Hit #29, page 5
He was driving a white 1966 Buick. Nothing special, but nice enough. You’ll notice few guys making a lot of money within the structure of organized crime drive flashy cars or live expensively. People who spend their days driving around in limousines and their nights in expensive clubs are prime picking for the Internal Revenue Service. And there is no need to attract unnecessary attention.
He pulled out of his parking spot on the street and headed toward Westchester Avenue. I waited a few seconds then took off after him. The point of following somebody is never to let them out of your sight, but to stay out of their sight as much as possible. There are only a few ways of doing this—for example, you always drive to the rear right of the man you’re trailing. That way he won’t constantly see you in his rear-view mirror. And, most importantly, you never, never stay with your man for too long at one time. If you do, he is eventually going to pick you up. I had no intention of staying with him for more than an hour or two. I just wanted to get the feel of him the first day.
His first stop was at a restaurant right at the end of Westchester Avenue by the Pelham Bay station. He parked his car in front of a hydrant, walked in and had what looked like a cup of coffee. I was sitting across the street and could not see inside so well. As he walked out two guys came up to him and handed him envelopes.
From the restaurant he proceeded down the Bruckner Expressway, then he cut over to Tremont Avenue. He made a right onto Tremont and then drove straight down to the Middletown Avenue cut-off. He stopped by a subway entrance over there, met a guy and picked up an envelope. Then he drove to Westchester Square and picked up another envelope. From there he went south on Westchester until he reached St. Lawrence and there were three guys standing there to meet him. He took their envelopes.
This is going boom-boom-boom. His stops never lasted more than a few seconds and it was obvious he was on a very tight schedule. He really had his schedule worked out well, his runners were always there to meet him and he did not have to wait. Most of them had picked up their action during the night from the pimps, prostitutes, people on their way to work, cab drivers, hustlers and late-shift cops. The day action, from the shop owners, housewives and day workers who bet at work, would come in later in the morning and early afternoon.
From St. Lawrence he went over to Watson Avenue and White Plains and met two colored guys. Then he went down Watson to Rosedale Avenue and found a place to park, again in front of a hydrant. He walked into the project with a brown manila-type envelope under his arm—obviously where he kept his slips and collections. He went into one building and was there about 30 seconds and then he came out and walked across the courtyard into a second building. Again, 30 seconds later he’s out and I see he’s got maybe six envelopes in his hand and he’s stuffing them in the brown manila. This was obviously all the action from the project which, I assure you, can be quite substantial.
With those envelopes in hand, he got on the Pelham Parkway and went up to the Pelham Bay station. He stopped and walked into a restaurant called The Six Brothers and saw two guys. He walked out of there and up the block into another restaurant where he saw three different guys, although I couldn’t be sure he collected from all of them. He was really hustling now. From the second restaurant he went across the street into a candy store where two guys were waiting for him. Then he got back into his car and drove over to Allerton Avenue. All this time I’m trying to follow him and take as many notes as I can. At this point I’m not even stopping to consider what locations might be good for the hit and which ones can be immediately eliminated. I’m just following and writing, following and writing.
He stopped at Allerton and Barker. Another car pulled up next to him and a guy leaned over and handed him a number of envelopes. Then my boy drove east up Allerton to the intersection of Allerton and Boston Road. Then over to Allerton and Wallace. There is a big supermarket there and he parked in the lot and went inside. I gotta assume he saw someone in there.
From that point he began heading into the southeast Bronx. He went over to Tremont and Southern Boulevard and met somebody there. Next stop was in the Hunts Point section, which made me happy. Hunts Point is perhaps the toughest section in the Bronx and has long been a good dumping ground for used bodies. He stopped in front of the Loews Spooner Theatre. There were four colored guys waiting for him in front of the theatre and they reached into the car and dropped envelopes into his manila carrying case. Then he turned down Hunts Point Avenue to Lafayette I think it was, and met a big fat colored woman who handed him an envelope. Where she collected from I don’t know. Maybe in one of the big factories in the area.
He parked about a block later, again in front of a hydrant—the man has absolutely no respect for the law—and went into four of the factories. These are particularly profitable markets for a good runner because all these places have a lot of employees and they all bet. All of them.
From there he went back into the Bronx, up by Castle Hill Avenue. There is a big envelope factory there and he met three people.
By this time it’s 10 A.M. and I am getting really tired and bored. Not careless though, I never forget that I’m on a job and one mistake is one more than I can afford. I followed him to a coffee shop on 174th and either Bryant Avenue or Vise Avenue. He sat there and began reading his paper and making some phone calls. I didn’t know whether he was calling his bookie, which I doubted because he really hadn’t had time to study the form, or what he was doing. I really could not care less because I decided that I had had enough for one day and was going to move along. Having worked in this business many years I know that controllers are creatures of habit—of necessity—and so I was pretty positive that Squillante’s morning schedule was not going to change too much from day to day. I figured it would be very easy for me to pick him up right at this coffee shop Wednesday morning.
