“Like aspirin?” Tommy said.
“Sort of,” I said.
“You’re like a freakin’ cave man, Shakes,” John said.
“What’s that flower you like to eat?” Tommy asked.
“What flower?”
“The one your mother made that one time,” Tommy said. “With all the leaves.”
“Artichoke?”
“Yeah, that’s the one,” Tommy said.
“That’s not a flower, moron,” I said.
“Looked like one to me,” Tommy said.
“Lamb’s head and flowers,” John said. “A feast.”
“The Irish know nothin’ about food,” I said.
“I give you that,” Tommy said.
“I give you this,” John said, grabbing his crotch.
“What does an Irishman call a seven-course meal?” I asked.
“What?”
“A six-pack and a boiled potato,” I said, initiating the Hell’s Kitchen game known as the dozens, where ethnic insults flew with abandon.
“How can you spot the bride at an Italian wedding?” John asked.
“How?”
“She’s the one with the braided armpits,” John said.
“What’s Irish foreplay?” Tommy asked, standing up and moving from the stoop.
“What?”
“Brace yourself, Bridget,” Tommy said.
“How many Irishmen does it take to change a light bulb?” I asked.
“How many?”
“Four,” I said. “One to hold the bulb and three to turn the ladder.”
“I’m goin’ swimmin’,” Michael said.
“We’ll go with you,” I said, following him toward the 12th Avenue piers.
“What do you call the captain of an Italian submarine?” John asked, in step behind us.
“Chicken of the sea,” I answered.
“How many of these are there?” Michael asked.
“About a hundred,” I said.
“You know them all, I bet,” Michael said to me.
“Just about.”
“And you’re gonna let me hear ’em all today?”
“That’s the plan,” I said.
“I don’t even know why I hang out with you guys,” Michael said.
“You’re lonely,” I said.
“You’re ugly,” John said.
“You have no other friends,” Tommy said.
“Must be it,” Michael said.
“You think the water’s too cold to swim in?” Tommy asked.
“That water’s always cold,” John said. “It’s like swimmin’ in chunks of ice.”
“It’s not the cold that bothers me,” I said. “It’s that other stuff.”
“All that shit floatin’ around the edges,” John said. “You ever think whose toilet that was flushed out of?”
“No,” Michael said. “I don’t.”
“And the rats,” Tommy said. “I went under once and this huge, ugly bastard was doin’ a Sea Hunt right alongside me.”
“Makes you wanna puke,” I said.
“Good place for it,” John said.
“What wimps,” Michael said, dismissing the three of us with a wave of his hand.
“Oh, sorry, I forgot,” John said. “Tarzan here loves it. Makes him feel like a man.”
“I don’t love it,” Michael said. “But it’s all the water we got and bitchin’ isn’t gonna send the rats to Jersey.”
“Mikey’s right,” I said. “Where else can you go and catch all the eels you want?”
“And get some asshole to buy ’em,” John said.
“Dead or alive,” Tommy said.
“Whatta we gonna do with the money we make?” John asked.
“How about Ho-Ho’s and a movie?” Michael said.
“At the Beacon?” Tommy asked.
“Nothin’ good’s there,” I said.
“What?” Michael said.
“Don’t remember,” I said. “Somethin’ French.”
“What’s at the Loew’s?” Tommy asked.
“Von Ryan’s Express,” I said. “Greatest war movie ever.”
“We’ve seen it four times,” John moaned.
“We’re talkin’ a lotta eels,” I said. “If we’re gonna do a movie and Chinese.”
“What’s wrong with you, Shakes?” Michael said. “We don’t need money for a movie.”
“I’m gonna pass,” John said.
“Why?” I asked.
“Gotta get home,” John said.
“Trouble?” Michael said.
“Not yet.” John shrugged. “But there will be. My mother’s got herself a new boyfriend and he’s lookin’ to keep me in line.”
“Need us?” Tommy asked.
“If I needed you guys, I’d be in real trouble,” John said.
“That’s no joke,” Michael said, suddenly somber and quiet. “You can’t trust anybody but us.”
“I know,” John said. “But I can handle this guy.”
“Let’s swim, then,” I said. “After that, we walk John home.”
“Okay with you?” Michael asked John.
“Okay with me,” John said.
Tommy and John moved on ahead, reading the statistics on the backs of baseball cards as they walked. I stayed by Michael’s side, our pace slower.
“You really serious about all that?” I asked. “That we can only trust each other.”
“What do you think?” Michael asked.
“I think you are,” I said.
“Then why’d you ask?”
“Wanted to make sure.”
“Well, now you’re sure.”
“What about Johnny and Butter?”
“What about ’em?”
“You think they feel the same way?”
“I think we all do,” Michael said.
“Think it’ll always be like that?”
“It’s like that now,” Michael said.
“I want it to last longer than just now,” I said.
“Maybe it will,” Michael said. “Unless you start thinkin’ like King Benny.”
“Nobody thinks like King Benny,” I said.
“Friends are like loans,” Michael imitated a King Benny monotone. “Bad ideas.”
