Free The Valachi Papers by Peter Maas Page B

around Yorkville. Sometimes you saw Lepke and Gurrah and also Little Augie from the East Side downtown.* But the big man on 116th Street was Ciro Terranova,
     
    :: "Louis (Lcpkc) Buchaltcr, Jacob (Gurrah) Shapiro, and Jacob (Little Augie) Orgen were among the most feared Jewish mobsters of the day. Shapiro got his odd alias as a young hoodlum, when pushcart peddlers would cry, "Get out of here, Jake's coming!" The first part of the frenzied warning sounded more like "Gurrah," and the name stuck.
    the Artichoke King. He got the name because he tied up all the artichokes in the city. The way I understand it he would buy all the artichokes that came into New York. I didn't know where they all came from, but I know he was buying them all out. Being artichokes, they hold; they can keep. Then Ciro would make his own price, and as you know, Italians got to have artichokes to eat.
     
    To his dismay, however, Valachi learned that the new 116th Street gang had acquired a new wheelman during his absence, and now they had no place for him. He put together a little group of his own and went on a series of petty thefts until he had enough money to buy a 1921 Packard under an assumed name. The car enabled Valachi to embark on more lucrative and sophisticated operations, using homemade tools to jimmy open shop and loft doors instead of risking die noise of breaking windows.
    His new confidence nearly did him in. While he was trying to force his way into a Bronx warehouse full of furs, one of the tools snapped. Another member of the gang suggested returning to East Harlem for a replacement. "Sure," Valachi said, "why not? Get into the car." Just as they were ready to depart, a patrolman walking his beat fired at them. The slug lodged in the base of Valachi's skull. "All I heard was that one shot," he says. "Next I heard someone yell. 'He's dead! What'll we do with him?"' Then Valachi passed out. His companions dropped his body off at 114th Street near the East River, fired six shots in the air, and left in the hope that the police would consider it a gangland murder that had no connection with the attempted robbery. But when they passed by an hour later, Valachi was still lying in the street. Finally they noticed he was still breathing and brought him to a neighborhood doctor noted for his cooperation in such matters. A bottle of
    Scotch was used as an anesthetic to remove the bullet. Valachi remembers coming to in die doctor's office and being told, "Drink this." But his proudest moment was when he heard the doctor say through his haze of pain, "This kid won't die. He's built like a bull." It took him two months to recover. "The thing that saved me," he says, "was all that work I did with the sledgehammer at Sing Sing. I was in real great shape."
    But his near-fatal wound was just the first episode in a star-crossed period for Valachi. Soon after he had returned to robbery as a regular way of life, he fell in with a man who would have a profound influence on his future, Dominick (The Gap) Petrilli. The Gap suggested a joint venture that seemed ideal —a loft in upper Manhattan crammed with silk, without an alarm system. Valachi agreed at once, but his Packard wasn't big enough to carry off the booty. Thus another friend, Joseph (Pip the Blind) Gagliano, who had his own car, was recruited. Two more hoodlums rounded out the group. Everything was proceeding smoothly, most of the silk successfully placed in the two cars, when they spotted a figure crouched in a corner of the loft next to a telephone. He turned out to be the night watchman. Outraged at this unexpected discovery, two of the gang attacked him with iron pipes. As the watchman tried to ward off the blows, he screamed that he had already called the police. But when everyone ran outside, Valachi's Packard would not start. "Well, there goes another car," he said as he jumped into Pip the Blind's Lincoln, barely escaping the police. The next day a member of the gang came to Valachi's