King of the Bootleggers Read online

  "What about it?" Rocco asked. "How does that help us?"

  Gianni gave it another moment of thought and then he explained his idea, "Tony's right. If we try to run the trucks out of here, they can see them. But what if we move the whiskey underground from here to that empty warehouse down the road?"

  "How the hell do you propose to do that? Dig a friggin tunnel from here to there?" Tony asked.

  Gianni looked at Tony, "How do you think I got all this muscle. That's all I did during the war, dig trenches, foxholes, and tunnels."

  "But how the hell are you going to dig a tunnel from here to there? It'll take years," Tony said.

  Shaking his head, Gianni said, "No. The city of Hamilton has already done it for us."

  Rocco cocked his head, "What are you talking about?"

  Gianni pointed in the direction of the street, "We have a large underground tunnel system built out there already."

  "The sewers?" Tony asked.

  "You have a sewer and storm drain system out there. I worked for a few months on a road crew because of my army training before I got sent to jail and I had a chance to see some of them," Gianni said. "You've got brick and concrete tunnels down there that are up to 12 feet wide and 8 to 10 feet tall." He pointed down at the floor again, "The walls down in the storage area below are brick, just like the outside of the building. All we have to do is break through and tunnel out to the street."

  "And then what?" Rocco asked him.

  "If we can do the same thing down at that empty warehouse, then we have a tunnel underneath the road that connects the two. We can easily build wooden dollies and roll the cases of whiskey all the way down there."

  Tony and Rocco looked at each other. "We could still run trucks out of here as decoys," Tony said.

  Rocco nodded, "Meanwhile we run the trucks with the whiskey out of that warehouse."

  Looking back at Gianni, Tony asked, "But are you sure you can do it? Tunnel out to the road, I mean?"

  "What if it caves in?" Maria asked.

  Gianni shrugged, "How fast can you dig me out?"

  Maria giggled, "You're right Tony, he's a jackass."

  Besha looked at Maria, "Why don't you and I go see if we can rent or buy that warehouse?"

  "Take Gianni with you and let him make sure he can tunnel out of there and connect to here," Rocco said. He looked at the men, "While they do that, let's get back to work loading the trucks."

  As Rocco left with the men, Gianni turned to Besha, "I'll meet you over there. I want to get some advice from someone."

  Chapter 28

  BIG GIANNI REPPUCCI led the way across the floor of the old warehouse, a lit lantern in his hand. Besha DeLuca and Maria Genovese followed closely behind, their footsteps echoing in the large, empty space and their breath swirling in the cold air. The smell of cold, damp cement and mortar was strong.

  "It's freezing in here," Maria complained as she pulled her coat tighter around her.

  "Mr. Corbett said the steam heating system hasn't been used in years because he couldn't afford to heat the empty space," Besha said.

  "We can take a look at that if we can use this building," Gianni said. He found what he was looking for, an opening in the concrete floor on the far side of the building. A pipe railing encompassed three sides and protected someone from falling into the opening. Moving around to the open side, the lantern's light revealed the stairs leading down to the basement.

  "Do we have to go down there?" Maria asked. "It looks spooky."

  "You can stay here if you want," said Besha as she followed Gianni down the stairs.

  "Not on your life," said Maria as she glanced around and moved quickly down the stairs behind Besha.

  Fifteen feet down, they found themselves in a dark, open space. A damp, musty smell hung in the air. Gianni swung the lamp around, illuminating the wall. It consisted of large blocks of stone. He placed his hand against it.

  "They just look like they're piled on top of one another," Besha observed as she moved closer to look.

  "You can still see some of the mortar in the cracks, but most of it has deteriorated," Gianni said.

  "Won't the building fall down if you take some of those stones out?" asked Maria as she moved up close beside Besha.

  "No, we should be okay," Gianni said as he swung his lamp around to the stairs again.

  Besha glanced at Maria, "He said should."

  "Yeah, I caught that as well," Maria said.

  "The front of the building will be in this direction," Gianni said as he headed off into the darkness.

  Besha and Maria followed closely behind him, their footsteps echoing off the dusty, concrete floor into the darkness.

