He Got Hungry and Forgot His Manners

by Jimmy Breslin

  Q. Thank you, Mr. Cafiero.

  A. For what?

  Q. For the conviction.

  And now, standing behind the counter at the Cross Bay Pizza stand, Dominic looked up at the Chief and, shaking his head, Dominic went into the cash register and counted out two hundred twenty dollars. Dominic sighed as he looked into the register and saw how little was left. “Boss break my head when he sees this.”

  “Tell him,” the Chief said.

  “Tell him what?”

  “Tell him some big nigger come in here and held you up. Go ahead. Now give me two pies to go home.”

  Dominic put two pies into boxes and as he handed them to the Chief, he said, “When you get in the car remember not to put one box on top of the other. Keep them apart so the weight don’t make one box squash down. I don’t want you getting home and calling me up and saying, ‘Hey, why is all the cheese all stuck together?’”

  “Good man,” the Chief said. He slapped the counter in lieu of payment, picked up the boxes, and left.

  The Chief was elated that he had taken the two hundred twenty dollars from the counterman. Earlier he had collected ten thousand from Network Records and another thirty-seven thousand from a guy who had borrowed money in order to get in a drug deal. The thirty-seven thousand had to go into the all-city Mafia pot, but all the rest of the money was the Chief’s personal score. Each sum he collected that day was worth killing for. If Dominic hadn’t had the two twenty for him, the Chief was going to have somebody come in the back door later that night and cut Dominic’s head off. When he was out of the place, Sarah asked, “Who is that delightful man?”

  “Saint John the Baptist.”

  “He’s crude.”

  “I’ll say he’s cruel.”

  Once outside, the Chief got into his Lincoln town car, the official Mafia boss’s car, and drove home. He lives on the last street in Howard Beach, in a house that sits right against the bullrushes and swampland, beyond which is East New York. At night, when the wind blows in hard from the bay, the bullrushes wave and shake with so much noise that you think somebody is coming through them.

  Bushwick and Sarah went home to Bushwick’s house, and Sarah had an exciting time. In the morning they talked on the way to work and Bushwick told her that he loved her and immediately Sarah began to cry. “Oh, I don’t know what to do,” she said. When Bushwick asked her what was the matter, she said, “Maybe what happened to my father frightens me. My mother always reached out in her sleep to touch my father. Then one night he wasn’t there. He died of a heart attack on the way home. After that, my mother made me sleep with her. If I got up and wandered around while she was still asleep, she’d wake up right away and get hysterical. Maybe that’s what’s bothering me. I’m afraid that if I stay with you, I’ll put my hand out one night and you won’t be there.”

  Bushwick said, “Look at me. Thirty-five years old. Don’t I look like I’m going to die any second?”

  One day at work Sarah said, “I still don’t know. I think I better go back with my mother for the time being.” And Bushwick said to her, “Do you know what I was thinking about when we weren’t talking on the subway? I was thinking about that it was time to get moved up to a better department. I might as well surrender and think about working all my life like everybody else. Go into the housing action grants. Start working so I can support you and the children.”

  Sarah was both thrilled and frightened by this and was glad when she was removed from the vortex of this controversy by the day’s first phone call, which was from a woman in the Flatbush Arms Hotel who said she didn’t have a can of corn left in her room.

  In the late afternoon of this day, D’Arcy Cosgrove awoke in his bare room in the rectory, looked down, and shook Great Big, who was asleep on the floor, for the beds simply were too small for him, and the two arose and had tea and, as it was late afternoon, cold chicken and salad served by a grumpy old woman. D’Arcy said Mass for himself, after which the two went out for a walk with the old pastor. Cosgrove was concerned that he had received no word from the Papal delegate. As they left the rectory, which had a broken gate and was joined at the hip to the old church building, late afternoon had begun to slip into the first darkness. One light showed on the street, in the ground floor of a building directly across from the church. The old pastor called and the window opened and an old woman pressed her forehead against bars that were an attempt at Spanish grillwork but were closer to state penitentiary. “I’m about to go marketing,” the woman said.

  “It’s nighttime already,” the pastor said.

  “Oh, I thought it was time to go marketing. I get so mixed up by the clocks. If it’s nighttime, then I’ll say good night.” The woman shut the window.

