IN 1950, THE WILLIAMSBURG section of Brooklyn, a mostly Puerto Rican neighborhood, stood face to face on its south and southeastern borders with the tense, black poverty of Bedford Stuyvesant. It was here, with Flushing Avenue as the border line, that the youth gangs of the 50s met to enact the rituals of passage that make a ghetto child into a man. They rarely used guns in 1950, content to batter and stab each other with baseball bats and chains and knives. In those days, car antennas (universally called aerials) could be snapped off a fender with one quick tug, like crushing an empty beer can. They made a singing sound, these aerials, as they whipped toward the flesh of an opponent. In schoolyard, on a dark night, they were completely invisible, almost magical.
The eastern and western ends of Williamsburg were heavily industrialized and supported businesses as large as the Knickerbocker and Schaefer Breweries and the Brooklyn Navy Yard, or as small as the individual warehouse-trucking operations on Heyward Street. These businesses formed the employment base for the Williamsburg community, a base that shrank continually. The three decades following World War II saw both breweries, the Navy Yard, and fifty other businesses close their doors forever, leaving Williamsburg with only a smattering of single-owner, garage operations—warehouses with virtually no heat in winter, no ventilation in summer and, most of all, no unions at any time.
Greenpoint, Brooklyn, lay directly to the north of Williamsburg. It was a working-class neighborhood, mostly Polish and Italian, into which the Puerto Rican community of Williamsburg expanded throughout the 1960s, pushing, little by little, along Kent and Wythe avenues, until it occupied all the area from the East River to McGuinness Boulevard. This was not accomplished without bloodshed, as the indigenous population fought tooth and nail to save their wives and children from the ultimate indignity of having to associate with Spanish-speaking human beings.
But the Puerto Ricans had little choice. They were forced to expand because of pressure by still another ethnic group which began to move into Williamsburg in the early 1950s. Hasidic Jews, drawn by the strength of their leader, Rabbi Schoenberg, began to arrive in America shortly after World War II. At first, they settled on the Lower East Side of Manhattan, where they found help from the long-established Jewish population. But the Lower East Side was too crowded, rents were high in the small area that remained Jewish, and jobs were scarce. Besides, there were a great many Jews living there who did not follow Mosaic Law. These were Jews who ate bacon and whose children routinely dated gentiles. The rabbi had seen Jews like these in Europe. There was nothing new here. Nevertheless, he led his people on one last journey. He led them two miles across the Williamsburg Bridge into Brooklyn, into a neighborhood where there were no Jews of any kind.
These were wild-looking people. Dressed in ill-fitting black suits and white shirts without ties, they seemed to wear their black overcoats all the time, summer and winter. Thick, untrimmed beards and long earlocks combined with centuries of imposed isolation to create an insularity which the local population found entirely offensive. The Hasidim went to their own schools, shopped at their own stores, bought only kosher food and first and foremost, in a community where jobs were already scarce, offered employment to each other. The women shaved their heads on the day of their marriages. They wore long dresses and thick, opaque stockings, resulting in a general appearance which can only be called asexual, a certain and deadly insult to the young Spanish girls and their macho boyfriends.
So, the Jews came under immediate attack. The ghetto criminals of Williamsburg and Bedford Stuyvesant saw them as unarmed and therefore helpless, as traditional Jewish victims. What they didn’t understand was that these people had no place to go back to, that their entire world had been destroyed, first by Adolf Hitler and then by Joseph Stalin and that, if necessary, they would have no choice but to die on the streets of Brooklyn. And the predators made still another error, another miscalculation based on ignorance. These people, these Jews, had seen their husbands, wives, parents, and children murdered by the butchers of Germany. They had seen their families shot and stabbed and bludgeoned to death. They had seen humans eaten by dogs. They had seen German soldiers throw living infants into burning ovens and they would not be intimidated by an eighteen-year-old kid with a Saturday night special.
After a time, they began to prosper. They bought up the small warehouses and established factories manufacturing sweaters and blouses. They purchased the row houses along Penn, Rutledge and Heyward streets. Schools were built and temples and even a grand, single-family home for the rabbi, the only one for miles around. It had a lawn with real grass, surrounded by a white wrought-iron fence and, to the Hasidim, gave the distinct air of a people prepared for a long stay. If they could not go back to Eastern Europe, if they could not make the Yiddish world come alive in its own garden, they would do their best to see it blossom in Williamsburg, Brooklyn.
