-Caveat Lector-
an excerpt from:
The Squad
Michael Milan
Rose Ann Levy and Shadow Lawn Press�1989
Shapolsky Publishers, Inc.
136 West 22nd Street
New York, NY 1001
ISBN 0-944007-52-X
304 pps. � First/only edition[there is also a UK printing] -- Out-of-print
--[3]�
The Old Man
On the Lower East Side, people used to say that when Roosevelt had a problem
he couldn't solve, he turned to God. If the problem had to do with the Lower
East Side, God would tell him to talk to Sam Koenig.
Sam Koenig was the macher, the ganzer macher, the center of life in the
neighborhood. He wasn't important because of how much he knew. It was who he
knew that counted, and how he could get people he knew to do what he wanted.
So when I found out many years later that it was Sam Koenig who had put
Costello and J. Edgar Hoover onto me from the very start, I wasn't surprised.
But if you had told me then, even in 1948 when I was just two years out of
the Navy, that Koenig had steered me into the Special Group, you could have
knocked me right over.
Koenig seemed to know everybody, and when he put the fix in, it wasn't
because he expected something in return the next day. That wasn't it at all.
He was a man who built up a vault of favors. Everybody owed him and he knew
how to exchange favor for favor, even putting people together whose paths
might never cross. That's bow he built himself one of the most powerful
neighborhood political machines in the country. He put judges on the bench,
sent congressmen to Washington, and got you out of hot water with the* cops.
If your nephew was laid off and needed a job with the city, you saw Sam. And
if some paper-pushing son of a bitch was putting the bite on you for a chunk
of dough under the table, you saw Sam.
His word went all the way to the top. When Roosevelt needed votes from New
York, he went to the Republican Sam Koenig. And in 1942, when Captain Roscoe
McFall, who was running an OSS operation out of a hotel room in midtown,
needed local muscle to cut a deal with Charlie Luciano to put some boys he
could trust on the docks, he also went to Sam. Luciano was spending the war
stamping license plates up at Dannamora so Koenig talked to Meyer
Lansky and Frank Costello about setting up a meeting with him. Meyer,
especially, thought he could get Luciano sprung when things cooled down after
the war. Koenig got Governor Dewey to bring Lucky downstate to Sing Sing
where he could enjoy some of the comforts of home. And he also got Dewey to
grant him a pardon as his cut for letting his button men organize the docks.
What nobody knew except Meyer and Frank was that Luciano had his own men in
the OSS underground units sent to Sicily in advance of General Patton. By the
time our troops entered Palermo, Lucky's men had organized the entire island
and were diverting U.S. fuel supplies into the European black market.
When I was drafted out of Seward Park High School in 1944, it was Sam Koenig
who put me in the OSS operation he'd setup with Luciano, Lansky, and Costello
in 1942. 1 worked undercover at Navy bases up and down the east coast until
the end of the war. And that was how I came to Hoover's attention. So you
could say that it was Sam who put me into the Squad, and years later before
he died, he admitted that he had spoken to Hoover about using me for some
special jobs.
Just like any of the celebrities Ed Sullivan wrote about in his column, J.
Edgar Hoover was a man of mystery to a Lower East Side kid like me. I knew
that he liked to stay at the Carlyle up on Madison Avenue whenever he came to
town. He didn't mind being seen at a swanky place like that, especially when
he stepped out at night with the local politicians and the show dames they
hung around with. He liked it when he saw his picture in the papers the next
day. What I didn't know was on that afternoon in 1948 while I was looking at
his picture on page one of the Daily News was that Hoover was in town looking
for people to beef up an operation he was running strictly on the q.t.
Like most afternoons, I was eating lunch at one of the rear tables in
Ratner's. And like most afternoons, I was alone, reading the results of the
horse races the day before. Because I had to make my collections from the
East Side book around dinnertime, I always liked to know who had made out on
the day's action and who had taken beatings. As usual, I sat facing the front
so I could keep an eye on the door while I read the papers.
