Sugar House (9780991192519) (30 page)

"Oh, it does. Unfortunately, that's one of
the difficulties. I've already heard rumors about priests in other
parishes ordering far above the needed amounts for communion, and
I'm pretty sure they're not drinking all the excess alone. I myself
have been approached by some of our own parishioners with offers to
help 'supplement the church's income' with the sale of any extra
wine. Of course if you look at it closely, things haven't changed
much since the beginning of time… Adam barely hesitated to take a
bite of the forbidden apple in the Garden of Eden."

"Yes, but asking a priest to…" Joe couldn't
finish. "And in church?"

"Is that what bothers you, Joe? That people
commit crimes behind the cloak of the church? God doesn't disparage
against disobedience and sin with a heavier hand when it occurs in
His house. He abhors all sin and evil. The Catholic Church didn't
fight for the passing of the Eighteenth Amendment, but now that
it's passed we stand by the laws of this country." Father
Gatowski's eyes looked directly into Joe's.

"Of course, Father. I've got to get going…
thank you for the Mass for Ojciec." He grabbed his hat from the pew
clip and stood up. Father Gatowski stood also and held out his hand
to Joe.

"Take care, Joe, and remember I'm here for
confession or just to talk if you need me. God be with you, son."
They shook hands. Joe left the pew, walked to the back of the
church, and turned around. The priest was kneeling in his family's
pew and praying. His mood dampened with the unspoken disappointment
from Father Gatowski; he crossed himself and left the church.

Joe hopped a streetcar and headed downtown,
back to the Sugar House. The sweet smell of sugarcane permeated the
air, in stark contrast to the rough voices and cussing from the
workers on the floor. Charlie informed Joe that Walt had been
persuaded to work on the boats but had struck a hard bargain. It
had been agreed that Walt would never operate the boats himself for
rum running or even to the hideout. If a boat broke down, Joe and
Cappie would somehow have to get it to the docks in Detroit for
Walt to work on. Direct from the conversation with Father Gatowski,
Joe's conscience felt a little better knowing that his friend would
not be directly involved in the illegal operations that Joe had
initiated him into.

Supper was a delicious and lighthearted
affair. Stephan spooned his mashed potatoes into a mountain of
white spuds on his plate as Frank regaled them with funny stories
from school. Joes' feeling of guilt abated as he looked around the
tiny kitchen at his family. He was providing for them the best way
he knew and fulfilling his promise to Ojciec. God would
understand.

It was dark when Joe pulled the speedboat into the
boathouse in Wyandotte. Cappie quickly shut the door behind the
boat and caught the rope Joe threw to him. Electric bulbs cast
light on the wooden walls and ceiling as Joe jumped out of the boat
and secured the garage door. They had been running whisky from
Walkerville for over two years and had it down to a science.

Seven days a week they woke at eight a.m. and
pushed carts of whisky and beer through a dimly lit tunnel from the
basement of the river house to another house the gang had bought on
the other side of the street. When they reached the end of the
tunnel, he and Cappie would carry the boxes up the basement stairs
to the attached garage at the back of the second house. They loaded
it into waiting trucks labeled Fresh Meat, Benny's Breads, or
whatever nondescript brand Leiter came up with to disguise the
contraband. Drivers took it into the city.

Afterwards, Joe or Cappie ate breakfast in
the river house kitchen and then went down to the boathouse to
tinker. Walt had designed an underwater exhaust system that
decreased the noise of the speedboats by half, but he continually
sent notes via the pickup men instructing Joe and Cappie on upkeep
or ways to increase the speed. Joe had become an extremely talented
boatman, able to evade the Coast Guard with the proficiency of men
more experienced than he; but he relied on Cappie for much of the
mechanical work. After lunch they'd play cards for a while, and
then Joe would read while Cappie took a nap.

On nice days, Joe would meander down to the
shipbuilding docks to watch the men construct the giant ships, or
he'd walk to one of the two Polish Catholic churches located in the
city. Our Lady of Mount Carmel and St. Stanislaus Kostka were
sufficient substitutes for his home parish, and if the doors were
open he'd go inside and sit for an hour or so, feeling calm and
safe in the fragrance of candles and incense. He was unable to
attend Sunday morning Mass due to scheduled pickups, but he hoped
his silent prayers during the week would suffice for the time
being.

