Scopa / The Cermak Hit

By D. Angelo Ferri

Scopa / The Cermak Hit The story is based upon an actual event, the execution of Giuseppe Zangara and his supposed assassination attempt of President Elect Franklin D. Roosevelt. Supposedly Zangara was trying to kill FDR but the guy who ends up getting shot is Anton Cermak, the Mayor of Chicago. Cermak did not die that night. He died in the hospital days later and it wasn’t from the gunshot wound. Giuseppe Zangara, the ‘would be assassin’, was fried in the electric chair within two months of the incident.
Bonus Features
D’s Guide to Italian Card Games Scopa and Quindici.

• Language: English
• Publisher: D. Angelo Ferri
• Release date: Nov 6, 2018
• ISBN: 9780463351413

D. Angelo Ferri

Thank you for taking a look at my profile page. Welcome! My magic e-books are dedicated to my teacher Slydini. It is my sincere hope that some Magicians will take up a serious study of his Art and pass it on to another generation of Magicians. My e-book: The Glass through the Table is a free download, my way to introduce you to the Magic of my teacher, Slydini. . Ever since I was a kid I’ve been fascinated with Magic, those old time private eye movies, especially the Maltese Falcon starring Humphrey Bogart, playing cards, and all things Italian. One night, while walking through the San Francisco Financial District, the idea for my own detective stories came to me. I’ve written two e-books that will teach you how to play some great Italian Cards games. My e-book: Scopa is a free download, my way to introduce you to my detective and the Italian Card Game Scopa.

Book preview

Angelo & Maria an Italian American Love Story / Episode Nine / Scopa; The Cermak Hit for Smashwords

Table of Contents

Introduction

The Set Up

Episode Nine – Scopa /The Cermak Hit

The story is based upon an actual event, the execution of Giuseppe Zangara.

Bonus Features

D’s Guide to Italian Card Games Scopa and Quindici.

Scopa means to sweep. Quindici means 15 (in Italian). Quindici is a variation of Scopa.

Keeping Score

The Final Hand of the Game

Scopa Blindness

Scopa Traps

Offensive Play

Last Hand of the Game

Quindici

Angelo’s Bar Bets

This Bar Bet was a famous swindle of a 1930’s con man who shall go nameless here. I doubt he was the guy who came up with the swindle but from what I was able to learn about him, he had no problem pulling it on suckers.

Old School Sports Bet

I’ll bet you can’t tell me what Former newspaper boy, born in Campania, Italy, came to America when he was a kid. In 1919 he was a 14-year-old newspaper boy. A tough southpaw, he had to wait until 1933 for a world welterweight title shot. He won the World Welterweight and Middleweight Titles boxing as Young Corbett III.

About the Author

Other Books by D. Angelo Ferri

Introduction

For me this is merely a glimpse into the minds, the premeditation, and absolute ruthlessness of the ‘people’ who pull the strings of the puppets who hold public office.

I am a second generation Italian American. I grew up in New York in the 1950’s and 60’s. Back then I was aware of two types of people, Italians and people who weren’t Italian. The fact that I was born in America had absolutely nothing to with it. More specifically I am half Neapolitan and half Sicilian.

Sunday’s were my favorite day of the week because the entire family gathered at my grandparent’s apartment. After dinner there were fresh fruits, hot chestnuts, cake, pastry, American coffee, and some type of after dinner drink, usually Anisette, to go with the Espresso.

After that it was time to play cards. My grandfather sat at the head of the table. My uncles and my Aunt Lucy would take their customary places around the table. My cousins would stand behind their fathers or a favorite uncle and watch the games; how I loved those days.

I wanted to write stories about Italian American’s. My stories are set in 1930 and ‘40’s San Francisco, from the days of Prohibition, through the Great Depression, the beginning of World War Two and the Interment of Italians living in America. Many extraordinary things happened in the 30’s and 40’s, things that should never be forgotten. I began to research the execution of Giuseppe Zangara. Supposedly he was trying to kill President Elect Franklin D. Roosevelt (FDR). That research resulted in the story you are about to read: ‘Scopa’.

Scopa means to sweep. I chose this title because to me this is a perfect example of the truth being swept under the rug.

Thanks to the Freedom of Information Act and the passage of time I was able to read former Classified Documents and Doctors Reports. I found old film clips and newspaper stories.

Being able to look back on what the people was told versus what actually happened is an extraordinary thing. Makes me think…

D. Angelo Ferri

The Set Up

It is a Sunday afternoon, 1933, in San Francisco’s North Beach neighborhood. My detective: Angelo Di Carini and his father sit down to play cards after dinner. They begin to talk about would-be assassin Giuseppe Zangara, from Calabria, by way of New Jersey and Chicago.

Zangara was convicted of trying to assassinate FDR and sentenced to eighty plus years in prison. Giuseppe Zangara was executed on March 20th, just thirty-four days after the shooting, that’s a record from capture, to trial, to sentence, to execution, that still stands.

The people and places Angelo and his father refer to in their conversation are the actual people and places I discovered in my research for this story. Their suppositions about this incident are based upon the media that was available to them at the time and their personal perspectives.

Of course; these are my suppositions of what they would have thought about all of this given Mr. Di Carini is a Sicilian and that he had family in Chicago and in New York from the 1920’s on. My father’s side of the family came to America from Castellammare del Golfo, Sicily in 1911. My great Uncle Vincent was the childhood friend of Joe Bananno. Uncle Vincent never got mixed up with the rackets but his brother, my great Uncle Jack (zio Giacomo) did. He left New York and went to Chicago and never came back. My father never talked about this with my brother and I when we were kids. When we got older and things came up, we learned about Uncle Jack.

The American People were told it was the attempted assassination of the then President Elect of the United States, Franklin Delano Roosevelt. The shooting occurred on February 15, 1933, at a political rally in Bayfront Park, Miami, Florida. The Mayor of Chicago, Anton Cermak, was also at the rally that night. To look at pictures of Roosevelt and Cermak together you would have thought they were asshole buddies from way back.

The Democratic Convention to decide who would get the Presidential Nomination had been held in Chicago. Cermak opposed the nomination of Roosevelt. (I could not find the details about what caused Cermak to play ball with FDR.)

Cermak was the guy who got shot that night. He died in the hospital several weeks later. Zangara was sent to the electric chair after Cermak died.

Americans were told Zangara was sent to the electric chair because one of the shots he fired at Roosevelt hit Cermak and that Cermak died as a result of that wound.

It is undisputed that Cermak did not die from the gunshot wound he suffered that night. Anton Cermak died in the hospital on March 6th. Supposedly some doctor, who I don’t know, screwed up, how I don’t know, and then tried to cover it up. Word is Cermak died of Peritonitis.

I think somebody finished the job on Cermak in the hospital but that’s just