The Tender Bar: A Memoir

by J. R. Moehringer

  I couldn’t bring myself to attend his funeral, for many reasons, but especially because I couldn’t face that open casket. I went instead a few days later to Calverton National Cemetery, on the eastern end of Long Island, a wilderness of white crosses. It was a cold February day, a biting wind blowing in off the ocean. The office was closed, but a machine told me my father was in Section 23, Grave Site 591. He had never been so easy to find.

  Section 23 was the newest in the cemetery. My stomach rolled when I saw the many open graves, waiting. I walked along, reading names, until I came to a freshly covered grave. JOHN JOSEPH MOEHRINGER, PVT., AIR FORCE. My father had told me that he’d changed his name legally to Johnny Michaels and that he’d been a marine. Two lies, dispelled by one headstone. I jammed my hands into my pockets, turned my collar against the wind. I looked down at my father’s name, at the fresh footprints of the workmen who had buried him, and tried to think of something to say, but I couldn’t. I stood quietly for half an hour, waiting for the words—and the tears—but they would not come. “Well,” I said, turning to go, “I hope you’re okay, Dad. I hope you’ve found some—peace.”

  Why it should have been this word that set the tears flowing, I don’t know, but they came in a torrent, so suddenly, so violently, that I had to drop into a catcher’s crouch. Rocking back and forth, my hands over my face, I felt that there was no end to those tears, that I could sob all day and into the night if I didn’t will myself to stop. I was embarrassed, and troubled, by the power of my reaction. “I’m sorry,” I said to my father, “for making such a scene at your—for making a scene.”

  The wind was whooshing through the dead leaves in the branches of the trees. A sound like static. Somewhere in that white noise is your old man. I tried to believe this. I tried to hear my father’s voice telling me—what? That he was sorry? That he understood? That he was proud of me? That it was normal to feel sadness about your father? That we all do, and that such sadness is part of the hard work of manhood? It was wishful thinking, hearing these things, hearing his voice, but as I left the cemetery I granted myself that last wish.

  I said good-bye to the gang from Publicans. In many ways it was harder saying good-bye this time than it had been years earlier.

  When are you coming back? they said.

  Not for a while, I said sadly.

  Don’t disappear this time, they said.

  I won’t, I said. I won’t.

  I promised the Manhasset story to my editors by the end of the week. Before I let it go, there was just one more thing I needed to do. One last interview. A Manhasset man named Roko Camaj had been a window washer at the World Trade Center, and he was on the job when the planes hit. His twenty-three-year-old son, Vincent, still lived in Manhasset. Just behind St. Mary’s.

  I phoned him and said I was writing about my hometown and how it had changed forever.

  He wouldn’t talk. Reporters had already written about his father, he said, and most had gotten it wrong. They had even spelled the family name wrong. I promised I’d get at least that much right. I pleaded with him to meet me. He sighed.

  “Okay,” he said. “Where?”

  I mentioned a few restaurants in Port Washington. I suggested Louie the Greek’s. I named places near his house, places not so near. He was silent. I was silent. Finally he said, “There’s a place my friends and I like to go.”

  “Name it.”

  “Do you remember where the old Publicans used to be?”

  Acknowledgments

  Like its author, this book has been rescued many times by a number of extraordinary people.

  First, Roger and Sloan Barnett. Their love and generosity at the outset made all the difference. When the book was just an unformed idea, they introduced me to Mort Janklow, the archangel of literary agents, who immediately understood the story I wanted to tell. He embraced me, inspired me—and commanded me to write a book proposal. More, he told me how. I’m forever in his debt.

  It was Mort Janklow who sent me to Jeff and Tracy Smith, the Nick and Nora of Watermill. They clipped lines from Somerset Maugham for me to pin above my computer, and let me set up my computer in their empty Pond House, where I wrote a rough draft while watching their frozen pond thaw.

