California Liberty

 California Liberty 

By Paul Davis 

I was just returning from evening chow after my eight-hour watch in the message center aboard the USS Kitty Hawk as the aircraft carrier launched aircraft from “Yankee Station” in the Gulf of Tonkin off the coast of North Vietnam in 1971. 

As I entered the Radio Communications Division's enlisted men's compartment, I heard Salvatore Lorino’s distinctive raspy, fast-paced voice. 

Lorino often visited me while we were on Yankee Station, partly because we were both from South Philly and became friends, and partly because he had two meth customers in the division. 

Lorino, a young hoodlum whom I knew slightly from the South Philadelphia neighborhood where I was raised, was several years older than I. He was about six feet tall, lean, with black hair, rugged features, and a long face with a perpetual lopsided grin that alternately charmed and menaced. 

Entering the compartment, I saw Lorino sitting in a folding chair across from Ingemi, Hunt and a couple of other sailors. The radiomen were laughing at a story Lorino was telling them. 

“Hey, Paulie, I was jes telling them about the time we went to the bullfights in TJ,” Lorino said as I sat down and listened to the story of our trip to Tujuana, Mexico. 

“We was out of Boot Camp for only three months, so we was jes a couple of “Boots” from South Philly when we went down to the border…” 

As he told the tale, I counted. Lorino got seven out of ten facts wrong.

 

While we were stationed in San Diego prior to setting sail for Southeast Asia, we were on three-section duty, which meant that Lorino and I had two out of three weekends off. I liked San Diego, especially Mission Beach, but I was not too fond of the honky-tonk bars that most of the sailors and Marines frequented in the downtown area. I preferred to visit the bars near the local colleges, where the girls were mostly from out of town, just like us.  

I also liked to visit Tijuana, which was just across the border from San Diego. I laughed as Lorino began his tale, recalling how Lorino rooted for the bull rather than the matador. At one point, Lorino stood up and shouted out to the bull, “Now! Get ‘em now!”  

The Mexican bullfight aficionados around us were not amused by the loco gringo, but the Kitty Hawk radiomen hearing the story certainly were. 

Lorino then launched into telling another liberty story. Lorino went on to tell the sailors in the compartment about the time we visited a club on Sunset Strip in Los Angeles. 

“We was in a club in LA and Paulie got us the two best looking girls in the place.” 

Lorino and I traveled in civies when we ventured to Los Angeles. I was fond of LA and liked the vibrant city’s nightlife, and I visited there previously on many of my free weekends. I liked to go to West Hollywood and hit the “happening” clubs on the mile and half of Sunset Boulevard that was known famously as the “Sunset Strip.” 

I told Lorino about the Strip and how it was home to trendy restaurants, sleazy bars and hip nightclubs. The Strip was a girl watchers’ delight and walking the Strip at night was like being part of a wild parade. Someone called the Strip a “cultural carnival.” 

I also liked the great rock music played at the clubs there and I liked dancing with the young, pretty girls. Growing up in South Philly, I had gone to teenage dances every weekend, so I knew that hitting the dance floor and dancing well was a good way to meet girls. 

Along with servicemen like Lorino and I, there were hippies, college students, tourists, music and movie people, and almost everything in between at the clubs. 

I wore my "civies" to the clubs, but unfortunately, like the other servicemen with regulation short hair, Lorino and I stood out from the young men who sported the longer hairstyles of the day. It appeared that the prettiest and most desirable girls shied away from military guys.

On the night Lorino was telling the Kitty Hawk sailors about, I asked an exceptionally good-looking college student named Susan to dance with me at a club on the Strip. She was a pretty, shapely blonde and she wore a loose blouse and tight dungarees.

“I like your high black boots,” I told her. “You can kick me if you want to.”

She laughed.

I spent a good bit of time with Susan on the crowded dance floor. Lorino grabbed Susan’s girlfriend and took her onto the dance floor as well. After a while, we took a break from dancing, and I bought Susan a drink at the bar. Lorino slid next to me with Susan’s girlfriend in his arms.  

Susan was a bit inebriated and giddy. I held her and she looked at me closely. 

I grinned, thinking this was a romantic moment and I was about to kiss her.

“Why do you have short hair?” Susan asked, stopping me from leaning in to kiss her. “Are in you in the military?” 

I just knew that my being in the Navy would be a “turn off” for her, so I thought fast. 

“No, but I don’t want to talk about it,” I replied sheepishly. 

“Why not?” 

“My hair is cut short because Sal and I just got out of San Quentin prison.” 

Her interest and imagination ignited, and she leaned into me and whispered, “Why were you in prison?” 

“We robbed a bank.” 

I heard Lorino behind me laugh. Susan nodded her head slowly, as if to say she understood. She then smiled, kissed me full on the mouth, and we returned to the dance floor. Lorino and I later took the two girls back to our hotel room. 

Apparently, this fresh-faced college girl was just fine with me being a bank robber and ex-con, but she would have surely bolted had I told her I was a sailor. 

Go figure.  

Thankfully, the girls in Olongapo had no such prejudice against sailors. 

 

On a roll, Lorino also spoke of the time we visited Disneyland in Anaheim, California. On that visit to Disneyland with Lorino, we dared to smoke marijuana openly, boldly, and quite stupidly, as we walked around the popular amusement park. 

On the Haunted Mansion ride we shared a joint in our continuously moving vehicle. At one point in the ride, the vehicle pivoted to the right before a mirror, and through Disney’s technological magic, a ghost appeared in the mirror between the reflection of Lorino and I. The ghost grinned and wrapped his arms around us.

Looking at the image between us in the mirror, I offered the joint to the ghost. I thought this was funny, and Lorino thought it was hilarious. 

The security guards monitoring the ride through the mirror were not nearly as amused. 

At the end of the ride, two security guards dressed as Western Sheriffs stopped our vehicle and ordered us to get out. 

