Beirut Incident

Chapter 15

After Philomina had gone to work the next morning, I wrapped up the papers I had taken from the Counting House and mailed them to Ron Brandenburg. There was enough there to keep the FBI, the Treasury Department, and the Southern District Task Force Against Organized Crime busy for the next six months.

Then I called Washington and ordered another 17B Explosive Kit. I was beginning to feel like the Mad Bomber, but you can't take on the Mafia alone with only a pistol and a stiletto.

When I finally got myself organized, I called Louie.

He practically jumped over the telephone line at me. "Jeez, Nick, am I glad you called! The whole goddamned place has gone nuts! You gotta get over here right away. We've…"

"Slow down, slow down. What's going on?"

"Everything!"

"Take it easy, Louie. Take it easy. What's happening, for Chrissake?"

He was so excited he had a hard time telling me, but it eventually came out.

Someone from Ruggiero's mob had blown up the Counting House, the firemen had just barely made it in time to rescue the two guards, who'd been beaten up, bound, and left to die on the rooftop.

Left to die, hell! But I didn't say anything.

Popeye Franzini, Louie went on, was in an enraged frenzy, screaming and pounding his desk between periods of morose depression when he just sat in his wheelchair and stared out the window. The destruction of the Counting House was the last straw, Louie babbled. The Franzini gang was "going to the mattresses" — in Mafia terms, setting up bare apartments around town, where six to ten «soldiers» could hole up, away from their usual haunts, protected by each other. The apartments, equipped with extra mattresses for those Mafioso staying in them, not only served as "safe houses," but as bases from which the buttonmen could strike out at the opposing force.

It was the beginning of the biggest gang war in New York since the Gallos and Colombos had fought it out in a battle that ended with Colombo paralyzed and Gallo dead.

Louie, myself, Locallo and Manitti went to the mattresses with a half-dozen other Franzini hoods in a third-floor walkup apartment on Houston Street. It had three windows giving a good view of the street and — once I had secured the rooftop door — only one means of access — up the narrow stairs.

We moved in, sat down, and waited for the next move. A few blocks up the street, the Ruggieros did the same. We had a half-dozen other apartments similarly occupied and so did our rivals: Each with a half-dozen or more hard cases, each with a full supply of pistols, rifles, submachine guns, and ammunition, each with its local messenger boy to bring in the papers and fresh beer and take-out orders of food, each with its 24-hour-a-day poker game, each with its endless television, each with its intolerable boredom.

Philomina was on the phone three times a day, to the extent that she prompted a few obscene remarks out of one of Louie's hood friends. I knocked out two of his teeth and no one commented after that.

It was Philomina, and the newspapers brought in daily by our messenger, that kept us up with the outside world. Actually, nothing much was going on. According to Philomina, the word was that Gaetano Ruggiero was insisting he had had nothing to do with either Spelman's death or the explosions at the Counting House. He kept passing the word that he wanted to negotiate, but Popeye was playing it cool. The last time Ruggiero had been known to negotiate, in the hassle a few years back with the San Remos, it had been a trap that ended up with the San Remos being killed.

On the other hand, according to Philomina, Popeye figured that if Ruggiero did want to negotiate, then he didn't want to antagonize his rival any further. So for two weeks, both factions hung around in those dreary apartments, jumping at imagined shadows.

Even Italian hoods can get bored after a while. We weren't supposed to leave the apartment for any reason, but I had to speak to Philomina without the others around. One night, the other guys approved of the idea of some more cold beer — my suggestion — and I volunteered to go out for it. I managed to override the others' warnings of Franzini's wrath and the danger I was letting myself in for, and they finally agreed, believing I was the most stir-crazy of the bunch.

On my way back from a nearby delicatessen, I called Philomina.

"I think Uncle Joe is getting ready to meet with Mr. Ruggiero," she told me.

I couldn't afford that. Half my battle plan was to set one mob against the other, to get things to such a fever pitch that the Commission would have to step in.

I thought a moment. "All right. Now listen carefully. Have Jack Gourlay call the apartment in about ten minutes and ask for Louie." Then I outlined in detail for her what I wanted Jack to tell Louie.

