by Tim Sultan
It was getting dark but we kept the lights off so as not to be interrupted by a curious passerby. We drank to many things. We drank to Patrolman Louis Balzano—Uncle Gigch—who had always been telling Sunny to take care on the water and who, I now learned, had drowned on duty, like Ken Hansen, when a pier collapsed beneath him on a spring night in 1950. We drank to Paul Cézanne, whose still lifes had turned out to be life-affirming in a way wholly unexpected, and we drank to ourselves and to the day and to this moment we were having. Sunny was unmistakably pleased by all that had taken place.
“Thank goodness we capsized, Timmy. It would have been mundane if we hadn’t tipped over. And thank goodness we’re still here to remember all these things!”
* * *
15
Ivory-Billed Woodpeckers
That same winter, a strange and baroque article appeared in the local news section of the Sunday newspaper about a man named Joseph Conigliaro who, despite having been shot five times in the face and chest in Red Hook, had driven himself to a hospital only to die on his way into surgery. The story described Conigliaro as an associate of the Gambino crime family who had been in a wheelchair since 1973 after a debt collection went very badly. Conigliaro and a confederate, James Gallo, had spotted a man named Vincent Ensulo, who owed Conigliaro $1600, at a gas station in Red Hook. Seizing the moment, the two men jumped in Ensulo’s car, sandwiching him between them, and drove off, each pointing a gun at him. After several blocks, Ensulo took both his destiny and the steering wheel into his hands, and the men opened fire, somehow each missing Ensulo, but not each other. The two went to prison for some years and not too long after they were released they were in trouble again, accused this time of running a loan-sharking business out of a place called John’s Luncheonette, described by a district attorney as “a nest of criminal activity on the Brooklyn waterfront.”
John’s Luncheonette. There was only one business in Red Hook that I knew to be called John’s and that was Sunny’s. The now-forgotten official name of the bar for decades had been John’s Bar and Restaurant. “Bar and Restaurant” was not the same as “Luncheonette” and I figured it was probably a coincidence, that the article was referring to some other place named John’s that no longer existed. But still—it was a small neighborhood and I did not really know all that much about the day-to-day operations of the bar in the decades prior to when Sunny began running it. What I did know was that in the past there had not just been nests, but entire colonies of criminal activity on the waterfront.
The following Friday, while there was a lull and we stood behind the bar, I said casually, “Sunny, I read a story in the paper this week about a mob guy named Conigliaro in the neighborhood who was shot while sitting in his car here. Even though he got hit a bunch of times, he was still able to drive himself to a hospital before dying.”
“Oh?”
“Yeah. It was quite a strange story. But anyway, the article also said that years ago he used to run a loan-sharking business out of a place called John’s in Red Hook. You ever heard of him?”
Sunny did not immediately reply and I thought that I may have crossed a line, a boundary of propriety. Sometimes mentioning the mob to Italian-Americans can have the same effect as mentioning Bill Buckner to a Red Sox fan. They would rather not be reminded. After a moment, and several squinty-eyed draws on his cigarette, he merely said, “Timmy, as much as I’d like to give buoyancy to your imagination, no, I never heard of him.”
Buoyancy to my imagination. One of our regulars liked to call Sunny “the philosopher king,” but I was beginning to think of him as a poet king.
I would later learn that there had indeed been another John’s in Red Hook and that Conigliaro had nothing to do with our bar—at least in recent decades—and that was a very good thing. He sounded like a particularly nasty man. Being a paraplegic did not discourage him from doing the dirtiest jobs. At one point, he was said to have invited a drug dealer to the social club he ran in nearby Carroll Gardens—delightfully named the One Over Golf Club—locked the door behind him, wheeled over to the man, and shot him in the head before his colleagues stuffed sawdust in the victim’s mouth to finish him off.
Conigliaro had been better known as Joe Pits, though whether this referred to a love of olives or cherries or to his attitude about life I never found out. His killer chose to shoot him on that particular January day because Joe Pits had left the German shepherd that usually accompanied him everywhere at home that afternoon. On his way to the hospital, Joe Pits, mortally wounded, took a detour to pick up a friend, unaware that this was the same man who had ordered his hit and who had loaded his killer’s gun with the very bullets that were now inside of him.
I had assumed the mob was historical to Red Hook, that the Red Hook that was home to Joey Gallo and the pet lion he displayed to delinquent debtors; the domain of Anthony “Tough Tony” Anastasio, the labor leader who fastened a fresh white carnation on his lapel every morning; the terrain of men with names like Carmine the Snake and Frankie Shots—that Red Hook was as much of the past as the shipyards. And even now, the story of Joe Pits read like the story of the aftermath. No lions. No carnations. German shepherds and wheelchairs.