“Are you part of the amusement ride?” I asked in jest. 

Lorino thought that too was hilarious. The guards remained unamused.         

The guards held us in a building until the Anaheim police arrived and took us into custody. We were handcuffed, placed in the police car and driven to the Anaheim police station. We were held in separate rooms. I was searched by an Anaheim police officer, and he confiscated the pocketknife I was carrying. 

I was worried about prison and getting kicked out of the Navy. Thankfully, the police officer took pity on me and told me that he was cutting me loose. He said he had been a Marine when he was a young guy, and he also did dumb things then. He told me to take off. 

I asked about Lorino, and the officer told me to “Get while the getting is good.”

I asked if I could have my knife back, and the police officer just stared at me in disbelief. I left the police station quickly and took a bus back to San Diego.  

Lorino later told me that he was arrested because he was holding more than an ounce of marijuana in a plastic bag in his pocket. He was held over the weekend and appeared before a judge on Monday morning. Lorino pled guilty to possession, was fined, and then released. 

Unfortunately for Lorino, the Kitty Hawk shoved off on Monday morning and the carrier went to sea while he stood before the judge. Lorino missed "ship's movement," which was a serious offense. Upon his return to the carrier, Lorino went before a Captain’s Mass and busted back to seaman apprentice and lost a month’s pay. 

I felt guilty that I was lucky to not be charged and “skated” through the incident, and left Lorino holding the bag, quite literally. Lorino shrugged and told me not to worry about it.

The sailors sitting around the compartment appeared to be quite amused at the pre-deployment adventures Lorino and I experienced.  

© 2025 Paul Davis 

Reeinald Bulan

 Reeinald Bulan

 By Paul Davis 

The son of an honest and hard worker in a restaurant in Olongapo, Reeinald Bulan grew up in a large, happy family. Reeinald Bulan, however, was the only member of the family not happy with his lot. The timid, chubby, shaggy-haired boy was bullied unmercifully in school and on the streets of Olongapo. The berated, bruised and battered teenager dreamed of becoming a powerful and feared crime boss. Then, he dreamed, he would take revenge against those who tormented him. 

Bulan scoffed at his father’s work ethic and the long, hard hours he put in at the restaurant, thinking he was a fool. Instead, Bulan admired Homobono Catacutan, an elderly and gaunt criminal with a scary knife scar across his right cheek and nose. Catacutan owned the grocery store where Bulan worked as a clerk. 

To Bulan, Catacutan didn’t appear to work at all. He mostly sat in a chair, drank San Miguel beer, smoked cigarettes and gave orders to his underlings. Bulan enjoyed bringing Catacutan his beer and cigarettes, and he enjoyed listening to the gang leader snap orders to his gang members. 

The Olongapo gang leader liked Bulan’s apparent cleverness as well as his subservient and slavish attitude towards the boss. Catacutan took Bulan under his wing and trained him to handle the legitimate business books as well as the illegitimate books for his criminal enterprises. 

Girls were never much interested in Bulan as a teen, but in his mid-20s he was an assistant to Catacutan, and due to that exalted role, he was able to have nearly every girl he desired. Catacutan paid him well and Bulan lived lavishly and enjoyed the night life of Olongapo with beautiful girls at his side. He moved out of his father’s modest home and took the apartment above the grocery. He paid good money to furnish the apartment well and he entertained women and Catacutan’s gang members in the apartment, suppling food, alcohol and drugs. 

Thanks to his lavish parties and his ingratiating manner towards his fellow criminals, Bulan became popular with the drug dealers, enforcers, and thieves in the gang. Catacutan did not see Bulan’s budding popularity as a threat. Rather, he was proud of Bulan. He saw Bulan as an up and comer in his criminal enterprises. He did not, however, see Bulan as a future gang leader, as he thought the portly young man was physically weak and lacked the sort of command presence that crime bosses in Olongapo needed to thrive and survive.    

The child-less Catacutan believed that he needed an heir who had brains like Bulan but also had the toughness of Ernesto Tibayan, his short, squat and not-to-bright chief enforcer. Catacutan wanted to train someone to step up as the gang leader in the event that he retired, went to prison or died. Catacutan regretted that he did not have anyone in his gang who had both skill sets needed to take over his criminal empire.    

Catacutan’s criminal empire included two hidden labs that produced shabu and a small army of dealers selling the crystal meth in Olongapo. He also employed several tough, violent men to act as enforcers. His dealers sold shabu in his bar, the Ritz, and Catacutan used his grocery store as a front to sell stolen items from the American naval base on the black market. Catacutan also sponsored and bankrolled several criminal gangs who pulled heists, kidnappings and other profitable criminal acts. 

In the mid-1960s there were several gangs selling shabu and committing other crimes, but Catacutan’s only true competitor was the Old Huk, whom Catacutan hated and feared. On several occasions, the Old Huk’s men came into conflict with Catacutan’s men. But both gang leaders were wise enough to cease the hostilities before it came to an all-out war between the two major criminal gangs. Open gang warfare in Olongapo would bring the police out in force and both businesses would suffer.    

Although he acted like an amiable toady, Bulan was secretly ambitious. He still harbored an ambition to become a crime boss, but he kept that plan to himself. He knew that Catacutan saw him as only a glorified clerk, albeit a criminal one.

So when Tibayan was ordered by Catacutan to murder a dealer whom the crime boss discovered was cheating him, Bulan asked Tibayan if he could come along and do the murder. Tibayan, who liked Bulan, agreed.

Tibayan and Bulan entered the Ritz and saw the dealer sitting at one of the tables. Tibayan walked past the dealer and motioned for him to follow him and Bulan into the men’s room. The dealer, who was soaring high on shabu, got up quickly and followed the two other men into the rest room. Once a customer in the men’s room left and the men had the room to themselves, Tibayan grabbed the dealer’s arms and held him tight. Bulan pulled out a knife and plunged it into the dealer’ midsection. The dealer struggled as Bulan stabbed him several more times.   As Tibayan dropped the dealer to the floor, Bulan laughed uncontrollably.

