Isn't This Too Fast?
Keep the damage as light as possible. At last I chose a suitable spot and triggered an explosion with its power drastically reduced.
Boom.
It was a small enough blast that even Ida, down in the lingerie shop on the first floor, would cock her head in mild puzzlement. Fragments peppered the surroundings, and the floor was scorched black. My chest ached, but this much was tolerable.
“We’ll still be able to open for business today, right?”
Anthony, who had just witnessed my little self-staged performance, froze mid-harmonica as if turned to stone. His mouth worked open and shut without sound.
“Mm. If we clean up quick, maybe. Still… I thought I was the only crazy one around, but the world’s a bigger place than I figured.”
Anthony whispered it under his breath. I snorted and tapped the dazed member standing beside me—the former pickpocket from Macy’s who now did odd jobs at the dance hall. I gave Lanza his orders.
“Go report this to the police.”
Until the cops arrived and saw the scene for themselves, no one here was to lift a finger.
Among the competing outfits I had chosen Rose and Palm Garden precisely because gangs stood behind them. In short, this fight was also a matter of territory. Expanding the dance halls in any serious way could be read as open war with the gangs. The self-staged act was only to dodge police scrutiny; I had no intention of hiding my hand from my enemies. On the contrary, I meant to use the moment to bring a certain gang into the light—under the name of the Union.
Bombings struck three dance halls. All of them on the same day, so the reporters dug into the story with relentless hunger. Interviews followed, and the simmering feud among the dance-hall operators finally broke the surface.
Rose and Palm Garden—whose interiors had been gutted by the blasts—pointed the finger straight at Pumpkin and even released the threatening letters they had recently received. But Pumpkin itself had been bombed as well. Their accusations lost force; instead the police and the press began casting suspicious looks at the three halls that had somehow escaped unscathed.
Golden Flame. The Moonlight. Silver Swing.
The owners of those three establishments gathered in a second-floor private room on Bowery Street. Each had just come from the police station after being hauled in for questioning.
“Damn it. Bombings out of nowhere.”
“We could be next. This isn’t something we can just shrug off.”
“I heard from the cops—this wasn’t amateur work.”
The culprit had built the bombs from corned-beef cans. They looked almost ridiculous, yet the experts said the blast yield, the radius, even the fuses had been carefully calculated and modified for timed detonation.
“Honestly, I still smell Pumpkin. They claim they got hit too, but the damage was light and they even opened for business the same day.”
“It does reek. Could’ve been a self-staging job to throw off suspicion. So if we assume Pumpkin did it—why hit Rose and Palm Garden?”
The owner of Golden Flame answered as if it were obvious.
“Because they decided Rose and Palm Garden were the ones who jumped their bands lately.”
“So they know more than they’re letting on.”
For a moment every mouth in the room clamped shut. They all knew certain facts too dangerous to speak aloud, and anything involving Rose and Palm Garden fell into that category. Those two houses were tangled deep with the gangs; they were fundamentally different from the men sitting here.
Golden Flame’s owner lowered his voice.
“Far as I can tell, Pumpkin’s got a gang behind them too. Could even be connected to the ones pushing into Ludlow and Essex lately.”
“Same thought here. We get caught in the middle, we’re finished. Outfits like us without real muscle have to ride the tide.”
Every man in the room already paid weekly protection to some gang or other. The only way through the present crisis was to hold their breath and watch who came out on top.
A bitter silence settled over the room until a staffer knocked.
“Sorry to interrupt… the owner of Pumpkin is here.”
“Pumpkin?”
Three men climbed the stairs to the second floor. At their head, Patrick addressed the gathered owners.
“Times like these, maybe you could let us in on the conversation.”
“How did you even know we were here?”
“The LES is smaller than you think.”
Leaving his two companions at the door, Patrick walked in without waiting for permission and dropped into the empty seat beside Silver Swing’s owner as if it had always been his.
