Operation Underworld (8 page)
Hogan called to him.
“And Murray. Make sure whoever you pick out of the files has an indictment. I mean an airtight indictment. One we’re going to win no matter what. I don’t want to screw up any opportunities for convictions.”
Gurfein nodded, then, as he stepped through the door, he hesitated. Coming back into the room, he closed the door behind him, leaned back on it and folded his arms, displaying a mischievous smile.
Hogan looked up from his desk. “What?”
“What about the wire taps?” Gurfein grinned.
After a short pause, Hogan instructed, “Leave them in place. This could get interesting.”
As he passed the secretary’s desk on the way out, Gurfein asked what had happened to the coffee. With no discernible movement whatsoever, the secretary kept typing while she issued her reply. “I forgot.”
Meanwhile, outside the DA’s office, in the hallway, a separate assessment of the meeting was under way as the two officers walked towards the elevators.
“Are you okay with this liaison position, Lieutenant?”
“Ah… yes, sir.”
“You don’t sound very sure of yourself,” remarked MacFall, as both men reached the elevator.
After considering his words carefully, O’Malley spoke again. “Sir, we need to tread lightly with these people.”
“Rest assured, Lieutenant, we’ll only tell them what they need to know.”
The elevator arrived and they boarded. They were alone. O’Malley continued. “I don’t mean just that, sir.”
“What
do
you mean?”
“They do business a lot different than we do, sir.” The bell rang, and as the doors opened, both men stepped into the lobby. “I know. I used to work in that office.”
“You have my ear, Jim.” MacFall listened more closely. know. I used to work in that office.”
“Sir, Dewey, Gurfein and that crowd have built a career on the fact that they got a conviction against Lucky Luciano.”
“Well, from what I understand, he needed to be put away.”
“No doubt sir, but…” O’Malley was clearly not comfortable discussing the inner workings of the DA’s office and their Mob-like code of silence.
“Go on,” MacFall coaxed.
“The trial evidence wasn’t as they portrayed in the papers. There were some serious procedural questions. Most of those girls testified under what they believed to be the threat of physical violence.”
“Well, gangsters are brutal people. That’s why they belong in jail.”
“I’m not talking about the Mob, sir. I’m talking about the prosecutor’s office, particularly Dewey.” Both men had now moved off to one side of the lobby, out of common earshot.
“What?”
“The threat of prison, sir. They wave it around like a magic wand. Testify or go to prison. The girls were threatened with unusually long prison terms if they didn’t testify against Luciano. Some of them were even coached in what to say. Section 399 of the State Criminal Code says you can’t get a conviction on one person’s testimony. You’re supposed to have corroborating evidence. They had no evidence, so they got hookers and people who wanted him out of the way to testify. No one can ever say the witnesses lied. The DA’s office is the only one who can prosecute for perjury, so anyone who said what the DA wanted was safe. Later, half of them recanted and it wasn’t all due to Mob threats. Perjured testimony alone is what got Luciano convicted. Political ruthlessness is what got him such an unusually long sentence.”
“Well, what do you know, a lawyer with ethics!” MacFall said.
“Sir, don’t get me wrong. I think all those bastards belong in jail. It’s just that I don’t consider that my brand of law. We play games like that with the rules, and we’re no better than them. Or the people we’re supposed to be fighting over in Europe, for that matter.”
“So, what I’m hearing, Lieutenant, is that people like Hogan and Dewey have their own agendas, and are not adverse to going outside the rules to achieve their aims?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Well, isn’t that just good, red-blooded American politics?”
“Sir, my point is that if push came to shove and the potential for a scandal arose, someone in that office would see it as a stepping stone to their career, and the Navy would be the loser. Not to mention the world-wide propaganda value of the fact that the United States Navy is turning to gangsters for help,” continued the Lieutenant.
“Having second thoughts about your own plan, Jim?”
“Not at all, sir. Just that after working both sides of the fence, there’s a reason why most of those guys up there are not in uniform.”
“I appreciate your candour. Your point is well taken, Lieutenant. “
“Thank you, sir.”
The two officers exited the building, and as they pushed through the bustling lunch hour crowd, Captain MacFall nodded in the direction of a nearby hot dog cart.