Wyandotte was a quiet rural town with quaint
streets lined with trees and flowers. Children played in large
front yards while prettily dressed ladies sipped tea on expansive
porches overlooking the river. But in spite of the tranquil
appearance, an intense Italian gang war had begun on those same
streets only a few weeks before. The residents were startled from
their beds by the sounds of car bomb explosions and loud blasts
from sawed-off shotguns blowing bodies to pieces in front of their
homes. Burnt corpses were found in nearby farmers' fields, and last
week a gift wrapped package intended for an important underboss had
detonated inside a drugstore, killing the druggist. But a truce had
been tentatively reached, and the last five days the town had
reverted to a quiet country atmosphere.

The sky was gray and cloudy that morning as
Joe walked to the local grocery store to buy some cottage cheese.
Cappie had never tasted pierogi, and he wanted to make some for
him. As he neared Vicolli's Fruits and Grocery, several black
sedans sped past him up Biddle Avenue in a silent motorcade. When
the caravan reached the business block, the pace slowed to a fast
crawl. Joe had never seen a hit, but knew the makings of one and
leapt into the lobby of the local inn for cover. As he hit the
floor the sound of a hundred shots could be heard across the
street, shattering windows and splintering bricks and wood. A woman
screamed, and the motorcade sped away.

Joe hesitated and then opened the inn's heavy
wooden doors. He glanced south at the line of sedans receding and
took a deep breath to steady himself as he exited the building.
Glass littered the wood sidewalk and street from the windows of
Vicolli's and any cars that had been parked in the way. Stepping
over bullet casings and shards of glass, Joe looked at the wrecked
storefront. A young policeman, not much older than Joe, was propped
up in the doorway, holding his leg with his right hand and holding
his gun in the left.

"Officer…" Joe said when he had reached the
storefront. The cop looked up at him with a blank stare. "They're
gone, officer. You can put your gun away." Blood was seeping
through the man's uniform.

"Get down, boy!" he responded. The young
rookie was in some sort of shock. He grabbed at Joe's coat trying
to pull him to the ground. Several Italian-looking men ran out the
front door of the grocery store and jumped into their cars to track
down the motorcade. People peered out of curtained windows and
slowly walked over to survey the damage. Joe pulled off his belt
and pulled it tight around the policeman's leg above the wound. Joe
pinched the belt hard and lightly slapped the young cop on the
cheek.

"See? You're all right. You can snap out of
it now," he whispered. "These people are counting on you to calm
them down." Joe looked into the eyes of the patrolman and then down
at the blood that had pooled onto the sidewalk.

The cop's eyes refocused, and he shook his
head slightly looking down at his leg. "Damn this hurts! They got
me good for sure… can you help me up?" He grimaced as he tried to
rise. Joe put his neck under the rookie's armpit and pulled him up
to a standing position. Several shop owners and citizens had made
their way to the grocery store now and had grouped around the
patrolman. Avoiding attention, Joe casually ducked out from
underneath the wounded man's shoulder and sneaked out of the
crowd.

"Back already? Ready to teach me how to make
those pie-rogees?" Cappie asked, as Joe entered the side door of
the house. He was sitting in a rocking chair in the living room
reading the morning paper and didn't look up.

"Had a little problem in town," Joe
responded. Cappie jumped up and strode to the kitchen. "What kind
of prob— What the hell? Are you hurt? Sit down." He looked at Joe's
blood-soaked shirt, and he tried to run his hands over Joe's
abdomen, back and arms.

"Relax Cappie, it's not my blood. I'm all
right." He pushed Cappie's hands away. He sat down hard in the
kitchen chair and took a deep breath.

"Not your blood? You get in a fight? You off
someone, Joe? What happened? Oh boy, this is gonna be trouble. We
gotta get you out of here." Cappie stepped toward the small kitchen
window, looking outside for the cops.

Joe laughed, "Kill someone with what… my
brute strength? I never take my gun into town. You know that. There
was a hit at the grocery store. I ducked into the inn when I saw
what was gonna go down. They hit a cop. He'll be all right, but
he's pretty shaken up."

