Excerpt
CHAPTER 1
A Hundred Friends
The sun was rising in the cloudless pale blue sky. I stopped for a moment in front of my house; I thought about climbing into the bathroom window over the back porch, I really didn’t want Mom seeing me like this. And I definitely don’t want to explain to her how I escaped a mob hit squad. Or why. I decided to keep going and hang out at the Raven until I have a good story to tell her. Besides, the way my sides are hurting I don’t think I can climb onto the back porch. I probed my left side gently, it hurts like hell but I don’t think my ribs are broken. I ran my tongue around my teeth and found the hole in the back on the right where my tooth used to be. Those guys tossed me a pretty good beat down. The Raven Social Club is locked up tight. Even the back door in the first floor hall way of the three-family house is pad locked. I slid down the cement wall of the Old Lady house on the corner across the street from the Raven. It’s our usual hang out across from the deli, when we’re not in The Raven shooting pool and drinking. Sitting on the sidewalk with my back against the wall felt good. I was slowly picking pieces from the French roll I took from the bread bag in front of the deli. I didn’t realize it until I popped that first piece of bread into my mouth how hungry I was. I haven’t eaten since yesterday afternoon. I get like that in the summer, especially when it’s hot. And even though it was only the first week of June, the temperature was in the nineties and that is unusually hot for New York. I closed my eyes and let the sunshine melt the pain away. I cleared my head of any thoughts. There was nothing but the red glow of the inside of my eyelids.
Blackness momentarily interrupted the warm red glow in my head. My eyes popped open and I instinctively sprang to my feet reaching around my back for my 007 switch blade. “You’re one jumpy jungle bunny,” said Nicky Rocci. “But I guess you would be from the looks of you. Black eye, swollen jaw, some nasty black and blues . . . Well blues on your sides,” he said holding my leather jacket open. “You look like you had a rough night too, you whop cocksucker,” I replied sliding back down to the sidewalk. “Who worked over your face Nails?” I call him Nails partly because his family was in the construction business and he likes to tell everyone that he can chew nails and spit bullets. He was sporting a black eye, busted lip, and his nose looked like it had been moved around on his face a bit. “My Dad wasn’t too happy about the job we pulled on the Deli Man. Let me get a piece of that bread.” “Get your own,” I said. “And while you’re over there grab a couple of quarts. I know the Deli Man won’t mind.” Nicky Nails went into the alley that leads to the back of the deli and came out with two quarts of Budweiser. He reached into the big brown bread bag and pulled out an Italian loaf. As he cross the street I noticed a slight limp, he probably got stomped on too. “So why did you tell him about the Deli Man? I thought we all agreed to keep our mouth shut. Not matter what!” “I didn’t tell him anything. It seems the Deli Man is more connected than we thought.” “Not we thought,” I corrected, “you thought. You said he was a small time numbers guy. Easy pickings.” “Well MoJo,” Nicky sat down besides me. He called me MoJo, short for Morris Johnson and after the lyrics in the Doors song, ‘L. A. Woman’. I love that song. I play it all the time. “Not only is he more mobbed up than I thought; he was paying my family to keep his bank here. Naturally when we hit him, he complained to my father about not protecting his money. My dad asked me what I knew.” “And you bitched up!” “Does it look like I talked?” I took a long deep swig of cold beer. Nicky continue, “We saw Deli Man’s guys grab you. I guess you kept quiet too.” “Of course I did. I wouldn’t be here if I didn’t. He was going to keep on beating me until I gave him the answer he wanted. That’s when he found out about me and Elizabeth, and went fucking ape shit.” Nicky shook his head, “I told you, fucking his daughter was a bad, bad idea. She talked didn’t she?”
“No.” I paused for a moment. My mind jumped back to Deli Man kitchen, “Elizabeth was in the hall crying. Deli Man looked at her, said something in Italian, which I didn’t understand. Her mother dragged her off down the hall. I thought he told her to get Elizabeth out of there. But a few minutes later her mother yelled ‘mignotta’, which I did understand, ‘whore’. She must have given her the old Virgin Finger Test. Deli Man forgot all about his money, and told his men to kill me.” “Yeah, well I told you, if you fuck his daughter he would kill you.” “Yeah, but at least he stopped beating on me.” “Wait a second,” Nicky had a surprised look on his face. “If he told his guys to kill you, how are you here?” I was about to answer when a black Ford Fury jumped the curb and screeched to a stop, its bumper inches from our faces. Detects. We knew who it was, Fitzpatrick and Mancotti, or Batman and Robin as we called them. They grabbed us by the shirt, well me by my leather jacket since I wasn’t wearing a shirt, and shoved us into the back of the car. No one said a word, not the two cops, not Nicky, and definitely not me. They drove a couple of blocks up to East Tremont and then down a little side street that dead end at the train tracks. It was a secluded place where junkies would go to shoot up or other deeds that one wouldn’t do in public. They got out the car and walked back up the street a bit, leaving Nicky and me locked in the back. Nicky and I looked at each other; we knew we were both thinking the same thing. This was either an open mike trick, or we were being setup for a hit. I was leaning more to the former, the open mike ploy. It’s an old cop trick to leave a couple of suspect in a room with a hidden microphone or tape recorder and wait for the people to turn on each other. It works just as well in the back of a police car, but Nicky and I weren’t going to fall for that. We sat there in absolute silence. If they were going to turn us over to the mob it would have been just as easy to do, it was really early in the morning and no one seen us get picked up. But then they would have been there waiting for us. In my mind this was the open mike bullshit, all we had to do is sit there and be quiet. They would get bored and cut us loose. Fifteen or twenty minutes passed and the two detectives got back in the car. We smiled at them. We weren’t some scared little school boys afraid they were going tell our mommies on us. Nicky said, “If you are finish playing games, you can drop us off back on the corner, our beers are going flat.”
