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All of this took place long before I arrived on the scene. Before I was even born, in fact. But my friend Sammy “The Lip” Henderson was around, witnessed some of the events first hand and heard about the rest from some of the principal participants. He told me about it years later over a couple gin and tonics, and now I’ll retell it you in my own way – beverages optional.
It was November 11, 1923, a sunny morning with a chilly breeze. Danny Driscoll rolled the last illicit keg off the unmarked truck and through the back door into the kitchen of Sal’s Trattoria Roma. The truck, owned by the infamous bootlegger Squiggy Liebowitz, was parked in the alley, out of sight of any passersby on Main Street, with another Danny – Officer Daniel Pankowski of the city’s police department – standing guard. Driscoll dropped the keg onto the platform of the elevator next to the other five he’d already hauled in, sat on it and pressed the DOWN button. The elevator had no door or walls. It was just a square platform with heavy cables at each corner, more like an oversized dumbwaiter. It was mostly used for taking room service orders from the ground floor kitchen to the upper floors of the hotel, where it could be delivered to the guests. But it also went down to the basement, to Sal’s Paradiso, the hottest (and wettest) spot in town during those dry years.
As the platform rattled to a stop in the storage area behind the bar, Danny found Sal waiting for him along with Hoppy Finkel, Sal’s most trusted right-hand man. Hoppy was the only guy in town who was bigger than Danny, and he was as strong as an ox.
“Good work, Danny,” said Sal in his Sicilian accent. “You guys get these stashed under the bar, then meet me back upstairs.”
As Sal took the elevator back up to the ground floor, Danny and Hoppy got busy rolling the kegs. Danny Driscoll had known Hoppy since they were kids. In fact, it was Danny that first gave him the nickname of Hoppy after some other kids had set his shoe on fire. The neighborhood kids were always picking on Hoppy because of his inability to speak, and giving him the old hot-foot treatment was not the worst of it. “Look at him hop! Hop, Hoppy!” called little Danny Driscoll as he watched the wordless Hoppy try to stomp out the flame. Now, all these years later, nobody remembered what his real name was – or why they’d ever started calling him Hoppy in the first place.
Hoppy did a lot of work for Sal, including security in the Trattoria and downstairs in the Paradiso, as well as any stuff Sal couldn’t trust to anyone who might talk about it. There was a lot of value in having an illiterate giant with no tongue on the payroll. And Hoppy would do anything for Sal, as long as he got to hang around and listen to Molly O’Malley sing. For Hoppy, incapable of uttering a sound, the miracle of Molly’s music was the most magical thing he could imagine.
§
The old Continental Hotel had stood at the intersection of Main and Central Streets for nearly a century before burning to the ground in 1905, in the same fire that destroyed the original town hall and the post office. Construction on The Albion Hotel, on the same site as the old Continental, ended in the summer of 1919. The grand opening was held October 24, exactly ten years before the great stock market crash. At six stories it was the tallest building in the city, and instantly became the center of everything that went on there, socially, economically and politically. The principal owner of the building (and of the construction company that built it) was a man named Michael Schanck. Schanck loved money, women and beer – in that order. He had imagination and ambition. He wasn’t much for day-to-day business decisions, but he had people for that.
At first, the ground floor was split nearly in half between Harrison’s Haberdashery, where all the city’s richest men bought their custom-tailored suits; and Sal’s Trattoria Roma, the classiest restaurant in town, and the only place to get authentic Italian food. Harold Harrison (owner of the Haberdashery that bore his name) was married to Schanck’s cousin, the beautiful Greta, whose parents had sent her from Berlin to America to escape World War I (or, “The War” as they called, naively believing there wouldn’t be another). Greta had fallen in love with the handsome English tailor, who had also recently arrived from across the Atlantic (London to be specific); and she convinced her cousin Michael to help him out.
Harrison’s and Sal’s each had their own entrances onto Main Street, while the entrance to the hotel was through a set of massive double doors right on the corner of Main and Central. These were attended by liveried doormen, and led to a broad marble staircase up to the hotel lobby on the second floor. The lobby was an ornate mélange of red carpeting, brass and gold trim, and crystal chandeliers, with mirrors on all the walls creating the illusion that there were no walls at all, that the luxury went on forever.
From the lobby, you could ascend to your room by climbing the red carpeted staircase or by riding the state-of-the-art Otis elevator. Or, you could descend to the Trattoria Roma on the ground floor by another red carpeted staircase.
