Beirut Incident

Chapter 9

The next morning I checked out of "Manny's place" by nine o'clock. Spelman's clothes were packed along with mine in the suitcase, along with one of the sheets and a pillowcase, which had been smeared with blood.

From the Chalfont Plaza, I grabbed a cab heading downtown on Lexington and went to the Chelsea Hotel on Twenty-third Street just off Seventh Avenue. It's kind of a beat up old hotel these days and attracts a lot of odd characters. It had its days of glory, however. Dylan Thomas stayed there, and Arthur Miller and Jeff Berryman. My main reason for moving in there was far from literary nostalgia: Larry Spelman's body wasn't next door.

The first thing I did was to send out for some brown wrapping paper and a ball of twine. Then I carefully wrapped up Spelman's clothes, the sheet and the pillowcase, and took the package over to the post office.

I mailed the package to Popeye Franzini. The return address read "Gaetano Ruggiero, 157 Thompson Street, New York, N.Y. 10011." The longer Spelman's body remained undiscovered the better, but once it was found, I wanted suspicion directed away from me. I didn't know of any specific bad blood between the Ruggieros and Franzinis at the moment, but once that package arrived, there would be.

The current postal system is such that I could depend — with reasonable assurance — on the fact that a third-class package mailed from Twenty-third Street to Prince Street, a distance of about thirty blocks, would take at least a week.

I went into the Angry Squire, a pleasant little bar on Seventh Avenue around the corner from the hotel, and had a leisurely lunch washed down with two mugs of that good Watney's ale. Then I called Louie at his Village apartment.

Louie was ecstatic, as usual. "Hey, Nick! What's up, man? I tried to call you up at Manny's Place, but they said you'd checked out."

"Yeah. Too plastic for me. I moved down to the Chelsea."

"Great! Great! I know the place. Hey, look, Nick. Uncle Joe wants to see us this afternoon. Okay with you?"

I wondered if I had much of a choice. "Sure, why not."

"Okay, then. About two o'clock. At Uncle Joe's office."

"Okay," I reassured him. "I'll see you then."

It was a pleasant day and I walked, taking my time. I hadn't really seen much of New York in years. It had changed a lot in some respects, in others it looked exactly as I remembered, probably exactly as it had fifty or a hundred years before.

I walked to Sixth Avenue, then headed downtown. Sixth Avenue down to Fourteenth Street still looked the same, but it had changed, and for a moment I couldn't put my finger on it. Then it hit me, and I smiled to myself. I was getting so cosmopolitan I didn't notice some things any more. Sixth Avenue from Twenty-third Street to Fourteenth was almost entirely Puerto Rican. The conversations I heard around me were, for the most part, in Spanish.

The bars were in the same places, but now they bore Spanish names; EI Grotto, El Cerrado, El Portoqueno. The old Italian delicatessens were still there as I had remembered, but now they were bodegas, with more fruit and fewer vegetables. If anything, Sixth Avenue was cleaner than it ever had been and the round-hipped, vivacious Latin girls clacking by on their high heels were a big improvement over the slow-moving eddies of elderly ladies with their shopping bags who used to fill the neighborhood.

Fourteenth Street looked more like Calle Catorce in San Juan, but there was an abrupt change from there southward to Third Street. Here, it was much as it had always been, the small-business part of the Village, hardware stores, drugstores, grocery stores, delicatessens, ten-cent stores, coffee shops. There never had been any particular ethnic identity to this stretch of the avenue and there wasn't now.

It was a polyglot crowd; neatly suited business men with attaché cases, strolling hippies with shoulder-length hair and blue jeans, chic housewives pushing black plastic baby carriages, hobbling old ladies with gnarled features and vacant eyes, kids armed with baseball gloves, a beggar on crutches. There were more mixed couples than I had remembered.

At Third Street, I turned east past MacDougal and Sullivan, then went south again on Thompson Street, a big grin of reminiscence on my face. Thompson Street never changes. All the way down to Prince Street, it is the old Italian Village: quiet tree-lined streets bordered with solid rows of brownstones, each with its series of steps running up to heavy oaken front doors, each one fronted by an iron railing designed to keep the unwary from falling onto the steep row of concrete steps leading to the cellar. For some reason, when the Village was built up in the late 1880s the cellar doors were always put in the front instead of the back.

