Narrows Gate Read online

  Text copyright ©2011 Jim Fusilli

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced, or stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without express written permission of the publisher.

  Published by AmazonEncore

  P.O. Box 400818

  Las Vegas, NV 89140

  ISBN: 978-1-61218-137-0

  To my parents,

  Narrows Gate born and raised.

  CAST OF CHARACTERS

  NARROWS GATE

  Sal Benno

  Leo Bell

  William “Bebe” Rosiglino, aka Bill Marsala

  Hennie Rosiglino, mother of Bebe Rosiglino

  Vincenzo Rosiglino, father of Bebe Rosiglino

  Vito and Gemma Benno, proprietors of Benno’s Salumeria, Sal’s uncle and aunt

  Abramo Bell, Leo’s father

  Father Gregory, pastor of St. Francis of Assisi Church

  NARROWS GATE CREW

  Fortunato Spaletti, aka Frankie Fortune, caporegime for New Jersey

  Domenico Mistretta, aka Mimmo, responsible to Fortune for Narrows Gate

  Boo Chiasso, soldier assigned to Mimmo

  Fat Tutti, soldier assigned to Mimmo

  Freddie Pop, associate

  FARCOLINI ORGANIZATION

  Carlo Farcolini, capo famiglia or undisputed boss. Consolidated the New York–New Jersey crime organizations. Aligned with the Sicilian Mafia.

  Cy Geller, South Florida–based consigliere. Former head of Jewish mob in New York.

  Anthony Corini, sotto capo who oversees the Farcolini relationships with government, business, entertainment and other so-called legitimate enterprises. Long-time Farcolini associate.

  Bruno Gigenti, sotto capo responsible for traditional criminal activities in New York and New Jersey. Joined Farcolini after the hit on Nunzio Patti, his former boss.

  Sigmund Baumstein, aka Ziggy Baum, reports to Corini. Charged with expanding gambling and entertainment activities to Las Vegas.

  Eugenio Zamarella, Bruno Gigenti’s hit man

  Fredo Pellizzari, soldier and driver to Bruno Gigenti

  Gus Uccello, aka Gus the Boss, deceased

  Nunzio Patti, deceased

  BEBE’S WORLD

  Rosa Mistretta Rosiglino, Bebe’s wife; Mimmo’s niece; mother to Bebe’s son, Bill Jr.

  Nino Terrasini, Bebe’s pianist and bodyguard

  Phil Klein, Bebe’s manager

  Rico Enna, executive at talent agency owned by Anthony Corini and Klein’s boss

  Eleanor Ree, internationally renowned Hollywood actress and Bebe’s mistress

  Guy Simon, musician and Ree’s ex-husband

  Captain Bridges, proprietor of radio’s Captain Bridges’ Amateur Hour

  U.S. MILITARY & GOVERNMENT

  Maj. Henry Landis, head of the Army’s Psychoanalytic Field Unit

  Lt. Charles Tyler, Army liaison to the Psych Field Unit and, in the post-war years, the Senate Criminal Investigation Committee

  Sen. Alvin Dunney (D, SC), head of the Senate Criminal Investigation Committee

  CONTENTS

  PROLOGUE

  PART ONE

  CHAPTER ONE

  CHAPTER TWO

  CHAPTER THREE

  CHAPTER FOUR

  CHAPTER FIVE

  CHAPTER SIX

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  PART TWO

  CHAPTER NINE

  CHAPTER TEN

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  PART THREE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

  CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

  CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

  CHAPTER THIRTY

  CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

  CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

  CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE

  CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX

  CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN

  CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT

  CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE

  CHAPTER FORTY

  CHAPTER FORTY-ONE

  CHAPTER FORTY-TWO

  EPILOGUE

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  PROLOGUE

  One late-spring day in 1928, Carlo Farcolini invited his boss to lunch. “Too much tension between us,” he explained to Gus Uccello, hat in hand. “People have been telling you wrong. I want to make clear my point of view.”

  Uccello agreed to a formal sit, pleased his underling had bowed. Farcolini ran a tight ship over in Jersey and delivering the heroin in hatboxes was a stroke of genius. But his ideas were too modern, too American. Next, this guy will have us in bed with the niggers.

  Farcolini suggested a little place Uccello liked, way out in Coney Island. To Uccello’s mind, no bodyguard was required. The old rules were clear: Gus the Boss couldn’t be touched. Farcolini would be held liable if the unimaginable occurred.

  Farcolini brought the car around to Mulberry Street. He held open the door when Uccello appeared.

  Uccello enjoyed the ride, the fresh air, the scent of the ocean. A pleasant day, no? He said it reminded him of the Tirreno off Capo Gallo.

  Farcolini knew there was no way this Mustache Pete could see the pie was too small and cut too thin. Uccello hadn’t considered the possibilities in the new country. Meanwhile, we got guys hijacking each other, paying the cops to arrest each other—we’re killing each other over who’s going to run the labor rackets, the piers, gambling, the whores. We look like petty thieves. We appear incapable.

