He Got Hungry and Forgot His Manners

by Jimmy Breslin

  “Frankie, will you put a sad look on your face?” the Chief said to one of them. “Your father just died. You’re acting like you’re happy.”

  “I am so happy that we are going to kill that rat Big Paul, I forgot my father just died.” It was obvious to Cosgrove that this was the poor deceased LaCarva’s son. Pretending to cry, LaCarva’s son and the two with him went into the restaurant. The Chief wheeled and walked away. Cosgrove pulled out the gun and started to chase the Chief. He was almost yanked off his feet by one of the thugs.

  “No! You don’t shoot him. You shoot Big Paul. You’re so fucking dumb! Where did they get you from?”

  Several pairs of hands pushed the gun back into Cosgrove’s belt. People streamed by on both sides, but nobody even looked at the struggle to hide the priest’s gun. Hands gripped Cosgrove firmly. “Stay here. You get mixed up.” The Chief walked up a few yards to a construction site for a new office building. When workmen, dawdling at the end of the day, saw the Chief they fled. The Chief hid under a scaffolding. Now over all the hand radios, including that of the thug who was holding Cosgrove, came the Chief’s command: “Get ready. They’re out of the lawyer’s office. Just two in the car. They’re at Twenty-eighth Street already.”

  Cosgrove saw men in fur hats and trench coats in doorways, one hand in the trench coat pocket and the other clutching the radio. Crowds hurrying by took no notice of the hand radios. Suddenly, the thug holding Cosgrove shoved him into the restaurant. Inside, a bartender crouching in apprehension relaxed as he saw the clerical garb. LaCarva’s son and the other two sat in the back directly alongside the kitchen door. All the tables near them were empty. The kitchen door opened slightly and a waiter’s hand came out and put menus on the table. The waiter’s hand quickly disappeared. Cosgrove went right to the table. “I am sorry for your trouble,” he said to Frankie LaCarva.

  LaCarva’s son became angry. “Get out of the way. I can’t see through you.”

  “I thought that as long as I am here I would offer my condolences. It must be very difficult to lose a father. I lost my mother and I never really got over it. Is your mother living?”

  “Yes,” LaCarva said absently.

  “That is one blessing, anyway.”

  The two at the table with LaCarva said at once, “We don’t need no acting. We need to see. Get out of the way. Where do you belong, anyway? You’re not supposed to be in here.”

  “How old is the dear mother?” Cosgrove said.

  “I don’t know, she must be seventy-one, seventy-two,” LaCarva said.

  “The dear women shade a year now and then,” Cosgrove said.

  “I’m going to fucking shoot you,” one of them said.

  Cosgrove went outside, where the sidewalk was packed with crowds hurrying in the winter darkness. He intended to walk directly up to see the Chief at the construction site and apologize for Great Big’s breaking the roof of the car. Looking up to the construction site, Cosgrove saw, over the heads of all the people hurrying home from work, the fur hat of the Chief bobbing frantically and out of the corner of his eye Cosgrove saw gray Persian lamb hats moving out of all the doorways. A gray Lincoln town car nearly grazed Cosgrove’s knee as it pulled up in front of the restaurant. The man on the passenger’s side was a large man with a prominent nose and heavy glasses. He smiled at Cosgrove and opened the door.

  “Are you here for the LaCarva family, Father?” the man said.

  “You mean the man whose father died?”

  “That’s him. That’s nice of you to come, Father. We could pray over the bread for poor Frank. You got no idea of the respect I had for this here man.”

  The driver looked up and said to Cosgrove, “I got respect, too.”

  Big Paul started to get out of the car. At this moment, all the men in gray Persian lamb hats and trench coats rushed out of the doorways up and down the block and the first three men jumped out of a crowd, knocked Cosgrove out of the way, and began firing point-blank into Big Paul. Cosgrove fell to the sidewalk in terror. He sensed people rushing away and screaming and the men kept firing guns so much that it seemed they would never stop.

  Big Paul was halfway out of the car with blood coming from the sides and front of his head. He tumbled into the sudden silence of empty guns. His head on the sidewalk, his feet in the car. Now there were new screams, shrieks, the slapping of shoes as people ran off, and Cosgrove opened his eyes to see Big Paul’s dead body and he knew instantly that he was to cease cowering and to accept — no, grab! — this opportunity to serve God. He crawled across the sidewalk and once again on his short visit to America he prayed over the body of a deceased. Running past him was the Chief, who looked at Cosgrove, and Cosgrove glanced up in the middle of his prayer and looked at the Chief, who skidded to a stop and began to tug his gun out of his trench coat.

