I couldn’t have been more than eighteen years old. And I was sitting on an airplane for the first time in my life. A pretty, blond stewardess with a blinding white smile came to me and offered me a drink.
“No thank you, ma’am,” I said. I was working. I knew better than to drink while I was on the job with Bumpy Johnson.
“Mr. Lucas,” she said, leaning over so far that I could see every drop of her cleavage, “we’re going to need you to fill out this paperwork before we land.”
“Not a problem,” I said. The slip of paper would explain who I was to Cuban authorities and, more important, why I was traveling there.
Name: FRANK LUCAS
Date of birth: September 9, 1930
Place of birth: La Grange, North Carolina
Occupation: _________________________
I stopped right there, my pencil in midair. Occupation? They didn’t have enough room in that tiny space for me to write out what I did for Bumpy Johnson. I wondered what Bumpy put down as his occupation. He owned several legitimate businesses. And the few times I’d read about him in the paper, he was listed as the owner of an exterminating business. So he probably put that down. But me? I didn’t have a job that could neatly fit on any form.
Occupation: driver/bodyguard/package picker-upper/confidant. That wouldn’t work.
I thought about a movie I’d seen before the trip. The main character fantasized about the occupation he wished he had when it was time to fill out that line.
I picked my pencil back up and moved the paper in front of me on the tray.
Occupation: Actor
As soon as we landed, someone met us and led us to a waiting taxi. Before we got in to go to our hotel, the driver opened the trunk of the cab and handed me two .45s. I tucked them both into my waistband, where they would stay for the remainder of my trip.
I don’t remember much about Cuba. I just know that Bumpy was in town to meet with a very well-known gangster I’m going to call Larry Lucci. I didn’t know much about Lucci back then. I just knew I ended up sitting near both of them at several restaurants and private homes all around Havana. I was strapped, with those .45s in my waistband. Bumpy seemed perfectly safe on this trip. And for important meetings in New York, he would have several people positioned at his meeting places. So this trip to Cuba must have been a low-pressure event.
I was always close enough to know if Bumpy was in any danger. But, just like in Harlem, I was never close enough to hear any conversations. It wasn’t a tense trip. From what I remember, there was nothing but easy smiles and a relaxed atmosphere. I couldn’t tell you if my life depended on it what Bumpy was there for.
Three days later, we were back in New York and back to business as usual. Breakfast at Frank’s or the all-night diner, a trip to the racetrack, a few meetings over a few meals. And dropping Bumpy off at home while the night was still young.
But while Bumpy was at home reading and listening to classical music by nine, I was hitting the streets for the second part of my day. I had my wardrobe back together, a clean Cadillac, and a sweet bachelor’s pad. So, I was able to turn my attention back to my own hobbies—drinking and carousing, hanging out in pool bars, and messing with the finest women in Harlem.
A year or two after our trip to Cuba, I picked up Bumpy for what I thought would be the usual schedule.
“Go to One Hundred Forty-sixth and Eighth Avenue, Luke.”
“Yessir.”
I parked the car right on the corner of 146th Street and 8th Avenue. There were two small corner stores with people streaming in and out. There was also a tiny storefront that I knew was one of Bumpy’s numbers-running spots.
“Do you have any idea how much money flows in and out of Harlem in this unofficial lottery system?” Bumpy asked.
“No, sir, I don’t.”
“Millions. See that woman right there?” he said, pointing to an elderly woman wearing a janitor’s jumpsuit.
“She hit for a hundred fifty thousand last year. She’s putting two daughters and a niece through college. Gave twenty thousand to her church for a new rectory. Didn’t even quit her job. And still playing a dollar every day. A dollar isn’t a lot of money, is it, Luke?”
“No,” I said. “It’s not.”
“And then there’s men like that one,” he said, pointing with his chin at a man in a suit, with a newspaper tucked under his arm.
“He looks like he’s hot shit. He’s going downtown to clean someone’s office—in a suit! Can’t afford to play more than a quarter a day. But he plays it. He’d skip lunch before he missed playing his number.”
