I Wanted to Show Them
Paul Kelly always kept his short hair slicked back with oil and wore a neatly pressed suit. Throughout our drinks his manner stayed mild and soft-spoken. The image of an intelligent, refined "gentleman gangster" set him sharply apart from the other gang bosses of the era.
After the drinking wound down, there were nights when just the two of us remained, and he would sometimes talk about himself.
"It's been nearly thirty years since my family first set foot on American soil. Italian immigrants weren't nearly as numerous back then as they are now."
Making a living had been hard enough, he said, but the worst thing to endure was the racial discrimination.
"The Irish had everything locked down in those days. You couldn't walk a single block without a flood of insults and mockery. I expect you know that better than anyone."
Paul Kelly fixed his gaze on me and paused. I answered as if filling in the natural beat.
"There were days I got dragged into an alley five times."
"Exactly. That's the LES for you. Those years only made me stronger."
As a teenager Paul Kelly had worked as a sailor; once he reached adulthood he took a job as a clerk at an Italian bank.
"That was when I learned how important speech and appearance are if you want to win a man's trust. I wanted a well-pressed suit, a proper tie, and shining shoes to be the first impression I left."
By day he worked at the bank and absorbed the lessons of respectable society. By night he let Paul Kelly's true nature run free.
"It's gone now, but there used to be a dive bar on the Bowery. Every night I'd head there, drink, and mix with the crowd."
A dive bar was a small, cheap place that sold liquor and soft drinks, usually tucked into a basement or half-basement so that patrons had to "dive" down into it.
"One night a brawl broke out in there, and that fight changed my whole life."
Paul Kelly had a natural talent for fighting, and he became one of the street bantamweights popular in those days. Once the Bridgeport Herald even ran an article calling him "the fastest and cleanest little fighter" around.
"The purses were so big they made my bank clerk's salary look like a joke. So I took the money I earned in the ring and invested it in brothels and athletic clubs."
In those days athletic clubs were less about sports and more about gathering places for young gangsters. The Five Points Gang itself was born out of one of those clubs.
"Like I said earlier, the Irish still outnumbered the Italians by a wide margin. Most of the gangs were Irish too. So the first people who reached out to me were the Irish politicians who had Tammany Hall in a stranglehold."
The politicians hired gangs for one purpose: vote-rigging and election fraud. The first election the Five Points Gang ever meddled in was the Second District primary—none other than Big Tom Foley's race for alderman under Tammany Hall.
The reason a heavyweight like Paul Kelly would even sit across from me had as much to do with Big Tom Foley as it did with Tanner.
"Foley speaks very highly of you. Higher than he ever spoke of me in my younger days."
He brought up the incident in which I had shot and killed two anarchists. That particular episode would probably follow me to the grave.
"Back to the gangs. Once we entered the 1900s the makeup of the membership started to shift."
Eastern European, Jewish, and Italian immigrants poured into New York in waves. As the poorest newcomers flooded into the squalid Lower East Side, the Irish who had managed to climb a rung or two began moving out. That was why the LES was now so heavily Italian and Jewish. My own family had never been able to afford the move, so we had stayed put.
In any case, the Five Points Gang had started out multinational, but it was gradually absorbed by the Italians. Given that Paul Kelly himself came from that stock, the outcome was only natural.
"A lot changed in roughly ten years. The Italian gangs in particular have been growing at a terrifying pace. How well do you understand this tangled power structure?"
"I hear the Neapolitan side has gone quiet, and that relations between Salvatore D'Aquila on the Sicilian side and Frankie Yale aren't good."
Paul Kelly gave a faint smile and shook his head.
"That was last year. The situation has shifted again. D'Aquila and Yale have joined hands."
"Is that so?"
They had been spilling blood over the LES and the Fulton Fish Market; now they were allies. None of it had anything to do with the Union.
"If you want to understand the present situation, you need to look at who started the Sicilian gangs in New York."
"Giuseppe Morello?"
"You know your history. That's right. Morello, who once controlled the Bronx and East Harlem."
The capo di tutti capi—the boss of bosses—who had laid the foundation of the New York Sicilian underworld. Giuseppe Morello was currently serving time for counterfeiting. His brother Nicholas Morello had taken over the family in his place, only to be assassinated by the Neapolitan side three years earlier.
"Right now the center of the gang is his half-brothers, Vincenzo Terranova and Ciro Terranova."
Vincenzo Terranova was the Boss; Ciro Terranova the Underboss. The two of them had won the Mafia-Camorra War between Sicily and Naples and preserved the Morello family.
Their triumph had been short-lived. Salvatore D'Aquila, a loyal lieutenant of the Morello family, had raised the banner of revolt. Until recently he had been at war with Frankie Yale over control of Brooklyn; now the two had formed an alliance.
Viewed that way, the New York Sicilian underworld currently rested on three axes.
"But no one knows whether those axes will multiply or collapse into one. Morello's release is less than a year away."
The release of Giuseppe Morello, who had once stood at the absolute summit of the New York Sicilian gangs, was an event that would reshape the entire Sicilian power map.
"Morello will certainly try to reclaim his power. D'Aquila joined hands with Yale precisely to stop him."
"In broad strokes, then, it splits into those who want to protect Morello and those who want to eliminate him."
"You've got it exactly. Either way, once Morello walks free, absolute chaos is coming."
I cast back through my memories of the mafia genealogies from my previous life. The structure was so tangled that the easiest way to grasp it was to work backward. If you started from the five great New York families that would one day dominate America and traced them to their origins, you found the starting points.
