Sleepers

  “My heart just stopped,” John said, his face pale, his voice cracking.

  “She’s coming for us,” I said, turning my head in Sister Carolyn’s direction, watching her walk down the steps of my apartment building, check for traffic, and make her way to where we were standing.

  “What the fuck’s that nun want?” Fat Mancho said, slurping a Yoo-Hoo and scratching at his three-day growth.

  “Stay quiet, Fat Man,” Michael said.

  “Eat my pole,” Fat Mancho said, walking back behind the bodega counter.

  “Hello, boys,” Sister Carolyn said, her manner calm, her voice soft.

  She was young, her face clear and unlined. She was Boston big-city bred and had spent three years in Latin America working with the poor before a transfer brought her to Sacred Heart. Sister Carolyn was popular with her students and respected by their parents and, unlike some of the other nuns of the parish, seemed at ease among the people of Hell’s Kitchen. Though she spoke no Italian and my mother hardly a word of English, they had formed a solid friendship, with Sister Carolyn visiting her an average of three times a week. She knew the type of marriage my mother was in and was always quick to check in on her after my father had administered yet another beating.

  “Hey, Sister,” Michael said casually. “What’s goin’ on?”

  Sister Carolyn smiled and put one hand on top of John’s shoulder. Nothing but fear was keeping John in his place.

  “The bathroom’s free now if you still need to use it,” she said to him softly.

  “Thank you,” John mumbled.

  “We’re very sorry,” I said.

  “I know,” she said. “Forget it happened. I already have.”

  “Thank you, Sister,” I said.

  “I’ll see all you boys in church,” she said, turning to leave.

  “Bet on it,” Tommy said.

  “What a peach,” John said, watching her as she walked up the street back to the convent on 51st, her long white skirt swaying at her feet.

  “And not a bad-lookin’ ass either,” Michael said, winking at me.

  “Fuck do any o’ you know about ass,” Fat Mancho said from behind his counter.

  “I’m gonna go pee,” John said, running back across the street. “Can’t hold it in anymore.”

  “Watch now,” Tommy said to me. “This time he walks in on your mother coppin’ a squat.”

  “That happens,” Michael said. “He might as well just throw himself out a window.”

  “He should throw himself out a window anyway,” Fat Mancho said. “Useless fuck.”

  “Go wash your mouth out with shit, Fat Man,” Tommy said.

  “Set yourself on fire,” Fat Mancho said. “All of you. Burn till you die.”

  We all looked over at Fat Mancho and laughed, walking away from his store, toward the fire hydrant and a dose of wet relief from the heat of the day.

  9

  FATHER ROBERT CARILLO was a longshoreman’s son who was as comfortable sitting on a barstool in a back-alley saloon as he was standing at the altar during high mass. Raised in Hell’s Kitchen, he toyed with a life of petty crime before finding his religious calling. Carillo left for a midwestern seminary three weeks before his sixteenth birthday. When he returned ten years later, he asked to be assigned to the Sacred Heart parish.

  As far as we were concerned, he wasn’t like a priest at all. He would spring for pizza after an afternoon pickup game or twist a few neighborhood arms and raise money for new sports equipment for the gym. He was a friend. A friend who just happened to be a priest.

  Like us, Father Bobby had an extensive comic book and baseball card collection, was an avid boxing fan, and favored James Cagney over any other actor. He had a small office near the back of the church, lined with books and old blues albums. At its center was a huge framed picture of Jack London standing on a snowbank. If I was ever tempted to steal something from Father Bobby’s office, it was that picture.

  Despite the criminal bent of the neighborhood, the church exerted considerable influence and its leaders were visible members of the community. Priests openly recruited boys for the priesthood, presenting the clerical life as a way out of Hell’s Kitchen. Nuns often took girls aside to talk to them in frank terms about sex and violence.