Tibayan told Bulan to stop laughing, calling him a gago in Tagalog. He told the young fool to wash the blood from his hands and arms. 

Tibayan reported to Catacutan that Bulan murdered the dealer, swiftly and without hesitation, but the experienced enforcer was concerned about Bulan’s odd reaction to the murder. Laughing hysterically after killing someone was peculiar and to Tibayan, a professional killer, it constituted unprofessional behavior.

Still, Catacutan was proud of Bulan for committing the murder and he gave his clerk a cash bonus. From then on, Bulan became Catacutan’s chief lieutenant.  

Bulan was now involved in all aspects of the gang’s criminal activities and Catacutan relied on Bulan’s advice.           

Bulan was happy to finally be accepted in the gang as the boss’ lieutenant, but he was in a hurry to be the boss, and he didn’t think Catacutan would retire or die anytime soon. To hedge his bets, Bulan became a police informant, providing an Olongapo police officer with information about Catacutan’s criminal activities. He hoped that the police officer would arrest Catacutan and send him to prison, opening the way for Bulan to become the boss. He also thought that it was good to have a serious professional relationship with a police officer. 

Another police officer who was on Catacutan’s payroll discovered that Bulan was an informant, and he reported this fact to the old gang leader. Catacutan was furious as well as hurt, as he had treated Bulan like a son. Catacutan lured Bulan to the back of his grocery store where he planned to have his protégé murdered. Catacutan brought along Ernesto Tibayan and he ordered the enforcer to shoot and kill Bulan. 

Thankfully for Bulan, Tibayan turned his gun on Catacutan, shooting him in the head. Tibayan told the relived and laughing Bulan that he felt Catacutan had outlived his usefulness. He said the two of them should work together and take over Catacutan’s gang and both the old gangster’s legal and illegal businesses.

Bulan quickly bought out the legitimate businesses from Catacutan’s widow. The widow, afraid that she too would be murdered, sold the bar, the grocery store and other property to Bulan at a very reasonable price. 

With Bulan’s sharp business mind and Tibayan’s fearsome reputation, the two took over the gang without complaint from the criminal underlings. One of Bulan’s first acts as the boss was to go after his chief tormentor when he was a teenager.

Rodrigo Torres went to work on the U.S. Navy’s Subic Bay naval base as a welder after he left school. Married with two young children, Torres was no longer a bullying adolescent. He had matured and was loved by his family and well-liked by his friends and co-workers on the naval base. 

Bulan assigned two of his enforcers to find out where his old classmate lived and worked. When they reported back to Bulan that Torres worked at the naval base and lived in a small home with his family, he ordered the two men to cut him down with bolo knives. Preferably, Bulan said, on a public street in front of his family to humiliate him before killing him. 

A few days later, as Torres was leaving the naval base’s gate, his young wife greeted him. The two enforcers pulled out their long bolo knives and began to attack him. The crowd in front of the gate dispersed in fear and horror from the brutal attack as Torres’ wife tried to stop the bolo-wielding killers. One of the enforcers kicked the woman hard and she fell to the ground. Two U.S. Marines at the gate came running out of the base, their M-16 rifles pointed at the killers. The two enforcers saw the Marines coming towards them and they abandoned the bloody body on the ground and took off running. 

The two Marines, unsure if they had the proper authority, did not fire at the fleeing killers. They knelt at the hacked and bloodied body, and they attempted to give Torres first aid, but he was dead. His wife stood over her husband, crying and screaming, as the Olongapo police came on the scene.   

The two enforcers reported proudly to Bulan how they butchered Torres in front of his wife and the other Filipino base workers. They neglected to tell Bulan that they ran in fear from the American Marines. Bulan was pleased. 

Another of Bulan’s initial acts was to eliminate one of the gang’s smaller competitors. Catacutan allowed Manny Bautista and his small gang to operate in Olongapo as he saw no threat or true competition from them. Catacutan also liked Bautista. But Bulan wanted to show his ruthlessness. He had Tibayan and two enforcers attack the gang’s leader in his home in front of his wife and children. Tibayan and his men entered Bautista’s home early one morning and they beat both him and his wife severely as the children cried and huddled in a corner. 

After the vicious beating, Tibayan took out his gun and shot Bautista in the head and killed him. He grabbed Bautista’s wife by her hair and lifted her up to her feet. Tibayan told her that she must leave Olongapo, or they would be back to murder her and her children. She agreed to leave Olongapo.            

The three murders in succession; Catacutan, Torres, and Bautista, cemented Bulan’s reputation as a gangster to be feared. Even the Old Huk, who in his time murdered far more than three men, took notice of the up-and-coming gang leader.

After a year of successfully running the gang’s criminal enterprises, Bulan felt he no longer needed Tibayan. Bulan now had under him other far cheaper men for muscle. So he ordered one of those cheaper killers to murder Tibayan.

Even with the Old Huk as a stern competitor, business and life was good for Bulan.

Then he met Salvatore Lorino.

© 2025 Paul Davis 

Mouth

 Mouth 

By Paul Davis 

I recently went for a haircut to a local barber shop located about four blocks from my home in South Philadelphia. 

The barber in residence was a young man and a good barber who had a mostly younger clientele. I happened to sit next to another old timer who, like me, missed the good old days when Frank and Sonny ran the shop. 

Originally from Sicily, Frank and Sonny Provenzano came to Philadelphia in 1955 and opened their barber shop in 1965. In the 1960s, when I frequented the shop as a teenager, and into the 70s, 80s and 90s, the Frank and Sonny’s barber shop had a congenial atmosphere akin to an old-fashioned taproom bar or a social club, minus the alcohol. Although the barbers put out bottles of scotch, vodka and sambuca during the Christmas and New Year season. The barber shop was authentically “South Philly.” 

