The Valachi Papers (8 page)

That's what finally happened on this job on Tremont Avenue and

177th Street in the Bronx. It was a store full of silk. We had been looking it over for a couple of weeks, and it looked like a cinch. It didn't even have a Holmes alarm system. We were in a Packard touring car when I pulled up in front of the store on the Tremont Avenue side. I forget what we used to break the window—I think it was a milk can. Anyway, one of the fellows went into the store to start handing out the bolts of silk. Two others were carrying them out to the car. The fourth one was standing on the corner so he could see down 177th Street. All of a sudden the guy on the corner comes running over to me, saying that there was a car coming down the side street. As he is telling me this, I see another car coming slowly down the avenue towards us, and I tapped the horn to warn the fellows in the store to get out. Then, just as they were all back in the Packard, I see another car creeping up right behind us. Gee, I said to myself, somebody must have tipped the bulls. All of a sudden I felt a gun against my head. It was a cop. I found out later it was this Captain Stetter who had been after us. He said, "I finally got you after three years."

Of course, I kept the motor in the Packard running, and this was where all my practice learning how to drive came in handy. When Captain Stetter told me to take the car out of gear, I said, "Okay," and pretended to start getting out of the car. But I was doing this to turn the steering wheel so I could get the car away from the curb and out onto the avenue. All at once I dove down on the floor under the dashboard, got my right hand on the gas pedal, and held the wheel with my left hand. You must understand that all this was done in a couple of seconds. I pushed down on the pedal as hard as I could with my hand and took off. Naturally the cops around us started shooting, and all the fellows ducked down. They shot the whole windshield off. Believe me, there wasn't any glass left in it.

When I looked up, I saw I was in the middle of Tremont Avenue. All

I could think of was to get the hell out of there. The cops had been getting some new Cadillacs, and one of them was about two blocks behind us. Then what do you think happened? Just as I was coming to a corner, a trolley car pulled out and stopped right in the middle of the avenue. I don't know what to do. If it starts to go forward again, we are dead, as I was going too fast to make a right turn. If it stays where it is, I could make it to the left. But to do this, I have to go across the sidewalk, jumping the curb. Well, the trolley stayed still, and that was all I needed, so I did it.

By now I'm hitting eighty miles an hour, which was a lot of speed in those days, and the cops are way behind me. They had to slow up when they saw the trolley car. For the first time I see some blood running down my wrist and I realize that I am hit in the arm, but I figured this isn't the place to stop and look at it. I turned down the Grand Concourse and kept heading for Harlem. At that time they had police booths along the Concourse, and as we came tearing down it, they blazed away at us. Don't forget we were in a touring car, and as we had been speeding all this time, the top finally flew up and was hanging over the back end. When we got to the bridge into Manhattan, I kept going like a wild man, and we lost them.
I
was only laid up a few days with my arm since the bullet missed the bone and came out the other side. But the bulls traced the car even though we had bent the license plate to hide the number—I still remember it, 719864—and pulled me in.*

*ln
the early 1920s, with few automobiles on the street at night, Valachi rarely used one that was stolen. Somebody his age driving around in a car often would be stopped by the police simply to check the registration papers.

They kept me in the Bronx County Jail for about six weeks. Then I went to court and pleaded guilty to attempted burglary. When I went to get sentenced, the owner of the store was there. After my name and the charge was called out, he jumped up and started yelling at the judge that he wanted to know where the "attempt" was when he was out $10,000 worth of silk. I must admit that he had something. But you see I was learning about the law, and believe me there was a lot to learn. When you plead guilty, you can plead to a lesser charge. But the owner of the store wouldn't buy this. He said it wasn't fair, and where was his silk? My lawyer, who was Dave Goldstein, told me to answer. So I said, "I threw it in an empty lot."

With that I was remanded for a couple of weeks while they worked the whole thing out about whether I had to withdraw my plea and stand trial. The decision was that the court could not force a defendant to do this, so now I was up for sentencing. Because I was under twenty-one, the judge could have sentenced me to the Elmira Reformatory for eighteen months. But my lawyer told me to go in front of him with a strut. That way he would figure me for a tough guy and send me to Sing Sing Prison, where I would be out in only nine months.

This is how it worked. At the reformatory
I
wouldn't get any time off for good behavior. But my sentence at Sing Sing would be one year and three months to two years and six months. With time off I will only do eleven months and twenty days before I'm up for parole. I will get credit for the time I was in the Bronx County Jail already; if I watch my step, I will be out of Sing Sing in less than nine months.