  A couple of blocks down, on what once had been an avenue, Cosgrove noticed that their footsteps were the only sound on a street of burned-out five-story apartment buildings whose front doors were sealed with cement. The apartment buildings stared with tin eyes at the emptiness and garbage.

  The old pastor said that once this had been the center of the parish, but many people from North Carolina moved up and the parishioners had fled. “Now we have only a few left, and if one dies we don’t even get the funeral. The relatives come here from Long Island and whisk the bodies away. I don’t think our church has long to go.”

  As they walked along the deserted streets, they came up to a man in his early thirties who stood guard over three Lincoln town cars parked at the curb. A leather jacket was open to reveal a neck as thick as a boar’s and ablaze with gold chains. He chewed gum as if being paid for the labor. The place he stood in front of was a small restaurant, with Christmas tree lights strung across the top of the small bar. There was no name on the window. The pastor murmured that the place was no good, but in the chill, Cosgrove had to use the men’s room.

  Instantly, the gum chewer blocked the way until he saw Cosgrove’s collar. His fierce look became a little softer. “I help you, Father?” Cosgrove gave his destination and the guy nodded. “Tell them I said it was all right.” Looking up at Great Big, he said, “He ain’t coming, is he?” When Cosgrove said no, the gold chains relaxed. The pastor and Great Big waited outside.

  When Cosgrove stepped inside, he found a long, narrow room with a few tables and the walls covered with horse-racing pictures, one large one of Frank Sinatra, and next to it a sheet with questions and answers on it. The place was empty except for three men seated at a round table in the rear. One of them, the Chief, looked up as he saw the priest walk in.

  “Help you, Father?”

  “I was told it was all right to use the men’s room,” Cosgrove said.

  The Chief nodded his approval; then he looked at the waiter, who stood at attention in front of him.

  “Garlic toast,” the Chief said.

  “We don’t have garlic toast tonight,” the waiter said.

  “Make it. Then you’ll have it.”

  The waiter nodded and went into the kitchen.

  At the table with the Chief was a young man of about thirty whose eyes were not quite alert. When he opened his mouth to talk, the man sitting next to him, wearing an expensive and understated banker’s suit, put a hand on his son’s hand to stop his words. Clearly, he wanted nothing said that would arouse the Chief.

  “The boy here is out of college and he and a couple of chums start this little business and, by golly, don’t they have union trouble right off.”

  The Chief nodded solemnly.

  Cosgrove walked past them and into the men’s room, whose walls were so thin that he could monitor the conversation.

  The banker said, “Now we’re all for unions, but these are just college kids starting out and I said, ‘Oh, you can’t bother that man. He does too many favors for people as it is.’ Except he gets a phone call and he was told that some people were concerned.”

  The son said, “Dad, they said they were going to strangle me until my eyes popped out.”

  The father said, “What
ever. So I said to myself, ‘Well, I think I better now just go down and see my old friend the Chief in person.’”

  The Chief said, “What was the name of the guy called you up?”

  “Anthony Capanegro. Local 1731.”

  “Now you’re in the Son business, right?” the Chief told the young guy.

  “No, the bank messenger service.”

  “But you got the service because your father’s got the bank. That puts you in the Son business. It’s the biggest business in the city. Someday, the city’ll be so old that you guys’ll be in the Grandson business. I tried to get my own kid in the Son business. I go up to the school where he was going, they had this parents’ night, and I give the geometry teacher five hundred and I tell him, ‘I don’t know what my kid is doing taking geometry, a subject like this, but he wants to be a lawyer. I know you need a father a lawyer, and this kid got no father a lawyer, so I’m buying him into the Son business. Here, you pass him so he can go to law school.’

  “I push the five hundred on him and I go out. I tell you, I had to give a guy a good fucking beating that night. You know what happens? The next day the kid comes home with the five hundred from the teacher. Now what do you think the rat-bastard teacher does? My kid comes home with an F in fucking geometry. Fail. Fuck you! How do you like that rat-bastard teacher? I says, ‘All right. They don’t want my kid in another line of work. They want him to be my son and stay in my business.’ His mother screamed. So I told him, look for something. He went to Fort Pierce in Florida a couple of years ago and opened a newspaper store and sold guns in the back room. Then they made his place legal. He’s a legitimate businessman. He sells guns.”

  Cosgrove finished using the bathroom and washed his hands. The Chief and the banker and son concluded their business. “Now I got four whole percent of a messenger business,” the Chief announced.

