The Prince (43 page)

Saro followed them out just in time to witness the scene. They seemed like a pair of happy lovers.

He was depressed, and his loneliness suddenly formed a lump in his throat.

He watched the two close the door behind them, and it was like dying. He doubled over with rage and impotence. He cursed his fate, railing against the entire world, but especially against that vulgar tough guy and that whore who had refused to stay with him. He raised his head, his vision clouded by the alcohol he'd consumed. He stared at the door and began climbing the metal steps.

In 1926 an article written by an anonymous crime reporter had appeared in
Collier's
magazine, observing that the greatest contribution to crime was developed in that generation: “It is nothing less than a diabolical engine of death . . . the paramount example of peace-time barbarism [and] the diabolical acme of human ingenuity in man's effort to devise a mechanical contrivance with which to murder his neighbor.”

The writer was talking about the Thompson submachine gun, known by gangsters as “the Chicago Piano” or “the Chopper.” The “Tommy gun,” its other nickname, was invented by Brigadier General John T. Thompson, who served as director of arsenals during the First World War. The commander had developed it for use in trench warfare, but the first models didn't appear until 1920, well after peace had already been established. Because of its firing potential, it had been boycotted by both the army and the police, but for the criminal world, it was a radical step up and soon became the regulation weapon for every gangster.

The Thompson weighed just under nine pounds and was so easy to use that anyone could fire it. It had a firing rate of one thousand .45-caliber bullets per minute. At a distance of 450 yards, it could pierce a three-inch-thick wood slab, and at closer range, it was capable of breaking through a wall. It could even be purchased by mail, in unlimited quantities. The law required the seller only to record the buyer's first and last name, which most of the time turned out to be that of some eighty-year-old woman who knew nothing about it. The gun caused a great deal of bloodshed from Chicago to New York, leaving a trail of notorious massacres.

Later on, in the thirties, when the gun law became more restrictive, Thompsons could be obtained only through the black market at a price of $2,000 apiece.

That's how much Jack Mastrangelo, Ferdinando Licata's trusted man from Brooklyn, had paid.

This time Mastrangelo had arranged to meet two small-time hoods from Harlem at Pelham Bay Park in the Rodman's Neck section of the Bronx, a perfect place to practice with those guns because there were no houses for miles and the road hadn't been used much in years.

It was the second time that Mastrangelo was meeting the two hoods. The first meeting had been to get to know them, to see if they were up to the task he had for them. He concluded that they were a couple of low-level punks, but vicious and unprincipled enough to handle the job.

Mastrangelo arrived ahead of time and hid the car behind some bushes, a mile from where they were to meet. Then he approached the spot, making a wide detour, two Thompsons slung over his shoulder.

At the spot where he'd told the two hoods to meet him, there was a corroded sign for a discontinued bus stop.

Mastrangelo took cover behind a tree and waited patiently for the pair to arrive.

Twenty minutes later, he heard a car approaching in the distance. A rusty Ford appeared around the curve, carrying three men. There were only supposed to be two, and that insubordination riled him. He recognized the third young man: Abraham Solo. He had nothing to fear from him; he was a hothead like the other two. Driving the car was Gabriel, the eldest of the three, known as “Spike,” and beside him sat Cornelius. The gate-crasher, Abraham, whom he'd met during a robbery at a grocery store, was in the backseat.

When they got to the intersection, Gabriel pulled off the road and stopped the car, raising a huge cloud of dust. Once it had settled, Mastrangelo, from his hiding spot, saw the three get out of the car and stretch their legs.

After making sure they hadn't been followed, he emerged into the open.

“Our agreement was that only two of you would come,” he said as he walked closer, the two Thompsons across his shoulder.

“Come on, Jack, don't talk crap. Two, three, four, what's the difference?” Gabriel said, approaching him. “Abraham can be a big help to us.”

Abraham grinned. “A big help, yeah.”

“Well, that's your business,” Mastrangelo said, taking the two guns from his shoulder and handing one to Gabriel and the other to Cornelius.

“Momma, this is super stuff!” Cornelius said, gripping it, pretending to fire a round at his buddies.

