“Is Herbie okay?” he said.
“Yeah. He just shit in his pants.”
“I won’t.”
The next morning Frankie was a hot boiler with a head of steam that had to be let out, so he raced his Harley to the olive oil office, but Bruno wouldn’t be in until two. Tony could feel Frankie’s anger, so slowly Tony prodded him. Then Frankie realized that Tony didn’t know the real reason Sylvia wasn’t on the job, and remembering that Tony would watch out for her, he told him what had happened.
“Beating up Sylvia wasn’t nice,” said Tony. “You go home, kid. I have a talk with Bruno. He belongs to me.”
Frankie was still steaming when he rode off. He tried to cool down by bringing the roses to Sylvia, but when he saw her bandages again his steam rose a few more degrees. Getting back on his bike, he charged around too fast and almost spilled, but he couldn’t decide on a place to go, so he steered back to the olive oil office. He had to give that bully a broken nose.
He had been waiting outside the office for a half hour, straddling his bike, when he saw Bruno walking up the street. Without any planning, Frankie turned on the ignition, gunned it, shifted into first, and, speeding up, shifted into second. With his bike roaring like a cannon going off, he aimed it at Bruno. Bruno didn’t jump out of the way soon enough to avoid the bike entirely. One leg was hit.
Frankie had tried to kill Bruno by running him down, but he had killed himself instead, by missing Bruno and hitting the brick wall beside the plate-glass windows of the office. His neck was broken.
Tony came out. When he saw that Bruno was still alive, he helped him inside and away from the crowd. In the back room where the counterfeit olive oil was mixed, Tony sat Bruno on the work bench and lit a smoke for him. When he returned from the front room with coffee, Bruno sipped it. Then, with a pistol that had a silencer, Tony shot Bruno in the head and put the body in an empty oil drum.
Frankie was laid out at the Califano Funeral Parlor and, in her bandages, Sylvia sat next to his father, Giovanni, for the three days that the body was on view. Gene, Rocco, and Nick were also there every day, in suits and ties, not knowing what to say to anyone. They had known Frankie better than they had the members of their own families. They had loved him as boys do each other, simply and without question, before they must turn to the richer love of a man for a woman, complicated and always questioning.
The last night of their vigil, an hour before the funeral parlor locked its doors for the night, Rocco hid himself in an unused room. Then, Gene at the handlebars of Frankie’s Harley and Nick behind him in a swiped priest’s cassock, they rode across the Brooklyn Bridge. Following the Madison bus on the Skyway, they arrived in Union City and at the Hudson Theater once again. As they had anticipated, the priest’s cassock got Nick in the stage door when he said to the guard, “It’s an errand of mercy.”
Miss Sugar Buns believed that Nick was a priest, and since he was also willing to pay her $50 to perform for a dying man, she said, “Why the hell not?”
She straddled the Harley too, showing her thighs that Nick, behind her, thought were like moonlight in bottles, and with the cassock flaring out behind him like a ghost in the night trying to keep up with them, Nick was holding on around her waist as she held onto Gene in front, who was letting all the untamed juice out of the Harley and speeding in a race of one. Nick was deciding now that he was too old to be an altar boy anymore. He wanted girls, dozens, hundreds of girls.
“This isn’t a hospital,” said Miss Sugar Buns, as Gene knocked three times on the funeral parlor’s back door, and then repeated it.
“You still get fifty bucks,” said Gene.
“What took you guys so long?” said Rocco, letting them in. “I was getting scared in here by myself.”
“God, he’s dead,” she said. “He won’t enjoy it.”
“Give him a chance,” said Gene, doing a practice drum roll, his drums unpacked by Rocco while he was waiting.
“He can’t see so good lying down,” said Rocco. “Let’s get him up.”
“He’s too big,” said Nick, standing at the casket.
“Give me a hand,” said Rocco, at Frankie’s head.
“Where to? His legs’re stiff,” said Nick.
“Let’s stand him some place,” said Rocco, looking around, as he and Nick gripped Frankie at each end.
Miss Sugar Buns said, “First, let’s see the scratch.”
“You ain’t only seeing it,” said Gene, taking out the money, “but you’re getting it. In advance.”
“That’s sweet. I never been paid in advance.” She stashed the bills in her purse.
