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!"