Sciacca turned to DeSarno. “I can handle this,” he said in a firm but barely audible voice. He levelled the gun until the barrel almost touched the window, sighted, and fired. Two shots rang out. The roar in the hallway was deafening.
“I got him!” Sciacca said triumphantly. “Maybe her, too. Let’s get the hell out!”
The three men raced through the hall and bounded down the stairs. They sprinted out of the building, and as they leaped into the getaway car, Frenchy Carlino floored the gas pedal. The car roared off like a shot. No one had seen them.
The two shots and Peggy Meehan’s cries awakened the entire apartment house. The neighbors rushed to the Meehans’ flat. They found Peggy clutching her abdomen, a widening crimson spot on her nightgown.
Peggy had been hit by the second bullet fired at Denny, which she stopped when she instinctively threw herself over her husband to protect him. But her gesture was in vain. Sciacca’s bullet had plowed into Meehan’s neck. Yet, it might not have killed him except for a change in the course of the bullet’s progress. The Kings County medical examiner disclosed this freakish turn after he had performed the autopsy on Denny’s body.
When the slug passed through the neck, it hit the collarbone. That caused the .45-caliber slug to ricochet upwards into Denny’s brain cavity.
Peggy was still in critical condition in Cumberland Hospital when her husband’s funeral was held. The crowd at Denny’s last rites at the Murphy Funeral Home in downtown Brooklyn was gargantuan. No fewer than nine hundred mourners turned out for the final tribute. The cortege to the cemetery was an incredible spectacle: six cars overflowed with floral wreaths, twenty limousines carried Denny’s relatives and the hierarchy of the White Hand organization, and more than two hundred cars of assorted commiserators followed.
Denny Meehan’s departure left the door open for his most trusted lieutenant, William “Wild Bill” Lovett, to take over the leadership of the White Hand gang. There were no challengers to the sandy-haired, five-foot-eight, 150-pound Lovett, who’d been regarded as the Irish mob’s roughest, toughest, and smartest member since he joined their ranks at the end of World War I.
He came into the gang after he returned to the States as a war hero who had won the Distinguished Service Cross after fighting at the Meuse, one of the last offensives before Germany’s surrender. Lovett quickly established himself as an irascible, hard-nosed, and hard-headed upstart. In the two short years that he had served in Denny Meehan’s troops, Lovett had gotten into no fewer than thirty-five scrapes with the law.
He’d been arrested for assault thirty-four of those times because he couldn’t tolerate a victim’s refusal to pay tribute for “protection.”
Meehan had often said, “If that fuckin’ Wild Bill could settle down, he’d be our best enforcer.”
The police had dubbed Lovett a psychopath “with an extremely dangerous tendency to do harm.”
That assessment was irrefutably confirmed on January 16th, 1920—the day Prohibition began. Wild Bill had gone into Guerney’s Saloon on Fourth Avenue, between Fifteenth and Sixteenth Streets, and asked for a shot of Dewar’s scotch. The bartender, Amelio Rolfi, said that Guerney’s was no longer serving drinks because of the new law.
“I don’t give a shit about the law,” Lovett roared. “You got a bottle there behind the bar and I want a slug.”
The bartender stood his ground. Lovett pulled a .38-caliber automatic from a hip holster and, in full view of the thirty patrons who were guzzling the new beer with its one-half-of-one-percent alcoholic content, he triggered three bullets into the man who had refused to serve him.
Lovett never stood trial. In fact, he wasn’t even indicted for the killing. After his arrest, precipitated by the statements of only two of the thirty patrons at the bar that evening, Lovett beat the rap. The two witnesses subpoenaed to appear before the grand jury had both been killed in auto accidents. That Lovett was behind both deaths, the police had no doubt. But they were in no possible position to prove it.
The murder case against Wild Bill Lovett went out the window—as had all the other charges against him.
Now, with Denny Meehan rubbed out, Lovett ascended the heights. He was in command of the White Hand gang.
The day after Meehan’s funeral, April 4th, he called a meeting of the gang in a warehouse on Pier 7 on the Gowanus docks.
“I swear to you men,” he said with all of the emotion he could summon, “we are going to get back at those ginzo bastards.” Then he shook his head.
“I don’t get this,” he said with a puzzled face, “how the hell is it that Pat Foley isn’t here.?”
“Maybe he got drunk again,” quipped Jimmy Naher, one of the White Hand’s dock enforcers.
There was a crescendo of laughter, but it died out quickly when Lovett, his face severe, said, “Somebody better go and find out where Foley is.”
Jack “Needles” Ferry and Frank “Ash Can” Smitty volunteered for the search.
“Well, get going!” Lovett roared.
Twenty minutes later, after most of the White Hands had left, Ferry and Smitty returned to the warehouse, supporting the seemingly limp form of Patrick Foley between them.
“Just as Jimmy called it,” Smitty said to Lovett, “Pat’s stewed to the gills.”
Lovett walked over and looked at Foley’s face. He glanced at Pat’s eyes, which were closed.
“This son of a bitch is faking it,” Lovett declared.
He slapped Foley’s face three times. Foley’s eyes opened wide, reflecting the pain he felt. That betrayed his actual condition.
“This bastard isn’t drunk,” Lovett cried out, “he’s putting it on. I don’t even smell liquor on his breath.”
Lovett turned to Foley.
“You dirty double-crossing bastard,” he snarled. “Do you think you can fool me, you scumbag? You’re not drunk. I don’t smell any alcohol on your breath. You’re putting on an act for a reason. Now, come out with it—you set up Denny, didn’t you?”
Suddenly Foley was wide awake.
“Bill, you’re crazy,” he protested. “How can you think of such a thing?”
Lovett grabbed Foley by the lapels of his jacket and shook him.
“Listen, you punk,” Lovett screamed, “I know you’re the Judas. I know all about your romance with Willie Altierri’s sister!”
Foley extricated himself from Lovett’s grip and slid to the floor. A moment later he struggled to his knees.
“Bill, you got to believe me,” he pleaded. “I swear to you on everything that’s holy I had nothing to do with Denny’s killing.”
“I don’t believe you,” Lovett growled. “But I’m going to give you a chance to get away. If you can make it, you’re a free man. Now, haul your ass out—fast!”
Foley fled through the warehouse and bolted out the door. He must have believed he was on his way to freedom as he raced down the pier toward the street. Then he spotted Pug McCarthy, one of the White Hand’s executioners. His bouncy steps leadened and he froze.
“Easy, Pug,” Foley pleaded as he faced the menacing twin barrels of McCarthy’s .12-gauge shotgun. “Bill just told me to take off…I’m in the clear…”
There was a deafening explosion. The pellets ripped into Foley’s face so that even the medical examiner couldn’t rely on the victim’s dental records to help in the identification of the body. The only way they were able to figure out that the corpse was Foley’s was from the tattoo of a swan that had been etched on his right calf when