Jersey Tough

by Wayne Bradshaw

  It was Helen Keller who told us, “Life is either a great adventure, or it is nothing.” I had no real idea what was to come, but I didn’t want it to be boring.

  I headed back to Middletown with no plan, no job skills and no prospects for work. I moved back into my parents’ place, got a job doing construction work and played third base on a local softball team. I went out most nights and often wound up spending the night at a friend’s house.

  My brother, Mike, had opened up a karate school across the street from the train station in nearby Red Bank: Bradshaw’s Karate. He worked at a bank during the day and was at the school, running classes, most nights and weekends. Like many karate schools, it was a basic storefront operation with a small counter up front, wood paneling on the walls and a large carpeted area that we used for training and grappling. I trained there regularly, studying Korean Karate under my brother and his buddies and doing some heavy-duty weight lifting. Mike had a sense of business acumen that I clearly didn’t have, and some superb fighting skills. He had trained under a local legend. He also was being instructed by a very tough group of Jamaicans from a brutal and prestigious school in New York City. I was reveling in the training and couldn’t have cared less about any sort of career advancement.

  The Jamaicans were the elite students of famed karate star Tadashi Nakamura. On weekends they would come down to the Jersey Shore in a group, their girlfriends in tow. The women were terrific fighters as well, smiling like jungle cats while they taped up their wrists for ju-kumite, or free fighting. The Jamaicans spoke of the warrior code and Bushido. They were traditionally educated and well schooled in oriental martial discipline and philosophy. But more importantly, in my mind, they walked the walk. They considered themselves classical warriors in a modern world. There wasn’t a phony bone in any of their bodies. Training and fighting with them was a test of your mettle every time, and the standards they set for my brother and I were the very same ones they set for themselves.

  These were the hardest and toughest men and women I had ever had the great good fortune to associate with. Humility and self-deprecating humor were the order of the day. Showing off or acting disrespectfully was not tolerated.

  One sweat-soaked Saturday afternoon, Venezuelan Santiago Vasquez came into the school. He was in incredible physical condition and warmed up doing full splits. He told us he wanted a “friendly” sparring session and asked if we would be amenable taking turns fighting him—five of us, in all—with short breaks between each bout. Assured of his prowess, he made it clear with his body language and facial smirk that this was a splendid idea. As the kumite began, Vasquez’s smirk evaporated, replaced by despair as he went toe to toe with fighters who wouldn’t back down no matter what the circumstances. After the fight, Vasquez’s body was bruised, but his self-esteem was devastated.

  Vasquez broke down in tears in front of the group. In many gyms, his tears would have been perceived as pathetic or unmanly. Not so on that night. Ultimately, the way in which he handled himself earned him real respect from the group.

  “A tiger can’t help being a tiger,” one of the Jamaican fighters explained. “His nature compels him to seek combat. The Chinese say that when two tigers fight, one dies and the other is seriously injured.”

  He continued: “Our warrior nature also compelled us to end this combat, since in this world a superior person seeks justice. And an act of kindness is the highest form of action, and is the mark of the superior man. Understand, my friend: you are not fighting normal people here.”

  Vasquez became a member and quickly a real leader in the school. Later he became a renowned undercover narcotics police officer in Kansas City, Kansas.

  The sun was starting to dip lower in the sky one hot day in August as I got onto the Garden State Parkway on my new deep blue 1975 Harley-Davidson Sportster, twisted the throttle and ran it up through all four gears. The 900-cc bike always sounded great on the open road. I’d used some of the money I’d made in construction as a down payment on the Harley. I had already started to customize it by adding an extended chrome front fork.

  I was headed northwest to my brother’s apartment in Matawan, off exit 120. Mike and I both played on a softball team sponsored by the United Counties Trust Company, where Mike worked during the day. I played third base, and Mike played center field. We were scheduled to play the River Plaza Fire House softball team, and my brother had decided to invite both teams to his place for a beer party the night before the game.

  The gang of five—me on the left, my grandfather Bill, my father Bud, and my brother Mike in the foreground. Mike’s son, Michael, is on my grandfather’s lap.

  Mike lived in one of the many nondescript apartment complexes that were sprouting up in the Central and North Jersey areas—perhaps not the best place to have a beer party for a bunch of young guys. The walls were paper-thin, and your neighbors were literally just a few feet away in each direction. Mike was the corporate type and not at all the sort of person who would draw undue negative attention from the rest of the yuppies-in-training that he worked with.

  The team that Mike and I played on was pretty chilled out. But the other team was captained by my cousin, Bill Hendricks, who was known to be a mediocre player with a competitive edge and a volatile temper. Bill had spent three years as an MP in Germany, most of it prior to my arrival. I had visited him at his posting and seen the healthy respect he received from his fellow soldiers. He had also endured some brutal and violent encounters, and survived using much the same methods as I had.

  As the party progressed, we continued drinking heavily. It was as if Budweiser was going to stop making the stuff the next day—which definitely wasn’t the case. We’d already purchased the keg that we’d be drinking at the game the following day. The voices got louder, prompting us to crank up the music time and again so that it could be heard over the din.

