Bensonhurst

By B. Lawrence Goldberg

A rogue FBI agent, and a poetry-loving director of a Brooklyn funeral home. A frayed truce among New York’s crime families, and a family of shopkeepers whose lives have come unglued. Bensonhurst is the story of people and events, real and imaginary, caught up in the June 1971 assassination attempt on Joe Colombo, the flamboyant head of New York’s reigning crime syndicate.

Fast forward thirty years and, as William Faulkner once noted, “The past isn’t dead. It’s not even past.” Hidden identities revealed, political ambitions run amok and a lingering thirst for revenge mix with ghosts from the past, only weeks after the 9/11 attack on the World Trade Center.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Gatekeeper Press
• Release date: Nov 5, 2019
• ISBN: 9781642378474

Book preview

PART I

Vincent Travaglia witnessed his first dead body in 1926. He had just turned five. His mother, Grace, alarmed by the sudden cries of her month-old newborn, left Vinnie alone in the second floor bedroom of their house in Bensonhurst, Brooklyn and dashed down the hall to make sure Theresa was okay.

Listen to me, young man, you stay right where you are, commanded Grace, whose broad forehead was lined in permanent troughs of worry. I’ll be right back.

Vinnie wasn’t listening.

Instead, on this steamy July morning, Vinnie headed downstairs to the Travaglia’s cool basement and edged his way in the darkness to the narrow sliver of light shining through a door at the back. The door had been left partially open. Vinnie peeked inside. The room seemed cold. He raised his hand over his eyes, shielding them from the blinding glare of the fluorescent lights overhead.

As he did, he saw his father, Anthony Travaglia, stooping over a sheet-covered aluminum table. Next to him stood an unfamiliar figure. The strange man wore a white apron, a gauze facial mask, and a white shirt rolled up to the elbows. He was inserting an orange rubber hose into the arm of a large tattooed, hairy body lying naked on the table. Vinnie watched while frozen in his tracks, horrified and curious. The man in white began massaging the arms and legs of the naked body.

Big bad Solly. Whatcha think—not so dangerous looking now, is he? Anthony asked the man in white.

A pussy, the man in white snickered.

Vinnie turned to run, then tripped over his own feet and fell with a loud thud on the cement floor outside the room. Anthony Travaglia spun from the table, barking Stop! to the startled man at his side. The man in white immediately shut off the machine connected to the orange rubber tube, and Anthony ran to pick up Vinnie off the floor.

His father, a man long accustomed to dealing with stress, remained calm. Vinnie, he said firmly yet softly, you don’t listen. We’ve told you a hundred times, you’re not to come down here. This is where I work. Do you understand? Vinnie didn’t understand, but he looked up at his father, a short chunky man with black thick hair and bushy eyebrows to match, and nodded.

That afternoon, Grace and Anthony Travaglia sat down with their five-year-old son to explain the mystery of death. Grace, a shy nervous woman with eyes brown as burnt caramel, and a pink lipsticked mouth she learned very early in life to keep discretely shut, was more than happy to let Anthony do the dirty work.

Everyone dies, he began, his cadence measured and solemn. They die and go to heaven. God giveth, and God taketh. He does both Vinnie; giveth and taketh. Vinnie felt confused, but nodded his agreement anyway.

What I do, Vinnie, Anthony continued, clearing his throat and looking over at Grace, is to make certain that when people die, they’re prepared to go to heaven… or wherever; I prepare them, get them ready, embalm them.

Grace winced.

Anyhow, some of these people, I have to admit, Anthony added, well they weren’t so nice, like Solly downstairs, the man...

Grace shook her head, and nudged her husband. I think that’s enough for now, she pled.

Anthony shrugged. Okay, okay, long story short, that’s the business we’re in, Vinnie, the funeral business. It’s a business entrusted to me by God, he said, tilting his head up slightly and straightening his shoulders against the back of the sofa. And it’s a job I’ll someday share with you: Travaglia and Son. Grace gave Anthony a relieved smile.

Although he wasn’t sure he wanted the job, Vinnie was nonetheless impressed that God had entrusted his father to carry it out.

Fourteen years later, it wasn’t God who killed Anthony Travaglia; it was Salvatore Minetti. Supporting on his narrow bony shoulders a thick neck out of which sprung his slender head and sad, drooping eyes, flaring nostrils, and raised pointy ears, Minetti had earned the nickname Trigger, after Roy Rogers’ famous horse..