  The light from the lantern finally fell against the far wall of stone. Gianni ran his hand along the stone blocks and lifted his lantern to look at the heavy beams crisscrossing the ceiling above them. Then he shone it along the area where the stone wall met the floor.

  "What are you looking for?" Maria asked.

  "I'm just trying to get an idea of how solid everything is," Gianni said. He took a couple of steps backward, holding the lantern high as he looked up, "I'm going to cut a hole in the floor over at the distillery so we can put in a lift system to lower the cases into the cellar. It'll be easier and faster. It looks like I can do the same here " He then walked back to the wall and looked at the beams over the stone, "The lumber isn't rotten or falling apart, so we should be okay."

  "There's that should again," Maria muttered.

  Gianni grinned, "We'll be okay."

  Besha and Maria watched as Gianni walked along the stone wall, examined the stone joints and lifting the light higher from time to time to look up at the wooden beams and floor joists.

  Maria turned to Besha, "I know I'm not as smart as you...."

  Besha looked at her friend and smiled, "Nonsense, you're plenty smart. What's on your mind?"

  "Well...we're doing all this trying to keep the coppers from knowing we're making whiskey and bootlegging it...."

  "Go on."

  "Well...does it make sense to have Glen Gael labels on the bottles? If the coppers raid a bootlegger and find the whiskey...?"

  "Damn." Besha shook her head, "You're right."

  Maria brightened, "I am?"

  "Yeah. They'll know exactly where it was produced and we'll be raided right after the bootleggers. Good thinking."

  Maria looked delighted with herself as she rubbed the back of her neck, thinking, "I guess we could use the name of another brand of whiskey and throw them off. The problem is...I just don't know another name."

  Besha shook her head, "I don't either. We can ask the boys."

  "Or maybe we just make something up."

  "Yeah, That's a good idea, too," Besha agreed, "We'll figure it out. But Rocco said Little Jack was really happy when he saw it was Glen Gael whiskey that he and Tommy brought him. If we ship anything to Buffalo again, we'll have to slap a Glen Gael label on it. That we can't change."

  "That makes sense. Providing we get to ship whiskey down there again," Maria said.

  "We'll let Rocco worry about that part. Right now we just need to sell as much as we can to make some money."

  Gianni came back to where the women where and he patted a large block of stone, "We can punch our way right through here."

  "Right through the stone?" Maria asked.

  "It's the only way," said Gianni. "There's no way we can just pull some blocks of stone out of the wall. They're all too heavy. But we can chip away at the stone with sledgehammers and chisels and create a doorway. Once we get through, we can build a heavy frame that supports the floor up there over the spot where we remove these stone blocks."

  "What about the other side?" Besha asked. "If town workmen go into the storm tunnels under the street, won't they see the opening?"

  "I've already thought of that," Gianni said as he lifted the lantern and looked at the women, "Dante Rizzo's father is a bricklayer. Or at least he was before he got h
urt on the job back about ten years ago. Hasn't worked since. Anyway, I brought old man Rizzo down into the sewer system over in front of the distillery and checked out the brickwork. We did the same thing out in front of this building before you came. Once we get both tunnels out near the sewer out there, Rizzo will work with the guys to remove the bricks lining the sewer wall as carefully as possible. Then we'll build a heavy wooden door and he'll apply the same bricks over top of it. Once we put the door up, it will match the sewer wall and should hide the fact it's a door."

  "There's that should again," Maria said.

  "Do you complain this much with Tony?" Gianni asked.

  Maria nodded, "Yep. That's why he married me. I keep him on his toes."

  "You're a lot shorter than he is," Gianni said, "he doesn't have to be on his toes."

  Maria opened her mouth and then closed it, looking at Besha, "Is he talking about what I think he's talking about?"

  Besha laughed.

  "You two are bad," Maria said.

  Gianni headed back across the darkness, "I think it looks like this place will do the job. All you have to do is buy it and we can start work."

  Maria and Besha followed behind him quickly. "Okay. Me and Maria will go back to Corbett. He's anxious to sell so we should be able to get it at a good price. We'll call this the Sherman Street Warehouse, so everyone knows what we're talking about."

