'The Rigano Murders'

 The Rigano Murders 

By Paul Davis

Rigano’s was crowded on that Friday evening in January of 1980.

People were lined up three deep at the nightclub’s long bar as they waited to buy drinks from the busy bartenders. Many others danced wildly and happily to club music on the large, square dance floor under a glitter ball that flashed roving light beams down upon them.

The well-dressed crowd was mixed, but many of the patrons were young people in their 20s from nearby South Philadelphia. They crossed the Walt Whitman bridge from South Philadelphia and drove to the upscale neighborhood in Cherry Hill, New Jersey to visit the trendy nightclub. Among the South Philadelphia patrons were a dozen or so of the younger members of the Philadelphia Cosa Nostra crime family.    

The young criminals from South Philadelphia were more than welcome at Rigano’s, as they were flashy big spenders and the two owners were themselves members of Cosa Nostra, although they were connected to the New York Bonfiglio crime family by way of Sicily.

The two owners and operators of the nightclub were Ciro and Angelo Rigano. The two brothers hailed from Palermo, Sicily. The 26 and 25-year-old stocky brothers with curly black hair looked like twins. They left Sicily to make their reputation and fortune in America. Their entry into America was sponsored by their father’s cousin, Luigi “Lupo” Bonfiglio, the boss of the New York Bonfiglio Cosa Nostra organized crime family.

The Rigano brothers’ popular and successful nightclub was not their primary source of income. The two brothers made the bulk of their money selling heroin, using the nightclub as their base. Their dealers spread across the region.

To operate in the Philadelphia Cosa Nostra crime family’s territory, Bonfiglio had to approach Angelo Bruno, his longtime friend and fellow Cosa Nostra National Crime Commission member, and ask him for permission for his second cousins to set up a nightclub and heroin operation in the Philly mob’s territory. Of course, Bonfiglio offered Bruno a percentage of the drug sales. Bruno agreed.

Bruno and Bonfiglio were partners in several criminal ventures, from organizing overseas high-end gambling junkets to promoting and “fixing” national boxing matches. Bruno and Bonfiglio also voted together whenever an issue came to a head at the National Cosa Nostra Crime Commission.   

Known as a businessman and racketeer rather than a violent gangster, Bruno was a friend to politicians, cops, entertainers and his South Philadelphia neighbors. He made most of his money from illegal gambling, loansharking and controlling unions. Although in his more than two decades as the Philly boss, he had men killed and many more beaten over serious issues, he much preferred to negotiate and exert influence over others rather than commit violence.

In one situation in 1969, a heroin addict named Michael “Blackie” Russo was holding up mob-run card games. Russo was called Blackie due to his raven-black long hair and scraggily black beard, and he was recognized easily by the poker players when he waved a long-barreled revolver at them and demanded they place the money on the table, and their wallets, watches and rings into a pillow sack.

When the series of robberies were reported to Bruno, his underlings asked the mob boss for the authority to murder the drug addict. Bruno gave Russo a pass, as the addict was a nephew to a made member.

“Lean on him,” Bruno ordered. “Tell him to go rob liquor stores.”

But despite a “good talking to” by his uncle, Russo went on to hold up another game. Bruno’s underlings, including Russo’s uncle, called for Russo to be “whacked,” but Bruno ordered that Russo be given “a good beating.”

When Russo recovered from the beating, he needed money for his drugs, so he went out and robbed another card game. Only then did Bruno reluctantly order that Russo be murdered.          

Bruno was born Angelo Annaloro in Sicily in 1910. His conciliatory reputation began in 1959 when the Philadelphia Cosa Nostra boss Joseph Ida fled the United States to avoid narcotic charges. Antonio “Mr. Miggs” Pollina succeeded Ida as the crime family boss.

Concerned about Bruno as a rival, Pollino ordered an underling to murder him. Instead, the underling informed Bruno of the murder plot. Bruno went to the Commission in New York to redress his grievance. The Commission sided with Bruno and authorized him to murder Pollino and become head of the Philadelphia crime family.

Instead, Bruno spared Pollino’s life and told him to retire from Cosa Nostra and move away from Philadelphia. Bruno then became the Philadelphia boss.