Even so, I began reconsidering what exactly it was that some of the customers who came to the bar did for a living. It was not that I was inclined to pry. But when it came to the mob, I had the curiosity of any person who knew the dialogue of Mean Streets by heart. With Joe Pits fresh in my mind, I soon realized that there were several prime candidates for membership in the mobster guild. These men stood apart not because of anything they did that would attract attention to themselves—on the contrary, they had the look and bearing of what one might think of as born-and-raised blue-collar Brooklyn guys. They could pass for firemen or members of Local 282. Still I had the quiet but unmistakable sense that it would be reckless to ever cross them. One such man I will call Casey. He had been coming to the bar since the early 1960s when he began working longshore as a sixteen-year-old; he had been permanently excused from school after his mother had a nurse write a note to his principal that stated he was suffering from a case of the nerves. His face was always flushed as if he was enraged and he was brawny like a lineman, but it was his eyes that reminded me of Mike Ditka—they had the same frank, cutting expression that indicated a low tolerance for fools. A scorpion medallion hung from his neck. His hands were two hammers. He was easily the most intimidating person whom I would ever see in the bar and yet he often appeared to be near tears—especially when he was speaking privately with Sunny. Casey was devoted to Sunny and to Sunny’s and once testified to that devotion by saying, “I’ve fucked hundreds of women but there’s no woman’s bed I would rather sleep in than sleep on the floor of this bar.” By this I knew that Sunny must have felt a great affection and trust for him as well because I didn’t know of anyone Sunny would allow to sleep in the bar.
Occasionally, Casey would arrive with a sidekick named Richie, a dark-haired, taciturn man who might have been handsome once before something or someone broke his nose badly. When they weren’t huddled at a spot directly by the door, they oftentimes sat in the back room that Sunny used as his painting studio. He stored not only his canvases and painting supplies there but also the spare beer for the bar. Though the room was open, it was considered off limits to customers and the lights were kept turned off. When Casey and Richie were in there, my restocking trips to the fridge were moments of tense silence during which the two of them would stop whatever conversation they had been having and watch me in the dim light as I stacked beer cartons in my arms. After one such encounter, I returned to the bar and while emptying the cases of beer into the cooler, I impulsively asked Sunny, “Is Casey involved in, you know—what he appears to be involved in?”
He looked at me sharply and said, “Timmy. Don’t ask me. I may be dumb but I’m not stupid.” This was Sunny’s way of telling me without telling me.
Years later, I would read with a sense of recogn
ition about the discovery in an Arkansas swamp of a bird known as an ivory-billed woodpecker. The woodpecker had been thought to be extinct for sixty years. But the new sightings of this bird were so fleeting and inconclusive that no one could say for certain whether they had spotted an actual ivory-billed woodpecker or whether it was a case of mistaken identity. I was now having my own passing encounters, ambiguous enough to leave me wondering, Is he or isn’t he? Did I hear correctly…?
One evening, as I served Budweisers to two men I had never seen before, I overheard just enough of their conversation to understand they were discussing a third man who went by the name Johnny Keyholes. They were ordinary, outright mild-looking men, but what other society of men besides the mob christens an associate with the name Johnny Keyholes? They left soon afterward, before I could listen in on anything else, but the news that somewhere in Brooklyn there was a man known as Johnny Keyholes made me happy for days. When I reported to a friend what I had overheard, she decided that my mob name would be Timmy Bathtubs—those who knew me well would know that I had been named for my habit of making my phone calls, reading the newspaper, and otherwise occupying myself for several hours each day in the bathtub, and those who knew me in passing could make their own darker assumptions.
Another night, another year. A small crowd came in the door. They were mostly late middle-aged and, in a bar where customers usually wore blue jeans, they were dressed conspicuously formally, as if they were coming from an official function or perhaps an anniversary dinner. The women wore dresses and the men sports coats, ties, and frowns—until they saw Sunny. Then they all lit up. The men took turns hugging him and boisterously slapping his shoulder and introducing him to their spouses and dates before moving to a table and pulling up chairs. Sunny turned to me.
“Timmy, do me a kindness,” he said. “I know that we don’t usually do this but just this once, why don’t you go over there and take their order? And, Timmy, don’t let them pay!”
There were about a dozen of them and they shouted out their drinks rapidly.
“Scotch, water, no ice.”
“Scotch and soda, rocks.”
“Scotch, soda, splash of bitters.”
I tried keeping track of the order in my head. When I returned with a tray of drinks and mistakenly put a scotch and soda instead of a scotch and water in front of the youngest and most sullen of the men, he looked up at me. Then he looked at the little bubbles popping in his glass. And then he looked at me again.
“Come on, Spidey. Get it right!” he spat. “This isn’t Appalachia.”
The rest of the evening, whenever I passed their table, he called out, “Hey, Spidey!” and snickered to himself.
As they filed out later, I said to Sunny, “Who are those people? And why did that guy keep calling me Spidey?”
“Spidey? I don’t know what that’s about, Timmy. They’re just over from Smith Street. Some are lawyers for the union, actually. Real nice guys.”
Only later did I realize Spider had been the hapless waiter taunted and then gunned down by an irritable Joe Pesci in Goodfellas. Wise guys or cinephile lawyers? Like the friends of Johnny Keyholes, I could not be sure.
