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the ramshackle two-story wooden building at 154 Twentieth Street, however, he thought it was too quiet. The place was a cabaret called the Adonis Social Club, and it should have been alive with bright lights and loud music even at this hour. Instead, it was cold and silent, like a corpse.
    Seeing something in the gutter almost directly in front of the club, Morano shone his light on it. A man was lying there, the back of his head shot off. Drawing his weapon, the policeman followed a trail of blood through the club doorway into the cabaret area.
    Judging by the chaos he found inside, something violent had happened not long before his arrival. All the tables were overturned except for one, and shattered glass from the drinking glasses and window panes coated the floor, making a mockery of the festive orange bunting and the MERRY CHRISTMAS AND HAPPY NEW YEAR message pinned to it. All the revelers-turned-combatants appeared to have fled.
    As he surveyed the room, Morano’s light fell upon found two men sprawled near the piano, bodies ripped apart by bullets. Realizing that he was beholding the aftermath of a gang fight, the policeman retreated and summoned assistance.
     

    Detectives surveying the crime scene. Blood from the bodies of Pegleg Longergan and Aaron Harms is clearly visible.
    Photo courtesy of Mario Gomes / Al Capone Museum.
     
    The three dead men were soon identified as members of South Brooklyn’s notorious Irish White Hand gang. Suddenly it wasn’t so hard to figure out who had murdered them, and why.
    One of the two in front of the piano was 24-year-old Richard “Pegleg” Lonergan, the mob’s leader. He had been shot in the head and chest so suddenly that a fresh toothpick was still clenched in his teeth. The other was Aaron Harms, Lonergan’s best friend and advisor. The man found outside was Cornelius “Needles” Ferry, a drug addict and another one of Lonergan’s closest aides.
    The White Hand Gang had originally been formed to oppose the Italian Black Hand, whose power and influence had been growing in New York since the 1890s. They were mostly Irish and had family connections to the rough-and-tumble Irish mobs on the pre-1890 era. When they weren’t insulting and attacking Italians, they were preying on the Brooklyn waterfront, controlling dock labor, and taking a cut of every longshoreman’s pay. 

    White Hand boss Richard “Peg Leg” Lonergan and Cornelius “Needles” Ferry were both casualties of the Adonis Club Massacre. Ferry's blood is visible on the sidewalk. Photo courtesy of Mario Gomes / Al Capone Museum.
     
     
    Dennis “Dinny” Meehan, one of the earliest leaders, had a contract to unload the cargo of all incoming ships. If anyone else tried to compete, they got their heads broken. Meehan was the terror of the waterfront until 1920, when he pushed another Irish gangster “Wild Bill” Lovett, too far. On March 31, five Lovett gunmen walked right into Meehan’s apartment, entered the bedroom where he lay napping, and shot him in the head.
    Lovett merged his own gang with the White Handers, and imposed a dictator-like rule until October 30, 1923. That night, he was sleeping off a drinking binge when two men crept into the room, bashed his skull in with a heavy object, and shot him twice in the neck. He was succeeded by his brother-in-law, “Pegleg” Lonergan, who strengthened the White Hand gang’s control over the waterfront and directed them into bootlegging, which added to their coffers.
    Lonergan, whose sister had been married to Wild Bill, was said to have killed 20 men in his rise to the top of the Irish underworld circles. He had been born into New York’s gangster royalty. His father and uncle were leaders of the infamous Yakey Yakes, who terrorized their district until around 1910. A childhood accident involving a streetcar caused his left leg to be amputated below the knee and forced him to wear a prosthesis, but the handicap did not limit his murderous urges or