The barber shop back then was always crowded, and on any given day, customers came and went after participating in the day’s running debate on sports or current events, moderated by the two barbers. The ongoing debate, often enlivened with abundant humor, made the long wait for a haircut enjoyable in the always crowded shop. 

Frank Provenzano, the older brother, was a short, balding, avuncular man who retained his Italian accent even after all his years in America. Sonny, who was some years younger than Frank, was short with curly black hair and possessed a sardonic wit that sometimes offended his customers. 

The two barbers supplemented their income by operating as bookmakers and loan sharks, and my crowd often made sport bets there and borrowed money from them when the bets didn’t work out. Like many of the young guys from my crowd, I thought of Frank and Sonny as my uncles rather than just my barbers. 

In the late 1970s, when I was in my late 20s and single, the shop was so busy that the two brothers brought in a pretty young girl to cut hair in the third chair they had in the barber shop. 

I recall one Saturday afternoon when the shop was standing room only. When it was my turn, the young girl waved me towards her chair. I told her that I would wait for Sonny. 

Although my short dark parted hair and my short trimmed dark beard was easy to cut, I was fussy and particular about who cut my hair. Not counting the four years I spent in the Navy, Frank and Sonny were the only barbers who had cut my hair since I was a kid. 

“Go ahead, let her cut your hair,” Sonny said. “She’s good.” 

Reluctantly, I agreed. 

I sat in her chair as she wrapped a long white sheet around my shoulders and placed a white strip around my neck. She then just stood there beside me as I sat in the elevated barber’s chair and looked at me with her head cocked to the right. She turned to Sonny in the middle chair. 

“I can’t cut his hair,” she said with an exasperated air. “He’s too good-looking.” 

Sonny frowned, Frank chuckled, and the other customers in the barber shop roared with laughter. The girl was soon let go by the brothers and she went to work at a nearby woman’s beauty salon. 

I was teased mercilessly both in the barber shop and elsewhere for some months after that. Friends would greet me with “Hey, Good-looking.” And a bartender and friend at our bar looked at my other friends when I walked in and said, “I can’t serve Paulie a drink. He’s too good-looking.” 

That got a big laugh at my expense.       

 When I wrote about the barber shop in the mid-1990s in my column in the local newspaper, I quoted Frank stating, “We are a friendly shop. Everybody is more of a friend than a customer. We have customers who have moved to New Jersey and other places far away, but they still come back here for a haircut. A lot of shops give them a haircut and throw them out. Our friends stay about talk about the salaries of ball players and such. This is an Italian neighborhood, although we have all kinds living here, and we all get along.” 

Thanks to their loyal, multi-generational following, the shop remained open for years even during the long hair days of the 1960s, when many other barber shops folded. 

Frank and Sonny always seemed to have a handful of oddball characters hanging around the shop. They would sweep up the hair from the floor and make coffee runs to a nearby delicatessen for the two barbers and any customers who also wanted coffee. But mostly the characters entertained the barbers and the customers with unintentional humor.    

One of their most entertaining and often annoying characters was Martin Alberto. 

Alberto was around 5’10, lean with dark wavey air and a permanent five o’clock dark shadow on his face. He was a minor criminal, into “this and that,” but he often spoke like he was a big shot mobster, even though everyone knew he certainly wasn’t.    

As he was a non-stop, speed-talker, known as a chiacchierone - a chatter box in Italian - Alberto was called “Marty Mouth,” Motor Mouth,” Mighty Mouth,” or simply “Mouth.” 

I recall one early evening when I entered the shop and Alberto was pacing up and down the shop and talking fast. Sonny had an older man I didn’t know in his chair and Frank had my friend Bob Longo in his chair. Frank and Bob were smirking as Alberto went on and on.     

“I know it ain’t right to do a cop,” Alberto said. “But I gotta tell ya this prick detective is getting on my last nerve. He’s always pulling me over when I’m driving around the neighborhood and questioning me right in front of everyone. He even pulled me into South Detectives and grilled me for an hour, but I didn’t fold. I didn’t tell him shit.” 

Alberto, voice high and fast, spoke of how this detective was pressing his luck by harassing him. 

“He don’t know who Marty Alberto is! I’m into some heavy shit right now, and this cop is crowding me. If I gotta go to the bosses and ask permission to whack this fucking cop, I will. And if they don’t give me the OK, I may whack his fucking fat ass anyway. I tell ya, I had it with this prick supercop.”            

Just then Frank pulled off the barber’s neck to knees white sheet and Alberto saw Bob Longo’s blue police uniform, badge and sidearm. 

Alberto was – for perhaps the first time in his life – speechless. 

Alberto turned quickly and bolted out the door as Bob Longo just shook his head and I, the two barbers and the other customers roared with laughter.

© 2025 Paul Davis 

Upton 'Uppercut' Clarke

 Upton “Uppercut” Clarke 

By Paul Davis 

In his day, Upton Clarke, known as “Uppercut,” was a promising heavyweight boxer. 

He was big, strong and fast. Clarke was a huge and ferocious black fighter who was brutal to his opponents. He had a powerful upcut, which often knocked his opponents out cold. He won most of his fights and he was popular with the fight fans. 

But Clarke had a lot of bad habits. He drank, did drugs, got into public bar fights, fought with cops, and got arrested. 

As I sat at Salvatore Stillitano’s grandmother’s kitchen table, we discussed his late father’s involvement with the infamous fighter. Stillitano, the son of Nicodemo “Nick the Broker” Stillitano, had become a federal cooperating witness against other organized crime bosses in the 1980s. After helping to put the crime bosses, who had planned to murder him, in prison, he went into the Witness Protection Program. 

