“Hey,” he said softly, “I’m gonna leave you for a minute, gonna get an ambulance.”
“Can’t do that,” she mumbled. “Gotta stay here. Pauly said I gotta stay here and make money, plenny of money….”
Her eyes rolled upward, then closed. She had passed out.
They asked questions at the hospital, but Gino wasn’t giving them any answers. He played dumb. He had made up his mind. This time Paolo wasn’t going to get away with it.
When they assured him that Vera was safely in a hospital bed, he left.
He went back to her room and waited, sitting on a chair and staring at the door for three hours.
At four o’clock in the morning Paolo walked in. Gino was on his feet and attacking his father before Paolo knew what had hit him. “You… lousy… coward…” he breathed as he kicked and punched. “Children… and women. You… mean… sonofabitch….”
It took Paolo a moment or two before he realized what was happening. He had spent a pleasant evening at a local speakeasy, nursing a bottle of scotch, and he had come home with every intention of getting laid and then falling into a comfortable sleep. Now he was being attacked, and he had no idea why. The boot was usually on the other foot. He did the hitting.
He groaned as a punch landed on the side of his head, and the full bottle of scotch came rushing out of his mouth, along with some of the lasagna he had eaten earlier.
“You stink!” his assailant breathed in disgust. “Ya hear me? You stink!”
Paolo thought the voice sounded familiar, but he couldn’t quite place it. Then another blow caught him full on the chin and he sunk to the ground.
“Don’t you touch her again,” the voice warned. “Next time it won’t be so easy for ya.”
Paolo threw up the rest of the lasagna as his attacker left. That Vera bitch. She had a boyfriend. Next time he got his hands on her she’d really get it.
Gino ran back to his room and stripped off his ruined suit. He was shaking but elated. It had been some day.
He sat on his bed and thought about it moment by moment. The money. The little blonde. The whore. Vera. Paolo. And his plans to make a bundle.
He stared at the ceiling, hating the cracks, peeling paint, and general cheapness of his surroundings. He had never known any better, but he had been to the movies, he had walked along Park and Fifth Avenues and seen the magnificent homes and big cars with chauffeurs. He knew there was a better life out there somewhere. And he knew the only way to get it was with money.
He went into action the very next day. There were several young street gangs always anxious for new blood. The notorious Minute Men were the strongest; they acquired their name on account of the fact that they always managed to break in and be away in less than a minute. Gino considered going with them, but they had a real hot wheelman name of Valachi and Gino figured it wouldn’t work out.
There were Irish gangs, and Jewish gangs, and mixed gangs, some running minor protection rackets, some into numbers, but most into easy hit-and-run thefts.
Gino wanted in with a small outfit that he could take over in time. He vaguely knew a guy called Aldo Dinunzio, who did the occasional job, working with only two other boys. He was smart, kept himself to himself, and the rumor was that he had a cousin in Chicago who was nearly as big as Capone. Gino approached him and suggested they work together.
Aldo nodded. Gino had a certain reputation in the neighborhood. He was strong, he was tough, and what is more he could really handle a car.
They shook hands in Fat Larry’s over a cup of coffee, and Aldo laid out the plans for the next job. A warehouse crammed with furs was just sitting there waiting to be taken. “We can make ourselves a bundle,” Aldo said, “but we gotta act fast. A little bird tells me the alarm system is out of action. You, me, two others, and we gotta take care of the night watchman. A five-way split. Could mean plenty.”
“When?” Gino asked.
“Tonight. Are you on?”
“Sure.”
They finalized their arrangements, and Aldo left. Gino was just about to set off for the hospital when Miss Cuteness and her two girl friends came in. She ignored him, pert nose in the air, slid into a booth, and buried her face behind a menu.
He went over to the table and stood there. “Hey,” he said, plucking the menu from her hands, “what’s with you? Don’t you have no manners?”
She gazed at him, eyes wide and innocent. “Have you come to take my order?” she questioned.
“Cindy!” One of her girl friends stifled a giggle.
