“I make thirty dollars a day, sometimes forty on a Saturday,” he had told Johnny when he was recruiting him to be his understudy. Johnny had forgotten to ask how much he was going to make. And that wasn’t Mikey’s only job. In the wintertime, he worked at Schuler’s cleaners on Lex, just a few stores up from Jimmy’s, delivering dry-cleaning.
Johnny started to protest but gave up. When Mikey had an idea, he was so positive and enthusiastic there was no talking him out of it, so why try?
“So what’s the new job?” Johnny asked, his eyes still half closed. Mikey leaned against the fire escape and folded his legs up so that his knees were at the same height as his shoulders. He was dressed in nothing but his Fruit of the Looms. He never wore an undershirt.
“We’re gonna be ushers at church.”
“What? Us? Ushers? That’s a job for rich old men. They’d never hire us. Besides, I’ve had enough of church to last me a lifetime.”
His response didn’t even cause Mikey to pause. “We’re all set. I’ve already talked to Tom. We’ve got the job.” That was Mikey. Tom Roney was a funeral director who had buried almost every prominent New Yorker who’d ever lived. He supervised the ushers as a public service. Somehow he was “Tom” to Mikey. “Pays eight bucks a Mass. Four Masses a week. And we don’t have to hang around for the whole show. We just have to seat people, take their money halfway through and usher ’em out at the end. You get it? That’s why they call us ushers.”
“How’d you line this up?”
“I ran into Tom last week after church. He told me he was looking for a couple of ushers. Asked me if I knew anybody. I scoped it out a little more as to time and money, then I told him you and I would take the job.
“Why’d ya do that without talkin’ to me?”
“Hey, it might not be there tomorrow. Ya gotta strike while the iron is hot. You can always back out.” He paused for a moment like Johnny knew he would. “But you won’t wanna. This is easy work. Easy money.” Johnny just nodded. Like it was going to be real easy staying out all Saturday night and getting up at the crack of dawn on Sunday. He didn’t say anything, just smiled to himself. He knew it would be fun. Everything he did with Mikey was fun.
They started the next week, eight o’clock Mass, and they actually made it on time: black suits, black ties, black shoes, white shirts. Very white faces, at least for Johnny. He’d puked before leaving the house that morning. He was sixteen now, Mikey was seventeen, and they’d started drinking—courage for the Saturday night dance. Maybe they could meet a girl. Maybe they could “make out,” although Johnny would have been happy just to get to the meeting stage. You needed courage to do that. At least he did. Mikey just liked to drink. “Courage” was a couple of half quarts of Colt 45 Malt Liquor. Malt liquor got you buzzed quicker than the regular stuff but it also made you a whole lot sicker. Johnny spent his first day on the job seating people, puking; taking the collection, puking; ushering people out at the end of Mass, puking. So far this job was working out as expected.
Father Charles Burke was the pastor of St. Francis parish, a big Irishman with a warm heart and a predisposition for good scotch. He too was one of Mikey’s fans. In fact, he gave Mikey his nickname after nine o’clock Mass one Sunday. Johnny had just finished escorting Mikey’s mother down the church steps because Mikey was incapacitated at the time. It was his turn to “hug the bowl,” as they endearingly called it.
“Good morning, Mary,” Father Burke sang in his best Irish brogue. (He was born on Jerome Avenue in the Bronx.) “And where’s the Mayor of Lexington Avenue?” He looked at Johnny, who didn’t have a clue what he was talking about.
“Who?” Mary Kelly asked.
“Young Michael. The Mayor of Lexington Avenue.” He repeated the title as if they both should have recognized it as a matter of course.
“And why do you call him that, Father?” she asked. They were standing on the sidewalk in front of the church. It was a beautiful, sunny Sunday morning but Mary Kelly, the mother of three boys, was sure a very dark rain cloud was about to pass over her head. “The Mayor of Lexington Avenue” was a prelude to something bad, she was sure.
“Well, Mary,” Father Burke replied, “the boy serves Mass for these people. He ushers them in and out of church on Sunday. He delivers their dry-cleaning and shines their shoes—all with that smile of his. He knows everybody and everybody knows him. He’s more popular than me and I’ve got God and the pulpit on my side.”
