The Mobster’s Lament Read online

  To my aunties – Georgia, Maria, Marina, Panayiota, Sofia, Voula and Marie

  Contents

  CHARACTERS

  SUNDAY NEWS

  PART ONE Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  PART TWO Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  PART THREE Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  PART FOUR Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  PART FIVE Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  PART SIX Chapter 14

  PART SEVEN Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  PART EIGHT Chapter 18

  PART NINE Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  PART TEN Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  PART ELEVEN Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  PART TWELVE Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  PART THIRTEEN Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  PART FOURTEEN Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  PART FIFTEEN Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  PART SIXTEEN Chapter 42

  PART SEVENTEEN Chapter 43

  Chapter 44

  Chapter 45

  PART EIGHTEEN Chapter 46

  Chapter 47

  Chapter 48

  Chapter 49

  PART NINETEEN Chapter 50

  Chapter 51

  Chapter 52

  Chapter 53

  Chapter 54

  Chapter 55

  Chapter 56

  Chapter 57

  Chapter 58

  Chapter 59

  Chapter 60

  Chapter 61

  PART TWENTY Chapter 62

  Chapter 63

  Chapter 64

  AFTERWORD

  Acknowledgements

  CHARACTERS

  Ida Young (née Davis), private investigator

  Michael Talbot, private investigator (retired)

  THE LUCIANO FAMILY

  ‘Lucky’ Luciano, boss, deported to Italy

  Frank Costello, acting boss

  Vito Genovese, acting underboss

  Joe Adonis, Costello’s lieutenant

  Gabriel Leveson, Costello’s fixer

  John Bova, a mole in Costello’s clique

  Nick Tomasulo, a mole in Genovese’s clique

  NYPD

  Lieu. Det. David Carrasco, assigned to the D.A.’s Homicide Bureau, Michael’s contact

  Lieu. Det. John Salzman, Narcotics Division, Gabriel’s contact

  OTHERS

  Benjamin Siegel (deceased), the New York mob’s West Coast representative

  Albert Anastasia, underboss of the Mangano crime family

  Bumpy Johnson, Harlem racketeer

  ‘Would you like to have an image that will give you an idea of my life? There is a person at the wheel of a car on a road unknown to him. He is unable to stop the car. The things passing through are unexpected, new, different from the trip that he wanted to make. It is terrible for the man who is at the wheel of his own life to realize that the brake doesn’t work.’

  FRANK COSTELLO, MOBSTER

  SUNDAY NEWS

  NEW YORK’S PICTURE NEWSPAPER

  City Edition Final Sunday, August 3rd 1947

  LOCAL NEWS

  HARLEM HOUSE OF HORRORS

  * * *

  FOUR FOUND SLAIN IN UPTOWN FLOPHOUSE

  * * *

  NEGRO VETERAN ARRESTED AT SCENE

  * * *

  VOODOO LINK TO SAVAGE KILLINGS

  * * *

  Leonard Sears – Chief Crime Correspondent

  Manhattan, Aug 2nd. – Thomas James Talbot, 35, an NYC hospital worker was arraigned this morning on four charges of first-degree murder following a killing spree late Friday night at a hotel on W. 141st Street. Police were called to the Palmer Hotel after reports of a disturbance and found a scene of carnage, with bodies littered throughout the hotel. In a room at the rear of the building they discovered a blood-soaked Talbot, still clutching money and narcotics he had stolen from his victims. Talbot, a hotel resident, fled the scene but was apprehended after a short chase.

  * * *

  ‘The most gruesome crime scene I’ve ever encountered’

  * * *

  All four victims were stabbed to death, with some slashed across the throat, and others partially dismembered and disemboweled. Bodies were discovered in the reception area, a passageway, and two guest rooms. Police Captain John Rouse described the crime scene as ‘the most gruesome I’ve encountered in over thirty years as a police officer. All the victims were savagely attacked, and killed in cold blood’. The murder weapon, most likely a long-bladed knife like a machete, is yet to be found.

  * * *

  VOODOO PARAPHERNALIA

  * * *

  Talbot, a WWII veteran who served in the Pacific campaign, had rented a room for some weeks on the hotel’s top story. When a search of his room was undertaken numerous items with links to voodoo rituals were discovered among his belongings – charms, amulets, bone-casting sets, skulls and robes. Bottles containing unidentified liquids were also found, and religious items from the Pacific Islands. Similar items were present in a room on the second floor where two of the bodies were found, along with literature relating to the Temple of Tranquility – a Harlem voodoo cult. It is yet to be ascertained whether the killings were undertaken as part of a voodoo sacrifice ritual, or whether Talbot and his fellow devotees, who also lived in the flophouse, fell out with tragic consequences. By the end of the night, Talbot was the only resident of the hotel left alive.

