Joe Bruno's Mobsters - Six Volume Set (76 page)

             
In the early 1930’s, Lepke added another valuable asset to Murder Inc.: Charlie “The Bug” Workman.

“The Bug” was born on the Lower East Side of Manhattan in 1908, the second of six children born to Samuel and Anna Workman. Workman quit school in the ninth grade and began roaming the s
treets of the Lower East Side, looking for trouble and mostly finding it. When he was 18, Workman was arrested for the first time, for stealing a $12 bundle of cotton thread from a truck parked on Broadway.

Since it was his first offense, Workman got off with simple probation.

The following year, Workman was arrested for shooting a man behind the ear over who-owed-who $20. By this time, Workman's reputation on the streets was so impressive, the man he shot refused to testify against him, and he even said he couldn't truthfully identify Workman as his assailant. Miffed, the cops pulled up his file, and they decided Workman had violated his parole on the cotton theft. As a result, Workman was sent to the New York State Reformatory.

For the next few years, Workman was in and out of prison, for such parole violations as associating with "questionable characters" and “failure to get a job.”

In 1926, Workman hooked on as a freelance schlammer for Lepke's union strike-breaking activities. In the early 1930s, Workman did such a good job schlammin’; Lepke put Workman on his permanent payroll at $125 a week as a killer for Lepke's Murder Incorporated division of the National Crime Commission.

Lepke liked Workman's cool demeanor, and after Workman performed a few exceptional “hits,” Lepke gave him the nickname “The Bug,” because a person had to be crazy to kill with the calm detachment Workman displayed when performing his gruesome tasks. (Workman's other nickname “Handsome Charlie,” was given to him by members of the opposite sex.)

For the next few years, Workman was in and out of trouble with the law. In 1932, he was arrested for carrying a concealed weapon. In 1933, Workman was arrested again; for decking an off-duty police officer after a minor traffic dust-up. But all the while, Workman’s specialty was killing whomever Lepke said needed to be killed.

After a hit was done, Workman enjoyed
the fringe benefit of "sweeping out the pockets" of his victims. Most of the times, Workman earned himself an extra $1,000 or so for his efforts. And one time he even found a $10,000 bonus in the pants pocket of a sucker whom he had just whacked.

This bad habit almo
st got Workman into big trouble. But we’ll get to that later.

*****

Lepke’s Murder Inc. didn’t
limit its exploits to the New York City area. Let’s take the case of Abe Wagner, for instance.

Abe Wagner was a Lower East side thug/bootlegger who fashioned himself as the quintessential Jewish hood - the new “Kid Dropper” he told people - Dropper being a tough New York City Jewish gang leader who bought the ranch in 1923. Wagner thought he was such a tough guy, he once roughed up the son of Italian mob boss Joe “T
he Boss” Masseria, and then told the kid to go home and show his old man what Abe Wagner had done to him.

Luckily for Wagner, Masseria was gunned down before he could avenge his son's indignity.

Wagner and his brother, Albie, were making a nice living in the bootlegging business on the Lower East Side when the Mazza gang, with ties to Lucky Luciano, decided to move in and take over the Wagners’ operations.

On Feb. 20, 1932, Wagner was riding down Suffolk Street in his brand-new car. As Wagner was weaving slowly past the numerous street pushcarts, a half a dozen shooters appeared from nowhere and opened fire at Wagner. As his car was being shot into Swiss cheese, Wagner was somehow
able to roll out the passengers door and then escape by dashing though the crowded street.

Not being the bravest of souls like he boasted, Wagner decided to make peace with the
Mazzas; but at a safe distance. Instead of making the trek himself, Wagner sent his partner Harry Brown and Wagner’s brother, Albie, to the Mazza gang's headquarters at the Hatfield Hotel on the Upper East Side.

             
“See if you can pay them off,” Wagner told them.

             
The two men arrived at the Hatfield Hotel with a huge sum of “let’s make peace” money, which the Mazzas gladly accepted. Then they shot Albie Wagner dead, leaving Harry Brown alive so that he could deliver the message to Abe that there would be no peace until Abe Wagner was dead, too.