  The priests, nuns, and brothers of the neighborhood knew they served a violent clientele and they were there to tend to our physical and psychological wounds. They listened to battered wives who came to them for solace and gave words of comfort to frightened children. They helped when and where they could, careful not to stray outside the established framework of the neighborhood and always aware that there were a number of situations over which they held no control.

  The clergy knew the rules of Hell’s Kitchen. They knew some people had to break the law in order to feed their families. They knew the clothes many of us wore were bootlegged and the meat most of us ate came from stolen trucks. And they knew not to butt heads with someone like King Benny. But in the ways they could, they helped us. If nothing else, they offered a quiet room, some hot coffee, and a place to talk when you needed it. Few people in the neighborhood would have asked more from any religion.

  Father Bobby cared for us in a significant way, and as much as we were capable of loving an outsider, we loved him for that care.

  He knew the problems my mother and father were having, of the beatings she was handed and the debts he incurred. He tried to balance that by talking to me about books and baseball and verbally guiding me away from the fast money and easy times offered by King Benny and his crew.

  He understood Michael’s instinctive resistance to any outsider, even one from the neighborhood. He saw in Michael a boy who was given very little reason to trust. He sensed the loneliness behind his tough talk and the fear hidden by his swagger. Father Bobby knew that Michael was a boy who merely longed for a father who did more than lash out at his only son. He gave Michael distance, leaving a book he would like at his desk rather than handing it to him after school. He fed his streak of independence instead of fighting it.

  He joked with John, keying in on a sense of humor built around insults and fast comebacks. He traded comic books with him, giving up valued Flash editions for mediocre Fantastic Four exploits, ignoring the sucker snickers after the deals were completed. On John’s tenth birthday, he gave him a Classics Illustrated edition of The Count of Monte Cristo, a gift that moved John to tears.

  He encouraged John’s quiet desires to be an artist, sneaking him an endless supply of pencils and paper. In return, John would give Father Bobby original illustrations from a comic book series he was working on. John was also his favorite altar boy and Father Bobby made it a point to work as many masses with him as possible, even if it meant pulling him out of an early class.

  “John would have made a good priest,” Father Bobby told me years later. “He was filled with goodness. He cared about people. But he had a knack, like all you boys did, of being in the wrong place at the worst possible time. A lot of people have that knack and seem to survive. John couldn’t.”

  But of all of us, Father Bobby was closest to Tommy.

  Butter never adjusted to having a father away in prison and, while he never talked about it, we knew it gnawed at his otherwise happy nature. Father Bobby tried to fill the paternal void, playing one-on-one basketball with him on spring evenings, taking him to James Bond movies on winter nights, helping him manage the pigeon coop Tommy kept on the roof of his building. He made sure Tommy was never alone on Father’s Day.

  Father Bobby had the soul of a priest but the instincts of a first-grade detective. He was a vigilant neighborhood presence, the first to take our class on outings and the first to question our outside involvements. He knew my friends and I did work for King Benny and was not pleased by that fact. But he understood the need for table money. In his time, Father Bobby had helped augment his own family’s income by running errands for “Lucky” Jack and the Anastasia family.

  He wa
sn’t worried about the pocket money. He worried about the next step. The one where they ask you to pick up a gun. He didn’t want that to happen to us. He wanted to get to the damage before it got started. Before we saw too many things we shouldn’t be seeing. Unfortunately, there were things even Father Bobby couldn’t prevent.

  THE SCHOOL AUDITORIUM was filled to overflow with balloons, poker tables topped with pitchers of beer and bowls of pretzels. Paper banners wishing the bride and groom luck lined the walls. A bald disc jockey in a wrinkled tux stood on a small stage, focused on a large stereo, four speakers, and three piles of records.

  It was a neighborhood wedding reception, open to all.

  The bride, a tall, dark-haired girl from 52nd Street, was five months pregnant and spent most of her time locked inside a bathroom off the main stairwell. The groom, a Mobil mechanic with bad teeth and a black beard, drank boilermakers and munched peanuts from a paper bag, well aware of the talk that said the child his wife carried belonged to someone else.