  One of the guys came up with the brilliant suggestion of having a friendly boxing match on the second-floor landing. It was too long a walk to head down to one of the grassy areas adjacent to the apartment building, and too far from the booze. I peered down over the rusty three-foot metal railing surrounding the landing. It was about a 20-foot fall to the concrete sidewalk below.

  Mike dug around in his closet, came out with two pairs of 16-ounce boxing gloves and offered to referee the matches. I was fortunate enough to be called for the first match; I’d be representing my team, and my six-foot-three, 215-pound cousin Bill would be representing the other team. I briefly wondered what my brother’s neighbors were thinking about this crowd and why they didn’t call the police. No matter to me. The fight was on, and I was fully confident that Bill would not hold back just because we’d grown up together and were relatives. No doubt he loved me. But he was also intent on knocking me out. If my front teeth were collateral damage in the action, so be it. We didn’t have any mouthpieces anyway.

  My corner man shouted words of encouragement—to stick and move. Perhaps more sage advice would have been “Don’t do it,” or “Try to avoid getting knocked over the railing.” No matter. The Heavyweight Championship of Who Gives a Shit was poised to begin.

  Bill and I both attempted the “stick and move” strategy for about two seconds. Then we moved to the center of the landing and punched each other as hard as we could. My brother briefly attempted to break a clinch but was promptly launched backward through his open apartment door, landing ass-first on the floor. One of the neighbors also tried to intervene, at least until Bill and I gave him an angry look and he silently retreated into his apartment. We continued beating each other until we couldn’t breathe or punch, thus ending round one.

  The second round ended the same as the first, and neither of us wanted a third round. So we ponied up to the beer supply and tried to drink, though we both had serious pain when opening our jaws from the trauma of the temporal lobe area being smashed; the only cure for this pain was drinking more beer.
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  The game the next day is a bit of a blur, a blend of angry hangovers and a hot and humid summer day. Bill participated in only three or four fistfights—not bad, given that his team got shellacked and someone certainly needed to pay. Bill and I almost had a much-anticipated rematch several times, but each time one of us cooled down just enough to save face and not have to relive the fun-filled festivities of the prior evening. We ended the day with an empty vow that we were done with each other as comrades. Later, Bill came to be a trustworthy and reliable ally who stood with me without question when serious threats came my way.

  Sometime after my discharge from the army, I began to evaluate my friends and relatives using what I called “the foxhole test.” In a foxhole, confronted by a powerful enemy, would I trust this person with my life? I believed I could judge people on my own, using just my intuition. I resolved that I couldn’t be close to those who failed the test. Ironically, there were few people that I was able to judge one way or the other; I was brooding, unsmiling and compassionless. Few people wanted anything to do with me.

  I landed the perfect job, working for a person who looked and acted menacing and didn’t care about upward mobility—contractor Tom Rondell, a shrewd, divorced ladies’ man who was building a small development of upscale houses. His method of obtaining maximum profit was to find the cheapest contractors possible—and then browbeat them to give him the best possible prices. His goal was simple: build a new house cheaply and quickly, and sell it for the highest amount the market would allow. My responsibility was simple as well: ensure that Tom didn’t get shorted by his grossly underpaid workers and make sure they didn’t beat the shit out of him.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  BEYOND GOOD & EVIL

  The phone rang one fall morning. It was my longtime friend Bob Grant, a well-educated guy who was tough as nails and could be a serious problem for his opponents in a bar fight. Though capable of significant violence, this guy was affable, gregarious and fun when drunk. He was also a married homeowner and businessman in Middletown with assets to lose and a reputation to uphold. “Have I got a story for you,” he said, inviting me to have a beer with him later in the day.

  Grant and I were in the army during roughly the same time period, though he was discharged about six months before me. He was an MP with a ferocious reputation for violence—and for not getting caught when dispensing his own form of justice. Once, after I got out of the army, I was picked up by local police after I got into a fistfight and foolishly left an ID bracelet with my name on it next to the dude I had knocked out. Grant’s subsequent advice for me was pretty simple: avoid carrying any kind of ID during that sort of mission: no patches, no dog tags, nothing.

  Over a couple of beers, Grant described to me how he’d been hanging out one evening in Fair Haven at a bar called the Lock, Stock & Barrel, drinking Scotch and talking with another guy. Grant said that one of his more colorful stories included the word fuck. But one well-dressed young woman at the bar was appalled at his use of the word—and opted to confront him.

  “Excuse me, but would you mind refraining from using that sort of language?” she asked.

  “I don’t know, honey, exactly which language would you prefer—French?” Grant replied. “Well, shit; don’t speak a word of it.”

  “You did it again. You have a really foul mouth.”

  “Hey, let’s start over again,” Grant said.

  “I don’t think so!” she angrily replied.

  Before Grant could reply, the bartender pointed at him and shouted, “You are flagged. Pay up and get out! Now!”

  Almost immediately, the bartender started to move toward Grant. Pissed, Grant picked up a drink glass off the bar and hurled it at the man’s head. He missed.