  “Of course,” the banker said.

  The Chief laughed. “I tell you what you do. When the guy calls up again, you tell him that you give the money over to me. He’ll understand. You won’t hear from him no more.”

  Father and son were walking out of the place as Cosgrove emerged from the men’s room. The Chief never noticed Cosgrove. His eyes were fixed with a murderous stare on a man being shoved into the restaurant. The man was overweight and had thick eyeglasses.

  “Here comes Rudolph Valentino,” the Chief said.

  The fat guy stood nervously.

  “Did you take Rocky’s niece out to the back of the garage and make her do something with you?”

  “No.”

  With a great noise, the Chief shoved the table and stood up. “You’re going to get the beating of your life. If you lie, you die!”

  “I’m telling the truth. I never made her do nothing. She couldn’t wait to do me,” the fat guy said.

  “She wanted to? She’s twelve fucking years old!”

  “Yeah, but she’s nice,” the fat guy said.

  The Chief threw a punch that made a sound that filled the room and Cosgrove, leaving hastily, thought that the Chief was a great man. Why, if killing were not such a final sin, the fat guy should be killed. Whoever this big shot was, he certainly had some proper morals, Cosgrove thought.

  The next morning Cosgrove left the rectory again and he recognized the streets ahead as Baby Rock’s landscape. Great Big was with him and they walked to the burned-out store, where Cosgrove saw a high bundle under the khaki blanket on the old couch. The bundle began to thrash quite a bit. There was youth panting. Cosgrove immediately thought of the Curragh racecourse phrase “sound of wind and limb.” Great Big, however, smacked his hands together in glee. Great Big thinks he sees Africa, Cosgrove thought, and of course he is wrong, for even here in this desolation, no matter how rare a scene in a nation smothered with wealth, a flying blanket cannot be what it seems.

  The whole couch took a mad jump and the high, happy voice of a very young girl said, “Make me feel good all over.”

  The bundle under the blanket broke into two and Cosgrove saw Baby Rock with his baseball cap on; also peering from under the blanket were two luminous dark eyes in the deep tan face of a small girl. Baby Rock and the girl stared at the fire licking out of the oil barrel a few feet away. Cosgrove saw that the girl, whose hair was pulled into a long braid, was wearing a pink snow jacket, and this comforted Cosgrove. But the girl, seeing Cosgrove, closed her eyes in embarrassment and pulled the blanket over her face. Certainly, Cosgrove thought, he was absolutely right at this moment to recall the memory of his bed in Ireland, with all four children snuggled against the cold, watching the turf fire, and squalling the moment anybody disturbed the blanket and allowed cold air to pierce the warmth.

  “And who do we have here?” Cosgrove said heartily.

  The little face, with large dark brown eyes and a nose with just enough nostril width to pay respect to the centuries, came out from under the blanket. “Go ’way from me.”

  Baby Rock twisted the white baseball cap from backwards to frontwards and pulled the bill down so that it covered all but his mouth, which formed a smirk. “My lady,” Baby Rock said.

  Again the girl hid her face under the blanket. Cosgrove laughed at Baby Rock’s incongruous remark, for she was only a child. Cosgrove asked her age.

  “I be eleven,” the little girl said from under the blanket.

  “And what is your name?”

  “Seneca.”

  “And why are you not in school?”

  “Baby Rock be lettin’ me oversleep.”

  Cosgrove shook a finger at Baby Rock. “Your lady was relying on you to ring her doorbell and you forgot.”

  Now Seneca sat up. “No doorbell here.”

  “Then he should have knocked on the door.”

  “What door?”

  “The door to your house.”

  “Wasn’t at a house last night.”

  “Where were you?”

  “I be here with Baby Rock.”

  “You were here all night?”

  “Sure was.”

  Cosgrove smiled tolerantly. Little girl trying to shock him; of course the child knew not of what she spoke. But when she and Baby Rock looked at Great Big and the three began to snicker, Cosgrove had a momentary vision that, through shock, the little girl was trying to lead him, an old man in her eyes, into reality. No, dismiss this thought. This is the pure work of the Devil. “Dear little girl, you shouldn’t use those expressions because you sound stupid. You are too young to know anything of these things.”

  “Fuck all around,” Seneca said.

  Baby Rock picked up his head and said, “Soft and warm.”

  He and Seneca giggled, which told Great Big all he had to know and Great Big jumped up and down.

