the acquittal of Filetti after four
days of trial, saying that the state had utterly failed to prove its
case. Jack, still a fugitive, was never mentioned during the trial.
Of the fifteen witnesses who testified, not one claimed to have seen
Filetti actually shoot anybody. Joe Vignola, who was described as the
state's most important witness, said he was dozing in another room
when the shooting broke out and he saw nothing. His speech was
incoherent most of the time.
Billy Reagan testified he
was too drunk after drinking twenty shots of gin to remember what
happened. Also, Tim Reagan's last words, originally said to have
incriminated Diamond and Filetti, were not about them at all, a
detective testified, but rather a violent string of curses.
* * *
Jack was a fugitive for eight months, and most of his
gang, which was an amalgam of old-timers and remnants of Little Augie
Orgen's Lower East Side Jews, drifted into other allegiances. The
bond had not been strong to begin with. Jack took the gang over after
he and Augie were both shot in a labor racketeering feud. Augie died,
but you can't kill Legs Diamond.
Eddie Diamond died in January, 1930. Jack was still a
fugitive when he met Kiki Roberts in April at the Club Abbey. and he
immediately dropped Elaine Walsh. Half a dozen gangland murders were
credited to his feud with Dutch Schultz during these months.
He saw the Jack Sharkey-Tommy Loughran fight at
Yankee Stadium, as did Al Smith, David Belasco, John McGraw, and half
the celebrities of New York. Jack couldn't miss such a show, even if
he did have to raise a mustache and sit in an upper deck to avoid
recognition. He bet on Loughran, like himself a Philadelphia mick;
but Sharkey, the Boston sailor, won.
The crest of his life collapsed with the Hotsy
shooting. All he'd been building to for most of a decade—his beer
and booze operations, the labor racketeering he built with and
inherited in part from Little Augie, his protection of the crooked
bucketshops which bilked stock market suckers, an inheritance from
Rothstein, his connections with the dope market, and, most
ignominiously, his abstract aspiration to the leadership mantle that
would somehow simulate Rothstein's—all this was Jack's life-sized
sculpture, blown apart by gunpowder.
Dummy, you shoot people in your own club?
Jack got the word from Owney Madden, his old mentor
from Gopher days, a quiet, behind-the-scenes fellow who, after doing
his murder bit, came out of Sing Sing in 1923 and with a minimum of
fanfare became the Duke of New York, the potentate of beer and
political power in the city's underworld. Madden brought Jack the
consensus sentiment from half a dozen underworld powerhouses: Go
someplace else, Jack. Go someplace else and be crazy. For your own
good, go. Or we'll have to kill you.
Jack's pistol had
punctuated a decade and scribbled a finale to a segment of his own
life. He had waged war on Schultz, Rothstein, and half a dozen lesser
gang leaders in the Bronx, Jersey, and Manhattan, but he could not
war against a consortium of gangs and he moved to the Catskills. I
knew some of this, and I was certain Charlie Northrup knew much more,
which is why Charlie's spitting beer at Jack and mocking him to his
face did not seem, to say the least, to be in Charlie's own best
interest.
* * *
After Charlie walked out of the Top o' the Mountain
House Kiki said she was sick of the place and wanted to go someplace
and have fun, and Jack-the-fun-seeker said okay, and we stopped at a
hot dog stand, Kiki's choice, and sought out an aerial bowling alley
which intrigued her and was a first for me. A genuine bowling ball
was suspended on a long cable, and you stood aloof from the pins
below and let the ball fly like a cannon shot. It then truly or
falsely spun through the air and knocked over all the pins your luck
and skill permitted. Kiki scored sixty-eight and almost brained the
pinboy with a premature salvo, Jack got one fourteen and I won the
day with one
days of trial, saying that the state had utterly failed to prove its
case. Jack, still a fugitive, was never mentioned during the trial.
Of the fifteen witnesses who testified, not one claimed to have seen
Filetti actually shoot anybody. Joe Vignola, who was described as the
state's most important witness, said he was dozing in another room
when the shooting broke out and he saw nothing. His speech was
incoherent most of the time.
Billy Reagan testified he
was too drunk after drinking twenty shots of gin to remember what
happened. Also, Tim Reagan's last words, originally said to have
incriminated Diamond and Filetti, were not about them at all, a
detective testified, but rather a violent string of curses.
* * *
Jack was a fugitive for eight months, and most of his
gang, which was an amalgam of old-timers and remnants of Little Augie
Orgen's Lower East Side Jews, drifted into other allegiances. The
bond had not been strong to begin with. Jack took the gang over after
he and Augie were both shot in a labor racketeering feud. Augie died,
but you can't kill Legs Diamond.
Eddie Diamond died in January, 1930. Jack was still a
fugitive when he met Kiki Roberts in April at the Club Abbey. and he
immediately dropped Elaine Walsh. Half a dozen gangland murders were
credited to his feud with Dutch Schultz during these months.
He saw the Jack Sharkey-Tommy Loughran fight at
Yankee Stadium, as did Al Smith, David Belasco, John McGraw, and half
the celebrities of New York. Jack couldn't miss such a show, even if
he did have to raise a mustache and sit in an upper deck to avoid
recognition. He bet on Loughran, like himself a Philadelphia mick;
but Sharkey, the Boston sailor, won.
The crest of his life collapsed with the Hotsy
shooting. All he'd been building to for most of a decade—his beer
and booze operations, the labor racketeering he built with and
inherited in part from Little Augie, his protection of the crooked
bucketshops which bilked stock market suckers, an inheritance from
Rothstein, his connections with the dope market, and, most
ignominiously, his abstract aspiration to the leadership mantle that
would somehow simulate Rothstein's—all this was Jack's life-sized
sculpture, blown apart by gunpowder.
Dummy, you shoot people in your own club?
Jack got the word from Owney Madden, his old mentor
from Gopher days, a quiet, behind-the-scenes fellow who, after doing
his murder bit, came out of Sing Sing in 1923 and with a minimum of
fanfare became the Duke of New York, the potentate of beer and
political power in the city's underworld. Madden brought Jack the
consensus sentiment from half a dozen underworld powerhouses: Go
someplace else, Jack. Go someplace else and be crazy. For your own
good, go. Or we'll have to kill you.
Jack's pistol had
punctuated a decade and scribbled a finale to a segment of his own
life. He had waged war on Schultz, Rothstein, and half a dozen lesser
gang leaders in the Bronx, Jersey, and Manhattan, but he could not
war against a consortium of gangs and he moved to the Catskills. I
knew some of this, and I was certain Charlie Northrup knew much more,
which is why Charlie's spitting beer at Jack and mocking him to his
face did not seem, to say the least, to be in Charlie's own best
interest.
* * *
After Charlie walked out of the Top o' the Mountain
House Kiki said she was sick of the place and wanted to go someplace
and have fun, and Jack-the-fun-seeker said okay, and we stopped at a
hot dog stand, Kiki's choice, and sought out an aerial bowling alley
which intrigued her and was a first for me. A genuine bowling ball
was suspended on a long cable, and you stood aloof from the pins
below and let the ball fly like a cannon shot. It then truly or
falsely spun through the air and knocked over all the pins your luck
and skill permitted. Kiki scored sixty-eight and almost brained the
pinboy with a premature salvo, Jack got one fourteen and I won the
day with one
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