Mr. O’Hara Meehan’s policy doesn’t cover death and fire,” Altierri said with a laugh that was joined in by Polusi and Capolla, who were standing in front of the desk with their guns still pointed at Sullivan.
The pier boss relayed Altierri’s answer to O’Hara.
There was a long pause. Suddenly Sullivan’s face brightened.
“He said okay,” Sullivan told Altierri. “The money will be here tomorrow.”
“Smart man, that Mr. O’Hara,” Willie smiled, taking the knife away from Sullivan’s neck and slipping it into the empty scabbard at his waist.
“All right, all right!” He turned scoldingly to Capolla and Polusi, who had their gun barrels still trained on Sullivan. “Dinja hear? They bought the policy. Put those heaters away, goddamn ya!”
Altierri stuck his hand out to Sullivan. “We shake,” he said. “We make a good deal and now we be friends, right?”
Sullivan’s stomach turned as he shook Altierri’s hand, which felt soft and delicate, almost like a woman’s.
Sullivan unlocked the door and led the pack of Black Handers out of the office. The snow was falling so heavily now that the booms and cranes were oblitered from view.
“Somebody come tomorrow for the first premium,” Altierri said before walking off with Polusi and Capolla to the parked Ford. “Two o’clock sharp…”
“Yeah,” grumbled Sullivan as he headed out on the dock. More than anything now he wanted to speed up the unloading before the storm crippled operations.
At two o’clock the next afternoon, activity on Pier 2 was at a standstill. The snow had stopped falling several hours ago, but the eleven-inch white blanket had wrought total paralysis. While Sullivan had managed to get the freighter unloaded and the last of the cargo stacked in the warehouse early the previous evening, none of the cargo was on its way to the consignee. The storm had played havoc with traffic and not a single truck rolled onto Pier 2 that day.
The depth of the snow on the city’s streets did not deter Benjamin “Crazy Benny” Pazzo, Frankie Yale’s ace “collector,” from reaching Gowanus Stevedoring’s pier at two o’clock sharp. Nothing less was expected since Joe “Frenchy” Carlino was driving the car. The number one wheelman in the Black Hand’s ranks, Frenchy could be trusted to tool passengers to their destinations through fog and rain and sleet and driving snow. No element of nature could prevent Frenchy from making his appointed rounds.
His vehicle on this particular afternoon was a black Cadillac limousine, Frankie Yale’s personal car. Frankie had put it at his henchmens’ disposal because of the significance of their mission.
This was the Black Hand’s first important breakthrough against Denny Meehan’s gang in the brief war for control of Brooklyn’s waterfront rackets. Although Frankie Yale had made progress in his attempt to break up the Irish underworld’s hold on the docks, none of his gang’s advances had achieved as dramatic a turn as the coup scored against Gowanus Stevedoring.
This, Yale felt, was to be a turning point in his drive to seize power on the lucrative waterfront from the White Hand gang. A $2000-a-week payoff from Gowanus Stevedoring certainly was a signal step.
There was a hush on Pier 2 as Crazy Benny left the Cadillac and made his way to Sullivan’s office. Even Denny Meehan and his two executioners in their somber black coats and black fedoras acted as though they didn’t wish to disturb his tracks, for they walked alongside him, leaving their own impressions in the snow of their ripple-soled snap-buckle galoshes.
Three hundred and twenty-five feet: that was the distance to the end of the pier where the oil-slick East River rushes by in a seeming hurry to carry into Upper New York Bay tin cans, bottles, broken crates, and the rest of the garbage people dump into the water. Crazy Benny’s last walk ended at the very ledge overlooking the water.
It is believed the expression, “Why don’t you take a long walk off a short pier,” evolved from this episode.
Crazy Benny made no attempt to postpone his death. He didn’t want to die. He was afraid to die. But he also must have known how useless any plea would be. He faced his death with a grim look as Denny Meehan’s executioners opened fire. The first .45 slugs tore through his overcoat and plowed into his chest. Benny slumped into the snow, his face expressionless. His eyelids closed. He was a man who seemed to have gone to sleep in the snow.
Few seconds were wasted. With a practiced motion the two executioners holstered their revolvers that had pumped fourteen bullets into Benny’s body, then bent over, picked up Crazy Benny’s limp body, and hurled it into the river with the deftness of longshoremen pitching a bale of fertilizer into an unloading net.
Benny’s body floated several seconds on the surface amid the whitecaps. Its buoyancy lasted only as long as it took the water to soak into his heavy woolen overcoat. And then it disappeared into the murky surf. His body would not rise again until the gases that inevitably form by fermentation after death filled it like a balloon and brought it bobbing up to the surface once more.
“Very neat work, boys,” Denny Meehan praised his lieutenants of death. They were two of the most reliable gats in the White Hand organization, William “Wild Bill” Lovett and Richard “Pegleg” Lonergan.
Lovett cast a curious eye on the flattened snow where Benny had lain.
“Funny,” he said, “there isn’t a drop of blood. Do you think the guy ever bled…?
As they walked back toward Furman Street, Meehan, Lovett, and Lonergan sloshed over the footsteps they’d made in the snow bringing “Crazy Benny” out to the end of the dock. They didn’t disturb Benny’s tracks. When they returned to the street, Meehan called Jimmy Sullivan out of his office.
“Com’ere, Jimmy,” Denny said. “I wanna show you something.”
He took the pier boss to the dock and pointed at the only pair of footsteps that were still clearly visible in the snow.
Sullivan glanced at the impressions of what must have been a size ten snowboot making one-way tracks the length of the pier.
“Crazy Benny ain’t coming back this way,” Meehan said, slapping Sullivan on the back.
“I’ll light a candle for him,” the superintendent remarked, and walked back to his office. He despised Meehan and the whole White Hand, but he was grateful for the service they had performed for Gowanus Stevedoring.
Frankie Yale was fit to be tied. He banged his fist savagely on the desktop in his garage office. Frenchy Carlino expected this reaction. The big coup that Willie Altierri had accomplished only the day before at Gowanus Stevedoring had been wiped out by Denny Meehan’s swift, stunning reprisal.
Frenchy had been able to get back to the boss alive and well because of the head start Crazy Benny had gotten in leaving the car. That sixty-second delay gave Frenchy just the time needed to spot Denny Meehan and the two torpedoes approaching Benny. In fact, Frenchy saw the White Hand leader and his confederates even before they had turned the corner of the warehouse, which was when Benny first became aware of them. But it had been too late to shout a warning to Benny. So Frenchy took the only sensible turn under the circumstances: he drove away as quickly as he could, leaving Benny to his fate.
If Frankie
