Sleepers (19 page)

None of us liked to lose, and yet here we had just lost and we didn’t know the reason why. Michael sensed our uneasiness but said nothing. In his mind, losing that game and handing a feeling of victory to a girl in a wheelchair was more than the right thing to do. It was more than a courageous thing to do. It was the
only
thing to do.

Summer 1967

14

T
HE TEMPERATURE TOPPED
out at 98 degrees on the day our lives were forever altered. It was the middle of a summer when the country’s mood plunged into darkness. Race riots had already rocked 127 cities across the United States, killing 77 people and putting more than 4,000 others in area hospitals, and neither side seemed ready to give up the battle.

Along with the turmoil came change.

Thurgood Marshall was appointed to the Supreme Court by President Lyndon Johnson after Justice Thomas C. Clark resigned. In return, Ramsey Clark, the son of the retired justice, was named to the attorney general’s post.

The Six-Day War was fought in the Middle East.

The New York World-Journal & Tribune
folded and
Rolling Stone
published its first issue.
Bonnie and Clyde
brought crowds to theaters and
Rosemary’s Baby
kept readers up all night. The Beatles sang “All You Need Is Love,” while “Ode to Billy Joe” suggested otherwise, playing and playing on the radio. Mickey Mantle, limping toward the end of his baseball days, hit his 500th home run, and Muhammad Ali, at the height of his boxing achievements, was stripped of the heavyweight crown for refusing to fight in Vietnam.

We had spent our morning in the cool shadows of a second-floor poolroom on West 53rd Street, watching a craggy-faced lug in a T-shirt and torn jeans rack up a dozen games against four different opponents. As he
played, he smoked his way through two packs of Camels and finished off a pint of Four Roses.

“Bet this guy could even beat Ralph Kramden,” Tommy said, watching the man side-pocket the six ball.

“Ralph Kramden doesn’t play pool,” I said. “He drives a bus.”

“Not on
The Honeymooners,”
Tommy said. “In that movie.”

“The Hustler,”
Michael said. “That the one you mean?”

“The one where they break Fast Eddie’s thumbs,” John said.

“You need directions to figure out the way you think,” I said to Tommy.

“It wasn’t Kramden?” Tommy asked.

“Let’s get outta here,” Michael said, looking around the smoke-filled room. “We’re startin’ to smell as bad as this place.”

We made a right out of the poolroom, late morning sun warming our shoulders, our attention jointly fixed on lunch. We ran a red light crossing 11th Avenue, dodged a school bus and two cabs, then eased back into a fast walk in front of old man Pippilo’s barber shop. At 51st Street and Tenth Avenue we turned left, side by side on the silent streets.

Between us, we had less than two dollars in our pockets.

“Let’s go get some pizza,” John said. “We can tell Mimi we’ll pay him down the road.”

“Mimi charges for
water,”
Tommy said. “He ain’t gonna go for any IOUs.”

“We can grab something at home,” I said. “Leftovers.”

“The only leftovers in my house are dirty dishes,” John said.

“And week-old bread,” Tommy said.

“Why not hot dogs?” Michael asked. “We haven’t hit the cart in a couple of weeks.”

“I don’t know, Mikey,” Tommy said. “That cart guy ain’t like the others. He gets pretty crazy when you take him off.”

“Tommy’s right,” I said. “Last week, he chased Ramos and two of his friends all the way to the piers. Almost cut one of ’em.”

“A hot dog ain’t worth bleedin’ over,” John said.

“We can eat hot dogs or we can eat air,” Michael said. “You guys choose.”

“Air’s probably safer,” Tommy said.

“May even taste better,” John said.

“Whose turn is it?” I asked.

“Yours,” Michael said.

“You think he’ll recognize me?” I asked.

“I hope so,” Tommy said. “I’m really hungry.”

The scam was simple. We’d done it dozens of times before, with almost as many vendors. We picked it up from an Irish crew on 48th Street who used it every summer to score free Puerto Rican ices.

I was to walk up to the hot dog cart and order what I wanted. The vendor would then hand me my hot dog and watch as I ran off without paying. This left the vendor with two choices, neither very appealing. He could stand his ground and swallow his loss. Or he could give chase. This second choice forced him to abandon the cart, where my friends could feast in his absence.