"A hit? Did you see who it was, Joe? What'd
they look like?"

"Didn't see no faces. Just three black sedans
speeding off." Joe pulled off his bloody shirt and threw it in the
trash next to the sink. "I don't think anybody else got hurt. You
think they're doing a hit on a rookie cop, Cappie?"

"No, they wouldn't bother with a cop. They'd
just threaten his family or give him more money. What grocery store
did you say?" Cappie got a glass of water and handed it to Joe.

"Viccoli's." Joe took a long drink of the
cool water and set the glass on the table. He looked at Cappie and
smiled. "They're probably havin a fire sale this afternoon if you
wanta go into town."

"Yeah? Very funny, Joe. How'd you get so
bloody if you was in the inn anyway?"

"Umm… I helped the cop a little."

"Joe! You gotta think boy! We don't need no
one knowing your face around here. We're supposed to stay in the
background. Who saw you?" Cappie went to the window again and
peered out.

"Relax Cappie! Nobody noticed me, and the cop
was too much in shock to remember anything. Let's just make some
lunch… how about I boil up a couple of wieners? I'll make pierogi
next week."

An hour before dusk they headed out in their
separate boats toward Walkerville. Leiter had made a deal with the
Walker sons, and they no longer bought from the Pioneer plant. Joe
preferred the ride to Walkerville because he didn't have to fight
the waves of Lake Erie; and seeing the lights of Detroit, even if
it was just from the water, made him feel closer to home.

Boating up the river, Joe felt a freedom he
had never experienced before. He loved the sound of the engine, the
wind and sun on his face, the waves pushing against the bow of the
boat. He felt lucky to be out on the water as he passed the
factories and warehouses where men toiled away for their meager
wages. The muscles in his arms, back and legs had grown strong from
carrying cases of whisky up and down the stairs every day, and he
had the feeling of invincibility only found in the young.

Not that his job was without stress and
peril. Hijackers were a constant threat—more so than the Coast
Guard—and he and Cappie now carried.38 snub noses in the waistbands
of their pants. Joe was happy for the added protection, especially
after the shooting he had witnessed at the grocery store. Cappie
had seen his share of violence in the last month also; he'd been
shot at twice coming back down the river with a load but had evaded
the thugs by hiding out on nearby Fighting Island.

The summer air was humid that evening, and
Joe was swarmed with mosquitoes as he pulled into the Walkerville
dock. "How ya doing, Clay?" He threw the dock foreman a rope.

"Sweating and swatting at these damn insects,
Joey O." Joe had been so young when he started making his runs to
Canada that he hadn't thought to develop an alias, so when the gang
started calling him Joey O in reference to all the O's in
Jopolowski; it stuck.

"It's like trying to swim through a wet
blanket out there. I musta ate twenty bugs on the way up here." Joe
handed Clay a folded piece of paper with the order for the day.

"That's a lotta hooch, Joey O," the foreman
said, glancing at the paper. "Might slow you down a little. You
sure about this number?"

"Yep, boss man says there's a lotta thirsty
people dying for a drink, and it's our job to help them out. Let's
load it up, Clay."

Truth was there
were
a lot of thirsty
people wanting a drink in Detroit, but there were a lot of people
in the rest of the country that wanted one too. The Sugar House
Gang, as the newspapers now referred to them, was supplying booze
for much of the country now. Wyandotte was just the starting point
of the liquor's long journey. From there, it was driven to Chicago
or put on trains headed to the south or west. The Sugar House Gang
had formed alliances with gangs in St. Louis, New York, Cleveland,
and other major American cities. But their largest shipments were
delivered to Al Capone in the windy city. Capone had heard about
and seen the brutality of the Sugar House Gang and had decided to
work with the Detroit based mob instead of fighting against them.
To keep up with the demand, Charlie Leiter sent word that Joe and
Cappie were to increase their volume.

"All right, Joey O. All loaded up. Where you
headed this evening?" Clay asked, handing the boat's rope back to
Joe.

"Looks like Mexico, sir," Joe replied with a
smile.