The Beginning of Change
“He couldn’t have seen us.”
Hazel said it while smoothing a hand down her chest.
The lights in our room were out, and half the window was screened by the curtain. On top of that we were standing in the middle of the room, well back from the glass, so the odds that Salvatore had spotted us were as close to zero as they got.
Come to think of it, the Five Points Gang had more faces I had met in person than just Salvatore.
Meyer Lansky. Irving Feinstein. Bugsy Siegel. And Al Capone.
Salvatore himself I still couldn’t pin down with certainty, so I set him aside. But according to the mafia histories I had read in my previous life, every one of those men had spent their teenage years inside the Five Points Gang.
With the outfit now split into rival factions, though, it was unclear whose orders any of them answered to.
Salvatore and the others I had just named were all connected to Arnold Rothstein. Yet Rothstein himself—running casinos and speakeasies in the Tenderloin—was not even a member of the Five Points Gang.
In other words, it was as if members of the Marginals or the Union were taking orders from, or cooperating with, some third party.
That was the sort of thing that simply did not happen in a normal gang.
Which meant the Five Points Gang’s power structure was a tangled mess, and every man was chasing his own agenda.
Around midnight the heads started bobbing around the room across the street, just as Hazel had said. Everyone was getting up off the sofas.
“Looks like they’re finally leaving.”
True to her word, they filed out until only Itzky Joe remained.
I stepped to the window and trained the scope on the hotel entrance. A few moments later six men appeared outside. They stood in front of a Ford Model T with its engine already running and started talking.
While I was still scanning Itzky Joe’s room through the scope, Hazel asked,
“Anyone you know among the ones gathered out front?”
“One.”
“Who?”
“Not Salvatore, is it?”
“Someone else. Frankie Yale.”
For a second the Coney Island saloon Harvard Inn and Al Capone flashed through my mind.
Frankie Yale had cut his teeth with the Five Points Gang as well, but he was a different breed of boss from Itzky Joe.
I held out my hand; Hazel passed me the binoculars.
I swept the group with them.
“Which one is Frankie Yale?”
“Italian guy, short hair slicked back. Early thirties, maybe?”
There he was—standing in the center of the knot of men, doing the talking.
That was the man of interest: Frankie Yale.
“Hazel, how well do you know him?”
“He came by the shop a few years ago. Bought five pistols and a load of ammunition.”
“Anything else?”
“I don’t know if Grandpa’s opinion of Yale will help, but he called him a sneaky, dangerous type. Said he was on a whole different level from the old gangs.”
The Gunsmith’s eye had been sharp.
From what I knew of the future, Frankie Yale—like Arnold Rothstein—had broken free of the traditional street gangs and focused on business. His nature was violent and ruthless; he would use any means necessary to get what he wanted. That made him a difficult man.
I handed the binoculars back and put my eye to the scope again, watching Itzky Joe’s room.
A moment later the light went out and a shadow fell across the window. Cigarette smoke drifted out into the night.
It was nearly midnight.
The city itself seemed to have gone to sleep; the engine of the Model T parked in front of the hotel sounded unnaturally loud.
I rested my finger on the trigger. Hazel spoke carefully.
“If you assassinate Itzky Joe, Yale might get involved. You okay with that?”
“Whether he does or not.”
“You only ever drive straight ahead, don’t you.”
“What’s the other direction?”
“Beats me.”
Then a louder noise swallowed the car’s exhaust.
A clanging impact, a screech of metal on metal.
It was the streetcar—steel wheels driven by electric motors rolling over metal rails. The Delancey Street line was a vital east-west artery through Lower Manhattan.
It ran from five in the morning until midnight.
“Last car.”
The streetcar slowed as it neared the hotel.
I heard the crackle of electric sparks.
If I was going to shoot, it was now.
I aimed at the silhouette of Itzky Joe still exhaling smoke.
“Cover your ears.”
The moment the streetcar stopped and blocked the men and the Model T from view, I squeezed the trigger.
Thoom.
A flash of light and a heavy recoil.
The shot punched through the open window and found Itzky Joe’s head. Through the scope I watched his skull snap back and blood spray. I immediately lifted the rifle off the easel, swung the muzzle toward the hotel entrance, and tried to pick up Frankie Yale—only to see the Model T already pulling away.
