Sleepers (35 page)

I saw them as often as I could, and when we got together, it was easy for me to forget what they had become and remember only who they were. We went to ball games, took long Sunday-morning walks down by the piers, and helped Father Bobby with the basket collections at mass. I seldom asked them about their business and they always teased me about mine.

Like Michael, I moved out of Hell’s Kitchen soon after my release from Wilkinson. Father Bobby also
pulled some strings for me: I was admitted to a first-rate Catholic high school for boys in the Bronx. By my late teens I was taking night courses at St. John’s University in Queens, working a nowhere day job in a Wall Street bank, and wrestling with a fresh set of demons—the discovery that my father was a convicted murderer who had served nearly seven years for killing his first wife. I divided my time between a bed in my parents’ Bronx apartment and a two-room basement sublet in Long Island.

One summer afternoon in 1973, I was reading an early edition of the
New York Post
on my lunch hour, sitting on a bench in front of a noisy and crowded outdoor fountain, half a ham sandwich by my side. There, under the heat of a New York sun, I read a Pete Hamill column about former vice president Spiro T. Agnew. By the time I got to the last paragraph, I knew I wanted to work on a newspaper.

It would take three years before I would land a job as a copy boy for the
New York Daily News
, working the midnight-to-eight shift, sharpening pencils, making coffee runs, and driving drunken editors home after a night on the prowl. By the time of Nokes’s death, I had worked my way up to the clerical department, typing movie schedules for the next day’s editions.

It was easy work, leaving me with plenty of free time, and most of it was spent in Hell’s Kitchen. I still liked the feel of the neighborhood, no matter how much it had changed. I still felt safe there.

I had coffee twice a week with King Benny, once again seeking refuge in the stillness of his club, as much a home to me as any place. Benny’s espresso was as bitter as ever, his mood as dark and he still cheated at every hand of cards we played. The years had made him older, his black hair touched by lines of white, but no one in the neighborhood dared question his strength.

I bought sodas from Fat Mancho every time I passed
his store. He ran enough business from that front to fill a mall and was easily spotted in his loud shirts sprayed with colorful birds and palm trees, which his older sister sent over from Puerto Rico. Every time he saw me he cursed. We had known each other for more than twenty years and I remained one of the few people he fully trusted.

On weekends I would drive down and endure two-hour one-on-one basketball games against Father Bobby, more than twenty years older than me and still two steps faster. We all were aging, but Father Bobby always looked young, his body trim, his face relaxed. Whatever problems he had, he handled beneath the silent cover of prayer.

On occasion I would have dinner with Carol, who still lived in the neighborhood and worked as a social worker in the South Bronx. She had moved with ease from awkward teenager to a young woman of striking grace and beauty. Her hair was long and dark, her face unlined, covered by only the softest makeup. She had long legs and spend-the-night eyes that lit up when she laughed. Her concern for us was undiminished by the passing years.

Carol was passionate about her work and quiet about her life, living alone in a third-floor walk-up not far from where we had gone to school. She dated infrequently and never anyone from outside the neighborhood. Though I never asked, I knew she still held strong feelings for Michael. I also knew that when that relationship ended she had been with John during his more sober periods. She always had a special affection for John, could always see the boy he once had been. Whenever we went out as a group, Carol would walk between Michael and John, grasping their arms, at ease and in step between the lawyer and the killer.

These were my friends.

We accepted each other for what we were, few questions asked, no demands made. We had been through too much to try to force change on one another. We had been through enough to know that the path taken is not always the ideal road. It is simply the one that seems right at the moment.

Wilkinson had touched us all.

It had turned Tommy and John into hardened criminals, determined not to let anyone have power over them again. It had made me and Michael realize that while an honest life may not offer much excitement, it pays its dividends in freedom.

It cost Father Bobby countless hours in prayer, searching for answers to questions he feared asking.

It made Fat Mancho a harder man, watching young boys come out stone killers, stripped of their feelings, robbed of all that was sweet.

Wilkinson even touched King Benny, piercing the protective nerve he had developed when it came to the four laughing boys who turned his private club into their own. It awakened the demons of his own horrid childhood, spent in places worse than Wilkinson, where he was handled by men more fearsome than those who tortured us. It made the hate he carried all the heavier.

None of us could let go of the others. We all drifted together, always wondering when the moment would arrive that would force us to deal with the past. Maybe that moment would never come. Maybe we could keep it all buried. But then John and Tommy and luck walked in on Sean Nokes halfway through a meat-loaf dinner. And for the first time in years, we all felt alive. The moment was out there now, waiting for us to grab it. Michael was the first to realize it. To figure it out. But the rest of us caught on fast. It was what we had been living for, what we had waited years for. Revenge.
Sweet, lasting revenge. And now it was time for all of us to get a taste.

3

M
ICHAEL SAT ACROSS
from me, quietly mixing sour cream into his baked potato. We were at a corner table at the Old Homestead, a steak house across from the meat market in downtown Manhattan. It was late on a Wednesday, two weeks after Nokes was killed in the Shamrock Pub.

The second I read about the shooting, I knew who had pulled the triggers. I was as afraid for Tommy and John as I was proud of them. They had done what I would never have had the courage to do. They had faced the evil of our past and eliminated it from sight. Though Nokes’s death did nothing to relieve our anguish, I was still glad he was dead. I was even happier when I learned that Nokes not only knew why he died, but at whose hands.