I just nodded my head.
“These people have to be treated with respect,” Bumpy said. “This is a sensitive operation. It’s illegal—God only knows why—so you have to watch out for the police. Avoid the good cops. Pay off the crooked ones. You have to have people working for you who are trustworthy and smart. I mean real smart.” Bumpy tapped the side of his head for emphasis. “People who can keep track of hundreds of combinations, remember who owes what. Who’s owed what. You hear me, Frank?”
“Yessir.”
“Spot like this one? Right next to the subway line. Bring in at least a hundred grand a week.”
I nodded.
“It’s your responsibility now.”
“Excuse me?” I asked.
“I’m assigning this spot to you. Already got a few folks doing all the running, collecting money and such. You need to make sure everything runs smoothly. Can you handle that?”
“Absolutely.”
“Let me know if you have any problems,” he said.
“I will.”
“Though I expect you to handle this on your own. If you come to me, I’ll assume you’ve already tried to handle it yourself.”
“Yes, sir.”
“You have to be honest, Luke,” Bumpy said. “All you have is your word. In my business, you can’t be dishonest. Gotta be straight up. You have to tell the truth. If it’s something you can’t say, just evade the question. Once you answer, you hit. Can’t go there. Only speak the truth. You got that?”
“Yes, sir.”
I threw myself into my new job, but I can’t say I really liked it. Nothing but people coming in and out of that little storefront all day long, playing bets for pocket change, down to penny bets. And there were a few people, mostly pimps and hustlers, who would put down a hundred dollars. The odds were six to one. If you put down a dollar and your number hit, you’d come by the spot the next morning and pick up six dollars.
I had a staff: Lenny, Cornbread, One-Shot, and Cockeye. They collected the numbers, paid out the money, and kept a lookout for the police.
I was doing okay with money. I think Bumpy was now paying me about two hundred fifty dollars a week, which was a lot of money back then. Plus, I got a percentage of the profits from the numbers spot. I moved into a two-bedroom apartment at 66 St. Nicholas Place. This spot was even nicer than the place overlooking Central Park I’d had years before. St. Nicholas Place was the Park Avenue of Harlem. My building was about eight stories and had uniformed doormen on duty twenty-four hours a day. There were a lot of big-time people living in that area. I remember looking out my living-room window and seeing none other than Willie Mays playing stickball with the kids out there. He lived across the street in a different swanky building.
I remember one night, I was out socializing at the Theresa Hotel on 125th and 7th Avenue and Bumpy came into the nightclub. It was rare for him to hang out and I was surprised to see him there. He was in a corner of the club, just as quiet as usual, listening to the jazz band. He had his eyes closed, oblivious to all the debauchery going on in the rest of the club.
I had my eye on this fine-ass Chinese woman. She was at the bar, I was at a table nearby. Every time I caught her eye, she smiled, and I wanted to melt. She was just that fine. I sidled up next to her, giving her my best sweet talk.
“I think that gentleman is trying to get your attention,” she said, pointing to the back of the bar.
I looked and saw Bumpy beckoning to me.
“I’ll be right back.”
“Do you know who you’re talking to?” Bumpy said.
“Should I know?”
“Yes, Frank, you should.”
I looked at the woman again. There was nothing unusual about her at all, at least not to me. You didn’t see Asian women too often up in Harlem. But I’d seen a few. None as fine as that one there.
“You should know she’s spoken for,” he said. He nodded toward the door.
None other than Joe Louis came through the door just then and went right over to the woman and kissed her. Joe Louis! Now, I was a badass at this time in my life. But even I couldn’t deny that seeing Joe Louis was a big deal.
Joe made the rounds around the club and then headed back to pay his respects to Bumpy.
“Always good to see you, Mr. Johnson,” he said, removing his hat.
“Joe, this is Frank Lucas, he works with me.”
Joe pumped my hand and smiled. “Good to meet you, Frank.”
