“What time you want the meeting, Frankie?” Altierri’s eyes lit up. Without being told, Two-Knife could feel in his bones that Yale was marshalling the troops for a hit on Denny Meehan. Frankie was in the habit of making out a list such as this when he wanted to hold a council of his top lieutenants on important business. And the killing of the Irish gang’s top dog was the only matter of any importance that could warrant convening that particular group of leaders.
As a rule, it was Altierri’s job to round up the men when Frankie wanted them for a meeting. Yale never had to tell Altierri where the gathering would be held. Without exception, all such high-echelon Black Hand get-togethers took place in the Adonis Club overlooking Gowanus Bay on Twentieth Street. The Adonis was run by Fury Argolia—when he wasn’t engaged in the more violent pursuits of his underworld calling.
Meeting there, the gang could also participate in the ultimate pleasantry of stuffing their stomachs with some of the finest Sicilian gastronomic delights this side of Palermo. Many an Italian family from as far away as the Bronx and even the eastern fork of Long Island preferred to book a wedding reception at the Adonis rather than the Astor because of the mouth-watering cuisine whipped up by Argolia’s master chefs.
Two-knife had just one question for Yale.
“What time you want them?” he asked.
“If they wanna eat, tell them be there at eight,” Frankie replied with a flamboyant gesture. “Fury’s getting up a good spread. But the meeting is ten sharp, you tell them.”
Yale suddenly shot a look through the partly opened door. He had heard a stealthy movement on the stair landing outside the office.
“What the hell you doing there sneaking around corners?” he roared. “Come in here so Willie can tell you to your face what you’re supposed to know, ya creep!”
Tony Yale flew into the room and bounded over to Altierri who, knees crossed, was ditching his cigarette in the ashtray. Thoroughly cowed, Tony mumbled to Two-Knife, “What’s for me…tell me.”
Willie told him, then rose from the chair and left the room without another word. Tony shadowed him down the stairs.
The Adonis Club’s wooden and shaky-legged tables were so antiquated that even the red-and-white-checkered tablecloths couldn’t hide their condition. The chairs had cane seats and backs so badly shredded that matrons at banquets invariably got their silk gowns shorn on the rough edges. The walls and ceilings were decorated with murals that combined religious figures and scenes of Mount Vesuvius and the Coliseum. The murals were executed in 1912 by an immigrant Florentine artist who gorged himself on Fury Argolia’s food and drink while he painted and was paid nothing. He had been in hock to the Black Hand’s loan sharks, who had wanted to kill him until Fury Argolia interceded with a merciful plan to have “Michelangelo,” as the artist was cynically nicknamed, work his debt off with paint and brush at the Adonis Club.
Argolia never expected a Sistine Chapel, but the Florentine came perilously close to giving the waterfront social club such a pseudo-appearance.
If the atmosphere inside the club left something to be desired, the outside was worse. The buildings along the rest of the block were prime candidates for a slum-clearance program; the grimy facade of the Adonis itself was no invitation to good dining. Worse still was the rotten-egg aroma that wafted from the shore at every low tide on Gowanus Bay.
It was 8:10 p.m. on March 15th when Frankie Yale arrived at the Adonis Club in his black limousine, chauffeured by his brother Tony. Riding with Frankie in the back seat was Willie Altierri.
A second car, a maroon Pierce Arrow, bearing Don Guiseppe Balsamo and his two bodyguards, Mangano and Guistra, pulled alongside the curb right behind Yale’s limo.
“Hey, compare!” Yale greeted Balsamo as he stepped out of the car, throwing his arms affectionately around the beefy Red Hook gangland boss. “How’s the family? How’s my little godchild?”
Yale had become Balsamo’s infant daughter’s godfather the previous summer. By then the menace of the White Hand gang’s retaliation upon the Black Hand’s newly-acquired territories had become reality. Balsamo’s continued control of the Little Italy sector in Red Hood was a vital factor in the impending war with Denny Meehan and his army of killers.
Yale had looked upon Balsamo as a weak link in the organization. He felt that while Don Giuseppe still maintained control over his area, he was losing some of his power in the territory. Perhaps, Frankie thought, at the age of forty-eight Don Guiseppe was becoming complacent.
But Balsamo’s past record as a boss in the Black Hand was exemplary, and Yale felt there was no reason Don Giuseppe couldn’t regain all of his old power in Red Hook. But something had to be done to reinvigorate Balsamo—to give him a greater sense of “belonging” in the Black Hand family.
So when Don Giuseppe’s wife, Nancy, who was forty-five years old and a grandmother seven times, brought home their ninth child, a daughter named Gina, Frankie Yale decided to infuse the spirit he thought Balsamo needed by offering to be little Gina’s godfather.
Yale’s ploy worked wonders. In the eight months since the christening, Balsamo’s sector accounted for three “accidental” deaths of White Hand mobsters. They were all killed in identical fashion: by the booms of cranes that crushed their skulls while they were standing on the Gowanus docks extracting tribute from the pier operators.
Followed by his entourage, Frankie Yale strolled into the Adonis Club, his arm still around Balsamo. A familiar voice greeted them:
“Good evening, gentlemen, we have prepared a banquet to satisfy a king.”
Fury Argolia laughed as he mouthed the words, perhaps because he had sensed how trite they were. Yet the six-foot-long smorgasbord table on which the Italian feast had been spread was anything but laughable.
“Mamma mia!” Yale enthused as he gazed at the table. “This is unbelieveable.”
The table groaned under the weight of forty platters of food, including seven selections of salad, a seemingly endless variety of antipasto, lasagna, baked clams, calimari, veal rollatini, and many other choice preparations. A side table had been loaded with more than a dozen bottles of fine Italian wine.
“Eat up, boys,” Yale said. “Eat good. We got lots of time to talk business.”
They gorged themselves on the epicurean spread for two hours. Then the meeting was convened.
Frankie Yale stood up. The room became quiet.
“What we are here for is to decide how we are going to get rid of Denny Meehan,” he said somberly. “Now let me hear from you the ideas…”
“What ideas you got, boss?” asked Balsamo.
The question caught Frankie by surprise. But he had a reply. “I was figuring maybe we hit the mick bastard when he’s leaving his favorite hangout, the Strand Dance Hall,” Yale offered.
“He’s gonna be protected by his bodyguards when he goes to the Strand,” Balsamo suggested. “Besides, we should try to do it without witnesses—”
“I agree! I agree!” Augie the Wop called out. “We make it a nice private execution. It will have the same effect because those dirty micks will know that it was us who gave it to Denny.”
Yale scowled at the lieutenants who had poured water on his plan. The silence in the room was heavy. Frankie probably knew that his idea was precipitate, but he wasn’t about to admit it. Doing the number on Denny at the Strand was, in fact, something that had come off the top of his head. The fact was that while he had had more than two months to mastermind the execution, he wasn’t yet able to make up his mind as to just where Meehan should be gunned down.
Finally, he snickered in amusement and broke the silence.
“All right, you wiseasses, if you wanna do it private