John and Tommy did not remain fugitives for long.

They were arrested within seventy-two hours of the shooting, fingerprinted, booked, and charged with second-degree murder. Police had four eyewitnesses willing to testify—the older couple in the first booth and the two businessmen sitting at the bar. All four were outsiders, strangers to Hell’s Kitchen. The restaurant’s other patrons, as well as its workers, stayed true to the code of the neighborhood: They saw nothing and they said nothing.

John and Tommy were held without bail.

The two hired a West Side attorney named Danny O’Connor, known more for his boisterous talk than for his ability to win. They pleaded not guilty and admitted to nothing, not even to their lawyer. There seemed to be no connection between the deceased and the accused, and both the press and police shrugged the murder off as yet another drug-related homicide.

“Have you gone to visit them yet?” Michael asked, cutting into his steak. It was the first time either of us had talked about the shooting since dinner began.

“The day after the arrest,” I said, jabbing a fork into a cut of grilled salmon. “For a few minutes.”

“What did they have to say?” Michael asked.

“The usual small talk,” I said. “Nothing with any weight. They know enough not to say anything in a visitors’ room.”

“What about Nokes?” Michael said. “They talk about him?”

“John did,” I said. “But not by name.”

“What’d he say?”

“All he said was ‘One down, Shakes.’ Then he tapped the glass with his finger and handed me that shit-eatin’ grin of his.”

“How do they look?” Michael asked.

“Pretty relaxed,” I told him. “Especially for two guys facing twenty-five-to-life.”

“I hear they hired Danny O’Connor to defend them,” Michael said. “That right?”

“That’s temporary,” I said. “King Benny’s gonna move in one of his lawyers when the trial starts.”

“No,” Michael said. “O’Connor’s who we want. He’s perfect.”

“Perfect?”
I said. “The guy’s a fall-down drunk. Probably hasn’t won a case since La Guardia was mayor. Maybe not even then.”

“I know,” Michael said. “That’s why he’s perfect.”

“What are you talking about?”

“You covering this story for the paper?” Michael asked, lifting his beer mug and ignoring my question.

“I’m a timetable clerk, Mikey,” I said. “I’m lucky they let me in the building.”

“Anybody at work know you’re friends with John and Butter?”

“No,” I said. “Why would they?”

“You didn’t finish your fish,” Michael said. “You usually eat everything
but
the plate.”

“I’m still used to my old hours,” I said. “Eating dinner at five in the morning and breakfast at eleven at night.”

“You should have had eggs.”

“I
will
have a cup of coffee.”

“Order it to go,” Michael said, waving to a waiter for the check. “We’ve got to take a walk.”

“It’s pouring out,” I said.

“We’ll find a spot where it’s not. Down by the piers.”

“There are rats down by the piers,” I pointed out.

“There are rats everywhere.”

T
HE RAIN WAS
falling in soft drops, loud blasts of thunder echoing in the distance. We were standing in an empty lot along the gates of Pier 62, West Side Highway traffic rushing by behind us. Michael had thrown his raincoat on over his suit. His hands were stuffed inside the side pockets and his briefcase was wedged between his ankles.

“I’m going in to see my boss in the morning,” Michael said, the words rushing out. “I’m going to ask him to give me the case against John and Tommy.”

“What?” I looked at his eyes, searching for signs that this was nothing more than the beginning of a cruel joke. “What are you going to do?”

“I’m going to prosecute John and Tommy in open
court.” His voice was filled with confidence, his eyes looked square at me.

“Are you fuckin’ nuts?” I shouted, grabbing his arms. “They’re your friends! Your
friends
, you heartless fuck!”

A smile curled the sides of Michael’s lips. “Before you take a swing, Shakes, hear me out.”

“I should shoot you just for talking about shit like this,” I said, easing my grip, taking in deep gulps of air. “And if anybody else hears it, I’ll have to open a freezer door to shake your hand.”

“You decide who else knows,” Michael said. “Just you. You’ll know who to tell.”

“You take this case,
everybody’s
gonna know!” I shouted again. “And
everybody’s
gonna be pissed.”

“You’ll take care of all that,” Michael said. “That’ll be part of your end.”

“Do something smart,” I said. “Call in sick tomorrow. It might save your life.”

“I’m not taking the case to win,” Michael said. “I’m taking it to lose.”

I didn’t say anything. I
couldn’t
say anything.

“I’ve got a plan,” Michael said. “But I can’t do it without you. I can work only the legal end. I need you to do the rest.”

I took two steps forward and held my friend’s face in my hands.

“Are you serious?” I asked. “You crazy bastard, are you really serious?”

“It’s payback time, Shakes,” Michael said, water streaming down his face and mixing with tears. “We can get back at them now. John and Tommy started it. You and I can finish it.”

I let go of Michael’s face and put my hands in my pockets.

“Let’s walk for a while,” I said. “We stand here much longer, we’ll get arrested for soliciting.”

“Where to?”

“The neighborhood,” I said. “Where it’s safe.”

W
E HUDDLED IN
the doorway of my old apartment building, rain now lashing across Tenth Avenue. Down the street, two old rummies argued over a pint of raspberry brandy.