Joe was one of those people you just liked right away. Of course, as a black man, I’d followed his career with great pride, especially when he beat Max Schmelling. But besides that, he was just an all-around good guy. I’d heard that he donated his entire purse to the war effort after several fights. How could you not like a guy who would do that? I ended up becoming friendly with Joe. When he was in town, we might have a drink together or just hang out at a club for a minute. I wasn’t big on having a whole lot of personal friends. But Joe Louis quickly became one of the few.
I liked working for Bumpy. But to tell the truth, managing the numbers spot bored the shit out of me. It was pure drudgery. All of these small-minded people making their tiny little bets day after day after day. And all the big money going to—going to where? I sure didn’t know.
And I was still collecting money for Bumpy, too. I collected more than a million a month from different businesses for protection. And I wasn’t the only person collecting for him, so I can’t imagine how much he was making.
I didn’t mind going from store to store collecting the money. But I hated counting it. Every once in a while I’d bring a briefcase or a valise or a plain shopping bag full of money to Bumpy and he’d glance over it and say, “Count that out for me, Luke.”
Ain’t that I can’t count. It’s just a dirty, tedious job. You might lose your place and gotta start all over. Drove me crazy. Especially when it wasn’t my money.
Some nights, I’d lean against the hood of my Cadillac, talking to some pretty young thing who stopped to say hello. And half of me would be telling her whatever she needed to hear to get her ass into my bed that night. But the other half of me would be daydreaming. Did I come to Harlem for this? To be comfortable? To have an apartment and a car and a regular job? I was in the underworld and always ran a risk of getting locked up for being involved in the numbers, and the payoff just didn’t seem worth it. What did I have to do to make it big? If I was going to wake up every day knowing that I could get arrested and go to jail, shouldn’t I be going hard to make some serious money?
Nearly a year went by as I wondered what my future would hold. In the meantime, I continued collecting for Bumpy. And I managed my numbers spot with no problems. Until a group of corrections officers who always played the same combination came into my spot, claiming they’d hit.
“You know we always play six four two,” said Bobby Jackson, the guy who usually played the number for the group of officers.
“I know what number y’all usually play,” I said. “But you didn’t play it yesterday.”
I didn’t look up from my slips. I’d checked, double-checked, and tripled-checked. There was no slip from them. It was common for people to forget to play, and then if their number came out, they’d try to get away with having the runner believe they’d played the number. Didn’t work with me. Jackson hadn’t played. Plain and simple.
“This is some bullshit. You owe us three thousand dollars,” Jackson said.
“I don’t owe you shit but a kick in the ass if you don’t get the fuck out of here.”
I went to Bumpy to let him know what was going on.
“I told you when I put you over there,” he said. “You have to handle it yourself. I’m sure you can do it.”
The next day, Jackson came back, with three of the officers who always played that number together. And they were all in uniform, with weapons in their waistbands.
“I want to get paid now, Frank,” Jackson said.
“Not a single dime,” I said.
Jackson whipped out his gun and fired off a shot in my direction. I dived behind the counter in the store and grabbed my own gun. There was nowhere for me to run because I was trapped in the back of the store. I was going to have to shoot or be shot. I came up just a bit, pointed my gun, and shot it. As soon as they saw my gun, they ran out of the store, still shooting at me.
It was broad daylight and I chased them right out of the numbers spot, still shooting. The people on the street started screaming and diving for cover. All the while, I’m still chasing these fools down the street, shooting at them and ducking their bullets at the same time.
It was a bad scene. But once they started shooting at me in the store, I had no choice but to return the favor. Innocent people could have been killed and I didn’t think about any of that at the time. I wanted those officers dead.
The officers all ran onto a bus and started making their way to the back of it. I had the audacity to start shooting directly into the bus, shattering all the windows, while the people on the bus screamed in terror. The officers ducked, and a few of them shot back. I ran down the street, alongside the bus. I shot out every window on the side of the bus I could see.