“That’s only because all his friends tried to kill him,” I said.
“He’ll go down one day,” Michael said. “And it won’t be a friend that does it.”
“That’s where you’re wrong,” I said. “Guys like King Benny never go down.”
“Why’s that?”
“They let others go down for ’em,” I said. “They walk away clean.”
“Yeah, but we’re not like King Benny,” Michael said. “We’re not always gonna walk away clean. One of us might go down. That’s why we have to stick together.”
“Hey, do eels bite?” John asked, approaching the edge of Pier 82, gazing down at the murky water, its greasy waves lapping the sides of the dock.
“They suck,” I told him.
“Like your mother,” Tommy said.
“Except eels do it for free,” John added.
Michael stripped off his shirt and stepped out of his sneakers. “Let’s get wet.”
“Last one in carries the eels,” I shouted, taking a running jump into the water.
“First one in kills ’em,” John shouted after me, stripping down to his underwear.
Butter stood atop one of the rusty moorings, naked, his body facing the sun. “Should I pee here or wait till I get in?” he said to Michael.
“Share it with the fish,” Michael said. He ran up behind Butter and shoulder-blocked him into the water.
“Let’s go, Mikey,” I said. “We only got about an hour till the tide picks up.”
Michael dove in backward and stayed under for as long as he could hold his breath, emerging twenty feet to our left.
“There’s tons of ’em down there,” he said. “We could make a lotta money today.”
“Or we could g
et eaten alive by river rats,” Tommy said.
“It’s still better than goin’ to the Yankee game,” John said.
I remember that as a perfect afternoon. We spent the rest of the day in the water, chasing after small schools of eels, avoiding the rush of the rats, the sound of our screams and laughter bouncing off the iron shadows of the abandoned pier.
OUR FAMILY LIVES were kept separate from our street lives.
We each knew the problems that existed behind our doors, but we also understood ours to be situations that couldn’t be improved by discussion. We never needed to organize playdates or sleepovers. Our parents never socialized or made attempts at forming friendships.
“Our apartments were war zones,” Michael described them. “But it was a war we were better off fighting on our own. We knew what was going on, we saw the cuts, the bruises. We heard the talk. We just chose to keep it to ourselves. Home was the one place where we couldn’t help each other. Nothing we could do would change a thing. So we ignored it, didn’t dwell on it, except for an occasional joke or comment. In a way, our problems just made our circle tighter.”
There were no Boy Scout troops in Hell’s Kitchen, but there was a Police Athletic League center on Tenth Avenue, which we were allowed to use free of charge. There, my friends and I boxed and hit the various bags and watched older boys spar and jump rope in preparation for the three-round bouts in the Daily News-sponsored Golden Gloves tournament.
We bowled at the lanes on Eighth Avenue and 54th Street, our weekly games paid for by the Sacred Heart parish, and we played in knock-hockey tournaments run by the De Witt Clinton Park Association. We shot dice in front of Fat Mancho’s store for a dime a roll and pitched pennies against all comers. All of these activities were done with the knowledge and consent of our parents. In fact, we were given a parental green light on most things we wanted to do. All that was required was staying out of trouble and keeping our parents’ participation to a minimum.
There were no curfews to worry about, but neither was there a danger of being snatched off a Hell’s Kitchen sidewalk by a stranger or shot at random by a drive-by gunman. Our parents knew that as long as we stayed within the confines of Hell’s Kitchen, we would be safe from any harm beyond street fights and sports injuries.
There were eyes everywhere. Hell’s Kitchen was Mayberry with a temper. The neighborhood was like having one giant baby-sitter. One giant, very mean baby-sitter.
What little socializing did exist between adults and children would take place in the saloons and diners that dotted the area. The Eastern Europeans and their families flocked to the diners, while the Irish were more likely to frequent the saloons. The Italians and Puerto Ricans would bounce from one to the other.
Early in Hell’s Kitchen history, diners and luncheonettes lined 11th and 12th Avenues, their booths filled with longshoremen fresh from four-day shifts, sailors on shore leave, couples on first dates, mothers with loud children. One such diner, called the Kitchen and owned by a German family named Heil, is credited with giving name to the neighborhood.
The saloons at first belonged to the gangs and were deemed unfit by most families.
As the gangs faded, the saloons turned into what they had been for many in their old country—a place to meet, swap stories, forget the mounting debts, share some laughs, and, above all else, drink. It was not an uncommon sight to walk into a Hell’s Kitchen saloon on a Saturday afternoon and see it crammed with families, drinking, laughing, singing old songs, and remembering friends and relatives on distant shores.
It was a drinking culture broken along ethnic lines: strong whiskey for the Irish, homemade wine for the Italians, cold beer for the Puerto Ricans.
Drugs were not yet part of our world.
As much as our parents embraced drink, they had no patience for drugs and they put their trust in King Benny, the biggest eyes and ears in Hell’s Kitchen, to keep them out.