Yet, over the next twenty years, the friction never died down, though it most often showed itself as a competition for political patronage. From the Puerto Rican point of view, the Hasidim had committed two unpardonable transgressions. First, they truly felt themselves to be superior to their darker, gentile neighbors and, second, they made no attempt to disguise their feelings. By the time Ronald Chadwick met his maker, the city of New York had been trying to mediate the dispute for thirty years, but aside from physically separating the combatants in time of actual battle there was little the city could do. Still, the politicians never gave up. There were votes on those streets, block votes, and thus the citizens had to be appeased. The action of the city over the Robert Wagner Homes was a perfect example of both the dilemma and the solution. The homes contained two hundred heavily subsidized apartments. Brand-new units, they represented the only city-funded housing in nearly a decade, and the war for occupancy began even before the old buildings resting on the site were demolished.
The most common charge was that, since everyone knows that all Jews are rich and that these apartments were clearly meant for the poor, the Jews should be excluded. This accusation led to the establishment of a special, though unofficial, fitness board to ensure that only the poorest of the poor would be considered. The Hasidic community, on the other hand, agonized over their vulnerability should they be forced to live door to door with the volatile Hispanics. The city responded by recruiting almost every Jewish housing cop in the city to serve as patrolmen at the Wagner Homes.
The negotiations went on for two years. There were dozens of community planning board meetings in which great arguments were made, in Yiddish and Spanish, as well as English. Finally, a bargain was struck, as all parties had known would happen, in which the apartments were divided evenly and Jews and Puerto Ricans and even a few blacks shared each floor. All that remained was for the politicians to make their ritual observances, to consecrate the holy ground while at the same time getting their pictures in the papers. The date for the grand event was set for Sunday, April 1, at 10:00 AM. The mayor, the president of the City Council, the borough president, Representative Herman Gonzalez and Rabbi Schoenberg, himself, would all appear. There would be speeches and media people galore and, just to make sure there was a nice crowd, a small block party was planned for the afternoon.
Naturally, the sad history of the Robert Wagner Homes had gotten plenty of attention in the local papers over the years and, just as naturally, had not escaped the attention of the radical community, including the American Red Army. Several of the more public organizations, such as the Communist Proletarian Party had sent field operatives to assist the downtrodden minority in their battles with the Jewish community. Muzzafer, on the other hand, preferred to work more quietly. He had been so impressed with estimates of the size of the crowd, that he’d gone to the trouble to prepare a surprise for them.
The surprise involved a trip to New Jersey for supplies. Muzzafer led the foray, accompanied by Effie Bloom and Johnny Katanos. The three drove to the Vince Lombardi truckstop on the New Jersey Turnpike where, after a two-hour wait, they found what they were after. John Dalkey, truckdriver for Fairbanks Galvanized Pipe, Inc., returned to his eighteen-inch flatbed truck after lunch, prepared to make a small delivery of twenty-two pieces of inch-and-a-half by twelve-foot pipe, only to find a heavily rouged Effie Bloom, black bouffant wig rising grandly over dark, aviator sunglasses, waiting in the unlocked cab of his truck. She, with the help of a 9mm automatic, persuaded him to take a short drive into a swamp near the Bayonne Bridge. By the time he’d hoofed it to the nearest phone, Effie Bloom was well into Staten Island and about to cross the Verrazano-Narrows Bridge into Bay Ridge, Brooklyn. She was not followed. Two hundred and fifty dollars worth of galvanized pipe does not excite local policemen, though the information was recorded and, within twenty-four hours, the plate number had appeared on local hot sheets and the vehicle described as “stolen.”
Of course, by this time, the truck had disappeared into a garage in Brooklyn and the plates had been changed. Because of her delicate touch, Jane Mathews handled most of the explosives. First, the ends of the pipe resting against the back of the cab were plugged with six inches of concrete. Then, after drilling holes in the pipe for the insertion of lead wires, small amounts of plastic explosives were placed against the concrete. Wires were run from the pipe through the back of the cab to a clock-timing device set under the driver’s seat. Finally, thirty pounds of three-penny nails were pushed gently against the explosive, making the truck one, large antipersonnel device.
