“All right, we decided, no arguments. We put Big Bill Sugar on the mantelpiece, propped him up against the wall, and left him there. With Mike, there was no use trying to understand. Afterwards, of course, the rest of us talked about it a lot, trying to figure out why Mike was so anxious to have Big Bill Sugar on his mantelpiece, right there in his living room. Everyone had his own ideas about that, but no one knew for, sure.
“Of course it was a great victory for us. Big Bill Sugar was a dangerous guy, he wanted to split the movement and keep a piece of the pie for himself, and Spats Marcovitz thought Mike wanted to keep Big Bill for a trophy to remind him of the great victory he’d won. In any case, he kept him like that on his wall for years, until he was sent down for tax fraud, before being deported to Italy. Yes, that was all they could find against him: tax fraud, and even then it was a put-up job by the politicians who tried to infiltrate the movement.
“Before leaving the States, he gave the statue to the Museum of American Folklore in Brooklyn. It’s still there. Mike didn’t get Big Bill Sugar for peanuts—they found his brother’s body in a garbage can on the Oakland docks—but he wasn’t a man to discuss the price when the question of unity was at stake. Yes, he laid the first stone of unity on the docks and he did it all with his own hands, which didn’t keep the government from taking his passport away and deporting him to Italy when he got out of jail. So that’s the man you’re going to see in about an hour, young fellows —a giant. Yes, a giant; there’s no other word for him.”
There were three of us. There was Shimmy Kunitz, who was Carlos’ bodyguard, and whose only occupation outside of his physiological functions consisted of target practice with his Colt about five hours a day. That was his way of life. When he wasn’t shooting, he was waiting. I don’t know for what. The day they picked him up dead at Libby’s, maybe, with three bullets in his back.
Then there was Swifty Zavrakos, a little man with greying hair whose face was a kind of permanent exhibition of every known variety of nervous tic; he was our lawyer and a real walking encyclopedia of waterfront history; he could give you from memory the names of all the organizers, the sentences each had served and even the caliber of the guns they used.
As for me, I had been to college, had spent several years on Madison Avenue, and I was mostly there to keep an eye on appearances and take care of the public relations, and I worked hard to try to modify the too often unfavorable image created in the public’s mind by our leaders, largely due to their often more-than-modest social origins, and their lack of interest in questions of philanthropy, education and culture.
We were going to see Sarfatti in Rome for two reasons: first of all, because his deportation decision had just been reversed by the Supreme Court as the result of a legal flaw, and second, because the Syndicate was at another crucial point in its history. We were planning to move out of the harbors and into bigger things. The first decisive step was in the transportation sector—trucks, planes, boats, railroads. It was a big mouthful to swallow. The so-called legitimate unions were fighting us like mad, supported by the politicians and by the federal authorities, who hated the idea of workers’ unity anyway and who cared even less to see it organized by us, or, as they put it, “see it fall into criminal hands.”
We needed Mike more than we ever needed him before.
His name, the news of his return, would scare the hell out of our enemies and would sound an optimistic note of victory. It would create just the necessary psychological effect. After all, he had been the first to understand, perhaps instinctively, that traditional American capitalism was on the wane, and that the true source of wealth and power was no longer management but labor. Mike’s genius had been to realize that the days of the Chicago-type rackets were over, and that protection of the workers offered infinitely bigger possibilities than the kind of protection pioneers like Bugs Moran, Lou Buchalter or old Capone had once imposed on big business.
He had even cut himself off completely from the drug traffic, prostitution and slot machines, in order to concentrate all his energy on the labor movement, despite the opposition of the more conservative elements in the Syndicate, incapable of adapting themselves to the new historical conditions. Traditional unions, fighting for life, and with the complicity of federal authorities, had temporarily succeeded in slowing the march of progress by getting Mike deported; now his return to the front lines of the battle for control would panic the ranks of our competitors.
We reached Rome around the end of the afternoon. A Cadillac was waiting for us at the airport with a uniformed chauffeur at the wheel and an excited old trout of an Italian secretary who spoke of Mike with throbs in her voice. Mr. Sarfatti was sorry, but he hadn’t left his villa in over six weeks. Carlos approved with a brief nod.
“You can’t be too careful,” he said. “He’s well guarded here?”
“Oh, absolutely,” the secretary assured him. “I see to that myself. No one disturbs him. He thought he’d have more time, but New York is very eager to have him return immediately, and he’s having to work twice as hard. It’s a great event in his life, of course. But he’s very happy you’re here. He’s often spoken of you to me. You knew him when he was still doing figurative work, I believe. Yes, Mr. Sarfatti enjoys talking about his artistic beginnings,” the secretary chatted on. “Apparently one of his works is in the collection of the American Folklore Museum, in Brooklyn. A statue called ‘Big Bill Sugar.’ “
Carlos caught his cigar just in time. Swiftly Zavrakos’ face blurred into a series of alarming twitches. I must have looked pretty funny myself! Only Shimmy Kunitz didn’t show the slightest emotion; he was so full of dope he didn’t seem to know he was there. He always looked so blank you ended up not seeing him.
“He told you about that?” Carlos asked slowly.
“Yes, certainly!” the woman exclaimed with a broad smile. “He often makes fun of his early efforts. Actually, he doesn’t disown them; he even thinks they’re rather amusing. ‘Contessa,’ he told me—he always calls me Contessa, I don’t really know why—’Contessa, when I first started I was very figurative—a kind of American primitive, like Grandma Moses, really naive, you know? Big Bill Sugar was probably the best thing I did along those lines—a nice example of what we call Americana—a gangster type bent over, clutching his stomach where the bullet went in, with his hat beginning to slip down over his eyes— but it wasn’t much. I hadn’t found myself yet, of course, I was only feeling my way. But if you ever go through Brooklyn, you should stop and see it all the same. Kids love it, I’m told. And you’ll find but how far I’ve come since.’ But I suppose you know Mr. Sarfatti’s work much better than I do____”
Carlos had got over his surprise. He was grinning. Old Mike knew how to put over a good joke.
“Yes, ma’am,” he said emphatically. “We sure know the work Mike’s done and we know he’ll do even bigger things now. Let me tell you, you’re working for a great man, a great man whose return all America is waiting for. Someday his name will be known all over the world. . . .”
“Oh, I don’t doubt it for a minute!” the secretary exclaimed. “Already Alto in Milan has devoted a most enthusiastic Article to him. And I can assure you that for two years he’s done nothing but prepare himself for this moment, so that he now really feels ready to return to the United States.”