Here, the pace is different than anywhere else in the city. The noise seems suffused, the action slower. Old men stand in clusters of two and three, never sitting on the stoop, just standing, talking their dotage away; fat-breasted housewives lean from upper windows to chat with neighbors standing on the sidewalk below.

On the fenced-in playground of St. Theresa's Junior High School, the neighborhood's young Italian bucks, long out of school, mingle with the kids in a perpetual softball game. On the sidewalks, the black-eyed, black-haired Italian girls walk sturdily, eyes straight ahead, if they are alone. If they are with a group of girls, they squirm and dawdle, talking constantly, darting their eyes up and down the street, making it ring with their laughter.

There are few businesses on Thompson Street, an occasional candy store, inevitably dark green with a faded, half-slashed awning sheltering the newspaper stand; a delicatessen or two, with huge salamis hanging in the windows; here and there a drugstore, almost always on the corner. What Thompson does have, however, is funeral parlors — three of them. You go to one if you are a friend of the Ruggieros, another if you are a friend of the Franzinis, the third one if you have no connections with either family or, if you do, don't want them known.

Also on Thompson, between Houston Street and Spring, there are five restaurants, good Italian restaurants, with neatly checkered tableclothes, a candle on each table, a small bar along one wall of the adjoining room. The people of the neighborhood often drink at the bars, but they never eat at the tables. They eat at home every night, every meal. Yet somehow the restaurants are full every evening, though they never advertise — they just seem to draw couples, each of whom has somehow discovered their own little Italian restaurant.

By the time I reached Spring Street and turned left toward West Broadway, I was so deep in the Old Italian ambiance I almost forgot that my involvement was something less than pleasant. The grand old Italian families who live south of Houston Street are not, unfortunately, mutually exclusive of the Mafia.

I arrived at Franzini Olive Oil at exactly two o'clock. Louie's cousin Philomina wore a white sweater that emphasized her breasts, and a brown suede skirt that buttoned down the front only partially so that when she moved, a good deal of well-shaped leg was showing. It was rather more than I'd expected from the conservatively-dressed Philomina of the day before, but I'm not one to complain about a very attractive girl wearing more revealing clothes.

She showed me into Popeye's office with a polite smile and an impersonal air she might have used for the window cleaner or the cleaning lady.

Louie was already there, bouncing. He'd been talking to Popeye. Now he turned, wrung my hand in a fervent handshake as if he hadn't seen me in months, and placed the other hand on my shoulder. "Hi ya, Nick! How are you? Good to see you!"

The huge old man in his wheelchair behind the black desk glared at me. Reluctantly he nodded and motioned with one hand. "Sit down." I took one straight chair, sat back, and crossed my legs. Louie took the other, spun it around, and then sat down straddling it, his arms crossed over the back.

Popeye Franzini shook his head slightly, as if Louie were a puzzle he could never figure out. Fat fingers fumbled at a cigar box on his desk and stripped the cellophane from a long black cheroot. He stuck the cigar in his mouth, lit it from the cigarette lighter on his desk and then peered at me through the smoke.

"Louie seems to think you're pretty damned good."

I shrugged. "I can handle myself. I've been around."

He stared at me a moment, evaluating a piece of merchandise. Then he apparently made up his mind. "Okay, okay," he muttered. He fumbled on both sides of his wheelchair as if looking for something, then raised his head and bellowed:

"Philomina! Philomina! Dammit! You got my briefcase?"

Louie's cousin appeared immediately, though her exquisite grace prevented her movements from seeming hurried. She placed a battered old grey attaché case in front of Popeye and glided out silently.

"You seen that goddamned Larry?" he grumbled at Louie as he flipped open the clasps. "He ain't been around all day."

Louie spread both hands, palms up. "I haven't seen him since yesterday, Uncle Joe."

"Me neither," the old man growled.