I noticed these two guys come in who I made to be cops right away. They stood
up too straight for local torpedoes and their shoes were shined up real
bright like they had marched in a lot of parades. I made like I was just part
of the local scenery, but I knew they were looking right at me. I was glad I
wasn't carrying a gun. One of them walked over to one of the waiters and
whispered something in his ear. Then they followed him to a table and sat
down.
So far so good, I said to myself. If they were cops looking for me, they
would have come right over. Cops don't stand on ceremony. If they were button
men from somebody's family, I'd know soon enough. Either way, I was going to
finish what I was eating and cut out the back. Then my waiter comes up to the
table and drops a dish right in front of me.
"Your dessert," he says without looking at me.
"What dessert?" I asked him, just a little jumpy that he had walked up to me
without catching my eye first.
"Your strawberry shortcake," he mumbled, motioning with his head to the two
men at the front table. "Happy birthday."
Now I look up toward the front and the two guys are looking back directly at
me. Then I looked at the shortcake and I got hungry all over again. One of
the men nodded, waiting for me to nod back, and stood up. OK, I figured,
strawberries are strawberries so they must be carrying a message from Mr. C.
"Mike Milan? "the taller of the two men asked as he stood over my table,
raising his voice at the end of my name like he was going to put the collar
on me as soon as I said yes. I didn't like the tone of that "Mike Milan" at
all.
"Someone would like to see you," he continued.
"Who?" I asked. I figured since they weren't button men from one of the
Families, all the rules were off. And if they were cops, they flashed no
warrants so I didn't have to go nowhere with nobody.
The shorter guy swept the room with his eyes like he was George Raft checking
for screws before telling John Garfield that they were busting out of stir
that night. "Somebody big."
"That don't tell me nothing," I said. "Somebody big can be anybody. Besides,
I got appointments."
"They'll keep," the taller man said. "The Old Man won't." And he sat down at
the table and leaned over so nobody else could hear us even if they were
listening. "We sent you the strawberries like we're supposed to. You're
supposed to know that we're OK"
"Yeah," I said, laughing just a little. "But they were supposed to be fresh
strawberries.
"In the middle of winter?"
"If they ain't fresh, I got to think about it," I said as I dug my fork into
the shortcake. "You guys wanna tell me anything else?"
The shorter guy was getting nervous.
"Youre supposed to see the fucking strawberries and say you'll go to a
meeting. That's what they told us and that's what you're supposed to do."
Then he turned to his partner. "If he don't come, the Old Man will pop a
fucking vein, and it's gonna be our necks." Then he turned back to me. "You
gonna come along or do I gotta tell my boss that you're a no-show? He's not
gonna like that."
I got up. "Can I bring my cake?" I asked.
"And you can eat it, too," the taller of the two men said as they took me
outside to one of those new slant-back Cadillacs that were selling for over
two grand in the showrooms. The taller guy slid behind the wheel while the
shorter of the two got in the back seat alongside me. Then we pulled away
from the curb and headed west along Delancey Street. We turned right at the
Bowery and headed uptown toward twenty-third street where we caught Madison
Avenue and took it north until we parked across the street from the Carlyle.
It was a ritzy joint alright, I said to myself, but even if Mr. C. liked to
stay there from time to time, he never liked to hob nob in public. Must be
something big.
The two guys took me past the tuxedo at the front desk and into the elevator
where they whispered the floor to a Spanish kid in a Phillip Morris outfit.
The kid slammed his gates shut, pushed the lever over, and we pretended like
we were alone while the car was pulled up the shaft with a swish. In a flash
the kid stopped the car, pulled the two gates back and sung out the floor
number. We walked out into the dark green hall and made a left turn. So, this
was where the rich people stayed when they came to New York. It was so quiet
and the lights were so weak and dim, I felt like I was walking the last mile.
