Brooklyn 1975
By R Moeller
Chapter One
Big Mike just stood there listening to me. He didn’t say anything but since he never said much anyway, I just kept talking. He was leaning against a long white Cadillac and two girls who I didn’t know were sitting in the back of the car smoking a joint. The car was the cleanest thing on Coney Island Avenue, which was lined with decrepit shops and methadone clinics. Here and there, junkies loitered, clutching newspapers and waiting for their dealers to wheel by. Old ladies wobbled out of the bagel shops looking both ways like they were entering traffic. Mike was in his mid-thirties, he was already a made guy, but like I said, you wouldn’t know it from talking to him.
I knew Mike since I was a kid. And even though I’m still a kid that counted for something. That, and he knew my sister, Rainie. I think he dated one of her friends, a girl named Gina. This girl, Gina, was the most beautiful girl I had ever seen. She was perfect, except for her name, which was Gina Gina. That was a lot of Gina, even for a place like Brooklyn.
Anyway, I had this problem. My sister’s boyfriend, this guy named Melo, was hitting her. Not just an occasional smack, either. By the look of her face it was a regular thing. Melo didn’t use his words, he used his hands, which wasn’t all that surprising I guess. I tried to handle it myself but that didn’t work out. Actually, it was worse than that. My best friend Junior ended up getting pistol-whipped in the process. He wasn’t hurt badly, or anything, but then again, you had to know Junior to know that wasn’t something he’d forget. I suppose it was a stupid idea, trying to take care of it alone, without help. But what are you going to do? We should have known that Melo’s friends would be hanging around and that he might be packing a gun. What the hell, we all make mistakes, right?
This is what happened. One night, we saw Melo standing outside a bar. He was by himself, smoking a cigarette, and looking like he always did, which was not completely reassuring. The muscles on his arms were thickly veined from the hours he spent lifting weights in the basement of his apartment building. He was wearing tight, pressed jeans, a polo shirt and white sneakers. When he saw us, he said, “What are you little pricks doing over here?” You couldn’t tell if he was joking or not by the sound of his voice. It had the even tone of a truck passing. I mean, he was one of those guys that didn’t laugh much, and when he did; he ended up looking stupid because… Trust me, he just did.
When we got up close to him, Junior tried to say something but his voice quit and he just sputtered some curses in Melo’s direction. I took a deep breath and punched Melo in the face all the while saying who’d he think he was hitting my sister. If I thought about it I bet my voice cracked too. Everything after that was just a blur. A couple of guys came running out of the bar and pulled us off of him. One of Melo’s friends held Junior against a wall with one hand and kept hitting him with the other. I was able to pull away from some fat guy and ran down the street. When I looked back, Melo had a pistol raised and fired a shot that hit the mailbox I was standing next to. I couldn’t tell if he hit what he was aiming at or just missed me because he was a bad shot. Then he turned his attention to Junior. I started back, moving a few steps before coming to a complete stop. Fear or something hit my brakes. Maybe, it was even common sense, maybe a combination of both. Anyway. I just stood there and watched until on of the fat guys yelped and hobbled away from the scrum surrounding Junior. He’s just been kicked in the balls and the lull in the action allowed Junior to pull away and run across the street but not before turning and gesturing back at Melo and his crew with two raised middle fingers stabbing in their direction. “You wait, you motherfuckers, you know who I am?” He shouted. I thought Melo was going to shoot him but they all just laughed and went back in the bar.
Back at the schoolyard, I found Junior sitting on the steps. His eye was kind of swollen and he had a beer can wrapped in his shirt and was holding it against his face. The first thing he said to me was “We got to talk to Big Mike because unless we get some guns, which I’m doing anyway, we can’t take those guys.”
“You get me a beer?” I asked.
“Nah, I just got one for my face. I didn’t think like this was a party or something. The Korean woman at the deli looked at me like I was…” He didn’t finish the sentence.
Junior was my best friend. His real name was John and his last name was so filled with vowels that no one could pronounce it correctly. Everyone just called him Junior, even his mother. His last named looked like a drunken eye exam chart, like the letters were just dumped in the street or something and rearranged by the wind. I won’t even attempt to spell it. Like I said, we were best friends, even more than that, something like brothers or twins. Everybody in the neighborhood said the same thing. We even sort of looked alike. Though ask anybody, I was better looking by an inch or two.
And like just about everyone from around here, his family was fucked up. His brother, Bomber, was in jail on a drug charge and the rumor was that he just wasn’t selling them either. All Junior would say about it was that he’d straighten it out when his brother got out of jail. It wasn’t something that we dwelled on—lots of people were in jail-- like my father that stupid prick and a half. But I don’t want to get ahead of myself here.