Thank God! That meant Spelman hadn't communicated with the Franzinis before coming up to roust me. I could probably thank the effects of heroin for that lapse of procedure.

Popeye Franzini took a sheaf of papers from the attaché case, studied the first page for a moment, and then laid them down on top of the case in front of him. His voice, his whole manner, suddenly changed and he was now the businessman.

"Frankly, Nick, you're not the man T would pick for this job. We don't know you well enough and I would prefer someone who had been with the organization. However, Louie here says he wants you, and if he thinks he can trust you, that's the main thing."

I returned his gaze without expression. "Whatever you say, Don Joseph."

He nodded. Of course whatever he said. "The point is," he went on, "this organization has been having some difficulties lately. Our receipts are off, a lot of our people are getting into trouble with the cops, the Ruggieros are moving in left and right. In other words, somehow or another we seem to have lost our grip on things. V/hen that happens in a business organization you call in an efficiency expert and make some changes. Well, I consider us a business organization and I'm going to do just that."

Popeye Franzini drew hard on his cigar and then pointed it through the smoke at Louie. "There's my efficiency expert."

I looked at Louie, remembering how my impressions of him had changed so quickly in Beirut. Outwardly, his demeanor suggested anything but efficiency. I was beginning to grow fond of this man. Though I was sure he was more intelligent than he appeared at first, I doubted he was very tough.

As though reading my thoughts, Popeye went on. "Louie's a lot tougher than most people think. I brought him up that way. Like he was my own son." His face grimaced in a smile at his nephew, who grinned back at him. "Right, Louie?"

"Right, Uncle Joe." He spread his hands expressively, his dark face beaming.

The Franzini story played through my mind as I listened with one ear to Popeye's obviously oft-repeated story of Louie growing up as the man he'd raised him to be.

Up until the second World War, the three Franzini brothers had been a team. Louie's father, Luigi, was killed during the Marine landing at Guadalcanal in August, 1942; the young Louie was taken in by Joseph.

By that time Joseph was battling the ravages of MS, though he was still able to walk with a lurching gait and drive a car. He also had his older brother, Alfredo, to contend with; the two brothers had grown steadily apart, and after Luigi's death, their quarrels grew into a bitter war for control of the family interests.

If the schism between the brothers had continued the entire Franzini famiglia as a Mafia power center would have been undermined. Joseph wasn't about to let that happen. In February, 1953, he set up a peace parley with Alfredo. On the day of the meeting, he took his Cadillac, alone, to pick up Alfredo, and the two brothers drove east, out of the Village.

It was the last time anyone ever saw Alfredo Franzini.

Joseph maintained — still did — that after they visited Alfredo's New Jersey place, he drove his brother back to the city, leaving him off on Sullivan Street — the spot where he'd picked him up. No one had ever been able to prove otherwise. Officially, Alfredo Franzini had been kidnapped off the streets of New York by persons unknown. Unofficially, the authorities knew better.

Only Joseph Franzini could support their suspicions, and Joseph Franzini never wavered from his story.

Joseph had made a great show of vowing vengeance against whoever had abducted his brother. He took Alfredo's wife, Maria Rosa, into his own home — "for protection," he said — along with her daughter, Philomina, who was just three years old at the time. Maria Rosa had died two years later of cancer, but Joseph had continued to care for his two brothers' children as if they were his own. He had never married.

Popeye Franzini continued to talk, an articulate mountain of flesh encased in a chrome and canvas cage with spoked wheels.

"…So then I sent Louie on to Columbia and he graduated magna cum laude. Since then, he's been running the Franzini Olive Oil business, and that's just about the only thing we have going that is producing the amount of revenue that it should."

"What did you study, Louie?" I was curious.

He grinned self-consciously. "Business administration. That's why Uncle Joe thinks I might be able to straighten out some of our operations."

"What operations are we talking about?" I asked the old man.

He glared at me.

"Look," I said. "If you want me to work with Louie, I have to know what we're getting into. You forget, I just got here yesterday."

He nodded. "All right. We're talking right now about porno, securities, numbers, trucks, vending machines, laundry supply, and narcotics."