Nobody, it turned out, trusted Minetti, least of all anyone in the mob. Nutcase, too short a fuse, Frank Costello scoffed in response to a suggestion that Sal be considered for some menial mob task. Discouraged he’d never get hired, Sal decided to take matters into his own hands. He’d get even; strike out on his own. He’d fence cartons of stolen canned goods--canned fish and milk and processed foods he read might be rationed should the US get involved in the war threatening Europe. So, on one particularly hot sticky Friday prior to the long Labor Day weekend of 1940, Minetti paid an uninvited visit to Anthony Travaglia.

Vinnie, a recent Fordham College graduate, was spending two weeks away from Brooklyn visiting his father’s brother in a small cabin at the foot of Vermont’s Taconic Mountains. Vinnie had been toying with the idea of enlisting in the Army and needed to get far away somewhere quiet to mull it over.

It was while Vinnie was away that Minetti showed up unannounced on Anthony’s doorstep. Invariably gracious, Anthony invited him in. I want to propose a business deal, Minetti growled at him in the seclusion of the funeral home office. It sounded to Anthony more like a threat than a proposal, and led him to conclude that in Minetti’s mind at least, a deal had already been struck.

Use of your basement for storing merchandise. You lend me the space, I pay you ten percent of the sales.

Anthony didn’t hesitate; he adamantly refused. You crazy? Absolutely not, he protested Now get the hell out of here before I call your father.

Minetti looked down at the much smaller Anthony as the two rose from their chairs a mere few inches apart. They glared intently at one another. Sal’s droopy eyes opened wide, his lips parted, and through a crooked set of clenched teeth he hissed menacingly, Think it over.

Think it over? I already thought it over. You get out of here right now, warned Anthony, pushing back the shoulders of his five-foot-four-inch fame. I’m going to talk to your father for sure about this. And while I’m at it, I might tell some other people too, people who’ll have a lot less sympathy than your father.

There was no mistaking it. Anthony was clearly referring to members of the Costello gang. Costello, anointed The Prime Minister of the Underworld by the press, had come to rely on Travaglia and Son, not only as his own family’s choice of a funeral home, but as a benevolent enterprise recognizing the entire mob’s reverence for their shared pursuits. Travaglia and Son, in effect, had become the Switzerland of the Brooklyn Mob. It was the one safe harbor each of the often-warring families understood as being off-limits to conducting business or to the settling of factional or personal grievances.

Sal The Trigger Minetti laughed derisively, sloughing off any potential danger he might have just put himself in. It’s business, he said. Who’s to say it wasn’t your idea? But after leaving Anthony’s office in an angry huff that morning, he woke the next day bathed in a sea of sweat. For the following three days, he barely left the house and sat alone in his bedroom stewing. He didn’t worry that Anthony might tell his father. His father had heard far worse. He worried Anthony might actually follow through on the more ominous threat; that he might alert mob enforcers of how cavalierly Sal flouted the neutrality of Travaglia and Son, and that if Anthony were to go ahead and do this, Sal could end up in deep, unforgiving peril.

By day four, he had worked himself up into a stormy panic and decided to act. He staked out Anthony’s house from a car directly across the street, and when Anthony stepped out the front door to get the morning paper, Sal The Trigger Minetti ran up and plugged him with three rounds of a .38- caliber Colt Special, killing him instantly.

Grace, helplessly distraught over the death of her husband, asked fifteen-year old Theresa to wire Vinnie and Anthony’s brother up in Vermont. Vinnie and his uncle left for Brooklyn the next day.

It didn’t take long for word of Anthony’s slaying to reach Costello. Following a brief but spirited interrogation of Minetti conducted by one of Costello’s underling’s, it was determined that it was Minetti after all and not Anthony who proposed Travaglia and Son enter into a separate business arrangement. A contract assassin known as The Iceman was dispatched, and the whole matter was quickly resolved.

As a courtesy, Vinnie was informed anonymously by phone of what had led to Anthony’s death, of Sal’s brazen attempt to strong-arm his father and Sal’s subsequent fear that Anthony might tell on him. Two days later, police received a report of a mutilated body floating head down in the Meadowlands’ swampy reeds on the border between Brooklyn and Queens. No positive ID just yet, a police sergeant told the reporter from the New York Daily News. But a head like a fucking horse.

Vinnie, barely twenty, was now the sole proprietor of Travaglia and Son, the breadwinner of the family, responsible for supporting his mother and his sister, Theresa. Accepting his new responsibilities, though with mixed emotions, he applied for, and two months later received, a III-A exemption from military service.