  * * *

  MISSING HAULAGE WORKER FOUND AT SCENE

  * * *

  Among the dead was Arno Bucek, 25, the only white victim. Bucek was reported missing by his parents in Queens six weeks previously. It was in the room where Bucek’s body was discovered that Talbot was initially discovered by police. It is believed that Talbot was attempting to steal narcotics and money from Bucek’s room when the police arrived. It is unclear what Bucek, a heroin addict, was doing in a Negro flophouse, and where he had been for the six weeks between his disappearance and death. The police have not ruled out the theory that he was being imprisoned for purposes of ritual torture.

  * * *

  COURT APPEARANCE

  * * *

  Talbot appeared emotionless and bedraggled at the arraignment hearing in the Manhattan Criminal Court. First-degree murder charges were filed by Assistant District Attorney Russell Patterson, and a date of August 11th was set for a preliminary hearing on the charges. Talbot did not enter a plea. He was remanded and sent to be held in custody at Rikers Island.

  * * *

  LIST OF VICTIMS

  * * *

  Below is a list of the victims discovered at the scene:

  —Arno Bucek, 25, discovered on the first floor. Killed by multiple cuts to the torso

  —Lucius Powell, 29, discovered on the second-floor corridor, believed to be a member of the Temple of Tranquility, killed by multiple cuts to the torso

  —Alfonso Powell, 32, discovered on the second floor, brother of Lucius, believed to be a fellow member of The Temple, killed by a single cut to the throat

  —Diana Hollis, 45, discovered in the hotel’s reception area. Miss Hollis was a hotel employee, found with injuries described as ‘particularly savage’ by Captain Rouse

  * * *

  For more
on this crime, and further photographs of the ghastly scene, turn to page 4.

  PART ONE

  NOVEMBER 1947

  ‘As a clue to the operational problems confronting the office, one has only to consider the complexity of life on the island of Manhattan. Here, 2,000,000 residents of heterogeneous lineage, race, religion and color, and 3,000,000 commuters and transients are jammed into the most congested twenty-two square miles in the world. Nowhere is crime found in such astonishing volume; nowhere does it assume so many imaginative and diverse forms; and nowhere may a criminal so readily lose himself in a crowd.’

  REPORT OF THE DISTRICT ATTORNEY,

  COUNTY OF NEW YORK, 1946–1948

  1

  Monday 3rd, 1.45 a.m.

  Come, see the vampires. Watch them lope across Times Square. Watch them jostle and throng as the stars wheel through the night. The hookers and pimps and junkies, the dealers and hustlers and chiselers, the elbow sneaks, the blade-men, the braggarts, the dead pickers, the lush-rollers, the runaways, the stay-outs and layabouts and down-and-outs, the wastrels and the bottom dogs, lured to the heart of the world’s greatest city by its neon blaze, its quicksilver jazz, the promise of a score. From flophouses on the Bowery, from dope-pads uptown, from the fruit bars strung like fairy lights along the docksides of Chelsea and Brooklyn, from sucker-joints, from bebop clubs, from hack ranks, from laundromats, from stage doors and artists’ lofts, from cold-water tenements and penthouses in the clouds, from bridges and freeways, from the blackness under the 3rd Avenue El, from tunnels, from alleys, from basements, from gutters, from shadows, out of the city’s very cement, the darkness had come and formed itself into something dangerous and alive: the empire of night had arisen.

  Among its hordes walked a tall, dark-haired man in his thirties, with his trench-coat collar turned up and his Stetson slouched low. He hid a haunted smile; a face which bore the marks of a life spent hustling on the streets of New York. His long-dead parents had named him after the archangel Gabriel, and all his life he had walked a little wearily, as if the weight of a pair of wings pressed down upon his back.

  He passed jazz clubs which emitted a swirl of bebop into the night, sex shows daubed in illuminated signs – GIRLS, GIRLS, GIRLS – lighting up the sidewalks like fairgrounds. He caught his reflection in the plate glass of all-night cafeterias, a reflection that distorted as he moved. He skirted advertising boards outside dubious movie-houses, ignored the shouts of the rope-callers leaning in the shadows and arrived at his destination: 1557 Broadway, Horn and Hardart’s Automat. He gazed up at the building, at its giant stained-glass windows, its red neon sign perched two stories high.

  He paused before he stepped inside, looked around. If anyone spotted him, it might mean his death, or worse, the death of the girl. And it was the girl he was risking it all for. Get in, get the passports, get out. Leave before any stray glances sent six years of plans unspooling.

  He entered and saw the place was jam-packed, roaring with people, customers standing two deep in front of the vending boxes. Gabriel peered through the crowd and the thick pall of cigarette smoke and spotted the forger at a table near the washrooms, sitting alone. He fought his way over and slid into the chair opposite him, saw immediately how close to death he looked; haggard and yellow-skinned and dull-eyed. Gabriel wondered again why the forger had chosen to make the hand-off in Times Square in the middle of the night. Maybe he wanted to get laid one last time in one of the brothels sprinkled around the neighborhood like confetti. But the man had explained he’d booked himself in on the overnight from Penn Station, and was so ill these days he didn’t sleep anyway.