"No prostitution?"

He waved the idea away disdainfully. "We leave that to the flashy black pimps." He looked thoughtful. "We do have other operations, of course, but those I named are the ones we're having trouble with."

I turned to Louie. "You done your homework on these?"

He sighed and looked a little embarrassed. "Well…"

Popeye explained. "Louie's never been in any of the operations. I worked hard at keeping him out, except for olive oil, and that's legit."

I tried to keep from smiling. In the Red Fez in Beirut, after I had pulled my trump with the tube of heroin, Louie's manner had implied that he was right in there, one of his Uncle's men behind all the Franzini rackets. In reality, he knew almost nothing about their inner workings. And Franzini wanted him to straighten out the «operations»? My skepticism must have shown.

"Yeah. I know," Popeye said. "It sounds crazy, maybe. But the way things have been going… something has to be done. I think Louie can do it by streamlining our business practices."

I shrugged. "It's your ball game. Where do I come in?"

"Louie here is my efficiency expert. I want you — somebody new to the organization — to provide the muscle. These guys all work for me, and they do what I say. But sometimes they have to be convinced more directly. They're not going to want Louie poking around in their operations because they're probably cheating me somewhere along the line — I know that. If Louie goes by himself, they're going to try to bamboozle him. If you go along, they'll know I sent you just to let them know this is coming straight from me and no shit about it."

For the job I was supposed to be doing for Uncle Sam, it was a heaven-sent opportunity. "Okay. Now, you mentioned porno, securities, numbers, trucks, vending machines, laundry supply and narcotics. What is 'trucks'?"

The old man grasped both wheels of his wheelchair with gross hands and moved himself back from the desk a foot or so before he answered. "Trucks' is what we call our hijacking operation run by Joe Polito. It's mostly garment district stuff, once in a while a little hardware like TV sets or stoves. We took three hundred stoves out of Brooklyn the other day. But it's been going bad. The cops, the feds, even the Ruggieros, everybody's cracking down."

"The Ruggieros?" I was amused. If he thought he was having trouble with the Ruggieros now, wait until he got that package with Larry Spelman's clothes in it!

He dismissed the Ruggieros with a wave of his hand. "Nothing big. Some of our boys picked up a garment truck the other day, then a couple of Ruggiero's boys hijacked our boys."

"I thought things were coordinated between the families in New York."

He nodded a massive head. "Usually. This time, Ruggiero said it was a mistake, that his boys pulled the job independently."

I laughed. "You believe that?"

He glared back at me. Levity was not part of Popeye Franzini's way of life. "Yeah, I do. Once in a while you have to let the boys go off on their own. You try to control them a hundred percent, and you're asking for a lot of internal troubles."

I could see his point "What about the other operations?"

"Pretty much the same thing. Nothing I can put my finger on; things just seem to be going badly. I think it may be because over the years we've gotten too loose, spent too much time trying to do things legit. We did better when we played it tough. That's what I want to get back to. Play it tough! Good business procedures, but tough!"

He paused. "By the way, you can use Locallo and Manitti if you need them. Just give them a week or two to get used to the city, that's all."

"Right."

"That reminds me." He half-spun in his wheelchair, so that he was pointed toward the doorway. "Philomina!" he shouted. "Philomina! Did we get that Beirut report yet?"

She appeared immediately in the doorway. "No," she said quietly. "Nothing yet." She disappeared again.

"Goddamn!" he exploded. "That report was due in yesterday and isn't here yet! I can't find Larry any goddamned place! The whole goddamned business is falling apart!"

He didn't know the half of it yet, I thought to myself.

It was remarkable the way he could switch from one personality to the other, from the cool, self-appraising businessman with the carefully structured sentences to the shouting, fuming Italian tyrant, petulant when things didn't go his way, morose when they did.

Now he pounded a fist on the armrest of his wheelchair. "Goddamn! You got to get this straightened out. Now! And find Larry, too. He's probably on a goddamned heroin nod somewhere. I got to have him. Get the hell out of here and go find him!"