The phone rang about five minutes after I got back and Louie took it.

"Yeah? No kidding? Sure… Sure… Okay… Yeah, sure… Right away…? Okay."

He hung up with an excited look on his face. Self-consciously, he pushed at the big.45 strapped to his chest in a shoulder holster. "It's one of Uncle Joe's guys," he said. "He said three of our guys were hit over on Bleecker street just a few minutes ago."

"Hey!" I helped out "Who got hit, Louie? Anyone we know? How bad?"

He shook his head and spread his hands. "Jeez! I don't know. The guy said he'd just gotten the word. Didn't know any other details." Louie paused and looked impressively around the room. "He said Uncle Joe wants us to hit the Ruggieros. Hit 'em good."

This time excitement had overruled any qualms Louie might have had before. The race of battle does that to men, even to the Louies of this world.

We hit the Garden Park Casino in New Jersey that night, eight of us in two comfortable limousines. The guard dressed as the elevator starter in the lobby of the Garden Park Hotel was no trouble; neither was the operator of the private elevator that went only to the Casino on the supposedly non-existent thirteenth floor. We herded the guard into the elevator at gunpoint, knocked them both out and ran the elevator ourselves.

We stepped off the elevator at the ready, submachine guns poised in front of us. It was a glittering scene. Crystal chandeliers hung from the high ceiling while plush draperies and deep carpeting helped to hush the croupier's sing-song, the click of the steel ball in the roulette wheel and the underlying hum of subdued conversation punctuated by occasional exclamations of excitement. It was the biggest gambling room on the East Coast.

A handsome man in a precisely cut tuxedo turned with the beginnings of a genial smile. He was in his middle 30s, a bit on the stocky side but dashing with jet black hair and bright intelligent eyes — Anthony Ruggjero, Don Gaetano's cousin.

He took in the significance of our entrance in a millisecond, spun on his heel, and made a diving leap for a switch on the wall. Locallo's machine gun ripped angrily, a staccato of violence in the charming atmosphere. Ruggiero's back buckled, as if snapped in two by an unseen giant hand, and he collapsed like a rag doll against the wall.

Someone screamed.

I leaped on a blackjack table and fired a burst into the ceiling, then menaced the crowd with my gun. At a dice table ten feet away, Manitti was doing the same thing. Louie, I could see out of the corner of my eye, was standing just outside the elevator, staring at Ruggiero's body.

"All right," I yelled. "Everyone be quiet and don't move, and no one will get hurt." Off to the left, a croupier made a sudden ducking movement behind his table. One of the other hoods who had come in our party shot him neatly in the head.

Suddenly, there was a deathly silence, with no movement. Then the Franzini men began moving through the crowd, cleaning cash off the tables and out of wallets, loading up with rings and watches and expensive brooches. The large crowd was in a state of shock, and so was Louie.

We were out of there in less than seven minutes and back in our limousines heading for the Holland Tunnel and our Greenwich Village hideout.

"Jeez!" Louie kept saying all the way back. "Jeez!"

I clapped him on the shoulder. "Take it easy, Louie. It's all part of the game!" I felt a little sick myself. I don't like to see men gunned down that way, either, but there was no point showing it. I was supposed to be tough. But this time the responsibility was squarely put on me, since I had set up that phony telephone call. I couldn't let it bother me too long. When you're playing the kind of game I was playing, someone is going to get hurt.

And by the next day, a lot of people started to ache.

First, the Ruggieros raided the Alfredo Restaurant on MacDougal Street where, contrary to orders, four of Popeye's hijack specialists had sneaked out to eat lunch. Two gunmen came in the back way, sprayed them with machine-gun fire as they sat, and left quickly. All four died at their table.

Franzini struck back. Two days later, Nick Milan, the aging consigliore of the Ruggiero family, was kidnapped from his Brooklyn Heights home. Two days after that, his body, trussed with heavy wire, was found in a junkyard. He had been shot once through the back of the head.

Then, Chickie Wright was shot down on the steps of his doctor's office, where he had gone to get some pills for his hay fever.

