Read Online The Ninth Step by Gabriel Cohen - Free Book Online Page B
Authors: Gabriel Cohen
Ads: Link
north. The neighborhood changed, became more residential, though still quiet. Back in the day, this had been such a bustling area! He passed Union Street, which had been jammed with pushcarts selling fruit and vegetables, except in winter, when they’d sell hot chestnuts. The area had hopped with bars, and movie houses, and social establishments, like the Impala Club, which had been a block east, above Nino’s Pizzeria.
Old landmarks caused memories to bloom. There was the corner where Bobby Salesi lost three fingers when a zip gun blew up in his hand. There was the home base of the Kane Street Stoppers (a teen gang who sometimes rumbled with the Black Chaplains) and their younger cohorts the Kane Street Midgets. It had been a tough neighborhood all right; Jack recalled hearing some punk refer to his switchblade as a “Red Hook boxing glove.” Jack passed various churches—Brooklyn had once been known as the City of Churches—and remembered how the local mobsters had run gambling games there, “collecting for the saint.”
Wiseguys. The neighborhood had been full of them. He would see them on the corners or in front of their social clubs, resplendent in their two-tone shirts and camel hair coats and fedoras with wide brims. These days, it was hard to imagine how intense their control over the neighborhood had been. Sure there’d been patrol cops walking around, wielding their nightsticks if a kid got out of line, but many of them had been in the pockets of the Mob. And if two neighbors had a beef with each other, they wouldn’t take it to the police or to the courts; they’d go to a “table,” a sit-down with the local capos, who would tell them what to do, like neighborhood kings. You needed their permission to get work on the docks, but also to open any kind of business, and then you had to offer up tribute, including a regular cut of the profits, as well as a few bottles of booze or a turkey at Christmastime.
Jack circled back into a part of the neighborhood now known as Cobble Hill. Its genteel brownstones brought unbelievable prices these days, and he saw yuppie mothers pushing expensive baby carriages along the quiet streets. The Gallo brothers had once lived in a tenement here; the entrance, he recalled, had been presided over by a midget named Armando, whose claim to fame was that he had been an extra in the film Samson and Delilah ; Jack could still picture the little thug clearly, with his high hairline and heavy brow. But Armando was not the most unusual feature of the operation. Joey and his brother Larry had bought an aging lion, perhaps off the same movie set, and kept it in their basement. If someone owed them too much money, the brothers would tell him to go down in the basement and “talk to Leo.” (The threat had proved remarkably effective, but the lion had not lasted long; it stank up the place, and soon the Health Department came to call.)
The Gallos were flamboyant, public men; they threw silver dollars to the neighborhood kids, let them swim in their backyard pool, and played the big shots during local religious feasts, as John Gotti would do a couple of decades later in Queens. But their charm had major limits. They made most of their considerable profits by demanding protection money from the local businesses, the tailors, the shoe stores, the butcher shops. The misery these men spread was beyond estimation; if you crossed them in any way, your days might become a living nightmare. Your neighbors would avoid you, you couldn’t work, couldn’t feed your family—and worse, you had to live in fear of a sadistic beating or even death.
Jack’s father had escaped Communist Russia, and he already knew plenty about brutality before he ever hit these shores. The old man had often been drunk and angry, but he was also a hard worker. He had grudgingly surrendered the tributes and bribes, but he warned Jack and Petey that if he ever saw them going near the gangsters, he would light into them
Old landmarks caused memories to bloom. There was the corner where Bobby Salesi lost three fingers when a zip gun blew up in his hand. There was the home base of the Kane Street Stoppers (a teen gang who sometimes rumbled with the Black Chaplains) and their younger cohorts the Kane Street Midgets. It had been a tough neighborhood all right; Jack recalled hearing some punk refer to his switchblade as a “Red Hook boxing glove.” Jack passed various churches—Brooklyn had once been known as the City of Churches—and remembered how the local mobsters had run gambling games there, “collecting for the saint.”
Wiseguys. The neighborhood had been full of them. He would see them on the corners or in front of their social clubs, resplendent in their two-tone shirts and camel hair coats and fedoras with wide brims. These days, it was hard to imagine how intense their control over the neighborhood had been. Sure there’d been patrol cops walking around, wielding their nightsticks if a kid got out of line, but many of them had been in the pockets of the Mob. And if two neighbors had a beef with each other, they wouldn’t take it to the police or to the courts; they’d go to a “table,” a sit-down with the local capos, who would tell them what to do, like neighborhood kings. You needed their permission to get work on the docks, but also to open any kind of business, and then you had to offer up tribute, including a regular cut of the profits, as well as a few bottles of booze or a turkey at Christmastime.
Jack circled back into a part of the neighborhood now known as Cobble Hill. Its genteel brownstones brought unbelievable prices these days, and he saw yuppie mothers pushing expensive baby carriages along the quiet streets. The Gallo brothers had once lived in a tenement here; the entrance, he recalled, had been presided over by a midget named Armando, whose claim to fame was that he had been an extra in the film Samson and Delilah ; Jack could still picture the little thug clearly, with his high hairline and heavy brow. But Armando was not the most unusual feature of the operation. Joey and his brother Larry had bought an aging lion, perhaps off the same movie set, and kept it in their basement. If someone owed them too much money, the brothers would tell him to go down in the basement and “talk to Leo.” (The threat had proved remarkably effective, but the lion had not lasted long; it stank up the place, and soon the Health Department came to call.)
The Gallos were flamboyant, public men; they threw silver dollars to the neighborhood kids, let them swim in their backyard pool, and played the big shots during local religious feasts, as John Gotti would do a couple of decades later in Queens. But their charm had major limits. They made most of their considerable profits by demanding protection money from the local businesses, the tailors, the shoe stores, the butcher shops. The misery these men spread was beyond estimation; if you crossed them in any way, your days might become a living nightmare. Your neighbors would avoid you, you couldn’t work, couldn’t feed your family—and worse, you had to live in fear of a sadistic beating or even death.
Jack’s father had escaped Communist Russia, and he already knew plenty about brutality before he ever hit these shores. The old man had often been drunk and angry, but he was also a hard worker. He had grudgingly surrendered the tributes and bribes, but he warned Jack and Petey that if he ever saw them going near the gangsters, he would light into them
Similar Books