Frankie was a heavy and stiff lead soldier that Rocco and Nick were standing in the corner now, where they pried open his aggie eyes. To keep Frankie from keeling over, they straddled chairs at each side of him. Then, by candlelight, less noticeable from the street than electric light, and by Gene’s drumbeat, Miss Sugar Buns loosened and discarded, stretching it out, peeling one garment so slowly, bumping and grinding, for the pleasure of the dead Frankie.
She stripped off all her clothes, until she got down to her hairnet bra and spangled G-string. She wore them even under her street clothes when she went to buy groceries. And when those gossamer items flew from her body, the guys all nodded. They thought they had again seen everything she had, although the funeral parlor wasn’t ablaze in a spotlight, and their eyes weren’t dry, and their view was filtered, on purpose, through the fingers of Frankie’s angel.
STEELWORK
BY
GILBERT SORRENTINO
Bay Ridge
(Originally published in 1970)
1941
To Arms
McGinn
On Pearl Harbor Day, McGinn heard the news of the attack playing touch football in the playground. The Japanese had done it! There they were out there. Far away. He didn’t quite know what they looked like but they had big swords and shit like that. Rising Sun? They tortured the Chinese a lot. He remembered the War cards he had collected for years.
Naked Chinese charging across a bridge against machine guns. The card’s dominant color was red, for the blood. All the cards had a lot of red in them. Severed heads, children in Barcelona? with ragged holes where their eyes should be. A lot of crazy jigs in the desert throwing spears at Italian planes. Let the boogies an wops kill each other, Cockroach once told him.
Now America was in it. He’d get to go in, too. Get the fuck away from here an kill some fuckin Japs. Or somebody. He was sixteen and could easy make it. The war wouldn’t end so quick.
They were out there. They sneaked in, the yella basteds, right in an bombed the shit outa all the ships, on Sunday! Sunday! They got no rules, rape kids an nuns. There were nuns on the War cards. He thought of Sister Margaret Mary, dirty little basteds running after her. He stood in front of them an kicked their balls off! The rat fucks.
Maybe he could even get in now. School was a mystery to him and his grandma might be able to sign a paper or something. Get to be a pilot and bomb the ass off them, with a scarf. Plenty of snatch back on leave. You could fly off a carrier.
He started to run to Yodel’s where he could talk about it. Jesus Christ! A fuckin war!
1946
Monte the Count
The Baptism
McGinn leaned, drunk, against the bar in Lento’s. His right eye was swollen shut where a cop had laid a nightstick across his face two nights before. Under and around the metal plate in his head there was an unwavering current of sharp pain that wouldn’t stop, that, in fact, the liquor seemed to intensify. I should be dead, he thought. I should be dead far away from here, far away, O far away … she loved him in the springtime and he’s far far away, he sang, and downed his shot. Black Mac turned to look at him. Have another John, he said, I got some money, have another.
McGinn rubbed at his swollen eye tenderly and moved his hand up to the cold, shiny surface of the plate covering his brain. My head hurts me, Mac, he said. Jesus, I
mean it hurts me terrible. Ah, ya fuck, ya got all that disability money comin soon for the resta ya life. You got it by the balls. He signaled the bartender for two more boilermakers, then turned to continue talking with Ziggy.
It was red in front of McGinn’s eyes after he had drunk the whiskey. He retched, then calmed, then retched again, but finally kept the shot down. Then he very carefully set the shot glass down, picked up his beer and drank it all slowly. As he was setting the beer glass down, it got very red. He looked at Mac and saw him as if he were looking at him through a piece of red cellophane. Like when they were all kids before the war, looking at the green park through the cellophane, the new world, intense, red and weird before them. It was silent, he saw everybody’s mouth moving but he could only hear the jukebox, clear, day clear, the mouths, the movement of the men at the bar, Frank the bartender drawing two beers. The pain in his head was down in his ears now, in his neck, clean and sharp into the swollen eye. I should be dead.
He was standing on the bar now, surprised to find himself there and the noise of the saloon came back. The pain in his head was gone and he saw them all clearly, they had sent him to the war. You bastards! he shouted, you bastards! You ain’t got a plate in your head! Mac was touching, gently, his ankle, motioning with his head for him to get down, and Frank was drying his hands patiently, giving McGinn time to get down by himself. A good kid he was, got hurt a little in the war but a good kid.