“New York tube steak?”
“Why not? I’ve been eating too healthy, anyway.”
The New York City waterfront is an impressive sight when viewed for the first time. It is unique in the world of waterfronts. The convoluted structure of the docks allows them to encompass all five boroughs, as well as border seven cities along the New Jersey shore, just across the Hudson River. The sheer vastness of these structures can only be appreciated from the air, and their true splendour is best experienced during sunrise or the change of seasons. In addition, it is unlikely that any other waterfront in the world is marred by such a long and consistent history of violence.
It is here, amid the bitter sweet aromas of hemp and creosote, that nearly every King, Queen or Head of State has arrived, then embarked for some far corner of the globe, while on these same timbers someone’s father, brother, uncle or son has became an unwanted coroner’s statistic.
However, these docks are composed of more than timber decks and pitch-coated pilings. There are the men and women who live and work in this city within a city. Along with these temporary caretakers of the waterfront, are the terminals and warehouses which sustain life through the blistering heat of summer and the sub-zero temperatures of winter. The long, narrow buildings are large enough to house entire populations of small countries, and it is within these structures that the majority of longshoremen, stevedores or dockworkers, depending on your cultural orientation, work out their days, sacrificing their feet, knees, backs and sometimes their lives, to make ends meet.
The typical terminal had a thirty to forty foot high ceiling mostly composed of heavy glass in order to take full advantage of the sunlight. At night, the work was carried on under the blinding glare of mercury vapour lamps. The rectangular footprint of the building was divided into three parts. The shoreward end of the building, furthest from the water, was usually partitioned off for office space, while the remainder of the sparse floor area was divided through the long axis into equal halves. One side of the terminal was designated for arriving freight while the opposite side was usually designated for outgoing freight. In addition to this arrangement dictated by practicality, there was a special corner bin designated OS & D, as it was in terminal 16A.
“Hey, Danny! What’s OS & D?” asked the newest member of the Longshoremen’s Union who everyone called ‘Kid’.
“You got that kid broken in yet? God-damn it!” The heavy-set foreman scowled as he walked by the two workers, who were standing next to a 1,500lb crate of loose M & M’s.
“Not yet, Bennie. Just showin’ him around,” Danny yelled back.
“Well, get a foot under it! You ain’t bein’ paid to be a wet nurse!”
“How come he’s always yellin’?” asked the sixteen-year-old dockworker.
Danny answered as he continued to shift freight. “’Cos, kid, he got ulcers. And he gets a bonus if he can get us to move extra freight. And he just got some bad news this mornin’.”
“Like what?” the kid asked, not really interested, but making conversation as he helped Danny.
“Like Joey Morretti is doin’ his wife.”
“Joey Morretti from here?”
“Yeah.”
“Shit!”
“Yeah.”
“Whata ya think’s gonna happen?”
“Don’t know. He only found out a half hour ago, and Morretti ain’t come to work yet.” Danny updated the kid while they continued to move some boxes to give the illusion of working.
“Anyways, what wuz you askin’me?”
“What’s OS & D?”
Danny looked around the floor and located a small wooden crate with a red metal tag wired to it. He motioned the kid over and began to explain.
“Okay, ya see dis here Spanish wine?” His apprentice nodded. Danny pulled back his right leg and one of his US Army issue paratrooper boots crashed into and through the pine crate. Rich coloured amontillado spilled out through the broken glass, staining the broken crate and concrete a dark red. The smell of alcohol permeated the air.
“Now,” said Danny as he continued the lesson. “Ya see that red tag?” The kid nodded. “That means this piece of freight is insured for ten thousand dollars or more. But one of them bottles is busted. Which means now we gotta put this in OS & D. Over, Short and Damaged. Why?”
“Because it’s damaged?” the kid responded in disbelief.
“Very good.” Gesturing to the bin, Danny said, “Gimme a hand.” And off they went with ten thousand dollars’ worth of cracked timber and broken glass.
“When we’re done here, we gotta load a flat bed with some oil ta go over ta the fish market.”
About ten or twelve yards from the bin, Danny looked up as he heard screaming coming from the office area which was just adjacent to OS & D. The screams were punctuated by the sounds of breaking furniture and through the window the pair could see that the stocky foreman had just thrown someone to the floor by way of a desk, and was viciously attempting to rip the time clock off the wall. Danny, with twelve years on the wharf, understood instantly.