Sal’s full name was Salvatore Antonio Francesco Avellino. There were a lot of rumors about Sal. Some said he’d fled Italy to avoid being forced to marry the daughter of a local village big shot after sullying the young lady’s virginal reputation with his passionate attentions. Others said it was because he was the target of a vendetta waged by a rival business owner. I don’t know anything about that. I only know what I learned years later from Sammy, who knew Sal about as well as anyone did.
What Sal told Sammy was that, back home in Calabria, he’d had a place that served mostly coffee in the mornings, and panini and wine the rest of the day. But times got tough, and eventually none of his neighbors could afford to buy coffee at a café. So, Sal figured it was time to head for greener pastures. This was somewhere around 1913, or so, just before Europe exploded into war, a time when this town was booming, moving in the opposite economic direction from Sal’s home village. Packer’s Straw Works, once one of the largest producers of straw hats in America, was in decline but still a presence; and a new factory operated by the American Gauge and Instrument Company (commonly referred to by locals as “the Company”) was making gauges that measured the flow of liquid through a pipe, which they sold to all the country’s biggest breweries and distilleries. Business was good, there were plenty of jobs and the promise of a prosperous future for all. It was the perfect time for an enterprising young man like Sal Avellino to take advantage of his natural talent.
Sal wasn’t the first Italian to settle in the area. Many of the construction workers who had built the hotel had been Italians, but they were poor, struggling to get by from one day to the next. Sal didn’t have that problem, rolling into town with an improbable amount of spendable cash. He hadn’t even needed to take a loan to lease the space, instead paying all the set-up expenses out of pocket. This was one of the reasons there were so many rumors about him. How had he come to have so much cash? Maybe he’d robbed a bank before he left Italy. Or maybe he was the illegitimate son of Francis II, King of the two Sicilies, who’d been forced into exile when Garibaldi captured the island on his quest to unify the Italian peninsula. Sal never confirmed nor denied any of these rumors.
Sal’s Trattoria Roma was a classy place, as I told you. White table cloths, mahogany bar, lots of brass everywhere. You could get anything from a prime rib or a rack of lamb to Sal’s meatballs and gravy or gnocchi Bolognese. And of course, wine, whisky, gin and beer to wash it down, all purchased from the same breweries and distilleries the Company was selling their gauges to. But once the National Prohibition Act went into effect in 1920, Sal needed a new business model – and sometimes fate takes a hand in unexpected ways.
One rainy evening in the spring of 1921, Harold Harrison was run over by a Model T as he attempted to cross the street after closing the Haberdashery. The car sped off, never to be seen again, a clear case of intentional hit and run. Greta, Harrison’s widow, had little choice but to sell off the store’s merchandise and other assets as Michael advised. As Sammy explained it to me, Greta was convinced that Sal had killed Harrison to put the Haberdashery out of business and expand the Trattoria. The truth, though, was that it was Schanck, Greta’s own cousin and so-called protector, who had arranged for her husband’s death. Sal told Sammy he was never sure of the reason, but he knew it to be true. He knew because Schanck had hired him to do it. So, Greta was partly right. And Sal certainly didn’t mind taking advantage of the opportunity.
In any event, the Haberdashery’s door and all its windows were replaced by brick to match the rest of the building’s exterior; and Sal’s Trattoria expanded, even while the beverage selection contracted. There was, however, for those folks in the know and in the need for something a little stronger, a hidden staircase that led down from the Trattoria’s dining room to a subterranean space of opulence and promised pleasure: Sal’s Paradiso. Access to this staircase was through a door that looked like a mirror, next to the door between the kitchen and the dining room. You had to know where to press on the frame of the mirror to make it slide open. During business hours, this door was always guarded by Hoppy, Sal or one of a handful of trusted thugs who would only admit those lucky few who knew the password.
The Paradiso was just as swanky-looking as the Trattoria upstairs and with the same menu, plus a full bar, a bandstand with an orchestra, and plenty of beautiful young women who were more than happy to let you buy them a drink and spin them around the dance floor. You could probably get more than a dance from some of the dime-a-dance girls, but it would certainly cost you more than a dime.
The cops wouldn’t shut the operation down because most of them drank there themselves. “First drink on the house to anyone with a badge” was a key policy in Sal’s business plan. Plus, a percentage of the take went back to the officer’s Benevolent Fund. It’s always a good idea to treat your local police benevolently.
The orchestra, featuring Sammy on tenor sax, was the hottest in town. All the country’s great musicians played on the Paradiso’s bandstand with Sammy’s orchestra when they were in town for “official” shows at the Palladium or the Palace Theater. And it was there, on the bandstand in the Paradiso, that you’d almost always find Molly O’Malley.
Molly was a young woman of profound roundness. From her large round hazel eyes and her perpetually blushing cheeks, to her bobbed brown hair and football shaped torso, Molly bore her general sphericity with pride and grace.
