Sleepers

by Lorenzo Carcaterra

“I need your help, Fat Man,” I said, turning to look at him. “A big favor. It would be easier for you to say no. A lot smarter too. And there’s no problem if you do.”

  Fat Mancho downed his Yoo-Hoo in two long gulps and wiped his mouth with the rolled-up sleeve of a green shirt dotted with orange flamingos.

  “I bet you would like me to say no,” Fat Mancho said, laying the bottle by his feet. “Then you can tell your buddies that the Fat Man don’t stand up. Don’t back his friends.”

  “Are you callin’ me your friend?” I said with a smile. “I’m touched, Fat Man.”

  “I ain’t callin’ you shit,” Fat Mancho said. “I’m just tellin’ you I’m here. You fuckers can’t pull off anything alone. You ain’t got the brass and you ain’t got the brains. There’s two of you in jail right now. Ain’t lookin’ to make it four.”

  “I guess King Benny’s been around to see you,” I said.

  “Some fuckin’ team we puttin’ together,” Fat Mancho said. “A drunk lawyer on one side, fuckin’ kid lawyer on another. A paper boy makin’ like Dick Tracy. Four eyeballs swear they saw the whole thing. And the two on trial killed more people than cancer. That motherfucker Custer had a better shot at a walk.”

  “Nobody’s expecting it,” I said. “That’s the biggest card in our favor.”

  “This ain’t no fuckin’ book, kid,” Fat Mancho said. “You best remember that. And this goes bad, it ain’t a fuckin’ year upstate in a kid jail. This is real. You get caught on this, you lookin’ straight at serious.”

  “There’s no choice,” I said. “Not for us.”

  “They were good boys,” Fat Mancho said. “That little fucker Johnny give you his shirt he thought you need it. That other prick, Butter, always chewin’ on a mouthful of somethin’, his lips covered with chocolate.”

  He turned to look at me. “But they ain’t good boys anymore. They killers now, cold as stone.”

  “I know,” I said. “I know what they were and I know what they are. It’s not about that.”

  “Ain’t worth throwin’ away a life just to get even,” Fat Mancho said. “You and the lawyer got a shot. You can make it out the right way. You ready to flip that aside? Just to get even with three fuckin’ guards?”

  “I think about what they did every day,” I said, looking away from Fat Mancho, my eyes on the street in front of us. “It’s a part of me, like skin. When I look in a mirror, I see it in my eyes. Sometimes, I see it in other people’s faces. It’s a nasty feeling. It’s a feeling that makes you think a piece of you is already dead. And there’s no way to bring it back.”

  “Gettin’ away with this gonna make you feel all better?” Fat Mancho asked. “Gonna make you forget every fuckin’ thing that happened?”

  “No,” I said, turning back to face him. “It’ll just give me something a little sweeter to remember. Somethin’ nicer to think about.”

  “I read that shitty paper you workin’ on now,” Fat Mancho said, standing and picking up his soda crate. “Read it every day. Still ain’t seen your fuckin’ name anywhere.”

  “Be patient,” I said. “Someday you will. Just keep on buyin’ it.”

  “I don’t buy shit,” Fat Mancho said, walking back into his bodega. “I never put any of my money in a stranger’s pockets.”

  “You still married to two women?” I asked him, standing and dusting the back of my pants.

  “Two wives and a lady Mend,” Fat Mancho said. “They can’t get enough of what I got.”

  “Must be good,” I said.

  “They like it,” Fat Mancho said. “That’s what counts.”

  “Thanks, Fat Man,” I said, leaning against his doorway. “I owe you. I owe you big-time.”

  “Bet your ass you owe me, fucker,” Fat Mancho said. “And you ain’t leavin’ this spot till you pay me for that fuckin’ pack of gum.”

  6

  I WAS SITTING on the hallway steps, my back inches from the apartment door, a bag holding a six-pack of beer by my side, when Carol Martinez lifted her head and saw me.

  “Mug me or marry me, Shakes,” Carol said, searching through her open purse for her keys. “I’m too tired for anything else.”

