In the Godfather Garden: The Long Life and Times of Richie "the Boot" Boiardo

Chapter 2. The Longy War

26 2 The press and the public speculated long and hard on the identity of the party responsible for the attempted assassination of the Boot. “None of Ritchie’s gang is above suspicion of planning the murder of their leader,” the Newark Evening News reported. “There are also said to be men who would like to see Ritchie out of the way because of certain women who favored him with their regard.”1 Other likely suspects included the Mazzocchi brothers, Willie Moretti, and even Al Capone. The number-one suspect, however, was Abner “Longy” Zwillman, a man sometimes referred to as gangster number two, reputed to be the second most powerful mobster of his time right behind Lucky Luciano.2 Longy was younger than the Boot by almost fifteen years but he had a head start. While the Boot was still working as a milkman and was married with three young children, Longy was already making rounds selling fruit and vegetables and illegal lottery numbers from a pushcart in the streets of the Third Ward, a largely Eastern European–Jewish immigrant neighborhood . Longy was the son of Russian immigrants.3 His father sold poultry c h a p t e r 2 THE LONGY WAR Till here, I’ve told you of the fights and boundless blows between these knights, and all their terrible attacks. Now I must soar above the sky, because two barons meet in arms who make me tremble in my mind. Lords, listen—if you like—a while about two knights whose wills were fire. —Matteo Maria Boiardo, Orlando Innamorato, 218 The Longy War 27 on Prince Street, the heart of the Jewish quarter, to support a family of seven children. He died when Longy, the oldest child, was twelve, leaving him and his four brothers and three sisters to fend for themselves. Longy’s nickname allegedly derived from a corruption of “der Langer,” German for “the tall one,” which is what the Third Ward merchants took to calling him. In his early teens he was six foot two and was described as darkskinned and broad-shouldered, with a head of dark hair neatly parted in the middle.4 He was handsome, strong, ambitious, and dissatisfied with business in his home ward; he began pushing his cart up Clinton Hill, an upscale neighborhood, and soon found that he could make better money by taking lottery bets from his new customers for a local gambling operator than by selling produce. He eventually muscled in on his employer, grabbed his customers, and set up his own gambling operation.5 While the Boot was still delivering milk and working for the Mazzocchi gang as a part-time manager of their alky-cookers, sixteen-year-old Longy was running a solid numbers racket and building a protection ring with a group of his school pals, including James “Niggie” Rutkin and Joseph “Doc” Stacher. They called themselves the Happy Ramblers, a street gang innocent in name only, as they found themselves summoned whenever Jewish street vendors and storeowners around Prince Street were harassed and robbed by Irish thugs from the neighboring Eighteenth Ward. The Ramblers fought these interlopers with their fists at first and later would dispatch them much more efficiently with guns. In 1923, Longy, at age seventeen, had a legendary run-in with a street hoodlum named Leo Kaplus, who had been roughing up his numbers runners and had threatened to kick Longy in the balls.6 Longy personally tracked Kaplus down to a Newark tavern and shot him in the leg, although legend has it he was deliberately hit in the testicles. In any case, the incident made an impression on other gangsters; Longy was seen as one tough hood, to be feared and respected among Jewish and Italian gangs. Waxey Gordon, a New York bootlegger who owned illegal breweries around Newark , took notice and hired Longy and his men to protect his operations. 28 In the Godfather Garden Longy also caught the attention of Joe Reinfeld, who owned a speakeasy on High Street and Eighth Avenue in the North Ward that was patronized by Italian immigrants, gamblers, loan sharks, and local community leaders. Reinfeld stocked his inventory with liquor that was clandestinely imported from Canada; he needed muscle to safeguard shipments that came in through Newark’s port. Reinfeld, a Polish-Jewish immigrant, had established a relationship with the Bronfman family, who owned...