Brooklyn Noir 2: The Classics (23 page)

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
G
ILBERT
S
ORRENTINO
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.