“Let's move and get off the road; somebody could come by,” Mastrangelo said with a sigh, heading toward a nearby hollow. They walked about a hundred yards, and he said, “Here, this is fine. Watch out for the recoil. You have to grip the handle tight with your left hand, or you could end up killing one another. And don't keep your finger on the trigger, otherwise you'll use up the magazine in a few seconds. Fast bursts is what you want. There's no need to aim. Come on, try it. Shoot at that tree.”

The two guys first did exactly the opposite of what Mastrangelo had told them: they held down the trigger the entire time and didn't grip the handle tightly enough. The magazine ran out, and they'd hit everything except the tree.

“Goddamn idiots,” Mastrangelo muttered. “Those magazines cost thirty bucks apiece on the black market. Want me to charge you for them?” He snatched the Thompson out of Cornelius's hands and gripped it correctly. “I said short bursts. Short! Otherwise you'll run out of cartridges too fast. Also, you have to hold the gun tightly. Your hands must have a firm grip on it. Make believe you're holding on to a colt you have to break in!” He dropped the empty magazine and put in a new one. Then he pointed the weapon toward the tree and began firing short bursts. The blasts sent huge splinters flying off the trunk. Mastrangelo's aim was perfect: he always hit the same spot, until the trunk was completely sheared off, and the tree crashed to the ground.

“I want to try too,” Abraham said, but Mastrangelo handed the Thompson back to Cornelius.

“No, Abraham, not you.”

The next attempts were better. A half hour later, having used up all the magazines, the two Harlem punks were ready for the mission. “So, Jack, now you gonna tell us what we have to do?”

“All in good time. I won't tell you anything now because otherwise you'd go blabbing it all to your girlfriends, and within an hour everybody would know. It's a very delicate mission; that's why I didn't want any busybodies in the way. This operation will decide your life for the next twenty years. But if any of you talk and let something slip, I swear I'll make you eat your tongue. Now go back to Harlem and pretend nothing's going on.

“Look me straight in the eye,” he barked. “If you open your mouth, I swear I'll cut out your tongue. Mastrangelo's word.”

“What about the pay?” asked Gabriel, the tough negotiator of the group.

“You'll know soon enough. I told you, you'll be sitting pretty for the rest of your fucking life.”

Jack Mastrangelo had made himself clear, and not one of the three talked about the job they were about to do for the Sicilians.

I
n the early hours of dawn, the streets and sidewalks of New York offered up the remains of the killings that had occurred the night before: dishonest drug dealers, addicts who had overdosed, gamblers caught cheating, unfortunate prostitutes. No one would have paid any attention to them if it weren't for another stratum of humanity that lived one step lower, who in the morning went rummaging in the garbage looking for a bone to strip clean or an umbrella to mend.

When an old beggar woman snatched up a cardboard carton that could be sold for a few pennies, she discovered Saro's body, huddled in a fetal position. He looked dead. The old woman continued poking through the garbage cans in the alley. She was used to such encounters in the early dawn and thought maybe later she'd notify her friend at city hall, a policeman who sometimes handed her a quarter for a glass of warm milk. Suddenly she was startled to see the “corpse” turn over, gasping in pain.

Saro opened his eyes and looked around. He saw the old woman beside him, bundled up in a black wool garment, watching him, stunned.

“And they say there's no such thing as miracles. Good thing you woke up, sonny boy, or you could have ended up in the dump, you know?”

Saro didn't get it. Then he looked at his hands: they were totally covered with dirt and caked blood. He peered at the knuckles. They were bloodied and bruised, as if he had punched through a plaster wall. He fingered his clothes. They were torn to shreds in a number of places, and there were large bloodstains on them as well. He couldn't think straight. His head was crawling, as if he were in the grip of a hangover. He tried to get to his feet but fell back on the pavement. The old woman had meanwhile moved away, dragging her bag of cartons and useless trash.

Saro tried to recall what had happened the night before, but he blanked out at the recollection of climbing the metal steps.

Then he began to remember: the steps led to the room of the girl he'd met at the Blue Lemon. The fog was slowly lifting from his numb, befuddled brain.

Ferdinando Licata's plan was moving along smoothly. The Bontades had scraped together drugs from every distributor they knew, and the Genovese family had provided the remainder. In return for that favor, Sante had asked them for 90 percent of the proceeds on the amount loaned. The Stokers, however, had not yet solved their problem. They had placed themselves in the hands of a gang of Puerto Rican drug dealers who controlled the Bronx and had promised to deliver by the end of the month, but they were already a week past due.

