And Rinaldi had touched my shoulder and remarked how he hadn’t seen me in church for a while. I had assured him I would be back soon, and he’d pressed a raffle ticket into my palm and told us to go have some fun.
Janice and I had melted away into the crowd, and she had started looking around for Tony. I guess Tony’s not here yet, Janice had remarked.
Maybe you missed him in this wall-to-wall crowd, Janice.
Not a chance. Believe me. Meaning that Tony Kroon was such a handsome hunk, no woman in her right mind could miss seeing him.
We had spotted Dara, one of Janice’s classmates, in the crowd, being played by one of the extras. She was a voluptuous blonde—from a bottle, of course—who had been dating Vin. It was common knowledge on the streets that he beat up on her as often as he fucked her. I had started toward her, I remembered, but Janice had held me back. You know how Dara flaunts it, and I want you to meet Tony on your own.
What’s the matter? Aren’t we hot enough?
The oddest thing about these recollections, about how I was going to see them played out by actors and actresses, was that none of them affected me now. Even though I understood that these scenes were straight out of my life, I didn’t experience the same angst I’d had when I’d first seen Susan, Jenean, and Camilla acting out those scenes in my old Brooklyn apartment. Maybe Liza was right that the filming of Brooklyn Story was a kind of purge.
John touched my elbow. “I’m off to find Brian.”
“See ya around, handsome.”
He laughed, bussed me on the cheek, and moved off through the crowd. I spotted Liza and Father Rinaldi near the food tent, where the cast and crew would be eating breakfast shortly, and I made a beeline toward them. Rinaldi hugged me hello. “I meant to catch up with you yesterday before you left the church, Sam. I just want you to know that I’m proud of the way you stood up to Vito.”
“I had to, Father Rinaldi.”
He gave my shoulder an affectionate squeeze. “See you out there, Sam.” He gestured toward the sea of actors.
The expression of Liza’s face was almost comical. I knew that she knew John and I had become lovers. That “tad psychic” part of her sensed it; that was how connected she and I were.
“You . . . look different,” she remarked.
“Ya think?”
“Ha. I know.”
“It changed something inside of me, Liza. Is that possible?”
“Possible?” She laughed. “Honey, you’re absolutely glowing. I’m so happy for you.”
I hugged her. “Maybe we both had to come full circle back to Brooklyn to find real love. Or does that sound hopelessly corny?”
“Who gives a shit how it sounds. I think it’s true, and who woulda thunk it? C’mon, let’s get a bite to eat. I’m famished.” Then in a softer, confidential tone, she added, “Having sex half the night left me with a ferocious appetite!”
Once again, the spread of food was amazing: lard breads and frittatas—my favorite—and muffins, and half a dozen types of Italian pastries and espresso. There were even dishes that would be found in some of the stalls: calzones and sausage-and-pepper heroes. Those dishes used to be made by Papa Tucci, and on the day Janice and I had been at the festival, I’d wanted to buy both of them but didn’t have the money.
Despite the fact that it was barely eight in the morning, I helped myself to both now, grateful that I could afford a full-time cook who would prepare those dishes for me daily, if that was what I wanted. Money may not buy happiness, but when you grew up as poor as I did, money certainly bought you a degree of freedom. Someone, maybe it was Priti, once remarked that my life had been filled with stark contrasts that enabled me to feel immense gratitude for what I had. It was true.
We sat at a table with Marvin and Flannigan, both of them in high spirits, chatting about the sightseeing they’d done after the shooting at Sally’s had wrapped. I could tell that something good was developing between them, and I was happy for them both. What was it with this return to Brooklyn/New York stuff, anyway? Had it helped the three of us—Marvin, Liza, and me—open up in some way? Had it enabled us to tap into and manifest our deepest desires?
King stopped by our table, and I noticed the way he touched Liza’s shoulder. “Ladies and gents, we’re about ready to get under way here. Another ten minutes or so. Sam, do we have things set up correctly?”