  The forger’s voice was ragged and soft and Gabriel had to strain to hear him over the din of coffee spigots, coin slots and waitresses clattering plates into piles. It was one of those places that amplified noise, that turned all sound into a rattle and sent it careening around the walls.

  The forger took a sip of the coffee in front of him and winced. Gabriel handed him an envelope. It contained enough money to see the man to Toronto, into the clinic, enough pain-killers to make his last few weeks on earth bearable. The forger’s death would ensure his silence, which was why Gabriel picked him. Getting the passports was the last piece of his escape plan, and when he heard through a friend of a friend that the forger was on his way out, he went to meet him over in Jersey and made him an offer.

  The old man hoisted his suitcase onto the chair next to him, opened it and rummaged around. Gabriel looked over to see what he was taking on his death trip – neatly folded clothes, a Pan Am washbag, a Reader’s Digest copy of Spinoza. The man had folded over the corners of a dozen or so pages, making Gabriel wonder what wisdom they contained. It also made him think of the Doc, who peppered his speech with quotes from Ethics.

  ‘To understand is to be free,’ Gabriel said.

  The forger paused and looked up at him, a frown unfurling across his brow. Gabriel gestured to the book. The forger nodded, then got back to his search, rustled a paper packet from the suitcase and handed it over.

  Gabriel opened it and took out the passports. They were of the highest quality. The old man had put all his decades of experience and craftsmanship into them; they were, after all, the last documents he would ever forge, the last time he would practice his art.

  Gabriel pocketed the passports and complimented the forger on a job well done. As the man was about to reply, however, he descended instead into a coughing fit. He pulled a handkerchief from his sleeve and Gabriel saw that it was stained bloody brown.

  As he waited for the old man to recuperate, Gabriel looked about, checking to see if anyone he knew was in the place. His eye landed on the food dispensers, each one made of glass, the size of a shoebox, placed one on top of the other all the way up the walls. People dropped nickels into slots, turned handles, took food from the dispensers – a plate of macaroni and cheese, a tomato soup, a fishcake, a Key lime pie.

  On a table further down, college kids were scoring tea from a Puerto Rican teenager in a leather jacket. At other tables sat bleary-eyed cab drivers and telegram messengers, dancing girls, junkies and johns, the outcasts and oddballs who filled Times Square each evening, and evaporated each dawn. Gabriel would miss them when he was gone, even though he knew them for what they were, as cynical and opportunistic as the city they called home. And he would miss New York too, its roar, its energy, its restlessness, the way it slammed against you. Like no other place on earth. The cities of Europe and Asia had been decimated in the war and now New York stood alone. In the dark skies of Upper Bay, the torch in Liberty’s hand burned brighter.

  The automat’s front doors fluttered open and a party of tourists from the Corn Belt wandered in. They looked about as if they’d stepped into some modern-day Babylon, and after a few awkward moments, turned and exited. The door swung shut, and through the condensation on its window the lights and sights of Times Square were transformed into a prism of multicolored streaks, making Gabriel think of constellations, hallucinations, the drip painting back in his apartment.

  He turned to the old man, who took a last sip of his coffee and nodded.

  ‘Happy to be leaving?’ Gabriel asked, wondering if the forger shared his own mixed feelings about moving away.

  The forger mulled over the question. ‘Happy, sad – same thing,’ he said.

  Gabriel wondered if the insight had been gleaned from Spinoza.

  He helped the man up, offered to escort him to Penn Station.

  ‘It’s a lot of money you’ve got there,’ Gabriel said, hoping the forger wouldn’t feel patronized. ‘These streets are rough.’

  The forger shook his head.

  They stepped out onto the sidewalk, into a drizzle that had started while they were inside. The forger turned up the collar of his coat, flipped a flat-cap onto his head. He gave Gabriel a look and Gabriel guessed at the man’s frosty manner – he had asked for forged passports for himself and a thirteen-year-old girl. No option to explain the
girl was his niece, that the pair of them were running away for the girl’s own good. Gabriel had to let the man think the worst of him. But he was used to it. In his past Gabriel had been a night undertaker, a petty crook, a skip-tracer, a gambler. All of which had schooled him in disapproval. These days he ran a nightclub on behalf of the Mob, and acted as a fixer when needed. He was good at it. He had a breezy manner other mobsters lacked, the charm and calm to handle delicate situations. But for the past few years, Gabriel had been stealing money, and in ten days’ time, on Thursday the 13th, the Mob would find out.

  As he watched the forger disappear down Broadway, heading for Penn Station and Toronto and a morphine-slicked slide into the great unknown, another Spinoza quote came to mind: a free man thinks of death least of all things. He wondered if it was on one of the pages the man had folded over.

  He lit a cigarette and scurried through the crowds to the nearest taxi rank. As far as he could tell, he had done the deal unseen. Mission accomplished, but his anxiety only dimmed a touch. He’d been living in a cloud of it for weeks now. If Gabriel and his niece hadn’t made it to Mexico by the time his skim was discovered, they were both as good as dead. A beach in Acapulco, or shallow graves in a forest upstate.