Wagner's mother
was mortified her youngest son, Albie, was murdered, and she didn't want the same fate to befall Abe.

“Take Goldie (Abe's wife) and go away someplace for a while,” Mama Wagner told her son. “Go now so I won't worry. Hurry!”

Wagner did as his mother requested, and he and Goldie quickly left town.

A month later, the Lindberg baby was abducted in Hopewell, N. J., and because he was such a low-life scumbag who had the reputation of doing almost anything to make a buck, Wagner immediately came under suspicion.

“We have a tip that Wagner was seen in the vicinity of Hopewell about a month before the kidnapping,” said Colonel H. Norman Schwarzkopf, head of the N. J. State police.

The cops couldn't find Wagner, but the Mazza Gang ha
d multitudes of  searching eyes and feet on the ground throughout the country. They immediately put this apparatus into motion.

After Wagner
had laid low with his wife in various out-of-town locations, he decided to sneak back into New York City to see his mom. He was in his mother's apartment for only a few hours when word got back to Mama Wagner her son had been spotted.

“Go quick,” she said. “Don't wait.”

Wagner picked up his wife, and they hightailed it out west, stopping at St. Paul, Minnesota. There Wagner changed his name to Abe Loeb, and as a ruse, he decided to start a fruit and vegetable retail business.

Despite his change of identity, it took only a few weeks for the Mazza Gang to locate Wagner in St. Paul.

Luciano contacted Lepke, and he told Lepke to get two of his finest boys on the job. Lepke, though his usual intermediaries, dispatched two of his most efficient (but not very bright) killers - Joseph Shaefer and George Young - out to St. Paul to lower the boom on Wagner. Both men were on the lam already for killing federal agent John J. Finiello during a raid two years earlier on an Elizabeth, N. J. illegal brewery. Schaefer and Young knew St. Paul intimately, since it was one of their hideouts during their two years on the run.

On July 25, 1932, after having a prescription filled, Wagner and his new partner
, Al Gordon, left a drug store on University Avenue. They were followed by Schaefer and Young, who were riding in a dark-green Packard.

Suddenly, the
hitmen jumped out of the car and began firing. Gordon was killed instantly, but Wagner was only winged.

Wagner ran for his life down University Avenue, and then
he turned onto Snelling Avenue. The gunmen caught up with Wagner as he dashed into the Green Dragon Restaurant. There, in front of several witnesses, they shot Wagner six times and then beat him over the head with their guns; just because they could. Wagner died a few hours later at Ancker Hospital.

In an amazing display of stupidity, the out-of-town Murder Inc. gunmen allowed themselves to be arrested by a passing patrolman on Roy Street just minutes after they left the Green Dragon Restaurant. Schaefer and Young were tried and convicted of the murders of Wagner and Gordon, and sentenced to life in prison.

However, Murder Inc. was well-stocked with killers, so their operation hardly missed a beat.

*****

All was going fine
and dandy for the National Crime Commission until 1935, when Special Prosecutor Thomas E. Dewey set his sights on all New York City’s top gangsters. After already putting Jewish mobster Irving Wexler (a.k.a. Waxey Gordon) behind bars for 10 years on an income-tax-evasion charge, Dewey went after the most visible mobster in New York City: Dutch Schultz.

As was mentioned previously, Schultz was not a Commission member. However, Schultz had made millions of dollars in the illegal booze business (he was called the “Beer Baron of the Bronx), as well as in the Harlem numbers business, where he had forcibly taken over the operations of  black bookies like “Madam” Stephanie St. Clair, Bumpy Johnson, and Caspar
Holstein. Money brings prestige, and since Schultz was smart enough to cut the Commission members in on his profits, he did wield some power in their decision-making.

Except this one time.

When Schultz (who already had beaten an income tax case, mainly because he had his venue transferred to the sleepy and the gullible town of Malone, New York) heard the mighty Dewey was after him, he became apoplectic.