“You’re so fulla—”
“What?” She interrupted him before he could say it.
“Wanna go to a movie one night?” he asked, not quite sure he heard himself correctly, but glad he had asked anyway.
“With you?” Her voice said it all.
“Naw, with King Canute.”
“I don’t go out with strangers.”
“’Course ya don’t. But I ain’t a stranger no more. Like we’re old friends now, right?”
“Wrong.”
He grimaced. “Who needs ya anyway?” He slouched away from the table. Stupid girl. Trying to score points off him. She didn’t know what she was missing.
He glanced back in time to catch the three girls convulsed with laughter. Kids. Babies. Couldn’t be more than fifteen or sixteen. Didn’t know from nothin’.
He thought briefly of the whore he had been with the day before and of the things he had done to her. It had been exciting. But it would be more exciting when he didn’t pay for it.
Gino celebrated his seventeenth birthday by going on his fifth job with Aldo. Easy money. In just under a month he had managed to stash away fifteen hundred dollars. A fortune! He opened himself a bank account in which he deposited fifty dollars, and the rest he placed in a safe deposit box. He had plans for the money; he didn’t want to piss it away like he had with the first fifty he made. No more suits or whores. Nothing to make anyone suspicious, especially the neighborhood cops, who had taken to stopping by Fat Larry’s and checking people out at random. So many gangs and so many burglaries. The cops were clamping down.
Gino took a daytime job to make himself legitimate. Delivery boy for a pharmacy. Only what he was delivering was a little different from plain aspirin. Narcotics, twenty-five bucks a delivery. Not bad. Not good. It was a risky job. If he was caught….
Every job had its risk factor. Pinky Banana had had a jack collapse on him while he was servicing the underside of a Cadillac. A broken leg, three broken ribs, and lucky to be alive. And for that kind of risk he didn’t even make twenty-five a week.
Gino had visited him in the hospital and talked some sense into him. When he got out, no more Mister Straight.
On the personal front, nothing much was happening. Miss Cuteness still presented herself at lunchtime in Fat Larry’s, but Gino needed none of her insults, so he steered clear. There was no shortage of girls to take to his room and practice his sexual arts on. And for Gino it was an art. If the girl wasn’t happy, he wasn’t happy. Gino the Ram was in full action.
He had not paid Vera another visit. He kept on thinking he would; then he changed his mind and another week went by. He had heard that she’d discharged herself from the hospital. The truth was he was frightened. Shit-scared that Paolo would have beaten Vera so badly he would be forced to do something about it. And he knew that if that happened he might not be able to control himself. The last time he had been prepared, no black rages. But if there was another time… if Paolo was sober and fought back…
So he stayed away. What he didn’t know about he couldn’t get upset about.
Costa’s letters still arrived regularly from California. And on one occasion a picture was enclosed. Costa, the skinny runt, now a nice-looking youngster pictured with his dog and stepsister. Gino grinned when he saw it. He couldn’t help being pleased that things had worked out for the kid. He had escaped into a world as unreal to Gino as taking a walk on the moon.
&n
bsp; Two months after his seventeenth birthday, Gino was arrested while waiting in a parked Dodge outside a Bronx warehouse. Inside the building they arrested Aldo and his two accomplices, busy placing bolts of silks and satins onto a trolley ready for loading in the car.
“We were fingered,” Aldo muttered in the patrol car taking them to the police station. “I just know it. Who’d you tell?”
Gino shook his head angrily. “What the fuck you mean, who’d I tell? No one, you dumb asshole. Who’d you tell?”
They were booked and thrown into jail. Gino’s stomach churned. He couldn’t take being locked up again. And this time it wasn’t some boys’ home. This time it was the real thing.
Carrie
1927-1928
Welfare Island. Dirt. Filth. Rats as big as a family cat. Lousy food. An overcrowded ward. And girls alive with all kinds of diseases. Lice. Crabs. Fleas. The clap. And dikes looking to pounce on anyone who couldn’t put up a fight.