Moments before the mid-July funeral service, the last time Anthony Travaglia’s body would ever be seen in the funeral home bearing his name, Vinnie stood alone, peering down into his father’s open casket. He had chosen for the coffin a buffed exterior of deep rich cherry hardwood, and for the interior, a warm champagne velvet with matching pillow, the kind of casket, Vinnie imagined, his father himself would have suggested.

Bending down to get a closer look, he placed a kiss on his father’s forehead. He was pleased with the cosmetic feat he had accomplished, seamlessly filling the small hole above his father’s right temple with a skin-colored compound that camouflaged the bullet hole wound.

"I wish he had some way of defending himself against Minetti before the fact, not after when it was too late; some protection not only from hotheads like Minetti, but from even the mob itself, some button he could have pushed, he lamented. Who knows, he might still be alive."

He recalled with pride his father’s ambition, his business acumen and ingenuity, how celebrated he’d become for charting new directions in the funeral home industry. But what Anthony couldn’t do was to protect himself against the very sort of clientele that comprised the lion’s share of his customer base.

Still, it was not the funeral business alone that engaged Anthony. His innate curiosity and genuine thirst for every kind of electronic keep in touch communication became a lifelong hobby he avidly pursued, creating very early on a special bond between father and son. Vinnie, tears forming in his eyes, remembered how the two of them pieced together a functioning walkie-talkie so that Anthony could communicate with Grace from the mortuary basement, and thereby needless treks up and down the creaky basement stairs.

And then there was Vinnie’s first crystal radio set assembled from coils of copper wire and capacitors, and how excited Anthony was to substitute the kit’s cheap headphones with a brand-new sophisticated set that had just come on the market. That same finished radio was now housed in a simple brown cardboard cigar box. Its cardboard entrails long gone, the old Garcia y Vega cigar box was now a keepsake. Vinnie filled it with a few photographs and his father’s leather address book, and the box sat prominently on the top shelf of a kitchen cabinet. Together, these were seminal experiences that helped fuel Vinnie’s lifelong interest in electronic communication, and for this, he would always be grateful.

But looking into the open casket before him, Vinnie fell red with shame. What gratitude had he ever showed to repay his father for these generously shared boyhood lessons? A gusty gale of conscience swooped down around the coffin like an unruly flock of birds. And there in the center of this swirling reminiscence, he saw his thirteen-year-old self standing high up on a wobbly ladder, delicately maneuvering a tiny microphone into the ceiling light fixture of Anthony’s bedroom.

True, he dismantled the listening device a few weeks after installing it, but he never confessed this blatant intrusion of privacy, this sin, to his father. He was too ashamed.

Vinnie looked up from the casket. Then it struck him. He’d trade this nagging, lingering guilt at bugging his parents’ bedroom for something his father could be proud of. He’d create within the mortuary of Travaglia and Son a sophisticated surveillance and recording system.

It made good, sound, practical sense. Who knows, his father might still be alive if there had been such a system in place. If, for example, Anthony had been immediately able to produce a recording, say, of his meeting with Sal—he could have threatened him with turning it over to any number of Costello’s associates or the police. Minetti might have backed off right then and there, fearful of the swift punishment certainly awaiting him for violating the law, or even worse, the unwritten terms dictated by Travaglia and Son’s neutrality. And Anthony would still be here, alive. Preemptive protection—a kind of personal indemnity policy, Vinnie enthused, tapes of privileged mob conversations to use should the occasion ever arise.

At that moment, the doors to the room opened and the mourners slowly entered, shuffling past the open coffin. Vinnie looked down at his father. He wiped the tears from the wells of his eyes as the initial outline of an elaborate surveillance network took shape in his brain. Vowing to refine the vision at a more appropriate time, he left to greet the overflow crowd filing into the chapel and to provide needed comfort and support to his grief-stricken mother.

Following the service, the overflow crowd thinned out. Those leaving kissed each other and promised to stay in touch. Those staying for the interment waited patiently, their arms dangling out their cars’ open windows and their engines left idling. Finally, with headlights on and police directing, the usually busy morning traffic came to an abrupt standstill as the procession crawled along Atlantic Avenue, across the steaming Brooklyn asphalt, and out the Interboro Parkway to the relative cool of St. John’s Cemetery in Queens. In the somber quiet of the hearse, Vinnie sat back, shut his eyes, and imagined within Travaglia and Son, an integrated network of microphones, tapes, and sophisticated recording equipment, the electronic equivalent of an insurance policy.

Which is how he knew, some thirty years later, that his sister Theresa’s husband, Donnie Malfatono, was about to get whacked.