“Why thank you, Father,” Mary replied, wondering where this was going. She found out soon enough.
“He’s seventeen now, Mary. Has he ever thought of the priesthood? He’d make an excellent priest. Perhaps you should mention it to him.” Johnny wanted to crawl under the car that he was leaning on at the time. He had no idea why Father Burke broached the subject while he was there. He just hoped he wasn’t next. His mother was already thinking that way. Just one word from Father Burke and they’d be packing him up and shipping him off to the seminary. He hadn’t even gotten laid yet. He stared straight down at the sidewalk and waited for Mrs. Kelly to give up her youngest son, his best friend. “Better him than me” was the thought that whizzed through his brain.
Mary Kelly was not about to deliver Mikey to the priesthood, that morning or ever. She understood how people could see Mikey as some sort of angelic person: the red hair, the freckles, the smile—that smile. He had a little space between his two front teeth that made it even more enchanting. Not to say it wasn’t genuine. Mikey had a zest for life and an affection for people that was unique. But he was no angel. Neither was this tall, pimple-faced sixteen-year-old next to her—his partner in crime. They were all boy and they were heading in many directions at once but none of those roads led to the priesthood—Mary Kelly was sure of that!
“Thank you for suggesting that, Father. I’ll certainly talk to Michael and my husband about it.” Father Burke smiled back but he could tell far better than Johnny that she was not interested.
Johnny couldn’t wait to tell Mikey about the conversation. He found him in the bathroom, the one on the second floor that nobody else used.
“You can’t have anybody come in while you’re puking,” Mikey had told him that very first morning when they were searching for a place for Johnny to spill his guts.
Mikey was leaning over the bowl but he appeared to be done. He might have had a few more dry heaves in him but nothing more of substance was coming out.
“Something real bad just happened,” Johnny said. Mikey was in no mood for games. The headache was on him now and he was hanging on for dear life.
“Whaat?”
“Father Burke just told your mother you’d make a good priest. He asked her to talk to you and she said she would—with your dad.” Mikey, in all his pain, ventured a weak laugh, although he didn’t move from the bowl. He wasn’t laughing so much at what Johnny said but the way he said it. As if his parents were going to stuff him in a bag and deliver him to Father Burke.
“What’s so funny?” Johnny asked, a little angry that Mikey wasn’t as upset as himself.
“My mother was just being polite to Father Burke. She’s not going to talk to me and neither is my father. It’s nothin’.” Johnny was a little disappointed at Mikey’s reaction, so he gave him the other piece of news.
“He called you the Mayor of Lexington Avenue.”
“Who?”
“Father Burke. He said you knew more people than he did and he had the pulpit.” Mikey just smiled.
“I like it,” Mikey said. “It’s a perfect nickname for you.”
“Me? He didn’t say it about me, he said it about you.”
“Who cares what he said? You’re the Mayor of Lexington Avenue. You know as many people as me. Besides, a mayor’s got to be smart and he’s got to know how to run things. That’s you, Johnny, not me. People look up to you. They know you got something that the rest of us don’t have.”
“Really?” Johnny asked. “Me?”
; “Yup. That’s why the Mayor of Lexington Avenue is so perfect for you. I’m going to make a prediction, Johnny. Someday, you’re going to do something great—like the things a mayor does. I’m not sure what it is or even if it’s one thing but it’ll be about me and you. And when it’s over—because you’ll finish it, whatever it is, you finish everything you start—I want you to remember this day and what I told you.”
“Come on, Mikey. You’re scaring me with this vision voodoo shit. Why don’t we just forget about what Father Burke said?”
“No. Now tell me you’ll remember.”
“C’mon, cut it out.”
“Tell me, Johnny.”
“All right, I’ll remember. I promise.”
“Good. Now, if Father Burke knew the other half of the people we know, he’d have another name for the both of us.”
The “other half” were the people in the neighborhood Father Burke would never meet. Jimmy the Shoemaker’s was a great place to meet those people. So were the streets between two and six in the morning when your parents thought you were sleeping.
