the doors! Jesus, this is gonna be a snap!”
As a matter of fact, Frankie Yale and his bunch had been lulled into believing a report that had been planted for their benefit that afternoon. Lovett had sent Needles Ferry to O’Brien’s Saloon, one of South Brooklyn’s hotbeds of scuttlebutt, to drop a word or two, “inadvertantly, of course,” that the White Hand was planning to sack one of the waterfront warehouses that night. Figuring that such shenanigans would command considerable manpower, Yale reasoned it would be highly unlikely that Lovett would divert any of his boys for an escapade in Coney Island.
So only one guard, Joe “Rackets” Capolla, had been conscripted for sentry duty at the doors. But, as fate ordained it, not even Joe was at the doors as Petey Bean pulled the Chevy to a stop in front of the dance hall.
Capolla wasn’t at his post because he had come down with a sudden case of diarrhea. And without calling for a replacement, he left to answer that peevishly demanding call of nature. The men’s room was a mere five steps from the entrance, which may have been why Joe didn’t ask for a stand-in. At any rate, his presence in the men’s room was registered by one Antonio Sisciliato, who himself was straddling one of the thrones when Capolla barged in, his trousers at half-mast even before he had reached the john. Had Joe not managed to expedite the evacuation of his loose bowels as quickly as he had, history might have recorded a different ending for the chapter in the war between the ginzos and the micks. Certainly it would have been a different outcome for Joe Capolla. For he came back the very instant Pegleg Lonergan and his three henchmen burst through the main outside doors and into the entrance foyer of the dance palace.
Capolla made an heroic effort in the face of the awesome artillery that by now had been drawn from the violin cases and suddenly levelled at him. Joe lived just long enough to hurl his body against the double swinging doors of the main hall and cry, “Look out…!”
His words were drowned out by the deafening blast of bullets that almost sliced his torso in two.
He didn’t fall as quickly as one might be expected to after the heart and pulse have stopped functioning. Instead, he stood erect, like a statue, for the longest time, framed by the swinging doors which had caught him in a vice!ike hold. All the while blood from his back, chest, and stomach cascaded out of him like Niagara, and formed a large pool on the floor.
When Capolla’s massive body finally toppled and hit the floor, it was with a sickening splash that spattered his gore over his assassins. Lonergan and his team of killers merely stepped over Joe’s dying hulk and surged into the hall, guns blazing.
The revelers—the cream of the Black Hand’s crop of aristocratic extortionists, loan sharks, bootleggers, hijackers, and hit men-—catapulted from their chairs and dove under the tables for protection. Many of them gallantly dragged their wives and sweethearts with them.
But whoever had escorted Anna Balestro to the dance that night was rated a poor score for chivalry. Anna, the buxom, angel-faced sister of Albert Balestro, a funeral director who fronted for Frankie Yale in his chain of parlors was struck by a .45-caliber slug on the left side of her head. The bullet tore through her brain. Her body, toppled from the chair in which she’d been sitting, crunched on the floor with thunderous impact. After all, she weighed two hundred and forty pounds.
Lonergan, Charleston Eddie, Danny Bean, and Irish Eyes Duggan sprayed their lead at random into the crowd, making it a simple case of pot luck for those who stopped the bullets and for the more fortunate ones who didn’t.
Giovanni Capone (no relation to Scarface Al) was one of the unlucky ones. Giovanni, who worked as a tombstone engraver when he wasn’t busy breaking into warehouses for the Black Hand, was struck with a charge of buckshot exploding from the muzzle of the sawed-off shotgun wielded by Irish Eyes. Though the whole front of his face was blown away, Capone was heard blurting profanities in a voice that carried for several long minutes. Witnesses swear Giovanni’s words were leaping out of his neck, for he had neither lips nor mouth through which his voice could have come.
Another of Yale’s more valuable underlings, Giuseppe “Momo” Municharo, a soldier in the protection rackets, also had the misfortune of catching a volley from Duggan’s shotgun. A gaping hole was opened in his abdomen, giving the stricken crowd a cutaway view of Momo’s intestines, which were still bulging with the spaghetti â la Milanese that he’d feasted on before coming to the dance.
The piercing screams and cries of the women, and many of the men as well, were like a replay of a sound track from the earlier carnage visited by the Black Hand on the Irishmen at Sagaman’s Hall.
Several of the more alert Italian mobsters had managed to unlimber their guns from their holsters and fire back at the four assassins. But the shots were pegged so carefully in order to avoid hitting their own people that they missed their intended targets as well. Only after Lonergan was satisfied that enough blood had been spilled and had commanded his accomplices to retreat from the hall were the beleaguered Black Handers offered a clear field of fire.
Then one of Yale’s boys made a quick score. Augie the Wop Pisano earned a notch on his automatic when he drilled a .45 bullet into the fleeing Danny Bean. It caught Danny in the back of the head. He crumpled in a heap on the vestibule floor, inches from the outer doors—and from Joe Capolla’s corpse. Another second and he’d have been breathing the fresh, snow-filled, sea-scented air of Coney Island.
Pegleg, Charleston Eddie, and Duggan made it out of the hall unscathed and leaped into the getaway car.
“Roll it, roll it!” screamed Pegleg.
“Where’s Danny?” cried Petey Bean, frantically searching the dance hall entrance for a sign of his brother.
“They hit him, Petey,” Duggan said crisply. “He ain’t gonna be commin’ out. You’d better step on it before we all get it.”
Suddenly the Packard with the backup team roared alongside the Chevrolet.
“Hey, what the hell you waiting for?” Eddie Lynch shouted from the window. “It’s over, get your ass going, Petey!”
Then, turning to Ernie the Scarecrow, who was at the wheel beside him, Lynch barked, “Fuck ’em. We ain’t waiting. Step on it!” The Packard roared along Surf Avenue like a frontrunner in the Indianapolis 500. But it wasn’t alone for much of its flight. For, at Lonergan’s urging—he had put the barrel of his gun against the driver’s head—Petey Bean at last pulled away from the dance hall. And not a second too soon. Just as the car began skidding around the corner into Stillwell Avenue on pavement made slippery by the falling snow, the crackle of gunfire was heard. The Italians were shooting from the windows and steps of the dance hall. But the bullets flying at the fleeing vehicle went wide of their mark and the White Handers got safely out of range.
But Petey Bean didn’t remain behind the wheel for long. He was too absorbed by the concern for his brother’s uncertain fate. “What did they do, shoot him?” his voice choked.
“Yeah, yeah,” Pegleg replied. “He was too goddamn slow running out. They dropped him right inside the door—”
“Why the fuck didn’t you carry him out?” Bean screamed, all at once breaking into convulsive sobs.
“No way we coulda done that, Petey,” Charleston Eddie said from the back seat. “I saw what happened. They got him in the back of the head…”
Bean began weeping so hard that when the speeding car almost mounted the sidewalk as Petey was making a turn, Lonergan decided it was time for a change of drivers.
“Stop
