Crime Incorporated. William Balsamo
want you to shoot in the left side of the dance hall because that’s where all the big-shot micks sit, get me?”
“All right, Frankie, you wanna give me floor plan?” Scalise asked with a disdainful stare.
Yale sensed that he was up against a breed of underworld killer who wasn’t about to take orders from him. But at the same time he held to a confidence that since Scalise and Anselmi had been sent by Al Capone, they could be depended on to do the job.
“Okay,” Yale finally yielded, “this is gonna be your show.”
Forty minutes later, Scalise and Anselmi were driven by Frenchy Carlino to the corner of Schermerhorn and Smith Streets.
“There’s the hall,” Carlino rasped. “Remember, up the stairs on your right to the balcony. And don’t forget—come out fast because I’m gonna drive my ass off if I don’t see you after I hear the shots.”
Scalise and Anselmi left the car without a word and walked into Sagaman’s Hall. The party was in full swing. Hardly anyone noticed the two Chicago mobsters, dressed in light-brown overcoats, dark fedoras, spats, and brown leather gloves. The gloves came off as Scalise and Anselmi climbed the flight of stairs to the swinging doors which opened on the empty balcony. The gathering that night was modest in comparison to the crowds that jammed the hall on other festive occasions: this was a special affair, limited to the White Hand gang. And they had all been seated on the main ballroom floor.
Scalise and Anselmi pushed past the swinging doors and entered the darkened balcony. There they had an unobstructed view of the celebrants. For a moment, they stood at the edge of the balcony rail, unnoticed in the darkness, and surveyed the activity. The orchestra had just finished playing an Irish jig and the revelers had gone back to their tables.
Anselmi nudged Scalise.
“The left side, isn’t that what Yale wanted?” he muttered.
“What the hell’s the difference?” Scalise shrugged. “This is a snap whatever side you wanna hit. But if Yale wants the left side, then let’s make him happy.”
The two killers whipped out the nickel-plated revolvers they were carrying in holsters under their coats and took aim at the crowd of men and women sitting at the tables. An instant later, a steady fire began to pour a deadly fusillade of .45-caliber bullets into the crowd.
Women’s screams pierced the haze of cigaret and cigar smoke and the steady bark of the bullets. Both men and women instinctively dove under tables. Others stood or sat, too paralyzed either by surprise or fear to seek cover. Still others fought and clawed their way through the panic-stricken crowd for the emergency exits and the front entrance.
Scalise and Anselmo reached for the second revolvers they carried as backup when the supply of bullets was exhausted in the weapons they had first used.
Then the triggermen raced down the balcony stairs and out the main entrance almost before the last echoes of gunfire had faded.
Carlino had opened the doors of the LaSalle sedan the instant his ears picked up the first explosions inside the hall. Before the last of the bullets had been spewed into the crowd, Frenchy moved the car directly to the front entrance.
Their coattails flapping behind them, Scalise and Anselmi sprinted across the sidewalk and leaped into the car. Carlino didn’t even wait for them to close the doors before gunning the engine. The car bolted forward, and the whining squeal of tires was louder than the roar of the eight cylinders as Frenchy turned the corner from Schermerhorn into Smith Street. He kept the gas pedal floored until he was assured by Scalise, who was in the back seat peering through the rear window, that no one was following them.
At Sagaman’s Hall, pandemonium reigned. The crescendo of wails and cries was deafening. Blood was splattered everywhere on the left side of the ballroom: on tables, chairs, the floor, and even the wall.
It looked like a battlefield. Hands, faces, bodies, legs were covered with blotches and streaks of crimson as though it had been poured on them from buckets. A dozen men and women were sprawled on the floor, some writhing in agony, others lying absolutely still. Others knelt beside the fallen ministering to their wounds or comforting them until they could be removed to a hospital.
Several frantic calls had been made to the police, but Irish Eyes Duggan had the coolest head. He phoned Kings County Hospital and pleaded for help.
“Send all the ambulances and doctors you got!” he said urgently. “Send nurses! This is a major disaster. Everybody’s been shot. They’re dying! Please, send them right away!”
The sound of Duggan’s voice convinced the night superintendent to dispatch two ambulances to Sagaman’s Hall. Minutes later, when the police phoned in their request for medical assistance and officially confirmed the full extent of the disaster, two more ambulances appeared at the hall.
The four doctors aboard those ambulances that responded were hard put attending to everyone. They worked first on the most critically wounded. Then they pressed some of the White Handers and their women into service, directing them to tie tourniquets around victims’ arms or legs to stem the flow of blood until the medics could attend them.
There were three who were beyond assistance.
Kevin “Smiley” Donovan was obviously a dead duck. There was no need even to feel for a pulse. He had caught at least three slugs on what had once been his forehead. The .45s did a good job of proving to some of his life-long kibitzers that Smiley really did have a brain.
Jimmy “Two Dice” O’Toole had been sitting with his back to the gunmen. Several bullets aerated his skull just above the neck, and the doctor who looked at him turned to one of the fifteen policemen now in the hall and said, “He goes to the morgue.”
Mary Reilly was the third and final passenger for the meat wagon. Richard “Pegleg” Lonergan’s sweetheart, she was known as “Stout-Hearted Mary” because she had raised seven younger brothers and sisters after their parents were drowned in a 1916 boating accident off Sheepshead Bay. But Mary’s heart wasn’t stout enough to withstand the impact of the .45 bullet that passed through it, exited from her back, and did an encore number on the forearm of Fred Mclnerney, who’d been seated at the same table.
Tears trickled down Pegleg’s cheeks as he knelt beside Mary’s lifeless body.
“I’ll get them for you, Mary, so help me, I’ll get them…” he choked through trembling lips.
Other men, hardened by their professional calling to regard violence and bloodletting as routine phenomena of their day-to-day lives, wept unashamedly.
Not everyone had stuck around to mourn the dead and give solace to the wounded. Wild Bill Lovett, who’d been sitting at the same table as Pegleg and Mary, miraculously escaped the bullets, and sent Ash Can Smitty, Peg McCarthy, and several other boys in pursuit of the killers.
In trying to pick up the cold trail, Ash Can and McCarthy drove past Frankie’s garage on Fourth Avenue on the chance that they might pick up some trace of the getaway car or its occupants. But the garage was closed tight and all the lights were out.
Frankie Yale hadn’t doubted for a moment that he and his gang would be suspected immediately of pulling the ambush at Sagaman’s Hall. So, as Carlino drove away with Scalise and Anselmi on their mission, Frankie, Augie the Wop, Two-Knife Altierri, and a dozen other ranking Black Handers all went to a wedding. It was an iron-clad alibi.
The reception was at the Adonis Club. While weekday weddings were a rarity, that particular one was held on a Monday night because the bride and groom had chosen to be married on Valentine’s Day.
Yale and his boys were strangers to the newlyweds, their families, and the guests, but Fury had reserved two large tables in an out-of-the-way corner of the dub for the mobsters. This was standard practice for every reception at the Adonis. Any banquet Argolia booked was arranged with the understanding that the two corner tables were reserved for “some very special customers of mine.” Fury also assured whoever was paying for