First, let’s take two steps to the side.
The Fast Eddie F. Complex
It was Sigmund Freud who once said, possibly after putting down his vial of cocaine and symbolic cigar for a minute, artists make art, and writers write, for the love of beautiful women. Let’s have a look into Herr Doktor. His “science” has been systematically proven dead wrong about the unconscious, dead wrong about the Oedipus complex, dead wrong about penis envy, dead wrong about homosexuality, oh, the list goes on and on in an instance of his repetition complex, about which he was also dead wrong. His batting average is far below the Mendoza line, alongside some political eminences. Writing for the love of beautiful women, huh? That’s the objective? And let’s leave aside for a moment the reductive sexual assumptions implicit in his position.
Moment’s up. Guy’s a dog. By any measure and study, his very conception of psychoanalysis is bogus if not a failed treatment protocol. As a fabulist and mythologizer, however, Freud was a skillful and historically influential writer, so maybe if he wasn’t hearing the Siren’s spoon call, he might have realized he was talking out of his bowler hat.
The motivations of writers may not always be of the virtuous variety, and they may be mystifying to writers themselves, and writers can be disreputable schemers and scammers, so give Freud very partial credit. But here’s the small point I would make: writing is so hard that if a beautiful woman or man came up after a reading and said, “I love you, take me, I’m yours, you’ve changed my life, this is my cell phone number,” I’m going to go out on a limb and say, “Is that all there is?” Of course, yes, indeed, true, sometimes it is all there is, but since when has it been enough? Hasn’t everybody binge-watched Real Housewives of The New York Review of Books? Then again, I could very well be a disreputable schemer and scammer, and here’s proof one way or the other: I wrote this book.
Full disclosure, or full enough: the psychodynamic model has its legitimate place, of course. It certainly had its place in my life, and the psychoanalytically inclined pediatrician and writer Winnicott is a genius I hold in the highest regard. And speaking of therapy, writing Subway was exhausting, like doing therapy on myself. At the end of each working day when the pace intensified over months and months, I was absolutely drained. Sometimes I wanted to send myself a bill.
And I resolved I would never write another memoir as long as I lived, it was too hard.
Yet here I am. Never trust a writer. But nobody needs to be reminded of that.
•
Before publication, I showed my college girlfriend a draft of Subway to California, which contained more than a few pages about her and our mutual first-love relationship—now decades in the rear view mirror. I did not use her name, but I did identify her by her first initial. I thought my treatment of her was definitively on this side of reverential, and I stand by that general characterization to this day and always will. If anybody takes a hit in the book for what went wrong between us, it was me.
Post-college we remained friends, dear steadfast friends, after the requisite cooling off period, and we talked from time to time or visited with each other in California or New York. I had genuine regard for her brilliant, attractive children and husband, and she was on good terms with my wife and family. But in the pages I drafted I had done a bad thing. There was one sentence pertaining to her that she insisted I remove; though, as I said, her identity was completely concealed for the general public. In that sentence I incorporated an observation about—you know, it doesn’t really matter what its essence or claim was. And no, no compromising or potentially embarrassing whips and bonds stuff, nothing remotely criminal or morally actionable.
The sentence wasn’t critical to the narrative drift, and in context of the whole book it virtually amounted to a throwaway recollection, so I cut it. Still, it was no throwaway as far as she was concerned, it was hurtful to her and she was upset. Reluctantly, I could take her point. Had I completely misremembered or misread something about her? At first I was defensive and argued with myself that she was wrong and I was right, much the way I often did when we were involved. But what if I wasn’t right? And if I wasn’t, what else had I gotten wrong? I might have been a fool or an idiot or simply a wretched human being.
The iconic Russell Baker invoked a principle that has served as encouragement and instruction for any erstwhile memoir writer. He said nobody’s life makes any sense, so tell a good story. Some cynical editors—cynical or wise, and excellent editors walk that high wire between those poles—have been known to say don’t let the facts get in the way of telling the story. But when you write a memoir, your job is supposed to be different. It’s the pact you have with your reader, whom you should never betray, ever. You are to tell the truth to the extent that you know it, if you aren’t James Frey, that is, and I never read, and will never read, his book, not that there’s any reason to pile on now.
A couple of years passed after she had read the draft. When I had come through New York in the past, I had normally made it a point to let her know and to get together, but I traveled there several times without contacting her, seeing no opening, and feeling sometimes annoyed, sometimes hurt, sometimes culpable. I am uncertain as to why or how a thaw took place between us. I am sure it took place on the occasion of a birthday phone call she initiated.
During that conversation she asked me if I was going to send her a copy of Subway, now in print. I was taken aback. “I think the last thing you said about the book was that you wanted nothing to do with it.” She didn’t deny she had said that. I couldn’t resist asking if she realized books were a business, and they were available wherever fine books were sold—and yes, this was snarky of me, but she graciously ignored that. I told her I had not used her name or her first initial. “What did you call me?” She approved the choice of the name I used. I thought it was a great name, too. I pressed on. Why did she want the book from me now?
