Outside the headquarters of Direct Vending Machine Company, Joey laid down the stakes for the Gallo gang, twenty-five men strong, armed to the teeth and ready to wage an all-out war against the Profaci Family. The Don had an underworld army of two hundred men, superior in firepower but inferior in spirit. Outmanned, outnumbered, and clearly in over their heads, the Gallo gang would pull out all of the tricks to annihilate as many Profacis as possible. The gang kissed their wives goodbye, packing them off to distant relatives, and grabbed mattresses. Fifty-one President Street became the Dormitory, a fortified compound to match the Alamo. The gang nailed chicken wire behind the windows to bounce off grenades. Digging in for the long haul, Umberto Gallo commandeered the mess on the second floor, stocking the shelves with soda and cans of tomato paste, stuffing the fridge with fresh mozzarella and strings of sausage from the local salumeria. The gang filed down points of the .30-30s for the John Wayne special, the Winchester 94. They loaded the magazines of the M1 Carbine high-precision military rifles and lubed up the Mossberg and double-barrel J. C. Higgins shotguns. Gallo sentries stood silent on the three-tiered, tarp-covered Dormitory rooftop. Locals had warned to keep off the streets. Some boarded shop, but most stayed, loyal to the boys and ready to alert them of danger. Outsiders didn't stand a chance in this tight-lipped neighborhood, silent as a Sicilian village.

Good job!  I need more to read...you left me dangling!

I agree with Starshine...I want to read more too! Want to know who wins. 

Many people share their stories nowdays please continue ! Its good

i need more to read ........ its great

Thanks, I'll try and do the second part today.

good story cant wait for the rest

Maybe you should try to write longer stories just so I dont have to wait on the next part.

If I do not see a second part, I will go into deep depression and succumb to suicide just like every other individual.

Sounds really good. Got my attention. You should definitley continue it.

Great start can't wait to here more!

Very well done with a very good cliff hanger, cant wait to read the rest

Well, the point of having the good cliff hanger, is to make you want part 2, therefore having more people reading/reviewing.

All and all, pretty good. Nothing like a nice bloodbath.

*Htaed lurks in the background, watching, waiting, listening, with a cryptic smile on his fade*

holy crap.nice story ill be here waiting for another :)

A full moon arose over President Street, setting the stage of a showdown in Red Hook, South Brooklyn's concrete-cracked Wild West. Junkyard dogs roamed the colorful cargo containers on the shipping yards. Derelicts lay passed out underneath the Brooklyn Queens Expessway. A car cruised silently past Jackie's Charcolette at two-thirty in the morning. A package flew out the back window. Inside was the last outfit of Joe Jelly (Gallo Gangster), wrapped around several dead fish. Lying at the bottom of Sheepshead Bay, Joe Jelly slept with the fishes.

URGENT

TO DIRECTOR, FBI

FROM SAC, NEW YORK

INFO RECEIVED THAT JOSEPH GALLO HAD GATHERED A LARGE GROUP OF MEN IN VICINITY OF VAN BRUNT AND COLUMBIA STREETS, BROOKLYN. MAY HAVE THOMPSON MACHINE GUNS. GALLOS HAD WARNED INHABITANTS OF AREA TO KEEP OFF THE STREETS.

On the FBI tip, Inspector Martin ordered his men to barge in on a midnight raid. Shadows moved across the rooftops toward the Dormitory. Raiders ran up the creaky narrow stairs to the second floor and flicked on the light, revealing Joey, Blast, Chice, and Lefty, sitting around a linoleum table.

"What are you doing sitting in the dark?"

"We were talking," said Joey. "What's that, a new crime?"

Bringng in floodlights, the raiders looked under furniture, behind the doors, and into the closet, where they found a box of .45s and Vinnie the Sicilian. They'd expected twenty-five men armed with Tommy Guns, but the Gallos wired up a makeshift network of intercoms and walkie-talkies, buying plenty of time to hide.

According to an FBI agent, during the police raids, the Gallos jumped out the rear Dormitory windows and shimmied down hanging ropes and ladders into adjacent buildings.

Paths of entry and escape lay throughout the rubble-strewn back lots, from the third-floor apartment at 31 President to the entire building at 75 President. Hideouts and stash houses for the arsenal were up and down this single block of President Street. The only weapons found in the raid were two double-barreled shotguns lying on the rooftop, unconcealed and perfectly legal.

The boys spent the night in the rat-infested Raymond Street Jail, and at noon were brought before Flatbush Court on consorting with criminals, each other.

"We arrested them," said an officer, "because we didn't want to find bodies all over the streets. It was building up to open warfare like the Roaring Twenties."

Free on bond Joey strutted down the stone steps of Flatbush Court. The cufffs of hiswhite button-down hung loose, half rolled up and unbuttoned. Mondo the Midget trailed behind.