At 8 AM, the day before the opening of the Robert Wagner Homes, Johnny Katanos drove the truck into Brooklyn. It was the Jewish Sabbath and the streets were nearly empty. Just on the corner of Ross, across from what would become 148 Wythe Avenue, he flipped a switch beneath the dash, cutting out the ignition. No amount of effort restarted the truck, though Johnny kept turning the key until the battery died down to series of pathetic clicks. Then, cursing, kicking the ground in disgust, he walked four blocks to where Theresa Aviles waited with the van. Exulting in their success, they jumped onto the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway and left Williamsburg behind them.
But their celebration was premature. By midnight, it was raining in New York, a cold, spring rain still catching the edge of winter, the kind that rips up cheap umbrellas and has pet owners cursing dogs who have to be dragged into the street. By 8:30 it was pouring hard enough to flood every highway in the city, and the politicians, after a hasty conference with all interested parties, decided to put the official dedication off for one week, though the new tenants would be allowed to begin moving into their homes.
Just as well. For at 10:00 AM, the American Red Army’s bomb exploded, right on time, utterly destroying the facade and lobby of 148 Wythe Avenue. There were only two casualties. Patrolmen David Stein and Louis Hochberg took the full force of the explosion. After viewing the bodies, the medical examiner remarked that they looked like some giant had forced them through a paper shredder.
Rita Melengic had been playing the numbers—50 cents per day—since she’d gotten her first job at age seventeen. She’d won occasionally over the twenty years following, won $250 each time. She played 118, the date of her mother’s death and each morning she bought a Daily News and checked the last three numbers of the previous day’s take at whatever local racetrack happened to be operating. In her twenties, she’d added bingo at St. Joseph’s and, after it became legal, an occasional lottery ticket, though she’d never won more than five dollars at the lottery. Yet, although she saw herself as a woman who gambled, none of her previous activities had prepared her for the experience of making twelve straight points at a Golden Palace craps table in Atlantic City, of turning two dollars into $9,192.
It wasn’t just the money. She held the dice for fifty-three minutes, never diverting a single chip from the pass line to the more exotic wagering in the middle of the board. The other gamblers at the table kept offering advice, urging her to bet the six or the nine or the hard ways, but though the action swirled about her, she remained above it and they finally came around to her, cheering each successful point. After the eighth pass, the dice went off the table and the pit boss tossed them out without even looking at them. The other gamblers screamed their resentment, but Rita simply chose two new dice and resumed shooting. She felt strangely serene, though her whole body trembled with excitement. She was suddenly aware of the rows and rows of tables, each surrounded by gamblers and bathed in its own pool of light, small green islands tended by the caretakers, the stickman and his assistants. They wore plaid vests and dark green pants and their hair was cut, each one, just above the ear. She felt that she could see the whole city, all at once, as if she surrounded it while the dice threw themselves, making consecutive points of ten; ten, five and nine. Then, as she raised her hand one more time, she found it covered by Moodrow’s huge paw. He pointed to the chips piled on the pass line.
“There’s nine thousand dollars there,” he said quietly, and she realized, with a start, that of all the voices raised to give her this or that piece of advice, she had never heard his, not once. He was just happy for her and she knew it.
“Should we keep it?” she asked, already sweeping the chips into her purse. “Are you sure it’s nine thousand dollars?” But she had not doubt about it and no doubts about Moodrow when he removed four fifty-dollar chips and handed them to the young men in their plaid vests.
Later that night, as she sat astride his great body, her lust fully spent though she still held him inside her, she looked down and saw the same smile on his face. Suddenly, she slapped her palms down on his chest and the crack echoed in the small room. “It’s perfect, you stupid cop,” she said, the tears already running down her cheeks. “No matter what happens later, it’s perfect tonight.”
They didn’t go back to the tables. Instead, they let Reggie Reynolds, night manager of the Golden Palace, treat them to everything from parking to dinner. Reggie, who’d been born Morris Stern and raised in a four-room apartment at Clinton and Grand, had gone to high school with Moodrow, and though he’d left the Lower East Side right after graduating, he’d returned years later to ask Moodrow to remove an especially aggressive loan shark from the back of one of Reggie’s uncles, his mother’s favorite brother. The sergeant had turned the trick after a week of surveillance and apprehended the loan shark and two companions in the act of breaking a Puerto Rican truckdriver’s thumbs. Several ounces of cocaine had been discovered in the trunk of the car they drove and what with possession of a controlled substance, possession with intent to sell, assault with a deadly weapon, atrocious assault, assault with intent to kill and weapons possession (a .45 automatic), Reggie Reynolds’ uncle had faded from the consciousness of that particular loan shark.
