The Band of 40 Thieves Story

                                 

                                                 The Band of 40 Thieves Story

                                                                    1952

                                                              A true story

                                        Written 07/14/2015, Re-written 03/23/ 2016

                                                          Howard Yasgar

By the end of 1962, I had been working with a fellow named Abe Zion for about a year.

Abe had shown up at the wrecking yard in Stamford, Connecticut, and said he owned it.

I thought that I had leased the yard in good faith from my old boss Lenny at Milford Auto Wrecking.

When I leased the Stamford yard from Lenny, I didn’t ask him too many questions about who owned the junkyard, or the license.

At the time I had no idea that Abe held the lease on the property.

So when he showed up, and claimed that he held the lease on the property, it could  have presented me with a problem.

But it didn’t because I was planning on leaving the business that day anyway.

Running an auto wrecking yard on West Main Street in Stamford Connecticut had become a big headache for me.

First of all, I was driving every day all the way from New Haven to Stamford, and the long ride was getting on my nerves.

Then I found out that when I closed my business on Sundays, practically everyone in Stamford jumped over my fence and stole whatever they needed.

So when Abe showed up and claimed that he owned the yard, I was really ready to do something else anyway.

Abe was a short fellow about 5 foot 6, with a distinct Arabic look about him. He dressed impeccably well in expensive pin striped business suits and nice ties. He always looked like he just stepped out of a Wall Street office.

As I was leaving the Stamford yard, Abe asked if I wanted to join up with him, and as I had nothing better to do anyway, I said yes.

Abe had an associate named Eichel Blumenstock, Eichel was about eighty years old and he closely followed Abe around wherever Abe went. (See the Abe Zion Story).

According to Abe, Eichel was originally the Michelin Tire Company franchise holder for all of Germany and he had fled to Palestine after being imprisoned by the Nazi's.

Once in Palestine, Eichel met Abe, and Abe became his assistant.

Now many years later, their roles were reversed,  Eichel was now Abe's assistant.

Looking back on it, I think when Abe showed up in Stamford and met me, he must have thought it was a dream come true for him. He had needed someone to assist him, and I was young and I had a lot of energy, and most of all I was interested in learning.

So when I sat down with Abe, he offered me a proposition that I couldn’t refuse, and I agreed to join up with him and Eichel.

I had never met anyone like Abe before, he was a real “Wheeler Dealer”, who every day had some new project or deal for us to work on.

For as long as I worked with Abe, we did a lot of interesting things together, and I never regretted a minute of it.

This story is about one of those deals, it was one that didn’t work out so well, but I never regretted what I had learned from it.

As long as I worked with Abe, I was usually left with the headache of  cleaning up the mess he left as he went forward on to the next deal.

Abe always drove us  everywhere in his new Ford, I sat in the passenger seat, and Eichel sat in the backseat with his eyes closed.

We only stopped for gasoline or to get “take out” food which we all ate while Abe drove.

Abe ate with one hand, the other on the steering wheel. He said “Why should we waste our valuable time sitting in a restaurant”.

As we drove, Abe was constantly teaching me about business.

For me, being with Abe was just like being in school again, but now he was my professor.

Whenever I came home to Westville and complained to my mother about how Abe operated, she said, “The education you are receiving from Abe, was better than any Ivy League college you ever could ever have attended”, and I believe she was right.

When we weren’t working on some deal, we would retreat to our small office on West Main Street in Stamford Connecticut.

Abe, always sat back, with his feet up on our old scratched wooden desk and he would act like a corporate CEO, as we were discussing our various projects.

I would go to the news stand and get a copy of the New York Herald Tribune, so we could look to see what kinds of auctions were going on.

Abe would read each auction very carefully, asking my opinion, he asked as if I knew what I was doing.

Abe was always looking for something interesting that could be profitable for us to do.

All of a sudden, Abe smiled, he said, “There was to be a big auction the day after tomorrow in New York City, he said it was a large “AA A” automotive towing and auto repair company.

It was located in a parking garage building.

It had one floor with offices, another floor with repair stalls and there was also a complete paint and body shop.

Abe said the business was located in Manhattan, within sight of the United Nations building.   

We decided to meet he next morning at the auction site, to look everything over.

So, in the morning I drove from New Haven to New York City, driving right to the address of the auction, where I was to meet up with Abe and Eichel.

When I got there, the first thing I noticed was how big the building was, it was one of  those parking garage buildings where you entered on the ground floor and you drove in circles to each floor on  endless curved concrete ramps, curved ramps that made your wheels squeal.

I parked my car on the seventh floor and walked to the next floor, it was the floor that had the bookkeeping and administration offices.

When I got there, I saw that the whole floor was made up of glass walled offices, perhaps  fifty of them, they were all filled with desks and file cabinets.

I could see that there was an elaborate telephone systems, I thought some of the phones had a hundred buttons.

The next floor I walked up to, was the automotive workshop, it had individual departments where the mechanical repairs were made.

There were engine repair departments, transmission repair departments, and endless bays and benches where the mechanics worked.

On the next floor was the company’s parts department, it was where the auctioneer and most of the people were now waiting.