  “Will you settle for a couple of beers?” I asked, tapping the paper bag.

  “If that’s your best offer,” she said.

  “I’ll throw in a hug and a kiss,” I said.

  “Sold,” she said.

  I stood up and put my arms around her waist and held her close to me, feeling her soft curves, even under the layers of thick jacket and sweater. She looked as pretty as I’d ever seen her.

  “You need something, don’t you, Shakes?” Carol asked, warm hands rubbing the back of my head and neck.

  “I could use a glass,” I said. “I hate drinking out of a can.”

  Her apartment was clean and orderly, filled with books and framed posters of old movies. The kitchen had a small table in its center, and a large cutout of Humphrey Bogart in a trench coat smoking a cigarette was taped to the fridge.

  “You pour the beer,” Carol said, taking off her jacket. “I’ll put on some music.”

  “You got any Frankie Valli?” I asked.

  “You’re so old-fashioned, Shakes,” Carol said with a laugh. “Valli was gone before the pill.”

  “At least he’s alive,” I said. “Which is more than I can say for your pal Bogart.”

  “Bogie’s always gonna be cool,” she said. “I can’t say the same about the Four Seasons.”

  “Well, don’t throw away their albums just yet,” I said, handing her a glass of beer, watching as she put a Bob Seger record on the turntable.

  “I don’t have any to throw away,” she said, sitting down next to me on the small pull-out couch in the center of the living room.

  We sat there quietly, listening to Seger frog his way through “Tryin’ to Live My Life Without You,” sipping our beer, my head resting against a thick, hand-quilted throw pillow.

  “You look tired,” Carol said, placing a hand on my knee. “They don’t give you time for sleep on this new job of yours?”

  “How much do you know?” I asked, turning my eyes toward hers.

  “Just what the neighborhood says,” Carol said.

  “And what does the neighborhood say?”

  “That they’re going to put John and Tommy away,” she said, sadness touching her eyes and voice. “And that their best friend is going to be the one to do it.”

  “You believe that?”

  “It’s hard not to, Shakes,” Carol said. “I mean, unless we all have it wrong, he did take the fucking case.”

  “Yeah, he did take the case,” I said.

  “Then what else is there to say?” she asked, drinking the rest of her beer and trying not to cry.

  I sat up and moved closer to her, our hands touching, our eyes on each other.

  “You know Michael very well,” I said. “Maybe even better than I do.”

  “I thought I did,” Carol said. “I really thought I did. Now I don’t know.”

  “You do know, Carol,” I said. “You know he loves you. And you know he’d never do anything to hurt you or me or Johnny or Butter. Never.”

  “Then why take the case?” Carol said. “For God’s sake, he even went in and asked for it. What the hell kind of friend is that?”

  “The best kind,” I said. “The kind who will throw whatever he has away, just to help his friends. The kind who never forgets who he is and what he is. The kind who’s crazy enough to think he can get away with what he’s trying to do.”

  “What are you telling me, Shakes?” Carol asked.

  “You’ve lived in this neighborhood a long time, Carol. Long enough to know that everything is a shakedown or a scam. Why should this be any different?”

  “I’ll go get us another beer,” Carol said, walking back into the kitchen. By now Bob Seger was singing “Against the Wind.” “You want a sandwich with it?”

  “You got any fresh mozzarella and b
asil?” I asked.

  “How about a couple of slices of old ham on stale bread?”

  “With mustard?”

  “Mayo,” Carol said.

  “You got me,” I said.

  We ate our sandwiches, drank our beer, and listened to music, the two of us relaxed in each other’s company and lost in the valleys of our own thoughts. After many moments had passed, I asked her why she had stopped dating Michael.

  “It just happened,” Carol said. “He was living in Queens, working and going to school. I was here and doing the same. We’d go weeks without seeing each other. After a while, it was easier to let it go.”

  “You still love him?”

  “I don’t think about it, Shakes,” Carol said. “If I did, I’d say yes. But Michael needed to get away from Hell’s Kitchen. Get away from the people in it. I was one of those people.”