Carmine Nunzio is dressed in a blue pinstripe suit, narrow yellow tie, and silver tie pin. He navigates his way through the crowd milling about the reception area of Travaglia and Son until he spots a tall, thin, bearded man standing alone at the far end of the room. The two men’s eyes meet and Carmine tilts his head up slightly in recognition. The tall man’s right arm leans comfortably against a sill. Above the sill is a stained-glass window depicting The Ascension.

The two men greet each other warmly, grasping each other’s hands and shaking them slowly up and down. Carmine forces a strained smile through his lips, exposing two jagged rows of yellow clenched teeth. His eyes dart around the room. Mourners rotate in and out of small clusters, pausing long enough to add their sympathies to the chorus of hushed voices before moving on. Confident no one is paying them any attention, the two men release their grip. Carmine cups his left hand over his mouth and, looking up at the tall man at the window, whispers: Donnie Malfatano. The 17th. Petey’s. The tall man nods thoughtfully for a few seconds. Of course, he says, his voice reassuring and compassionate. I’ll take care of it. Be well, Carmine. Then, with a slight limp, the tall man walks off unnoticed, and slips out the side door of the mortuary.

Theresa?

"Yeah, speaking.... Vinnie?" They haven’t spoken since their uncle’s funeral nearly a year ago.

Yeah, it’s me. How’re you doing?

Cut the shit, Vinnie, her voice barking over the phone like an angry owl. What the fuck you want?

Nice to hear your voice too. We need to talk.

Theresa shakes her head and frowns. Is this about the house, Vinnie? I don’t want to talk to you about the house—in person or on the phone. If you wanna talk, talk to Lipton; he’s the lawyer not me.

As soon as Theresa found out Vinnie was relocating the business, she hired a lawyer. She demanded her brother relinquish all rights to the house. She was adamant. What she’d accept, and nothing less, was half the market value of the house, or, alternatively, half the proceeds following its sale (whichever came first).

Vinnie’s lawyer Barone said they’d mull it over. Privately, he advised Vinnie to hold off, thinking Theresa protested too much, that she was being melodramatic, and might after all these years settle for less than a fifty-percent share in the house just to get the whole thing over with. Lipton will pressure her. He’s sick of the whole thing.

Besides, Vinnie, he cautioned, she’s a dollar short and thirty years too late. The statute of limitations has run out. We can drag this thing out in court proceedings until you’re ready to settle. It was a compelling argument.

Their dispute was only the latest instance of a long history of conflict.

No, Theresa, I swear, nothing about the house or the estate. It’s something else, something more important. I don’t want to talk about it over the phone. How about we meet for lunch Tuesday? At Athena’s, that Greek restaurant, at, say, one?

Theresa holds herself back from making some smart remark. "You mean Tuesday like tomorrow Tuesday?"

Yeah, tomorrow.

Must be important, she decides. Okay, tomorrow at one, but lunch is on you.

After Theresa hangs up, her husband, Donnie, wanders into the kitchen from the living room where he’s been watching Days of Our Lives. A short, fat man with thick, muscular arms and a red crescent scar over his right cheek, Donnie Malfatono doesn’t like to have his soap opera interrupted.

What’s your brother want?

What he always wants, to be the fuckin’ center of attention.

The next day Theresa tries on three separate outfits before settling on a silk green blouse and a black pleated skirt. The combination, she thinks, complements her new hair color: brown with blond highlights. Her face is smooth and full and her cheeks glow with a light pink rouge. She shifts side to side in the full-length mirror, running her hands down the sides of her hips. After one last approving glance, she nods her head. Not bad for nearly forty-five.

She arrives at Athena’s fifteen minutes late. Vinnie is already seated and looking over the menu. Sorry, she says, looking down at her watch. The trains had so much graffiti scribbled on them, they couldn’t move.

She sits down and glances around the stately old restaurant, taking in the white linen tablecloths topped with standing folded napkins and matching pairs of silver salt and pepper shakers. Each place setting includes a crystal water goblet as a kind of crowning glory. So, she finally says, nice place. Kinda stuffy maybe, but nice.

She peers up at Vinnie. You look the same. She weighs whether to add Kinda stuffy too, but decides against it. Biting her tongue is as close to giving a compliment as Theresa ever comes.

Her brother is five years older, and though she admires him, she resents him as well. She always has. In part, because she’s envious of the unrehearsed ease with which he can walk into any roomful of complete strangers and command their immediate attention. Or of how easily he fits into any social situation, as if he never had to try anything on and look in the mirror before walking out the door. Like Theresa, his face has remained wrinkle free. He has Anthony’s head of thick black hair, their father’s wide-set dark brown eyes, and his broad chin. But unlike his short, squat father, Vinnie inherited his mother’s lanky stature. Theresa thinks he looks like the Italian actor Marcello Mastroianni.