“Shut the fuck up!” yelled Mancotti. “You boys will be lucky if you see the light of day again.” The car ripped up the street in reverse and spun around in the intersection. They flipped on the siren and sped down East Tremont Avenue, catching the attention of the few people waiting at the bus stop. There were some people on their way to work this early Saturday morning. We raced through the street until we got to the police station. We were marched upstairs, not in handcuffs mind you, and to individual cells. They pushed us in and slammed the doors shut behind us. It was dark and stank of urine and shit. There was a long narrow metal bench opposite the door. I lay on my back; I was finally going to get some sleep. I laid there looking up at the ceiling in the dark. This had been one long fucked up day, I thought. Hell it’s been one long fucked up month. It had been one month since Nicky told us his plan for robbing the Deli Man. May 2nd to be exact. It was the first really nice day in spring, so naturally we all ditched school and was going to hang out at my house. Maria, Bonnie, and Betty walked in and went into my room. “Your mom gone to work, right?” asked Maria. I grabbed her by the waist and pulled her down on me, “of course. And she thinks I left for school already.” I kissed her. Her long black hair draped down over my face. “Get in,” I commanded. “Oh no,” objected Bonnie, “you get up and come down stair. We want to have some fun. And we have to call everybody school and report them absence for the day.” She grabbed Maria’s arm and pulled her from the bed. Maria pulled away and gave me another kiss, her blue eyes darting wildly over my body. “No, no, no, there will be none of that.” And Bonnie dragged her from my bedroom. I came down to the living room about five minutes later. Maria was just ending her call with Fr. Robinson, my Dean of Discipline, “OK Father, you have a good day. Yes I will. I have to go now or I’ll be late for work. Good Bye.” She smiled at me standing in nothing but cut off shorts. “Nice legs.” “Your man’s a track star baby.” I struck a running pose. “Fr. Robinson sounded a bit annoyed. I don’t think he believes you’re sick,” she said scolding me. “How many days have you missed young man?” “I don’t miss any of them,” I laughed. “Give me the phone I’ll call Aquinas for you.” “Betty will call Aquinas for her and St. Catharine for me, thank you very much. You can go finish getting dress. You need to cover up that stick figure you call a body.”
“I’m agile, lean, and a real power pumping sex machine. Go ahead you can tell them baby.” “I don’t know anything about that,” Maria had her arms wrapped around my waist and I was trying to slide my knee between hers. “Quiet fools,” Betty ordered, “it’s ringing!” “Ah, Yes, is this Sister Thomas . . . This is Maria Marino mother. She is having a bad day this morning. No it’s nothing serious, just the start of her time.” “That’s a croc,” I blurt out loudly. I dash to the kitchen and grab the other phone. “That’s what wrong with you women today. You cry about God’s natural ways, with your pills and feminist products . . .” “Shut the hell up you old fool,” Betty yells into the phone. “I’m so sorry Sister, that’s her senile drunkard idiot grandfather on the other phone.” The girls get the message and rush to the kitchen. I’m fighting off laughter, Bonnie, and Maria with the phone held above my head. “Who’s gonna make me breakfast. Forget that, get my vino!” I yell just before Bonnie slaps down the receiver holder and cuts off the line. “So sorry Sister I got to go.” Betty hangs up abruptly. She joins the other girls in the kitchen punching and slapping me. “You are such an idiot! Maria, take him upstairs and keep him out of trouble. Bonnie you go with them and keep her out of trouble. I’ll get you when it’s your turn to call.” Dino, the Greek, Sweet Jesus, we pronounce it like you say when your excited, and Frank walk in to see the girls piled on Morris. From the way the girls are covering him they think he’s naked. “All right it’s going to be one of those parties,” Sweet Jesus shouts as he quickly pulls his shirt above his head. Betty turns to see Jesus with his shirt half off, “great the other morons are here. Can we just get through making the calls?” Nicky busted into the kitchen, “good youse guys are here. I got a plan that you got to hear, let’s go downstairs. Sorry girls it’s boys only.” “Good, get out of here,” Betty tells him, “we got real business here.” Nicky like to talk business in my basement because of the foot thick stone walls and shuttered windows. No way for the cops to eaves drops on us. I think he’s overly paranoid, he says the cops are always listening. “OK guys, I was hanging out on the corner the other day and for two hours I saw a couple of guys go into the deli and leave in a minute or two. I recognized two of them; they were numbers guys for the Bananas.” The Bananas was what Nicky called the Banoa family, a mob family whose territory was north of Tremont Ave. “Deli Man is running a drop in my neighborhood! Can you believe that?” He was looking at us across the pool table like he was expected us to be as outraged as he was. We weren’t. After a couple of seconds he continued, “I watched the coming and goings for the next couple of days . . .” “You haven’t been to school