I was really tired myself by this time and decided to grab a cup of coffee and maybe a danish. Since I had no plans for a few hours I drove into Manhattan to a luncheonette owned and operated by a friend of mine named Johnny Dee. Johnny Dee is the funniest man I have ever known in my life. He will say anything to anybody, particularly his customers. I once heard him tell a woman giving him grief to “go out and get hit by a bus, you old geezer,” and the look on her face broke me up.
He really didn’t care if his customers ever came in again or not, because the place was actually a combination luncheonette and bookmaking business. He had only one phone and maybe 20 customers who used it, but he did very fine. So he didn’t care as much as I did if his danish turned out to be three days old.
As I walked in he was taking down a round-robin. He was very serious when booking bets, these customers he did not fool around with. “What do you have that’s fresh?” I asked him as he hung up.
“A fourteen-year-old daughter,” he said.
I laughed. “What’s happening tough guy?”
“Nixon and Humphrey, Nixon and Humphrey,” he said. “All my customers want me to find them someone to take their bet. What do I look like?”
“A bookmaker,” I told him.
“Animals and athletes only,” he corrected me. “I don’t book no presidents. Can’t figure ’em, can’t trust ’em. Give me the horses every time. They give you an honest day’s work for a bale of hay.” This was just as the 1968 elections were heating up. Nixon had jumped off to a big lead but Humphrey was making his move into the stretch. “Who you voting for?” he asked me.
I gave him an empty look. “One’s a crook and the other’s a bum. Which one do you think?” As I said that I poured myself a cup of his so-called coffee and asked, “What’s on the menu this morning?”
He picked one up and looked at it. “It looks like a dead roach to me.”
I took two of his semi-stale danish and retired to a booth in the back. I took out my pad and began studying the information I had compiled. I cross-checked it with the material Jackie had given me and from what I could see Squillante had picked up about 40 envelopes. A good, solid morning’s work.
For the first time I began to think about when and where I might make my move. I had absolutely no preconceived ideas about either question. The only time an individual does have to decide beforehand is when he goes to another town and he’s told this location would be particularly good, or this and that location are suitable. If you know the city you really should not depend on other people.
I hadn’t even decided day or night. Although nighttime is usually preferable, it’s not always possible. If a man makes a habit of spending his nights in front of the television set you can forget about it. No one is going to sit in front of his house until he gets the urge to wander out and then take a random shot at him. You’re not if you have a brain in your cranium. So you study every possibility.
I went down my list very carefully and next to each spot which I thought might have potential I wrote down “OK.” Then I know this is a place I want to come back and look at again later. Next to the places that didn’t seem to hold too much hope—the project he visited for instance—I wrote down “No,” and made a thin line through the area.
The place that looked the very best at first glance was Hunts Point. Hunts Point is actually the world’s largest sewer. At one time it had been a major industrial area and, although it was still busy, a lot of business moved out when the junkies, pimps and hookers moved in. Hunts Point had a lot going for it: There are wide open areas, there is noise, and there are enough people around doing strange things that nobody looks to butt into anybody else’s business. With a silencer, if I could catch him by himself, Hunts Point could be the place. And there are a few moments when he is by himself, out of view of all his runners. Finally I made a little asterisk next to it. Although it wasn’t perfect, of the places I had seen today it was the best.
While I am studying these sheets Johnny is screaming up a storm at a nonexistent repairman who is not sitting on a stool in front of his counter. “You son-of-a-bitch,” he yelled, “I call you for four days to get in here and fix this spritzer and where the hell are you? I hope your fuckin’ truck gets a flat tire on 125th Street at three o’fucking clock in the morning!”
“See you, Johnny.”
“Where you going without paying? You owe me seventy cents. Twenty for the coffee and a quarter each for the danish. What kind of establishment do you think I’m running where you can walk out without paying?”
“Seventy cents for that shit?” I screamed as loudly as he did. “For weak coffee and two stale danish? That’s highway robbery!”
“You want first-class service you pay for it!” So I paid for it. I got even though, I didn’t leave him no tip.
That same afternoon I began to gather the equipment I would need. In other words, I made arrangements to get myself a gun.
Getting a gun in New York City is about as difficult as finding a hooker in Las Vegas. I can go anywhere in New York and get myself a gun within 24 hours. The only difficulty is making sure you get a perfectly clean weapon, one which cannot be traced back to you, or traced back to the individual you got it from in the first place. An entire gun-supply industry has developed in New York. There are a number of people in this city who make a nice few extra dollars supplying clean guns and asking no questions. Perhaps the best of them all is Cockeyed Jimmy.
Cockeyed Jimmy and I have known each other since we were kids. He’s a good thief and from time to time we did things together. He stands about 6’4” and weighs a solid 250 without any fat, and he looks bigger. Jimmy became known as Cockeyed about 20 years ago when he tried to ball a nightclub singer—right in the middle of her act. When the nightclub toughs tried to prevent this union, Jimmy kayoed four of them and went a good way towards wrecking the place. Love has no greater actor than a 6’4” muscleman with the hots.
After that people kept saying, “Watch out for that guy, he’s cockeyed,” so they hung the name on him. I enjoyed working with him. At one point we were doing a little muscle work for a bookmaking outfit and we went to visit this businessman who was not paying his bills as regularly as he should’ve. The first time we went to see him his secretary told us he was in a meeting and could not be disturbed.
