Gang That Couldn't Shoot Straight

by Jimmy Breslin

  “Where do we stand?” Kid Sally Palumbo said. He wanted to let Izzy know who was in charge. Kid Sally was. Kid Sally had a button in the Mafia. Izzy was only a Jew. They can’t join.

  “My work was finished before it started,” Izzy said.

  “What do you mean?” Kid Sally said.

  “I know my business. Let me ask you something. Where do you stand?”

  “Stand where?”

  “Stand with everything.”

  Kid Sally reached inside his jacket for his cigarettes. He carefully took one from the pack. He picked up his lighter and flicked it open. He wanted to show this Jew who he was.

  “You want a Monte Carlo made up around a bike race, right?” Izzy Cohen said.

  “Right,” Kid Sally said.

  “I got that already,” Izzy said. “Now let me ask you one thing. Suppose a chain breaks? What do you do then?”

  “A chain? What chain?”

  “The chain on the bike breaks. What do you do then? You can’t have a price on a bike-rider if his chain breaks. What do you have for that?”

  Kid Sally felt all this uncertainty running through him. He put the cigarette in his mouth and gave Izzy the Tommy Udo sneer.

  “I got the fat man takin’ care of all the details. What do you think, I’m some little kid runnin’ around fixing bikes?”

  “What do you mean by everything?” Izzy Cohen said.

  “Just what I said. The fat man does all my work for me. He’s terrific at takin’ care of things like this.”

  The fat man was Big Jelly Catalano, and he is 425 pounds slabbed onto a 6-foot-3 frame and topped by a huge owl’s face with a mane of black hair. He looks at the world through milk-bottle eyeglasses. What he thinks the world should be has made him, at thirty-two, a legend in South Brooklyn. In grammar school, with 280 pounds of him lopping over both sides of his seat and blocking the aisles, he spent his years with his hands covering his mouth while he whispered to the girls:

  “Sodomy!”

  “Period!”

  “Come!”

  Since that time he has done so many bad things that Judge Bernard Dubin, Part 2B, Brooklyn Criminal Court, one day was moved to observe, “If this man ever could have fit on a horse, he would have been a tremendous help to Jesse James.”

  While Kid Sally guaranteed on this night that all things were being handled by Big Jelly, while the bike-riders were due in the country in a matter of hours and the race was only a week off, Big Jelly was doing what he always does at night.

  “I’m telling you it’s all right,” Big Jelly was saying to the maitre d’. The maitre d’ was nervously fingering three menus while he stood in the foyer and tried to block Big Jelly’s entrance into the Messina, a restaurant on East 55th Street in Manhattan.

  “Meester Jelly, please, we got a nice-a place here. You a circus.”

  “Carlo, will you stop it,” Big Jelly said. “This is my wife. Say hello to Carlo, honey.”

  A thin ebony-wood carving with a tremendous chest bursting against a white blouse held out her hand to Carlo.

  “Howyou, my good man,” she said.

  “And this here is my mother-in-law,” Big Jelly said.

  A cocoa-colored girl built like a middleweight and dressed in a blond wig and yellow miniskirt began to giggle. “If Jelly my son-in-law, then that make him a mother-in-law fucker!”

  Carlo turned his head to see if anybody inside had heard her, and the two girls began to shriek and Big Jelly reached out and mussed Carlo’s patent-leather hair, and he pushed past Carlo and the two girls came with him and Carlo had to trot to get ahead of them and he was scowling while he led Big Jelly and his two girls to a table in a corner in the back of the room.

  Big Jelly sat down and untied his pearl-gray tie. He took off the jacket of his size-64 black mohair suit. He unbuttoned his white shirt and took it off and arranged it over the back of the chair. Big Jelly now sat in a T-shirt that had broad pink stains on it from some previous powerhouse linguine sauce which would not come out in the wash. Big Jelly always takes his clothes off when he eats because his stomach and chest stick out so far that the fork always brushes against them and food drops down his front. So Big Jelly strips down and lets the linguine sauce fall where it may.

  All around the carpeted dining room people were looking at Big Jelly in shock, then smirks and a chuckle or two. Big Jelly’s mother-in-law leaned across the table and began rubbing the two cow udders that Big Jelly has for a chest.