The hot dog vendor at this corner was tall and slender and in his mid-twenties, with thick dark hair and a round, bulbous nose. A recent addition to Hell’s Kitchen, his English was as poor as his clothes, ragged blue shirt and jeans, front pockets frayed at the edges. He owned a Yankee warm-up jacket and soiled cap and wore them on colder days.

The vendor worked the far corner of 51st Street and Tenth Avenue, standing under the partial shade of a red and yellow Sabrett umbrella, selling cold sodas, hot
dogs, and sausages to an array of passing customers—local merchants, longshoremen and truckers, schoolchildren. Seven days a week, late morning to early evening, he was there, plying a trade that was all too easy for us to ridicule.

We never saw the vendor as a man, not the way we saw the other men of the neighborhood, and didn’t care enough about him to grant him any respect. We gave little notice to how hard he worked for the few dollars he earned. We didn’t know about the young wife and two kids he left in Greece and how he hoped to build for them a new foundation in a new country. We didn’t pay attention to the tedious twelve-hour days he endured, slicing buns and sifting through chunks of ice through cold spells and heat waves. All the time stamping his feet on hard ground to keep the blood flowing.

We never saw the tiny, airless fourth-floor room he lived in, a forty-minute walk from his station, its only comfort a tattered collection of pictures from home, crudely taped to the wall nearest the worn mattress of his bed. We never saw the hot stove, topped by empty cans of Campbell’s pork and beans. Or the crumpled packs of Greek cigarettes, tossed in a corner trash bin, gifts from his wife, his only stateside pleasure.

We didn’t see any of that.

We saw only a free lunch.

“Mustard and onions,” I said, avoiding the vendor’s suspicious look. “No soda.”

He nodded, wary, his eyes over my shoulders, looking for hidden shadows.

“I know you,” he said, accusation more than question.

I shrugged and smiled.

“Can I have two napkins?” I asked, reaching my hand out for the hot dog. “Onions get messy.”

The vendor pulled a second napkin from its canister and wrapped it under the bun. He hesitated for an instant, his hand out toward mine, our eyes fixed. We
both sensed a wrong about to happen, though we were ignorant of its eventual weight. He shifted his feet and handed over the hot dog. I took it from him and ran.

I scooted past Tommy Mug’s dry cleaners and Armond’s shoe repair. The vendor, the anger behind his months of frustration broken beyond any reasonable point, gave chase, a wood-handled prong fork in one hand.

As I ran, slivers of red onions flew off the top of the hot dog, dotting my cheek and the front of my white T-shirt. I cut past the P.A.L. entrance and turned the corner at 50th Street.

He was close on me, arms and legs moving in their own furied rhythm, the fork still gripped in one hand, his breath coming in measured spurts.

“Pay my money, thief!” he shouted after me. “Pay my money
now!”

Michael, John, and Tommy were on their second hot dogs, leaning casually against the side of the cart, faces turned to the sun.

“How long you think he’ll be?” John asked, wiping brown mustard from his lower lip.

“Shakes or the hot dog guy?” Michael asked.

“You got one, you got the other,” Tommy said. “That guy looked pissed enough to kill.”

“Gotta catch him to kill him,” John said. “Don’t worry.”

“These things are heavier than they look,” Michael said, standing now, hands gripping the cart’s wooden handles.

“The heavy shit’s underneath,” Tommy said. “Where nobody can see it.”

“What heavy shit?” John asked.

“The gas tanks,” Tommy said. “The stuff that keeps the food hot. Or maybe you thought the sun made the water boil.”

“Think we can push it?” Michael asked. “The three of us?”

“Push it where?” John asked.

“Couple of blocks away,” Michael said. “Be a nice surprise for the guy when he gets back from chasing Shakes not to find his cart.”

“What if somebody takes it?” Tommy said.

“You gotta be pretty dumb to steal a hot dog cart,” Michael said.

“Ain’t we doin’ that?” John asked.

“We’re just
moving
it,” Michael said. “Making sure nobody
else
steals it.”

“So, we’re helpin’ the guy out,” Tommy said.

“Now you’re listening,” Michael said.

The vendor tired at 52nd Street and 12th Avenue.

He was bent over, hands on his knees, the fork long since discarded, face flushed, his mouth open and hungry for breath. I was on the other side of the street, against a tenement doorway, hair and body washed in sweat. My hands were still greasy from the hot dog I held for most of the run.