“Shit! Kid, drop the crate!”
“What is it?”
“Looks like Morretti came to work!”
Just then, Joey’s battered body came crashing through the plate glass office window and hit the concrete floor of the dock with a sickening smack.
“No matter what happens, don’t interfere!” Danny cautioned at the unexpected extension of the lesson. The kid suddenly noticed colours were a little brighter, and the harbour smelled stronger than usual.
There was surprisingly little blood surrounding the body that was lying there amongst the broken shards of glass. As Joey began to roll over, his supervisor broke out the remnants of the office window with a metal chair, threw it at Morretti, and stepped through the broken frame and out onto the platform. The burly foreman, completely consumed by rage, steam rising from his sweaty face in the cold morning air, looked around for another weapon.
By this time, most of the workers had gathered at that end of the dock to watch the latest show. Joey, now up on all fours, blood dripping from his nose, watched as his opponent spotted a bailing hook stuck into a nearby crate, and slowly moved towards the vicious tool. Joey seemed paralysed.
An eerie silence befell the terminal, accentuating the screaming of the gulls circling outside as they fought over a piece of meat.
“Morretti don’t look so good,” one of the men behind Danny and the kid whispered. The kid looked at Danny.
“Joey’s connected on the Jersey side,” the former paratrooper narrated, without turning away from the action. “He’s took some real beatin’s in his life. His father was on the docks during the depression when all dem blacks come down from Harlem with weapons, wanting to take over the waterfront.”
“What happened?” the kid asked as Danny gave the history lesson.
“Game ended Mott Street 50, Harlem 0,” Danny answered.
Watching his own blood dripping onto the concrete floor, Joey thought about his father’s description of the bloody battle when the two factions met in Greenwich Village, and how the blacks were beaten back in an all-day battle with bailing hooks and Johnson bars. That was why he hadn’t gone for the hook, even though he had seen it first. He knew better. With over a dozen witnesses, Morretti knew he was home free.
Having taken the bait, the infuriated foreman held the ten inch iron hook menacingly at his side as he walked towards his intended victim. Morretti, now up on one knee, fragments of glass embedded in the side of his baby face and blood flowing from his forehead, smiled as he watched the big man hesitate.
Three rounds in rapid succession fired from Morretti’s .38 buried themselves in the foreman’s chest, and it was his turn to lie face down in the broken glass and blood.
The kid jumped at the sharp crack of the weapon, and instinctively started towards the ex-foreman. Danny threw out an arm and blocked him. “Forget it! You wuz in the back wit’me. All you heard was some shots. Got it?” The kid couldn’t avert his stare. “Come on, we got a flatbed to load.”
An hour and a half later, the last of the police squad cars drove through the terminal gate, and right behind it was a flat-bed loaded with olive oil. The squad car turned south towards the Battery, but the truck headed straight across town to Fulton Street.
The overweight truck driver finished his coffee and threw the paper cup out of the window, but left the cherry cheese Danish hanging from his mouth as he manoeuvered his vehicle up to the loading docks, in front of the Fulton Street Fish Market. After turning off the engine, he lifted his hat to wipe the sweat from his forehead, and his dirty hair stood straight up, matted together from grease and dirt.
Theoretically, this huge complex of bins and stalls, stocked with every species of fish imaginable, was municipally owned. However, like the adjoining retail outlets, the cannery and nearly the entire distribution network, it was controlled by one man: Joseph ’Socks’ Lanza.
Socks Lanza was the undisputed number one power in the American fishing industry. Period. He had gained and maintained control of this empire with a very logical technique. A stranglehold on union labour. Socks simply established his own unions, extorted funds for membership, and after filing some papers with the AFL, was in business.
For example, the Sea Food Workers Union, which was only one of a handful of unions run by Socks, dominated the Fulton Street Fish Market. In classic mob fashion, he covered all the bases with a separate union for each labour force. It was a trick learned from the DA’s office, where they would file up to half a dozen charges for one alleged offence, and try to get one to stick. A charge to cover all the bases, so to speak.