“What were you all talking about?”
“In weather like this, what else is there besides the bombings? We just came from the station because of them.”
Golden Flame’s owner—looking to be in his fifties—answered curtly. Patrick smirked.
“So who do you figure is next?”
The men kept their mouths shut and let their uneasy faces do the talking. Patrick did not circle around the point any longer.
“Rose and Palm Garden have gang ties. We believe every ugly incident lately traces back to them.”
“That a confession you just bombed Rose and Palm Garden?”
Golden Flame seized on the wording. When Patrick neither confirmed nor denied it, the older man scowled.
“So the bomb at Pumpkin really was a self-job after all. Am I right?”
“Strictly speaking, not us. The people we hired did it.”
“Hired? Who the hell did you hire for that?”
“The Union.”
The sudden appearance of a name that sounded like a labor outfit made every owner blink.
“A gang that recently set up shop in the LES. A place the rest of us without muscle can lean on.”
“So Pumpkin itself has no direct gang affiliation?”
“People keep mistaking us for the gang. We’re not. If any of you are interested, you’re free to deal with the Union yourselves.”
A gang that took contracts and carried out bombings—how could that not be terrifying?
Patrick continued.
“I came here on Union business. They have a proposal for you gentlemen.”
“A proposal?”
“Cooperate with the Union, back them, and they’ll cut your protection money in half from now on.”
“You’re out of your—”
Patrick fixed Golden Flame with a hard stare and dropped his voice.
“If the Union had heard that just now, the entire Golden Flame building would already be gone.”
“…”
“Anyway, Pumpkin has decided to cooperate with the Union. If you want to keep running your places in peace and order, you’ll need to make a decision soon.”
Patrick stood. Golden Flame hurried after him with a question.
“Who the hell is the boss of this Union?”
“I don’t know either.”
“Then what’s your proof they can actually take this neighborhood—and why should we believe they’ll protect us from retaliation?”
“That’s exactly why early cooperation matters. For reference, once the Union expands all the way to the Bowery, it’ll already be too late. Timing is everything in a deal like this.”
Patrick left. The air in the private room grew heavy. The sudden name of the Union pressed down on every man present.
The youngest of them, Silver Swing’s owner in his thirties, spoke carefully.
“What does ‘cooperate’ actually mean?”
“Money and information, obviously. Which gang we pay, where their base is, how many men they have.”
“Sounds like they really mean to take the whole LES. What are you two planning to do? If we just ignore them, the bombs…”
No matter how they ran the numbers, the only image that kept floating up was another bomb. The fear that their dance halls could go up at any moment would not leave them.
“What if we report it to the police?”
“You’re too naïve. You still trust the cops? And why do you think they’re telling us this so openly? Because they’re that confident.”
“When you put it that way… damn.”
“Speaking of which, you’ve been quiet today. You called the meeting—least you can do is offer an opinion.”
Golden Flame turned to The Moonlight’s owner. The man was not normally silent, yet today he had kept his mouth tightly shut. It was not the attitude of someone who had arranged the gathering.
“My mind’s a mess, that’s all.”
“Fair enough given the situation. Still, times like these you need a clear head.”
Whenever the owners of Rose and Palm Garden had been present, those two had always driven the conversation. With them absent, Golden Flame seemed to enjoy acting as the new center of gravity and delivered his conclusion.
“We ought to show the crazy bastards some sincerity. Feeding the Union a little information doesn’t sound so bad. Even if they get the intel, I doubt those other boys survive.”
“They’ll collapse on their own, you mean?”
“Even if I’m wrong, it doesn’t matter. We just stand with the winner. So leaking information both ways might be the smart play.”
“Whichever side wins is our side?”
Silver Swing chimed in. Golden Flame’s mouth curved upward.
“Let’s watch who moves first.”
At that, The Moonlight’s owner—silent until now—shook his head.
“Dangerous thinking. We could get hit from both sides. Do you trust me?”
