Gangster by Lorenzo Carcaterra Page B

it to you! My son!
        Paolino turned and walked away from Pudge and Angelo, his head down, his eyes filled with tears.
        I still think we should have tossed Banyon in the drink, Pudge said, turning his back to Paolino and the pier. Let the rats have their way.
        He belongs to the workers, Angelo said. They'll do a better job than the rats. Believe me, Banyon won't live long enough to earn a week's salary.
        And what about your pop? Pudge asked.
        Angelo looked at Pudge and shrugged. He's happy when he's working, he said. It's what he wants and it's what he'll get.
        Angelo clutched his stomach, turned and started a fast walk away from the pier. Pudge, surprised by the sudden move, ran after him.
        Where are you going? he asked.
        I need to find a place where nobody can see me, Angelo said.
        See you do what?
        Throw up, Angelo said.
    4
    _____________________________
    Summer, 1923
    IT WAS A busy time.
        Twenty-four-year-old bond salesman Juan Terry Trippe quit his job to join his friend John Hambleton to start a plane taxi service called Pan American World Airways. The nation's first supermarket opened in San Francisco and Frank C. Mars, a Minnesota candy maker, earned $72,800 in less than a year, with a new bar he called the Milky Way. Time published its first issue and more than thirteen million automobiles clogged the roadways. Adolf Hitler and Benito Mussolini began their push to power in Europe. Stateside, workers and executives forked over larger chunks of their money to the government in the form of a federal income tax, led by John D. Rockefeller Jr. who paid $7.4 million under the existing rates.
        And in New York City, the gangsters got richer.
        It was a period of expansion and upheaval and it all helped to serve the gangster interest. No one law did more for their personal gain than what was first called the Prohibition Enforcement Act and later the Volstead Act, which made the sale of alcoholic beverages anywhere in the United States a crime. The law, which passed on October 20, 1920, served as the midwife to the birth of twentieth-century organized crime. It opened wide the vault and gave the enterprising gangster free reign in dozens of untapped markets, including trucking, distribution and nightclubs--all of which served the public's desire for a nickel glass of beer.
        Wherever the opportunity for making money existed, the gangster was quick to marshal his resources.
        When race riots erupted across twenty-six cities in 1919, sending urban blacks scurrying deeper into the pockets of poverty, Angus McQueen and his ilk were ready to cash in. They tripled the number of betting parlors in the poorer neighborhoods, charging only a penny a wager on the number of the day. Soon, the gangs were hauling in profits of over ten thousand dollars a week in what was referred to on the streets as the nigger numbers.
        The circuslike trial of Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti, arrested for a Massachusetts payroll robbery and murder, convinced a silent minority of Italian-Americans that justice could never be had in their adoptive homeland, making them more than receptive to the recruitment overtures of Italian gangsters. In addition to those willing workers, there were 3.5 million more Americans without jobs and, with twenty thousand businesses failing each year, the prospects would only grow higher. The gangsters were again quick to capitalize on such an availability of cheap labor, offering tax-free solid wages in return for a pulled gun or a late-night heist.
        In 1922, the New York Daily Mirror began publication and, along with the still-infant New York Daily News and a cluster of other tabloids, devoted full, detailed coverage to the better-known hoodlums, turning many of them into recognizable names and faces, helping to fuel the public image of the gangster as celebrity.
        I can't think of any other time in