The auctioneer had a table set up and was handing out catalogs that told you what the various lots were that were going to be auctioned off.

I quickly looked over the parts department, and saw there were endless shelves with all types of new spare parts on them.

I didn’t see Abe or Eichel anywhere so I walked up to the top floor, it was the body shop. The shop was complete chassis straighteners and a paint booth.

This automotive center had employed hundreds of people.

From the top floor I looked out the buildings window and on the other side of the East River I could actually see the United Nations building.

I estimated that there were over a hundred people walking around at the auction, all doing the same as I was.

I finally saw Abe, and Eichel so I walked over to see them.

Together we again walked around each floor discussing what Abe thought would be the best items for us to bid on.

As we walked, I saw that Abe recognized someone.

What’s the matter I asked him, “Nothing”, he said, and then Abe leaned over and he whispered to me, “The Mafia is here”.

I had heard him, but I didn't have a clue as to what he was talking about, so what if the Mafia was there at the auction.

We then walked to a quiet area where Abe could talk with no one listening, he explained that in New York and New Jersey, the mafia controlled all the big auctions.

He said they were jokingly called the “Band of 40 Thieves”

Abe said, “When the Mafia showed up at an auction, you couldn't buy anything unless you cleared it with them first.

If they liked you, they would do all the bidding for you.  Then they would sell it to you at a profit and that was only if they liked you.

If they didn't like you, they wouldn't let you buy anything.

I asked Abe, why don’t we just leave, it wasn’t like we needed to be there.

Then I asked Abe if he would point them out to me. I wanted to see what a real Mafia character looked like.

Abe approached a fellow that was having a heated discussion with several men, all whom looked like thy came out of the godfather movie.

Abe approached them with Eichel and me right behind him.

As we got close, I could see one of the tough looking guys that had been facing me, made a motion with his eyes and an older fellow whose back was towards us, quickly turned around.

He immediately saw Abe, he smiled and put his hand out, and said “Abe my friend, how are you”? “I’m Good Tony,” Abe replied.

I thought the fellow looked pleasant enough, he looked just like someone’s gentle grandfather.

He was about 60 years old, potbellied, and wore his work pants with suspenders.

“What brings you here Abe”?

“We thought we could find something to make a few dollars on,” Abe replied.

“Let me know if you see something you like”, the older fellow said”, “I will”,” Abe replied.

Then Abe said, “Tony, I want to meet a good boy from New Haven”, and he introduced me.

The Mafia guy glanced at me and said to Abe, “Does the kid know the score?”

“Yes.” Abe said, “He knows the score” and if you need help just ask him, he’s available to assist you if you need him.

With that having been said, the fellow, turned back to the men he was talking to, paying us no more attention.

The next day was the auction.  

The auctioneer walked from each lot to lot, auctioning off each one as he went.

Abe had already given Tony one of the auction catalogs with six lots circled that he wanted Tony to bid on for us.

By about three in the afternoon the crowd had thinned out, I think it was possible most of them were scared off by the “Band of 40 thieves” being there.

Eventually there were only about thirty people remaining, and as we all followed the auctioneer, I soon found myself standing next to Tony, the Mafia boss.

Tony turned to me and said quietly, hey, New Haven, you got twenty bucks on you?

I got a little nervous, because in 1962 twenty dollars was like two hundred dollars would be today. “Yeah” I replied, I have twenty dollars.

Tony said, “Take the twenty dollar bill and roll it up so no one see's it, and put it in the auctioneer's left hand, tell him Tony said that you get the clean-up.”

The moment the auctioneer slowed his pace down, I stepped up to him and pressed the twenty dollars into his left hand, and I told him, Tony said, I got the clean-up.

The auctioneer looked at me, nodded in the affirmative, put the twenty dollars in his pocket, and kept on auctioning as if nothing had happened.

After the auction, I asked Abe, “what he thought, regarding Tony telling me that I had the “clean up”, I told Abe that it cost me twenty dollars.

Abe said, “I think, Tony has taken a liking to you, and the cleanup could be very profitable for us, it means that after the auction was over, and everyone had left, you can come back in the building and take anything that was left over, and no one would say anything to you.

Abe joked, you can even take the entire building, as there will be no one here to watch what you are doing”.

I knew Abe was joking regarding taking the building, but for me it was exciting to think that for only twenty dollars everything left over from the auction was ours.

Then Abe smiled and said “You see, now, you are number forty one in the band of forty thieves”.

That afternoon, as everyone was loading up from the auction, Tony came over and put his hand on my shoulder.

He said his boys were loading their truck, and he asked me to follow the truck to New Jersey.

He said I was to make sure nothing fell off the truck on the way there.

I didn’t dare refuse, and it became quite a scary trip following them to New Jersey.

Their truck was way over loaded, and it had on it more than a hundred eight foot long fluorescent fixtures they had removed from the building.

As they loaded the truck, many of the glass fluorescent lighting tubes had become loose from the metal fixtures. So every time their truck made any kind of turn, all the fluorescent glass tubes would slide out the side of the truck about three feet, and almost hit the cars driving in the other lanes.

