Looks Like You're Fighting to Stay Alive
619 Willow Avenue, on the border between Hoboken and Jersey City. In the industrial district, the Italian gang used a three-story brick building disguised as an auto parts warehouse as their headquarters.
Boss Luigi “Lou” Collafinto had woken in the early evening and only made it to his office well past nine at night.
“Worthless bastards. Nothing but a waste of good time.”
All night long he and his men had been screwing around at DeMeo and DiNorscio’s warehouse. Just thinking about how they had waited with their eyes peeled for a Union that never showed made his guts churn.
Collafinto entered through the building’s right-side entrance.
He climbed the stairs, opened the third-floor office door, and smoke poured out as if the place were on fire. It was cigarette smoke billowed by the underlings enjoying a card game at the table.
“Open a window and air the place out.”
“It’s freezing outside.”
With a rattle the window slid open, and cold air began seeping into the office. Still wearing his heavy overcoat, Collafinto sank into his chair.
He uncorked the whiskey bottle on the desk, poured a glass, and unfolded the newspaper. The Jersey Journal, published out of Jersey City, ran Prohibition-related stories day after day.
After skimming the headlines, Collafinto asked the men at cards,
“Any word from D’Aquila’s side?”
“Nothing today.”
“Fuck. They said the goods would hit the docks in a few days—least they could do is give us an exact date and time.”
“Eh, what’s a day or two?”
Watching his man answer so casually, Collafinto knocked back the whiskey.
He already knew. The reason the Manhattan Italian gangs hadn’t given a precise arrival time for the contraband was that they still didn’t fully control the waterfront.
For years the Italian outfits had worked every angle to seize the docks and extend their influence.
A prime example was Paul Kelly, vice president of the ILA—the International Longshoremen’s Association—and original boss of the Five Points Gang.
Born Paolo Vaccarelli, he had even changed his name to recruit the many Irish longshoremen. Through him the Italian gangs had been tightening their grip on the port and building their smuggling networks.
The ILA’s reach covered not only the Manhattan piers but New Jersey’s as well.
Then, suddenly, a problem appeared.
A year earlier, ILA vice president Paul Kelly had started backing the Irishman Tanner Smith, and everything began to unravel.
Control of the docks tilting away from the Italians and toward the Irish was a serious blow.
And once Prohibition looked certain, the situation became intolerable.
Should’ve taken them out ages ago.
Paul Kelly and Tanner Smith. At the very least those two had to go if the Italians were ever going to reclaim the waterfront.
Collafinto was certain it would happen before the year was out.
And when that day came, he would seize every smuggling pipeline in Jersey City—or so he dreamed.
Helping those idiots DeMeo and DiNorscio last night had ultimately been about uniting and absorbing Jersey City’s Italian crews under his own banner.
He poured another whiskey.
As the luminous amber filled the glass, one word stood out sharply. The newspaper print on the desk was magnified through the whiskey.
“Fuck. Of all things, ‘Union.’”
An article about Jersey City’s Railroad Union. But Collafinto’s mind jumped straight to the Union gang.
Had DeMeo and DiNorscio been telling the truth?
Thinking it over, it made no sense.
Even Salvatore D’Aquila and Frankie Yale—the two pillars of New York’s Italian underworld—had failed to track the Union down.
And now they just showed up in Jersey City?
Far more likely someone had been impersonating them.
“To get played by trash like that…”
Collafinto lifted the glass where “Union” was enlarged. The moment he brought it to his lips—
The office door burst open.
Glass still in hand, Collafinto’s eyes dropped. A blond man whose hair stuck out from under his hat crossed both arms and thrust them forward. The black holes aimed at him and his men were unmistakably gun muzzles.
“Fuc—”
Bang!
Bang!
Bang!
In an instant the office became a slaughterhouse.
Cards fluttered through the air. The whiskey bottle shattered and spilled across the floor.
Desk splinters and newspaper scraps danced upward.
Collafinto sat frozen in his chair, eyes wide open.
Blood ran from the hole in his forehead; amber whiskey dripped from the edge of the desk.