When Salvatore Stillitano returned to South Philadelphia, he contacted me, hoping that I would write his life story. He told me in our first meeting that as I was half-Italian and grew up in the predominantly Italian American South Philly, I would understand him better than most journalists. 

That I was a newspaper crime reporter and columnist who covered organized crime for many years was a clear plus in his eyes. He said he read my columns and magazine pieces, and he was especially fond of an earlier piece of mine in which I wrote about meeting his late father in Palermo, Sicily back in 1975 when I was a young sailor in the U.S. Navy. 

I described Nick Stillitano in the piece some years later as an elderly slim and polite gentleman with dark hair mixed with gray, and large, dark protruding eyes that could, I believe, intimidate people if he had chosen to use them as such. He was intelligent and spoke well. He looked more like a prosperous businessman than a notorious gangster.     

Having previously visited Salvatore Stillitano’s grandmother’s house and interviewed him about his father’s 1960’s rise in the Philadelphia Cosa Nostra organized crime family, Stillitano in this interview session wanted to talk about the early 1970s when as a teenager, he was allowed to shadow his father as he went about doing his various criminal activities. I laid my tape recorder, notebook and pen on the kitchen table. 

Back in the early 1970s, Nick Stillitano was a well-known boxing promoter, gambler, and the Caporegime, or captain, of the Philadelphia Cosa Nostra crime family’s Wildwood, New Jersey crew. Salvatore “Salvy Shotgun” Stillitano was then a teenager who idolizes his father. The son was allowed to accompany his father as he was promoting the sensational boxing match between Clarke and a younger popular heavyweight named Marlon Wilson, known as “The Kid.”      

Clarke was a North Carolina farm boy. The big youngster ran afoul of local law enforcement and his parents sent him to live with his aunt and uncle in North Philadelphia. The city’s black teenagers ridiculed him, calling him a big, dumb black farmer. He endured the taunts stoically, but when one of the teenage hoodlums in the schoolyard pushed him, Clarke beat him and two of his friends brutally. 

The three boys, members of a notorious black drug gang, debated whether to kill Clarke, or to recruit him into the gang. The teenagers put aside their hurt feelings and hurt bodies and invited Clarke to join the gang. As Clarke had no friends in Philadelphia, he agreed. 

His uncle, not liking the way his wayward nephew was heading had Clarke join a local gym and under the tutelage of a former heavyweight southpaw boxer by the name of Arthur “Lefty” Moore. Moore saw real talent in the young man, and he convinced his friend and employer, Gus Frangella to manage him. 

Clarke did not trust Frangella, nor did he trust any white man, but he trusted Lefty, so he signed on with Frangella as his manger and Lefty as his trainer.     

Nick Stillitano often worked out of Rocco’s Passyunk Avenue Gym in South Philadelphia. Stillitano’s partner was a New York mobster named Joseph “Joey Pug” Puglisi, a former professional middleweight fighter. The two promoters ruled the fight game in the late 1960 and early 1970s. 

Stillitano and Puglisi promoted the fights of Upton “Uppercut” Clarke, then a heavyweight contender. Stillitano was able to get Clarke a fight with another up and comer, Marlon Wilson. Wilson, known as “The Kid,” was a glib, good-looking young black fighter. Wilson was lighter and shorter than Clarke, but he was skilled and flashy. 

The upcoming fight was getting a lot of press and fight fans were looking forward to the bout. Newspaper sport writers called the bout “The Beauty and the Beast.” Fight fans and gamblers were betting heavily on the fight. 

But a few weeks before the fight, Clarke got drunk in a North Philadelphia bar and  knocked out the bartender when he refused to serve the intoxicated boxer. Two of the bar’s bouncers came to the bartender’s rescue and Clarke knocked them out as well. The crowded bar’s customers moved away from the fight and huddled together into corners, fearful of the huge, crazy drunken fighter. 

Someone called the police. Sergeant James Monroe received the call as he happened to be talking to an old friend, Detective Bill Bartlett. Bartlett, then-Mayor Frank Rizzo’s bodyguard, stood at 6’3 and weighed over 200 pounds.

Bartlett was quiet and dignified, but he was a powerhouse when he had to be. 

Many people in Philadelphia and beyond considered the former police commissioner and populist mayor to be a racist. But others pointed out that the so-called racist mayor was guarded by two black cops. 

“Rizzo don’t hate black people,” Bartlett often told people who asked him how he could work for Rizzo. “He hates criminals, be they black, white or whatever.” 

Although Bartlett was off duty when Monroe received the call, he accompanied his old sergeant and friend to the bar. 

When Monroe and Bartlett entered the bar they saw the unconscious bodies on the floor, people huddled in corners, and Clarke in the center of the bar threatening two patrol officers. Bartlett stepped in front of the patrol officers and made a show of pulling out his “sap,” a five-inch leather pouch that covered a lead pipe. 

Clarke looked at Bartlett and then looked at his sap. He suddenly sobered up and decided that he didn’t want to fight the big cop. Clarke turned and placed his hands behind his back, allowing one of the patrol officers to place handcuffs on him. Without further resistance, Clarke was taken to the local police station. 

One of the arresting officers called a reporter at the Philadelphia Daily News and told him about Clarke’s arrest. The other news outlets in Philadelphia and across the country picked up the story.        

 

A week later, Nick Stillitano called Clarke to a bar after closing time. With Stillitano were his teenage son, Puglisi, and Stillitano's two constant companions. Anthony Gina was a small man and former welterweight known as “Tony Ball-Peen,” as he hit like a ball-peen hammer. He was known to use the real thing on people after he retired from the ring. 

Stillitano's other constant companion was Dominick “Dom D” Demarko. Demarko was a big, fat former heavyweight who retired after he found out that eating was preferable to fighting in the ring. Both former boxers worked for Stillitano. Also at the meeting were Clarke’s trainer and manager. The men at the table watched Clarke stumble into the closed bar and restaurant. They could see clearly that Clarke had been drinking.