The streetcar lumbered after it a beat later. No one was left at the entrance.
“Don’t tell me you were going to shoot Frankie Yale too?”
“If he’d looked this way, he would have had to go.”
“Wow…”
A suppressor could muffle the report, but it couldn’t hide the muzzle flash. If those men had caught even a glimpse of the flare, they could have pinpointed this room and come after us.
“Well, luckily it looks like they didn’t see it.”
“I’m genuinely curious. The way you move, it’s like you’ve spent decades on a battlefield.”
I more or less had. Anyway.
A bolt-action rifle doesn’t eject the spent casing automatically. Forcing it out risked scattering powder residue. I was about to field-strip the weapon when footsteps sounded in the hallway—at least three or four people.
Hazel and I froze, listening. The footsteps paced the corridor for a while, then faded.
Someone must have reported the noise, or a guest had felt the odd vibration and stepped out. The shot had been as loud as a car horn, and the tremor had run through the walls and ceiling; more than a few people would have noticed.
I detached the suppressor and scope. Hazel lit a candle and threw the window wide to air out the gunpowder smell.
“Morning’s going to be interesting. Will the cops start knocking on doors, or will they have no clue at all? I’m dying to know.”
“What I know for certain is that it’s going to take them a while.”
Identifying the .30-06 slug in the body and realizing the shot had come from outside would eat up time.
Clack. I worked the bolt of the Springfield nestled in the easel case, extracted the cartridge, pocketed the casing, and closed the lid.
“Leo will come by at seven to pick this up.”
I propped the easel case against the wall and started for the door. Hazel caught my hand.
“See you in the morning.”
If we’re going to see each other, why grab my hand?
Our eyes met for a second; only then did she let go.
“Don’t get caught. Go carefully.”
*
The next morning.
When I came down to the lobby, astonishingly nothing was happening. A few early check-outs and a handful of guests heading out for breakfast like us were the only people in sight.
The European war had emptied the hotels; business was rock-bottom. Of course, that was exactly why I had been able to book two rooms.
As we left the lobby for a nearby restaurant, one guest was questioning a clerk about the night before.
“I thought it was an earthquake. You’re telling me nothing happened?”
“We checked thoroughly and found no particular problems. You can rest easy, sir.”
“It wasn’t just me. People from other rooms came running out too. We all heard the noise and felt the building shake.”
“There may have been an issue with the streetcar around that hour. It makes noise from time to time.”
I left the conversation behind and headed for the restaurant.
Roa was treating the whole situation like a vacation, still thinking about Coney Island.
“Roa must be made for hotels. You too, Teddy? Hmm? You want to keep living here!? But it’s so expensive…”
“Then tell that stuffed bear to start paying rent.”
“Little brother, his name is Teddy. Roa’s little brother, Teddy.”
“Right. Teddy. Tell him to get a job already.”
“Playing with Roa is Teddy’s job.”
“Wow, tough work. Poor guy.”
“Little brother talks so pretty. Teddy, you scold him.”
We ordered simple bread and milk.
I was watching Liam and Roa bicker when Hazel walked in. Our eyes met; she gave me a smiling look and took the table right next to ours.
While we waited for the food, a slick-looking man sidled up to her table.
It was the same guest who had just been talking to the clerk in the lobby.
“Hello, lady. You’re staying in room 403 at the Livingston, aren’t you?”
“And?”
“James Harvey, room 408 on the same floor. By the way, did you hear anything strange last night, miss?”
He was trying to use the night’s events as an ice-breaker. When she gave him nothing, he switched to swaggering self-promotion—some nonsense about being a businessman with decent sales.
“That uncle’s working hard first thing in the morning. Big sister doesn’t look interested, though.”
Roa’s comment nearly made me spit milk.
Mother and Liam were the same.
“You can tell that just by looking?”
“What, big brother, you can’t? Roa can tell from faces, eyes, the way people talk. Who likes who.”
“Keep those eyes sharp.”
I doubted Roa would ever fall for a lowlife like that. Reassuring.
In the end the man left empty-handed. The friendly face vanished; he returned to his own table looking cold.
After breakfast we went back to the hotel.