I looked over at the vendor and found him staring back at me, anger still visible, his hands now balled up and punching at his sides. He was beat but not beaten. He could go ten minutes more just on hate alone. I decided against a run toward the piers, choosing instead to double back and head for neighborhood safety. By now, I figured, the guys should have downed enough hot dogs and sodas to satisfy Babe Ruth’s appetite.

I took three deep breaths and started running toward 51st Street, traffic moving behind me. I turned my head and looked back at the vendor, his body in the same position as it was a block earlier. I slowed when I reached the corner and allowed myself a smile, content that the chase, while not over, had drifted to my favor.

If I got to the cart fast enough, I might even have time for a hot dog.

Michael, John, and Tommy were standing at the corner of 50th Street and Ninth Avenue, tired from having
pushed the cart up the one long block. They stopped in front of a florist, a short woman, her hair in a bun, clipping stems from a handful of roses, watching them with curiosity.

“Let’s have a soda,” John said, sliding open the aluminum door and plunging a hand into dark, icy water. “A Dr. Brown sounds about right.”

“I’ll take a cream,” Tommy said.

John handed Tommy a sweaty can of soda. “How about you, Mikey?”

“I don’t want anything,” Michael said, looking down the street, arms across his chest.

“What’s wrong?” Tommy asked, taking a slurp from his soda.

“Shakes is taking too long,” Michael said. “He should’ve been back by now.”

I stopped at the light at 51st Street and Tenth Avenue and looked for my Mends and the hot dog cart.

The vendor was one avenue down, running again at a full pace, his stride seemingly stronger than ever. I bent over to tie my laces and caught a glimpse of him.

“Give it up,” I whispered. “Let it go.”

I stood and continued to run, this time toward Ninth Avenue. My sides hurt and my legs were starting to cramp. I was light-headed, my throat dry and my lungs heavy. I ran past Printing High School, the yard empty except for two rummies drinking coffee and smoking cigarettes, thinking of ways to score their first drink of the day. I dodged past a heavyset woman tugging a shopping wagon piled with groceries and jumped two garbage-can lids tossed to the side by a passing sanitation crew.

Then, halfway up the block, the vendor still on my trail, I saw the hot dog cart being pushed toward Eighth Avenue by my friends. They were hunched low and moving easy, walking within the shadows of the arches
of the old Madison Square Garden, as calm and steady as if they were out walking a dog.

The vendor saw them too.

“Stop them!” he shouted, not breaking stride. “Stop them! Stop the thieves!”

In a neighborhood where silence in the face of crime is a virtue and blindness a necessity, no one moved.

I ran as fast as burnt lungs and tired legs would permit and reached my three friends as they went past a poster announcing the much-heralded rematch between World Wrestling Federation champion Bruno Sammartino and challenger Gorilla Monsoon.

“You’re only supposed to take the hot dogs,” I said when I got to them, my hands holding a side of the cart. “Not the wagon.”

“Now you tell us,” John said.

“Just leave it here,” I panted. “You guys are lookin’ to push somethin’, push me. I can’t take another step.”

“No, not here,” Michael said, pointing to our right. “Up there. Over by the subway station.”

“The guy’s comin’ fast, Mikey,” John said. “I don’t think we got time to make it to the subway.”

“I got a plan,” Michael said.

I turned around and saw the vendor gaining on us by the second. “I’m sure he’s got one too,” I said, helping to lift the cart onto the sidewalk, toward the top step of the IRT subway station.

“I don’t even
like
hot dogs,” John said.

The plan, as it turned out, was as simple and as dumb as anything we had ever done. We were to hold the cart on the top edge of the stairwell, leaning it downward, and wait for the vendor. We were to let go the second he grabbed the handles and leave the scene as he struggled to ease the cart back onto the sidewalk.

To this day, I don’t know why we did it. But we would all pay a price. Everyone. All it took was a minute, but in that minute everything changed.

People who’ve been shot always recall the incident as if it happened to them in slow motion, and that’s how I’ll always remember those final seconds with the hot dog cart. The action around me moved at quarter speed and the background was nothing but haze—quick hands, fleeing legs, scattered bodies, all shaped in dark, nasty blurs.