ourselves, which was okay by me, because both gangs were too busy to bother with us. We’d have the odd run-in with some of Kelly’s boys, but were always gonna have trouble trying to dodge the Eastmans. Monk had almost eight hundred geeks in two different gangs, while Kelly’s Five Points gang only numbered six hundred. Me and Jimmy used to be part of the Junior Eastmans, which was why they were chasin’ us down—you don’t leave the Eastmans without paying a price. So when Charlie Luciano and Frankie Costello was running with the Kelly Gang and I helped them out of a scrape one time when seven JR.s jumped them, Charlie told me he’d never forget it. Charlie was always lucky like that.

*

When the new decade started, Jimmy said 1910 was gonna be like the dawn of a new era. He said people were always saying things like that at the start of a new decade, but this time things would be different. I guess he was right, because by the end of the year, Monk was serving time in Sing-Sing, and two of Kelly’s own men tried taking him out. That didn’t make the two gangs any less of a problem for us, but it was the beginning of the end for both of them, because things started falling apart after that. Within two years, both gangs split up and a lot of the Monk’s geeks tried forming smaller gangs, like the one Meyer Lanskey and Benny Segal started, working out of Mulberry Street. Jimmy said to make certain we got on their good side, on account of how Benny Segal was as buggy as a shit-house rat; when people heard Jimmy say that, they took to calling Benny, Bugsy.

When Charlie Luciano and Frankie Costello formed up with Lanskey and Segal, things changed for everyone; we just didn’t know it. Jack Diamond and the Dutchman muscled Jimmy and me out of our own crew, as most of the dinks we had took off with them. Things went from bad to worse for us after that.

Me and Jimmy stuck it out with each other though, and got back into the muscle racket, hiring ourselves out for protection against guys like Diamond. For two bucks, I’d break an arm, or a leg; I’d bust anyone’s head open for five. It cost a lot more to whack someone, and if we did, it was usually Jimmy what did it. I was more into using my fists, working as a bouncer for whatever floating crap game we could find. There’d always be someone trying to bust a game up, but I knew I could always count on Jimmy for backing me up.

By the time the Big War broke out in Europe, we were still doing our nickel and dime crap games, and people took to calling us the Five and Dime Crew. No one bothered with us anymore because there was just the two of us, but we still had to fight for everything we got. Most of the time we were fighting Diamond and our old crew until he moved uptown and the crew fell apart. I’d heard some of them went up to Canada so they could join in the Big War. Someone said Jimmy was the one what got Monk Eastman to join the army and fight in the Big War, but that wasn’t true. Monk got picked up trying to mug some rich kid slumming in the Points a little while after he got out of Sing-Sing; it was a matter of choice for Monk: go back to Sing-Sing, or join the army and kill Germans. He came back from the war a genuine hero.

When the Big War broke out, we stole ammo and sold it back to the army; we sold spoilt meat to the navy and broken airplane parts to the new air force. We were robbing the docks by night, and selling stolen goods the next day. Jimmy could smell a profit, and he’d do whatever it took to get a piece of it. We ran fifteen floating crap games all across the Five Points, taking a cut from all of them, making a lot of people mad. Jimmy talked about expanding the operation, like running numbers and betting on the ponies. We even considered buying one or two glue factory wannabe’s and running them up in Saratoga, but we didn’t know nothing about horses. I was bringing in almost four hundred a month, with Jimmy taking in more than one large. But he was the brains I needed and I wasn’t going to say different.

*

It was in Saratoga where we crossed paths with Arnold Rothstein-–Mr. Big, The Fixer, The Man Uptown, people called him—but Jimmy called him The Brain. I called him R because I could never remember what I was apposed to call him. We bought into his protection racket on account of him having the cops in his back pocket—and a couple of judges too. Somebody said he’d helped to bankroll a Senator and some other politicians. All I know is that it cost us sixty percent of our floating crap games, which Arnie said was fair since it was only a matter of time before word went out to take care of us. He said he’d make sure it did. I didn’t mind giving up the money as much as Jimmy did, as long as I could still blow my horn; but I didn’t know how much it really meant we had to give up.