With his easy-going public demeaner, pencil moustache, white hair, jeff cap and big glasses, Bruno appeared to be everyone’s kindly grandfather. But in private, he ruled his crime family with an iron hand. But as the 1980s began, many in his crime family came to resent him for his greed and his old school Cosa Nostra ways. 

Allowing the Rigano brothers to sell heroin in Cherry Hill, New Jersey infuriated Bruno’s captains, soldiers and associates, as he forbade them to sell narcotics. It was bad enough that despite Bruno’s edict on narcotics, he turned a blind eye as the biggest methamphetamine dealer in Philadelphia operated openly in Bruno’s South Philly neighborhood as well as across the city.

The mobsters also knew that Bruno received a weekly fat envelope full of cash from the “meth” dealer. Now, Bruno was receiving another fat envelope from the Sicilian heroin dealers. And he was not sharing any of that tribute drug money with anyone under him.

The Philadelphia Cosa Nostra troops under Bruno were not happy.

Ricardo “Ricky” Amato, a tall, thin man in his 50s with a pinched face, was an unhappy caporegime in the Philadelphia crime family. He was unhappy that Angelo Bruno restricted his ability to earn a living by not allowing him to venture into narcotic trafficking. He was especially unhappy that Bruno did not share his drug money from those who were exceptions to his rule.

Not that he needed the money. Amato was caught on an FBI wiretap telling his fellow caporegimes that he had more money than he could possibly spend in his lifetime. Amato made a fortune overseeing illegal gambling, loansharking and theft from legitimate businesses in South Philadelphia. But he hated the boss for not sharing his drug tributes with his captains.

“It’s the principal, not the money,” Amato told his fellow mobsters. But of course, he wanted the money as well.

Although Amato’s parents came over from Sicily, he hated Sicilians. He said they were greedy and notorious cheap skates. He called them “Zips” and “greaseballs,” and he hated that Bruno dealt with them.

Amato was also unhappy at the way Bruno had made Atlantic City an “open city” like Las Vegas when New Jersey legalized casino gambling in the seaside resort town in 1978. Bruno retained a hold on several unions in Atlantic City, so the Philadelphia crime family made a fortune as the casinos began to operate. But his decision to call Atlantic City an open city allowed other Cosa Nostra crime families to operate in a city that was firmly in the Philadelphia crime family’s territory.

“He’s allowing these New York wiseguys and other crooks to pick our pockets in Atlantic city,” Amato told the gathering of Philadelphia caporegimes in his South Philly home in the Packer Park area. “And we can’t sell narcotics, but he allows these fuckin’ Sicilian “Zips” to set up shop in our backyard.

“It’s a fuckin’ insult.”     

The other angry captains nodded in agreement. Richard Amato, the capo’s son, overheard the conversation as he emptied ashtrays and refilled the captains’ glasses with Sambuco, Scotch and wine. Some thought it ridiculous, but the son was called “Little Ricky,” even though the 25-year-old was hefty and even taller than his father.

Little Ricky was ambitious, and he waited desperately to become “made,” and he dreamed of being inducted formally into the Philadelphia Cosa Nostra crime family. He saw himself as a future boss of the crime family.

After the other captains left Amato’s house, the father sat his son down and explained what must be done, and how Little Ricky must do it.         

On that busy Friday night at Rigano’s, Little Ricky Amato was one of the many customers at the bar. He was accompanied by Joseph “Fireplug” Caruso, a short and stocky young man who was Amato’s best friend. Amato swallowed his Scotch in a gulp and Caruso lifted his bottle of beer and gulped down half of it. Amato slammed his glass on the bar, looked at Caruso and began to walk towards the men’s room. Caruso smacked his bottle down on the bar and the shorter man followed Amato.

Amato and Caruso lingered at the sinks, washing their hands until they were the only ones in the men’s room. Amato then pulled a ski mask out from his sport jacket and placed the mask over his head. As Caruso was also placing his ski mask on his head, Amato pulled out his 9mm Colt and theatrically jacked a round in the chamber, like they do in the movies. Caruso pulled out his 38. Smith & Weston.

“Let’s do this, Joe,” Amato said.