Stillitano, who was seating at a large round table with the other men, pointed to an empty chair and told Clarke to sit.  

“Uppercut, I’ll come right to the point,’ Stillitano said. “It has been decided. You’re going to go down in the fourth round with The Kid.” 

“Shit, fuck,” Clarke responded, slow and angry. “I can beat that punk boy. I’m the heavy favorite. Put your money on me, man.” 

“Uppercut, you’re trouble. It’s all over,” Stillitano said. “You had a good run. We’ll put money down for you. You’ll come out well.” 

“Fuck no, I ain’t gonna do it.” 

Gina stood up and leaned over table, “Listen you big, dumb…” 

Stillitano made a motion for Gina to sit down.   

Clarke looked at Moore and Frangella. “Ain’t you two got nothing to say?” 

Both men sat there still and did not respond. 

“Uppercut, Tony and Dom here were my fighters, and I took care of them,” Stillitano said in a calm voice. “Ask them. I’ll take care of you as well. Do you want to own this bar and restaurant? It’s yours. 

“We can set you up here, have all of your boxing photos on the wall. You can greet the customers and play the tough guy and big shot. You can have a good life. But you’re done as a fighter. You drink. You’re loud. You act crazy. You make newspaper headlines. We can’t have that anymore. So, this is your payday."

"C'mom," Clarke pleaded. "Gives me another chance. I can whip that young boy's ass."

"Uppercut, keep in mind that I have partners. I have bosses," Stillitano responded. "It has been decided. You will lose to The Kid.” 

Clarke hung his head and nodded meekly.

 

The Kid won the fight, as planned, and the mobsters in South Philly and New York cleaned up. Clarke took his last big payday and Stillitano opened the bar and restaurant in the former fighter's name. 

Upton Clarke went on to live a life of alcohol abuse and later became addicted to heroin. Moore found Clarke dead in his apartment. His death was ruled to be a drug overdose. 

Many people in the fight game and the press believed that someone had given Clarke a “hot shot” of heroin and murdered him

Admiral McCain

 One of the good things about working in the Communications Radio Division aboard an aircraft carrier during the Vietnam War was that radiomen were the first to know about everything. 

For example, when fleet headquarters ordered the carrier to leave “Yankee Station” off the coast of North Vietnam and sail towards Subic Bay on such and such a date, the word spread quickly among the radio division. The radiomen in turn told their friends in other divisions aboard the ship the good news about heading to Subic Bay and the great wide-open liberty town of Olongapo. 

The Kitty Hawk’s captain often complained that the entire ship’s crew and air wing knew about the order to proceed to Subic Bay before he did. 

While on watch in the Message Processing Center one evening in 1971 during our final Yankee Station line period, I saw a copy of a classified CIA report that was sent to the Task Force 77 admiral and the Kitty Hawk captain. 

The report announced the capture of a North Vietnamese spy in Manila. The spy, named Thanh Ban, was the subject of a nation-wide manhunt in the Philippines. He had been posing in Olongapo as a Filipino Chinese merchant named Shi Chen as he spied on the massive Subic Bay U.S. naval base. But after an assassination plot had been uncovered, Ban fled to Manila and was hidden by the New People’s Army (NPA), the communist guerrillas at war with the Philippine government. 

An elite Filipino police unit, accompanied and assisted by an unnamed CIA officer, raided a NPA hideout in Manila. Four Filipino NPA Communist guerrillas were killed in the shootout with the elite unit. One NPA officer and Ban were captured.

The report noted that although Ban was a dedicated Communist, he did not relish being executed by the Filipinos or spending many years in an awful Filipino prison, so he confessed to the commander of the elite unit and the CIA officer. 

Ban told of the plan to execute Admiral John S. McCain aboard the USS Kitty Hawk while the aircraft carrier was off the coast of North Vietnam.  

On our very first line period on Yankee Station in December of 1970, Admiral John S. McCain, the Commander-in-Chief, Pacific Command, known as CINCPAC, flew aboard. As CINPAC, Admiral McCain was the commander of all American forces in the Vietnam War.  

I was working in the Message Processing Center when I heard a commotion.

Admiral McCain, escorted by the Task Force admiral, the ship’s captain and other ranking officers, entered the center for a brief tour. I stood at attention like the other sailors in the center and heard McCain yell “At ease.” 

The admiral, a short, thin and wizened officer, with a cigar as big as a pony’s leg, walked by me and other sailors on watch. He stopped, looked me in the eye, and said in a gruff voice, “Get a haircut, sailor!” 

“Yes, Sir,” I replied. 

The admiral and his entourage all laughed. 

As they were passing by, I heard the admiral ask what movie was showing on our closed-circuit television on that evening. An aide responded that MASH was scheduled to air three times for the ship’s three different watches on their down time.   

I saw the admiral grimace and say that we should be watching the movie Patton with the great actor George C. Scott, and not some anti-war crap. 

I liked both films, but the good admiral did not ask me for my opinion. 

After Patton showed in the early evening, McCain appeared on our closed-circuit TV. Noted for his profane language, the admiral opened with, "Good goddamn evening.” He went on to give a rousing and profane speech about our mission to contain the Vietnamese Communists in Vietnam. He praised our Navy commanders on the carrier as well as the young crew. 

He ended his speech by stating, “The hippies back home say ‘make love not war.” I say if you’re man enough, you can do both.” 

There were both cheers and groans from the more than 5,000 sailors and airmen about the ship. 

“Cut him some slack,” I told a friend who had groaned loudly next to me. 

“Do you know his son, a Navy carrier pilot, is a POW in North Vietnam? How would you like to be the top officer in the war while the enemy is holding your son? And you don’t know if he is being tortured because of you?” 

Admiral McCain’s son was U.S. Navy Lieutenant Commander John S. McCain III. The future U.S. Senator and presidential candidate was then a prisoner of war being held in North Vietnam having been shot down in 1967. The admiral said little about his POW son, and I can only imagine how he suffered in silence.