  During my stay at the pond I did much of my reporting, visiting Manhasset countless times, interviewing most of the people who appear in these pages. My thanks to Bob the Cop, Cager, Colt, Dalton, DePietro, Don, Georgette, Joey D, and Michelle. They, and many others from Publicans, spent hours confirming or correcting my memory, and helping me piece together long-ago conversations. They also granted me permission to use their real stories and real names. (Only three names in this book have been changed—Lana, Magdalena, and Sidney.)

  As drafts progressed I showed them to a group of careful and thoughtful readers. Jackie Griggs, Bill Husted, Jim Locke, McGraw Milhaven, Emily Nunn, Jim Newton and Amy Wallace each helped in unique and essential ways. I owe a special thanks to Harvard professor John Stauffer, who gave me a list of rare old memoirs to read, then sat with me in his campus office through long winter afternoons and explained to me the American memoir. Those were among the most pleasant hours of my life.

  From the start my editors at the Los Angeles Times—John Carroll, Dean Baquet, and Scott Kraft—have been unwavering in their patience, support and interest, even granting me a book leave at a time that was very inopportune for them. I can never thank them enough.

  At one particularly anxious moment I was fortunate to meet with Hyperion’s editor-in-chief, Will Schwalbe, who set me right with a brief tutorial in the “architecture” of story. Another pivotal meeting, with Los Angeles Magazine editor Kit Rachlis, The Master himself, helped me finish at last.

  In the fact-checking stage, Yale spokeswoman Dorie Baker and Saybrook dean Lisa Collins were kind, gracious and tireless. They are what Yale is all about.

  Through it all I was pushed, coached, charmed, needled, educated, dazzled and edited as never before by the miraculous Peternelle van Arsdale, my editor at Hyperion. As rare and symphonic as her name, she did two things no one else had ever been able to do: She made me believe in the story, and through the sheer force of her faith, she made me keep writing.

  Finally, my mother. Though a private woman, she answered hundreds of my questions with honesty and astonishing recall. She let me write about some of her toughest days, and shared with me her decades’ worth of family diaries, photos, cassettes and letters, without which this book might not have been possible. Above all, when the way was lost, she was my beacon, calling me back to the words, the simple words. It has been my great fortune in writing this book, as in entering this world, to have had her as my primary source.

  Turn the page for a sneak peek of J.R. Moehringer’s debut novel, Sutton.

  An excerpt from Sutton

  ONE

  HE’S WRITING WHEN THEY COME FOR HIM.

  He’s sitting at his metal desk, bent over a yellow legal pad, talking to himself, and to her—as always, to her. So he doesn’t notice them standing at his door. Until they run their batons along the bars.

  He looks up, adjusts his large scuffed eyeglasses, the bridge mended many times with Scotch tape. Two guards, side by side, the left one fat and soft and pale, as if made from Crisco, the right one tall and scrawny and with a birthmark like a penny on his right cheek.

  Left Guard hitches up his belt. On your feet, Sutton. Admin wants you.

  Sutton stands.

  Right Guard points his baton. What the? You crying, Sutton?

  No sir.

  Don’t you lie to me, Sutton. I can see you been crying.

  Sutton touches his cheek. His fingers come away wet. I didn’t know I was crying sir.

  Right Guard waves his baton at the legal pad. What’s that?

  Nothing sir.

  He asked you what is it, Left Guard says.

  Sutton feels his bum leg starting to buckle. He grits his teeth at the pain. My novel sir.

  They look ar
ound his book-filled cell. He follows their eyes. It’s never good when the guards look around your cell. They can always find something if they have a mind to. They scowl at the books along the floor, the books along the metal cabinet, the books along the cold-water basin. Sutton’s is the only cell at Attica filled with copies of Dante, Plato, Shakespeare, Freud. No, they confiscated his Freud. Prisoners aren’t allowed to have psychology books. The warden thinks they’ll try to hypnotize each other.

  Right Guard smirks. He gives Left Guard a nudge—get ready. Novel, eh? What’s it about?

  Just—you know. Life sir.

  What the hell does an old jailbird know about life?

  Sutton shrugs. That’s true sir. But what does anyone know?

  WORD IS LEAKING OUT. BY NOON A DOZEN PRINT REPORTERS HAVE ALREADY arrived and they’re huddled at the front entrance, stomping their feet, blowing on their hands. One of them says he just heard—snow on the way. Lots of it. Nine inches at least.