The two young mobsters rushed out of the men’s room and moved swiftly through the crowd towards a back table where the Rigano brothers were holding court with two young girls and a criminal associate named Billy Yates.

The Rigano brothers were so engrossed with drinking and laughing with the girls and Yates that they failed to see the two-masked gunmen moving towards their table.      

Amato and Caruso began shooting as they neared the table and Ciro Rigano and Yates died instantly from the hail of bullets. The girls screamed and ducked under the table as Angelo Rigano was up and attempting to run from the table. Amato ran up quickly behind the fleeing Sicilian and shot him in the upper back and the back of his head. Rigano fell and slid across the dance floor.

Most of the crowd at the nightclub were running and screaming from the numerous shots while many others had dropped to the floor. No one attempted to stop the two masked gunmen from running out of the nightclub. The two fleeing gunmen fired at a man in the parking lot as they jumped into their car. Amato rolled down his window and fired off two shots in the air to scare off anyone looking to stop them from driving away. 

      

The sensational murders at Rigano’s made headlines in all of the Philadelphia area newspapers and was the lead story on the TV news broadcasts. The Rigano murders also led to the murder of the Philadelphia Cosa Nostra organized crime family boss on March 21, 1980.  

After having dinner at a South Philly restaurant, Angelo Bruno was driven home by Sicilian John Stanfa. As Bruno sat in the passenger seat of the car in front of his South Philadelphia row home, someone came up to his window with a shotgun and blasted the 69-year-old mob boss. He died instantly. 

A macabre photo of the late mobster, his head back and his mouth agape, ran on the front page of the Philadelphia newspapers and other newspapers across the country.  

The brutal murder of Angelo Bruno led to further murders and an internecine mob war that stretched from South Philly to Sicily.  

© 2025 Paul Davis  

'Officer Mack'

 Officer Mack

By Paul Davis

Back when I was a teenager in South Philly in the late 1960s, some of the boys on our corner at 13^th and Oregon Avenue hated cops. 

South Philadelphia is the hub of the Philadelphia-South Jersey Cosa Nostra organized crime family, and these teenagers were the sons and nephews of the mob guys. 

I recall that “Crazy Joe” Villotti, the nephew of a Cosa Nostra capo, or captain, refused to go with us and see the film Goldfinger. 

Villotti asked me, “Isn’t James Bond a cop?”   

“No,” I replied. “He’s a British secret agent, a cool spy of sorts.” 

“Yeah, he’s a fucking government guy, so I don’t want to watch the fuck.” 

But for most of the boys on the corner, like me, we saw that there were two types of cops. There were “cool” cops and “prick” cops. 

The cool cops were generally tough guys who could afford to be lenient and understanding at times, while the prick cops were weaker men who we believed made up for their feelings of inferiority by acting stern and officious at all times. 

Police Officer Thomas T. Mack was a prick cop. 

Mack, a short and muscular 30-year-old, began dating Marie Saccone, the attractive elder sister of Chick and Stevie Saccone, two of my friends on the corner. 

Their father was a mob associate and a big-time bookmaker and loan shark. But despite their father being an illegal gambler, Chick and Stevie didn’t hate cops the way Villotti and some others did. 

Mack asked to be transferred to the 3^rd Police District to be closer to Marie. He patrolled Oregon Avenue, a four-lane wide street and major thoroughfare in the predominantly Italian American neighborhood in South Philadelphia. 

He often stopped at JP’s Luncheonette at 13^th and Oregon Avenue for cigarettes and coffee. He would then come out and gab with Stevie, whom he treated like a younger brother. 

Chick would walk away, as he hated Mack. He hated Mack, not because he was a cop, but rather because he thought Mack was a phony and an asshole. 

Mack’s friendliness with Stevie and the other teenagers on the corner ended the day Marie dumped him. 

That very night he arrested Stevie and two other teenagers for drinking beer on the corner. And from that night on, Mack declared war on us. He harassed us nearly every night. We all hated Mack.

On a Mischief Night before Halloween, Mack pulled up on the corner and shouted through his open passenger window for us to get off the corner. 

“Yes, Sir,” we replied in unison. And in unison, a half dozen of us tossed a half dozen eggs at him through his passenger window. We then took off running but not before I saw the furious look on his face and his cap knocked sideways with egg yolk dripping down his face from the cap’s brim. 