“Because I’m in it.”
She was right, objection sustained. I sent her the book.
So when I heard about the sealed case files on my father, the one in Queens as well as possibly another one in Brooklyn, and I already had in my possession the trial transcripts that had recently appeared, I took a chance and gave her a call to give an update. She specializes in defending white-collar crime cases in New York City and was once a federal prosecutor, and I figured she would be expertly positioned, both professionally and personally, to do something about unsealing the file.
“This is getting seriously interesting,” she said.
“Is it possible to unseal a case file?”
“Yes.” But she was careful to qualify: possible didn’t mean easy.
“I love you,” I blurted out, surprising myself. It was at that moment that I realized all over again how I was all in on this investigation, how important the case was to me, and how important she was, too.
She laughed. “You haven’t said that for a while.”
Thus it was that Naomi took the case, not that that is her name.
Mitzvah Madness
On another stop of the Subway tour, I did a reading at the Half King in Chelsea. This is a superb Irish literary bar with a very welcoming room for reading and a very desirable venue for authors.
Old college pals as well as friends from California and former students showed up, a nice little turnout. As I prepared myself to go on, dealing with pregame jitters and sipping on a shot of Irish to steel my nerves, a woman rose up from her table and walked over.
“Hi, I’m Patricia.”
No clue. My brain scanned and scanned and scanned and spit out nothing. She cut me a break.
“I’m your cousin.”
It clicked. Yes, she was. I saw it now. A first cousin I quickly calculated I hadn’t laid eyes on for many decades, a daughter of my Uncle Mike and Aunt Ruth. Ruth was Jewish and therefore made for certain ridiculous complications for my ethnocentric Ita
lian American family, but I liked her a lot. She was warm and kind and sweet to me when I was a little boy, and her three daughters were wonderful childhood playmates I thought I would never forget. But as tonight demonstrated, on that point I seem to have been overconfident.
My cousin and her husband, as it happened, lived on the road where my grandparents once had their farm and which was the launching point for my dad’s self-appointed exile, and she had read the book. I had heard from her sister Jen that there was one aspect in particular that they appreciated. The memoir flickeringly brought to life on the page their loving mom, who had died when they were very young, so young in fact that they had precious little memory of her. This knocked me out.
I had made my share of questionable choices in the book, and obviously in my life for that matter, but this was one thing I had gotten a little bit right, even if I didn’t know it, or intend it. Whatever gift I gave her, she had granted me something more precious.
Whose book was this again?
Consideration
In October 1961 the Police Commission called a single witness to testify against a decorated police sergeant, one Baldasaro "Benny" Ficalora. He, along with his partner, stood accused of shaking down a bookmaker named Sal Valenti, in 1957, for $600, which amounts to about $5,000 in today’s dollars. Until my father appeared in New York City in September 1961, the police had no clue as to the Valenti shakedown. That meant he had been sitting on this information for use on a rainy day (such as being indicted, as he was). Either that or he had made up the story to get some play from the oncoming DA.
The transcript makes for fascinating reading, if by fascinating one means excruciating, forehead-smacking frustration. Under questioning, my father seems often confused, or feigns being confused—states of mind not readily distinguishable relative to him. Sometimes he’s reticent, more than occasionally defensive. His thinking seems tortured, but thinking doesn’t seem the word. His memory, overtaxed. His word choices, pokes in the eye with a sharp stick. He seems incapable of comprehending, much less responding to, direct questions. Or he understood them perfectly and didn’t wish to answer. Then again, in my experience, he was always that way. Downtown Joe Di Prisco.
For example, under suppressive cross-examination fire pertaining to these dirty cops, he testifies that “they grabbed him,” “him” referring to the bookmaker, Valenti. Counsel for the defense wanted to know, reasonably enough, who was “they.”
“Tartarian [Ficalora’s partner] got out of the car.”
“It was not ‘they,’ just one man?”
“I got out, fingered the bookmaker to Tartarian.”
“I’m asking you who is the ‘they’?”
Counsel for the Department: “He said…”
Counsel for the Accused: “He didn’t say.”
For the Department: “He said it was Tartarian.”
For the Accused: “‘They’ is not Tartarian.”
For the Department: “To you it’s not, to him it is.”
For the Accused: “So is that what you mean, ‘they’ is one man?
“Tartarian got out of the car.”
“You didn’t mean ‘they’?”
“Ficalora was at the wheel.”
“You did not mean ‘they’?”
“Well, only one man got out of the car. I can’t say he didn’t.”