Today is no different. Vinnie’s dressed in a dark blue blazer with shiny gold buttons and an expensive Gant button-down shirt. What he’s missing today, Theresa notices, is his seductive toothy smile.

A young, black-vested waiter wanders over with menus.

Welcome. My name’s Ralph—I’ll be taking care of you today. Can I get you folks something to start with?

Vinnie politely waves him away. Give us a minute, will you, Ralph?

Sure thing, Ralph says. Take your time.

You look the same too, Vinnie says, watching Theresa unzip her tan suede jacket. He was going to tell her she looked terrific.

Things must be going well, Vinnie, Theresa says, carefully folding her jacket on the seat of the empty chair at the next table. "I read somewhere, Time I think, that funerals are the growth industry of the ’70s."

Right, Theresa. Vinnie fakes a laugh.

Ignoring him, she continues. Everyone’s gotta die sooner or later, right? Protesters, soldiers, rock stars...seems like everyone’s dying. Maybe it’s the fuckin’ Vietnam War or drugs—I don’t know. But dying’s gotten big. It’s like Dustin Hoffman in the movie The Graduate. Remember the one word the guy in the suit told him to get into? ‘Plastics?’ Well now it’s death.

Vinnie groans.

I hear your new place is just about finished; you must be excited. Theresa looks down at her menu. You’ve gotta tell me all about it sometime. I don’t know about you, but I’m starving. Let’s order.

I wasn’t planning to talk about it. But yeah, the new place will be finished in a few weeks. And I’ll give you a heads-up: I’m willing to settle just to get the goddam thing over with.

Theresa looks up from the menu.

We’ll put the house up for sale and I asked Barone to settle with you and Lipton. If you agree, you get half once the house is sold.

Hmm, hmmm, Theresa mumbles, trying not to sound interested. Ralph, the black-vested waiter, returns, fills their crystal glasses with ice water, and stands patiently by, pad and pencil in hand. Ready?

The two nod their heads.

Good. A cocktail to start out with?

Vinnie looks over at Theresa. No, she says, water’s fine.

All right. Ralph continues, Today’s special is Moussaka with sautéed green beans and a salad. Do you need a few minutes or do you know what you’d like? he asks.

Theresa glances at the menu. I know what I want. I’ll have the whatchacallit, Paidikia? She points to the most expensive entrée on the menu, Greek lamb chops with lemon potatoes and zucchini.

Ralph nods, scribbling the order down on a small green pad.

And for you, sir? Vinnie isn’t feeling hungry. I’ll go with the Greek salad plate. And water’s fine. Thanks. Ralph scurries off to the kitchen.

Seeing anybody? Theresa asks.

You mean dating? No, nobody. Work and construction on the new place have been keeping me pretty busy. Haven’t had much opportunity to meet attractive single women.

Maybe you should try ugly married ones then.

Service is quick. Ralph puts the two plates down with a flourish. Let me know if you need anything else, he says, and ambles off.

I’ve signed up for a night course at NYU, Vinnie adds. Shakespeare. He realizes immediately it sounds like a clumsy attempt to convince her he’s got a life outside of work.

Good for you. Okay, so go ahead. What’s so important you couldn’t tell me on the phone? Theresa says, looking up at Vinnie in between hungry bites of lamb chop.

It’s about Donnie...

Theresa interrupts. Donnie? What about Donnie?

Vinnie leans forward and lowers his voice. I don’t know any other way to put it: He’s got trouble; there’s a contract out on him.

Theresa puts her knife and fork down and stares at Vinnie.

What did you say?

A contract, Theresa. There’s a contract out on Donnie. They’re going to kill him, assassinate him, whack him. I can’t make it much clearer than that.

Theresa’s eyes widen and she feels her stomach harden. She looks around the restaurant, assuring herself no one can overhear them. What are you talking about? That’s crazy. Why would they want to kill Donnie? And how would you know anyway? She pauses. You’re not connected. Are you?

No, you know that. Listen, I thought a lot about this, about telling you. Trust me Theresa, I’m doing this with mixed feelings. I could care less about Donnie—you know that.

Theresa grunts.

I’m telling you because you’re my sister and even if I don’t like it, you’re married to him, and well, because...well, just because."

I’m touched, she huffs sarcastically, "but I really don’t give a shit what you think about Donnie. I still don’t believe you. And I sure