Jimmy the Shoemaker was actually a shoe repairman. The neighborhood bestowed the title of “Shoemaker” on him because he was so adept at his craft. Nicknames—they were everywhere. On Saturdays, however, Jimmy did double duty, plying another trade at which he would never excel. Jimmy Donatello liked to gamble about as much as he liked to breathe and, although he worked hard and was an excellent shoe repairman, he tried not to let work interfere with his gambling, especially on Saturday.
The front part of the store, although it contained the one big noisy machine Jimmy needed to do his repairs, was rather small. Mikey worked the shoeshine booth, which was elevated and had two chairs each equipped with “golden stirrups” where customers set their feet for the shine. Mikey always positioned their feet just right before he began his work.
“The worst thing that can happen,” he told his young protégé Johnny, “is one of their feet fall off the stirrup. So set it in there good. Lock the heel in place.”
All the action happened in the back room, which was larger than the front. It started at eight in the morning when Jimmy opened up. Artie was the first to arrive. Artie was like clockwork. He was usually there before the boys and sometimes before Jimmy. Being the low man on the totem pole, Johnny’s first job on Saturday morning was to go up the block to Pete’s restaurant for coffee and cigarettes. He loved those early weekend mornings when the city was just waking up and the streets were empty except for the shopkeepers working like busy little ants, setting up for the day. There was something so clean and crisp and serene about it all. Pete would start to prepare the containers of coffee as soon as he walked in the door. There was no need to speak. The orders were the same every Saturday—Jimmy was milk and one sugar, Artie was black, no sugar, and the boys were regular (milk and two sugars).
By the time he returned to the store, the first game of blackjack had already begun. The front door had a little bell so Jimmy in the back room could hear a customer entering. He had a great knack for leaving a game, waiting on a customer, and jumping right in where he left off. On Saturdays, however, he had the added luxury of Mikey, who had worked at the store for years. He not only knew how to use the machines and repair shoes, he knew the customers. Jimmy took great pride in knowing a customer’s shoes without ever looking at a ticket. By watching closely, Mikey had acquired the same talent. He practically ran the store on Saturdays and while he was busy taking care of customers, Johnny would shine shoes. The boys lived for Saturdays.
Vito showed up with Carmine at ten and the craps game began. The back room was full by then, which meant there were ten guys back there at most. Smoke so thick you couldn’t see yourself, and dark except for a few lights in the corners where the games were being played—a real den of iniquity. Everybody talked at once and money passed from one hand to the next with words like, “I got twenty on this one” or “I got you covered.” On the rare occasions they were allowed to go in the back, the boys were mesmerized by the show.
Vito was their favorite. Vito was cool. He was always impeccably dressed and he always stopped for a shine before going in the back. It wasn’t just that he gave a big tip, although that helped. Vito actually noticed them, spent some time with them, showed an interest in their lives. To everybody else they were just kids, although that changed when Mikey spread the word that Johnny was “the Mayor of Lexington Avenue.” After that, everybody wanted to get a shine from “Hizzoner.” Johnny didn’t like it at first. He felt like a fraud since Father Burke had pinned the name on Mikey, but he started feeling better about it when his pockets were bulging with dollar bills.
“You boys pokin’ any of them high school girls yet?” Vito would ask every week.
“Yeah. Three this week,” Mikey would reply. Sometimes he’d change the number. It didn’t matter. Vito knew he was lying.
“Listen to old Vito,” he would say—he was about thirty-five at the time. “You gotta treat them nice. Treat them with respect and they’ll be all over you. You gotta dress nice too. They don’t wanna go out with no bums.” Then he’d laugh and the boys would laugh with him and he’d prance into the back room. Vito was a dandy in his silk shirts and sharkskin pants but the boys knew he was not a person to mess with.
At one or thereabouts, Frank would arrive. He never came alone and he never entered the store until Jimmy came out and invited him in. Guys were running out of money by one o’clock, and Frank was there to replenish their pockets.
Frank was a loan shark and his arrival always caused a stir. When Jimmy went out to get him, some guys would disappear, quickly walking out the front door, their shoulders hunched, their hats down over their foreheads. They never acknowledged Frank and he never acknowledged them.