  “You make a girl for somebody,” the mother-in-law said.

  Big Jelly laughed loudly. He cupped his hands under his cow udders and he swung back and forth in his seat.

  “That’s it, that’s it,” the mother-in-law said.

  The wife began to clap her hands and sing a smoker song.

  Carlo came plunging between tables, running his hands over his hair and then waving them.

  “Please, please.”

  “Please what?” Big Jelly said.

  “This is no pigsty,” Carlo said.

  “A pig!” Big Jelly shouted. “You call me a pig? Who’s a pig!”

  He picked up a butter plate and bounced it off Carlo’s head. Carlo grabbed a glass of water and threw it in Big Jelly’s face. Big Jelly got his size-13 shoe out from under the table and he kicked Carlo in the ankle. Carlo let out a scream and clutched his ankle. Big Jelly bounced another plate off Carlo’s head. A waiter in a red jacket came over and grabbed Big Jelly. The girl with the big breasts got her nails into the waiter’s face. He screamed. Another waiter grabbed the girl. Big Jelly missed a right-hand punch but he got a fork in his hand and brought it down hard into the waiter’s hand. The two girls got up from the table. Big Jelly grabbed his shirt, tie, and jacket and fought with one hand while he and the girls made their way to the door. Big Jelly came out into the cold air in his T-shirt, and his hair was all over his face.

  “I’ll burn that joint down,” he screamed.

  The two girls waved a cab. The three of them got in, and Big Jelly said he wanted a drink. They went to Clarke’s on Third Avenue for straight vodka. The cab waited outside. Then Big Jelly took his girl friends to a place on Madison Avenue, where he drank scotch with a wine chaser. They told the cab-driver to take them to Jilly’s on 52nd, but they made a stop at the Wagon Wheel on the way, and now Big Jelly was clapping his hands and rolling his eyes and saying, “Sodomy!” and the two girls slapped their thighs and the wife fished into her purse and Big Jelly yelled, “Find it for paper.” When the cab-driver saw the girl come out with three marijuana cigarettes and pass them around, he stopped the cab and got out and leaned against the hood.

  “If I’m goin’ to take a pinch, it’s goin’ to be for my own habit, not yours,” he announced.

  “It’s all right, I’m with my mother and she lets me,” Big Jelly said.

  At 6:30 a.m. the two girls were standing naked in Room 625 of the Hotel West Virginia. The bathroom door opened and Big Jelly came out naked with a black beret tilted over his right eye.

  “Ooooooo la la,” he said.

  Chapter 6

  AT 7:05 P.M. ALITALIA FLIGHT 101 came in on its approach to Kennedy Airport. The plane whined across the last of the Atlantic with its landing floodlights striking the black water and then running onto the gray sand of Rockaway Beach. In the tourist section of the plane Mario Trantino and seven other bike-riders tumbled around the windows like monkeys, trying to see America for the first time. The plane came down on the winter-wet runways and Mario Trantino came down the steps with his eyebrows up, mouth open, eyes afire.

  Joseph DeLauria was waiting in the lobby in his function as president of the bike-race association. A crowd of men stood with him. When the passenger agent brought Mario and the other riders out, DeLauria pushed through people and hugged Mario. He stepped aside, and a thin old man wearing the red, green, and white sash of the Society of San Gennaro kissed Mario on both cheeks. Two fat doctors wearing reception-committee rosettes waited in line. Anothe
r man in a sash stood behind them.

  Joseph DeLauria was next to Mario, rattling off names, “Mr. Riccobona … Mr. Scola … Mr. Cirillo … Dr. Palermo … Mr. DiLorenzo …”

  Mario jumped. “Mr. DiLorenzo!”

  The fat man hugging Mario nodded eagerly. Mario reached into his jacket pocket for the list from the priest. “DiLorenzo, DiLorenzo,” he said. His finger shook while it went over the list and stopped at the name.

  “Are your people from Catanzia?”

  The fat man nodded yes. His eyes became filled. He hugged Mario tightly. Mario put the list back in his pocket and wrapped his arms around the doctor.

  “You know Father Marsalano? He put your name down on the list here.”

  The fat man pushed backward against Mario’s arms.

  “He said you’d help,” Mario said.

  The man broke out of his arms and went backward through the crowd.

