Jack the Dandy

Jack ("The Dandy") Parisi is a toadlike little man with amazingly large bags under his eyes and an unswerving penchant for flashy clothes. During the big years of New York's Murder, Inc., he made his living by shooting people. But though he finished off a lot of them, most of the details of his life remain obscure. Jack is not a talkative man. "If you hung him up by the thumbs for eight weeks," said a Bronx prosecutor, "he might tell you his first name."

This reticence has not prevented the law from checking up on some of his business enterprises. Take Jack's last job: one of his associates told the cops all about it to avoid being electrocuted at Sing Sing. It took place in 1939, after Gangbuster Tom Dewey slapped a subpoena on a onetime garment-union leader named Philip Orlofsky. Orlofsky knew a lot about the union rackets, and Mob Chieftain Louis ("Lepke") Buchalter was disturbed. He ordered Orlofsky's death. Parisi was chosen to do the honors.

The Fingers. Everything was handled with great care. Gangsters Albert ("Big Albert") Anastasia, Abe ("Kid Twist") Reles, Harry ("Pittsburgh Phil") Strauss and Emanuel ("Mendy") Weiss spent weeks in planning. One Jacob Migdon spent a long time "fingering" the job, and reported that Orlofsky, a short, fat man, left his Bronx apartment at exactly 7:55 every morning. Thus, when the big day came, Parisi was standing near by at exactly the right time.

But everything went wrong. Parisi had no way of knowing that his victim had left 20 minutes early to get a barbershop shave. He just fired five shots into the first short, fat man who came out the door--it happened to be a music-publishing executive named Irving Penn. Penn screamed and collapsed, dying. Parisi jumped into a stolen getaway car, driven by one Seymour ("Blue Jaw") Magoon--and found that a gravel truck was blocking the street.

As police sirens moaned close by, Parisi cried: "Mamma mia, mamma mia, let me out of here." He jerked open the door and ran. Parisi dropped out of sight for ten long years. Last autumn the Pennsylvania State Police found him at last; he was napping on a bed surrounded by crucifixes and holy candles in his hideout house in the anthracite coal fields.

The Forgetful. He was taken back to Brooklyn, put on trial for the murder of an A.F.L. official named Morris Diamond. Ex-gangster Allie ("Tick Tick") Tannenbaum told the jury all about the crime. But another hood named Angelo Catalano--who had earlier admitted driving Parisi's getaway car--last week took the stand and said blandly, "That ain't the guy." A corroborating witness who had seen the murder just couldn't identify the killer either. Since a man may not be convicted of murder in New York solely on the testimony of accomplices, the judge helplessly dismissed the charge against Parisi and gave him an indignant dressing-down. "The court is convinced," said the judge, "that this defendant . . . shot and killed Morris Diamond." Parisi listened with a bored air, and belched loudly at the climax of the judge's denunciation.

After that Parisi was transferred from a jail in Brooklyn to jail in The Bronx, waiting to be tried for killing Irving Penn. But it looked very much as though he might beat the rap again. One thing was certain: Jack would not talk. The law, by cleaning up the old charges, seemed only to be helping Parisi get back into circulation--and in his business, there were always job openings for close-mouthed men.

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