JANUARY 15, 1918
NEW YORK CITY
On the third Tuesday of most months, Mother Moon left our building in Hell’s Kitchen to meet Mother Fineman in a millinery shop on Second Avenue. Mother Fineman was a fence who knew that Mother Moon’s mob of kids stole good merchandise. That Tuesday, I had been chosen to carry the bag of samples—a girl’s dress and blouse from two racks of clothes that we’d picked clean, a can of Savarin Coffee from the five cases we’d boosted from a truck, and two men’s pocket watches, one cheap and one good, part of a lot we’d bought from a jeweler’s assistant who’d stolen them from his own boss.
At the millinery shop the women would spend a couple of pleasant hours examining the goods, haggling over prices, and drinking tea while complaining about the quality of the smoke at the Sans Souci opium parlor, their favorite. I could work the neighborhood if I wanted to, or make myself scarce if I stayed in the store. It was cold that day so I stayed. The place was warm and it smelled good, and looking at the shapely dress forms that the women used in sewing gave me a pleasant itchy feeling I didn’t quite understand. Hell, I was seven years old, maybe eight. Bolts of cloth were stacked on the floor and shelves, and a small kid like me could work his way through them, tunnel toward the back, and find a comfortable place to curl up where no one would notice him but he could see everything that was going on. When you’re my size, that’s a useful skill.
I was stretched out on a shelf when the commotion started on the street. I heard yelling, a quick pop-pop, feet pounding on the sidewalk, and then saw the shop door slam open and bang against the wall. A fat little man crashed through, his straw-boater flying. He vaulted the first display and ducked behind it.
Another shot sounded. Louder, closer. A mirror in the back shattered. Two men with pistols shouldered through the doorway together. Mother Moon and Mother Fineman dove beneath the cash register, teacups forgotten.
The fat little man scuttled straight toward me. For a split second, we were eye to eye, and I flinched against the stench of spoiled garlic that surrounded him. I saw a shiny black suit and white shirt speckled with red and purple stains before he scurried away.
The gunmen turned in crazy circles. Where was their target? He knocked over a dress form and they both blazed away, running toward the headless model. The fat little guy bounced up, dashing across the store, ducking and twisting. One fellow emptied his pistol and reloaded. The other chased the fat man and kept firing. The bullets hit high on the wall and punched through the tin ceiling. The first guy rejoined the chase. The fat man bobbed and twirled and slid, his feet never still. The gunfire continued. I could see sweat pouring down their necks. One of the gunmen whirled and put a bullet through the store window. The gunfire abruptly stopped as his partner smacked him on the back of the head.
The fat little man peeked around the corner. The other two raised their pistols, but the hammers clicked on empty chambers.
The first gunman smacked his partner a second time. They rummaged through their coat and pants pockets. No more bullets. They looked at each other, one said something in Italian, and they disappeared out the front door.
The fat little man slowly stood, his breath huffing, eyes darting madly around the shop. At length, he retrieved his boater, and laughed a little when he stuck a finger through a bullet hole in the crown. After checking the street, he scurried out.
The women emerged from behind the cash register. Mother Fineman began to catalog losses, including the broken glass and mirror. Who could say how much of her stolen goods were damaged? She held up a bolt of dirty cloth. I stood in the middle of the floor and committed it all to memory so I’d be able to tell everyone about the wonders I’d witnessed.
Mother Moon appeared beside me. “Do you know who that was, lad?”
“Yes, ma’am. It was Joe ‘The Boss’ Masseria and those guys were working for Umberto Valenti, the guy that Joe tried to kill last week.”
“And what did you learn from what you just saw?”
“Those guys can’t shoot for shit.”
She tousled my hair. “Aren’t you smart. I think I see an opportunity here for us.”
That very afternoon we started clearing one side of the basement in Mother Moon’s building for a shooting gallery.
The project took more than a week to complete even after we emptied a narrow space along the back. Mother Moon found an article in Modern Mechanix magazine. She hired Mr. Merkl, the carpenter on the third floor, to frame up a wall of lath and plaster, and put in a waist-high counter at one end. Oh Boy and I rounded up bales of newspapers and stacked them from floor to ceiling outside for soundproofing. We rigged coal-oil lights, with sandbags reaching up the wall at the far end. Mother Moon bought targets and a couple of beat-up Colt revolvers, a sawed-off double-barreled shotgun, ammunition, and a gun-cleaning kit from a guy who worked at Frank Lava’s gun shop.