Behind the blond man who had just painted the office with blood, a squad of men stormed in. Without so much as a glance at the corpses they tore the place apart, hauled the safe out of the cabinet, and dragged it free.
Then three more men burst into the office. The one in the middle had glassy eyes and could barely keep his feet.
The blond leveled a gun at his head—one of the pistols taken from the bodies on the floor.
“Your usefulness ends here, Gugu Nox.”
Bang!
Thud.
The blond pressed two pistols into the hands of the fallen Gugu Nox—the Colt M1911 and Beretta M1915 that had just wiped out the Italian crew—and arranged the corpse into a plausible pose.
By then his men had heaved the safe out the window.
Boom!
A dull crash, followed by the scrape of metal being dragged across the ground below.
“Let’s go.”
The blond turned and spoke the single word. As if on cue the whole pack slipped out of the office like wolves finished with the hunt.
In the storm’s wake, corpses littered the floor. It was hard to believe one man had done all of this.
Bang!
Bang!
The sudden gunfire made Willy Moretti’s heart clench. He had been standing lookout near Collafinto’s office with Union men.
These people are actually insane.
Two firefights and multiple killings—morning and night. No one in their right mind could pull that off.
Even after several volleys no one appeared. The warehouse district had no streetlights, and once night fell no pedestrians wandered through.
Still, the shots had been loud enough that Moretti couldn’t help feeling jumpy.
A short while later the blond man led the way out of the building. The others scattered in different directions; only the blond walked toward Moretti.
Those cold, composed eyes gleaming above the scarf sent a shiver racing down Moretti’s spine.
Moretti and the man took the prearranged escape route, weaving quickly between the tangled warehouses.
Moretti kept glancing at the silent figure beside him. No haste, no nerves. The indifferent gaze, as if nothing at all had happened, was unnerving enough on its own.
This one’s terrifying.
A few months earlier Willy Moretti had been certain Prohibition would be the chance of a lifetime. To seize it he had brought in Gugu Nox, DeMeo, and DiNorscio—men he had met in Elmira Prison.
The first month went smoothly.
They secured a warehouse and steadily stacked the whiskey Gugu Nox had stolen from Hell’s Kitchen.
Then everything collapsed overnight.
The Union gang appeared out of nowhere, forced a humiliating written pledge on them, and the partners he trusted betrayed him.
Before they had even properly started, he found himself standing on the edge of a cliff.
To escape the Italian crew that had teamed up with the traitors, he had only one option. Ironically, the only hand left to grasp was the Union’s.
He had prowled the warehouse perimeter until he finally made contact—and then the shocks kept coming.
He didn’t know the full details, but somehow the Union had wiped out the traitors DeMeo and DiNorscio, the Hudson Dusters, the Italian crew, and Gugu Nox—all of them. In a single day!
Moretti stole another look at the blond hair peeking from under the man’s hat.
His former partner Gugu Nox had run wild like a rabid dog with no plan at all. This man moved every piece with the calm precision of a chess master.
No matter how he looked at it, the man had to be a core figure in the Union—decisive, cold, and ruthlessly efficient.
To Moretti he was both terror and hope.
After roughly twenty minutes of travel they reached the busy DL&W terminal. They melted naturally into the throng of trains, ships, stevedores, and passengers.
A short distance farther, among the cluster of diners and boarding houses, they stopped.
“Wait here a bit.”
They had not spoken a word the entire way; there had been no room for conversation. But this silence now felt like wasted time.
Moretti couldn’t hold it in any longer.
“What’s your name?”
“Nox.”
“……Not planning on telling me, huh.”
Who would believe a man who just killed Gugu Nox and then called himself Nox? Moretti gave a bitter smile and pressed on.
“So what happens to me now?”
“Three months. I’ll give you that long. Build a crew in Jersey City.”
“……Sorry, but I’ve got nothing right now.”
A piercing stare stabbed into him.
He wanted to dodge the truth, but it was the truth. He had lost everything.
As he hung his head, the man calling himself Nox asked,
“I hear you were planning to buy an armored car on the black market?”