We turned a corner and stopped at the first door. The tall guy knocked three
times, then twice, and the door swung open to reveal two guys in shirt
sleeves wearing shoulder holsters with .38s tucked inside. One of the men was
sitting on a couch in a far corner listening to the radio and holding a
coffee cup. They both stared at me like they were comparing my face to the
hundreds of Wanted posters pasted up in the post office. They were just like
cops. Cops never take their eyes off you. They make you feel like you're
standing in a department store window every time you talk to them. These guys
were the same way. Button men from the Family are different. They never look
at you until you do something funny. They know how to show a guy respect.
Cops and feds don't show respect to nobody.
A tall guy motioned me inside the room and the guy on the couch stood up.
"Tell the Chief that Mike Milan is here," the tall guy said to no one in parti
cular. The man with the cup looked at me even harder through his two narrow
slits for eyes like he was taking a mug shot for his files. Then he gave me
one last sizing up and down like a prizefighter who was going to start
throwing punches. Finally, he lit a cigarette and leaned forward, his elbows
on his knees as he blew a cloud of smoke toward the door.
"Hurry up and quit posin'," the tall guy said again. "The Chief ain't got
all day."
Then the man on the couch got up, walked over to a door to an adjoining room,
knocked, and stuck his head inside.
"Milan is here, sir," he said in a low voice like he was a secretary.
"Send him in," a voice growled from behind the door.
The tall guy jerked his thumb toward the door in the rear and I followed it.
I still didn't know who was in there waiting for me, but I figured that,
without nobody telling me otherwise; I was under Mr. C.'s protection and
nothing could happen to me except that he didn't know about it. And if
anybody was so stupid as to try to pull something off, Mr. C. would make him
wish he hadn't. So, even though you might think I was a little careless in
just taking this guy's word and all, that's the way things used to get done.
I walked through the living room of the hotel apartment and into what turned
out to be the bedroom. And waiting in there, sitting at a small writing desk
by the window and glaring at me beneath his thick bulldog eyebrows as I
walked through the doorway, was J. Edgar Hoover in the flesh. He was wearing
a fresh-pressed white dress shirt with extra long collars and a flap-over
breast pocket, a wide brown tie with polka-dots, and thick brown suspenders
with leather turnbuckles. His pleated pants, which were a lighter shade of
brown than the tie, were baggy, like he'd been sitting in them all day, but
still held a military crease all the way down from his waist to his cuffs.
I'd seen his picture in the papers a thousand times since I was a kid, but it
was nothing like seeing him sitting there looking at me right in the eyes.
Nothing at all.
"Do you know who I am?" he asked, standing up. But before I could answer, he
waved the man at the door out of the room and motioned him to close it behind
him. Now just the two of us were in the room together.
"Yes," I answered. "Sir." After a pause that took too long. I was still a
snot-nosed kid, still too stupid to give other people their due, still
thinking that I was the same invincible Navy middleweight champ who had the
fastest left jab in the entire service. He hrumphed, satisfied that I had
added the "sir," but unsatisfied that it took long enough for me to figure
out that's what I was supposed to do. Then he took a file folder off the top
of the writing desk behind him and opened it, looking down at it as he spoke.
"Michael Milan," he began, almost as if he had committed my file to his
memory. "Born, New York City, 1925; graduated Seward Park High School, 1943;
served in the Office of Strategic Services attached to the Navy 1944 to 1946,
trained as an ordinance technician; earned seaman first class rating,
military serial number. . ." He stopped and looked at me." This is all stuff
we know." Then he flipped a few pages over in the folder and began again.
"Arrested, 1937, 114-NYPD, charged with possession of stolen property,
charges dropped; arrested again, 1943, NYPD, drunk and disorderly and
possible accomplice to homicide in a police lockup!" He looked up at this,
maybe for emphasis, and gave me a long, hard stare. Then he continued like
was reading from the pulpit: "Known associates, 1938, Meyer Lansky, Benjamin
Siegel, Charles Luciano, Frank Costello; 1943, Tomasso Lucchese; 1947, Frank
Costello again . . ." He paused a second time. "This is all stuff most people
don't know. Should I go on?"
