A Palpable Hit - 1980
By Stuart Slade
The Piedmont Ravioli Company, West Side of Mulberry Street, New York, December, 1980
Although most people didn’t know it, visitors who dined in the long lines of Italian restaurants on the east side of Mulberry Street ate ravioli, cannelloni, gnocchi, tortellini and fettucini made by the Piedmont Ravioli company. It was more economic than making their own and the tourists never knew the difference. Not that the products were second-rate, most people agreed that the pasta made at the Piedmont was the best that could come out of a mass-production facility. Despite being a standard New York brownstone, it had four stories of pasta machines whose operators were watched with eagle eyes by the grandmother who had brought the recipes over from Sicily and enforced quality standards with a fierce hand. Yet, they were still mass production products and could not match the quality of fresh pasta produced in small batches by a family business. Or so every small Italian family business would swear with its hand firmly on its heart.
Bricín Ó Murghaile did not care about the finer points of pasta quality. His dietary spectrum ran from corned beef and cabbage via soda bread and Irish Stew to Guinness. Those eating preferences were as false as his name. He was listed on police records as Brian Murphy with a depressingly long record of minor convictions. To the discerning, this indicated that he had an equally depressing tendency to get caught. However, to the Irish Mob, those convictions suggested that he was a hard man and a worthwhile recruit. The truth was that after their defeat of the Genovese Family in the Hells Kitchen War, the Westies were short of men and recruited whoever they could find. Aware that his recruitment had been a matter of necessity and his connection with the Irish Mob was tenuous, he had made a great point of Gaelicising his name and ostentatiously eating what he thought was Irish food. Although he didn’t know it, these pretensions amused his bosses greatly.
"So'tiz a nice business yer 'av 'ere." Ó Murghaile looked around appreciatively. "Wud be a pity av somethin' wus ter 'appen ter it. loike a brutal fire or somethin'. Wirin' in dees auld places is whitie brutal. Fire can start any time an' spread rayle fast. Can be a tragedy ter be sure, if al' de doors are locked an' nobody can git oyt."
"What do you want?" Aristione Spatafore knew the answer already but wanted it in words. A glance at his sister Rossana showed him what the reality of the situation was. She was crouched in a corner sobbing, her arms holding her ripped-open dress closed. She had been comprehensively groped and the experience had left her traumatized. Being violently and roughly mauled was not the sort of thing that happened to good Italian catholic girls.
"We're sellin' insurance." Ó Murghaile looked over at Rossana and licked his lips. "Whitie warrld dis is. Dat wee lassy dare cud trip on de street an' fall on banjacked glass. Cleave 'er face up somethin' brutal. Insurance costs yer a t'ousan' a week. payable in advance. Yer wud na let it expire nigh wud yer. Temptin' fate dat wud be."
Spatafore admitted defeat. He produced a roll of bills and peeled off a thousand dollars. That disappointed Ó Murghaile; he had hoped they wouldn't be able to pay so much without warning so he could extend a week's credit at dire interest rates. Still, he had made a good start to filling his quota of 'insurance customers'.
Trattoria Syracuse, Little Italy
There was an interesting display of cultural misunderstanding going on. To Bertoldo 'Cargo' Cannova, captain of the Mulberry Street Crew, the fact that the meeting was being held in an Italian restaurant was a show of strength for his Family and put the Chinese in the position of being supplicants. To Chung Hsiao-Lin, Straw Sandal of the Mott Street House of the 14K Triad, the fact that the Italians were hosting the meeting and thus paying the check was a sign of their weakness. Each saw themselves as being negotiating from a position of strength and the other as being at a disadvantage. Oddly, that had eased the path to agreement.
"So to summarize." Straw Sandal looked at the Gwailo sitting opposite and reflected how easily the Triads could take over the city from the round-eye gangs. That would mean a gang war though and such things were expensive and created too much disruption. The operating strategy of the 14K could be summarized as 'infiltrate, make alliances and then absorb'. If it came to a war, the 14K, Sun Yee On, Wo Shing Wo and the Shui Fong would forget their rivalries and combine their strength against the enemy. But, there would be no need for that. "Mulberry Street will be the dividing line between Little Italy and Chinatown. The division will run down the middle of the road. The east side of the road will be your territory although you will protect the Chinese people there as if they were your own. The west side will be our territory although we will protect the Italian people there as if they were our own. Even though this problem with the Piedmont Ravioli Company, on the west side, predates this agreement, we will deal with it for you as a mark of good faith. You will select five members of other Families, we will select five members from other Auspicious Societies. If there is a dispute between us, we will select, by drawing of lots, two members from that group, one from your list, one from ours, who will arbitrate. Their verdict will be final. Are we agreed?"