Carrie learned the hard way. Two weeks in, and she was jumped by the ward’s self-styled boss, a zoftik redhead with squinty mean eyes.
It was nighttime, and Carrie was attempting to sleep on her cramped cot in the overcrowded ward. Suddenly she felt a heavy weight on top of her, and hands on her breasts.
“What the hell?” She struggled awake.
“Shut up and lie still,” Zoftik Redhead warned. “I’m gonna finger fuck you better than any guy’s ever given it to ya.”
“Get off me,” Carrie hissed, her voice hard.
The redhead was surprised. “Are you kidding? Most gals ’round here would give their left tit for my attentions.” She rolled Carrie’s nipple between thumb and forefinger. “Gonna make you a happy little gal.”
Carrie wriggled free and rolled onto the floor, where she crouched and glared. “You leave me alone, y’hear? Just leave me alone.”
“Dumb nigger. You sure don’t know what’s good for you. Never thought the day would come I’d get turned down by a dumb nigger whore.”
“I don’t go with women,” Carrie spat. But she didn’t add, and certainly not big fat ones with greasy skin, bad breath, and a rumored dose.
“There’s always a first time,” Zoftik Redhead encouraged. “You want to know what’s good for you, don’t turn me down. Understand, nigger?”
Carrie shuddered. “Pick on someone else. I don’t want you.” She knew as she said it that it wouldn’t be the end of the matter, and sure enough it wasn’t. The very next day no one would talk to her. The word had gone out that she had offended the leader, and that was enough for most of the girls. Nobody wanted trouble, so overnight it was as if she ceased to exist. Welfare Island had been bad enough before. Now it was impossible.
At night Carrie lay on her cot, unable to sleep, scared, lonely, and just about ready to give up. She did not see much point to her life. What was she there for? Why had God forgotten her?
Over and over she thought about what her life could have been. And then she thought about what it was, and what she was. The redhead was right: a dumb nigger whore, that’s all she was. Soon she started to think about ways she could finish it all, and it provided her with a purpose in life.
One day in the bathhouse there was an unusual silence. The other girls were staring at her strangely and hurrying over their toilet, anxious to get out.
Bad vibrations were strong. But bad vibrations had become such a part of Carrie’s whole being that she took no notice. She scrubbed the strong carbolic soap over her body, under her arms, between her legs. To try and stay clean had become an obsession.
“Hello, nigger.” Zoftik Redhead appeared, accompanied by four other girls.
They were the first words Carrie had had spoken to her since the incident in the ward six days earlier.
“You know what?” the redhead jeered, as she stepped out of her prison dress. “I’ve decided not to hold it against you just ’cos you’re dumb.” She took off her brassiere and touched her huge breasts. “I want you to suck these,” she commanded.
Carrie put down the soap and attempted to edge out of the tiled shower area.
“Not so fast, honey pie.” Two of the redhead’s friends blocked Carrie, moving in on either side. “Lay her down,” their leader ordered, “and get her legs open.”
It was no use struggling. Four of them moved in on her, got her onto the wet tile floor, and held her spread-eagled. The redhead grinned.
“Now, dumb nigger, out of the kindness of my heart I am going to teach you a thing or two.”
They kept her there for an hour, spread-eagled and helpless, while they all had fun using her as a receptacle for anything at hand they could shove into her. Zoftik Redhead sat astride her and masturbated as a final act. When they left they were laughing. It had been a good morning’s entertainment.
Carrie didn’t move. She lay and stared at the dripping shower above her and mumbled about death under her breath. It was enough. Her life was over. She was ready for it to be over.
Matron found her two hours later stretched out in the same position, blue with cold, congealing blood decorating her thighs. “Good God almighty! Who did this to you?”
Carrie did not reply. In fact she did not speak at all for two weeks. She lay listlessly on a cot in the sick ward. It was better than being up and about.