King Benny used diplomacy when called for, force when necessary. He earned his money from old-fashioned mob enterprises—policy running, loan sharking, truck hijacking, swag sales, and prostitution. These crimes were quietly condoned by a police department warmed by weekly payoffs and supported by a neighborhood addicted to illegal action. King Benny ruled with a tight fist and lashed out with deadly purpose against any threat to his domain. A lot of people tried taking over his business during his reign and a lot of people ended up dead.
He would do favors for those he liked and ignored the financial requests of those he considered liabilities. He would listen to people with problems and offer opinions on how those problems could be solved. He was a father confessor without a conscience. His decisions were never rash and were always final. His words were, in Hell’s Kitchen, respected as the law.
It was the only law not ever broken.
KING BENNY SHUFFLED the cards, large espresso cup to his left, drawn window blind shielding his face from the sun. I sat across from him, chest near the edge of a small round table, hands folded, 7Up bottle at my side, waiting for the game to begin. I was eleven years old.
“Sure you wanna play me?” King Benny asked.
“Why not?”
“I cheat.”
“Me too,” I said.
“Good,” he said, and opened the deal.
The game was sette bello, Italian blackjack, and the stakes were low, a penny a win, nickel on a two-card hit. We were in the middle of King Benny’s club, three empty tables around us, the door behind us locked. White dust particles, heavy enough to hold, curled their way up toward the hanging overhead lights. A jukebox played Sinatra and “High Hopes.”
“Hungry?” King Benny asked, tossing me two cards.
“No,” I said. “Thanks.”
“Sure?”
“I’m sure,” I said.
“What’s it gonna be?” he said, nodding toward my cards.
“Give a hit.”
King Benny flipped a card from the top of the deck, his eyes on me.
“You’re over,” he said. “You’re into me for a penny.”
“Double or nothing,” I told him.
“A sucker bet,” he said, dealing out a fresh set of cards and sipping from his coffee.
I lost the first ten hands we played, King Benny picking up the pennies and piling them next to his cup. He kept the deck of cards in his right hand, dealing with one finger, his eyes always on me, never on the table. He shuffled the cards every other deal and ignored the phone when it rang.
“You always end up with a six,” I said. “How is that?”
“Lucky,” he said.
“Got any pretzels?” I asked.
“Behind the bar,” he said. “Help yourself.”
“Want anything?”
“What time is it?” he asked.
“Quarter to five,” I said, looking at my Timex watch, a swag present he had given me.
“Too early,” he said.
King Benny never ate before seven and slept only two hours a night. He always carried a thousand dollars in twenties and singles in his pants pocket, never wore a gun, and was said to have a brother in jail, doing natural life on a double murder charge.
I sat back down, picking at a bag of salt pretzels. He sipped his coffee, shuffled the cards, and leaned back in his chair.
“I hear you got trouble at home,” he said, putting the cup back by his side.
“It’s nothing.”
“If it was nothing,” he said, “I wouldn’t have heard about it.”
“My father owes money,” I admitted.
“Who this time?”
“The Greek,” I said. “He’s six months late on the payments.”
“How much?”
“Three thousand,” I said. “As of yesterday. Goes up every day.”
“Yeah,” King Benny said. “It does.”
“The Greek sent a coupla guys over late last night,” I said. “Scare him a little.”
“It work?”
“Scared or not,�
� I said, “he doesn’t have the money and can’t get it from anybody else.”
“No,” King Benny said. “He can’t.”
“He’s hiding out,” I said. “Until it blows over or he makes a big score.”
“Guys like your father never make big scores,” King Benny said. “They just keep guys like me in business.”
“Will they kill him?”
“No,” he said. “He’ll just wish they did.”
“I got sixty bucks put aside,” I told him. “My mother can come up with another forty. That should be good for something.”
“Forget it,” King Benny said.
“I can’t forget it,” I said. “He’s my father.”
King Benny shook his head. “The loan’s been squared.”
“Who squared it?”
“You did. This morning. The Greek picked up an envelope with three grand and a note from you. Him and your father are even.”
I didn’t show any real emotion. That wasn’t allowed. All I said was “I can’t pay you back right away.”
“You don’t have to pay me back at all,” I was told.
“Why’d you do it?” I wanted to know. “You never liked my father.”
“Still don’t,” King Benny said. “He lives or dies, don’t mean a thing to me.”
I took a drink of the 7Up.
“Thanks,” I said. “Thanks a lot.”
“Always watch out for men like your father,” King Benny said. “They go down bad streets. And they never go down alone.”
“He tries,” I said. “He just gets caught up.”
“There are other ways,” he said. “Better ways. You should walk away from the table knowing that.”
“He wants to make money,” I said. “Same as everybody around here.”
“Looking for easy money,” King Benny said. “Every one of them. And guess what?”
“What?”
“Ain’t no such thing,” he said.
“Does my father know?” I asked. “About the payment.”
“Not yet.”
“Can I tell him?”
“Soon as you see him,” he said.
The room was turning dark, the sun’s shadows giving way to early evening. King Benny’s coffee cup was empty and my soda was warm. The jukebox had abandoned Sinatra and settled now on “Don’t Be That Way” by Benny Goodman. In a corner, an old steam radiator sizzled, despite the outside heat.
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