I was laughing madly as I ran away from the corner. 

Mack went crazy and zoomed around the streets hunting us. I ran home after throwing my egg at him. My mother asked why I was home so early, and I told her I was tried and wanted to go to bed. 

Officer Frank Grant was a cool cop. We never would have thrown eggs at him. 

Grant stopped into JP’s nearly every night for a sandwich and a cup of coffee. Grant, a tall, gangly man in his late 20s, told funny stories to the owners of JPs and us. 

I recall him telling a story about a drug raid on an abandoned house in the 3^rd District. 

The district captain saw white powder that lay on a sheet of brown paper on the floor in the corner. He wet his index finger and dipped his finger in the powder and tasted it on the tip of his tongue. 

“Is this heroin,” he asked.

He again dipped his finger in the powder and tasted it.

“Is this heroin,” he again asked.     

One of the officers told the commanding officer, “Captain, I think it’s rat poison.”

The captain froze for a moment and then told the officer to drive him to the hospital.

Like many cops I’ve known over the years, Grant was a fine storyteller. When years later I read and enjoyed Joseph Wambaugh, the LAPD detective sergeant who became the best-selling author of The New Centurions, The Choir Boys, and other classic cop novels and nonfiction books about cops, I often thought of Grant. 

Another thing that endeared us to Grant was that he hated Officer Mack and often mocked him. 

One night as I sat alone with Grant at JP’s counter, I told the officer that although my Uncle Bill was a police captain, and my father, a WWII Navy chief and Underwater Demolition Team (UDT) frogman, was a strict law & order man, I hated Officer Mack. 

Grant laughed and said most of the 3^rd District cops also hated Mack.       

Although we had some tough guys on 13th and Oregon, like my older brother Eddie, Joe Villotti and the Saccone brothers, we were more of a party corner, as we hosted various crews of pretty girls that hung out with us 

But the street gang blocks away at the corner of Dalton Street and Oregon Avenue, called the “D&O,” was a crazy crew of violent, drug dealing teenage hoodlums. 

The D&O street gang hated Officer Mack even more than we did. Like us, Mack rousted the D&O teenagers for no reason other than hating them. True, they were hoodlums, but Mack often went overboard, roughing them up after handcuffing them. He then threw them out of his patrol car without even bothering to arrest them.

I suspect that because he was rejected by a beautiful Italian woman, Mack hated Italians. He called the D&O boys and the 13^th & Oregon Avenue teenagers “dagos” and “wops.”

But the D&O teenagers fought back.

I heard Mack went batshit crazy when he drove down Oregon Avenue and saw that the D&O boys had spray painted on the side of a building in very large letters, “OFFICER MACK BLOWS.”

The painted message was the talk of the 3^rd District cops. Mack was widely mocked by his fellow officers.  

One night Officer Mack pulled up to 13^th & Oregon, jumped out of his car, leaving the driver’s car door open and the patrol car running. He dashed into JP’s and shouted to the dozen or guys and girls on the corner, “Be off this fucking corner by the time I come out, or I’ll lock up all you up.”

I saw his patrol car door open and the car running, so I seized the day and jumped into the driver’s seat and took off. I drove across Oregon Avenue and jumped the curb of Marconi’s Park. 

I looked for, but could not find, the siren. As I drove through the park wildly, I glanced in the rear-view mirror and saw Mack running and shouting like a crazy man across Oregon Avenue, his service revolver held up into the air.  

I put on the brakes halfway into the park and jumped out running. I ran right into the beefy arms of a Fairmount Park Police Officer, who twisted me around and handcuffed me. He held me for Mack. 

Mack came up huffing and placed his service revolver back in the holster. He took out his “sap,” a short steel rod covered in black leather, and he slapped the sap across my knees. 

The pain was awful, but the worst thing was that I could not clutch my aching knees, as my hands were handcuffed behind my back. I leaned down as the Park cop held me.  

The Park cop asked Mack if he wanted to arrest me, and Mack said no. 

“Do me a favor and drive the kid down to the river and let the punk walk back home.”  

I had to walk from the river on Delaware Avenue and Front Street back up to 13^th and Oregon with swollen and throbbing knees. 