 

Later, reading messages to and from the Subic Bay naval station and our message center, I learned about the plot to assassinate Admiral McCain aboard the Kitty Hawk. 

Lieutenant Colonel Cesar Rosa of the Olongapo City Police was a short and thin officer, but he was wiry and hard, and he had a stern face and cruel dark eyes that frightened the people that he investigated and subsequently arrested. He also had a reputation for being relentless and ruthless. 

Luz dela Cruz was an unattractive older woman with a skeletal body, a taunt face and protruding buck teeth. Still, she had her customers in The Ritz, an Olongapo bar that catered to American sailors. Most of her customers who bought her drinks were “Cherry Boy” young virgins and older American sailors that were not too fussy about looks. 

She also had customers she sold shabu crystal meth to at the bar. Luz dela Cruz was her own best customer. When a young sailor went wild on shabu and took on two American Marines in The Ritz, the Olongapo police arrested the sailor. 

Prior to handing over the young sailor to the American Shore patrol, he was questioned by Rosa. 

"Where did you get the shabu?"

The sailor, who was still jumpy from the drug, replied, "I bought the meth from Luz."

He said that he had never taken the drug before and he had never felt so strong and invincible.  

"So why did those two Marines I picked a fight with beat the living shit out of me?" 

After turning over the sailor to the Shore Patrol, Rosa and Mario Dizon, his huge sergeant, drove to The Ritz and arrested dela Cruz. Back at the police station, the scared and desperate bar girl quickly gave up her shabu supplier. As a bonus, she confessed to collecting information about U.S. 7th Fleet ships from the drunk and high sailors and passed on the information on to an NPA agent. 

Rosa and Dizon headed out to arrest the NPA spy. Fernado Diaz, a muscular and seasoned warrior, fought the two Filipino police officers when they tried to arrest him. Diaz swung punches widely and tried to pull a knife from his pants pocket, but Dizon pinned the spy's arms and Rosa punched Diaz repeatedly in the face. Dizon took Diaz to the ground and placed handcuffs on him. 

Diaz was taken to the police station. Rosa called Boone Cantrell, a Naval Investigative Service special agent who worked at the Subic Bay naval base. 

Diaz, bruised by his fight with the Filipino police officers, was quiet as he sat in a chair and faced Cantrell, who was tall and Lincolnesque, and the much shorter Rosa. 

Worried about what Rosa and the American agent might do to him, he confessed to being an NPA spy. He asked for a deal. He would not only confess to passing on intelligence tidbits to his NPA superior in Manila, he would also confess to working with a North Vietnamese spy. Rosa and Cantrell looked at each other in amazement. Rosa agreed to a deal. 

To their amazement, Diaz told them that the NPA had a spy aboard the USS Kitty Hawk. The spy, Roberto Santos, was a Filipino serving in the U.S. Navy as a disbursing clerk aboard the aircraft carrier. Santos was ordered to meet with Diaz whenever the ship visited Olongapo. Santos, the son of an NPA guerrilla, had been ordered to join the American Navy. Although as a disbursing clerk, he did not have access to classified information, he was useful to a point. 

During the Kitty Hawks first port of call to Subic Bay for the 1970-1971 combat cruise, Diaz and the North Vietnamese spy, called Shi Chen, spoke about Santos. Chen said that Santos should be assigned to assassinate Admiral McCain when he visited the aircraft carrier later that month. 

Diaz objected and told his Vietnamese Communist brother-in-arms that Santos was not trained for assassinations, but the North Vietnamese spy said that it did not matter. Even if the assassination failed, it would be a psychological victory for the Communists. 

Since Diaz’s orders were to assist Chen in any matter, he met Santos at an Olongapo hotel and handed him a .25 semi-automatic pistol. Santos cried and pleaded with Diaz. He had never killed anyone, he said. He was also concerned with his own safety. What will happen to him after he shot the famous admiral?  

Diaz was adamant. Santos will follow his orders. 

After listening to Diaz’s confession, Cantrell rushed back to his Subic Bay NIS office and sent an urgent message to the USS Kitty Hawk. 

Aboard the Kitty Hawk, the message was received and distributed quickly. The admiral appeared unconcerned when told of the assassination plot. Two Marines armed with .45’s were added to the admiral’s group, and the Marine Division’s captain and two enlisted Marines armed with M-16 rifles rushed to Santos’ berthing compartment. 

Santos raised his hands in surrender and told the Marines that the pistol was in his locker. He seemed almost relieved to be arrested and therefore he would not have to shoot the admiral.

Admiral McCain later flew off the carrier. His son, John McCain, a 31-year-old Navy lieutenant commander, was held as a POW for five and a half years. He was finally released on March 14, 1973.

And looking back, I didn’t get a haircut after being ordered to do so by Admiral McCain. 

I’m proud, somewhat perversely, of the fact that I disobeyed a direct order from a four-star admiral.

Crime Fiction: 'Murder By Fire'

Murder By Fire

By Paul Davis

I was sitting at my desk in the Radio Communications Division's Message Processing Center aboard the USS Kitty Hawk in 1971 as the aircraft carrier was on “Yankee Station” in the Gulf of Tonkin, launching aircraft that flew combat sorties against the North Vietnamese, when I came across a copy of a message for the ship’s captain.  

My small desk was located in a cubbyhole partially hidden by a series of pneumatic tubes, which we called “Bunny Tubes.” We used pneumatic power to shoot high priority messages, such as the message I was reading, in a two-foot-long missile-like container to the captain’s office and to other senior officers aboard the ship. 

As I was responsible for the administrative security of messages that were distributed, filed and eventually destroyed, a copy of the message landed on my desk. The message informed the captain that former Engineman 3^rd Class Robert Bean, a former sailor assigned to the Kitty Hawk, had died in prison.    