  “Hey!” Mario called out to him.

  “Bafongool,” the fat man said. He fled into a crowd.

  Mario tried to follow him in the crowd, but his eyes fell on two Air France stewardesses. The committee led Mario out of the airport while he kept twisting to see the stewardesses, and when Mario got into Manhattan the lights in the theater district, and the crowds walking in them, made him dizzy.

  Mario passed out when he got to the room. He woke up in the morning with his head under a pillow. He rolled over on his back and began to run his legs back and forth against the white sheets. His body tingled with its first brush of luxury. He swung out of bed and went over to the window. Manhattan in the morning in the silence drifts across the eyes, and the buildings seem to be moving into each other. Beyond the buildings was the river. The river water was winter-gray and the January wind blew onto the water from an angle and made a windowscreen pattern on the surface. Mario went into the bathroom and unwrapped the soap. It was the biggest bar of soap he had ever seen. He held the soap to his nose. There was a clean smell with an undertone of cologne. It did not have the cleaning-fluid smell of Italian soap. He twisted the shined silver handle in the stall shower. Warm water, becoming hot, came down on him. He turned and let the water fall on his neck. He stood there with the hot water hitting his neck, and he was using more water with this one shower than entire families use during a day in Catanzia. Mario began thinking while the hot water fell on his neck. He began thinking of the same things anybody who lands in America thinks of. Mario was thinking about staying in America forever.

  He came out of the shower and sat on the edge of the bed and flipped through the telephone directory. He was surprised to find Grant Monroe listed. He dialed the hotel operator and gave her the number.

  “You can dial that yourself,” she said.

  “I’m blind,” Mario said.

  “Oh, I’m sorry, I’ll get it for you,” she said.

  Mario spoke away from the phone. “Do your own work, I don’t do it for you.”

  Grant Monroe’s number rang several times. Finally a foggy voice answered. Mario stood up in excitement.

  “Mr. Grant Monroe?” Mario said.

  “Of course, he’s always up answering phones this time of day.”

  “Oh, good,” Mario said. “Could I please to speak to him?”

  “Oh, I see. You’re not putting me on. You are sick.”

  The phone clicked.

  Mario got dressed and went downstairs, where he waited for Joseph DeLauria. Since Mario could speak English, DeLauria was taking him around town for publicity interviews. When DeLauria arrived he was grumpy because he didn’t like being an errand boy, and he was also afraid the bike race would be a flop and he would be blamed for it. “My guys don’t even know what a bike race is,” Bobby Scola of Hodcarriers Local 43 told DeLauria. DeLauria gave the desk clerk envelopes addressed to the bike-riders. He handed Mario one. It contained a hundred-dollar bill for expenses. Mario put the bill in the watch pocket of his suit. He went to the newsstand and took two Hershey bars for breakfast. He stepped aside so DeLauria could pay. DeLauria remained immobile. Mario made a face like a beggar in pain. DeLauria muttered and fished in his pocket for change.

  DeLauria took Mario to the offices of a scratch sheet which ran little sports-news items, to two small radio stations, and then to the big chain afternoon newspaper. By custom, it was the easiest to crack for publicity. The custom called for DeLauria to step into a small office with the sports editor and pay money. The sports editor then called out to a young guy who was sitting at a desk and writing a headline for a basketball story. The headline said, “St. John’s Splinters Holy Cross.” The young guy put down his work and interviewed Mario.

  Back at the hotel, Mario called Grant Monroe again. There was no answer. He watched television all afternoon. At night three fat men on the race committee took the riders to dinner at a restaurant across the street from the hotel. The riders, mixed up by the time changes, began to fall asleep at the table.

  In the morning Mario called Grant Monroe again. After many rings, the foggy voice answered.

  “The wake is tomorrow,” the voice said. “He died yesterday. He cut his throat.” The voice trailed off. “Hey, it’s seven-thirty in the freaking morning. Are you crazy? What do you do, sleep in the streets?” The phone clicked.

  The bikes had arrived by air freight. They were being kept in a park building at Central Park. Mario and the other riders went for a workout at ten. Many of them were asking when the indoor track would be ready for practice. Joseph DeLauria laughed and clapped a few of them on the back. After the workout DeLauria walked out of the park to hail a cab. Mario, who was wearing a black sweatsuit and had sweat dripping from his chin, ran after DeLauria. He got in the cab with him. Mario showed DeLauria Grant Monroe’s address on 10th Street.