But her roundness wasn’t her most notable quality, nor was her confident bearing. It was her voice. When she sang (her mouth forming a perfect O), listeners were instantly transported to a higher realm where physical reality was meaningless and all that mattered was the sound of her voice. In the mind’s eye, her song took shape, became light and color, and painted pictures indescribable by any human language. When she sang about young love, you swooned before the vision of your own first infatuation. When she sang about spring time in Ireland, you were carried to the greenest hillside imaginable, below blossoming apple trees, with a warm, fragrant breeze in your hair. When she sang of sailors and ships at sea, you could smell the salt air. As Sammy said many years later, trying to fake an Irish brogue, “It was a magical, miraculous thing to hear Molly O’Malley sing.” And Hoppy Finkel loved her.
§
According to Sammy, there wasn’t much unusual about that day up to this point. But what kind of a story would this be if there wasn’t a twist? In all the years he knew Sal, Sammy said he’d never seen him as shaken by anything as he was by what happened next.
When Danny and Hoppy finished carting the kegs off the lift, they stopped for a moment to rest and quench their well-earned thirst. Driscoll took a seat on a barstool while Hoppy stayed behind the bar and poured two shots of rye. The two men raised their glasses to toast a morning’s good work. Meanwhile, unknown to them, a gunman came, shoeless and silent, creeping down the stairs. Still four steps from the bottom, he opened fire. Hoppy, who was surprisingly nimble, dove for the secret bolt hole that led under Central Street into the basement of Stearns’ Department Store. Driscoll had no chance, however. He was dead before he hit the floor.
Sal, in the kitchen just above, had checked his watch at 12:25. Still plenty of time to get ready for the big night. That was when he heard the gunshots, though he wasn’t sure where they were coming from. He pulled his 9mm Beretta out of its shoulder holster and looked through the swinging doors into the dining room of the Trattoria. The room was empty, but he could see that the door to the Paradiso’s staircase was open. He backed into the kitchen and hit the lift’s DOWN button. When it was halfway between floors, he hit the EMERGENCY STOP button. He then sped through the dining room, out the front door onto Main Street (where the mayor was about to finish his speech), and in through the hotel’s double doors. He knew that was where he’d find the hotel’s detective, Joe “Cappy” Capitalone, keeping an eye on the entrance and the crowd out in the street.
“Cappy,” Sal hissed nervously, “there’s somebody shooting downstairs. I froze the lift, so their only way out is the stairs up to the Trattoria.”
“OK, Sal.” said Cappy, with his usually professional reserve. “Let’s keep ‘em down there.”
The two of them hurried back to the Trattoria’s entrance, then cautiously through the mirror door and down the stairs, expecting to find the shooter coming up toward them at any moment.
§
You might be wondering why the mayor was making a speech to a crowd in the middle of Main Street. Well, it was November 11, remember. Armistice Day wasn’t yet a national holiday, but folks around here felt it was worth celebrating. The War had taken more local boys than any other event in anyone’s memory; and with only five years having passed since the end of the conflict, no one thought it was time yet to forget them. So, there was a parade, followed by a city-wide moment of silence at precisely 11:00am, followed by speeches and prayers.
The afternoon had turned increasingly cold, like winter had already settled in a month and a half ahead of schedule. The parade had started at the fairgrounds and ended in front of the Albion Hotel. A stage and a grandstand had been set up in the middle of the street. American flags flew everywhere, dancing and snapping in the autumn breeze. All businesses were ordered to remain closed until sundown, to allow the citizens the opportunity to listen to the politicians, priests and ministers. It was a solemn day, but with the promise of hope. Hope for peace, hope for prosperity – and hope for a cold beer, no matter what the federal government said.
Just as the mayor was finishing his speech, Hoppy came out the front door of Stearns’. It was precisely 12:30pm. He wound his way through the milling throng, past the hotel’s entrance and in through the Trattoria’s front door at 12:32. By this time Sal and Cappy were reaching the bottom of the staircase and surveying the scene in the Paradiso. What they found was disaster – and a mystery.
Molly O’Malley sat bound and gagged in a chair in the center of the room. All the other chairs and tables had been pushed aside, piled up in front of the bandstand. Standing behind Molly, with a gun pressed against the back of her head, was Danny Pankowski, the cop who’d been guarding the alley while the beer was being delivered. And behind the bar, calmly filling a mug from one of the freshly tapped kegs, was the young widow Greta Harrison.
“Good afternoon, gentlemen,” said the icy German. “Kindly drop your weapons, and step slowly into the room. Believe me, if Officer Pankowski feels in any way threatened, he will kill your little songbird.”