  Immediately, Cosgrove stopped praying and pulled the gun out of his belt and said, “Take this.” The Chief, color draining from his gaunt face, jumped back and into a swift moving crowd that had been inside office buildings when the shooting occurred and knew nothing of it. A man whistling merrily and walking briskly nearly bowled the Chief over. The Chief took off for Third Avenue, where the twelve men in identical hats and coats already had melted into the crowds, which is what the Chief proceeded to do.

  Cosgrove noticed that Big Paul’s driver had been blown up, too, dropped the gun, and crawled over Big Paul’s body to pray for the dead driver. A policeman pounded up and ordered Cosgrove not to put his hands on anything. A detective appeared, took one look at the famous dead, and said, “Hey, Father, say a prayer for the phone pole ahead of these guys.”

  “All men need prayer,” Cosgrove said.

  “And all police need witnesses.” An officer with gold braid had appeared. “Let’s get some men interviewing the crowd right away. If you get a witness, put them into a patrol car with a blanket over their head. Anybody who saw this stands a chance of getting choked to death. Excuse me, Father, but you got to move now.”

  Cosgrove found himself pushed back through the crowd and into the stream of people walking along the building wall, and, numb, praying for the dead men, he was carried down to Third Avenue. Right away, he thought of the tremendous fortune that had come his way. For now he truly had specific work in Howard Beach. I must go directly to the Chief’s house and save his soul, Cosgrove told himself. He also wanted to ask him about Buster the Cabdriver.

  8

  AT THIS POINT, WE see the magnitude of the betrayal of Cosgrove by the Papal delegate to America. The man was so small of mind that even the vaguest and most unfounded suspicion that cash money would go anywhere but to him caused the Papal delegate to act treacherously and leave Cosgrove virtually penniless in a deserted parish.

  On this particular morning in Saint Lucy’s, the pastor said he had a meeting to attend with the diocesan money changers, as he called them. As it was the last few days of the month, things could happen quickly, he said. “Pray with your bags packed,” he said. He left. Immediately, Cosgrove ransacked the rectory for a bottle of anything that would make him feel great. As we have seen from observing him closely, Cosgrove had been drinking nil since his arrival in America, but now idleness, truly the Devil’s workshop, attacked him throat-first. He became very agitated when he could find nothing to drink in the entire rectory. Cosgrove waited for the mailman, for as he was basically a person of tremendous faith, he was sure that at any moment he would receive his special orders from the Papal delegate. When no such mail arrived, Cosgrove woke up Great Big and left the place in thirst and in rapidly increasing anger at his desertion by the local representative of Rome.

  While looking for a liquor store on the dilapidated avenue, they found Baby Rock and the little girl Seneca arguing on the sidewalk. Baby Rock complained that, earlier, Manslaughter had been around looking for his gun and that he, Baby Rock, had been forced to flee. He blamed Cosgrove for throwing the gun away and Seneca for bringing Manslaughter around. Seneca denied this
vigorously, stating that now Manslaughter was mad at her, too. “I don’t be bringin’ Manslaughter here. He be comin’ here himself. Him and his big gun.” Her feet beat on the sidewalk in a dance. Baby Rock played the drums against his thighs. Seneca shrieked. “I be dancin’ like this and Manslaughter pull out his big gun. He say, ‘Freeze!’ I go like this. ‘Freeze.’” Seneca was a little statue with cornrowed hair. She stopped, pouting. “I can’t go to school because I got to pass by Manslaughter. I want to go to school. I think I’m going to get me E for excellent in school.”

  “Do you now?” Cosgrove said.

  “Sure do. You could ask my teacher. I want to be a judge or a lawyer. Lawyer’s good. Get people out of trouble. My teacher say I should sure come to school every day. Get me another E for excellent.” She looked around the corner and pointed down the block, where three teenagers in white sneakers stood in a doorway. “Blocking my way.” Right behind the teenagers, a sign hung from one of the few stores open on the block: LIQUOR.

  “Well, I’ll just go and talk to him,” Cosgrove said.

  Seneca shrieked. “You make Manslaughter mad.”