My heart was in my mouth the whole trip, but fortunately there were no accidents and once we all were in New Jersey, I was treated to supper just as if I was a member of the mob.

All evening they referred to me as “New Haven”.  

The next morning, I got an early start from our Stamford yard.

I was driving our stake body GMC truck.

When I got to the building in New York, there was a security guard at the entrance and I leaned out the window of the truck, and in my best New York accent, I said, I’m the cleanup guy, and he just waved me in.

I was so very excited at the prospect of what I might find left over on the different floors, I didn’t know where to start.

I drove round and round all the parking floors until I got to the administration floor where all the offices had been.

I parked the truck and got out to survey the situation.

It appeared that all the filing cabinets had been sold and whoever bought them had dumped all the papers from the filing cabinet drawers onto the floor.

In some places the papers were piled on the floor over a foot thick.

I couldn’t believe it, I thought I was in heaven, all the scrap paper was mine.

I looked around and it appeared that I was the only one in the whole building, but it also felt very humid now that the air conditioning in the building had been shut off.

But I didn’t care, all I had to do was load the truck up with the scrap paper and run it down to the scrap paper dealer and collect my money.

I started to pick up the piles of papers off the floor and piling it on the bed of my truck.

It wasn’t as easy as I thought, the papers were all invoices with carbon paper, they were slippery and they were laying helter skelter on the floor.

I had to organize them into stacks, then carry a stack to the truck.

After several hours, I hadn’t even made a dent in loading the papers that were on the floor. I was soaked in sweat, and my hands were black from the carbon paper.

That’s when I started to have second thoughts about everything.

As I stood there thinking of a better solution, I heard someone whistling, it was the security guard.

“How's it going pal?”  Not bad I replied.

He looked at the paper I had on the truck and said, “What are you going to do with all the scrap paper, you going to the dump”?

I'm going to fill the truck up and take it to the scrap paper dealer I replied.

The security guard just stared at me for a few seconds, then he said, “Are you sure they will buy scrap paper with carbon paper mixed in?”

Well, that’s when it dawned on me, all the papers on the floor were invoices in triplicate with carbon paper.

When the security guard left, I climbed up on the truck to throw all the paper that I had stacked up, back onto the floor.

It took over an hour, I pushed it, I threw it, I kicked it, I think it took me longer to push the paper off truck than it took for me to load it on.

If I could have kicked myself in the ass, I would have done it.

I didn’t know how I could have possibly been so stupid, it was now late in the afternoon, so I drove back to Stamford, that night, I couldn’t sleep, I was very depressed.  

The next morning, I was re-energized, and I drove the truck back to the building in New York.

Fortunately for me, there was a different security guard so I didn't have to face the one that told me about the carbon paper.

Today I was determined to find something of value in the building, I knew there had to be something good there.

When I got to the administration floor, that’s when I noticed all the telephones that were buried under the papers on the floor, so I pulled one out, it must have had thirty or forty buttons on it.

I took out my cutting pliers and cut the phone free.

After the first one, I cut about another hundred phones free, I did it until I had a big water blister on my hand from using the cutting pliers.

I looked over at the phones I has collected.

The housings were plastic and most were cracked or broken. I came to the conclusion that what I was doing was making another big mistake.

Here I was killing myself loading the truck with broken plastic telephones that couldn’t be sold.

I decided I should leave the pile of telephones and look for something that was a little easier to do.

I drove to the next floor in the building which was the mechanical repair shop, but like the floor below it was just littered with trash from all the people removing what they had bought at the auction.

I walked around the entire floor and checked every inch, but I never saw one item of value for me.

After lunch, I drove the truck up to the next floor which had been the paint and body shop area.

I was starting to get a bad feeling about this whole clean up deal that Tony had so kindly fixed me up with.

Just like the other floors, the body shop floor was completely cleaned out, except for the trash.

But then there was one small room that was about 10 foot wide by 20 feet deep with a door that was stuck closed.

By using a piece of a bent bumper, I got the door of the room open and I went inside.

Thank god I had finally found something.

The little room was full of car paint, there was shelf after shelf of paint, in gallons, in quarts and pints, there was every car color you could imagine.

At that point I realized that there was nothing left in the building but the paint to take back to Stamford, so I spent a couple of hours loading everything from the room on the truck.

The next day, I was back in Stamford Connecticut, and Abe and Eichel came down to the yard to see what I had brought back from the auction cleanup.

Abe looked at the paint and I could tell by the expression on his face that he didn't know what to say.

He pulled out a quart of paint and brought it over to me to read the label, it said 1952 Pontiac Forest Green, and the can had obviously been opened and used, it was only half full.

Abe asked me, “Who can you sell this to”?

By then I already knew, there was no one to sell used cans of old car paint to.

Then Abe said, if we get caught with all this paint pollution on our property, we could get in big trouble, and I knew that he was right.

So I drove around all morning to trash dumpsters in the neighborhood and I threw all the paint away.

After that experience, I could never determine if Tony, and the “Band of 40 Thieves” were doing me a favor or teaching me a good lesson.

If it was a lesson, I had learned it pretty good.

Anyway Abe was right about one thing, for a short time in New York, I was number forty one in the “Band of forty thieves.”