  They all groan.

  Too cold to snow, says the veteran in the group, an old wire service warhorse in suspenders and black orthopedic shoes. He’s been with UPI since the Scopes trial. He blows a gob of spit onto the frozen ground and scowls up at the clouds, then at the main guard tower, which looks to some like the new Sleeping Beauty’s Castle in Disneyland.

  Too cold to stand out here, says the reporter from the New York Post. He mumbles something disparaging about the warden, who’s refused three times to let the media inside the prison. The reporters could be drinking hot coffee right now. They could be using the phones, making last-minute plans for Christmas. Instead the warden is trying to prove some kind of point. Why, they all ask, why?

  Because the warden’s a prick, says the reporter from Time, that’s why.

  The reporter from Look holds his thumb and forefinger an inch apart. Give a bureaucrat this much power, he says, and watch out. Stand back.

  Not just bureaucrats, says the reporter from The New York Times. All bosses eventually become fascists. Human nature.

  The reporters trade horror stories about their bosses, their editors, the miserable dimwits who gave them this god-awful assignment. There’s a brand-new journalistic term, appropriated just this year from the war in Asia, frequently applied to assignments like this, assignments where you wait with the herd, usually outdoors, exposed to the elements, knowing full well you’re not going to get anything good, certainly not anything the rest of the herd won’t get. The term is clusterfuck. Every reporter gets caught in a clusterfuck now and then, it’s part of the job, but a clusterfuck on Christmas Eve? Outside Attica Correctional Facility? Not cool, says the reporter from the Village Voice. Not cool.

  The reporters feel especially hostile toward that boss of all bosses, Governor Nelson Rockefeller. He of the Buddy Holly glasses and the chronic indecision. Governor Hamlet, says the reporter from UPI, smirking at the walls. Is he going to do this thing or not?

  He yells at Sleeping Beauty’s Castle: Shit or get off the pot, Nelson! Defecate or abdicate!

  The reporters nod, grumble, nod. Like the prisoners on the other side of this thirty-foot wall, they grow restless. The prisoners want out, the reporters want in, and both groups blame the Man. Cold, tired, angry, ostracized by society, both groups are close to rioting. Both fail to notice the beautiful moon slowly rising above the prison.

  It’s full.

  THE GUARDS LEAD SUTTON FROM HIS CELL IN D BLOCK THROUGH A barred door, down a tunnel and into Attica’s central checkpoint—what prisoners call Times Square—which leads to all cell blocks and offices. From Times Square the guards take Sutton down to the deputy warden’s office. It’s the second time this month that Sutton has been called before the dep. Last week it was to learn that his parole request was denied—a devastating blow. Sutton and his lawyers had been so very confident. They’d won support from prominent judges, discovered loopholes in his convictions, collected letters from doctors vouching that Sutton was close to death. But the three-man parole board simply said no.

  The dep is seated at his desk. He doesn’t bother looking up. Hello, Willie.

  Hello sir.

  Looks like we’re a go for liftoff.

  Sir?

  The dep waves a hand over the papers strewn across his desk. These are your walking papers. You’re being let out.

  Sutton blinks, massages his leg. Let—out? By who sir?

  The dep looks up, sighs. Head of corrections. Or Rockefeller. Or both. Albany hasn’t decided how they want to sell this. The governor, being an ex-banker, isn’t sure he wants to put his name on it. But the head of corrections doesn’t want to overrule the parole board. Either way it looks like they’re letting you walk.

  Walk sir? Why sir?

  Fuck if I know. Fuck if I care.

  When sir?

  Tonight. If the phone will stop ringing and reporters will stop hounding me to let them turn my prison into their private rec room. If I can get these goddamn forms filled out.

  Sutton stares at the dep. Then at the guards. Are they joking? They look serious.

  The dep turns back to his papers. Godspeed, Willie.

  The guards walk Sutton down to the prison tailor. Every man released from a New York State prison gets a release suit, a tradition that goes back at least a century. The last time Sutton got measured for a release suit, Calvin Coolidge was president.