When I heard the sirens of a police car on the way, I snapped out of the rage and hauled ass out of the area. I wasn’t worried about people telling the cops about me. By that time, everyone knew I worked for Bumpy Johnson. They wouldn’t say a word, if they knew what was good for them.
I even went back to the scene of the crime an hour or so later. The cops were there, trying to get the scene cleaned up and asking people questions.
“Excuse me,” said a white man with a notebook in his hand.
I just raised an eyebrow to acknowledge him without speaking.
“Walter Winchell,” he said, thrusting out his hand. I shook it without saying a word. I knew exactly who Walter Winchell was. He was the most popular news columnist in the country. He knew stuff happened as it was happening.
“Looks like you’re in a bit of trouble,” Winchell said. He flipped his notebook to a fresh sheet and licked the tip of his pencil.
“I have no idea what you are talking about,” I said.
“Sure you do. Don’t you work with Bumpy Johnson? I know this is his territory. Which means you probably work for him.”
“Bumpy who?” I said.
Winchell smiled. “I guess you have no comment.”
I smiled back. “Nice to meet you Mr. Winchell.”
He held out a business card. “If you ever want to talk. You know, about anything, here’s where you can reach me.”
I nodded.
“And I guess if I need to reach you…” he said.
“I don’t see that ever being necessary,” I said, walking away.
But Winchell would continually find me over the years. I’d never give him any quotes. But we’d talk regularly. That’s how a good reporter gets his goods, keeping an ear to the streets. And he definitely made sure to check in with me just to say hello.
The next close call I had came when Bumpy had a confrontation with some people who owed him money. Bumpy didn’t just shake down businesses in Harlem. If anyone made any money doing anything illegal, Bumpy was owed a piece of that, too. Soon after I started working for him, some guys from Harlem pulled a job off out in the Midwest, robbed some diamonds from somewhere. And they sent Bumpy his share of the heist. That kind of thing happened quite often.
One time, Bumpy was expecting his share of jewels from a robbery, but instead, he was sent fake gems. He came up to the numbers hole where I was working to see me.
“You got your piece?” he asked, as soon as he walked inside.
“Yessir,” I said.
“Let’s go.”
We got into his Lincoln and sped down the East River Drive to a jewelry store on Canal Street.
“Where is he?” Bumpy asked.
An elderly white man looked up, alarmed. “Mr. Johnson, no one is here but me, I swear to you!”
Bumpy pointed to a back door and I tried to open it. It was locked.
“Open it, Luke,” he said.
I kicked the door down. There were six older white men standing there.
“Where are my fucking diamonds?” Bumpy said to one guy.
“This ain’t how we’re doing this, Bumpy,” the guy said.
I just watched the other men. We were outnumbered. But it didn’t matter. If they made a single twitchy move, I’d shoot them all dead.
“You want me to show you how we’re doing this?” Bumpy asked. He pulled his hand back and smacked the shit out of that man. None of his people moved a muscle. He motioned for Bumpy to join him in a back room. I kept my eyes on the five people left in the office and they kept their eyes on me. I don’t know what took place back there but when Bumpy came out, he was satisfied.
“Let’s go, Luke,” he said.
I faithfully followed Bumpy’s direction that day and every other day. I told the truth and kept my word. If I couldn’t do either, I kept my eyes open.
A few years after I started working with Bumpy, Icepick Red was still running the streets, killing people for money, and generally being a menace to society. I know Bumpy kept tabs on everything he did. He knew what everyone in Harlem did. But finally, Icepick had gone too far and Bumpy had to make an example out of him.
There was a guy named Little Willie who worked for Bumpy. Like a lot of men in the street life, he had a fancy house out in Englewood Cliffs for his wife and children. I knew he had a daughter about eight or nine years old and a son who was just a little baby. Well, for some reason, Icepick Red decided he was going to rob Little Willie. To this day, I can’t figure out why that man would do something like that. Robbing one of Bumpy’s men was suicide, plain and simple.