Louie got up and started for the door, but stopped when he saw I'd remained seated.

The old man glared. "Well?"

I shrugged. "I'm sorry, Don Joseph. But I can't work for nothing. I need some money up front."

He snorted. "Money! Hell! You stay with me, you'll get plenty of money." He regarded me somberly for a moment, then turned toward the doorway again. "Philomina!" he yelled. "Give this new guy some money. Give him a big one." He spun his wheelchair again in my direction. "Now get out of here, dammit! I got things to do."

"Thanks." I got up.

"And I want to see you at the party tonight."

"Yes, sir."

He was still glaring as we left the office, a huge old man in a wheelchair, a weird combination of helplessness and power.

I went to where his niece was counting out some bills on her desk and stared at her face — and the white sweater. She paid no attention.

"Here." She handed me a sheaf of bills. I could have been the paperboy getting fifteen cents for The New York Times.

I leafed through the bills. Twenty fifties.

"Thank you, Philomina," I said politely. "Your uncle pays very well, doesn't he?"

"My uncle sometimes overpays," she said snippily, emphasizing the "over."

She looked past me to Louie with a sudden smile. "I'll see you tonight, Louie. I'm awfully glad you're back."

"Sure, Phil," Louie replied, looking embarrassed.

Outside on the sidewalk, we walked along together. "What's with your cousin, Louie? Should I change my after-shave or what?"

He laughed. "Oh, don't pay any attention to Philomina. She does a great job for the olive oil business, but whenever she gets into… uh… other operations, she gets up on her high horse. She doesn't want anything to do with it, really."

"What the hell does that mean? She's old enough to know she can't have it both ways, isn't she?"

He laughed nervously, hands jammed deep in his pockets as we strode along. "Well, it's not really both ways as far as Philomina is concerned. It's just that once in a while she has to give somebody some money or something, like she just did you. Usually, we don't conduct organization business in that office. I guess we did today just because Larry disappeared somewhere and wasn't around to take Uncle Joe over to the Counting House."

"The Counting House?"

"It's over on Spring. It's a big old building we use to keep our records in. Kind of a headquarters."

We walked along in silence for a few minutes. Then Louie spoke up again. "Where do you suppose we can find Larry?"

"Don't ask me. Hell, I just got here yesterday."

"Yeah. I forgot." He clapped me on the shoulder. "Look, why don't you go back to the hotel and get some rest. We'll see you over at the restaurant tonight… about nine o'clock."

It sounded like a fine idea to me. I certainly had no desire to go off looking for Spelman. Particularly since I knew where he was. "Great," I replied with unfeigned enthusiasm.

He went off cheerfully, whistling, his hands in his pockets, heading for the subway, I guessed. I hailed a cab and went back to the Chelsea.

Once back at the hotel, I called Jack Gourlay at the News. It seemed strange giving my right name over the phone td the operator.

"Nick Carter!" Jack's slow voice repeated. "When the hell did you get back to town?"

"A while ago," I hedged. "Listen, Jack, I want a favor."

"Sure. What can I do for you?"

"I wonder if you could slip into a story somewhere that Larry Spelman is missing and that the Franzinis think the Ruggieros might have something to do with it."

The best way to get someone to think something sometimes, is to tell them what they are supposed to be thinking.

On the other end of the line, Jack whistled. "Get it into a story, hell! I'll make it a story! But is it true, Nick? Is he really missing?"

"He's really missing," I said.

"And do the Franzinis think…?"

"I don't know," I answered quite honestly. "But I'd like them to."

He was quiet for a moment, then, "You know, something like that could start another gang war in town. Those two families haven't been getting along so well lately."

"I know."

"Okay, Nick. As long as you're sure Spelman is really missing."

"He's missing. Really."

"Okay, man, you're on. Anything else I should know?"

"No, Jack. But I really appreciate it. I'm kind of busy now; maybe we can get together for dinner or drinks one of these nights when I get clear."

"Love to," he said, and hung up. Get Jack Gourlay started on a story and he doesn't want to fool around with small talk.

I stretched out on my bed and took a nap.