The First Family by Mike Dash Read Free Book Online Page A

Grudgingly, the confectioner escorted the policemen to his cellar and allowed them to inspect his stores. It did not take Petrosino long to spot a barrel full of sugar that was practically identical to the one that had appeared on East 11th Street. Squatting to examine it more closely, the detective noticed that it bore precisely the same markings: “W&T” stenciled on the base and “G.223” stamped along the staves.
    Inzerillo freely admitted that he had purchased two such barrels from Wallace & Thompson and seemed unperturbed when Petrosino wanted to know what had happened to the missing one. When it was empty, the shopkeeper replied, he had taken it upstairs and dumped it in an alley with half a dozen others. He had then sold the lot. Three or four men had come to pick up the empty barrels, but he could not describe them. It was the common practice in the district; barrels were useful things, and he was happy to let his fellow Sicilians purchase the ones that he had finished with.
    Petrosino scribbled Inzerillo’s statement down. But he did not believe it.
    THANKS TO CAREY, FLYNN, AND PETROSINO , the police now knew a good deal more about the barrel victim than they had that morning. They had learned that he seemed to be a stranger to New York and thathe had links to an important counterfeiting gang. They knew he had been seen, hours before his death, in the company of several dangerous criminals. They also believed that they had traced the barrel he was found in. But one vital piece of information was still missing. They had absolutely no idea of the dead man’s name.
    At midnight, responding to Chief Flynn’s call, Inspector McClusky arrived at the Treasury Building with two other senior policemen for a briefing on the Morello gang. For the better part of an hour, Flynn ran methodically through everything the Secret Service had discovered about the forgers: their names, their records, and the scale and nature of their operation. Morello, he warned McClusky, was a dangerous individual: cunning, intelligent, and—unlike the great majority of counterfeiters—perfectly willing to use violence. His friends Laduca and Genova were ruthless, too, and the remaining members of the gang were almost as formidable. Among the other members of the group, Flynn pointed out, were Joseph Fanaro, a red-bearded giant of a man—six feet four in his socks—whom Secret Service operatives had seen escorting the barrel victim around Little Italy. Fanaro, the Chief thought, had been assigned to watch over the stranger and ensure that he did not slip away.
    It was almost 1 A.M. by the time Flynn finished and the conversation turned to strategy. McClusky, headstrong as ever, was only too aware that his superiors wanted evidence that he was making progress. The press, too, would be expecting action. Now was no time to wait and see how things developed; he and his men, he said, would round up all the members of Morello’s gang next afternoon, confident that at least one of them would talk under interrogation. The fact that the arrests would take place in time to feature in the next day’s papers was not mentioned, but it was scarcely incidental to the inspector’s thinking.
    Flynn was utterly appalled. His own investigation would be fatally compromised, he urged, and, anyway, it was too early to be talking of arrests. Likely as it was that Morello and his men knew all about the barrel murder, there was as yet no shred of proof that they were actually involved—and hence there was a real chance that the killers would go free for lack of evidence. The best way forward, the Chief urged, was further observation, which would almost certainly produce new leads. At present Morello did not know that he was being watched. Arrests would simply put the whole gang firmly on its guard.
    Flynn pleaded, but McClusky would not be budged and the truthwas that the Secret Service had no jurisdiction in a murder case; indeed, the Chief’s only role in the