On one cold, wintry night, I had just dropped Bumpy off at home. I was waiting around to make sure he didn’t need me for anything else when I saw him take a phone call. Suddenly, a worried expression came across his face and he just stared at the wall in his living room.
I could tell by the look on his face that whatever news he was getting on the other end of that phone was not good at all.
“Luke, get your boys,” he said.
He stood up and put his coat back on and headed to the back of the house. I made a call and then went outside to wait for my crew to show up. Within minutes, Cockeye, Shoestring, Little Bit, and Doc Holliday were pulling up, waiting to get their instructions.
Bumpy came out to my car and got inside.
“We’re going to Englewood Cliffs,” he said. His lips set in a tight line. “Icepick robbed Little Willie.”
I could hear bloodcurdling screams as soon as we pulled onto the street in New Jersey. I wasn’t sure what was going on but the screaming was loud and intense.
We all went into the house and saw a horrible scene. Little Willie was dead, sprawled out on the living-room floor of his fancy house. There was blood pooled underneath him and an ice pick sticking straight out of his chest. Willie’s wife was naked, huddling on the floor near the stairs, screaming and crying.
Bumpy immediately went to Willie’s wife and put his overcoat across her shoulders. He kept asking her what had happened but she just kept screaming and screaming. Their little girl, not more than eight years old, was at the top of the stairs. She looked like she was in shock.
“What happened?” Bumpy asked one more time.
“Willie told him where the money was,” the wife said. “And Icepick took the money. But he still tied Willie up! And then … and then he raped me.”
The wife started bawling again. And everyone in the room dropped their heads and looked away.
“Right in front of him, Bumpy,” the wife said. “He attacked me right in front of Willie and my kids. And then he killed him!”
The wife dissolved into more tears and Bumpy tried to comfort her.
“Luke, you stay here,” Bumpy said. “The rest of you all. Go.”
Bumpy and I got the wife together, called some of her relatives, and then we took her to the Theresa Hotel. I waited in the car while Bumpy got her all checked in and waited for the family to come and take care of her and the children. Bumpy came back to the car and exhaled as he sat back.
“She’s on the top floor, Luke,” he said. “If you hear from her, take her whatever she needs.”
“Yes, sir,” I said.
I drove Bumpy back to the house in Mount Morris Park. He got out and stood in front of the car before going inside.
“Go get Icepick Red. I want to see him. Immediately.”
“Yessir.”
The next night, me and Doc Holliday saw Icepick Red leaning up against a lamppost on the corner of 134th Street and 7th Avenue. It was dusk and it was rainy. I wasn’t sure it was really him. But as we walked up the street, Doc touched my side with his elbow and jutted his chin in the direction of the tall, lanky man standing there.
I stopped a few feet away from Icepick. Doc kept walking until he was right next to him.
“Let’s go, Red,” I said. “Boss wants to see you.”
Icepick looked me up and down, brought up a noisy batch of phlegm, and spit on the sidewalk right in between us.
“I ain’t got no time for that bullshit,” Icepick Red said.
I thought about the scene the night before at Little Willie’s house, the little girl wandering around in a daze, the baby crying, Little Willie on the floor with the ice pick in his chest, and his wife naked and screaming. Icepick was crazy. I knew Bumpy was going to punish him. And I knew he had to know that Bumpy was going to punish him. Why would he do it? Icouldn’t imagine. And it wasn’t my job to figure it out. It was my job to bring him to Bumpy.
“Let’s go, Red,” I said again.
“Ain’t going nowhere.”
With no hesitation, I pulled out my .44 and cocked it. With a loud snap, my gun was in position. Icepick jumped. I’d pulled it out so fast, he hadn’t even had a chance to reach for his own weapon. And with Doc standing less than a foot away, he knew he wasn’t getting away.
“Stop popping all that shit and let’s go,” I said.