The guy from Lava’s told me about the rudiments of marksmanship, and showed me how to clean the pistols. I thought this was just about the greatest thing that ever happened, and I spent hours in the basement getting used to the big noise, the sudden power, and the recoil. I was able to make mistakes on my own, even when my grip wasn’t strong enough and the Police Positive jumped out of my hand. Or when I shot into the floor and almost hit my own damn foot. I learned to be careful, even when that meant going slow. For a little kid, I became unusually patient. I remembered the way the guys in the millinery shop acted, how fast and uncontrolled they’d been. If one of them had just stopped for a few seconds before he aimed, he’d have dropped the fat little man where he stood. But they were both too excited. Hell, I’d been excited watching them. I could still feel the leftover buzz, and I wanted to feel it again. But excitement didn’t help when it came to hitting what you were aiming at. The trick, I came to learn, was not to hurry and not to hesitate.
I practiced for another week and then we spread the word. The target range was open for business. You could bring your own piece and ammo and rent the range, or Mother Moon would let you practice with her equipment, for a price. We always kept the money away from the shooting gallery, never allowing in more than one guy at a time.
One of our first customers was a gawky, skinny teen from a good neighborhood, not the kind of customer Mother Moon had in mind. She thought she’d attract mugs who wanted to get into local gangs. This was a working-class kid whose father had a good job at the Chelsea Piers. That didn’t keep him from being drafted into the Army to fight in the Great War.
Mother Moon and I met the kid when he showed up on a gray cold afternoon, looking unhappy, hands stuffed into the pockets of his coat. He was pretty young but was already six feet tall, looming over both of us.
“Look,” he said, “I gotta go for training in a couple of weeks, and then I’m sent overseas. They tell me they’re gonna give me marksmanship training but I don’t know from guns. So I figure to get a leg up here by learning to use a pistol, it can’t hurt.”
“A wise young man,” Mother Moon said as she pocketed his money. “Are there other boys from your neighborhood in the same situation?”
“Sure. Dozens of ’em.”
“If you recommend our little enterprise to your friends, I’ll give you extra time with the instructor.”
The deal was done on the spot, and I led him downstairs.
“You’re the instructor?” the guy asked. From the tone of his voice, he was just curious. He didn’t seem to care that I was so much younger and smaller. He stuck out his hand. “Walter Spencer. Spence.”
“Jimmy Quinn. In here.” I pointed the way.
I lit the acrid coal-oil lamps, got out the .32, and showed him how to open the cylinder and load the bullets.
“First, all the things you’ve seen in the movies, Tom Mix shooting guns out of guys’ hands and stuff like that, it’s crap. This,” I said, like I knew exactly what I was talking about, “is a Colt Police Positive. You hold it in your right hand. Now, you can either pull the trigger or pull the hammer back and then squeeze the trigger. Either way, you need to hold it steady. You gotta use both hands or lean on something or kneel down and brace your elbow. Then you line up the sights right in the middle of whatever you’re aiming at . . .” And on and on I went with my half-informed lessons.
Spence listened and watched, following everything I said. We spent the afternoon down there until the stink of the lamps and the gun smoke made it too hard to breathe. When we were done, we took the pistol and the remaining ammo back to Mother Moon and walked down Eighth Avenue in the cold evening to find something to eat.
“You’re right,” said Spence. “It ain’t nothing like the movies. Why don’t they ever have to reload?”
“That’s the movies for you, I guess. You know, I was there when they tried to get Joe the Boss.”
“Really? You saw it?”
“Yeah, let me tell you it was . . .”
And that was the beginning of a curious friendship that grew over the next three months. Somehow, the ten-year difference in age never mattered to either of us. Every now and again some guy would make a crack about Mutt and Jeff. If we could catch him, we’d beat the hell out of him. We went to the movies all the time, ate hot dogs and sandwiches at the deli, stayed up late, and rolled drunks for cash. I showed Spence the finer points of sizing up a properly boiled mark, and we regularly earned more than $100 each week.We sat up all night to watch the sun rise from the roof of Mother Moon’s house. Spence said that his father worked extra hours at White Star Pier, drank a lot, and complained about his son. His mother drank too, and he thought that she worried about him, but he wasn’t sure. That was all he ever said about his parents and his home. Both his mother and dad died while he was overseas.
Spence was a stand-up guy overall. He also delivered other boys from his neighborhood who wanted to play with guns. I provided the lessons, and Mother Moon prospered.
Spence shipped out for training in South Carolina in September. I got one letter saying that it was hot as hell down South, and most of the guys in his unit were apple-knockers from upstate. He hated them all, hated the Army and the whole goddamn thing.