at all this week?” I asked. I immediately knew it was a stupid question. “Yeah, it’s been really nice this week. And besides what do I need school for? I’m going to work my father construction business.” “It might be good if you knew how to add and subtract, or the difference between area and perimeter, or anything useful for the business.” “Yeah that’s for youse guy. My job will be making sure I get my cut or I bust somebody head. Let’s get back to the business at hand. Deli Man leaves around 3 when Elizabeth gets there. The bag men make their drops and then the Deli Man comes back about 5. For about a half-hour or so Elizabeth is there all by herself with the money. Guys we are going to rob the deli before the Deli Man gets back.” Sweet Jesus was the first to object, “You want us to rob Elizabeth. You do realize she knows all of us.” “I’m not talking about pulling a gun on her or anything like that. That’s for amateurs, I’m a profession. First of all, the five bag men go straight to the back stock room, she probably don’t even know what they are doing there. We are going to sneak in, find the hiding place, and take it without her even knowing we are there.” “And how do you plan to do that?” asked Frank. Frank was six one and redheaded, not quite the sneaky type. “Well, Deli Man leaves his daughter there because he figures the cops won’t bust it when she there. His first mistake, Elizabeth has the hots for our friend here MoJo. And she has it bad.” “Jungle fever is easy to catch and incurable,” I said. “That’s why I excluded the girls, we need you to work your black magic on that dizzy little blonde and keep her busy while Sweet Jesus steals the cash.” “That’s HEY-ZEUS you blasphemous bastard. And what are you gonna be doing while me and Morris are taking chances stealing mob money?” Nicky laid out the rest of the plan. “I’ll be covering you so you can get into the back room without being seen. Dino and Frank will be lookouts and warn us if Deli Man comes back.” I thought about a saying we had, ‘You have a hundred friends who can get you into prison, but not one that has a plan to get you out.’ Then there is Nicky, his plans could get you killed. This was one of those plans. As Nicky saw it, Elizabeth was our insurance that no one suspected us of the robbery. She will be able to swear that I was no where near the back room and Nicky while boosting beers will also be cleared. It was risky, but it seemed like and easy in and out job. It’s like when we go shoplifting, all the store detects follow Betty and me around the stores, while the others cleans up. And if we really want a big score, we go to the jewelry counter. While Betty tries on some cheap items, Maria and Bonnie tries on more expensive things and pockets them. The more upscale the stores, the easier it is to work them. While Betty is black, well more like a cinnamon chocolate, beautiful long obsidian black hair down to her back from her Indian heritage, she is still black. We agreed the plan is a good one, but stealing from the mob is asking for a bullet in the head. According to Nicky, Deli Man is small potatoes, probably not even connected to the Banana family. Nicky sure he is running a rogue operation; he thinks they are probably skimming money from the Bananas. And if that’s true, the job is probably good for a couple of thousand and they won’t be able to tell anyone about the loss. We plan to make a go of it next Friday, that’s the heaviest gambling day. The boys joins the girls in the living room, Frank had brought in five quarts of Budweiser, and now they crack the caps. Morris takes his to the window and pours a bit out. “To the brothers down below.” “Why do you always do that?” asked Frank. “Respect,” I walk back to the couch and Sweet Jesus pulls out a baggie full of weed. I go to work rolling joints and tossing them to the guys. In about two minutes I rolled five fatties, Maria, who has been sitting on my right leg the whole time, sticks the last one in my mouth and lights it up. I take a big deep toke and hold it in. “Let it out,” Maria tells me. When I finally exhale a thick cloud of smoke straight up, she says, “Give me a shotgun.” I oblige flipping the joint backwards in my mouth so only the tip is visible. I inhale deeply through my nose and blow a steady long stream of thick white smoke up her nose. As she starts to exhale, I pinch her nose shut and cup her mouth. After a couple more seconds, she shakes her head and I release her. She lets out a huge cloud and a little cough. “Stupid, you’re choking me.” “Now that how you smoke reefer . . . like a man.” I take a swig and another toke. Before I can exhale, she locks her lips to mine. After a few seconds, I manage to break away coughing out smoke. We break out in
laughter, hugging and kissing our eyes red and tearing. We get a rush. ‘Brown Sugar’ blares out of the speakers as one of the girls put on my new Sticky Finger album. The party was just getting under way. Nicky was going around the room holding up a little red capsule for either an open mouth or a beer bottle. I offered up the beer bottle and he drops in the barbiturate. Maria and I sip on the downer laced beer as we stretch out on the couch entwine in each other arms and legs. By the time ‘Can’t You Hear Me Knocking’ pumps through the air, time is slowing down for us.