We took him back to the car, where Chickenfoot was waiting in the backseat. I got in the driver’s seat while Doc and Chickenfoot sat on either side of Icepick Red, with Doc jabbing a handgun into Red’s side. If he moved a muscle, Doc would have shot him dead. If I had known what Bumpy had planned for Icepick Red, I would have just told Doc to shoot him right there.
Back at Mount Morris, I let Bumpy know we had Icepick. He came outside immediately, dressed smartly as always, in a topcoat and hat, wearing leather gloves to shield his hands from the cold night air.
“Luke, come get in the car with me.”
“Yes, sir.”
Bumpy got into the car and I told the guys to follow us in my car. Bumpy directed me to a mammoth abandoned apartment building over on the southwest corner of 141st Street and 7th Avenue. Bumpy had the crew take Red downstairs to the basement, strip him naked, and cuff him to the large pipes.
I watched Bumpy take two small jars and a paintbrush out of the inside pocket of his topcoat. One looked like syrup or honey. The other had something moving around inside but I couldn’t make out what it was. He stuffed his handkerchief into Icepick’s mouth and used duct tape to shut it. Icepick was on the ground, his eyes wild, moving and squirming, not knowing what was coming next. None of us knew.
“Some people are just animals,” Bumpy said softly. “Not worthy of life.”
He took out a small knife and cut deeply across Icepick’s face, on both sides of his eyelids and across his neck. If he hadn’t had his mouth stuffed with the handkerchief, we might have heard his screams. But they were just low and muffled.
Bumpy calmly opened one jar, poured the sticky substance onto the brush and rubbed it into Icepick’s eyes. Then he dipped the brush into the jar again and rubbed it over Icepick’s privates. He picked up the second jar and held it up. Now I could see what was in there: hundreds of fire ants. I felt my stomach flip over as I watched Bumpy open the jar and dump the ants all over Icepick’s eyes and privates. Somehow, he was able to start screaming and I could hear him yelling even through the handkerchief stuffed in his mouth.
I couldn’t even imagine where Bumpy had gotten fire ants. I grew up seeing them in the South. But I knew you wouldn’t see them in Harlem. Bumpy always had a way of getting his hands on anything he wanted or needed.
I had to look away. Because that scene was almost worse than what I’d seen the night before at Little Willie’s house.
“Let’s go,” Bumpy said.
We all filed out of the basement silently. The only thing I could hear were the tortured, muffled screams of Icepick Red. I can still hear them in my head today, as a matter of fact.
Bumpy told me to drive him back there the next day. Icepick Red was still alive. And completely out of his mind.
Bumpy dumped more ants onto Icepick Red and spit on him, just the way Icepick always spit everywhere.
“Why don’t you just shoot him?” I asked Bumpy.
“He doesn’t deserve to die that easy,” Bumpy said.
We left the building once more. And left Icepick to die. I went back a few days later to make sure he was dead. And of course, he was. What I saw remaining was—literally—just a shell of a human. Never seen anything like it before or since.
I have to admit, I left that basement with tears in my eyes. And this is Icepick Red we’re talking about. He was a stone-cold killer. But still, what I saw in that basement really messed me up. Don’t get me wrong. Icepick definitely had to die. But not like that. When I got back into the car to leave, I found myself wishing that I’d just shot him dead as he leaned up against that lamppost that night.
I knew why Bumpy had reacted so strongly. He’d had no choice. He was the biggest thing in New York City. And any man who worked for him was hands-off. He could not let anyone think that they could do what Icepick Red had done to Little Willie and his family and get away with it. And he couldn’t just kill him. He had to make an example out of him. After Icepick’s body was discovered, the streets were buzzing for weeks. People knew what Bumpy was capable of. And nothing like what happened to Little Willie would ever happen again.
That situation also let me know exactly what I was dealing with. Bumpy was my boss. And he was the boss of all bosses. I knew two things. I knew that he would do the same thing for me if anyone ever disrespected me.
I also knew that he would do the same thing to me if he ever felt like it was necessary. They were two lessons I hoped I never needed to learn firsthand.