  “And you’re with John now,” I said.

  “As much as anybody can be with John,” Carol said. “The man I know is not the boy you remember. But there’s something special about John. You just have to look harder to see it.”

  “You visit him?”

  “Once a week,” Carol said. “For about an hour.”

  “Good,” I said. “Keep that up. Just don’t tell him you see me. In fact, don’t tell him anything. The more it looks hopeless to him, the better this might work.”

  “Why not tell him?” Carol said. “Might make things easier.”

  “He’ll put on a tougher act in court if he thinks he’s cornered,” I said. “I want that little baby face of his looking straight at the jury and I don’t want it to look happy.”

  “Why didn’t you ever ask me out?” Carol said, a thin hand running through her thick hair.

  “You were Mikey’s girl,” I said. “He got to you first.”

  “And after Mikey?” she said, her face shiny and clear.

  “I never thought you’d say yes,” I said.

  “Well, you were wrong, Shakes,” Carol said.

  “Will you say yes to me now?” I said, holding her hand in mine. “No matter what I ask?”

  Carol leaned over and put both arms around me and rested her head against my neck.

  “Yes,” she whispered. “What do you want me to do?”

  “Break the law,” I said.

  7

  MICHAEL’S PLAN RELIED heavily on Hell’s Kitchen to deliver information and to keep silent. Both were skills the neighborhood had in abundance.

  The plan also depended on keeping Michael alive, which meant that word had to get to John and Tommy’s killing crew that he was not an open target. Within days of Michael taking the case, the West Side Boys got a visit from King Benny. The King requested that the verbal abuse directed toward Michael continue, but that there never be a death move against him. The hit on Michael Sullivan, if there were to be one, could come only from King Benny.

  While the neighborhood, led by King Benny, Fat Mancho, and Carol, worked their end, I received and relayed the information I got from Michael back down the line. In turn, I fed Michael all that he needed to know.

  We had set up a simple method of communication.

  If Michael was sending, messages were left at work for me to call my nonexistent girlfriend, Gloria. Once I received the signal, I would send one of King Benny’s men to pick up an envelope no later than noon of the next day at one of three designated drop spots.

  If I needed to get word to Michael, I would have someone from the neighborhood pick up an early edition of The New York Times, script the word Edmund on the upper-right-hand corner of the Metro section, and drop it in front of his apartment door. Later that day, Michael would pick up his envelope at an Upper East Side P.O. box.

  We spent our early weeks going beyond Michael’s files, digging up information that could be used either in a courtroom or on the street against the three remaining guards. We also were working the witnesses, gathering their backgrounds, finding their weak spots. A full folder was also being developed on the Wilkinson Home for Boys, finding former guards, employees, and inmates willing to speak out, hunting down wardens and assistants, locating the names of juveniles who died during their stay there and checking on the given cause of death.

  Michael supplied us with a list of questions for O’Connor to ask in court. He also gave us the questions he intended to ask and the answers he expected to receive. Any additional information on the guards or on Wilkinson that he came across was also passed along.

  All written messages, once delivered, were destroyed. Phone conversations were permitted only through the use of coded numbers on clear third-party lines. There was never any personal contact between the main participants.

  Our margin of error was zero.

  Hell’s Kitchen, a neighborhood that came to the aid of its allies as quickly as it rushed to bury its enemies, thrived under Michael’s plan. The verbal shots at Michael continued, cries of “traitor” and “gutter rat” heard up and down the avenue, but those were bellowed for the sole benefit of strangers. The underground word, the only one that mattered, had spread through the streets with the speed of a late-night bullet—King Benny’s “sleepers” were making their play. “Sleepers” was a street name for anyone who spent time in a juvenile facility. It was also a mob phrase attached to a hit man who stayed overnight after finishing a job. There were many “sleepers” in Hell’s Kitchen, but my friends and I were the only four King Benny considered his crew.