When I heard this, I naturally went in front of the judge with a strut. I could see right away that he didn't like the way I was acting. I remember just what he said, "Do you think you're fooling me acting like a tough guy? Well, I'll tell you something. I'm going to send you where you want to go. You know why? Because the sooner you're out, the sooner you'll be in front of me again."

Well, who cared what he said?

A few days later Valachi was taken to Sing Sing. At first his strategy to escape a longer sentence in a reformatory seemed a dreadful mistake. He was placed in a tiny, clammy cell with no sanitary facilities other than a bucket. To his relief, however, he learned that he would stay there for only ten days while he was being processed. And even before the ten days were up, he was rather enjoying himself. Taken to a special prison showing of a Broadway musical—
The Plantation Review —
he
recalls, "I had such a great time I couldn't believe that I was at Sing Sing."

He was then assigned to a construction gang building a new cell-block, delighted to be out of his dungeonlike quarters, and life at Sing Sing passed quickly and uneventfully for him. Better yet, he was released on parole after serving his nine months and returned to New York, where, within days, he was back "crashing" store windows.

There had been some changes during his absence. His old 107th Street burglary gang had now taken to hanging out on 116th Street "where all the action was." Valachi found the new life there exhilarating, especially at night at the Venezia Restaurant:

Guys were coming there from all over the city. Besides us Italians, there were the Diamond brothers, Legs and his brother Eddie, there were other Jew boys, and Irish guys from down around Yorkville. Sometimes you saw Lepke and Gurrah and also Little Augie from the East Side downtown.* But the big man on 116th Street was Ciro Terranova,

^::
"Louis (Lcpkc) Buchaltcr, Jacob (Gurrah) Shapiro, and Jacob (Little Augie) Orgen were among the most feared Jewish mobsters of the day. Shapiro got his odd alias as a young hoodlum, when pushcart peddlers would cry, "Get out of here, Jake's coming!" The first part of the frenzied warning sounded more like "Gurrah," and the name stuck.

the Artichoke King. He got the name because he tied up all the artichokes in the city. The way I understand it he would buy all the artichokes that came into New York. I didn't know where they all came from, but I know he was buying them all out. Being artichokes, they hold; they can keep. Then Ciro would make his own price, and as you know, Italians got to have artichokes to eat.

To his dismay, however, Valachi learned that the new 116th Street gang had acquired a new wheelman during his absence, and now they had no place for him. He put together a little group of his own and went on a series of petty thefts until he had enough money to buy a 1921 Packard under an assumed name. The car enabled Valachi to embark on more lucrative and sophisticated operations, using homemade tools to jimmy open shop and loft doors instead of risking die noise of breaking windows.

His new confidence nearly did him in. While he was trying to force his way into a Bronx warehouse full of furs, one of the tools snapped. Another member of the gang suggested returning to East Harlem for a replacement. "Sure," Valachi said, "why not? Get into the car." Just as they were ready to depart, a patrolman walking his beat fired at them. The slug lodged in the base of Valachi's skull. "All I heard was that one shot," he says. "Next I heard someone yell. 'He's dead! What'll we do with him?"' Then Valachi passed out. His companions dropped his body off at 114th Street near the East River, fired six shots in the air, and left in the hope that the police would consider it a gangland murder that had no connection with the attempted robbery. But when they passed by an hour later, Valachi was still lying in the street. Finally they noticed he was still breathing and brought him to a neighborhood doctor noted for his cooperation in such matters. A bottle of

Scotch was used as an anesthetic to remove the bullet. Valachi remembers coming to in die doctor's office and being told, "Drink this." But his proudest moment was when he heard the doctor say through his haze of pain, "This kid won't die. He's built like a bull." It took him two months to recover. "The thing that saved me," he says, "was all that work I did with the sledgehammer at Sing Sing. I was in real great shape."