I remembered Bean as I attended a U.S Navy firefighting school in 1970 with him prior to our setting sail to Southeast Asia during the Vietnam War.

After the deadly fire that killed 134 sailors and injured many more on the aircraft carrier USS Forrestal in 1967, all carrier sailors were ordered to attend firefighting schools. After all, one can't call the fire department while at sea. We were the fire department. 

As the USS Forrestal was conducting combat operations on Yankee Station, a fire erupted on July 29, 1967. An electrical failure caused a Zuni rocket attached to an F-4 Phantom to launch as the jet fighter was sitting on the flight deck. The rocket struck another aircraft on the flight deck, an A-4 Skyhawk. The aircraft’s highly flammable jet fuel spread quickly across the flight deck, which ignited a series of explosions that blew sailors and aircraft apart.

At the school, we sat through flight deck footage of the Forrestal fire and watched bombs, missiles and jet fuel ignite, and we saw sailors die from the fire and explosions. I still recall the gruesome images to this day. 

I liked that officers, chiefs and other senior enlisted people trained alongside junior teenage seamen like me at the firefighting school. At one point, all of us were assigned a part of the long hose and told that we had a certain number of seconds to put it together before the instructor turned on the water. The first two attempts failed, and we all were soaked and knocked down by the great force of the water. Laughing together, we were successful on the third attempt. We were wet but happy to have worked successfully as a team.   

I was 18 years old at the time, and Bean was a couple of years older. He was squat with dirty blonde hair and a pimply face. I recall that he was surly and inattentive. More than once, the instructors screamed at him to get him to focus. He was also chewed out by a Kitty Hawk senior chief who was also taking the firefighting course.

“Son, you’re not taking this training seriously. This course can not only save your worthless fuckin' life, but it can also save the lives of your shipmates should there be a fire on the ship,” the crusty chief said in a gruff voice. “So get your head outta your ass and get with the program.”     

Bean stayed to himself that week and he didn’t join the camaraderie of his fellow sailors. He was not much of a team player, although the course stressed teamwork.    

“Always keep the hose’s stream of water between the fire and you,” I recall one of the Navy fire instructors telling us, "If you let the flames get around you, they'll reach out and hit you like a boxer's jab."

And that’s what happened to me.

We were crowded into a square cement structure that simulated a ship’s compartment. I held the nozzle of the long hose, and I began to wave the hose in short left to right movements. As I waved the hose too sharply to the left, I allowed the fire to slip past me on my right. The flicker of flame seemed almost human - perhaps even supernaturally evil - as it lashed out like a whip and struck my right arm.

The pain and shock of getting burned and seeing my arm on fire caused me to drop the hose’s nozzle and jump back. Fortunately, the instructor grabbed the discarded nozzle quickly and he ordered me out of the burning structure. To my further embarrassment, the heavy smoke and the hood of my poncho impaired my vision and I hit my head on the oval hatchway as I was exiting the structure. The other instructors and medical corpsmen rushed to me, as they believed I was seriously injured.

As it turned out, my burns were superficial and the head injury was only a bump, but my pride received some serious blows that day. I returned to the fire and completed the course without further incidents.

After graduating from firefighting school, I went on to serve on a Damage Control Team aboard the carrier and fought some real fires, but thankfully those fires were nothing along the lines of the horrendous and deadly fire on the USS Forrestal. With an abundance of bombs, missiles and JP jet fuel onboard, even a small fire on a carrier can escalate and become a major catastrophe, as it did on the USS Forrestal.

 

I later learned that Bean, who never had a girlfriend until he joined the Navy and met a portly and exuberant college student in San Diego, did not want to leave her when the aircraft carrier departed San Diego on route to Hawaii, then the Philippines, and lastly, to the Gulf of Tonkin off the coast of North Vietnam. 

After the aircraft carrier made a port of call to Hawaii, Bean was so angry and heartbroken that he became drunk in a Honolulu bar just off Waikiki Beach. 

When the bar closed, Bean took a cab back to the aircraft carrier at the Pearl Harbor naval base and he staggered aboard and leaned against bulkheads in the passageways as he traveled to his workstation below decks to an engine room compartment. The compartment space had three sailors on watch, and they told Bean to go to his rack and sleep it off as he was annoying them with his sad sack love story. Bean sat in a chair and appeared to pass out, so the enginemen on duty ignored him. 

When one of the enginemen left the compartment to go to the head, and the other two were talking to each other with their backs to him, Bean in his drunken state had an idea to punish his uncaring shipmates and cripple the carrier so it would head back to San Diego for repairs rather than go on to Southeast Asia. 

Angry at the enginemen, as well as with the entire U.S. Navy, Bean took out his lighter and reached into a trash can filled with paper. He lit a piece of paper and dropped it back in the trash can, which quickly set fire to the other papers. Bean then lifted the trash can and tossed it into a corner near a supply cabinet and ran out of the engine room compartment. 

The trash can fire ignited some stored flammable material, and the compartment was quickly engulfed with fire and smoke. The two enginemen tried to contain the fire with fire extinguishers, but they were soon overcome with smoke, fell to the deck, and died. The engineman who had gone to the head raised the alarm.   

The fire was extinguished by a Damage Control Team that came on the scene in less than a minute. Although there was severe damage to the compartment, there was not enough damage to prevent the aircraft carrier from departing Pearl Harbor later that week and sailing towards the Philippines. 

After a brief investigation, Bean was arrested, court-martialed and sentenced to prison for arson and murder. He never saw his girlfriend again.

 

The message to the captain that I read at my desk reported that Bean, who was left unattended in a prison kitchen for only a moment, died of self-immolation, having doused himself in cooking oil and then set himself on fire. He died horribly as he was engulfed in searing flames as he fell to the floor.  

Some thought it was a fitting death for a man who had committed murder by fire.   

© 2024 By Paul Davis