But it was worth it, as I was the talk of the corner that night and Thomas Junior High School the next day. Everyone thought I was a cool guy. The wild hoodlums from the D&O slapped me on the back and called me a “crazy motherfucker,” which was a high compliment from them.

Grant came to JP's the following night and told me that I was lucky that Mack didn’t arrest me or shoot me. He said that Mack was probably hoping no other cops would hear that a teenager stole his car.

But the Park cop hated Mack and he called a friend at the 3^rd District and told him the story. The cop in turn told all of his fellow 3^rd District officers. Mack was ridiculed once again.         

Some months later, Officer Grant came into JP's and told me that Mack was fired for beating the son of a South Philly councilman. According to Grant, Mack cuffed the Italian American politician’s teenage son and beat him as he held him against the side of the patrol car. 

The son was a what we called a “square” kid, and what the adults called a “nice Italian boy.” He was a good student who didn’t drink beer or smoke pot on the corner with us. 

We didn’t know why Mack singled him out. Mack handcuffed him and threw him against the side of the patrol car. He slapped the teenager in the face repeatedly and delivered a severe punch to the teenager’s stomach. 

The noise and flashing lights on the patrol car drew the attention of several neighbors who called 911 and reported the brutal treatment of the teenager. 

The councilman called the captain, who then ordered an investigation. Mack was subsequently fired. He also faced assault charges from the District Attorney’s office.

“Good riddance,” Grant said.

I laughed and said, “So even in South Philly, there’s some justice. 

The 30-Day Detail

 The below story, which is about drug dealing and other crimes aboard an aircraft carrier during the Vietnam War, is a chapter in my crime novel Olongapo, which I hope to soon publish.

In my day, we thought the Navy was the coolest military service. After all, bell-bottoms dungarees were fashionable in the civilian world in the late 1960s and early 1970s, and dark blue bell-bottom dungarees were part of our working uniform aboard the aircraft carrier USS Kitty Hawk.

In addition to the dungarees, we wore a white t-shirt under a short-sleeve light blue chambray shirt, with our name stenciled in black just above the left breast pocket.

We also wore ankle-high black leather boots called “BoonDockers,” and when outside, a dark blue ball cap topped the working uniform. My dungarees and chambray shirt were always cleaned and pressed and my BoonDockers were always polished.

My older brother Eddie, who served in the U.S. Army at Chu Lai in South Vietnam in 1968 and 1969, often mocked me for wearing a clean uniform and fighting the war on a safe, clean and air-conditioned ship off the coast of Vietnam.

His life as a soldier at Chu Lai was not so clean, with heat, humidity, mud, dirt, bugs, rats, and Viet Cong attacks. Compared to his time at Chu Lai, my brother thought I served on a luxury cruise ship. In rebuttal, I told him that if it were not for naval air power from aircraft carriers, he and many other soldiers “in-country” would have died in combat. He agreed, albeit reluctantly.

The Kitty Hawk’s aircraft and battle group ships protected the aircraft carrier and kept it safe from attacks from the North Vietnamese while on "Yankee Station" in the Tonkin Gulf off the coast of North Vietnam, but life could be dangerous on an aircraft carrier as air combat operations were fast-paced and precarious as the carrier launched and recovered aircraft around the clock. With vast amounts of jet fuel, bombs, missiles and rockets on board, an accident or a fire on a carrier can be a truly deadly affair, as it had been earlier on the Kitty Hawk and on other aircraft carriers, most notably the deadly fire on the USS Forrestal. The carrier was later nicknamed the “USS Forest Fire.”

And there were other safety concerns on a carrier, such as crime.

An aircraft carrier has been described as a floating small city due to her size and large crew. As even small cites have crime, it should not be a surprise that one would encounter crime aboard an aircraft carrier. There were assaults, thefts, gambling and drug trafficking taking place on the ship as the carrier sailed the South China Sea.

While operating off the coast of Vietnam. I worked in the Communications Radio Division’s Message Processing Center. The center was a hectic place, as we handled fast-flowing and fast-action highly classified war traffic. We received and distributed traffic concerning combat missions, tactical reports, naval intelligence reports, and intelligence reports from the CIA, DIA, NSA and the other alphabet soup intelligence agencies. We also maintained radio communications between the aircraft carrier and our pilots as they flew combat sorties against North Vietnamese and Viet Cong supply routes and strategic positions.