Golden Flame flinched and shot back.
“What’s that supposed to mean? Sounds like you’re threatening to talk.”
“I’m saying it because I don’t want that to happen. If word spreads that we tried to play two gangs against each other, can we handle the fallout?”
“Hmph. So what then? Join the Union?”
The Moonlight’s owner nodded.
“These are maniacs who plant bombs. Right now the smart move is to fall in line. That’s how we stay alive.”
When the meeting broke up, Golden Flame was the first out of the room. The Moonlight’s owner caught Silver Swing before he could leave.
“You’re not thinking of playing games either, are you?”
“I always take the safe route. You’re right—the Union looks dangerous.”
“Good thinking.”
They parted ways. Heading back to his own hall, The Moonlight’s owner pulled a scrap of paper from his pocket—the note Patrick had slipped him while sitting right beside him.
Damn it.
On the day of the bombings, strangers had paid him a visit.
If you don’t want to get blown to pieces along with your dance hall, do exactly as we say.
At the time he had not even known they were the Union. They had ordered him to call the meeting and report everything said inside. The only reason Patrick had known where to find them was because The Moonlight’s owner had told him. The strangers had also made clear they would pick out the uncooperative outfits and erase them according to what they heard.
That, at least, I have to stop.
Every one of them had poured their lives into these dance halls. Dying as collateral in a gang war would be too damn wasteful. He had struggled to bring the stubborn Golden Flame around, but overall the meeting had gone well enough.
A short while later, in a dim and cheerless place, three men with scarves wrapped around their faces waited for The Moonlight’s owner.
“Result of the meeting?”
“They all… agreed to follow the Union.”
“You’ll answer for those words.”
He nodded and began feeding them the important pieces—the home base of the gang tied to Rose and Palm Garden, and the name of its boss.
Allen Street twin-building office.
I spent the entire morning at my desk combing through the newspapers. Nowhere in the coverage had the NYPD managed to pin a clear profile on the bomber. German spies, anarchists, gang turf wars—they were chasing every possibility, which only meant they had no real direction.
So in times like these I had to give them one myself.
Right on cue, Brian walked in after meeting with The Moonlight’s owner.
“They all agreed to cooperate with us.”
If you wanted to know the future of dance halls that sold liquor, you only had to look at the Prohibition era. These men would convert into speakeasies and make me money selling the booze I supplied. For now, though, their real value lay in the information I could squeeze out of them.
“Things are about to get bigger. The other side is none other than…”
The Five Points Gang—the outfit that had ruled the LES for nearly twenty years. More precisely, the fractured warlord remnants left after founding boss Paul Kelly retired and became a vice president of the ILA. Their current boss was the Jewish immigrant Joe Hickman, also known as Itski Joe: the last true boss of the Five Points Gang.
“The owners of Rose and Palm Garden are Itski Joe’s men. Ludlow and Essex Streets are under their thumb too.”
That was exactly what had been said at the earlier meeting of the five dance-hall owners.
“But Boss… Five Points? Isn’t that too fast?”
“What’s too fast? We’ve already clashed with them more than once.”
Salvatore, Meyer Lansky, Bugsy Siegel, Irving, Al Capone, Johnny Torrio—I had met them all face to face and spoken with them. Johnny Spanish, ‘Kid Dropper’ Kaplan, Herman Kalman—I had removed those with my own hands. Looking at it that way, the Five Points Gang had lost its center after Paul Kelly’s retirement and scattered like weeds. Units claimed membership so casually that the reply “Oh yeah? Me too” had become common. Oversight had collapsed, and the title of New York’s strongest gang was steadily losing meaning.
“So what are you afraid of?”
Leave Ludlow and Essex alone for now. Open a new front. Itski Joe—the last boss of the Five Points—had coiled himself around Bowery Street. Take the Bowery and the entire eastern LES would fall into our hands.
There was no reason not to.