  "We could buy a bunch of empty boxes and pile them inside too, in case somebody comes snooping," Maria suggested.

  "That's a good idea," Besha agreed. "we could even buy crates of sugar or boxes of linens. We'll figure something out. But that gives me another idea to go with it. Kippen told me of a couple of breweries running legal 2.5% beer they're allowed to make under the prohibition law and sell in the province. To cover over the smell of the production and all the activity back at the distillery, we're going to buy some of that 2.5% beer and re-bottle it under our own Glen Gael brand. The trucks can make runs with it out of the distillery and if any copper stops the truck, they'll find a legal product."

  "But who do we sell it to?" Maria asked. "I thought most of the breweries shut down because people don't want that stuff?"

  "We don't have to sell it," Besha said. "We just bring it here, swap it for the whiskey and then take the light beer back through the tunnel to the distillery."

  A look of delight crossed Maria's face, "We just keep doing that over and over with the same beer."

  "Right."

  "But we have a distillery and not a brewery," Maria said.

  "I'm not going to worry about that, for now. I don't want to change the name and bring scrutiny unless we have to," Besha said. "We just say we shifted production because of the law."

  Gianni looked back over his shoulder, "And very few people would know the difference between the two as far as smells go."

  "How long do you think before we can start to use the tunnel system, Gianni?" Besha asked.

  "Hard to say," Gianni said. "Part of it will depend on the type of material we have to dig through from here to the road. And we don't want to do it too fast. The noise might attract attention. There's also the factor of making sure we reinforce the tunnels leading from the buildings to the sewer system properly." Gianni stopped and swung the lantern back to the women, "We're also going to have to get rid of the stone we remove from here, as well as the dirt we remove from here to the road. We could pile it up down here, but if a copper ever gets suspicious and comes down here, he could figure out what we've done. Maybe we should get an extra truck or two to handle the job and dump it somewhere. Can we swing that?"

  Besha stopped and thought about it for a moment, "We can if you need it. But how about if we take it over to the distillery and send a bit of stone and dirt out each time we make a run with a truck. They could drop it off along the side of the road somewhere and no one is ever going to know."

  Gianni's forehead wrinkled as he thought about it, "Yeah. That's smart. Never thought about it."

  "That's why she's the brains of the organization," Maria said proudly.

  "True. And the beauty," Gianni added as he turned and headed for the stairs.

  "Hey, what about me?" Maria asked as she followed quickly behind.

  "Tony says you're the little firecracker," Gianni said as he reached the stairs and lit the way up for the women.

  "Is that what he calls me?" Maria said in delight as she climbed the stairs behind Besha.

  Gianni shrugged a beefy shoulder, "Well...he says you make noises like a firecracker in bed at night."

  Chapter 29

  TOMMY PULLED THE TRUCK TO A STOP in front of a weatherbeaten old dock at the far end of Hamilton Harbor. A large man was coiling heavy rope on the back of a 56 ft. fan-tail fishing tug. The entire tug was painted back, no doubt to make it almost invisible on the water after dark. Tommy leaned over the steering wheel and pointed at the man, "That's the old guy my pops told me about. He grew up in our neighborhood. His name is Lisandro Santoro. The men on the docks called him Cuba because he always has a Cuban cigar between his teeth. Word is he'll run anything for a buck."

  Rocco considered Santoro. He was about 50 years old, 6 foot-four, barrel-chested and had a swarthy complexion. He wore a heavy wool coat against the cold and a fisherman's knit cap. "And you say this guy is willing to work with us?"

  Tommy shrugged, "He said he'd talk to you about it, is all."

  "Okay, so let's go talk." Rocco got out and met Tommy at the front of the truck. Together they walked towards the boat tied up at the dock. The smell of fish and old wood drifted across the crisp air.

  Santoro saw them coming and dropped his coil of rope before stepping up onto the tugboat's gunwale and onto the dock. He chewed on half a cigar as he walked several feet up the dock and then stopped, setting his feet as he looked down at the two men approaching him. "So this is the guy from the old neighborhood you wanted me to meet, kid?"