“I walked through when John and I got here, Brian. It looks pretty much the way I remember it. Even the food.” I gestured at my plate.
“Great. Perfect. We’ll start the shooting with that scene where you and Janice see Father Rinaldi. Bob has to catch a plane in a couple of hours, so we want to do that scene first.”
“Sounds great,” I said.
Then King ran his fingers through Liza’s hair, a slow, delicate caress. “Does this woman have gorgeous hair or what?”
Liza looked flustered, but said, “Honey, flattery will get you everywhere.”
King laughed and motioned to his right, where John and Prince were entering the tent with Nina and Nick. “Hey, John’s son made it. Good enough. The stars must be aligned or something.” He walked out into the center of the tent to address the cast and crew. “Okay, people, listen up. We’ll have exactly three hours for this shoot, so let’s make the most of it. Everyone got their script notes?”
For the next ten minutes, he went through the script, explaining which scenes would be shot.
John, Nick, and Nina joined us at our table, and at one point Nina leaned toward me and whispered, “I want you to know that I’ve never seen John happier. I think you’re the reason.”
“That’s awesome to hear. He makes me feel the same way.”
“He’s such a great guy—Nick and I have been hoping he’d meet someone who deserves him.”
“Did you know his ex?”
Nina wrinkled her nose as if she’d bitten into something bitter. “She was way before my time, but I met her once when she came to see Nick. A really pretty woman, but one of the most negative human beings I’ve ever been around. Nick refuses to have anything to do with her now. When John started making a lot of money in real estate, she tried to take him to court to collect back alimony or child support or something. Thing is, there was never any agreement about child support or alimony because John had full custody of Nick. Go figure. People do some pretty strange things when money is involved.”
She was preaching to the choir. Vito was proof of that.
“Well, Nick’s lucky that his dad makes up for what his mother lacks.”
“That’s for sure.”
A few minutes later, the cast and crew left the dinner tent and moved en masse out into the park. Throngs of bystanders had gathered outside the barricades to watch the filming. Word had undoubtedly gotten around that some big stars were filming. We were a celebrity-obsessed culture, after all, and it wouldn’t surprise me if some of those bystanders had come equipped with pen and paper to garner autographs. There was a police presence, just like yesterday outside the church, but it didn’t seem as substantial.
Liza, Nina, Nick, and I stood on the east side of the park, well out of the way, and when the cameras started rolling, I watched with delight. My younger self from three decades ago was now headed to the big screen. Some of the extras were supposed to be mob boys who kept an eye on things.
Bottom line, the Feast of Santa Rosalia—also referred as the 18th Avenue Feast—was their celebration as well, an expression of the Italian heritage that united this Brooklyn neighborhood even now. The people who lived here reveled in their traditions and the opportunity to exhibit their collective pride. The differences and disputes that existed within and between families were forgotten during this weeklong feast.
I spotted John on the other side of the park with Prince, Carl Davidson, and Barbara, the artist we’d met at Gallery who worked with Renée. The
y huddled together in what appeared to be some sort of heated discussion. But about what? I wondered. Everyone had agreed on the scenes that would be shot, and even though many elements in my original script had been changed over time, the changes were for the better. Had the art department screwed up somewhere with the stalls? Was that it? Or was it some other detail about which they disagreed?
My phone vibrated, and when I glanced down at it, there was a text message from Lieutenant Gotti.
Just rec’d results from forensics. We have 3 sets of prints from inside and outside the house. Yr intruder Paul Jannis. APB out on him now. His son says he’s in NY. You’re there, right?
Yes. Brooklyn. Filming.
Be careful. As soon as he returns to LA, we’ll bring him in. Will keep u posted.
Thank u so much!!!
“Here goes the DJ,” Liza said, leaning into me, and suddenly the speakers boomed with Cher’s voice singing “Half-Breed.”