You bastards, McGinn shouted. The bar was dead quiet now, the jukebox stopped, the customers watching him standing there, high above them. He lifted his hand up over his head, gloriously, and saw himself, outside himself, above them all, the men of the king’s guard, McGinn in a cloak, soft boots, a rapier elegant, pointed straight up. He raised his hand high. I am the Count of Monte Cristo! he shouted, I am the Count of Monte Cristo! He kicked at Mac’s drink and smashed it to the floor, then kicked at the glasses next to him on the bar, hearing them break, shouting through the absolute clarity now in his head, I am the Count of Monte Cristo! You bastards, you sent the Count to the war! He was screaming now, and someone at the far end of the bar started for the door. Hold it, you bastard! Hold it! You ain’t callin no bulls on me! The man stopped, shrugged, walked back to the bar. Frank began moving quietly and casually down toward McGinn, smiling sickly. I am the Count! I am the Count, he was crying now, weeping freely, his arms at his side, the pain back in his head, his eye, his ears, the bar had gone silent to him, there were movements, feet scuffling, he saw them through the tears, out there they moved through their lives in dead silence, I am the Count of Monte Cristo, you mothers’ cunts! he screamed, the tears running down his face, dropping down on his faded fatigue jacket, dark stains spreading on its front as Mac and Frank helped him to the floor.
1951
Fading Out
Monte the Count
His open Irish face had become coarsened and brutalized, and he frequently, now, forgot his name, his real name. He always answered to “Monte” or “Count.” A broken nose, reddened face with the ruptured capillaries speckling its surface. At times, through the alcoholic murk, the pain screwing his face up.
Let the pricks jus hit me one good shot on the toppa the head. Jus one, jus one. He would cry at times, racked with sobbing, holding himself together, one hand on his belly and the other on top of his head, squeezing the life back into himself. (Beeoo Gesty! Beeoo Gesty! Cantering down toward Pep.)
Hermes Pavolites, one of three brothers who shot pool in Sal’s, fair sticks, hit him a hard uppercut in the Melody Room one night, while Monte was looking at the bar in a daze, his head on his chest. Some bitter revenge taken at an opportune moment, for some old wrong done in the years just after the war. His two brothers stood near, in case Monte got up, but he simply sagged and oozed across the bar, spilling his beer and change into the rinse water. Everyone watched the Greeks walk out, laughing, then the place emptied.
Monte tried for months to find out who’d creamed him. Nobody had been there. Not me, Monte, I heard about the lousy fuckin thing, musta been some spicks come inna bar. To watch him walk the streets, asking questions, then finally stop, just look accusingly at everyone. One night he hit Frank Bull in Henry’s, and Frank simply tore the arms off his shirt, laughing at him.
A little while later, the cops broke his arm outside Papa Joe’s, one kneeling in the small of his back, holding his face down, pressed into the sidewalk, while the other casually whaled at his arms and legs with his nightstick. He broke Papa Joe’s front window with the cast when he got out of Raymond Street jail.
1951
Monte the Count
The Last Stand
After he smashed Papa Joe’s window with his cast, he stood for a moment, then, very wisely, walked rapidly down the block toward the bay. It would take a while for the cops to come, he’d sit in some driveway till morning, then just go down to the ferry and ride back and forth a while. It was almost five anyway. But he stopped in the middle of the block and started back, stood then on Papa Joe’s corner and watched the prowl car coming down Third Avenue, slow to a halt. The first cop got out, swinging his nightstick, grinning at him. Monte walked over slowly, humbly, then when he got to within a few feet of the cop, kicked him in the balls. He fell backward, and Monte smashed him across the skull with the cast. Then he ran around to the driver’s side as the cop was getting out there, the door just about a foot open, the cop’s foot grazing the street. Monte kicked at the door with all his strength, slamming the cop’s ankle between it and the car frame. He saw the cop’s face go white and he started to laugh. The cop drew his gun and leveled it at Monte, pushed the door all the way open, his nightstick high over his shoulder in his other hand. Monte drew the cast back to paste him and the cop put the stick across the side of his head and laid him out. He sat in the open door of the car, the gun still trained on him, thinking about firing.