Schultz called for an immediate meeting of the National Crime Commission, where he said, “Dewey will not sto
p until all of us are in prison! We have to take Dewey out!”

The Commission did not immediately reject Schultz’s demands. In fact, the Commission directed Albert Anastasia to determine if Dewey indeed could be murdered without much difficulty.

Anastasia went so far as to “borrow” a baby from a friend, and then push this baby around in a baby carriage in front and around the streets of Dewey’s apartment building at 214 Fifth Avenue. Using this ruse, Anastasia was able to clock Dewey’s morning movements quite precisely.

It seemed that every morning at 8 a.m. sharp, Dewey exited his apartment building, and surrounded by a squadron of bodyguards he strode a few blocks to a neighborhood drug store, for his morning cup of coffee and to make a phone call to his office from the phone booth in the back. Anastasia told the Commission that Anastasia could wait in the coffee shop for Dewey’s morning arrival. And as Dewey passed him and headed to the phone booth in back, Anastasia could fill Dewey with lead, and then kill the drug store owner so there wouldn’t be any witnesses. Anastasia said that his men out front would take out Dewey’s bodyguards, so that Anastasia could make his safe escape.

The following week, the Commission summoned Schultz to a meeting to discuss their decision on Dewey’s fate. The Commission told Schultz, that although the takeout of Dewey was doable, it was not in their best interest to kill the most famous lawman in the United States of America. If they whacked Dewey, the Commission reasoned, the full brunt of United States law enforcement would come crashing down on their collective skulls.

The lone dissenter on the Commission was Jacob “Gurrah” Shapiro, who agreed with Schultz tha
t if Dewey were allowed to live he would not rest until he put the entire Commission behind bars.

However, Shapiro’s lifelong pal
, Lepke, finally convinced Shapiro that a live Dewey was the lesser of two evils. Years later, both Lepke and Shapiro would regret their decision.

When Schultz heard the bad news, he hit the ceiling.

“Dewey's got to go!” Schultz told the Commission. “I'm hitting him myself in 48 hours!”

By losing his temper, Schultz had just signed his own death warrant.

As soon as Schultz left the room, the Commission decided they could not afford to let Schultz carry out his threat. The ball was handed to Lepke and Anastasia’s Murder Inc. crew, and the two bosses decided that since Schultz was a Jewish mob boss, out of respect, Jewish killers would have to be used to carry out the hit. The contract was given to Charlie “The Bug” Workman and Lepke’s close pal, Mendy Weiss.

On Oct. 23, 1935, Workman and Weiss were driven to the Pa
lace Chophouse in Newark, N. J. by a man known as "Piggy,” who was not a Murder Inc. operative, but just a Newark local who knew the terrain. While Piggy waited in the car outside with the engine running, Workman and Weiss rushed inside.

Th
e front bar-room area was empty. But the gunmen heard lively chatter coming from the back room, where Schultz and his cohorts usually held court. The Workman and Weiss burst into the back room – guns blazing.

They blasted bullets at three of Schultz's henchmen: Lulu Rosencrantz, Abe Landau, and Abbadabba Berman, who were enjoying their last supper together. It was reminiscent of a “Wild West” shootout, but the element of surprise worked to Workman’s and Weiss’
s favor. Even though Schultz’s men returned fire, when the dust settled, all three of Schultz’s men were dead, and Workman and Weiss didn’t have a scratch on them.

But their main target was missing.

Weiss said to Workman, “Where’s Schultz? You better check the bathroom.”

Workman rushed into the bathroom with a hot .45 in his hand. The bathroom looked empty, but after Workman kicked in the door o
f the stall, there was Schultz, pants down and looking sincerely constipated.

Workman fired once, but Schultz ducked and the bullet blasted into the wall above his head. Workman lowered his gun a tad
, and then he fired again. This time the slug ripped through Schultz's stomach, large intestine, gall bladder, and liver, before falling onto the floor next to him. The reason Workman didn’t fire again was because he had run out of bullets due to the previous backroom shootout.