  Outside, the night was rainy. Inside, large corner fans did nothing to still the heat.

  “You know either one of ’em?” Tommy asked, chafing at the starched collar and tight tie around his neck.

  “The guy,” I said, drinking from a bottle of Pepsi. “You know him too. From the gas station. Lets us drink from his water hose.”

  “You’re not used to seeing him without grease on his face,” Michael said, filling the pockets of his blue blazer with salt pretzels.

  “You think it’s his kid?” Tommy asked.

  “Could be anybody’s kid,” Michael said. “She’s not exactly shy.”

  “Why’s he marrying her?” I said. “I mean, if you know all about her, how come he doesn’t?”

  “Maybe it is his kid,” Tommy said. “Maybe she told him it was. You don’t know.”

  “That’s right, Tommy,” Carol Martinez said. “You don’t know.”

  She was wearing a blue ruffled dress with a small white flower pinned at the waist. She had on ankle socks and her Buster Browns were shiny and new. Her hair was in a ponytail.

  “Everybody’s here,” John said when he saw her.

  “I’m a friend of Connie’s,” Carol said.

  “Who’s Connie?” John said.

  “The bride, asswipe,” Michael said, and led Carol by the arm off to dance.

  THE THREE MEN came in just as the bride and groom started slicing the three-tiered wedding cake. They stood off to the side, their backs to the front door, their hands nursing long-necked bottles of Budweiser. One of them had a lit cigarette hanging from the corner of his mouth.

  We were standing in the shadows next to the disc jockey, Michael and Carol holding hands, Tommy and John sneaking beers. I held a Sam Cooke 45, “Twistin’ the Night Away,” which was next on the play list.

  “You know ’em?” Michael asked, putting his arm around Carol’s shoulders.

  “The one with the cigarette,” I said. “I’ve seen him in King Benny’s place a few times.”

  “What’s he do for him?”

  “He always passed himself off as a shooter,” I said. “I don’t know. Could be nothing more than talk.”

  “Why’s he here?” Tommy asked.

  “Maybe he likes weddings,” John said.

  The three men walked toward the center of the room, their eyes on the groom, who was eating cake and sipping champagne from the back of his wife’s spike-heeled shoe. They stopped directly across the table from the couple and rested their beers on a stack of paper plates.

  “What do you want?” the groom asked, wiping his lips with the back of his hand.

  “We come to offer our best,” the man in the middle said. “To you and to the girl.”

  “You just done that,” the groom said. “Now maybe you should leave.”

  “No cake?” the man in the middle said.

  The crowd around the table had grown silent.

  “C’mon, guys,” a middle-aged man said, his speech slurred, the front of his white shirt wet from beer. “A wedding’s no place for problems.”

  The man stared him back into silence.

  “Maybe your friend’s right,” the man said. “Maybe a wedding’s no place for what we have to do. Let’s take it outside.”

  “I don’t wanna go outside,” the groom said.

  “You got the money?”

  “No,” the groom said. “I ain’t got that kind of money. I told you that already. It’s gonna take a while.”

  “If you don’t have the money,” the man said, nodding toward the bride, “you know the deal.”

  She had not moved since the men approached, paper plate full of cake in one hand, empty champagne glass in the other, heavily made up face flushed red.

  “I ain’t gonna give her up,” the groom said in a firm voice. “I ain’t ever gonna give her up.”

  The man in the middle was quiet for a moment. Then he nodded and said, “Enjoy the rest of your night.”

  The three men turned away from the bride and groom and disappeared into the crowd, making their way toward the back door and the dark street.

  WE SAT BRACED against the thin bars of the first floor fire escape, staring at the alley below. Four garbage cans and an empty refrigerator carton stood against one wall; the shadows of a forty-watt bulb filtered across the auditorium’s back door. The rain had picked up, a steady Hudson River breeze blowing newly laundered sheets across the dirt and empty cans of the alley.

