with laughter. The others joined in.
When the snickering subsided, Pisano said, “Frankie, that mick bastard don’t understand Italian.”
“That’s my little joke, Augie,” Yale parried with distinct edge of pleasure in his voice. “His wife reads Italian. She translates for him. But he don’t know even then what the fuck the message is all about—until after he go to bed. Then he find out because, for sure, it’s gonna be for him, Good night, mister…”
Shortly before six o’clock on the evening of March 31st, Willie Altierri and Augie Pisano posted themselves near Gate 16 in Grand Central Station to await the arrival of the Spirit of St. Louis, one of the era’s crack cross-country trains. They had checked at the information desk and were told the train bringing DeSarno and Sciacca from Cleveland was on time.
At exactly 6:10 p.m. the passengers began emerging from the gate—the two killers among them. Altierri didn’t know DeSarno and Sciacca, but Pisano did: he had performed a contract killing in 1917 in Columbus with them.
Pisano nudged Altierri. “There they are,” he said just as DeSarno and Sciacca spotted him. They greeted each other with warm handshakes.
Pisano introduced Two-Knife, and the Brooklyn mobsters ecscorted their Cleveland brothers out of the marble terminal to a black Packard sedan parked on Vanderbilt Avenue with the motor running. Frenchy Carlino was in the driver’s seat. Yale had assigned Frenchy to chauffeur the assassins to Warren Street when they paid their visit to Denny Meehan.
But the exact hour for Meehan’s execution was still unsettled. The timetable couldn’t be plotted until Denny and his wife had departed the Strand Dance Hall, their nightly hangout. A pair of spotters had been staked out near the Strand to phone Yale the instant Meehan and his wife left; another two henchmen had been planted on Warren Street to report when the couple arrived home.
The messages were relayed to Frankie via Fury Argolia’s private office number at the Adonis Club. Yale ordered this arrangement, because he wanted DeSarno and Sciacca brought to the club for a final pre-execution briefing. And he wanted to show the hired guns good fellowship: Argolia had been prevailed upon to have another banquet table of his finest food and drink prepared.
It was mostly chitchat during the period given over for eating. Then the sudden switch in Frankie’s mood dictated the change in the tenor of the conversation.
One of the means by which Yale had ascended to the leadership of the Black Hand gang had been the demonstration of his ability to keep iron-fisted control over his men. He fought, bullied, even killed his way to the top. And he retained his grip on that leadership because he never let down the pose of the tough guy, the man in charge.
Thus, when DeSarno and Sciacca had been feted and were filled with Fury’s epicurean enticements, Frankie Yale quickly transformed the hail-fellow-well-met atmosphere in to one of deadly seriousness.
“I want to see your pieces,” Yale demanded of the Cleveland sharpshooters. “I gotta make sure they’re in shape.”
He tapped his finger on the table, indicating that he wanted DeSarno and Sciacca to put their guns there.
“What is this, some kind of gag?” Sciacca questioned, instinctively suspicious.
“No gag, fella,” Yale narrowed his eyes. “This is very serious to me. I pay you ten thousand apiece for this job and I gotta make sure your equipment is working. So, if I am not satisfied what you gonna deliver, I send you home and get somebody else to wipe out that mick. Get it?”
Sciacca turned to DeSarno with a questioning gaze. Nodding that it was all right to show their guns, DeSarno slipped his hand inside his jacket and removed a .45-caliber Colt revolver with a maroon grip. He placed it on the table, warning sarcastically, “Be careful, Frankie, it’s got bullets in it. Don’t hurt yourself.”
“Thanks,” said Yale coldly, “you just save my life.” He snatched the gun, emptied the bullets from the revolving cylinder, pointed the barrel at the ceiling, and squeezed the trigger. He smiled when he heard the click. Then he pumped the trigger a dozen times more.
“It’s in good shape,” Yale proclaimed, returning the bullets to the chamber and handing the weapon to Sciacca. Then he performed the same ritual with DeSarno’s piece.
“Now I’m happy,” Yale smiled benevolently. “You boys pass my test. You are ready. Only thing now is we gotta wait and see when Denny Meehan will be ready for his bye-bye.”
At 2:30 a.m. the phone in Argolia’s office jangled. Chootch Gianfredo was calling from his observation post near the dance hall.
“He just left here,” the lookout told Fury, who’d been waiting impatiently for the call. Argolia went to the corner table that Yale and the others were occupying and relayed the message.
“Good,” Yale rubbed his hands. He turned to the assassins. “Get your coats on.”
DeSarno, Sciacca, Pisano, and Carlino hopped out of their chairs, walked briskly to the hatcheck room, slipped into their garments, and returned to the table. Yale pulled his watch from his vest pocket and muttered, “Any second now we should get the call…”
No sooner had he spoken than the phone in Argolia’s office rang again.
“They just went into the house,” reported Nick “Glass Eye” Pelicano, who was staking out Warren Street.
“Anybody go in with them?” Argolia asked.
“Naw, they were dropped off in front of the house and the guy who brought them—I think it was Eddie McCarthy—drove away,” said Pelicano, who had worn a glass orb in his left eye since he’d lost it in the ring when he was boxing as a middleweight in the amateurs.
“How’s the street look?” Argolia wanted to know.
“Clean,” was the reply. “Only thing moving is the gutter rats and they ain’t paying attention to nuttin’. They’re busy eating out the garbage cans.”
Argolia hurried from his office.
“Frankie!” he shouted even before he had passed the door, “Okay! Okay! Send ’em!”
Yale turned to the four executioners. “You heard him,” he snapped gruffly, “what’re you waiting for?”
They rushed in quick, urgent steps toward the door. But before they were out of the club, Yale jumped to his feet and yelled almost as an afterthought, “Give Denny my best regards!”
It was nearly 3:30 the morning of April 1st when Frenchy Carlino turned into Warren Street and eased the Packard to a stop in front of Meehan’s residence, a three-story, six-family red brick apartment building that was one of the few habitable dwellings in a neighborhood of encroaching decay and rot.
With the riches that gang leaders like the Meehans were ripping off from their illicit ventures, they could easily have afforded the most luxurious living accommodations. Yet a good many of the moneyed mobsters then—and later—seemed content to remain in the decrepit environments that had spawned them, to raise families in the same filth and squalor that not only bred rancor against society but also debased men into the enemies of that society.
DeSarno and Sciacca leaped from the car and hurried through the door