“Gugu Nox must’ve run his mouth. It’s true. Seemed like a pretty efficient way to stop truck hijackers.”
Nox considered for a moment, then continued.
“Instead of the armored car I’ll give you three trucks, crates of whiskey, and weapons.”
“Y-you’re giving me all that?”
“Of course. On one condition.”
Might as well carve out a flea’s liver. He was simply returning what he had taken from the warehouse—and attaching a new string.
“We need to adjust the relationship a little. Not partners. You swear loyalty to the Union.”
Moretti’s eyes wavered.
It felt like stepping into a cage full of predators. One wrong move and he would be torn apart—fear and dread surged through him.
He had already made up his mind, yet his body trembled all over again.
But I don’t have a choice.
Moretti’s deliberation was short. He locked the decision in place even faster than when he had signed the body-surrender pledge.
“I’ll follow. I’ll give the Union my full loyalty.”
“You’ll learn the rules in time. Just remember one thing. The Wall of Silence. Never speak of internal business to outsiders, and never cooperate with them.”
The rule of silence and obedience.
Identical to the Italian Omerta.
“Break it, and the retribution will be absolute.”
Nox’s voice and eyes were icy. Having seen and heard what this man could do, Moretti did not take it as a casual warning. He swallowed hard and nodded.
That day became the greatest turning point of Willy Moretti’s life.
A little later one of the scattered men—Brian—joined them.
“From now on, clear everything with Brian. The two of you will be responsible for Jersey City. I’m heading out, so talk it over between yourselves.”
“Going to sleep?”
“No. Need to put some oil in the tank.”
Moretti did not hear it as a joke. The man called Nox really did move like a machine that needed greasing.
I slipped into an alley, peeled off the wig, and wiped away the powder caked on my eyebrows. Once I looked like myself again I went looking for a diner.
Plenty of places near the docks stayed open until dawn for longshoremen and travelers.
I picked one that looked unpretentious and walked in.
The place was packed.
Laborers in shabby clothes. A family eating with a child in tow. A large steamer trunk sat beside them—late arrivals, by the look of it.
“No empty tables. Mind sharing?”
The waitress led me to a man sitting alone. With all sorts of people flooding in, and lone customers like me, sharing a table wasn’t unusual.
“Excuse me.”
“What can I get you?”
I scanned the menu and ordered.
“Keep it simple—steak and eggs.”
“Shit, you call that simple? At this hour?”
The man across from me snorted as if talking to himself and looked me over.
Whether I ate or not was none of his business, and he sure as hell wasn’t paying.
I hung my coat over the chair and pulled down the scarf. When he saw the last of the mask still on me he sneered again.
“Looks like you’re really fighting to stay alive. You’ll live a long time.”
With men who made a habit of picking fights, silence was the best answer. Of course silence could also piss them off further.
From rough days in the LES I had learned that a slight smile in the eyes usually kept things from escalating.
I understood the psychology well enough.
Most customers were eating stew, potato chips, corn, or sandwiches. Steak and eggs sat on the expensive side of the menu.
That was what stuck in his craw.
The food came faster than expected.
I picked up knife and fork.
The smell of the nicely browned steak already made my mouth water.
Too much for a late-night snack, maybe, but I had earned it.
I had walked a lot, shot a lot, killed a lot today…
Suddenly another man’s fork invaded my plate, stabbing fast at my steak.
Ting!
I blocked fork with fork, shoved it clear of the plate, and in the same motion set the tip of my knife against his throat.
Then I traced the knife-edge along the line of his neck up to his cheek.
“Want me to give you a scar?”
“……”
All the color drained from the man’s face.
The waitress standing nearby looked the same. In a trembling voice she managed,
“I-I’m sorry, but sharing tables—”
A man stood behind her.
The eyes that had been staring at me steadily grew wider and wider.
Scarface.
Al Capone, with a knife scar on his cheek that hadn’t been there before.
The New York–Chicago express. The Pennsylvania Railroad ran through Jersey City.
So the rumors were true—he was running from the White Hand, trying to escape to Chicago.