  DeLauria shook his head. “Puerto Rican neighborhood.”

  Mario did not answer.

  DeLauria held his hands out. “So go get killed.” DeLauria told the cabbie to go down the East Side to 10th Street.

  Tenth Street was narrow, and tin cans and spilled garbage bags were on the curb and in the gutter. The blacktop was covered with swatches of broken glass, which glistened in the pale winter-morning sunlight. The sidewalks were empty in the cold. The houses were five-and six-story adjoining walkups, some dirty red, some dirty brown, some dirty tan, with chalk-marked stoops and high, bare soot-covered windows. Number 288 was dirty red. The brass mailboxes in the vestibule were scarred and bent from being pried open by junkies. The names on some of them were printed by hand on cardboard and were so smudged Mario had to look closely to see Ruiz and Torres and Maldonado. The other slots had no names on them. Mario couldn’t find Monroe. He tried the vestibule door. It was unlocked and he came into a lightless hallway with a staircase in front of him and an apartment, the door half open, on his left.

  Mario knocked on the half-open door. There was no answer. He stepped inside. He was in a bare-floored front room. The walls were covered with floor-to-ceiling posters of pop art. One showed a caveman chiseling “Nobel Peace Prize” onto a stone tablet. An old bathtub was against one wall. It had a curved lip at the top and it stood on ornate legs. The bathtub was painted in psychedelic swirls. In the middle of the room were easels and tables with brushes and paints and palettes. A high stool was placed in front of the three windows looking onto the street.

  “Hello,” Mario called out.

  There was a muffled sound from the back of the apartment. A door opened and a little man pushed himself into the room in a wheelchair. He was bald and wore glasses and he had a brown bottle of whisky in his lap and a cup in his left hand. He pushed the chair with his free hand. He brought the chair to a stop at a long table.

  “In that case,” he said. He put the cup and the whisky bottle on the table. He opened the whisky bottle and poured into a glass. He swallowed the whisky in a gulp. He picked up the cup and spilled something on a large sheet of art paper on the table. He began rubbing his fingers on the wet paper.

  “He k
nows I only want tea and the son-of-a-bitch doesn’t buy me any and he tells me use coffee. Use coffee, and he’ll see what he gets.”

  “What’s that?” Mario said.

  The little man kept rubbing the paper. “Tea, I said tea, can’t you even hear? He wants something to look ten years old. I use tea on the new paper to make it look old. Tea does it good. This son-of-a-bitch, what does he care? He says use coffee if I don’t have tea. Oh, he’s a lazy bastard.”

  “Who?” Mario said.

  “Who? Who do you think? What’s the difference anyway? I’m so freaking stewed now I don’t care.”

  He poured himself another drink. After he swallowed it, he ran his hands over his face.

  “All night I work, and twice in a row now some dirty bastard calls here early in the morning and wakes me up. Two days in a row. So this morning I said to hell with it. I just took myself into the kitchen and had a pick-me-up. And I’m still picking myself up. Freaking telephones.”

  The little man’s head was flopping toward his left shoulder, and he had to raise his eyebrows to focus on Mario.

  “Where are you from, dressed like that?”

  “I’m Mario Trantino. I am from Catanzia in Italy.”

  “How’s the Pope?”

  “His Holiness?”

  “Yeah. I think he wants to make sex a contest. See whose wife gets caught tonight.”

  He spun around in the wheelchair and whirred over to the bathtub. He fumbled with his fly and went in the bathtub. He ran the water, shut it off, and whirred back to the table.

  He held the bottle out to Mario. “Treat it like it’s your own.”

  Mario looked at him. “Come on,” the man said. Mario walked over to him, took the bottle, and put it inside his mouth as if it were a tongue-depressor. He was not going to do anything to have this man in the wheelchair get mad and make him go away. With his lips outside the bottle, there was no way for Mario’s mouth to close by reflex and block the flow of whisky. When he tilted the bottle, the whisky poured free and a string of small bubbles beaded through the bottle, and then more of them came, and finally an air pocket gurgled through the whisky.