Free The Vaults by Toby Ball Page A

remained silent.
    “It was Altabelli’s apartment.” Altabelli ran a meat-processing factory. Along with Block and Bernal and a few others, he was part of Henry’s inner circle.
    “Was he there?”
    “Sir, yes, he was. But he’s okay. He was in the john, I guess, and now he’s at the hospital, but they said it was only a precaution.”
    Henry’s skin prickled with heat. “Call the Chief. Tell him my office in an hour.” He hung up the phone.
    “What was that?” Siobhan asked, without looking up from her book. Henry ignored her and walked into his bedroom, where he had a better view of Altabelli’s neighborhood. Sure enough, a spire of smoke was rising up over the Theater District. He watched the smoke for several minutes, its undulations focusing his thoughts somehow, as he considered just how furious his response would need to be to maintain order in the City.

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

    At this very hour of the night, in an airless sitting room illuminated by the flickering light of an oil lamp, Joos Van Vossen flipped through page after page of his tight, meticulous script. Something he had come across needed attention; a detail that had eaten at him throughout the afternoon and evening, its implication unclear. Only as he prepared to retire for the night did the context finally come to him, and now he found the pertinent passage, several hundred pages back.
     

Typical of a certain type of criminal known colloquially as a “block boss” is Reif DeGraffenreid, who held sway over four blocks on Delft Avenue between Trafalgar and Wellington streets. As with others of his particular type, he collected protection money, kept book, and served as an intermediary for residents who had some concern to take before the gang bosses. The block boss would pay the gangs, either the Bristol Gang or the White Gang or sometimes both, a percentage of his takings and would make himself scarce when they sent their hard men in to do some of the heavy business.
     

DeGraffenreid’s career was unspectacular when compared to those of his fellow block bosses, though the standard they set was, of course, high. He was purportedly the lover of Janey May Overstreet—known as Queenie—who owned the Bull Ring Saloon, a favorite among hoodlums and roustabouts. This claim is subject to some suspicion as the sum total of her reported assignations and the jealousies they would have inspired surely would have raised the City’s homicide rate noticeably. Nevertheless, this rumor puts in perspective his reputation as a peer of such notables as Jimmy McQuaid in lower Capitol Heights, Hamish Berry (who, in fact, was himself briefly married to Queenie Overstreet), and Johnny Acton, and, in deed, though not style, of Trevor “Vampire” Reid.
     

As was the case with all block bosses, DeGraffenreid was compelled to tread a careful line during the escalating violence between the Bristol Gang and the White Gang. Initially, as was the case with so many others, he endeavored to ingratiate himself to both sides by performing small tasks unlikely to upset either one too much, such as his alleged arson of the restaurant owned by the Hungarian named Praeger—who had endeavored to run a book without paying either gang its “vig.”
     

In the end, he fell in with the Bristols, ended the flow of cash from his blocks to the Whites, and performed menial services. His call to greater action, and the eventual end of his criminal career, came when he was ordered to murder the husband of a cousin, Ellis Prosnicki, who was suspected of being a police informant.
     

DeGraffenreid shot Prosnicki in an alley off Delft Avenue and was arrested within forty-eight hours on the evidence of several eyewitnesses after they were assured by Bristol thugs that they would not be subject to retribution. DeGraffenreid was convicted and thus ends his story for our purposes.
     
    Dipping his pen into a well of green ink, Van Vossen took out a fresh sheet of paper.
The case of Ross