Sixto Stabile – Character in Divide the Dawn
“They shooed the whore away an’ tied me to the bed. Then this Ivy League dago comes in, duded up like he’s some gaudy business man with a pinky ring. But you can’t put a blond wig on a guerrilla and convince me her name’s Mary.”
~Vincent Maher
Sixto Stabile (b. 1893), also known as the Young Turk, is a self-assured, sardonic and overly polite South Brooklyn Italian who graduated from Harvard University. Sixto’s Italian-born father paid for his schooling via the bawdyhouse (brothel) he owns, called the Adonis Social Club on 20th street & 4th avenue, which is protected by Frankie Yale and the Black Hand. In 1916, Yale’s man Il Maschio was murdered by the Irish White Hand. Still angry that Red Hook is populated with Italians, yet the dock winnings are collected by the Irish, Yale decided to temporarily emphasize friendlier relations with the powerful White Hand Gang’s Dinny Meehan. Highly educated Sixto was a perfect fit to smooth things out. Working with the ILA’s Thos Carmody, Sixto helped put together a brilliant three-way peace deal, which gave the Italians the southern terminal of Red Hook in exchange for the (failed) murder attempt of Wild Bill Lovett, while both the White and Black Hand longshoremen unionized.
What you need to know before starting DIVIDE THE DAWN: With the assistance of Jonathan G. Wolcott‘s NY Dock Co, and headquartering his new gang in Red Hook, Lovett seceded from the White Hand in 1917. Dinny Meehan was backed into a corner, so Sixto sprung into action. At the Adonis, Sixto and Carmody kidnapped White Hand enforcer Vincent Maher and gave him peace terms that would break Lovett’s stronghold in Red Hook and kill Wolcott’s strategist and muscle, Silverman. The plan succeeded. Even though Lovett survived, he was sent to the Great War in a plea deal after murdering a Black Hand assassin. In 1919, after Maher is jailed, Sixto and Yale visit him and offer him a job in Chicago, warning him that Meehan plans on setting him up for the robbery of the Hanan & Son shoe factory, just as he’d set up Pickles Leighton, Non Connors, and even Lovett before him.