Frankie Marchetto, a longtime underling in the Ruggerio operation, was next — he was found at the wheel of his car, shot four times in the chest.

The naked bodies of two of Franzini's men were found in a rowboat adrift in Jamaica Bay. Both with their throats cut.

Mickey Monsanno — Mickey Mouse — one of the leaders of the Ruggiero mob, escaped injury when he sent one of his sons to get his car out of the garage. The car exploded when the kid turned on the ignition, killing him instantly.

The final straw came on Friday when six Ruggiero men, armed with shotguns and submachine guns, stormed into the Franzini Olive Oil Co. By sheer luck, Philomina had just taken Popeye for his daily walk through the park. Four other men in the office were shot to death, but two women clerks were untouched.

We were putting the finishing touches on a bizarre plan of Popeye's to raid Ruggiero's estate in Garden Park when suddenly it was called off. Word had come that the Commission, disturbed as much about the sudden limelight being thrown on Mafia affairs as it was about the daily mounting death toll, had called a meeting in New York to arbitrate the situation.

Louie was excited again as we left our Houston Street apartment and headed for home, Louie to his bachelor pad in the Village, me back to Philomina's."

"Boy, Nick! You know, they're all supposed to come in! Tough Joey Famligotti, Frankie Carboni, Little Balls Salerno, all the big guys! Even Allie Gigante is coming in from Phoenix! They're going to hold the meeting Saturday morning."

He was like a kid talking about his favorite baseball heroes coming to town instead of seven of the most important crime figures in America.

I shook my head in disbelief, but grinned at him. "Where's it going to be?"

"The Bankers Trust Association board room up at Park Avenue and Fifteenth Street."

"You're kidding? That's just about the most conservative, established bank in town."

Louie laughed proudly. "We own it! Or, at least, I mean we've got shares in it."

"Fantastic," I said. I should have read those papers I had taken from the Counting House more carefully, but there had hardly been time. I clapped Louie on the shoulder. "Okay, paisano. I've got a date with Philomina tonight. You going to want me?"

He frowned. "No, not tonight. But on Saturday, each Commissioner gets to take two guys to the bank with him. You want to go with Uncle Joe and me? It might be a lot of fun."

Oh sure, I thought. Great fun. "Count me in, Louie," I said. "Sounds like a great idea." I waved and got into a cab, but instead of going directly to Philomina's, I went uptown to the Banker's Trust Association on Park Avenue. I wanted to see what it looked like. It looked formidable.

I went to the bus station, picked up my 17B kit and went back to the Chelsea to ponder my problem. The opportunity to be present at the Commission meeting was a stroke of luck, but I had to figure out some way to make the most of it. It wouldn't be easy. The Banker's Trust Association building was going to be crawling with Mafia hoods tomorrow, each fanatically concerned with protecting his boss.

It was Philomina, oddly enough, who gave me an idea that night after dinner.

She snuggled in my arms on the couch and yawned. "Do me a favor when you go to meet Uncle Joe and Louie tomorrow, will you?"

I cupped one hand around her breast "Of course."

"Now, stop that!" She removed my hand. "On your way down to the office, would you stop and pick up a new hot water bottle for Uncle Joe?"

"A hot water bottle?"

"Don't look so surprised. You know… one of those red rubber things. Whenever Uncle Joe starts shaking so badly he can't control it, a warm hot water bottle to put his hands on seems to help. He always carries one in that little rack underneath the seat of his wheelchair, so it's handy whenever he wants it."

"Okay, if you say so. What happened to the old one?"

"It's getting leaky," she said. "He's had it a long time."

I went down to the drugstore on the corner of Ninth Avenue and Twenty-third Street that night and picked one up. Then, later that night when I was sure Philomina was sound asleep, I got up and packed it carefully with plastique.

It was difficult to set the detonator and timer fuse in the water bottle, but I finally managed it. The meeting was supposed to begin at ten o'clock the next morning, so I set the timer for ten-thirty and kept my fingers crossed.

I was going to have to figure out some way not to be in the vicinity when that damned thing blew, because when it did blow, it was going to blow big. But I would have to play that by ear. As it was, I'll admit, I was quite restless in bed that night.