Crime Incorporated. William Balsamo
lieutenants grieved with Frankie over the lost liquor, but their anguish over the humiliation inflicted on them by the White Handers was far greater.
“Parked the fuckin’ truck outside here,” Yale said for the fifteenth time, his voice now reduced to a mere roar. “Well, I’m gonna fix them micks good. I know what I gotta do.”
He grabbed the phone on his desk and leaned back in his swivel chair. Suddenly he was calm again. His mood was almost mellow as he lifted the receiver and placed it against his ear, waiting for the operator. Several seconds went by.
“Come on, what the hell ya waiting for?” he snapped edgily. “The goddamn telephone people,” he complained, “they charge you an arm and a leg and they don’t give you no service.”
Augie the Wop was sitting in the chair beside Yale’s desk. Two-Knife Altierri was standing with his back to the window overlooking the alley, cleaning his nails with one of his knives. Don Giuseppe Balsamo, who only came to Frankie’s office in dire emergencies, was ensconced in the plush maroon cut-velvet armchair in a corner of the office. The expensive, ornate chair was totally out of place amid the plain, scratched wooden furniture. It had played a dominant role in the decor of Frankie’s living room until his father-in-law had suffered a heart attack and died while sitting in it. Frankie’s wife was superstitious, and she had him remove it from the house. Rather than leave it on the sidewalk for the junkman, Frankie toted the chair to the garage and installed in in his office.
At first he derived sadistic satisfaction out of using the chair as a prop to unnerve his boys. When one of them had sat in it a while, Yale would say, “Hey, how you like that chair? Comfortable?”
Nothing but compliments for the chair. Then after a few minutes Yale would say, “You remember my father-in-law, eh? Well, the poor fella, he died in that chair.”
Some of the Black Hand’s toughest cutthroats squirmed, fidgeted, and looked around for any excuse to evacuate the chair.
“Oh, you back from lunch so soon?” Frankie said sarcastically when the operator finally came on the line and asked for the number.
“I wanna talk to somebody in Chicago,” Yale continued, “but I want to ask you which is quicker, if I take the train or if I use the phone?”
Yale generated a crescendo of laughter in his office, but only silence came through the receiver. He gave the operator the number and waited with characteristic impatience for the two minutes or so it took to route the call. Finally he said quietly, “This is Frankie Yale in Brooklyn. Is the big guy there?”
Another wait. Then, “Hello, Al, it’s good to hear your voice. How’s your mama and the rest of the family?” Yale’s voice was mellow, undeniably humble. He was talking with an old friend from earlier Brooklyn days who had followed Horace Greeley’s advice and gone west and who was now well on his way to becoming the nation’s most feared underworld boss.
To what did he owe the pleasure of this call from Frankie Yale, Big Al wanted to know. Frankie told him in the briefest terms, what had happened the night before. Yale was aware that Scarface Al was a man of few words and demanded that others follow his example. He had no patience for windy explanations.
Yale got to the point. He wanted to know if Capone could spare a couple of his executioners from their busy Chicago practices to perform a little extracurricular work in Brooklyn.
No sweat, Big Al told his old buddy. He’d put two of his best triggermen aboard the next Twentieth Century Limited leaving Chicago. These were, he said, two Sicilians from Cicero named Albert Anselmi and John Scalise. These Sicilians never played out-of-town engagements for anything less than $15,000 apiece.
“But, good brother,” Yale protested in his mildest, most polite voice. “Cleveland charged only ten big ones for the compito on Denny Mee—”
Capone cut off Yale in midsentence. Frankie listened for several seconds, then began laughing. It was forced laughter, but he had to show the Big Guy that he enjoyed his humor.
“Okay, good friend Al,” Yale said, “you are justified to ask for that. I will pay it.”
Yale hung up and pushed the phone away in disgust.
“How you like that?” he asked.
“Why’s he putting such a big bite?” Augie the Wop asked.
“Because,” Yale replied, shaking his head resignedly, “Al say the train fare from Chicago cost more than from Cleveland.”
When Al Capone told Frankie Yale he’d put Anselmi and Scalise on the next train to New York, that was merely a figure of speech. Underworld contract killings never come off that quickly. It takes skillful and time-consuming conniving to plot the successful rubout of a rival gangster, mainly because the intended victim is constantly alert to the dangers of assassination. Consequently, he takes precautions to protect himself.
So a number of long-distance calls between Brooklyn and Chicago followed in the days after Yale’s first talk with Capone. The prickly details of the demanding assignment had to be ironed out.
Yale had decided he wanted to hurt Wild Bill Lovett in the worst of ways. But the most severe punishment the White Hand leader could suffer would not be his own death, Frankie decided.
“We gotta hurt his people,” Yale said on the phone to Scalise. “I know just how to do it.” Frankie proceeded to tell Scalise about the forthcoming Valentine’s Day dance that the White Handers were to hold in Brooklyn’s Sagaman’s Hall.
“I have in mind an ambush,” Frankie suggested. “What do you think?”
Scalise wanted to know who Yale wanted killed.
“Anybody!” Yale shouted. “Shoot crazy! Hit the crowd! You don’t have to aim. Just shoot. Make a big score!”
Scalise got the message. He told Frankie that he and Anselmi would show up at Frankie’s garage at seven o’clock on the night of February 14th.
“I’ll send my boys to meet you at Grand Central,” Yale offered.
No need for that, Scalise replied. When he and Anselmi go on a job, they make their own way.
And at precisely the hour promised, Scalise and Anselmi walked into the garage. They introduced themselves to Yale, and then Scalise asked, “Who’s the wheelman?” Yale pointed to Frenchy Carlino. “The best driver in the whole world,” he said with a wink.
“Yeah,” smiled Anselmi, “if he’s that good how come he ain’t working in Chicago?”
When laughter abated, Scalise turned to Carlino.
“What you driving?”
“Nineteen-twenty LaSalle,” Carlino replied.
“Not bad,” Scalise said. “You got it ready?”
Carlino assured the Chicago gunmen that the car had just been tuned up, that it had a full tank of gas, and was raring to go.
“Good,” Anselmi grinned. “If the wheels don’t move, you don’t move. And that could be very bad…”
Thirty-six members of the White Hand gang were whooping it up in Sagaman’s Hall. Thirty-three of them had their wives with them; the other three had brought their best girls.
Frankie briefed the killers on what had to be done.
“You see,” he said with a frown, “when you go in there you gotta make sure you get them at the tables, when they are sitting…”
“Hey, Frankie,” Scalise interrupted. “You trying to tell us our business? We know what we gotta do. We don’t need no instructions. Capeesh?”
Yale was taken aback.
“Listen, John,” he said, stiffening, “you are in strange territory here, and all I am trying to do is help you. Remember, you came here to do the job for me…”