  Cosgrove had no idea of what he was thinking until he heard himself say it. “Why, as a matter of actual fact, today is a great blessing. You two must be married immediately.”

  “What for?” Baby Rock said.

  “To consecrate all your further acts.”

  “If I get married, do I get welfare?” Seneca said.

  “Oh, I’m not sure of these details. What’s important is that, dear God in Heaven, you two wonderful children get married.”

  “When you married, they give you a place to go for dinner?” Baby Rock said.

  “God will provide,” Cosgrove said.

  “What street is the man on?” Baby Rock asked.

  “Oh, we’ll find all that. We must get you married first. Think of what would happen if you had a child out of this.”

  “We only be doin’ it a few times last night,” Seneca said. “You got to do it a whole lot of days before you get a baby.”

  “Who told you such a thing?” Cosgrove said.

  “Girl on my block. She know.”

  “Well, she’s wrong. And you should get married immediately. I’ll come home with you and talk to your parents.”

  Seneca frowned. There was wriggling under the blanket as she obviously pulled on clothes. �
��I’m not marryin’ Baby Rock. He isn’t my boyfriend. My boyfriend be Manslaughter. I be tellin’ him.”

  Seneca threw off the cover. She was dressed for a grammar school hallway, in snow jacket, corduroy pants, and white snowboots, and she swung off the couch where she had spent the night with a boy who wasn’t her boyfriend and she walked out to the street.

  Baby Rock jumped up. “You got me in bad trouble. She tell Manslaughter I’m here and he be comin’ around lookin’ for his gun that you threw away. Manslaughter only wants to be strapped with that gun. He be bringin’ his second gun. Shoot me twice. First for losin’ his gun, second time for messin’ with his lady. I got no gun to shoot him back.”

  Baby Rock caught up to Seneca on the sidewalk and when she said that she wouldn’t tell Manslaughter if Baby Rock would buy her a cherry Danish and a grape slurpy, Baby Rock asked Cosgrove for a dollar fifty. Cosgrove, with six dollars on him, said of course he could have the money and Baby Rock and Seneca led him around the corner onto a desolate street where it seemed nobody lived.

  There were houses with bricked-up doors and windows and others with tin nailed over the openings. It was a street without even a stray dog on it. Standing alone was a narrow grocery store with a yellow tin sign proclaiming, BODEGA. Inside, there was barely room for people to get past each other. There were rubber gloves atop the bread, a basket of sweet potatoes on the floor, a stack of cans of roach killer, a shelf of canned peas, a gum machine, cases of warm beer, a cooler filled with beer, soda, and margarine.

  The Puerto Rican behind the counter had a mustache and wore a black leather jacket that he seemed to like very much. He glanced down at it, then looked in suspicion as Baby Rock fingered the packaged cake shelf, and then glanced down at the jacket once more. The jacket made the Puerto Rican’s shoulders seem square and powerful, although he had a small face and neck. He watched as Seneca reached into the cooler for a slurpy and Baby Rock picked up a cherry Danish for Seneca, and for himself, his best meal, Cheez Doodles. The Puerto Rican relaxed when Cosgrove put money on the counter.

  Cosgrove saw the Puerto Rican’s eyes widen. Cosgrove saw Great Big bend over and open a large bag of potato chips. Great Big held them up and poured them into his ‘ mouth. Great Big bellowed. He liked the potato chips. His arms spread almost from one end of the store to the other. Great Big gathered everything within reach, which was quite a bit. Great Big, roaring in delight, clutched a mountain of canned peas, roach spray, potato chips, bottles of warm beer, and giant plastic bottles of Pepsi-Cola. He headed for the door. The Puerto Rican shouted. Cosgrove tried to block the way, but Great Big simply kept walking and carried Cosgrove out onto the sidewalk. The Puerto Rican tore off his black jacket and, sure enough, he didn’t have those wide shoulders that he did with the jacket on. Still, he was courageous. He jumped Great Big from behind and rode Great Big’s back all the way to the curb. Where, in frustration, he sunk his teeth into Great Big’s back. Great Big dropped his treasure, reached behind him and grabbed the Puerto Rican, and scaled him like a stone into the middle of the street. Which is exactly how the Puerto Rican went, too. Once he skipped on the top of his head. Then he bounced on his forehead and that took care of that. The Puerto Rican was part of the asphalt.