ABOUT THE CONTRIBUTORS:
LAWRENCE BLOCK is one of the acknowledged masters of the mystery genre, winning numerous accolades, including the Edgar, Maltese Falcon, Nero Wolfe, and Shamus awards. His column on fiction writing was a popular feature of Writer’s Digest magazine for many years, and his books for writers include the classic Telling Lies for Fun & Profit. A longtime New Yorker, his books about Matthew Scudder and Bernie Rhodenbarr, like his big New York novel Small Town, span the five boroughs. Block lived on Manhattan Avenue in Greenpoint, Brooklyn for a year and a half in the early ’80s; these days he’s at home in Greenwich Villege.
MAGGIE ESTEP has published five books, most recently Gargantuan, the second in a series of crime novels involving horse racing. She is currently working on a third crime novel as well as a nonfiction book entitled Bangtails: Ten Dazzling Horses and the American Rogues Who Raced Them. Maggie lives in Brooklyn.
PETE HAMILL was born in Brooklyn in 1935. He is for many the living embodiment of New York City. In his writing for the New York Times, the New York Daily News, the New York Post, the New Yorker, and Newsday, he has brought the city to life for millions of readers. He is the author of many bestselling books, including the novels Forever and Snow in August, as well the memoir A Drinking Life. He currently divides his time between New York City and Cuernavaca, Mexico.
SALVATORE LA PUMA was born in Brooklyn in 1929. A novelist and short story writer, La Puma received the 1987 Flannery O’Connor Award for Short Fiction and a 1988 American Book Award for his first story collection, The Boys of Bensonhurst. That book was followed in 1991 by A Time for Wedding Cake, a novel, and in 1992 by a second story collection, Teaching Angels to Fly. Most of La Puma’s fiction takes place in Bensonhurst, Brooklyn, his own neighborhood until 1959. He now lives in Santa Barbara, California.
H.P. LOVECRAFT was born in 1890 in Providence, Rhode Island, where he lived most of his life. Frequent illnesses in his youth disrupted his schooling, but Lovecraft gained a wide knowledge of many subjects through independent reading and study. He wrote many essays and poems early in his career, but graduall
y focused on the writing of horror stories, after the advent in 1923 of the pulp magazine Weird Tales, to which he contributed most of his fiction. His relatively small corpus of fiction—three short novels and about sixty short stories—has exercised a wide influence on subsequent work in the field, and he is regarded as the leading twentieth-century American author of supernatural fiction. Lovecraft lived in Brooklyn from 1924 to 1926, and he died in Providence in 1937.
TIM MCLOUGHLIN was born and raised in Brooklyn, where he still resides. He is the author of Heart of the Old Country (Akashic, 2001), a selection of the Barnes & Noble Discover Great New Writers Program and winner of Italy’s Premio Penne Award. McLoughlin edited the first Brooklyn Noir anthology, to which he also contributed the story “When All This Was Bay Ridge.”
HUBERT SELBY, JR. was born in Brooklyn in 1928. He dropped out of school at age fifteen and joined the Merchant Marine. Physically disabled by tuberculosis, he lost a lung at the age of eighteen and was sent home, not expected to live long. For the next decade, Selby remained bedridden and frequently hospitalized with a variety of lungrelated ailments. Unable to make a living due to health concerns, Selby decided to become a writer. After the publication of Last Exit to Brooklyn in 1964, Selby became addicted to heroin, a problem that eventually landed him behind bars. After his release from prison, he moved to Los Angeles and kicked his habit. Selby was married three times and had four children. In recent years, Last Exit to Brooklyn and Requiem for a Dream have been adapted to film. He died in Los Angeles of chronic lung disease in April 2004.
IRWIN SHAW was born in 1913 in the Bronx and moved early in life to Brooklyn. He received a B.A. from Brooklyn College in 1934 and began his career as a scriptwriter for popular radio programs of the 1930s, before moving to Hollywood to write for the movies. Disillusioned with the film industry, Shaw returned to New York. His first piece of serious writing, an antiwar play entitled Bury the Dead, was produced on Broadway in 1936. His first collection of stories, Sailor off the Bremen and Other Stories (1939), earned him an immediate and lasting reputation as a writer of fiction. His first novel, The Young Lions, published in 1948, won high critical praise as one of the most important books to come out of World War II. The commercial success of the book and the movie adaptation brought Shaw financial independence and allowed him to devote the rest of his career to writing novels, among them The Troubled Air (1951), Lucy Crown (1956), Rich Man, Poor Man (1970), and Acceptable Losses (1982). His stories are collected in Short Stories: Five Decades (1978). He died in Davos, Switzerland in 1984.
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