We also handled highly classified traffic for the Task Force 77 admiral, who commanded the entire fleet off Vietnam. The Task Force 77 admiral and his staff were stationed aboard the Kitty Hawk as the carrier was the designated Task Force 77 Flag Ship. 

The message center additionally received and distributed the famous “Z-Grams” from the then-Chief of Naval of Operations, Admiral Elmo Zumwalt. Those Z-Grams changed Navy policy, such as letting sailors grow beards and go ashore in civilian clothes. Senior Navy people hated the Z-Grams, but young enlisted sailors like me loved them.

While on Yankee Station, we worked in eight hours on/eight hours off shifts, with about 20 to 25 men working in the message processing center during each “watch.” The center job was grueling and never-ending, sending and processing traffic, but we knew this was a good job. There were far more dirty and dangerous jobs on the aircraft carrier.

Compared to the engineers, called “snipes,” who worked in the hot bowels of the ship, and the flight crews, called “air dales,” who worked in the blistering heat on the flight deck dodging launched and recovered aircraft, we had it pretty good in the message center. And we certainly had it easier than the carrier’s pilots, who braved being shot down and killed or captured as they flew combat sorties over Vietnam. 

During this time on Yankee Station, I was under the dubious supervision of Gerald Hobbs, a newly promoted 3^rd Class Radioman, which was the Navy equivalent to an Army buck sergeant. Hobbs, who hailed from Baltimore, was a big guy, around 6’3,” and on the heavy side. He was crude and obnoxious, and not very bright. He was disliked by most of the enlisted sailors in the division.

His sour personality did not improve after he was promoted. With his new “crow” stitched on the left sleeve of his blue chambray uniform shirt, Hobbs became even more obnoxious. 

On one watch in the message center, I told an old joke in the guise of a true story, as I usually did.

“I met a girl in Olongapo,” I told a couple of sailors working alongside me. “She said her name was Angelina. I told her that was a pretty name. I asked her if people called her “Angel” for short, and she replied, “Yes, but not for long.””

The two sailors laughed. Even Lieutenant Junior Grade Albert Moony, who overheard the old joke as he walked by, laughed. I was a bit surprised, as Moony was not known for his sense of humor. The serious young officer once told us that his post-Navy plans were to become a State Department official or a Buddhist Monk.

But humor is not universal. Although I had some good friends in the division and I made them laugh on occasion, I must admit that there were those who did not find me particularly amusing. These sailors disliked me, disliked my telling old jokes that I heard or read somewhere, and disliked my sarcastic asides. My detractors thought I had far too much to say for so young a sailor.

Hobbs was squarely in that group. He overheard my joke and didn’t think it was funny. He screamed at me to stop telling jokes and “turn to,” Navy-speak for get to work. Hobbs puffed up his chest and acted tough as he was older, taller and had about fifty pounds on me. I was not intimidated, and I suppose I gave him a dirty look.  

“I’m a petty officer now and don’t you ever forget it,” Hobbs declared. 

 “I looked up petty in the dictionary and it’s defined as small and unimportant,” I told him. “And your photo was next to the definition.”

The sailors near me laughed. This angered Hobbs and he shoved me. 

Bad move on his part. 

As I had been training and competing as a boxer since I was 12 years old at the South Philly Boys’ Club, my instincts kicked in and I threw a stiff left jab to his nose, followed immediately by a “Sunday punch” to his mouth. The left jab and short right knockout punch dropped Hobbs heavily to the deck. He laid there next to his two front teeth, which I had knocked out of his head. 

Bad move on my part. 

I had punched out a petty officer in the message center in front of officers, chiefs and a number of assorted petty officers. Chief John Helm rushed over and ordered me to go the division’s supply office and wait there for him.   

As I waited for the chief, I knew I fucked up. I was worried that I would be sent to the carrier’s brig. As I was pondering my fate, Chief Helm came in. I could see that the chief was upset, as his large ears were bright red. He took off his glasses and taking a hankie out of his pants pocket, he furiously rubbed them clean.     