I stood there as dumb as a stone. The man was unsmiling, his heavily jowled
chin resting against his chest, but he didn't look as if he was going to put
me away or nothing. He just stood there, waiting for me to say something, but
knowing there was nothing I really could say. If he had the evidence to back
up what I knew was true, he had me dead to rights. But I had the feeling this
wasn't just a roust. Why bring in the head of the FBI on a roust? Then I
figured, maybe they want to turn me into a snitch. But when they want to turn
you, they beat the shit out of you first just to let you know what you can
look forward to in stir. No, I said to myself, this was something else.
Hoover flipped over a few more pages in the file, eyeballing them like he was
checking a racing form, and looked directly at me again. "Nine, November
1944, USS Ranger, Aircraft carrier berthed at Brooklyn Navy Yard, report of a
missing seaman, report of a Hellcat-Torpedo Bomber that fell overboard." He
raised his voice as if he was asking a question. "And a seaman Milan is the
crewman nearest to the accident. Three, January 1945, Quanset Point Naval Air
Station, Marine drill sergeant Brumer found dead from an overdose of
morphine, and there is a seaman Milan implicated in that incident as well.
Should we talk about Fort Dix, where I don't know what the hell a swabbie
named Milan was doing assigned to an Army processing center, but I guess in
the Navy anything is possible?"
What was I supposed to say-that those were all assignments? That I had to
admit to homicides because the cases were all classified as military
operations? I toughed it out.
"I don't know what those military records mean, sir," I said. "I was assigned
to all those bases and I happened to be acquainted with the personnel
involved in the accidents. The Navy has classified all of them as accidents."
"I know what the Navy has classified, Mr. Milan," he said, stressing the Mr.
as if he didn't believe it himself. "But can I ask you a question, strictly
off the record?" And as if to make the point, he turned around to the desk
and flipped the file folder closed.
"Do you know how many Nazis our troops let sneak into this country at the end
of the war?"
I knew there were a lot because of all the forged identification papers that
kept turning up in discharge records that I had investigated down at
Jacksonville Naval Air Station before I was discharged myself.
"Do you know how many Soviet agents are operating in this country out of the
United Nations?"
You didn't have to be a genius to figure that one out. There were Russian
spies all over the place, and everyone knew it.
"Sit down for a second," Hoover said and pointed to one of the easy chairs in
front of the far window. He got up from behind the desk and sat down directly
across from me. "I'm not going to play any games with you. I know who you
are, what you did during the war, and what you~re doing now. I'm not going to
threaten you or ask you to rat out anyone in the Families."
The fact that he used the term "Families" told me more about Hoover than
anything else could have revealed.
"I'll be direct," he said, opening another file on the table beside his
chair. "I want you to do for me what you're doing for Frank. Only when you
work for me, you'll be working just like you did in the war. This time it'll
be for Uncle Sam instead of the Family. Same assignments, same group."
I didn't say anything, and he didn't expect me to say anything. I just shut
up and let him do the talking. Besides, I figured, if I said anything to
incriminate myself, I might just wind up in the slammer, or worse, in the
chair.
"Your reputation-what you've done up to now-has brought you here," Hoover
said in a way that reminded me too much of what Mr. C. had said to me the
year before. "But now we wipe the slate clean, and whatever you. do from now
on determines how long you'll stay." He paused and leaned forward on his
elbows.
"I'm looking for fellows I can trust," he continued, but this time in a
friendlier tone. "I can't use the boys in the Bureau because what I need to
do isn't really Bureau business. I need guys like you who aren't afraid to
get a bloody nose once in awhile and go out on a limb with no one backing you
up."
