Part 31

The case began to take shape when Agent Angelo Zurlo, tailing a suspected narcotics pusher on New York’s Lower East Side, saw his man enter a small olive oil and cheese shop on Christie Street near Delancey. He noted the name and address of the shop in his notebook and later made a memorandum of the incident which went into the Bureau’s cross-indexed file. Some months later, Narcotics agents following another suspect saw him enter the olive oil and cheese shop on Christie Street. They made a memorandum, also, which went into the files.

In the summer of 1952, O’Carroll was checking the files when he noted the two memos mentioning the small shop on Christie. Further investigation revealed it had been owned by Alphonse Attardi before he was sentenced to serve an eight-year prison term for a narcotics violation in Galveston, Texas, in the early 1940s. Attardi had completed the sentence, but Immigration authorities were studying the possibility of extradition proceedings, inasmuch as Attardi was Italian by birth.

Attardi at this time was sixty years old, 5 feet 3, and weighed about 140 pounds. He had the appearance of a meek and humble little shoemaker, and he scarcely fitted the part of an underworld character. He had an engaging, warm personality, and he was known in the Mafia as “The Peacemaker” because of his knack for compromising disputes--but that was before he had served time in prison.

O’Carroll decided to pay a call on Attardi, who he learned was living in a cheap, transient rooming house on 16th Street just off Third Avenue. It was after midnight one warm night when he strolled down Third Avenue in the shadows of the old El to 16th Street. Even the softness of the night could not hide the shabbiness and the squalor of the area.

O’Carroll entered the rooming house and climbed two flights of stairs. He knocked on the door and then tried the doorknob. The door swung open, and at that moment the agent knew that Attardi was in a bad way financially. If he had had a bankroll, he wouldn’t have left the door unbolted--not in this dive.

He saw Attardi sitting up in bed, a skinny gnome of a man wearing only undershirt and shorts.

“Who is it?” Attardi said. “What do you want?”

“Take it easy,” O’Carroll said. “I’m a U.S. Treasury agent. I just want to talk to you.”

Attardi switched on a light over the bed. “What do you want to see me about?” he said. “I’m clean.”

“Have you got any narcotics in this room?” O’Carroll asked him.

Attardi shook his head. “No. You can search the room if you like. I’m out of the business.”

O’Carroll pulled up a chair beside the bed and sat down. He began to talk about Attardi’s connections with well-known underworld figures, asking him why it was that he had been convicted in Houston while others in the mob had gone free.

As they talked, bitterness began to creep into Attardi’s voice. He had taken the rap in Houston--and then his pals had deserted him. They didn’t even try to communicate with him while he was in prison. His wife had become ill and no one had come forward to help her. She had died. He had even lost the little olive oil and cheese shop on Christie Street.

“Now I have nothing,” he said.

“Maybe we can help you,” O’Carroll said. “I can’t make any promises, but if you help us we may be able to help you when your deportation case comes up.”

Attardi shook his head. “I can’t do it. I’d be dead if I worked for you.”

O’Carroll continued talking of the injustices done to Attardi by his old pals, insisting that he owed them nothing since they had deserted him. But Attardi continued to say no.

At last O’Carroll said, “Well, I’ll leave my name and telephone number. If you ever need help--I’ll be glad to talk to you.” He wrote his name and telephone number on a slip of paper and handed it to Attardi.

For six months O’Carroll heard nothing from Attardi. He made no move to see the man again. He had planted the seed, and whether it took root depended on what went on in the mind of the skinny little ex-convict.

But in early December Attardi called the Narcotics Bureau office and Agent George O’Connor took the call. He explained that he wanted to talk to O’Carroll and he would be waiting for him on Delancey Street near Christie.

That afternoon O’Carroll and O’Connor drove to Delancey and parked near the street number mentioned by Attardi. A few minutes later the hoodlum walked from a doorway and ducked into the car with them.

The agents had assumed that Attardi had made the call because he was frightened over the prospect of being deported to Italy. But it wasn’t deportation that was on Attardi’s mind. He had fallen in love. He had met a twenty-two-year-old waitress in one of the mean little restaurants on the Lower East Side--and this girl had become the most important thing in his life. They wanted to get married, but he had no money.

Attardi said he was willing to put the agents onto some Puerto Ricans living in Brooklyn who were dealing in narcotics. If the price were right, Attardi would help knock off the gang.

The agents listened to Attardi’s story and then O’Carroll shook his head. “It’s no deal,” he said. “We want better cases than that. We want to go to the top.”

Attardi was frightened but he also was in love. And so he began asking how the agents could protect him if he did agree to work with them. He flatly refused to do any buying of narcotics himself.

At last it was agreed that Attardi would introduce an undercover agent to some of his friends who were in the peddling business. Then it would be up to the agent to handle the deals, Attardi’s role being to vouch for the agent as “one of the boys.”

Undercover Agent Joe Tremoglie, a big, curly-haired man, was chosen to work with Attardi. Tremoglie’s parents had come to the United States from Sicily and Joe spoke fluent Italian. He knew the underworld, its mannerisms, superstitions, and nuances. He had about him a conspiratorial air that seemed to appeal to criminals and to disarm them.

Attardi’s first assignment was to introduce Tremoglie to a cafe cook on Newberry Street who was pushing narcotics on the side. The agent made a small purchase and then let himself be seen in the right places with Attardi--who began to introduce him as a distant cousin.