The Disappearance

A while back I introduced you to Salvatore M., a volatile Philadelphia waterfront personality. He had a step-son whom he persuaded the company to hire as a gofer/chauffer - call him Arnold G. With such limited duties Arnold had considerable idle time on his hands. The pier office also housed a medical clinic staffed by a local hospital to minister to the needs of the dockworkers. When no ships were working this clinic was usually unoccupied. One day Arnold slipped into the clinic, donned a white coat and summoned the new hire for his "physical". He had the young man stripped to his skivvies doing jumping jacks with the entire office staff watching this act from the balcony. Several days later the new hire resigned and no one ever knew why. Arnold had a boyhood friend from South Philadelphia who turned out to be a pretty fair middleweight boxer, Joey Giardello, who fought for the title. Arnold considered himself to be one of Joey's "advisers" and would disappear for a week at a time and the next time we would see him was on the TV screen from Las Vegas working the corner wearing his white sweater and carrying the bucket for Joey. He was advising! Several years went by and his boxer friend retired from the ring but Arnold kept his finger in the fight racket. It was rumored he was managing several Puerto Rican fighters. One day Arnold failed to report for work at the pier. They found his Cadillac at the Philadelphia Airport. He had really disappeared this time. It was believed that something did not go as planned in the ring. The local hunch was that he had taken up residence in the Tinicum Wildlife Preserve. So first it was Merton, now Arnold, which gave us two alleged homicides in our little outport office. Enough to give a guy a complex.
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