Hoover was trying to get his message across without telling me exactly what
he wanted. Finally he blurted it out. "Lookit, I need guys who can pull jobs
when I need them pulled. Kick in a few doors and get me evidence against
Nazis that G2 and the boys in Washington forgot to check. Slap some creep
around so he talks about a crooked judge that's setting a foreign Communist
Party worker loose with only a rap on the knuckles. And I need a squad of men
who know how to pull the trigger and bury the body so it don't turn up
floating in a canal the next day for a bunch of flatfoots to poke their billy
clubs at." He paused to let the full impact of what he was saying sink in.
Then he started up again.
"The courts are letting too many people off the hook for crimes that ten
years ago would have landed them in the can. I don't mean you boys and your
friends; I mean the dope pushers and cop killers. There's a whole new breed
coming into this country these days, and it's us against them. There are
plenty of foreign agents who got into this country after the war and neither
the courts nor the immigration people can touch them. And these people were
killers during the war. They ran the camps or shot our POWs down in ditches.
We gotta let them know that we know who they are. And we gotta be worse than
they are. I need some triggermen who can get in, do the hit, and get out.
Cops can't do it. Only guys from the Families and the wartime field personnel
can. You're both."
I could see the picture he had painted. As the chief of the Bureau, his hands
were tied. He had to stick to the letter of the law no matter what he did.
But if he had his own private group of button men, he could point to a sap
and the guy would get hit. The Bureau covers up the evidence, and nobody's
the wiser.
But the old boy was no fool. At least with me, he knew who he was recruiting
for the job. "In the position you're in," he said. "You'll be in the know
about certain things people you deal with would pay a lot to find out. It's
just like the war," he said. "Loose lips. . ."
"You can trust me, Mr. Hoover," I said. I had earned my reputation of never
giving up a trust while I was in the OSS. Looking back on that day and
knowing what I know now, I didn't realize the importance of what he was
saying. I was a triggerman and I was being hired by a new boss; that was all.
But Mr. Hoover wasn't looking for palookas. He was looking for guys who could
think as well as they could follow orders, and guys who would keep their
mouths shut no matter what.
"I believe I can, but I want to make it clear. What you do for me, you do for
me. What you do for Frank Costello is something else. I don't ever want to
know," he said, opening his hands and pushing them out straight as if he was
pushing the rest of his Sunday dinner across the table after he'd eaten too
much.
I only managed to stare back as he spoke. At first, I really didn't believe
what I thought I was hearing, but it sank in real fast. For years, we'd
always wondered what the FBI boys would do if they ever got their hands on
information from the inside. Now, the head of the FBI was telling me that he
didn't want to know. He didn't expect me to rat out Mr. C. or any of the
other bosses. He was letting them have what was theirs so not to upset the
balance.
I also realized that Hoover never once asked me if I agreed to his deal. It
was as if he never even considered that I had a choice. At first I thought he
figured that if he said, "This is what must be done," I would just have to go
along. Then I thought that maybe he figured to blackmail me. After all, he
knew that I was running jobs for Mr. C., and it would only take one phony
witness to say that he saw me pull the trigger and I'd get my one-way ticket
to Death Row at Greenhaven. But that wasn't it either. Somehow, Mr. Hoover
knew that I was stand-up. That I would do the right thing because I'd done it
in the service.
"You're not going to know the identities of the other man in this unit," he
said. "For the present, you'll work alone. In the future, you may work in
teams, but I doubt it." He told me that my Navy records would be changed. I
would become a wounded war veteran and receive medical benefits for the rest
of my life. "That way, nobody can trace why you're being paid," he said. "At
least in the beginning. Later on we may make other changes. Your Navy
discharge may become an Army discharge. No two records will ever check, but
you'1l keep getting your payments as if you're disabled."
Then he told me that if I ever got married, they'd be able to pay me Social
Security through my wife if they wanted. "Just like you're a dead man,"
Hoover said with just a hint of a smile, as if he were enjoying a private
joke that nobody else would ever share. "When the time comes, the checks will
be paid to your wife's name and if anybody ever asks how Michael Milan is
paid, well just list him as Beneficiary Deceased or Disabled. It is the
perfect cover."