The music blasted across the park, seductive and so beautifully rhythmic that even bystanders were swaying to the tune. The day that song actually had played, I’d been thinking how often I’d been told that my hair was like Cher’s. In those days, it had cascaded down my back, almost to my hips, an ebony river, and I had taken great pride in it. After all, who had better hair than Cher? And at the moment I’d had that thought, the song had boomed from the PA system, just as it was now.
Janice had wrapped her arm around my waist, as Jenean was doing to the young woman playing Janice, and we had sung along with Cher and several others. Music had been a large part of my childhood in Bensonhurst. We had enjoyed dancing in time with the upbeat tempo of a new sound and had known every word to every popular song.
As my past played out in this scene, something registered in my peripheral vision, something out of place, something that didn’t belong.
My head snapped right, left, but I didn’t immediately notice anything unusual. The number of bystanders had swelled, probably because of the music, but I didn’t see anyone attempting to shove his way into the filming area. People were snapping photos with their phones, and I was sure that some pictures of De Niro and the other actors were already on Facebook and Twitter and zipping through the virtual world as text messages.
Liza touched my arm, and I glanced at her. She pointed upward, where four sparrow hawks flew in wide circles over the park, as if they’d been drawn by the music, the crowd, the aroma of food. Weird. In all my years of living in this area, I’d seen only one hawk within the city limits, and it had been living in the eaves of the Dakota. After Lennon’s death, it vanished.
When the Imagine tribute to Lennon had been erected in Central Park, a hawk had been sighted frequently, circling the monument and occasionally landing on it. No one knew, of course, whether it was the same hawk that had been living in the eaves of the Dakota. But in my mind, the hawks were one and the same. In my mind, that hawk became Lennon’s spirit, his soul, watching over his former home, his wife, his tribute, his legacy.
Sounds I couldn’t immediately identify erupted from somewhere in the crowd, then screams tore apart the air. I couldn’t tell if the screams came from within the park or outside of it, beyond the physical and human barriers. People dived for the ground and scrambled behind trees and leaped into the road. They raced away from the park, hurled themselves behind cars and buses.
And then I saw him, saw him as Cher belted:
Half-breed, that’s all I ever heard
Half-breed, how I learned to hate the word
Paul. His bald head gleamed in the glare of the sunlight as he walked quickly and purposefully toward John, Prince, Carl Davidson, and Barbara. He didn’t run, didn’t do anything to attract undue attention to himself. He wore jeans, a denim jacket, and jogging shoes, and wove his way through the crowd of extras with a focused determination.
When he broke into a sprint, he shouted something I couldn’t hear and waved a gun, a large gun, larger than any gun had a right to be. He fired shots into the air, and the sounds reverberated through the park, above the volume of Cher’s voice, and sped out into the larger world, a reminder that terrorists weren’t just Middle Eastern guys with box cutters who hijacked airplanes and crashed them into the World Trade Center.
Bedlam exploded through the park, worse than anything in the church yesterday. Not only were there more people diving for cover, but they’d heard the gunfire, they’d seen the gun, they knew he was a madman.
I didn’t realize I was racing toward John until Liza grabbed my arm and jerked me back. She shoved me to the grass and threw herself over me, screaming, “Stay the fuck down, Sam, don’t move, don’t breathe, stay down!”
People ran past us, screaming, sobbing, terrified. They crashed into stalls, overturning them, spilling food and crafts and statues of the saints and the Blessed Mother, which shattered on impact. Barbecue grills slammed to the ground, spewing hot coals everywhere. Shelves toppled, cameras and sound equipment shattered, and everywhere, the horrendous, panicked screams and the endless shrieks of sirens.
I pushed Liza off me and scrambled to my feet and tore toward the other end of the park. Paul now fired into the crowd, one more nutcase with a gun and an ax to grind—except that he wasn’t just some random madman. He had worked with the cast and crew, had known many of these men and women professionally for years, had been a producer for this film. These facts didn’t connect in any way with the crazy man I saw now. I understood just how deeply Paul’s mind had cracked.