  Baby Rock said, “He vic you.”

  “Utter nonsense. Why, he’s only a young lad,” Cosgrove said. “Furthermore, if he is so angry about losing his gun, why doesn’t he just come up here right now?”

  Seneca laughed. “Because he think Baby Rock got his gun and he could shoot back. If Manslaughter knows you don’t have a gun, he be shootin’ you right away.”

  Cosgrove thrust his chin out and walked determinedly up the street. His eyes were fixed on the liquor store sign. He had thirty-four dollars in his pocket, the last of that breed, but he needed drink. As he approached the three in white sneakers, he heard them growl. One, his eyes hooded, stepped out and faced Cosgrove.

  “Good day to you, my dear lad.”

  The hooded eyes said nothing.

  Cosgrove said, “You are Manslaughter, are you not? When I’m through with my errands here, I’d like to have a little chat with you.”

  “You strapped?” the one on the stoop said.

  “Am I what?”

  “Strapped. You carryin’ a piece?”

  “You mean a gun? Oh, good Lord, no. I wouldn’t dare carry a gun.”

  Manslaughter now spoke. “Freeze!”

  Manslaughter put the gun inches from Cosgrove’s chest and pulled the trigger. There was a click as loud as a building collapse. Manslaughter screamed, “Jesus Christ!” This brought Cosgrove back to life. “My good lad, you’re not supposed to take the name of the Lord in vain. Look, lad, a sprightly lad you are, too, and you’ve had your good fun with me, but now I must ask you, what have you got in front of you for the rest of the day? Do you intend to stand here and waste your life playing with a toy gun all day?”

  “You call this motherfucker a toy?” Manslaughter crouched and banged the gun on the sidewalk.

  Obviously, I am not getting through to this lad, and I know that I certainly could if I had time, Cosgrove told himself. Besides, he had this real good urge for a drink. Cos-grove went into the liquor store and bought a fifth of Scotch, leaving himself with twenty-four dollars. Emerging, he saw Manslaughter pounding the gun on the sidewalk, first with one hand and then the other. He couldn’t seem to make up his mind which to use.

  “I’ll bet you have dyslexia,” Cosgrove said. “Lad, have you ever been tested? You know, dyslexia is more than seeing letters backwards. It involves the difficulty of knowing which han—”

  The sidewalk exploded. The second time Manslaughter’s gun went off, the shot splintered a wood window frame right above Cosgrove’s head as he tore past empty stores, his arms wrapped around the bottle as though it was a baby. The noise caused Great Big to come loping and Manslaughter, even with a gun in his hand, felt inadequate against somebody of this size. He and the two with him disappeared into an empty store.

  Great Big started to pursue but was distracted by the bottle of Scotch, which he snatched from Cosgrove, opened, and took a huge swallow. “Good water!” Great Big shouted. He took one more swallow and Cosgrove had to grapple for the bottle, which Great Big was about to empty right there. Cosgrove stepped into the store — after all, it would do no good for him to be seen drinking on a street — and had his first drink in quite a while. Oh boy, it tasted good.

  Looking around, Cosgrove saw little Seneca running off toward school. She was a full block away by now and he felt exhilarated; he had opened the way for her.

  Baby Rock saw it another way. “We better leave the landscape,” he said. He led them onto the bus, where, again, they didn’t pay. Cosgrove held the bottle, but not for long. Great Big snatched it at a red light and the bottle never saw the light turn green.

  At the Flatbush Arms, a security guard in a baggy uniform and with a red bandana wrapped tightly around his head waved a nightstick to keep a crowd at bay. All clutched yellow tickets. Disco Girl, wearing a cranberry-colored knit hat and shivering in her red Disco Girl T-shirt, was yelling, “I got a low number, I got number fifty-six.”

  “Number fifty-six is too high,” the guard said. “You got to be one of the first forty-five or you miss.”

  “I’m not missin’,” Disco Girl said.

  At the curb was the special truck of the New Opportunity Hot Line, its back doors open and Bushwick Taylor standing on the truck with cardboard boxes of food. The guard tried to make the people form a line. A woman in a black raincoat and red pants ran out from the right side of the lobby doorway and when the guard tried to grab her, a little girl shivering in a green summer blouse darted past on the other side. Three women went by the guard at once. “I’m not missin’,” Disco Girl yelled. She bolted for the truck. Quickly a crowd was clutching at food boxes and just as quickly the crowd was gone.