When she was released she went silently back among the other girls. They avoided meeting her eyes, and still they did not speak to her. She didn’t care. She was developing a new quality. Hate. It was a good powerful feeling, and her vibrations silently warned the other girls to keep away.
One day she made a decision. When she got out she was going to look out for herself for a change. She was going to become the toughest, sharpest, meanest, most successful nigger whore in the business.
Winter was cold on the ground when Carrie was finally released. She had been on the island six months, twice the length of her original sentence, but bookkeeping was not one of the high points of life on Welfare Island. She was eighteen pounds thinner, which meant she was real skinny. Her hair was cropped short on account of the lice, and she shivered in a thin summer dress as the ferry took her across the East River to the docks.
She had exactly ten dollars to her name, but she was hopeful that Florence Williams still had her possessions, including a small box holding her six hundred dollars savings.
A line of pimps waited dockside, ready and anxious to inspect the girls. They looked them over like so much beef and approached the ones they felt looked promising. It was a situation the authorities were aware of, but no one seemed prepared to do much about it. After all, once a whore, always a whore. Even the police turned a blind eye.
What chance did the girls have? Who was going to turn down a comfortable bed, some new clothes, a hot meal, and the opportunity to start making money immediately?
Carrie knew what was going on. A running joke on Welfare Island was which pimp would get lucky. The girls all sent their little messages. “If Rag Bags is there, y’all give him the clap for me!” or “Go with the ratty spook with the yellow car and stick another knife in him! That mean bastard sure ’nuff deserves it!”
Carrie looked around. She wasn’t attracting much attention; she knew she must look a mess. She took a deep breath and stuck out her chest. The result was a swarthy white man who sidled over and muttered, “Wanna job, darkie?”
She didn’t like the “darkie.” She shook her head.
“Come on,” the man said nastily. “Ain’t no one else gonna ask you.”
Her eyes narrowed. “If you saw what I had between my legs you wouldn’t talk like that, whitey!” She turned her back on him and saw the pimp she was looking for. He was unmistakable. Tall. Black. Totally bald. White-suited. Fur-caped. Carrie had heard all about him on the island. His name was Whitejack, and he pimped for Mae Lee, the hottest black madam in Harlem.
Whitejack leaned against the side of a shiny new automobile, chewing on a long thin stogie. His attention had not been caught by any of
the girls. It was understandable because they were a sorry-looking bunch.
Carrie approached him with as much flash as she could muster. “S’cuse me, mister,” she said boldly, “I’m lookin’ for a ride.”
His eyes flicked over her. A lazy head-to-toe inspection. Twice over just in case he missed something the first time.
“You best look elsewhere, honey,” he drawled, totally disinterested.
“I just turned sweet sixteen last week.” She spoke quickly. “Sweet, black, hot an’ young, just the way those old ofays like ’em. I worked me a while at Florence Williams’s, I ain’t no amateur.”
“You ain’t no hot stuff neither.”
“How about a chance?” she wheedled, drawing her hands down her body. “Dressed up an’ fattened up you got a real winner. How ’bout givin’ me a try?”
“Me and Madam Mae are into class, little girl. Class. Go shake it elsewhere.”
She glared at him, the wheedling smile leaving her face in a flash. The hate she had learned on the island welled up inside her, and she wanted to strike out. But she didn’t. She shrugged, turned to go.
He stopped her with a hand on her arm. “You want a job as a maid?”
She shook his hand off and kept walking. A maid! That was a real laugh. There was no going back for Carrie.
“You!” He was coming after her now.
She stopped, and he moved alongside her. She sensed he was interested at last.
“You really work at Florence Williams’s place?”
“Check it out. Me, a girl called Billie, two white chicks….”
“Hmmm.” He blew a thin trickle of smoke in her face. “You wanna take a chance on Madam Mae likin’ you?”
She knew when to be bold. “You like me, then she’s gonna like me. Everyone knows that’s the way the story goes.”
He smiled. “So smart.”
She smiled back, although the smile never reached her eyes. “And so young.”
“Get in the car.”