  Rocco and Tommy stopped a foot away from Santoro. "Yeah. This is Rocco DeLuca," Tommy said.

  Santoro chewed on the cigar as he considered Rocco's beaten-up flat-cap and well-worn leather jacket. He looked at Tommy and jerked a thumb at Rocco, "This is the guy who is supposed to pay me? He can't even afford to buy himself a decent hat." Santoro took the half cigar from his mouth and snarled as he flipped it at Rocco.

  The cigar bounced off Rocco's chest. He looked down at the cigar as it bounced on the old wooden dock. Then he looked up at Santoro. A heartbeat later his right fist crashed into the bigger man's face.

  Santoro was taken off his feet and landed hard on his back. The old wooden dock shuddered under his fallen weight.

  Rocco stood there impassively, waiting for the big man's next move.

  Tommy grinned.

  Santoro struggled to lift his head and finally got himself propped up on his elbows. He shifted a little and placed a big, meaty hand on his jaw as he worked it back and forth. He glanced up at Rocco, "Shit. I've been in bar fights, street fights and fought in the ring professionally. Ain't no man ever knocked me down before. You got a punch like a mule."

  Tommy leaned over, "Yeah. And he pulled that punch so you can live long enough to work with us."

  Santoro fished around in his mouth with his tongue and spit a tooth out to the edge of the dock. Blood stained his lips as he laughed, "Yeah, I can believe that."

  Rocco and Tommy stepped back as the big man struggled to his feet.

  Santoro rose to full height and stuck his hand out, "Pleased to meet you, Mr. DeLuca. Now let's get down to business."

  SNOW WAS BEGINNING to fly and the dark waves on Lake Ontario tossed Santoro's tugboat as he moved closer to shore, north of where Old Fort Niagara stood. Rocco sat in the front of the tug, his collar lifted futilely against the bitter cold as he watched the shoreline. Ten minutes passed as the tugboat skirted east.

  "There," Tommy said suddenly. His voice shivered with the cold.

  Rocco lifted the binoculars in the direction Tommy was pointing
. The faint lights of a truck could be seen shining towards Lake Ontario. "Yeah. That's gotta be them. Who else would be stupid enough to be looking out over the lake on a night like this?" He lowered the binoculars and peered towards the center of the lake, "That means the Frenchies should be along any minute to land their cargo."

  Santoro called from back in the pilot house. His voice was muffled.

  Tommy turned back and yelled, "What? We can't hear you."

  Santoro must've had trouble hearing them as well because the engine cut out. A moment later he came out of the pilot house and walked along the side of the tug. He handled the up and down motion of the waves easily. Reaching the bow, he pointed past Rocco and Tommy, "There's a boat dead ahead."

  Rocco and Tommy turned and peered into the darkness.

  "You can just see the top of her pilothouse," Santoro said.

  Rocco held the binoculars as steady as possible, searching the dark. Then gave Santoro a thumbs-up, "Yeah, I see it."

  "So, do we board her and steal her cargo?" Santoro asked eagerly. "Or do we go ashore and steal it from those fellas?"

  Rocco lowered the binoculars, "Neither one. We let them land their cargo and follow them back to where they load it. Like I told you, I want to know where that alcohol is coming from and who we're dealing with."

  Santoro grunted with disappointment, "I stole one of those new diesel engines and I'd like to see how fast I can overtake her."

  Tommy laughed, "You stole a diesel engine? Those things are friggin' big. How did you manage that?"

  Santoro chewed on his half cigar, "I'm a man of many talents."

  THE SUN WAS JUST COMING up when the boat they were trailing started tacking towards shore. Everyone was inside the pilot house, with Rocco watching through the binoculars.

  "Looks to me like they're heading into Cornwall," Santoro said as he spun the wheel in his hand to change course and follow them.

  "Is there much there?" Rocco asked.

  Santoro chewed on his cigar, "In Cornwall? Only been there a couple of times. There's a dry dock there and they build a lot of boats. The Cornwall canal leads into the St. Lawrence."