Debasements of Brooklyn by Ira Gold

Author:Ira Gold
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781579624743
Publisher: The Permanent Press
Published: 2016-04-11T04:00:00+00:00

25

The Way it Was

In the old days, mobsters would hide out together during war. Sometimes they’d “take to the mattress,” that is change houses every night. Or soldiers would make bunkers out of their own homes. War could never cross a man’s threshold. Get caught on the street, go shopping for a tomato, and you would be whacked as it is being weighed. But play cards in your living room and you would be as safe as an infant in her mother’s arms.

Also, during wartime, business stopped. Your hijackings, your bookmaking, your shylocking, your whorehouses all need to be put on hold until you could leave your bedroom. Outside guns have to be hired, and mercenaries do not come cheap. Every crew had to kick in for them. The added expenses and loss of revenue ate at the kishkas of all gangsters. You build an operation based on muscle and shaded dice, and because of the stubbornness, greed, or just plain stupidity of a few old men clinging to power with the tenacity of aging lions, years of hard work, endless scheming, and life-threatening risks atrophy. Every day that you aren’t on the street making collections, taking bets, circulating, your business weakens. So wars ended quickly.

When the Sicilians battled each other, they abided by rules that made the Geneva Convention seem a throwback to Genghis Khan. But today is different. Now the mob is global. The Russians and Chinese, almost as much as the Feds, pose a grave threat to Italian hegemony. These new guys don’t mind bringing anarchy into people’s homes. Our women and children might be shot in cold blood. The same is true for the length of the conflict. These newcomers fight with a viciousness that even overcomes their lust for a buck. Every battle is Stalingrad. Retreat equals the Long March. Businesses are set aflame, cars booby-trapped, houses bombed, entire gangs wiped out and still they fight. In Queens, every member of the Grinkovsky ring was hunted down in the course of a war that also led to the demise of Fat Fat Chen, the head of a triad that controlled all the soy sauce going in and out of Flushing.

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