One reason I could not be sure is because Sunny never told. A man who otherwise elevated the recounting of stories and jokes and remembrances, of “holding forth,” to an art form, never talked. He did not betray confidences, he did not tell stories about those who did not want stories of themselves to be told. When it came to his own life, he was unsparingly open. There was no indiscretion, no priapic bout with Viagra, no shortcoming of good sense too embarrassing to relate. But when it came to others, and in particular to wise guys, he observed a code that said: you don’t tell stories, you don’t say names—and if something has to be said, say no more than necessary while still conveying enough truth to satisfy the questioner and your own conscience.
One afternoon a man and a woman knocked on the door. It was a time of day when the bar was usually closed but Sunny happened to be cleaning the counters and, as he told me later, he let them in. They introduced themselves as FBI agents. Sunny said, “Please, let’s sit,” and the three slid into a booth. The agents explained they were actually hoping to talk to his brother Frank as a possible witness but perhaps Sunny, as someone from the neighborhood, could be of some help. Without indicating yes or no, Sunny nodded for them to continue. They explained that as a result of many interviews they had reason to believe that Frank had taken part in a card game years ago at a nearby bar—long since gone—and witnessed a man shooting and killing another man after being accused of cheating. Did Sunny know of this incident? Sunny said that he had been away from Red Hook for many years and had only heard things after the fact, but to whatever degree hearsay is truth, yes, he had heard of what had taken place. The agents went on to say that the man they suspected of that card-game shooting might himself have recently been murdered, supposedly for killing a made man without permission. They looked at Sunny inquiringly.
Sunny had a good idea of what had happened to the man. He had a good idea because he hung out with guys that hang out. He knew that the man in question, the man the agents named, was the kind of man who liked to hurt people and had always been that way. This man would brag of committing his first murder when he was fourteen. He would say things like, “I’m going to get myself a big gold chain, the biggest fuckin’ chain I can find, and I’m going to sit on a bench in Coffey Park and wait for some nigger to try and rob me and I’m going to blow his fuckin’ head off.” Sunny knew that the guy was said to be such a loose cannon that not even the mob wanted him.
He also knew, you kill a made guy, you’re dead, no matter who you are. He knew because everyone who grew up in Red Hook at the time he had grown up knew that.
He looked at the agents. They had the right guy. They were right in suspecting the man for the card-game shooting and they were right to suspect that he was now dead himself. His brother had been at that card game, he was sure. Frank was his favorite sibling but he had always had a theory about him. Being allowed to curse in front of the family while doing his Hitler impersonations had served to tag him with a reputation of being a bad boy, and he had gone on to befriend many of the tough hitters in the neighborhood. Some had become gangsters and killers and Frank himself had been a bit of a thief for a while. Not the kind that would ever harm anyone intentionally, but if he went to a wedding, he’d walk out with the silverware wrapped in a tablecloth, whistling under his breath like he was Santa. That was his nature. He wouldn’t go out and stick somebody up or hit them on the head. There had to be a little distance, like stealing from Con Edison. Eventually, he had stopped spending much time around the bad guys in the neighborhood, though he might have sat in on their card games from time to time.
Sunny felt sympathetic toward the agents. He said, “I don’t know how you do what you do. I look at you—you’re a lovely woman. Perhaps you’re married. And you seem like a nice guy. How do you go out there and witness what people do to each other and not take it home to your families? I’ve seen it from afar and can’t get the images out of my mind, you got to see it straight up front.”
“We learn to live with it,” the woman replied.
“Well, you have my respect for it,” Sunny said. “And as to what it is that you are asking about, I can’t speak with any kind of authority because I have no personal knowledge of it, but if you’re thinking the way I’m thinking, that is, if there’s anything to the idea, ‘You spit in the air, it comes back down on you’…the guy’s dead. Aye?”
The agents smiled. “We believe that to be the case,” the man said, returning to his breast pocket a notebook in which he had been writing. Realizing that they had gotten all the information they ever would from Sunny, they stood up and shook his hand in a friendly manner.
“We’ll come back,” they promised. “When we’re not on duty.”
Nobody wants to be on duty at Sunny’s.
Sunny could come across as circumsp
ect and cagey and truthful all at once because not only did Sunny not talk, he did not listen either. That is, he did not listen when it was unadvisable to listen. And it was most unadvisable to listen when wise guys wanted to tell tales or, worse, unburden their consciences.
When he sensed that a man was on the verge of confiding in him something that, as he would put it, was “unpalatable,” Sunny would stop him and say, “Please, I don’t want you to say something that you may be sorry that you said. It’s better if you don’t tell me because if it ever gets out that you did things, I don’t want you to have to say to yourself, ‘Well, I told Sunny.’ I don’t want you to ever have any doubt in your mind that I’m your friend and that I’m your friend no matter what you did in your life. I know who and what you are to me. We all do things in our life that we are sorry for tomorrow. So we change.”
Where Sunny was concerned, wise guys, I had by now come to understand, were no different from the rest of us who came to the bar. They, too, believed they had a special kinship with him. They wanted to drink with him, they wanted his companionship, they wanted his counsel, they wanted to introduce him to their wives and friends the same way I watched so many people introduce him—to show that they were friends with such a singular person and thereby elevate their own standing in their companions’ eyes, as if the glow of his incandescence would emanate from them as well.