Now Reggie was paying back and he saw to it that round after round of Chivas Regal appeared, as if by magic, at Moodrow’s right hand. And Moodrow, anxious to oblige, put them away, three to Rita’s one. Reggie kept bringing celebrities over to the table, fighters and baseball players and even the star of the Golden Palace, Kenny Brighton, a country singer from Alabama who was the current favorite on the Las Vegas/Atlantic City circuit.
Rita, watching Moodrow intently, as a woman always watches a lover about whom she is perpetually unsure, could not quite make out how drunk he was. The conversation at the table rambled back and forth, mostly gossip about various celebrities, until they were joined by Cedric Kingman, a lightweight prizefighter. Kingman’s brother, an innocent bystander, had been shot dead on a Detroit street during a gun battle between two drug dealers. Condolences were offered and the conversation naturally turned to crime. All, except for Moodrow, expressed ritual indignation at a court system which plea-bargained major felonies into misdemeanors.
“C’mon, Stanley,” Reggie said. “You must have some opinion. You just sit there like the great stone sage, like a Buddha in some museum. Let’s hear what an expert has to say.”
Moodrow cleared his throat and Rita knew, then, that he was quite drunk, though in control, and that he was about to launch into one of his special talks about crime. She waited for him to begin, gave him two sentences, then, leaning over to rest her head on his shoulder, she slid her hand down into his lap and began a gentle, determined massage.
Moodrow giggled, but an inappropriate giggle goes unnoticed at a table full of drinkers and no one changed expression as the sergeant continued doggedly on.
“You guys are amateurs. You read the paper and think you’re getting the truth.” He was slurring just a little bit, but, again, nobody picked it up. “Shit, you probably think it’s like all clues, like that asshole with the funny hat, Surelick Combs or whatever his fucking name is.” He stopped suddenly as Rita grazed him with the tip of a sharpened fingernail. “Jesus Christ.” He looked around the table, giggled again. “But it ain’t like that at all. There’s only two ways you solve crimes, and that’s either you catch them with the goddamn gun still smoking or you make somebody rat out.” He paused momentarily to plant a kiss on Rita’s cheek, then collected his thoughts and continued. “I don’t wanna hurt you, Cedric, but let’s say I catch one of the assholes that shot your brother. Now I know the guy is a middle-level dealer and I gotta get two things from him. First, I want the other guys responsible for the shooting and then I want the scumbag’s boss. You know, you can’t beat it out of them anymore. They’re too goddamn tough. I mean, sometimes you could persuade a guy, but for the most part, you gotta make a deal, because if you don’t, you never get them until they’re on the street, shooting. Say for a second everyone at this table decides to smuggle in five pounds of coke. How do we get caught? Nobody knows who we are or what we’re going, but let’s say the courier gets popped coming through customs. Just by accident in a random search. If the agent that busts him don’t make some kind of a deal, we’re back in business tomorrow, but if he does make a deal, we all get busted.
“I swear it must be a hundred times I went up to a guy and said. ‘Hey, listen, you’re looking at ten to twenty, but I could make it three to five if you give me this name and this name.’ Eventually I get it all and sometimes I put him back on the street and let him go work for me. And I mean work. I stay on the cocksucker’s case every minute. If I didn’t do it, I’d never bust anyone above street level. The guy who really gets fucked is the poor schmuck who loses his cool in a bar and plants a knife in his neighbor’s ribs, ’cause ninety percent of the time that guy doesn’t have anything he can trade and he gets the full dose.”
Moodrow paused once again. The rest of the table was silent, held there by the obvious conviction in his voice. Finally, he looked around the table. “You wanna stop crime? Then make drugs legal. Forget tougher sentences. Let the ones who can’t make it any other way get high or give ’em fucking jobs.” He stood up suddenly, holding his jacket closed. “Now you gotta excuse us. Me and Rita ain’t used to being up so late. We gotta get some rest.”
“Yeah,” Rita said, following innocently. “He’s real tired.”