Unable to lock up the gallos for good, but not wanting a massacre on his watch, Inspector Martin ordered the Pizza Squad to guard the eight-block radius around the Dormitory with 24-7 surveillance on the Gallo gang.

"Without our protection," said Martin, "their lives would not have been worth a counterfeit subway token."

Inspector Martin called roll every morning to ensure Kid Blast, Peanuts, Punchy, Tarzan, Vinnie the Sicilian, Sammy the Syrain, and Big and Little Lollypop had survived the night.

Detective Bartels got friendly enough with the Gallos to join them for dinner, better then the usual stakeout grub. Umberto donned a chef's hat and boiled pasta in his ten-gallon pot for the big eaters, Tarzan especially, a Gallo waste-management interests.

"He could eat two pounds of spaghetti," marveled Bartels.

Others passed the time building remote-control model airplanes, practicing yo-yo tricks, and playing jacks on a stoop with neighborhood kids.

Family Day at the Dormitory. Mothers brought in baked cassroles and hot plates, promising,

"Dont worry, I've never squealed on your father and I won't squeal on you."

Inside the Dormitory, Gallos were getting fat off Umberto's pasta, growing weaker by the day. All the while, Profacis encircled the Red Hook backwaters like sharks in Cadillacs, hungry to break throught the police cordon.

"Let's get our guns and go after them," snapped Kid Blast, but Joey, wouldn't budge.

Cooped up in the Dormitory behind his chicken wire, Kid played his arias on his violin while Joey choked on the bad air, needing to breathe free.

At his wit's end about how to wipe out the Gallos, protected 24-7 by the best security force in the city, Junior slid a dress on his wild, curly-haired sidekick and send him off in a red sports car with a trunkload of weapons. The plan was to slip past the Pizza Squad with a wink and a smile, then blast the Dormitory, but somebody tipped off Inspector Martin. He doubled the manpower around President Street, leaveing the gunman all dressed up with nowhere to go.

Soon a fleet of what Inspector Martin called "shotgun riders" roamed through the neighborhood, perfectly legal as the weapons weren't concealed. Cruising along Court Street in a white oldsmobile, a rider found a sitting duck on a afternoon, Gallo man Big Lollypop, coming out of Pintchik's with a can of paint in each hand for the Dormitory. Bullets sprayed from the backseat, hitting Lollypop in the ankle. Paint poured out a pierced can.

Old Man Profaci was not happy. The botched Lollypop hit was the lastest headline in the Gallo-Profaci war, s spectacle of vanisging bodies, fish wrapped in clothes, cross-dressing kamikaze raids, and now, drive-bys on paint stores in broad daylight in the middle of the most crowded thoroughfares of the borough.

According to a Profaci Family informant, there were to be no more attempts on the Gallos unless there were no witnesses, near impossible considering the NYPD encampment on President Street. Cops made the job tougher upon arresting a shotgun rider on account of the state conservation law, claiming that the loaded weapons endangered the exotic birds and frogs in the Prospect Park Zoo.

Three in the Gallo gang stood on a barren street corner in black fedoras, hands stuffed into the pockets of their overcoats. A cigargette jutted straight from a lip. Inside the Longshore Rest Room, a pack of Gallos stood around Kid Blast, Who was barking out orders at the table. Big Lollypop leaned on crutches with an ankle cast on his left leg. Umberto reheated the stale cooking oil and warmed one of the remaining cans of tomatoes on the shelf. Gallos slouched in freshly painted Dormitory and littered the floor with cigarette butts. They froze in unmade beds with unchanged sheets. Day ran into each other until the afternoon of January 31, 1962.

Smoke poured from the third-story window above Mrs.Gatto's luncheonette down the block.

"Come on!" shouted Joey.

Joey rushed up the stairs. Shrieks of childen pierced the heavy black smoke. Punchy grabbed a five-year-old girl with her hair on fire. He snuffed the flames with a couple of whacks of his hand, then snatched a naked baby, wrapped the infant in his jacket and passed him out the door. The Gallo bucket brigade shuttled all six childen down the steps and into the thick arms of Mrs.Gatto. Three fire engines roared onto President Street, but the fire was out. Joey and Punchy had already tossed the burning mattress out of the window. Back from a trip to buy milk at the grocery store, Sista Biaz, seeing all six of her childen safe and sound, dropped her brown bags and wept.

"They save my childen," she cried in Spanish. "They are wonderful boys. God bless them."

Kid Blast made the gang empty out their pockets.

"We were going to go out solicting some more," he told reporters, "but then we would have got pinched for extortion."

Mrs.Biaz got fifty dollars. She hugged the Gallos, posing for pictures in Mrs.Gatto's luncheonette. Blast leaned down to put his arm around her. She kissed him on the cheek. The shutter clicked.

"Dont try to make heroes out of us," Blast told the news cameras. "We're not heroes. We only did what any red-blooded American boys would do. Do you see any horns here? I got no horns. We're not animals. We're just human beings trying to get along."