  “I missed the meat,” Disco Girl cried.

  Mother Agnes emerged with her arms full of the family papers. Her long brown down coat was fastened with a large safety pin. She grew angry when she saw that Disco Girl had no food. “You missed the meat! Told you to stop listenin’ to that music. Child, there was meat to be had and you be too busy dancin’.”

  “I like the music,” Disco Girl said.

  “That damn old music takes up your mind.”

  “The music is the only thing that makes me forget,” Disco Girl said.

  She smiled brightly and danced in circles all over the sidewalk. Baby Rock beat his hands on his thighs. Mother Agnes walked toward the subway kiosk in anger. “She’s going to welfare to reapply,” Disco Girl said. “I go next. She got the coat today!”

  Mother Agnes started to cross the street but had to pull back as fire trucks rushed by.

  On the top floor of a rooming house some blocks away, the first piece of plaster hit James Woods down by his ankles. Under the blanket, his cat, High Yellow, jumped. “Damn old rat!” James Woods said. James Woods kept his eyes closed; he couldn’t start the day watching High Yellow eat a rat right in his bed.

  Not after what he’d seen the other night. James smoked a chunk of crack while Don Johnson of “Miami Vice” drove his Porsche right at James Woods. James, in his Bentley, decapitated Don Johnson. Watched Don Johnson’s head bounce right out of the television set. “Next time stop for the red light.”

  Another piece of plaster fell right smack between James Woods’s eyes. He found he was looking straight up to the sky. “They stole my roof!”

  Georgie Larson in his fire hat looked through the hole in the roof at James Woods. “Hey, I lost the last one who didn’t stay out of the building like he was told. What are you doing there? Somebody didn’t tell you?” James Woods didn’t answer. “You didn’t hear the fire? Woman end of the hall had a hot plate on the dresser. Took a while for it to burn through, but when it did it must have hit the socks. Five o’clock in the morning.”

  “I was in the emergency room with Don Johnson,” James Woods said. He glanced at his bureau, on which sat his personal holdings, one welfare check. Anothe
r fireman kicked his way into James Woods’s room. He stomped right through the debris, grabbed the dresser, and pulled it away from the bedroom wall. “Look at this!” The back of the dresser was charred and rippled and smoke swirled from it. Suddenly a tiny flame showed on the top of the dresser. The flame licked at James Woods’s welfare check.

  “My case money is smokin’!” James screamed, trying to jump out of bed.

  The check burst into flames. The fireman pushed the dresser out the window.

  “I don’t even have money for a bun,” James cried.

  “You got your life,” the fireman said. “If you were asleep another two, three minutes, the dresser goes up like a Christmas tree and takes you with it.”

  James took clothes and a towel from a chair and went into the rooming house hallway. Fire hoses ran the length of the hall and the floor was covered with freezing water. The smell of an old fire, giving the instant feeling of desolation and nakedness, hung in the air. He turned on the icy water, dipped in the tips of his index fingers, and ran them over his eyes. Then he stepped back from the sink, spread his legs, braced himself, and put his right hand into the cold water and splashed his left armpit. His body cringed as the cold water hit him. He swung his body and cupped his left hand under the water and splashed the right armpit. Now he braced himself further. “Test your ticker.” Woods threw ice water against his chest. The water nearly knocked him down. He went back to his room and threw on last night’s clothes, smelling like it, too, and left. At the corner phone booth, he dialed the courthouse and counted the rings. Twenty-six. He stamped his feet in the cold. Finally, a woman clerk answered.

  “Just go to the courtroom to which you are assigned.”

  “I told you I had a fire.”

  “Tell it to the jury.”

  “That’s what I am.”

  “Then go to the courtroom where you’re supposed to be.”

  Once, Woods tried to make it on marginal jobs, but he was roundly defeated. Now he took the long walk to the East New York Income Maintenance Center, which services people who have no income. Along one wall was a row of phones, with a list of extension numbers of caseworkers, including his caseworker, M. Singer. He dialed her number, 5347, which phone rang in one of the offices upstairs. Welfare caseworkers don’t appear in these huge crowded rooms; the only reason to do that would be if you were on welfare yourself and didn’t care about getting punched around in a waiting room. Therefore, the clients communicate by phone, much as people visiting jails speak to prisoners through telephones.