There was still a big question that I didn't dare ask. I was supposed to be a
cop. A fed. I was working for the family and I was being told to work for the
FBI. But the jobs were the same. The question was on the edge of my tongue.
How do you ask the chief of the FBI what you say to your padrone, the Boss of
all Bosses who sits at the head of the commission? What do you say to the man
who sent you out to earn your bones and before whose eyes you swore to uphold
the law of omerta? Was I supposed to tell Mr. C. that I worked for J. Edgar
Hoover? I was on a tightrope and Hoover knew it.
>From that time on, my presence in the family would no longer be as it was. I
would be an outsider in their world and an outsider in Hoover's world. I
would be able to trust no one even though both sides would trust me. Hoover
had done all of this by bringing me to this meeting. He had used the code to
gain my trust. How had he known about the code? That was a secret known only
to people in the Family. But that question was too dangerous to ask. Even
then I knew it was a subject not to be opened. I only asked the obvious
question.
"Since you say you know what I do, what do you expect me to tell my friends
and the friends of their friends?"
"Work for your friends the way you see fit," he answered. "I won't ask you
about it, and I don't want to know about it. Someday you may be surprised to
learn more about your friends and their families than you know now. But, I
believe Mr. Costello once told you about a line that you must not cross. Now
it is even more important that you know where that line is and who your
friends are on either side of it. I'll put it as bluntly as I can. If you use
what you learn from me to profit on the other side of the line, than both side
s will stand away from you because you cannot be trusted. But you're still
very young. Maybe too young for this. You only have to know that the person
who stood up for you before Frank Costello is standing up for you now. This
meeting is over. It never took place. And now I don't know you. You will be
sent for if needed." And with that he turned around and dismissed me from his
presence as if he were some swami in the desert.
I didn't tell Frank Costello about my meeting with J. Edgar Hoover, of
course, but somehow during those early years I could feel that he knew. Maybe
it was the way he ushered me into his presence or maybe it was the guarded
way he spoke about the feds and the FBI agents who were always tailing him.
It wasn't until many years later when I had received the same set of
instructions from Hoover and Mr. C. that I saw the two of them in the same
place at the same time. It was in Grand Central Station before Mr. C.
officially retired and before The Chin was to take his pot shot at him. I had
just walked away from J. Edgar Hoover when I saw Frank Costello in front of
me. I turned around and there was the Old Man. I turned back and there was
Mr. C. They saw each other and I saw both of them. Then they turned and
walked in opposite directions. That was how I knew that they were working
together and had been for many years. And that was how they told me that they
trusted me enough to let me see them together in the same place.
Twenty years after that day, I read in a book somewhere that Mr. Hoover and
Mr. Costello had met many times in private and that they even owned a
racetrack down in Florida. But I didn't have to read it in any book. Sam
Koenig, the man who stood up for me to Meyer, to Frank, and to the Old Man,
the man who had turned my life in this direction because he and Meyer Lansky
had made a judgment about me while I was still a punk rolling boxcars at the
Chrystie Street crap games, had told me all about it.
When he was a dying old man, Sam Koenig confided all of it to me, even the lit
tle details about the judges who stole from the victims of crime, the fathers
who sold their daughters to storekeepers for a night's worth of food, and the
mothers who had begged him with their bodies to keep their sons out of jail.
It was Sam Koenig, the old man who used to sit on the fruit crate in front of
Pollack's, who moved people around like pieces on a checkerboard. You would
never know it to look at him, but he had the ability to pick people out from
a crowd, point his finger, and set them in motion. That was how it was done
in those days. And for me, by the time I was twenty-three, Sam Koenig had
moved me so far in that I would never get out for the rest of my life.
pps. 38-49
-----
Aloha, He'Ping,
Om, Shalom, Salaam.
Em Hotep, Peace Be,
All My Relations,
Omnia Bona Bonis,
Adieu, Adios, Aloha.
Amen.
Roads End
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