We returned the next day and, again, his secretary tried to put us off. I opened the door to his office with a good, swift kick and in we went. He was sitting behind his desk and when he looked up and saw us he turned as white as if he had just seen Attila the Hun and his elephant walk in the door. “Listen, stupid,” I said, “if you want to jerk people around, it’s always better to talk to them first.”
I don’t know where this guy got the courage, but he opened his mouth and blurted out, “I’ll pay when I damn well feel like it!”
Finally Cockeyed Jimmy opened his mouth. “You will?” he asked casually. This was one of the older buildings in which you could actually open the windows. We weren’t very high up, but we were high enough that a man would make a nice splat if he fell from that height. Jimmy went over and opened the window. We had no more intention of throwing him out the window than we did of mugging his kids, but he didn’t know that. We picked him up and started carrying him toward the window.
He started screaming bloody murder, “My heart, my heart. I got a bad heart!”
“Think of it this way,” Jimmy answered. “You won’t have to worry about your heart no more.”
“I’ll pay ya, I’ll pay ya.” He wrote out a check and the three of us walked to the bank and cashed it.
Jimmy had shifted operations to the docks a long time ago. He was a longshoreman with a reputation as big as he was for making things happen. Everybody on the docks knows him, so it is never any trouble locating him.
I drove over to West 45th Street and stopped the first longshoreman I met. “Hey,” I asked, “you know Cockeyed Jimmy?”
“What about him?”
“You seen him?” He said he hadn’t. “Well, listen, if you do see him you tell him Joey’s up at the Market Diner on Fifty-first and Twelfth and he wants to see him.” Longshoremen have one of the tightest and most effective codes in the world. They look out for one another. If you give one guy a message you can usually be sure it will get where it is supposed to get. And, just as important, no one will be able to remember how it got there.
The word was indeed passed quickly. By the time I got to the diner, ordered a cup of coffee, flipped through the Daily News and the songs on the little juke box in the booth, Cockeyed Jimmy walked in. He crossed the whole place in maybe four long strides and stuck out that ham he calls a hand. “What’s doing kid, how are you?” I told him and we bullshitted each other for a few minutes to catch up on old times and old people. Eventually we got around to business. “Whattya need?”
“Some goods,” I said. “A piece and a silencer to match.”
He nodded. “You got it.”
“What’s the tab?” This was not like Johnny Dee’s place, where maybe I walk out without paying. This is a cash money deal.
“The piece is seventy-five and the silencer is two hundred.” Just about what I expected. Cockeyed Jimmy is known to be fast and reasonable. There are people who will try to charge you as much as $600 for a silencer. And, in fact, you may never use it. A silencer cuts the sound of a gun discharging from BAM to bim. In some places, hit number 28 for example, you don’t want to use it at all. You want to attract attention. But at this point I didn’t know where I was going to do Squillante.
“Okay. That’s fair. When can I get it?”
“I’ll have it for you in two hours. Where you gonna be?”
“Call me at Patsy’s Restaurant.” The whole meet took ten minutes, and I had myself a gun and silencer on the way.
Patsy’s is the best Italian restaurant in New York City. It’s a joint on First Avenue and 108th Street frequented by connoisseurs of fine cuisine. By the time I meandered my way up there Jimmy had already called once. No problem, I know he’s going to call back. So I sit down and finish reading the paper, have a slice of pie, sit with the owner for awhile and sure enough the phone rings and it’s for me.
“How are you?” says Cockeyed Jimmy.
“Still shittin’ bricks.” He just wanted to make sure it was me.
“Wonderful,” he said. “Your bird is here.”
“Is it domestic or imported?”
“We got you a domestic one.”
I said, “Very good,” emphasizing the very. When I order a gun I don’t order anything specific unless I know I need a certain weapon. So I’ll get whatever my supplier can steal. It could be a .32, .38, .45, he’s got to check the crates on the docks and see what is around.
Jimmy gets his supplies from a number of different places, but his main source is the crates of guns either being imported or exported, and just waiting on the docks. I would wager there isn’t a crate of guns that comes in or out of New York without a few items missing. (This was in 1968, before the heavy supply of the so-called Saturday Night. Specials started coming in from the surrounding states.)
In this particular case Jimmy obtained for me a .38, which is fine because that is the weapon I almost always use. Jimmy told me to get into my car and meet him under the West Side Highway at 20th Street. He was standing there when I pulled up.
“Here’s the toy,” he said, handing me a brown paper bag. “I’ll have your silencer either tonight or tomorrow. Call me later at the number I wrote on the bag.”
“You do good work my friend. I’ll speak to you.” Normally about this time of the week I’m beginning to put my cigarette deals together. And I have been playing with the thought of going ahead and sending a truck down but I know this is going to take a lot of my time and thought. I’ve got to do everything from borrow the cash to make the purchases from Joe Cheese to hire the kids to distribute the goods when they arrive. All this time should be spent thinking about Joe Squillante. Too much, just too much. I finally decided to screw it for the week—although my two new customers are going to be unhappy—because there is no reason to hurt both operations by splitting my time.