When the call finally came, Mastrangelo picked up the receiver and asked, “Who's this?”

“Our cousin left, and she's fine.”

Mastrangelo stood up. He recognized the voice of Fryderyk Marek, a Polish member of the Stoker family. “When will she get here?”

“Tomorrow evening at eight, at the station I told you about,” Marek said, and then hung up.

Mastrangelo had managed to bring one of the Irish family's members over to his side. Years earlier, before he was affiliated with the Stokers, Marek had killed a heavy-handed policeman during a brawl in a bar in Queens. Mastrangelo, who had a knack for being in the right place at the right time, had saved him from the other cops who'd arrived on the scene, hiding him in a safe place until things calmed down. Fryderyk Marek was eternally grateful to him.

Mastrangelo, intolerant of any form of control, had always lived as a maverick, unlike his peers, who, as soon as they were old enough, joined neighborhood gangs. In working-class slums where as many as ten persons lived in two rooms, in tenements where dampness and the stench of sewers permeated the halls and apartments, in garbage-strewn courtyards where swarms of flies and packs of rats encamped without regard for humans, in places where people froze in winter and sweltered in summer, it was easy for men to take their animosity out on those who were weakest: namely, their wives and children. That's why kids, as soon as they were a little independent, preferred to stay away from that institution called “the family.” The neighborhood gang was a means of escape, offering freedom as well as an outlet for brimming energies. What kids sought in the gangs were thrills, adventure, coarse jokes, some preliminary attempts at gambling, their first shoplifting experiences, vandalism as an end in itself, the rituals of collective smoking and excessive drinking, an initiatory sexual romp or two with some emancipated girl, and, ultimately, bloody confrontation with other gangs, to demonstrate their physical prowess. The gang signified a bridge of passage between street pranks orchestrated by a group of buddies and organized crime.

Mastrangelo represented the exception: he had always been a loner, didn't like the herd, didn't want to be ordered around by anyone, and didn't care for any type of rules. To avoid commitment, he systematically failed to keep appointments, and the end result was that no one spoke to him anymore. On the other hand, he had little to say, did not communicate well with others, and gradually accomplished his goal of being left to himself. But to survive on one's own without supporters in a city divided into gangs would have meant succumbing, so in order to get by, he made sure he had a lot of “friends.” He had managed to spread the word that he was a kind of benefactor, like Robin Hood.

In actuality, all Mastrangelo did was store up debts of gratitude that would sooner or later be presented for payment.

Years earlier, he'd succeeded in hiding the Polack from the cops, so now he'd asked Marek to tip him off about the arrival of the stuff from the Puerto Ricans. The Pole had hesitated a little but couldn't refuse a favor to someone who had saved him from the electric chair.

Marek first informed Mastrangelo and, immediately afterward, the Stoker family. At that point, Brian Stoker phoned Tom Bontade and arranged to meet him late the following night.

As soon as he received the call, Mastrangelo drove to Gabriel's and Cornelius's apartment in Harlem.

After passing through a room filled with women, children, and wailing babies, he gave the men the two Thompsons concealed in violin cases.

He explained the plan to them step by step. They were to make their move the following evening, around eight, protected by darkness. A gang of Puerto Ricans was to deliver a shipment of pure cocaine to a freighter, the
Paraguay Star
, moored at Pier 97 on the Hudson River. Gabriel and Cornelius would find a rowboat at the dock. They were to use it to reach the stern of the cargo ship, where a friend on board the vessel would lower a rope ladder. They would climb aboard and remain hidden until the Puerto Ricans arrived, at which point they would have to improvise. He didn't know where the exchange would take place. Almost certainly in the captain's quarters. The job was easy because no one would be expecting the surprise: that was their trump card. They would make a clean sweep, taking out everyone there. They were to spare no one. After that, all they had to do was take the suitcase full of coke and return to their hiding place in Harlem. Upon completion of the job, Mastrangelo would meet them there, providing them with new passports and three tickets to Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. The flight's stewardess would let the suitcase pass through as hand luggage. Once they reached Rio, prior to landing, she would give them an address and the number of a bank account. They were to bring the goods there, sell them, and then deposit 25 percent in the account and split the rest among themselves. Finally, he advised them to stay away from Puerto Ricans for the rest of their lives.