The family headed off to work and school; I stayed behind alone, planning a leisurely checkout.
With time still left I went up to the fourth floor.
As I walked the corridor past room 408 at the far end, I took the spent casing from the previous night out of my pocket, dropped it on the floor, and kicked it under the door.
Eleven in the morning.
I finished checkout and left the hotel.
Only then did police arrive at the entrance of the Hotel Delancey across the street.
Slow reaction, as expected.
I put it out of my mind and headed for Allen Street.
Second-floor office of the twin buildings.
Some bastard was sleeping in an insolent pose—hat over his face, feet up on the table.
“You finished the job before you took a nap, right?”
Anthony lifted the hat a fraction and smirked.
He sat up properly and spoke.
“Handled perfectly. And if you need Itzky Joe done, just leave him to me, Boss.”
“That side’s finished too.”
“Hmm? How’d you take him out?”
“Sniper shot.”
Anthony whistled and pointed at a chair.
“A sniper shot. Sit down a minute, Boss. We’ve got a lot to talk about.”
*
The NYPD medical examiner autopsied Itzky Joe’s body, examined the bullet and time of death, and concluded “homicide by sniper fire.”
Guests who had stayed at the Hotel Delancey—where Itzky Joe had been—and at the Livingston Hotel, the suspected firing position, all became subjects of investigation.
The detectives who pursued the inquiry with real energy eventually showed up at Mrs. Graves’s tenement house.
“There was a leak, you say?”
“Water started pouring down to the floor below all of a sudden, so I had the balcony and living-room side sealed with cement.”
“Did you notice any strange sounds or vibrations on the day of the incident?”
“Not at all. I had a lot of work, and the children were out cold early.”
After questioning Mrs. Graves, the police ruled her out for the time being.
Hazel boldly stayed at the hotel for three full days before she was questioned. Her room had been the most likely sniper’s nest, yet no weapon or residue was found.
More importantly, a spent casing turned up in room 408 on the same floor, and the investigation swung hard in that direction.
For a short while a man named James Harvey became the prime suspect.
Meanwhile the police tracked down everyone who had been with Itzky Joe right up to his death.
Salvatore and Frankie Yale were among them.
Of course the cops had been on Yale’s payroll for years, so the questioning stayed purely formal. They even fretted over his safety.
“Yale, you’d better stick to Brooklyn for a while. Bombings and now a sniper… LES is crawling with lunatics right now.”
Yale stared grimly at the newspapers spread across the desk.
And one long headline twisted Yale’s guts.
“A new order? Arrogant bastards.”
“And lunatics. Anyway, keep your head down for a while. The brass are taking this seriously. If they get any dirt on you right now, even I won’t be able to help.”
“I’ve got no interest in sticking my nose in. I’ve got other business.”
Yale finished the interview in thirty minutes and left the station. Outside, Salvatore and his men—who had also been questioned—were waiting.
“You’re just going to leave the Union alone?”
Yale shrugged at Salvatore’s question.
“I already drove the nail home when I talked to Itzky Joe.”
A few days earlier, during his meeting with Itzky Joe, Frankie Yale had declared he wanted nothing more to do with the Five Points Gang.
“LES means nothing to me. I’ve got bigger things waiting.”
Cleaning out lunatics like the Union can come after that.
Yale left them with nothing but a meaningful smile.
Salvatore watched the car pull away and rubbed his chin.
“Just what the hell does ‘bigger things’ mean?”
Yale, who had built an independent power base in Brooklyn, had come to the LES to construct a network among Italian gangs.
That was why he and Salvatore were neither members of the same outfit nor in a boss-and-soldier relationship.
A few days later.
The collapse of the Five Points Gang accelerated, and the Union began to emerge as the new masters of the LES.
Kieran spent the quiet period while the NYPD investigation cooled absorbing the smaller units inside the LES and using them to lock down territory.
And while the ground was shifting under the LES, a quieter, more secret change was overturning the balance of power among New York’s gangs.
The new head of New York’s Unione Siciliane.
Years earlier Giuseppe Morello and Ignazio Lupo had been sentenced to thirty years and locked away, leaving the position of Capo di tutti capi vacant.
Frankie Yale was named the “boss of all bosses” among New York’s Sicilian gangs.