The Bonanno family.
The Colombo family.
The Gambino family.
The Genovese family.
And the Lucchese family.
Salvatore D'Aquila would become the founder of one of those families. What mattered was that "family" no longer meant blood so much as a criminal organization—or a corporation. The history they would write in violence and blood from this point forward would become the history of those families.
"There's a reason I suddenly brought up the Sicilian gangs. While we've been out on strike, word is they've been quietly seizing the Bronx and the Upper Manhattan piers one by one."
Paul Kelly's expulsion from the ILA in the first place had not been unrelated to the Sicilian gangs. They, too, understood perfectly well what needed to be seized first during the grace period before Prohibition.
In short, the point of everything Paul Kelly had said was a request: reinstate him in the ILA before it was too late.
And before we parted he left me with one more loaded remark.
"There's another lieutenant who stayed loyal to the Morello family, just like Salvatore D'Aquila. He's still working for Morello."
Rumors were spreading that a new power base was coalescing around that man. He was famous enough that even I knew the name.
The founder of one of America's five great mafia families—the Genovese family.
Joe Masseria.
He had begun to move in earnest.
The West Side waterfront stretched from Tribeca through Chelsea, where the ILA headquarters stood, all the way to Hell's Kitchen. The bulk of Manhattan's major dockworkers had now joined the strike of their own free will.
A few days later:
The strike had spilled across the river into New Jersey. The picket lines targeted not only politicians but also the slanted newspapers. A paper's influence was measured by its circulation, and that circulation depended on ordinary American citizens—the workers. Faced with such fierce protests, management could no longer afford to take only the employers' side.
A spark properly lit will catch even in a light breeze. Workers in Florida, on the Great Lakes, and in New Orleans began to stir. As one headline put it, this was no longer simply a matter of a five-cent raise.
The strike had grown beyond a wage fight into a tangled web of postwar social instability, rising labor consciousness, internal union conflicts, and the "Red Scare" bogeymen of communism, socialism, and radicalism.
In the original history the New York dockworkers' strike would not begin until October 9—six months later. Records showed between seventy and a hundred thousand men taking part; import and export logistics ground to a halt. Ships backed up by the score; hundreds of thousands of tons of cargo sat stranded on the piers. The scale was so vast that the federal government itself stepped in, trying to settle the crisis through the War Labor Board. Paul Kelly was eventually reinstated as ILA vice president, but by then the strike had already slipped beyond his control.
Kieran's intervention had twisted history. The strike had erupted six months early, and its purpose was crystal clear.
Mayor John Hylan of New York finally visited the ILA a full two weeks after the walkout began. Politicians and union leaders sat down together over the question of rescinding Paul Kelly's expulsion and restoring him to office.
Chaos, of course, is a golden opportunity for criminals. Street thugs piled on; near-riots of looting and small-scale brawls broke out one after another. And in the middle of that disorder the gangs began snatching up waterfront real estate—or rather, warehouses.
They moved to control the storage sheds near the docks, collecting protection money and threatening companies and haulers that no cargo would move without their "permission."
Silver Chain Logistics, sitting close to the East River, was no exception.
Bang!
The office door of SCL slammed open and a dozen thugs poured in—a mixed crew of Italians and Jews.
"We're here to speak with the boss of this place. Who is it?"
Rosenthal had already left to hunt down armored cars on the black market; Derek and Noah were running SCL. The two of them stepped forward without hesitation.
"That's some attitude for a friendly chat."
"We know what you're after, but you've got the wrong address."
The thugs let out disbelieving laughs. Then—
Click-clack.
Every office worker raised a gun and leveled it at the intruders. Except for the female clerks, every man was armed.
"…You crazy bastards."
The laughter died. The leader's face hardened.
"You're making something simple into something hard."
"Look who's talking. You're the ones who came sniffing where you don't belong."
"I don't know what you think you've got backing you, but you're going to regret this real soon."
"I'll give you those words right back."
Noah and the leader locked eyes in a silent staring match. In the end the thugs turned and walked out empty-handed.
"Hoo…"
One of the women collapsed into a chair, legs gone weak. The men holding guns looked little better. They had been issued weapons only because the waterfront had grown so chaotic lately; none of them were gangsters. Most had never fired a shot in their lives.
"Don't worry. Everyone get back to work."
Derek calmed the office, then stepped into the conference room with Noah to put their heads together.
"Looks like the Italian gangs have started moving, just like Kieran said. They'll be back, Noah. No question."
"We should let him know, then."
"Of course. We can't keep the brothers who ride shotgun on the trucks sitting around here just to guard the company."
"All right. I'll call him."
Noah picked up the telephone. He pressed the receiver to his ear; a low hum and crackle answered. He cranked the side handle hard. A metallic clack sounded, and a distant, fuzzy operator's voice came through.
"Where may I connect you?"
"Allen 3-1268."
"The thing we were worried about just happened."
"How many of them?"
"Seven."
"Understood. I'll be there before the day is out."
"In person?"
"Yes."
I hung up after the brief exchange with Uncle Noah and called for Gavin. He had been spending his time on the basement shooting range with the other veterans.
"New job. We're taking everyone to East 13th Street—SCL."
"What about the strike?"
"It's already out of our hands. Don't worry about it."
A smile spread across Gavin's mouth. Something about it bothered me.
"What's that grin for? Did you hate playing slugger that much?"
"No. I just wanted to show the kids. Our gang's real business."
Hell, the underwear shop on the first floor was our business too.
Had that not counted?
That evening I led twelve of the brothers to SCL.