  In the restaurant, Uccello put on a typical display: shoveling down the antipasti, pappardelle with a lamb ragu, a whole roasted chicken with lemon and caccociulli, Gus the Boss sucking the bones. All the while, Farcolini picked at mussels in wine, braised escarole on the side, some fresh-baked bread, sipping a homemade red while Uccello wielded his fork like a weapon.

  “So,” Gus the Boss said finally, as the last plate was cleared. “You think we should go in with the Jews…”

  Eavesdropping, the restaurant owner signaled to his mother-in-law, who tottered over to offer a ricotta cheesecake made in her kitchen upstairs—just for Signor Uccello. The tiny 80-year-old woman smiled seductively, a withered angel. “I bring it down,” she said.

  “Go now,” Uccello replied with a gluttonous grin, waving his finger in the air.

  With that, the owner excused himself to escort the old widow upstairs. “Unless you want I bring the coffee first…”

  “I’ll do it,” Farcolini said.

  Eager to be served by his subordinate, Uccello nodded.

  Sitting across Surf Avenue in a boosted car, Frankie Fortune saw the owner and his mother-in-law depart.

  Four doors opened in unison: Fortune, Anthony Corini, Sigmund Baumstein and Domenico Mistretta stepped onto the street.

  Farcolini pushed back from the table, scraping his chair on the terrazzo.

  Seconds later, Uccello took the first of 22 rounds to the face and chest, rattling in his seat like he was being electrocuted. He fell back with a gruesome thud.

  Twenty-two rounds, meaning only two shots missed.

  Later, when they saw the story in the Daily News, they teased Mistretta, who they called Mimmo, claiming he’d put a pair
in the Franklin stove.

  Meanwhile, Farcolini walked the streets of Little Italy with Cy Geller, the head of the Jewish mob, at his side. Farcolini had secured permission from Uccello’s rival, Nunzio Patti, for the hit after Farcolini had shown him the stupidity of Sicilian crews at cross-purposes. Patti was amenable to working with Geller and the Jews; and, having pledged to Farcolini the waterfront on both sides of the Hudson in exchange for a bigger slice of the heroin trade, he felt secure. Now Nunzio Patti sat on top of the mountain. Once he learned everything Farcolini knew, he’d turn him into mulch, his half-Jew crew too. He’d give the assignment to Bruno Gigenti, who was built like a buffalo and had no qualms about putting a rival down.

  Four months later, Farcolini met his new boss in a lounge at the Hotel Commodore and told him that an agent for the Internal Revenue Service intended to pay him a surprise visit. Patti ran a legitimate carting company from an office in the Graybar Building next to the Grand Central Terminal. “The books are clean,” Patti said. “I got no cause to worry.”

  “The muscle,” Farcolini reminded him. “You got men on probation.”

  Patti looked hard across the table, remembering Uccello in Coney Island, the grisly photo in the Daily Mirror.

  “Convenienza,” Farcolini said, meaning propriety. Then he added that the Treasury men would arrive at 11 o’clock. “Maybe you want your lawyer there.”

  “No, I’ll act surprised,” Patti said. He was thinking Farcolini might look like a droopy-eyed caveman, but the son of a bitch made the trains run right.

  Next day, a few minutes after 11, Patti’s secretary buzzed Sigmund Baumstein into the inner office. In Farcolini’s crew, Baumstein was known as Ziggy Baum. Normally a flashy dresser, Baum wore a conservative suit and tie for the assignment.

  When the real T-men arrived at noon, they found Patti with his carotid artery severed, and Baum gone. The secretary was gone, too. Through the beveled glass, she’d seen Baum’s shadow do its work. The cops located her four days later in Poughkeepsie. When they asked her to describe Patti’s killer, she said, trembling, “Jewish.”

  Back in New York City, the cops waited, expecting to find Cy Geller’s gangsters dead on their doorstep, Sicilians taking their revenge. When nothing happened, they understood an alliance had been formed. This, they knew, was not good. Somebody on the dago side had made the smart move.

  His power consolidated, Farcolini established as his deputies Anthony Corini and Bruno Gigenti, the latter a brutal Patti ally whose services he’d secured before the hit. Given his choice of domain, Cy Geller selected Miami, a key port for heroin coming through Cuba. From the West Coast, Ziggy Baum would report to Corini, who would serve as Farcolini’s deputy in matters of government and legitimate businesses, such as entertainment and the press. Jersey was given to Frankie Fortune, with Gigenti turning over his Hudson County crew, which in turn was assigned to Mimmo to run out of a candy store in downtown Narrows Gate, close to the piers, close to the trains, close to two tunnels into the city. In return, Gigenti got extra points on liquor, narcotics, gambling and prostitution. New York was his to rule, particularly the piers, trucking and unions. Fortune reported directly to Farcolini, as did Corini and Gigenti, who took over Uccello’s old storefront in Little Italy as his headquarters.

