of his particular type, he collected protection money, kept book, and served as an intermediary for residents who had some concern to take before the gang bosses. The block boss would pay the gangs, either the Bristol Gang or the White Gang or sometimes both, a percentage of his takings and would make himself scarce when they sent their hard men in to do some of the heavy business.
DeGraffenreid’s career was unspectacular when compared to those of his fellow block bosses, though the standard they set was, of course, high. He was purportedly the lover of Janey May Overstreet—known as Queenie—who owned the Bull Ring Saloon, a favorite among hoodlums and roustabouts. This claim is subject to some suspicion as the sum total of her reported assignations and the jealousies they would have inspired surely would have raised the City’s homicide rate noticeably. Nevertheless, this rumor puts in perspective his reputation as a peer of such notables as Jimmy McQuaid in lower Capitol Heights, Hamish Berry (who, in fact, was himself briefly married to Queenie Overstreet), and Johnny Acton, and, in deed, though not style, of Trevor “Vampire” Reid.
As was the case with all block bosses, DeGraffenreid was compelled to tread a careful line during the escalating violence between the Bristol Gang and the White Gang. Initially, as was the case with so many others, he endeavored to ingratiate himself to both sides by performing small tasks unlikely to upset either one too much, such as his alleged arson of the restaurant owned by the Hungarian named Praeger—who had endeavored to run a book without paying either gang its “vig.”
In the end, he fell in with the Bristols, ended the flow of cash from his blocks to the Whites, and performed menial services. His call to greater action, and the eventual end of his criminal career, came when he was ordered to murder the husband of a cousin, Ellis Prosnicki, who was suspected of being a police informant.
DeGraffenreid shot Prosnicki in an alley off Delft Avenue and was arrested within forty-eight hours on the evidence of several eyewitnesses after they were assured by Bristol thugs that they would not be subject to retribution. DeGraffenreid was convicted and thus ends his story for our purposes.
Dipping his pen into a well of green ink, Van Vossen took out a fresh sheet of paper. The case of Ross Carmargue, he wrote, who was running prostitutes on DeGraffenreid’s blocks, confirmed that Prosnicki had received money from the police in exchange for information. However, Prosnicki’s informing did not, ironically, extend to the books being run out of several Bristol-associated restaurants, the transgression of which he actually stood accused.
Finishing this, Van Vossen marked the appropriate sentence with a footnote and put away his work for the night.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
Puskis returned to work to find three full pages of file requests. In a deviation from his normal routine, he spent several minutes reordering the slips so that he could make a single, efficient trip to fulfill the requests; he wanted some time between completing this round and the next that would surely come in the midmorning. The second bombing would increase the force’s work exponentially.
As he began his circuit, pushing the squeaking cart before him, he thought about the sensation of fear that he had experienced the previous night. Fear. In his twenty-seven years at the Vaults, he had not once felt fear. Anxiety, pressure, fatigue—all disagreeable states, to be sure—had visited him at one time or another. But never fear. Even now, with the experience so recent, he found he could not summon up the actual feeling, could not remember precisely what it had felt like. This may have been why the blood-etched warning to desist had little effect on him. If anything, it only served to drive him forward.
Having collected the files, Puskis returned to his desk to reorder them in the sequence in which they had been requested. This done, he placed the lot in a box labeled OUTGOING and returned to the shelf holding C4583R series, subseries A132, where he had earlier that morning returned the two DeGraffenreid files. Removing the DeGraffenreid file that contained the picture of the real DeGraffenreid, he placed it into the wire cart and headed to the southeast corner of the Vaults, where institutional records were kept.
Unlike the files—which were full of loose sheets of paper and were constantly added to—the institutional records were hardbound tomes that served as official records of criminal-justice activity in the City. Puskis pulled