Brooklyn Noir 3: Nothing but the Truth by Tim McLoughlin Page A
Authors: Tim McLoughlin
Tags: Ebook
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have a way of soothing the savage breasts of certain blasphemers on the outside—the ones loitering in dubious doorways, like spiders hungry for flies.
To get to Brownsville—which nobody in Manhattan nowadays has ever heard of, never mind that it was home to the departed pugilist Al “Bummy” Davis and later two other heavyweights by the names of Mike Tyson and Riddick Bowe—you must catch the Brooklyn-bound 3 train. Hang onto your snatchables for the next thirty to forty minutes and you should arrive at the elevated Saratoga Avenue station relatively unmolested.
Now then, descend two flights of tired-out stairs. Feel the grooves beneath your feet, created over time by the lunch bucket hordes. Decades ago there was a lively after-shift crowd, too, arriving in Packards and Imperials and Cadillacs. The shtarkers and Mafiosi of Manhattan, all dressed up in their spats and sharkskins for copious meals in the trattorias of Mulberry Street, would slum it across the East River to Brownsville for dessert: a nice plate of biscotti maybe, washed down with genuine Brooklyn egg creams. Also maybe some business.
Upon reaching the sidewalk, the first thing you see is the Shop Smart Mini-Mart. In another day this was a round-the-clock pastry shop and candy store known as Midnight Rose’s. That and the headquarters of Murder Incorporated, which in truth was not, in the commercial sense, a kosher establishment.
The proprietor of Murder Inc. was a Brownsville homeboy by the name of Albert Anastasia, a.k.a. “Lord High Executioner.” He was a short, fat man with cold eyes and a habit of telling smutty jokes at the dinner table with his mouth full of food. He insisted that his Christian name was Albert, which sounded to him more American than what his birth certificate read: Umberto Anastasia .
In the enterprise directed from Midnight Rose’s, Umberto/ Albert Anastasia was assisted by Louis “Lepke” Buchalter. In contractual association with Charles “Lucky” Luciano and Meyer Lansky, Messrs. Anastasia and Buchalter undertook approximately 800 acts of permanent violence before the count was forever lost on October 25, 1957.
At 10 o’clock a.m. on that date, a red Cadillac sedan containing a debonair Brownsville candy and pastry merchant pulled up in front of the Park Sheraton Hotel in Manhattan, which is now the Park Central but still situated at 870 Seventh Avenue. Mr. Anastasia slid out from the back of the Cadillac and strolled into the hotel barbershop for his daily shave and shoeshine. And on that particular morning, his weekly haircut.
He parked his blue chalk-striped suit in a plump barber’s chair of maroon leather, reclined, and closed his eyes. Mr. Anastasia was said to have been chortling under a hot white towel dropped across his moon face; he might have been plotting a preemptive strike against a certain business rival on the Italian north side of Brownsville who had whispered something about how the fat man at Midnight Rose’s was headstrong.
Unaccountably, Mr. Anastasia’s chauffeur sped away from the curb outside two minutes after that towel went down.
The Negro shoeshine kid started up with his brushes, as well as the song Mr. Anastasia got such a kick out of: Shine and shine / Fifty-cent a boat / Make you look like a New York s’poat …
The Italian barber started in with his scissors where the flesh pooched out from his customer’s collar line. But when several gentlemen suddenly piled through the door, all wearing sunglasses and fedoras and bulky coats and waving large pistols, the barber and the kid took a break.
A barrage of bullets found their way into Mr. Anastasia’s chest, arms, head, and left rib cage. The fusillade was of such weight and velocity as to propel him out of the plump chair and down to the tiled floor, where he died in a crumple amongst his hair clippings.
There were no arrests following the assassination of Albert Anastasia. But it was generally accepted by police and
To get to Brownsville—which nobody in Manhattan nowadays has ever heard of, never mind that it was home to the departed pugilist Al “Bummy” Davis and later two other heavyweights by the names of Mike Tyson and Riddick Bowe—you must catch the Brooklyn-bound 3 train. Hang onto your snatchables for the next thirty to forty minutes and you should arrive at the elevated Saratoga Avenue station relatively unmolested.
Now then, descend two flights of tired-out stairs. Feel the grooves beneath your feet, created over time by the lunch bucket hordes. Decades ago there was a lively after-shift crowd, too, arriving in Packards and Imperials and Cadillacs. The shtarkers and Mafiosi of Manhattan, all dressed up in their spats and sharkskins for copious meals in the trattorias of Mulberry Street, would slum it across the East River to Brownsville for dessert: a nice plate of biscotti maybe, washed down with genuine Brooklyn egg creams. Also maybe some business.
Upon reaching the sidewalk, the first thing you see is the Shop Smart Mini-Mart. In another day this was a round-the-clock pastry shop and candy store known as Midnight Rose’s. That and the headquarters of Murder Incorporated, which in truth was not, in the commercial sense, a kosher establishment.
The proprietor of Murder Inc. was a Brownsville homeboy by the name of Albert Anastasia, a.k.a. “Lord High Executioner.” He was a short, fat man with cold eyes and a habit of telling smutty jokes at the dinner table with his mouth full of food. He insisted that his Christian name was Albert, which sounded to him more American than what his birth certificate read: Umberto Anastasia .
In the enterprise directed from Midnight Rose’s, Umberto/ Albert Anastasia was assisted by Louis “Lepke” Buchalter. In contractual association with Charles “Lucky” Luciano and Meyer Lansky, Messrs. Anastasia and Buchalter undertook approximately 800 acts of permanent violence before the count was forever lost on October 25, 1957.
At 10 o’clock a.m. on that date, a red Cadillac sedan containing a debonair Brownsville candy and pastry merchant pulled up in front of the Park Sheraton Hotel in Manhattan, which is now the Park Central but still situated at 870 Seventh Avenue. Mr. Anastasia slid out from the back of the Cadillac and strolled into the hotel barbershop for his daily shave and shoeshine. And on that particular morning, his weekly haircut.
He parked his blue chalk-striped suit in a plump barber’s chair of maroon leather, reclined, and closed his eyes. Mr. Anastasia was said to have been chortling under a hot white towel dropped across his moon face; he might have been plotting a preemptive strike against a certain business rival on the Italian north side of Brownsville who had whispered something about how the fat man at Midnight Rose’s was headstrong.
Unaccountably, Mr. Anastasia’s chauffeur sped away from the curb outside two minutes after that towel went down.
The Negro shoeshine kid started up with his brushes, as well as the song Mr. Anastasia got such a kick out of: Shine and shine / Fifty-cent a boat / Make you look like a New York s’poat …
The Italian barber started in with his scissors where the flesh pooched out from his customer’s collar line. But when several gentlemen suddenly piled through the door, all wearing sunglasses and fedoras and bulky coats and waving large pistols, the barber and the kid took a break.
A barrage of bullets found their way into Mr. Anastasia’s chest, arms, head, and left rib cage. The fusillade was of such weight and velocity as to propel him out of the plump chair and down to the tiled floor, where he died in a crumple amongst his hair clippings.
There were no arrests following the assassination of Albert Anastasia. But it was generally accepted by police and
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