Sal and Cappy both set their guns down on the floor and took a few hesitant steps forward.
“Where are Hoppy and Driscoll?” asked Sal.
“Mr. Driscoll is there on the floor,” responded Greta, “quite dead thanks to Officer Pankowski. I’ve not seen your silent giant. Perhaps he’s run away to somewhere safer.”
Meanwhile, Hoppy had reached the kitchen of the Trattoria, where he could hear Sal’s and Greta’s voices coming up through the elevator shaft. He heard Greta mention his name, heard Sal’s shaky voice saying, “Don’t you hurt Molly, she’s a good girl, never hurt nobody.”
Hoppy held down his rage and his fear for Molly’s wellbeing. Knowing that the elevator was hidden from the view of anyone in the Paradiso’s main room, he carefully lowered himself into the opening and dropped as gently as he could onto the platform as it hung halfway between the two floors, pausing there to make sure his approach was still undetected.
That was when he heard Greta say, “For taking my husband from me, and robbing me of his business, you will now pay. Unless you wish to see Miss O’Malley’s tongue removed you will give me five hundred thousand dollars. Then Officer Pankowski and I will leave, and you can stay here and rot in your infernal ‘Paradise.’ I am going back to Europe.”
If he could speak at all, Hoppy might have shouted with anger at this point. Instead, he lowered himself carefully to the floor and crawled on hands and knees from the storage area toward the space behind the bar. He soon found himself looking up at the shapely legs of young Greta Harrison. He grabbed both her ankles and pulled, causing her to disappear from the view of Sal, Cappy, Pankowski and Molly, as if by magic.
Sal was the first to recover from the surprise, pulling his spare .38 out of his jacket pocket and shooting Pankowski in the right shoulder. The cop went down with a yell, dropping his gun. Hoppy bounded over the bar, planted himself on Pankowski’s chest and started punching him wildly in the face and head. Cappy and Sal untied Molly and pulled Hoppy off Pankowski, who was now quite as dead as Danny Driscoll.
“Now we got a problem,” said Sal, wiping the sweat from his brow. “Two corpses: one a city cop, and the other a driver for Squiggy Leibowitz.”
“Maybe the problem is its own solution,” said Cappy, coolly. “You leave it to me, boss. I’ll make it look like they took each other out. Right?”
Beginning to calm down in the face of Cappy’s confidence, Sal said “Not bad, Cappy, not bad. But it can’t look like it happened down here.”
“Right. Hoppy, help me stash these two stiffs in Driscoll’s truck.”
And that’s what they did. The two bodies went up the lift the beer barrels had come down just a few minutes earlier, and into the same truck, which Cappy drove to the edge of town, with Hoppy following in Pankowski’s unmarked cruiser. They pulled in to an alley behind the Hi-Spot, a speakeasy owned by Squiggy Liebowitz next to the fairgrounds, and dumped the bodies there. After wiping the cars and guns as free of fingerprints as they could, Cappy put Sal’s .38 in Driscoll’s hand, and Pankowski’s own revolver back into his hand. Nice and neat, like the cop had been busting Driscoll and they’d shot each other. Never mind that Pankowski’s face was beaten to a pulp, or that the only bullet in him was in his shoulder – clearly not a lethal wound.
Once that was done, Cappy and Hoppy walked on side streets and back alleys until they reached a bus station, where they waited for a bus to bring them back to The Albion.
Meanwhile, in the alley behind the Trattoria, Sal and Molly were loading Greta into the back seat of Sal’s Cadillac. Sal had discovered that, while Greta had no money, there was a ticket in her purse for passage on the RMS Olympic bound for Southampton, England. By this point, Greta was waking up. Her hands and feet were bound, and her head throbbed from when it had hit the floor when Hoppy brought her down. She thought about fighting, but her head hurt too much, and she passed out again. The next time she woke up, she was on a bus heading south, already across the state line and halfway to New York City, where her ship was waiting.
After Greta was on her way, Molly—who was still shaking off the ill effects from being tied up herself, not to mention being held at gunpoint and fearing she’d lose her tongue – helped Sal put the Paradiso back into shape for the evening’s festivities. By the time Hoppy and Cappy were back, the place was ready to open, and Molly was almost back to her normal, confident self. The dime-a-dance girls were looking finer than a spring morning, and the orchestra was warming up with a rendition of Irving Berlin’s “You’d Be Surprised,” one of Molly’s favorites.
As Molly sang the final notes, Sal looked up to see Hoppy standing on the bottom step. Tears streamed down the silent man’s cheeks as he stared at Molly and his face told more than any words ever could.
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