Anyway, like I was saying, I was talking to Big Mike, and I go, “ We went down there and tried to settle it ourselves, me and Junior. Last week, Rainie came home and she had a black eye, not a full shiner, Mike, but pretty bad. I got really mad and told her I’d take care of it and she just looked at me. She’s my sister, right?” Now Mike was just looking at me. “You did the right thing.” Only in Brooklyn is doing the right thing the very thing that doesn’t work.
“So, what do you want me to do about it? Rainie is a good kid, this shit can’t continue, you know what I mean?” Mike goes.
One of the girls in the car must of heard Rainie’s name mentioned and she stuck her head out the window and joined the conversation. “Is that Rainie from Lincoln? I went to school with her, if it’s the same Rainie. Lorraine Deleo, right?”
I nodded. “Yeah.”
Big Mike gently put his hand on her head and pushed her back into the car. “Mind your own business.” He said. And then, kind of like an afterthought he bent over and kissed her. And then, he motioned to the other girl, and kissed her, too. Both girls laughed. I couldn’t believe what I just saw. Mike winked at me, like I understood, which, I didn’t. I mean I did but couldn’t picture shit like that even if I tried. You had to be careful or this shit would suck you right in. Look at this guy. Fucking amazing. The car, the girls, and the pull he had on the street. I even heard he was married and had some kids and a big house in Bay Ridge.
“I’ll take care of this, don’t worry.” Mike said. “Just stay away from those assholes until I do, you understand what I’m saying?” I nodded, not saying anything. “I can’t take care of it tonight, I’m busy, right.” Mike said. “I promised the girls I’d take them out. But this will stop. I’ll go down there soon and talk to Melo.”
“Thanks, Mike. I mean, I didn’t know who to talk to about this. It’s a real problem.”
“You did the right thing. Now, stay out of trouble and tell your crazy friend to do the same.”
That night we jumped Melo when I got home Rainie was sitting on the couch waiting for me. She was tall and skinny with thick black hair and she had a mouth on her that she was waiting to use on me. “Melo called,” she said, “He said you and Junior jumped him, jumped him for no reason.”
“No reason? Are you crazy? Look at your face. That’s no reason? He’s been hitting you, Lorraine.” I always used her real name when I was mad. “Why do you go out with that asshole like that? You could better by accident. And never mind that t
he stupid prick took a fucking shot at me and beat up Junior pretty good. Am I your brother or what?” I looked at her real seriously.
“Who I go out with is none of your business, you understand.” Her face was getting red and she looked like she was going to cry. “Just leave it alone, I can take care of myself. And besides, you don’t know him like I do. He’s not a bad guy.”
“Yeah,” I said. “That’s what it looks like. Looks like you’re really taking care of yourself. What’s next, you gonna bang your head against the wall or throw yourself in front of the D Train? Huh?”
She got up and went to her room, her ponytail shaking back and forth as she walked. If I were really mad, I would have followed her to the door of her room but knowing that Mike was going to take care of things, I didn’t need to chase her around. Instead, I went to my room and hopped out the window onto the fire escape with one of those Robert Ludlum novels, I forget which one, something about spies. While I was reading, I could hear her on the phone. It sounded like she was talking to one of her friends. I put the book down and crept to her window before sticking my head into her room and yelling something to scare her.
“Don’t do that, I could be naked, or something.” She said, pointing at me with the phone in her hand. She was smiling and I noticed how pretty she was and I was happy that Big Mike was going to take care of Melo for me.
A couple of nights later, two cars rolled up in front of the bar Melo hung out at. Five or six guys went in and Big Mike waited outside. Indian Joe, a big red-faced Irish guy was in there when it happened and when I ran into him the next day he told me about it. He said that one guy covered the back door and was holding a shotgun. The others went straight up to the table that Melo and his friends was sitting at and dragged Melo outside. His friends sat there, not lifting a finger. They knew the rules. If you touched a made guy you were as good as dead.
“What the fuck you doing hitting that girl for? What are you stupid? Are you fucking stupid or something?” Indian Joe said that Big Mike didn’t wait for an answer but instead just picked Melo up and threw him through the bar’s front window. When he landed, he tried to get up and run, but the guy with the shotgun kicked him in the face. “Answer the man.”
Flat on his back, it seemed, Melo didn’t have any answers, and so the man kicked him again.
Big Mike came into the bar and pointed at Melo’s foot. The guy with the shotgun shouldered it and fired a half-load of buckshot into Melo’s sneaker. He screamed and blood raced over the top of his sneaker like the ocean sometimes crashes over the rocks down at Brighton Beach. Someone told Melo to shut up and Big Mike asked one final question. “Anyone see this? Anyone see what happened here?” He looked at the bartender.
“Nope, nothing. Some guys came in, never saw them before.” The bartender said.
“Call an ambulance before this fucking douche bag that thinks hitting a girl I know is going to sit well with me bleeds to death.”