As I raced toward them, cops swarmed into the park, SWAT teams in full gear. My head drummed, my heart hammered, I could no longer see John. I ran faster, faster, my arms tucked in at my sides, my shoes pounding across grass, concrete. I dodged overturned stalls, leaped over a couple huddled on the ground next to a trash can, jumped across overturned barbecue grills and shattered religious icons. I tripped over something and pitched forward, and my arms shot out to break my fall.
I struck the ground and my arms buckled, but I rolled and somehow vaulted to my feet and kept on running. The music had long since stopped, the shrieks and cries and shouts of a panicked crowd filled the air. Sirens screeched nearby. It took me several lifetimes even to get near the area where I’d last seen John. Everything now moved in slow motion—every sound drawn out, like an animal writhing in agony; every flash of color scorched paths through my brain; every movement was an urgency that propelled me forward faster, faster.
Then I was there, and John and Prince lay on the ground, bleeding, groaning, and Paul stood over them, clutching his gun, screaming senselessly. He was oblivious to the cops rushing in on either side of him. His back was to me, and I was closer to him than any of the cops. Red poured across my vision. I didn’t think. I saw John bleeding, injured, and simply reacted.
I screamed something unintelligible and crashed into Paul from behind, body-slammed him so hard he never knew what hit him. He stumbled forward and lost his grip on his weapon, and we both struck the ground, rolled. My fists pummeled his chest, his head, and my nails clawed at his face.
“Fucker,” I screamed. “You fucker.”
His knee jammed upward into my stomach; my head snapped back, and he threw me off him and struggled to his feet. I grabbed his ankles and held on like Velcro. He pitched forward and slammed into the ground so forcefully that I heard the clunk of his head as it hit, and then he went still.
I could barely lift up from the ground. I tasted blood in my mouth, felt the sticky warmth of it oozing down the sides of my face. My ribs burned with pain. I had trouble breathing, heard a strange rattle in my own lungs. I crawled toward John on my hands and knees, my eyes fixed on all the blood, pools of it around him and Prince, and I started praying, making deals with God, the Blessed Mother, Buddha, whoever might be listening.
Please, please, don’t let him be dead. If you let him live, I will . . . I will . . . I will . . . what? What the hell kind
of deal can you make with God? To be a better person? To be a more forgiving person? To give your money and clothes and all your belongings to charities? To live in abject poverty like Mother Teresa?
These thoughts raced through my head as I crawled toward John, toward the man with whom I’d made such exquisite love for most of the night. The man who now looked to be bleeding to death on the ground, in this grand and beautiful park where my past had been reenacted in such precise detail.
This wasn’t supposed to be part of my Hollywood story.
Just as I reached John, as I slipped my hands under his head and sobbed uncontrollably, cops moved in on either side of us. Someone grabbed my arms, jerked me to my feet, cuffed me, and shoved me forward, away from John.
“What the hell!” I shouted, struggling to free myself. “What’re you doing? I’m a bystander, for God’s sakes. I didn’t do this, I’m injured . . .”
“She needs medical treatment,” someone snapped. “Get her to the ambulance, take off her cuffs, moron!”
My vision was strangely blurred, so I couldn’t see who gave the order. But my cuffs fell away, I stumbled toward an ambulance, cops gripping my arms, holding me up, and I was unable to understand what was happening, unable to hold my head erect. My ribs screamed, my head pounded; blood still rolled down the sides of my face. I tasted it on my lips.
I knew that I was injured, that John and Prince had been bleeding all over the ground, that Paul was responsible. That was all I knew. I couldn’t think straight, couldn’t connect one coherent thought to another.
Where was John?
Mercifully, I blacked out.
• • •
When I came to, I was in the ER, on an examining table, and my arms and legs were restrained. I couldn’t move; I ached all over; my head felt like little gremlins were inside of it, hammering nails into my skull. I had trouble breathing. I desperately needed to know where John was, how he was, how any of this had happened, if he was . . . dead.
Dear God, please, not that.
Even though I was physically restrained, my voice was fine, and I bellowed, “Hey, someone, get me outta here!”
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