“What’s the matter with you? You think I don’t want to punch one of these kid officers in the mouth every day? Especially that tall glass of fresh water, Lieutenant Harrison. You just can’t do it!”   

Chief Helm told me that he went to see Commander Olson, the division’s commanding officer. He explained to Olson that Hobbs had shoved me first, although that was no excuse for me to punch him. We were both in the wrong. But Chief Helm said he put in a good word for me.  

“Is Davis the kid who tells all those dumb jokes?” the chief told me Olson had asked him.

“Yes, Sir” the chief replied. 

“No charges or the brig for Davis,’ the commander ordered. “Get him a 30-day detail out of the division and chew Hobbs’ ass. Tell him from me that he’s lucky that I don’t bust him back to a seaman.”  

I found it curious that it was my telling a joke that caused the confrontation in the message center, and yet it was my telling old jokes that also got me a light punishment.

 

Although I was happy that I avoided a 30-day stint in the carrier’s brig, I was not happy about being kicked out of the division. Although I was only a seaman, lower than whale shit, as the saying goes, I felt that I was doing important war-related work in the vital communications center. 

Chief Helms told me he arranged for me to be detailed for 30 days to the ship’s vent shop, as he knew the petty officer in charge. The following morning, I packed my sea bag and reported to the vent shop’s boss. Roscoe Davis was a hulking and jovial black 1^st class petty officer with a huge gut protruding over his belt.

 “I’m Roscoe,” he said. “Welcome aboard.”

He gathered around the other guys in the shop and as we had the same last name, Roscoe introduced me as his “illegitimate white boy son.”

I laughed along with the others. One of the sailors in the shop asked me the question that sailors always ask when first meeting another sailor, “What state you from?”

 “South Philly,” I replied.

 “Is South Philly a state?” another sailor asked sarcastically.

 “We think so,” I replied. 

 James Green, a tall and lean black sailor from North Philly, laughed.  

“Shit,” he said to the other sailors. “I know these I-Talian South Philly boys. They are bad-ass, motherfucking mafia gangsters.”  

Rather than reproach this seaman on stereotyping Italians, as I was half-Italian, I said nothing, allowing the sailors in the shop to believe that I was a hoodlum. The fact that I was detailed to the vent shop because I had punched out a petty officer added to that somewhat exaggerated image. 

Roscoe teamed me with Green and called us “the Philly boys.” Each day we went around the ship and pulled out the 4x4 air filters from the ventilation system and replaced them with clean ones. We took the dirty filters back to the shop and soaped them up and blasted them with a high-power water hose. The removal and cleaning of the air filters was on a rotational system that Roscoe controlled. 

Pulling out filters, replacing them, and cleaning the old ones was a dirty job, but we worked an eight-hour day, unlike my eight on/eight off watches in the Communications Radio Division. I grew to like the job, although I felt like I was missing out on what was happening in the war. I also liked Roscoe, Green, and the other misfits in the vent shop. 

I soon discovered that Roscoe ran illegal card games aboard the carrier. He also smuggled aboard cases of vodka, scotch and other alcohol from Subic Bay and then sold the bottles at sea for a good profit. He reminded me of the colorful rascal military characters portrayed in movies and on TV series like Sergeant Bilko and McHale’s Navy. In fact, McHale’s Navy was one of the reasons I joined the Navy.   

I was a fair poker player and I sat in on Roscoe’s games. Many of the people I played against were poor poker players, so I made a few bucks on my down time. I always gave Roscoe a cut of my winnings, as he ran the games, just as I would have given a cut to the mob guys who ran the card games back in South Philly.  

Roscoe took the money, shoved it into his dungaree pants pocket and said, “My man.”  

On most days, Roscoe locked the shop’s door after working hours and we broke out the booze and partied.   

Another seaman in the vent shop was Leman Knox, a skinny guy from some small town in Florida. He had a serious case of face acne, which he always picked at, and he constantly scratched himself all over. Having known drug addicts from my old neighborhood, I knew he was a heroin addict. He confirmed this later by offering to sell me heroin. I declined his offer.    