  “You want a Rolls-Royce, you go to England or wherever the fuck they make it,” Fat Mancho said. “You want champagne, you go see the French. You want money, find a Jew. But you want dirt, scum buried under a rock, a secret nobody wants anybody to know, you want that and you want that fast, there’s only one place to go—Hell’s Kitchen. It’s the lost and found of shit. They lose it and we find it.”

  8

  KING BENNY SAT on a park bench in De Witt Clinton, feeding pumpkin seeds to a circle of pigeons, the late fall sun scanning his back. It was one week past Thanksgiving and three weeks into our work. The weather had begun its turn to New York cold.

  He wore the same black outfit he usually wore in his club, ignoring the frigid air much as he ignored everything else. He had a coffee cup resting next to his right leg along with a small bottle of Sambuca Romana.

  “I didn’t know you liked pigeons,” I said, sitting down next to him.

  “I like anything that don’t talk,” King Benny said.

  “I heard from Mikey today,” I said. “The case goes to trial first Monday in the new year. It’ll be a small story in the papers tomorrow.”

  “You only got two witnesses who are gonna testify,” King Benny said. “Two others changed their minds. That won’t be in the papers tomorrow.”

  “Which two?”

  “The suits at the bar,” King Benny said. “They said they had too many drinks to know for sure who they saw walk in.”

  “That leaves the couple in the booth,” I said.

  “For now,” King Benny said.

  “Everything else is falling into place?” I asked, blowing breath into my hands.

  “Except for your witness,” King Benny said. “That pocket’s still empty.”

  “I’ve got somebody in mind,” I said. “I’ll talk to him when the time’s right.”

  “He good?”

  “He will be,” I said. “If he does it.”

  “Make sure, then,” King Benny said, tossing more seeds at the pigeons, “that he does it.”

  “None of this would work without you,” I said.

  “You’d find a way,” King Benny said. “With me or without.”

  “Maybe,” I said. “But I’m glad you’re with us on this.”

  “I don’t know if I coulda been any help to you back in that place,” King Benny said. “But I shoulda tried.” It was the only time he ever alluded to the fact that he knew what had gone on when we were at Wilkinson.

  “Things happen when they’re supposed to,” I said. “I
t’s what you always said to me.”

  “Good things and bad,” King Benny said. “Goin’ in, you never know which one you’re gonna find. Always be prepared for both.”

  “And most of the time,” I said, “bet on the bad.”

  “You better go now,” King Benny said. “You don’t wanna be late for your appointment.”

  “What appointment?”

  “With Danny O’Connor,” King Benny said. “He’s waitin’ for you in Red Applegate’s bar. Should be on his second Scotch by now. Get to him before he has a third.”

  “Is he ready to go along?” I asked.

  “He’ll go,” King Benny said. “He’s too young to have his friends drive their cars with their lights on.”

  Winter 1980

  9

  THE COURT OFFICERS led John Reilly and Thomas Marcano into the courtroom, both defendants walking with their heads down and their hands at their sides. They were wearing blue blazers, blue polo shirts, gray slacks, and brown loafers. They nodded at their attorney, Danny O’Connor, and sat down in the two wooden chairs by his side.

  The court stenographer, a curly-haired blonde in a short black skirt, sat across from them, directly in front of the judge’s bench, her face vacant.

  The chairs of the jury box were filled by the twelve chosen for the trial.

  Michael Sullivan sat at the prosecutor’s table, his open briefcase, two yellow legal folders, and three sharp pencils laid out before him, his eyes on the stenographer’s legs. He was in a dark wool suit, his dark tie crisply knotted over his white shirt.

  I sat in the middle of the third row. Two young men, both of whom I knew to be part of the West Side Boys, sat to my left. Carol Martinez, eyes staring straight ahead, was to my right. She held my hand.

  Judge Eliot Weisman took his place behind the bench. He was a tall, middle-aged man with a square face topped by a cleanly shaved head. He appeared trim and fit, muscular beneath his dark robes. He was known to run a stern courtroom and allowed scant time for theatrics and stall tactics. Criminal attorneys claimed his scale of justice almost always tipped toward the prosecutor. The assistant district attorneys themselves called him fair, but by no means an easy touch.