"We are agreed." Cannova nodded and stretched out his hand. Straw Sandal took it and they shook solemnly. It was meaningless to Straw Sandal; an agreement was an agreement, it didn’t need hand-shaking or signatures on paper to confirm it. But the barbarians like doing such things.
Straw Sandal's face suddenly lit up. "We have a Sai-Lo, what you call a wiseguy, who is half-Chinese, half-Italian. We will assign them this task. An auspicious start to our new alliance do you not think?"
Cannova nodded again.
Back out on the street again, Straw Sandal was smiling to himself. From his point of view, the meeting had gone extremely well. Now, with a formal agreement in place, the west side of Mulberry Street was Triad territory and the Triads ruled with a much lighter hand that other gangs. They offered protection certainly, but at reasonable rates and the protection they offered was genuine. People could even decline Triad protection without penalty other than being left unprotected. After a while, people understood that was a poor choice since anybody who interfered with people under Triad protection would regret it. Very quickly and very finally. Word of the polite, reasonable and helpful Sai-Los would get out and people would drift towards the Triads and away from their rivals. Beside him, Long Chung-lee, White Fan of the Mott Street 14K looked curious. "Elder brother, you are going to give this job to our youngest sister?"
"Why not younger brother? She is indeed half-Chinese, half Italian and thus eminently suitable. She is a favorite of our Dragon, and with good reason for did she not kill the traitor Bao Chu when nobody else could?"
"And walked up to our Dragon with a loaded pistol in her pocket and nobody tried to stop her." White Fan winced. The Dragon's personal guards had lost much face and would never live that down. "This would be another good chance to test her abilities. Perhaps the death of Bai Chu was a fluke?"
"She has done well so far. Still, we shall see. Now, let us return to Mott Street and get some proper food."
West Side of Mulberry Street, New York
Ó Murghaile walked down the street, cursing the slush that still remained from the overnight snow. He had already shouldered a few other passers-by into the gutter as befitted his hard man image. One elderly Italian lady had fallen over the kerb as he had done so and others had gone to her aid, brushing the mud and slush from her coat. A young Chinese man who had come to her aid nodded but the significance of the gesture was lost on Ó Murghaile.
A few yards further down the street, he passed a group of Chinese children playing with an old, battered ball. They cowered away from him and let him pass. One thing Ó Murghaile did notice was the youngest of the children had been excluded from their game; instead, she sat miserably on the steps, watching the play. Her clothes, from the woolen stocking cap to her battered jacket and torn jeans, were ragged and shabby. Ó Murghaile guessed she was either an orphan or a bastard, either would explain her exclusion. As he passed, she obviously grew tired of waiting to be invited to join the game and walked away from the other children, following a few yards behind him. He guessed she was heading for the street market to steal some food. With that conclusion, he dismissed her from his consciousness.
Up ahead, an alley led off Mulberry Street towards Mott Street. Ó Murghaile took it, wanting to see if he could find more vulnerable candidates for extortion. Five steps into the alley, the girl crossed the entrance behind him. As she did so, she turned, drew her pistol and fired four shots. One took him full in the back of his head, a second went through his neck, severing his spine just under the skull and the remaining two hit him in the heart. He took two more steps before falling on his face but he was already dead and had been since the first shot hit him. Behind him, the girl returned her pistol to the holster under her coat and walked calmly away. By the time people noticed there was now a dead body in the alley, she had vanished into the crowd. She was just one more street urchin amongst many others only this one was wondering what to buy with the $250.00 she had just earned.
87th Precinct Station House.
"Brian Murphy. I thought the city smelled a little cleaner this morning." Detective Carella looked at the pictures of the body. It had started snowing again and the mortal remains of the Irish gangster had dusting of white covering it. That highlighted the bullet wounds quite nicely.
"Damned neat bit of shooting." Detective Kling had the autopsy report. "Four bullets, all kill-shots. One would have been all it took. Four shows a commendable level of caution. Nobody saw anything, nobody heard anything, nobody knows anything."
"This is New York, Bert. People know better than to get involved."
"You don’t get it, Steve. Really nobody saw, heard or knows anything. You know how they look sideways for support when they’re lying? Well, they didn’t. It's like a ghost did this one."
"Well, we've got nothing to go on and the city is better off without Brian Murphy in it. File it under cold cases unless something new comes up."
"Not so fast." Lt. Peter Byrnes had entered the Bull Pen. "Multiple rounds, all kill-shots, nobody sees or hears anything? We've had four or five others like that in the last few months. Give the Murphy case another look, see if there's any links to the rest. If there are, follow them up. If not, then you can cold-case it."
Six months later, despite Carella and Kling's best efforts, nothing new had emerged and the Brian Murphy case was forgotten. By then, the NYPD had more important things to worry about.