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Emmett pondered the depths of vanity and self-indulgence
required to organize such jive-ass events as the Clean-Ins,
before directing his attention to the serious matter of relieving
the neighborhood of its abundant and weighty loads of trash and
scrap metal. He was convinced it was going to require a fleet of
trucks to make the number of hauls needed to clear the area, and
that fleet would have to meet some sort of schedule if there was
to be any hope of getting the job done before summer. But how was
anyone ever going to arrange for the trucks to appear in the
first place? "Where are they all supposed to come
from?" Emmett was thinking to himself over a cup of coffee
one morning. He hadn't made very much progress in locating the
trucks when he noticed what turned out to be the solution to the
problem on the front page of the morning paper-- the good old New
York Times!
In the lower right-hand corner of page one, almost lost--like
only a front page story can be lost by the Times--was a
brief headline announcing a developing scandal within the city's
private sanitation companies. This one-liner was followed by an
article reporting the progress of some committee that was
investigating several reports of kickbacks and payoffs to various
city officials for their help in assigning city contracts to the
area's private sanitation companies which were alleged to be
controlled by organized crime. The story went on to detail a
specific instance of alleged corruption on the part of one city
agency official in collusion with the head of a reputed crime
syndicate family "with its headquarters on Elizabeth Street
in Lower ~anhattan's Little Italy." The reputed head of the
Elizabeth Street crime family was none other than Don Signore
Jimmy Peerless himself, and Emmett, immediately understanding the
kind of trouble the private sanitation companies found themselves
in, flashed on the idea that they could use a sizable dose of
good publicity in the New York press. He wondered how receptive
they would be to a little public relations advice from him. Well,
he would know soon enough because he was going to speak with the
men in charge in the same place he spoke with them almost exactly
ten years ago to the day, as one of the Aces Wild who came to
their section of Little Italy to go against the Chaplains in a
game called Ringolevio.
There was also a good precedent for the offer he was about to
extend the "family" men who used the Elizabeth Street
Cefalu Social Club as the headquarters for the overseeing of
their private sanitation companies, as well as their other varied
business inter [end page 334]
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