  And so Carlo Farcolini had in place his syndicate, the one he’d envisioned several years ago while he recovered from a beating Uccello had authorized. Properly organized and populated by men of appropriate temperament, Farcolini saw no reason why it couldn’t run the rackets in the United States for the remainder of the century.

  The week before Christmas 1931, Vito Benno found his 8-year-old nephew sitting on the floor behind his grocery store’s counter. The plump, curly-haired boy held an old Beretta semiautomatic in his lap.

  Startled, Vito kept an eye on his customers, women bundled in scarves and heavy coats who crowded the shop, hefting tins, studying dry goods. Cured meats and cheese hung on hooks.

  “I told you I don’t want you near the gun,” he whispered in Sicilian.

  The boy held onto it, flexing his little trigger finger. “That cop Maguire,” he replied softly. “He hits your arm, your leg, with the nightstick.”

  “Sal—”

  “He’s coming now, right? For his money.”

  Vito held out his hand. “Salvatore, give me the gun.”

  “No.”

  Vito Benno was thin, a little hunched in his posture, bronzed even in winter, a touch of snow in his black hair. By nature, he was mild in manner, reasoned, unhurried. But now his mind was gripped with dread. His nephew was usually carefree, always eager to please, never a moment’s trouble. Now he was saying he could shoot a cop.

  “What kind of trouble are you looking for?” Vito said.

  “Nobody puts an eight-year-old in jail.”

  “Sal, don’t make me—”

  “You grab the gun from me now, the thing could go off.”

  The bell rang over the front door. Cold air rushed in.

  A sinister voice sang, “Oh, Vito. Vito.”

  Maguire the cop, the scourge of Polk Street. He was intent on removing immigrant slime from Narrows Gate. The Irish, to his mind, having arrived several decades ago and winning the fight for survival, owned the mile-square town, save this overcrowded, stink-riddled patch. Empowered by the rat-eyed Mimmo and his band of thugs, the guappos were itching to take over, preparing to push uptown, to soil streets trod by the righteous, the honorable. Maguire swore to all he held holy that he would never allow that to happen. Having his way with them, their bones battered and their money gone, soon they’d sail back home. All would be as God intended.

  Maguire shook the light snow off the shoulders of his navy coat, his nightstick posed in prominent display.

  Vito’s patrons scurried to the door, leaving the warmth of the stove the boy stoked not an hour ago.

  “I’m waiting,” Maguire said.

  The shopkeeper toddled around the counter, wiping his hands on his apron.

  Gun in his fist, Salvatore Benno spun to his knees.

  In halting English, Vito Benno said, “I’m sorry, but maybe next week. Next week before Christmas—”

  “Ah, but you recall I told you Christmas arrives a wee bit early this year, Vito.”

  Cowering, his head bowed, Benno said, “Yes, but I must have my, my…The money from customers…I don’t have the money from…Not now.”

  When the last of Benno’s patrons fled to Polk, Maguire turned. The broad grin falling from his face, he swung the nightstick. The blow struck bone hard on the side of the shopkeeper’s leg. Maguire then thrust the stick’s butt end into Benno’s midsection. He collapsed in a heap.

  Salvatore Benno raised the gun. Now, he thought. Jesus Christ, shoot him now.

  “The honey, Benno,” the cop said as he stared down, his jaw twitching, spittle on his lip. “The fuckin’ honey…”

  “A minute, please,” Vito said meekly, his hands shaking. Struggling to his knees, he sent a furtive glance toward the case, hoping to catch his nephew’s eye.

  Thinking the shopkeeper was looking to where he kept his cash, Maguire bent at the waist and peered past jugs of olives and platters of breaded cutlets. He saw Salvatore Benno staring at him.

  “On your knees too, eh?” the cop said.

  The gun was hidden from view. But the boy still had his finger on the trigger.

  Maguire returned upright.

  Shoot the son of a bitch, Sal Benno told himself, quivering as he tried to focus his rage. Put one between his balls. Drop the man who shames us where we live.

  Vito limped around the counter. In Sicilian, he said softly, “Put the gun on the floor. Sal, please…”

  Looking up, Sal Benno saw a deep sadness in his uncle’s eyes. He understood: Maguire’s brutal arrogance the man could take. But his nephew resorting to crime, no.

  “Vito, I’m not standing for one of your games,” Maguire said impatiently. “I’d just as soon see
this foul place empty.” He turned his back to survey the shop. “God, the stench of it…”

  The boy clenched his teeth. He closed one eye. Trembling, he lifted the gun.

  Then he slumped and put it on the wooden floor. Slowly he got up, the knees and the rump of his pants sprinkled with sawdust. As he walked away, he muttered in Sicilian, “I’m you, I go see somebody.”