  Michael had positioned us there. He was positive something was going to happen and he’d picked the most strategic place to observe the action.

  We watched as the bride and groom stood in the narrow doorway, arms wrapped around each other, both drunk, kissing and hugging. The harsh light from the auditorium forced us to move back toward the window ledge.

  The groom took his wife by the hand and stepped into the alley, moving toward 51st Street, holding a half-empty bottle of Piels in his free hand. They stopped to wave at a handful of friends crowding across a doorway, the men drunk, the women shivering in the face of the rain.

  “Don’t leave any beer behind,” the groom shouted. “It’s paid for.”

  “Count on that,” one of the drunks shouted back.

  “Good-bye,” the bride said, still waving. “Thank you for everything.”

  “Let’s go,” the groom now said to his new wife. “It’s our wedding night.” With that, a grin stretched across his face.

  The first bullet came out of the darkness and hit the groom just above his brown belt buckle, sinking him to his knees, a stunned look on his face. The bride gave out a loud scream, hands held across her chest, eyes wide, her husband bleeding just inches away.

  The group by the door stood motionless, frozen.

  The second shot, coming from the rear of the alley, hit the groom in the throat, dropping him face first onto the pavement.

  “Help!” the bride screamed. “Jesus, God, please help! He’s gonna die! Please help, please!”

  No one moved. No one spoke. The faces in the doorway had inched deeper into the shadows, more concerned with avoiding the shooter’s scope than with rushing to the side of a fallen friend.

  Sirens blared in the distance.

  The bride was on her knees, blood staining the front of her gown, crying over the body of her dying husband. A priest ran into the alley, toward the couple. An elderly woman came out of the auditorium holding a large white towel packed with ice, water flowing down the sides of her dress. Two young men, sobered by the shooting, moved out of the doorway to stare down at the puddles of blood.

  “Let’s get outta here,” John said quietly.

  “So much for getting married,” I said just as quietly.

  Michael, Tommy, and Carol said nothing. But I knew what they were all thinking. It was what we were all thinking.

  The street had won. The street would always win.

  Fall 1965

  10

  MY FRIENDS AND I were united in trust.
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  There was never a question about our loyalty. We fed off each other, talked our way into and out of problems and served as buffers against the violence we encountered daily. Our friendship was a tactic of survival.

  We each wanted a better life, but were unsure how to get it. We knew enough, though, to anchor our hopes in simple goals. In our idle moments, we never imagined running large companies or finding cures for diseases or holding elected office. Those dreams belonged to other places, other boys.

  Our fantasies were shaped by the books we read and reread and the movies we watched over and over until even the dullest dialogue was committed to memory. Stories of romance and adventure, of great escapes and greater tastes of freedom. Stories that brought victory and cheers to the poor, allowing them to bask in the afterglow of revenge.

  We never needed to leave the cocoon of Hell’s Kitchen to glimpse those dreams.

  We lived inside every book we read, every movie we saw. We were Cagney in Angels with Dirty Faces and Gable in The Call of the Wild. We were Ivanhoe on our own city streets and the Knights of the Round Table in our clubhouse.

  It was during those uninhibited moments of pretend play that we were allowed the luxury of childhood. Faced by outsiders, we had to be tough, acting older than our years. In our homes we had to be wary, never knowing when the next violent moment would come. But when we were alone we could be who we really were—kids.

  We never pictured ourselves, as adults, living far from Hell’s Kitchen. Our lives were plotted out at birth. We would try to finish high school, fall in love with a local girl, get a workingman’s job, and move into a railroad apartment at a reasonable rent. We didn’t see it as confining, but rather as a dramatic step in the right direction. Our fathers were men with sinful pasts and criminal records. We would not be.

  I loved my parents. I respected King Benny. But my friends meant more to me than any adult. They were my lifeblood and my strength. Our simple dreams were nourished by a common soil.

  We thought we would know each other forever.