The Black Hand had resurfaced again around 1905, sending letters and marking doorways throughout Little Italy and Harlem. Some said they were getting even bolder. One Sunday, Father Vincent Sorrentino, of the Church of Our Lady of Loreto, revealed that the Black Hand had threatened the church itself on Assumption Day.
“Is it not an awful thing,” the father said, his voice trembling, “that a priest, the pastor of his flock, when called upon to visit the dying must carry a revolver in his pocket that the Blessed Sacrament may reach the person about to die.”
The police had also discovered Black Hand strongholds on the city’s outskirts, most notably in Westchester. In the quiet forest stretching into Pennsylvania, police patrols looked in the dark for the mysterious Queen of the Black Hand, who had been leading a gang that was terrorizing local merchants with letters, bombings, and even shootings. They also found, hidden in the woods, a Black Hand school filled with dummies and stiletto knives.
In East Harlem, the head of the largest Italian criminal gang was Giuseppe Morello. Known as the Clutch Hand because of his deformed right hand, Morello built a gang—a family—of notorious gangsters by sharing territory, unifying bloodlines, and being merciless to his enemies. His brother-in-law was the Wolf, Ignacio Lupo, and together they laid the foundation for bigger families to come. Morello was called the capo di tutti capi, the “boss of the bosses.” The Wolf alone was thought to have murdered sixty people on Morello’s orders. They were especially known for gruesome barrel murders, whereby the victim’s body would be cut in two and folded into a barrel before being buried or shipped to an unwitting recipient. When Morello was finally busted several years later on a counterfeiting charge, agents found Black Hand letters ready to be sent, hidden in the diaper of the baby his wife was carrying on her hip. Most of the letters began with “Dear Friend,” but ended with a threat of mortal violence. They all carried the same import:
FRIEND: The need obliges us to come to you in order to do us a favor. We request, Sunday night, 7th day, at 12 o’clock you must bring the sum of $1000. Under penalty of death for you and your dears you must come under the new bridge near the Grand Street ferry where you will find the person that wants to know the time. At this word you will give him the money. Beware of what you do and keep your mouth shut …
The spectre of the Black Hand—as it appeared in newspaper accounts and rumors on the streets—hung over Grace as she walked in and out of her office in Little Italy. She was steadfast, as always, but she knew that the danger she faced was real. After a few weeks, the phone calls finally subsided and the police removed Grace’s protection from the Black Hand. But she still looked over her shoulder. The woman in black had been marked like a page in a book. She wondered who had that book and how long that mark might last.
*
One warm night at Bible House, a woman came to see Grace. She spoke very fast, and her eyes looked as if she had been crying. The translator said that the woman’s husband had gone missing from the city. Grace had heard stories like this before. The woman kept shaking her head when Grace’s translator said “kidnapping.” Something else was going on here.
Grace questioned the woman further. Her husband’s last job had been with the S. S. Schwartz Employment Agency at First Street and Bowery. After the woman left, Grace did some checking into the company but could find nothing beyond a thin line in the city directory. The husband’s disappearance—and his fate—seemed, on the surface, a complete mystery.
A few weeks later, the woman returned to Bible House, accompanied by her husband, a big Russian man named Bennie. Grace was happy that the mystery had been solved, but neither the woman nor her husband, who looked ill, seemed very happy about it. The woman started speaking swiftly and loudly as she turned her husband around. As his wife started to lift up the back of his shirt, Grace modestly started to turn away. She stopped when she saw the man’s bare back, marked with raised stripes.
The man’s name was Bennie Wilenski, and he was fifty years old. He was impossibly thin for such a tall man. He looked like a shadow. His brow was wet with flop sweat and from the heat. He sat down on Grace’s step, shivering.
“Six weeks ago,” Bennie said, “I read an advertisement in an East Side paper, offering splendid work for good men.” It sounded like a good idea for an out-of-work Russian Jew. The agency agreed to pay thirteen dollars for passage to Florida; the money was to be deducted from his wages at fifty cents a week. Bennie said that he and forty-one other men boarded a Clyde Line steamer for Jacksonville. The good prospect was looking worse by the moment. The men were forced to sleep on hard decks and actually refused the food because it was so bad-tasting.
After three and a half days, the dirty boat reached Jacksonville, where the heat felt like a wool coat. According to Bennie, they were met by representatives of the Hodges Milling Company and a man they called “the boss.” They then took a day-and-a-half train ride to Maytown and Buffalo Bluff, their new place of employment. They were shown to their new homes: low huts that the boss called “dog houses.” By now, they were all very hungry.
“Five men slept on mattresses on the floor and five on shelves higher up,” said Bennie. “There was no table to eat from. The cabins were full of dirt and vermin and you put your food on your mattress and ate it there. We were all half-starved. The superintendent told us we could buy what we wanted at the grocery store. The prices were awful. A glass of ice water was five cents. The weather was very hot. It is a swampy country full of mosquitoes.”
Grace looked at this big man, shaking and sweating. He continued his story.
“We were watched all night by Negroes with revolvers. At four o’clock every morning, the watchmen woke us up. We had only a few moments to eat our crackers and fish and then we had to walk for two hours into the swamp, where we handled logs all day long. When we staggered from the heat, and overwork, they dashed water on us to revive us. The foreman beat us. When we stopped to eat a few soda crackers at noon the foreman kept driving us to hurry up. If we didn’t move fast enough, sometimes he would knock the cracker out of a man’s hand and yell ‘Hurry up!’ and beat him.