Knox was one of those stupid and silly white guys who spoke and acted like a black street tough. Knox thought this made him cool. He called the black sailors “Bros.” Most of the black sailors did not consider his act an homage. They thought he was an ass and they mostly ignored him.  

Green, who possessed a great sense of humor, thought Knox was funny. He did a fine burlesque of Knox acting like a “brother.” He often performed his impression of Knox for the white and black sailors in the shop, and it always brought on great laughter. One day, Green did his impression in front of Knox himself. While everyone was laughing, Knox was clueless and asked what was so funny.     

 

As we were pulling out a dirty filter one day, Green told me that Knox went to the “Jungle” in Olongapo during the carrier’s previous visit to Subic Bay in the Philippines. The Jungle was the section of the wide-open sin city that black sailors frequented. The black sailors preferred to be segregated and did not take kindly to white sailors intruding on their territory.  

Knox, who must have thought he was an honorary black guy, visited a bar in the Jungle and was promptly beaten severely by several black sailors. Thankfully for Knox, the heavily armed shore patrol happened to enter the bar and disrupted the beating. Knox was bloodied and stunned as the shore patrol took him to the base hospital. 

Green also told me that Knox sold heroin aboard the ship. He said Knox was supplied by a Filipino drug dealer in Olongapo. Knox supported his own habit by selling the drug to other sailors while we were at sea off the coast of Vietnam. Green said that if Roscoe found out, he would boot Knox out of the shop. Booze was one thing, but Roscoe hated drugs.

When two drug users overdosed and nearly died on the heroin Knox sold them, a civilian Naval Investigative Service (NIS) special agent was flown aboard the carrier from Subic Bay to investigate. He interrogated the two sailors who survived the drug overdoses, and both sailors gave up Knox as their drug dealer.  

After Knox was arrested by the NIS special agent, he wasted little time giving up his Filipino dealer in Olongapo, as well as his many customers aboard the ship. He implicated several sailors. I was one of the sailors.  

I was summoned to the legal office where a tall, lean, and lanky civilian was standing behind a desk. I sat down in the chair across from him. He introduced himself as NIS Special Agent Cantrell and he passed a sheet of paper across the desk to me. The “Lincolnesque” special agent from West Virginia spoke slowly and softly with a smooth Southern accent.

“Sign this,” he said.

“Do you mind if I read it first?” 

The document was a confession that I was a heroin user. 

“Sign it and you’ll get a general discharge.” 

I pushed the paper back across the agent’s desk.  

“I’m not a heroin user,” I told the NIS special agent. “And I’m not going to sign that.”

“Suit yourself,” the NIS special agent said softly with a smile. “But if “Ole Boone” discovers that you are using heroin, you will go to prison.”

“Boone?”

“That’s me, Ole Boone Cantrell.”

I got up and left the office. 

Thankfully, there was no blow-back on Roscoe Davis due to Knox being his subordinate. Like me, Knox had been a disciplinarian problem who was assigned to the vent shop. For some reason, Knox did not tell the NIS special agent about Roscoe’s extracurricular criminal activities. Perhaps he thought Roscoe would kill him. 

 

My 30-day detail was coming to an end. Returning to the vent shop one day with dirty filters, Roscoe handed me the phone. Chief Helm was on the line, and he asked me if I was ready to come back to the division. I hesitated, but then said yes.

Roscoe shook my hand.

“If you ever fuck up again, you’ll be welcome back here,” Roscoe said with a wide grin.                       

Upon my return to the Communications Radio Division, I was greeted with handshakes and back slaps. Hobbs, I was told, was assigned to the other duty section, so we would no longer work together. 

Hobbs was so disliked by most of the guys that some of them told me that they wished that they had been there when I punched him out.  

The event was summed up nicely by Willie Henry, who hated Hobbs.   

“Someone now has 30 teeth and a different attitude.” 

© 2024 By Paul Davis 

Note: You can read other Olongapo stories via the below links:

Paul Davis On Crime: My Crime Fiction: 'Butterfly'

Paul Davis On Crime: My Crime Fiction: The Old Huk

Paul Davis On Crime: My Crime Fiction: Join The Navy And See Olongapo

Paul Davis On Crime: My Crime Fiction: 'Boots On The Ground'

Paul Davis On Crime: Chapter Two: Salvatore Lorino