It goes on in this Runyonesque via Greenpoint fashion here and elsewhere for pages and pages—much like the unrecorded transcript of almost every conversation I ever had with him. His words are cumulatively reminiscent of nothing so much as a stoner version of Abbott and Costello’s baseball vaudeville routine “Who’s On First?” My father liked those comics.
Costello: Well then who’s on first?
Abbott: Yes.
Costello: I mean the fellow’s name.
Abbott: Who.
Costello: The guy on first.
Abbott: Who.
Costello: The first baseman.
Abbott: Who.
Costello: The guy playing…
Abbott: Who is on first!
Costello: I’m asking YOU who’s on first.
Abbott: That’s the man’s name.
Costello: That’s who’s name?
Abbott: Yes.
Costello: Well go ahead and tell me.
Abbott: That’s it.
Costello: That’s who?
Abbott: Yes.
And no, English was not my dad’s second language, though he makes it sound like he came through Ellis Island the week prior. More than anything, he seems to be heeding the stock wisdom of the streets: nobody was ever hanged for something he didn’t say, something he couldn’t deny, something nobody could understand. So he didn’t express anything you could pin on him. This principle was absolute, and it applied not only to courtroom testimony, it also applied to the weather, to what he had for lunch, to how he was feeling today, to where he was going, to what he thought of the game, to what he wanted for Christmas. Plausible deniability was in his blood.
Of course, nobody should underestimate how stressful testifying under oath can be when counsel has painted a bull’s-eye on somebody and is argumentatively skillful, able to distort a prepped witness’s words. Equipped with his grade school education, my father distorted his own words enough for a courtroom of lawyers. What’s more, for somebody like him, who I have no doubt in another era would have been diagnosed with attention deficit disorder, it had to be supremely challenging to think cogently and speak coherently at the same time—assuming cogency and coherence were his priorities, which it was not always clear they were. Compounding everything was that those felony charges were hanging over his head in the two boroughs over from Manhattan, where he sat in the witness chair. The prospect of execution truly concentrates the mind, as Samuel Johnson said, but in my father’s circumstances, that seems a long shot. My general verdict on the old man’s performance was not too bad, considering. He mostly held his own with the suits. Not bad was that Brooklyn man’s highest accolade.
•
The formal charges against Ficalora (and in other proceedings, his partner, Tartarian) alleged that he conspired with my father to frame the bookmaker Valenti in 1957. My dad used his old friend, Joe "Smokey" Loguerico, to help identify Valenti coming out of work, and then my father signaled in the police, who ushered Valenti into the backseat of Ficalora’s car. That’s when my father testified that he took an envelope from Valenti and said that there were numerous betting slips. At this point, it was contended, “having seized evidence of said crime [bookmaking], [Ficalora] did solicit, demand, and ask the said Valenti for a sum of money, in return for which the said Valenti would be released and freed from arrest.” Valenti offered $200, but the cops said that wasn’t enough. As my father predicted for Tartarian, Valenti would pay because he couldn’t afford the pinch, or so Loguerico advised my father, and as a result he was summarily squeezed. My father took off at this point, and they drove the bookmaker to his home, where he came up with an additional $400, and that’s where the matter lay dormant—until my father’s extradition, when he testified.
In exchange for his information as confidential informant, my father received one hundred bucks from the cops, about eight hundred in today’s dollars. He gave either twenty-five or fifty dollars to Loguerico, or so he said at various times, though Loguerico swore he never got a dime.
It would be easy to be suspicious of my father’s testimony. After all, until he came back to New York, nobody knew the first thing about this shakedown. Seemed a little bit too convenient for somebody in tight straits like his. While counsel for the defense strained to establish that my dad made up the accusations out of whole cloth to save his own skin, giving something of value to the police so as to increase the chances that his own problems would go away, the two cops made some crucial errors that cast grave doubt upon their d
efense. For one thing, Tartarian denied using my father as a confidential informant as a regular practice, but that seemed not to be true upon examination. In fact, he had used him for years. “Tartarian was plainly inconsistent and evasive about his relationship with Di Prisco,” ruled the Police Commission.
For another thing, Ficalora asserted that the car my father identified as being the one driven during the night of the shakedown could not have been his car, which, if so, should discredit Di Prisco’s testimony and exonerate him. The 1949 Chevy, he said, had been junked before the night of the alleged crime. But police furnished records and other evidence indicating that that car had been operable on the night in question and that, in fact, Ficalora had unfettered access to the vehicle.
Once the hearings concluded, the deputy police commissioner formally weighed in on my father’s status and commented on his testimony:
“It is conceded that there are several inconsistencies in Di Prisco’s testimony and that he was not truthful at a previous departmental trial where he said that he did not know other policemen, wherein in fact he did. It is also conceded that his character and background are unsavory and that his relationship with the District Attorney, while under indictment at the time of his trial, provided a ready motive for his testifying against these respondents.”
The Pope of Brooklyn Page 10