But his near-fatal wound was just the first episode in a star-crossed period for Valachi. Soon after he had returned to robbery as a regular way of life, he fell in with a man who would have a profound influence on his future, Dominick (The Gap) Petrilli. The Gap suggested a joint venture that seemed ideal —a loft in upper Manhattan crammed with silk, without an alarm system. Valachi agreed at once, but his Packard wasn't big enough to carry off the booty. Thus another friend, Joseph (Pip the Blind) Gagliano, who had his own car, was recruited. Two more hoodlums rounded out the group. Everything was proceeding smoothly, most of the silk successfully placed in the two cars, when they spotted a figure crouched in a corner of the loft next to a telephone. He turned out to be the night watchman. Outraged at this unexpected discovery, two of the gang attacked him with iron pipes. As the watchman tried to ward off the blows, he screamed that he had already called the police. But when everyone ran outside, Valachi's Packard would not start. "Well, there goes another car," he said as he jumped into Pip the Blind's Lincoln, barely escaping the police. The next day a member of the gang came to Valachi's house and asked him for the keys to retrieve the Packard, arguing that it was ridiculous to lose it. Valachi stupidly agreed to die request. "You got to remember I was just getting over that bullet in the head," he says, "and I wasn't thinking too good." Worse yet, the friend took Valachi's youngest sister along for the ride. The police, of course, had die car staked out, followed the couple home, and the next thing Valachi knew he was under arrest again.

Released on bail, he was headed for still more trouble. He had become increasingly friendly with some Irish toughs during his free nights at the Venezia Restaurant, and to his amazement one evening, when he returned home from visiting a friend in another part of the city, he was suddenly accosted by an angry group of Italian youths whom he had grown up with. "What the hell's going on?" he demanded.

"You know what happened on 116th Street," one of them, Vincent Rao, snarled. "Those Irish guys shot up the block this morning, and you were driving the car."

Valachi finally convinced Rao that he had been nowhere in the area. Then Rao explained that an automobile had suddenly roared down the street spewing bullets and that Valachi's Irish friends had been recognized. Someone also thought that he had seen Valachi behind the wheel. Apologizing for the mistake, Rao took Valachi aside and said, "Anyway, these Irish like you. I want you to set them up for us. Will you do it?"

"I'll think about it," Valachi replied.

The next day, typically suspicious and wary, he decided to approach one of his Irish friends, known to him only as Mike, to see if there was another side to the story. No sooner did he confront Mike than he found himself covered by a gun and was told, "Let's go see the others."

As suspect with them as he had been with Rao the day before, Valachi was told by the Irish that they had not initiated the shooting incident. "Okay," he said, "that's good enough for me. There's no reason for you to lie. I want to join you guys. I like your style. You got a lot of guts."

"I don't know," one of them said. "After all, you were brought up with them other guys."

"You're right," Valachi replied, "but I ain't sticking up for you. I'm sticking up for my own principles. I'm supposed to double-cross you guys, and you ain't done nothing to me. So why should I set you up for them?"

That night, in a temper as characteristic as his caution, Valachi telephoned Rao. "After this," he said, "when you people meet me, shoot me because I am out to shoot you guys."

"What's the matter with you?" Rao asked.

"What do you mean, what's the matter? First of all, don't I have enough troubles of my own? I got enough things on my mind being out on bail. So all of a sudden everybody is looking to shoot me without any reason. And you started it, asking me to do something that only a dog would do. Why are you picking on me to pick on those guys? I don't like it. So watch out!"

"Jesus," Rao said. "I want to talk to you."

"Fuck you!" Valachi yelled and hung up.

The Irish gang, as Valachi called it, was in fact a polyglot outfit that also included two Jews and, counting Valachi, even three Italians. For about three months intermittent gunplay with the
11
6th Street gang took place. The only casualties were two innocent bystanders—"Poor souls," as Valachi puts it—who happened to get in the way of stray bullets. Meanwhile, Valachi had begun to regret the "guts" he had originally admired in his new companions. Instead of the burglaries he was used to, they favored armed robberies embracing everything from subway stations to bank shipments of cash. "They had a lot of nerve," Valachi recalls, "but no business sense. I figured it would be a short life, staying with them." He tried to persuade them to adopt his operational methods, breaking into warehouses and lofts at night. Finally they agreed to let him lead them in the looting of a clothing store. After picking the lock, Valachi took most of the gang inside, while stationing two others on the sidewalk as lookouts. But when he returned with an armful of suits, he discovered that his two lookouts, doubtless bored with guard duty, had lined up half a dozen passersby against the wall at gunpoint and were removing their wallets. At once Valachi called a halt to the operation and drove off. "Jesus," he said to the two lookouts. "What are you doing with those people? This ain't no game. You do that and it ain't a burglary anymore; it's a stickup. Them people can identify us."