  Sutton stands before the tailor’s three-way mirror. A shock. He hasn’t stood before many mirrors in recent years and he can’t believe what he sees. That’s his round face, that’s his slicked gray hair, that’s his hated nose—too big, too broad, with different-size nostrils—and that’s the same large red bump on his eyelid, mentioned in every police report and FBI flyer since shortly after World War I. But that’s not him—it can’t be. Sutton has always prided himself on projecting a certain swagger, even in handcuffs. He’s always managed to look dapper, suave, even in prison grays. Now, sixty-eight years old, he sees in the three-way mirror that all the swagger, all the dapper and suave are gone. He’s a baggy-eyed stick figure. He looks like Felix the Cat. Even the pencil-thin mustache, once a source of pride, looks like the cartoon cat’s whiskers.

  The tailor stands beside Sutton, wearing a green tape measure around his neck. An old Italian from the Bronx, with two front teeth the size of thimbles, he shakes a handful of buttons and coins in his pocket as he talks.

  So they’re letting you out, Willie.

  Looks like.

  How long you been here?

  Seventeen years.

  How long since you had a new suit of clothes?

  Oh. Twenty years. In the old days, when I was flush, I’d get all my suits custom-made. Silk shirts too. D’Andrea Brothers.

  He still remembers the address: 587 Fifth Avenue. And the phone number. Murray Hill 5-5332.

  Sure, Tailor says, D’Andrea, they did beautiful work. I still got one of their tuxes. Step up on the block.

  Sutton steps up, grunts. A suit, he says. Jesus, I thought the next thing I’d be measured for would be a shroud.

  I don’t do shrouds, Tailor says. No one gets to see your work.

  Sutton frowns at the three reflected Tailors. It’s not enough to do nice work? People have to see it?

  Tailor spreads his tape measure across Sutton’s shoulders, down his arm. Show me an artist, he says, who doesn’t want praise.

  Sutton nods. I used to feel that way about my bank jobs.

  Tailor looks at the triptych of reflected Suttons, winks at the middle one. He stretches the tape measure down Sutton’s bum leg. Inseam thirty-two, he announces. Jacket thirty-eight short.

  I was a forty reg when I came in this joint. I ought to sue.

  Tailor laughs softly, coughs. What color you want, Willie?

  Anything but gray.

  Black then. I’m glad they’re letting you out, Willie. You’ve paid your debt.

  Forgive us our debts, Willie says, as we forgive our debtors.

  Tailor crosses hi
mself.

  That from your novel? Right Guard asks.

  Sutton and Tailor look at each other.

  Tailor points a finger gun at Sutton. Merry Christmas, Willie.

  Same to you, friend.

  Sutton points a finger gun at Tailor, cocks the thumb hammer. Bang.

  THE REPORTERS TALK ABOUT SEX AND MONEY AND CURRENT EVENTS. Altamont, that freaky concert where those four drugged-out hippies died—who’s to blame? Mick Jagger? The Hells Angels? Then they gossip about their more successful colleagues, starting with Norman Mailer. Not only is Mailer running for mayor of New York, but he just got one million dollars to write a book about the moon landing. Mailer—the guy writes history as fiction, fiction as history, and inserts himself into all of it. He plays by his own rules while his rule-bound colleagues get sent to Attica to freeze their balls off. Fuck Mailer, they all agree.

  And fuck the moon.

  They blow on their hands, pull up their collars, make bets about whether or not the warden will ever be publicly exposed as a cross-dresser. Also, they bet on which will happen first—Sutton walks or Sutton croaks. The reporter from the New York Post says he hears Sutton’s not just knocking at death’s door, he’s ringing the bell, wiping his feet on the welcome mat. The reporter from Newsday says the artery in Sutton’s leg is clogged beyond repair—a doctor who plays racquetball with the reporter’s brother-in-law told him so. The reporter from Look says he heard from a cop friend in the Bronx that Sutton still has loot stashed all over the city. Prison officials are going to free Sutton and then the cops are going to follow him to the money.