In 1919, people were saying Arnie helped fix the World Series. He didn’t mastermind it, he just helped bankroll the players. People said it couldn’t be done, but Arnie knew all you had to do was buy off a couple of players. I don’t think he expected eight of them to want in on the scheme. Once we knew the fix was in, Jimmy put up twenty-five hunnerd to my fifteen. Arnie put two hundred grand down for one game; Arnie had balls–-and money-–but once people heard the fix was on, the odds started dropping.

When the 18th Amen’ment become law in 1920 and Prohibition come around, Jimmy said it was time for us to play with the big boys. It was the dawn of a new era, he said, just like the way he said ten years ago. It made me think how much things had changed. With the Kelly and Eastman Gangs gone, and then the Big War, we’d made a lot of money. Jimmy said we could bring whiskey down from Canada, and ‘shine up from the South, without getting in anyone’s way. We’d let them shoot themselves up if they wanted, and then step in and pick up the pieces. We had a few close calls with hijackers, and had to shoot our way out once or twice, but we were able to cut ourselves a nice little slice in the Five Points as long as we paid Arnie his share.

*

By the time 1926 rolled around, I told Jimmy that I wanted to open up my own club somewhere. I didn’t want no “pig-poke,” because you couldn’t count on getting protection from the cops or anyone else who was thinking of muscling their way in. There were speakeasies all over town, but I didn’t want one of them either. I said I wanted me a real Supper Club, like “Twenty-one” or “Delmonico’s.” It was all about the music I told him, and he knew I meant it; I’d never give up blowing horn.

I used to sit up on the rooftops when I was younger and blow until the wee hours of the morning—watching the sun come up over the Hudson, the water all dark and grey, slick with oil. I’d watch the lights dancing on the river like worn out stars, waiting until the sky above pinkened with the dawn. Some nights, I’d drive up to Little Africa near Harlem, where I’d blow horn with the niggers and play until my lips were sore.

Jimmy said a club sounded like a sure thing, but only if we could run girls and sell our own hootch to customers. He said we could get us something going on in the back–-like set up a couple of tables for a high stakes game—a members only sort of club where they paid admission. I asked him what he meant by that, and he said that meant you had to pay us to play. Like I said, Jimmy could always smell a profit. I told him I didn’t care what he did as long as I could blow horn, and he told me maybe I should go see Arnie.

*

Arnie usually ate lunch at Lindy’s Restaurant on Broadway and 49th in Manhattan. The day was dark and overcast, the clouds the colour of gunmetal. I parked my car in the back of the restaurant, checking the safety on my gun before I got out and closed the door. I looked around. The alley was deserted and I thought to myself if I was a guy like Arnie, I’d make certain I had me a man on the back door in case someone was gunning for me. The guard was inside the kitchen door standing beside the chef and spooning gobs of pasta into his mouth-–he was laughing and his huge belly shook up and down effortlessly. His coat was hanging on a hook on the wall, along with his gun, his shirttail hanging out of his pants. He looked at me as soon as I opened the door, looked at his gun, and then relaxed when he recognized me.

“Does R know this is how you watch the door?” I said as I walked past him.

“If I’d’ve thought you was a t’reat, I’d’ve broke yer neck by now,” he grinned.

I nodded as I walked past him and stepped through the kitchen doors. I knew the geek from around the neighbourhood and knew he’d give as good as he got, but I was pretty sure I could take him if it came right down to it. I knew Jimmy would put his money on me, and that was all that mattered.

There were two other guards sitting at a table and they stood up as soon as they saw me. One held a hand up to stop me while the other one patted me down, taking my gun. The first guard stepped aside and I walked past a second table where I recognized a couple of geeks me and Jimmy used to run with when we were younger. That could only mean one thing, I told myself.

Arnie was sitting at the same table he always sat at, with Charlie Luciano and Bugsy Siegel on either side of him; Meyer Lanskey was on Bugsy’s left, and Frankie Costello was sitting beside Charlie. And then I saw that lousy bastard, Jack Diamond standing behind Costello–-which explained the other geeks sitting at the table across from them-–and I could see that one of them was that crazy German, Dutch Schultz. They were a hard crew, willing to cut anyone down if they even looked at them wrong, but they didn’t bother with me and Jimmy. We’d all known each other since we were kids, coming up through different gangs in the neighbourhood, and there was a kind of respect we all had for each other’s past. That didn’t mean they wouldn’t turn on me if they felt threatened.