  The glass struck and shattered the huge mirror that hung behind the bar. Shards of glass rained down behind the very large, well-built and now startled bartender. Grant took his cue and headed for the door, crossing the street and going down to the cold, swiftly moving river, which was nearly a mile wide. Hearing police sirens in the distance, he ran down the embankment, “borrowed” a rowboat he found tied up along the shore and quickly rowed across the river.

  Soon he had disappeared into the dark, moonless night. Grant felt certain that no one in the bar knew his name and that it would be difficult, if not impossible, to identify him. He’d driven a friend’s car to the bar that night and so couldn’t be identified that way, either.

  Grant ditched the boat on the other side of the river and walked the seven miles to his house without seeing anyone. Once home, he grabbed a beer and hung out with his wife, who was still awake.

  The doorbell rang around 3 a.m., and his wife hopped up to see who was there. She instantly recognized their visitor and opened the door. In walked Middletown Police Officer James Pressfield, a trusted lifelong friend of Grant’s who’d noticed that the lights were on and was hoping for a cup of coffee.

  Half-drunk and still high on adrenaline, Grant made a bad mistake: he opened up and described to the officer what had just happened at the bar. Pressfield seemed to love the story and reveled in the details, laughing uproariously at Grant’s description of his escape across the river and long, long walk home. Pressfield assured Grant and his wife that the police would never catch him.

  “You are home free, my man. Nothing to fear,” Pressfield said. “Relax and go to bed, and don’t worry about those bozos across the river. They can’t catch anything bigger than cold.”

  Grant thanked his buddy and retired to bed soon after the officer returned to patrol.

  But, Grant continued, things went very differently.

  At 8:30 the following morning, the doorbell rang again. Two detectives from the Middletown Police Department stood at the door, explaining to Grant and his wife that they wanted to take custody of him immediately in connection with the incident in the bar. Grant sleepily feigned ignorance of any wrongdoing, but the lead detective cautioned him to stop talking.

  The detective then described, in great detail, what Grant had done the previous evening. The description matched nearly word for word what Grant had said to Officer Pressfield.

  “We aren’t looking for bail here, just formally charging you,” the detective said. “We’ll give you a lift back here, if you promise to play nice.”

  “I will cooperate completely, but can I ask one question?”

  The detective wryly grinned. “Let me guess. You’re gonna ask how did we figure all this out? Did someone tell us?”

  “You must be reading my mail.”

  “Listen, you look like an intelligent person. My partner and I start work at eight. Need I connect the dots?” The implication was that Pressfield had left Grant’s house, completed his patrol and then reported what had transpired to his superiors. As soon as the shift change had taken place, the detectives were sent out to make the arrest.

  Grant was furious at Pressfield—and pissed at himself for trusting his friend of many years. After his processing in the Middletown Police Department’s headquarters, he spoke with the arresting detective.

  “Honestly sir, I have only one confession to make,” Grant said to the detective. “I don’t trust anyone with dangerous information, but I would trust my closest friend. James’s betrayal hurts worse than this arrest.”

  The detective didn’t hesitate in his reply: “If James is your friend, you don’t need enemies. If this was involving a serious injury or a major theft, that’s one thing. But no one was hurt at the bar—luckily, I might add. And the rowboat was recovered from the dock where it was tied up. It really makes a good story. But I don’t like rats, even when they help me clear cases.”

  The detective paused for a second, and then continued: “But in a way I’m almost glad it happened. Want to know why?”

  “Tell me,” Grant replied.

  “Because, without anyone getting hurt, I know I can never
trust your pal James,” the detective said. “He does this to you, I’m nothing to him. Stand-up he most certainly is not.”

  When Grant had finished telling me the story, he seemed energized. He wanted payback against Pressfield but knew it was going to be a serious problem. It’s one thing to have a bar fight, but quite another to put a beat-down on a sworn police officer. It also didn’t take a genius to figure out that the cops would come looking for Grant if something suddenly happened to Pressfield.

  We ordered another round of beers, and I gave the matter some thought.

  Turning to face my buddy, I said, “You can have no knowledge of any act of revenge whatsoever. If these fucking cops even suspect you, and they will, James being the pussy that he is, you are fucked. They will bust your balls for all eternity. Trust me; James does not get a pass on this because he’s hooked up with the blue mafia. I’m flying a black flag on this and we will not discuss it again.”

  “You ain’t flying anything on this without me,” Grant said.

  “You’ll just have to shut the fuck up,” I said. “Not to worry, though, no doubt I’ll need a favor from you someday. Anyway, this one will be fun.”

  “What do you guess you’re gonna do?” Grant asked.

  “I have no idea what you are talking about.”

  My assessment of James Pressfield completely changed after hearing from Grant about the bar incident. Though Pressfield was big and carried himself like a tough guy, I believed that deep down he was a pussy. The cop used his size, badge and gun to bully and control people—and there were plenty of people in Middletown who agreed with that assessment. At that point, Pressfield and I had known each other for years through our mutual friendship with Grant, and we’d gotten along pretty well. But behind my back, I knew that he quietly boasted of having taken me down. That was pure fiction. If Pressfield was as tough as his reputation, he was going to get an opportunity to prove it—in the dark, with no witnesses but me, his attacker.