Crime Incorporated. William Balsamo
Despano had unearthed.
“…Listen closely, Nick,” Yale began anew. “I have very bad news for you about Olympia…”
Again Frankie hesitated as he spoke. He was measuring his words and seemed to want to deliver the message he had for Nick in precise language.
“Frankie,” Nick blurted after so much anticipation, “what are you trying to say?”
“Okay, my friend, I will stop beating around the bush,” Yale rasped. “I’m going to tell you what I found out…”
Yale turned and glared at Nick’s brother George, little Olympia’s uncle.
“This man,” Frankie said through tightly clenched teeth, pointing a finger straight at the now-startled George Colouvos, “has been screwing your daughter—and that is why she has been having nightmares and been so depressed—”
Nick’s face suddenly became a dark mask as he turned and glared at his brother in total shock and disbelief.
George sat bolt upright in his chair at the table, stupefied and speechless.
Before Nick could utter a word, Yale continued to relate what Mary Despano had learned from Olympia.
“This thing has been going on for two months—ever since your brother’s ship went into drydock for repairs and he came to visit you. Olympia told Mary how George lured her to the cellar with the promise of giving her chocolates. He did vile things with her. Then after he had satisfied himself with her he warned Olympia that he would kill her if she told anyone what he was doing to her.”
Nick again turned and glared at his brother in disbelief. George Colouvos became terrified. He leaped out of his chair and started to run for the door. He froze in his tracks when Yale yelled, “Sit down, you disgraziato degenerato bastard!”
George obeyed, went back to his chair on trembling legs, and seated himself. He broke out in a cold sweat as he waited for Frankie Yale’s next command.
His eyes popped wide open as Frankie opened his jacket and unlimbered a .45-caliber revolver from his hip holster.
Frankie cocked the trigger and aimed the barrel at George’s head. “You should not be so impolite when somebody is talking,” he snarled.
George sat back in his chair at the dining room table and submitted to the rest of Frankie Yale’s narrative about Olympia’s agonizing experiences.
Nick and Maria were utterly devastated as Frankie went into the most sordid details of their daughter’s abuse by her uncle, of his threat to kill her if she ever told anyone about what he was doing to her, and of how fright drove her to withdraw into a shell of fear and confusion.
When he finished Yale turned to Nick and placed the gun on the table before him.
“More than anything in this world, Nick,” Yale said in a slow, measured tone, I want to kill this degenerate bastard brother of yours. But I am not selfish. I do not want to deprive you of that honor.”
Nick gazed disbelievingly at Yale.
“…You want…me to…kill…my…my brother…?” he stammered.
Yale’s eyes narrowed to slits as he glared at Nick.
“I know you are a gentle, mild-mannered man, my friend. But I have not gone to all this trouble to find out what is bothering Olympia only to have your brother escape the punishment he deserves—from the only person who should give it to him. And that person is you!”
Nick’s hand moved slowly toward the gun on the table. All the while George Colouvos, cringing in his chair, let his eyes follow his brother’s movements.
As Nick palmed the gun, George suddenly cried out plaintively in Greek:
“Adelphi, mou…oyi!”
The plea, “Brother of mine…no!,” went unheeded.
Nick Colouvos, now as revenge-bent as Frankie Yale instructed him to be, aimed the .45 at his brother’s sweating temple.
George pleaded again. “Please, Nick…I couldn’t help myself. I’m a sick man…”
Nick glared at George and screamed, “I’m ashamed and humiliated to have a brother such as you. If Papa was alive he would kill you himself. But since he is not, I am going to do it…”
The dining room fell into an eerie silence, broken only by the condemned man’s heavy breathing—and then by the two quick shots that Nick triggered at his brother’s head.
Twin holes tore open George Colouvos’ temple, and blood spurted in torrents from them.
Maria Colouvos screamed hysterically as her brother-in-law collapsed on the table, his head falling into the baklava.
As the echoes of the gunfire subsided, Yale moved quickly.
“All right, Nick, grab his feet and help me put the body on the kitchen floor,” he instructed. “I don’t want to get blood on the carpet in here.”
Taking hold of George’s limp upper torso under the armpits, Frankie lifted the dead man out of his chair as Nick lifted his brother’s feet off the floor. They carried George’s body to the kitchen and laid it on the linoleum, which Olympia’s mother later mopped to remove the blood that still trickled from the two head wounds.
At about nine o’clock that night, as darkness descended, Yale and Colouvos carried the blanket-wrapped corpse to the street, stuffed it into the trunk of Colouvos’ sedan, and drove to the New Jersey ferry.
Their destination had already been mapped by the Mafia overlord: a weeded-covered illegal dumpsite in Lyndenhurst close to the Passaic River. They sprinkled quicklime over the body. In just days, the flesh and bone totally disintegrated.
They drove home in silence and didn’t get in touch with each other for a week—until Nick phoned Frankie.
“My very good friend,” he said. “I want to tell you how much my little girl has improved. She is talking again and smiling like she used to. And she is eating once more. Most important, she does not have nightmares…”
Nick’s voice went silent a moment as Yale listened. Finally, Olympia’s father spoke again:
“Frankie, I want to thank you. I know what you did was because of your love for children—and that you hate to see them hurt in any way.
“You are a very fine man and on that account I am proud to call you my friend.”
Yale thanked Colouvos for those sentiments, then imparted a few words himself:
“Nick, I know you are sincere in what you just said and mean every word. And because you and I are such good friends, I want to give you this bit of advice:
“Never forget. We only kill if we have to. And they die—but only because they deserve it…
“And your brother—Amorte…he did deserve it!”
January 5, 1920 was a Monday. A chill winter day.
The wind swirled in twenty-five-mile-an-hour gusts.
The leaden gray skies threatened to disgorge the season’s first heavy snowfall.
On the Brooklyn waterfront, crews of longshoremen were busily shifting crates and bales, loading freighters bound for foreign ports, unloading cargoes shipped across the Atlantic.
PIER 2. The new sign had just been hung over the long, rectangular, narrow-fronted warehouse jutting out