Big Mike pointed at one of the guys he was with and rubbed his fingers together. The guy, who was named Rocco, and he was the size of an apartment building, three stories at least, handed the bartender a thick wad of bills. “That’s for the window.” He growled. “Melo will pay us back. Right, Melo? You can’t go around breaking people’s windows.” Melo didn’t say anything but just sat watching the blood ruin his new sneakers.
Classic Asshole
The day of the prom, I was sitting in the park waiting for Junior. I was watching the gate, looking for him, looking for that familiar way he walked, which was kind of half-walking, half running. Instead, a horn beeped behind me and a car’s engine revved up followed by the sound of tires squealing. When I turned around, Junior was yelling at me. “Come on, I got a license.”
I went through a hole in the fence, careful not to step on any of the broken glass and walked up to the car.
“Where’d you get the car?” I asked.
“Forget the car, I got a license. One of my brother friends is making them. Twenty bucks. Looks just like a real one. I’m not shitting you, look at it.”
I took the license from him and sure enough, it did look real. “But what about the car?”
“I was walking through a parking lot, you know, the one behind the firehouse on Fourteenth St. The keys were in the ignition. What was I supposed to do? It was sitting there like a gift.”
“Well let’s change the plates before we go.” I said.
“I already did.” Junior said, comically folding his arms across his chest. “What do you think I am, stupid?” He looked seriously proud of himself.
We sat in the car and mixed an ounce of pot with the same amounts of catnip and oregano, saving enough pot to roll a big joint so that we’d have something to smoke on our way to the city. We figured we’d go to Washington Square Park and sell the weed to the hippies, or what was left of them. I took the cigarette lighter and pushed it into the dashboard.
“Take the Belt Parkway,” I said to Junior, “I like the water.”
The lighter popped out and I lit the joint. The weed was good, not harsh and smoky. I inhaled and passed the joint to him. He sucked the smoke in with a big grin on his face.
“We’ll make the money for the hotel in the city, plus, a bunch more. You got your suit ready?”
“Yeah,” I said, “And Rainie ironed a shirt for me, even though she’s still mad about Melo and his foot.”
“She’s still seeing that gimp? Junior asked, exploding in laughter. “If we see him, we better run or at least walk fast.”
“Very funny. You know he’s going to come back at us, right.” I said, not really worried about it at the moment. “I mean, that’s just the kind of guy he is.”
The Belt Parkway clung to the shore of Brooklyn, stretching along the shoreline like, well, a belt. The water was choppy and looked dirty. As we were driving, Junior pointed across the water and said, “I hate fucking Jersey.”
“You clown, that’s not Jersey, its Staten Island,”
“Well, I hate Staten Island, too, its all farms and crazy Italians who got their noses up in the air. Like they’re better or something.” he said, half-seriously.
“Have you ever been over there?” I asked.
“Been there a lot. You ever hear of the ferry? It’s a boat that goes back and forth.” Junior said.
“I heard of the ferry. We’ve been on it together. Remember those school trips, the Ferry, the Statue of Liberty, the Circle Line. Remember when we snuck into the Old Sailor’s home, you know, like the nursing home for the Merchant Marine and locked all those old geezers in the sauna?”
“Yeah, you put a broom through the latch on the door.”
Junior cackled. It was sort of an unpleasant laugh but it was something I’d gotten used to. “Those guys are probably still in there cooking like turkeys.
Anyway, we talked about taking the tunnel into the city but decided the bridge would be more fun. It was a beautiful day and we had all the windows open. The traffic wasn’t that bad and we sat there not saying anything but just enjoying the view. Maybe, the pot was kicking in. Lower Manhattan loomed up under the bridge like some fake city painted on a backdrop. The thing I liked best about it was how quiet it looked, quiet and empty. But that was just an illusion. When we bumped down the ramp off the bridge we were engulfed by noise. Even the ground underneath us rumbled as the trains passed below us.
The city was crowded, more crowded than Brooklyn. Beat-up taxis careened through traffic like they were being chased and people crossed the streets in herds. We drove up into the Village and found a parking space right outside the park. Washington Square was filled, as usual. The hippies sat around in bedraggled groups, surrounded by sleeping bags and guitars. One older hippie was singing a Neil Young song, patting the beat out with his hands moving over an imaginary drum. I smiled at Junior and he shook his head.
“These people ever take a bath. Even wash up, maybe?’
“Relax, they’re harmless. And besides, they’re ou
r customers, remember.”
Since I had one of those honest faces and Junior didn’t, I approached the hippies, quietly making the pitch. “Nickels and Dimes.” I said. “Nickels and Dimes.”
One of the hippies put a ten-dollar bill between his toes and said, “We’ll take a bag.” His feet were filthy and he was smiling.
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