“Frank’s a gentleman,” Jimmy told the boys one day after everyone had left. “He never tries to collect when he’s at my store.” Apparently the guys who disappeared every week when Frank arrived didn’t know about that part of the arrangement.
Gambling was only part of the program at the shoe store. Jimmy’s nephew Tony worked around the block at Doc Feeney’s animal hospital. Doc was a regular shine but only on weekday afternoons, never weekends. He always sat in the same chair, put his already-shined-the-day-before loafers on the golden stirrups and philosophized about life. Two things were constant with Doc: He was always drunk, although most folks couldn’t tell, and he included everyone in the conversation.
“What are you kids smoking for?” he challenged Mikey and Johnny one afternoon, a cigarette dangling from his jaundiced fingers. Doc had the knack of hanging an ash on his cigarette forever. He wouldn’t flick the ash off and he wouldn’t allow it to drop of its own accord.
“’Cause we like it,” Mikey replied. Mikey was respectful but never deferential to adults.
“Yeah. But it’ll kill you. If I knew then what I know now, I never woulda started.”
“Why don’t you quit?” Mikey asked.
“Can’t. Besides, I like it too much. If I’m gonna go, why not go from something I like?”
Jimmy piped in then. “Hey, ya go when your time’s up. There was a guy in this neighborhood, you know, a rich guy from Park Avenue, rich like you, Doc.” They all laughed at Doc, who was from Westchester. “I used to do his shoes. This guy ran every day—over to the park, around the reservoir. Never smoked, never drank. Every time he came in here he was drinking orange juice. Dropped dead on the street at thirty-five years old. When your time comes, it comes.”
“When my time comes, I want to be pickled,” Doc replied. Johnny and Mikey looked at each other. That was one wish they knew was going to come true.
Carl worked for Doc. He’d been at the animal hospital for twenty years and like Doc, Carl was always drunk. The difference was that Carl actually looked drunk. He was black and Doc made him wear a blue uniform, probably so people would think he was the janitor or something. His pants were always hanging down below the crack, which yo
u couldn’t see because his shirt was always hanging out over his pants. Carl only had a few teeth and they were a cross between yellow-green and dark brown. His cigarette, a Lucky Strike, was always dangling from his lips about to fall every time he opened his mouth, which was constantly. For the first year they knew him, the boys never understood a word Carl said, partly because of the way he talked and partly because of his constant state of inebriation. Eventually, they picked up the language, just like people living in a foreign country start understanding what people around them are saying. Osmosis maybe. Whatever. When they finally started to understand, the boys found Carl to be quite funny.
Doc was funny too in his own sardonic way, but Doc was an aristocrat—perfectly manicured, perfect white teeth, richly dressed. The thought that the two worked closely together was hysterical.
It wasn’t until Jimmy’s nephew Tony started working at the animal hospital that the boys—and Jimmy—learned just how close Carl and the Doc were.
“Carl does everything, including the surgeries,” Tony told them. “The Doc and Carl make the diagnosis together, then Doc goes and meets the people in his office. They never see Carl. He comes to work through the back door.”
“No kiddin’?” Jimmy asked. He was as surprised as the boys.
“Yeah,” Tony replied. “I’m his assistant and I don’t know nothin’. Carl gives ’em the anesthesia and cuts ’em open, jawin’ all the time about who knows what. If those people from Park Avenue ever found out about who was operating on their animals, we’d all be in jail.”
“Well, I’ll be,” Jimmy murmured. “Old Doc’s got more balls than I thought. I don’t think Carl ever got past the third grade.”
Mikey was right, Father Burke didn’t know the half of it.
Fifteen
Joaquin Sanchez bought a boat with a trailer the day he retired from the Miami police department. It was a used twenty-six-foot outboard whaler with one seat and a small canvas canopy. Joaquin didn’t want or need any company. Like Rudy, Joaquin enjoyed nothing better in life than to be on the water by himself—observing, feeling, being a part of nature. Catching fish was secondary. Joaquin had a fish camp just outside of Indiantown on a small tributary that fed into Lake Okeechobee. When he wanted to fish for grouper or mahi, he trailered his boat from his home in Homestead to the Keys. It was a solitary life but one he enjoyed totally.
The Mayor of Lexington Avenue Page 9