1/27/04

There is a pain that comes to me in the right inner elbow. It is a twitch- The Twitch- that forces me to tighten my arm to relieve it. My fingers clench & it is as if a part of me wants to strangle something. I must massage it to defeat it. It does not come often now, but I must acknowledge its dogging of me throughout my years. Although I was always aware of it on some level, I was not cognizant of its manifestation to others until this tic was pointed out to me in my mid 20s, when I had started seeing a psychologist named Dr. Cora Kotter- at a clinic on Myrtle Avenue, not far from Finast supermarket where I worked. She 1st noticed the tensing as I spoke of various childhood scenarios. In truth, I frustrated the poor doctor & was not a good patient. I never opened up full & she never knew the depths of my torquings, nor their provenance. There were several reasons I went- not because I was crazy or any such thing. I simply had no 1 I could really talk to of many of the things in the past that left me filled with a rage. The grocery store union (UFCW) was paying for my visits as part of my benefits- so what the hell? Besides, I figured, many great poets & artists went to a shrink- it adds stature. Besides, I had many rages & no 1 to vent on in a peaceable fashion. At the time I was just a year or 2 removed from my anger over not being able to woo Irene Bruno, the 1st girl I had ever truly loved. It was a love unrequited. She preferred a younger drug dealing kid who worked at the store, & who dissed her behind her back, talked about her as if she were a whore, & cheated on her all the time. The tale of my exposing his nefarious deeds will have to wait, though, as this 1 is about more ritual abuses of power- not specific 1s.

Still, it has always amazed me how easily most people who get even the least bit of power tend to abuse it. Yet, when given power of my own I have always gone out of my way to NOT abuse it. Case in point- in the late 1980s when I had followed Irene Bruno’s then-boyfriend- a kid named Morgan Piazza- to his assorted drug deals & hangouts I went to see an old acquaintance of mine from my high school days. Even though I had helped betray & take down the Wannabe gangsters who ruled East New York, courtesy of their older kin in the Omega 7, I was not totally shitmeat in those venues. After all, the O-7’s demise meant a power vacuum that the other gangs could fill. Some of the black kids who had been in the teen J-Liners gang had now graduated to positions of influence in the rackets of northern Brooklyn. 1 of them was a black guy named Rollo. I will elaborate on the specifics of my dealings & relationship with him as the need arises. For now all you need to know is that Rollo was a hired gun. He would kill for money & was very, very good at what he did. Few knew that this seemingly average looking guy was a totally amoral & efficient killer. No, he was not a serial sex killer like a John Wayne Gacy or Gary Ridgeway. He could never be because he felt absolutely nothing- not highs nor lows. He was coolness personified. He killed for money. Period. Pay him enough & he would kill anyone he could- regardless of race, creed, color, income level, status, etc. It is an argument for another time whether this meant he was a higher or lower order of murderer than a serial sex fiend, but my reason for approaching him was his knowledge of the drug scene in East New York & Bushwick- areas where Morgan did most of his transactions (in my old stomping grounds, no less!), & his ability to solve problems. Although Rollo loathed my bloodbrother Paco Robatillo there had always been a mutual respect each had for each other. Neither trusted the other, but both were probably the only kids who put a little fear in to the other 1. There were a few times where I had acted as intermediary between the J-Liners & the Wannabes, as my status as a whiteboy meant I was more likely to be impartial- therefore trusted- between the rival black & Hispanic gangs. The favors are a tale in themselves- their import here is knowing that they put Rollo in my debt. It should be a self-evident truth that it is always a good thing to have some 1 who is capable of anything on your side.

After 1st meeting with Rollo he said he’d find out the shit. A week or so later he had the goods & I knew more about the people Morgan was dealing with than he did. It was worse than I thought- not only was Morgan lying to & cheating on Irene, but he was dealing drugs to children- as young as 3rd & 4th graders in Saint Pancras Catholic School on Myrtle Avenue. But his main source of income was dealing harder forms of heroin to kids at Christ the King High School on Metropolitan Avenue. He had an intermediary who would get the stuff from Chinatown, then meet him at some locale near Wyckoff Heights Hospital. My plan of attack & exposure was to get some proof & anonymously tip off the cops to bust Morgan & his dealers. Things did not go as planned as fate intervened. Again, later. But, at that 2nd meeting Rollo offered to pay off his debt to me by killing Morgan. He knew where the shit-punk lived, who he was dealing with. He assured me it would never be tied back to me & that it would look like a deal gone south- that Morgan’s own partners had wasted him. I’d like to tell you, dear reader, that I dismissed the suggestion out of hand- right away & unequivocally. But I am not the knight in shining white armor I had hoped to be when my love for Irene was at its height. I thought about it- really thought about it. After all- I would not be killing him, nor would I be technically guilty of murder since I would not be paying Rollo. Bad drug deals go down with violence all the time. Putting aside my own ethics I mused: would Irene turn to me in grief? Would she realize all along that Morgan had been using her? As she lay naked in my arms at night would she be thinking that she had failed him? Rewind- thoughts like this were not productive. But, a part of me, deep down, knew that Irene would never be mine. But I denied it. I could shunt any residual guilt in to a corner. I had gotten to be expert at that. But I also had damnable ethics- that same thing that had led me to betray Paco years earlier to save the lives & health of kids I barely knew. Fuckin’ ethics.

If Rollo paid his debt to me I would be as bad or worse than Morgan was. I could not defeat the enemy by becoming the enemy- no matter how much I wanted to. I demurred & resolved to defeat him through exposure & win Irene’s love on my own. Surely, after exposure, a wise young woman like Irene would turn to a kid like me who had risen above all the shit Morgan chose to suckle? No? Need I elaborate? To this day I have never collected on the debt owed me by 1 of New York’s most prolific & efficient assassins. The point is, I did not do the easy thing- even though no 1 would mourn the drug dealing little punk once his demise unraveled his evil deeds. I showed the ability to refrain from using power. A decade later when another young kid- a good looking blond kid named Nicky Powers- started attending the Uptown Poetry Group I ran & started harassing some of the females who were attending, I also showed restraint. Some of the women complained to me that he had started harassing them & I told them I did not want to get involved, for a few years earlier a psychotic woman named Tessy Becker, who attended another poetry group & became obsessed with me, had falsely accused me of many untrue things on her descent to madness. I would not do to Nicky what Tessy & that other group had done to me, even though I strongly suspected that the women were telling the truth, & he was no innocent as I was. Instead, I encouraged the women to pursue legal means to deter his unsavory advances. The actual outcome between Nicky & the women I do not know, for I never heard from the women after my refusal to do what they asked, & confront Nicky’s harassment at the end of a UPG meeting. Nicky soon disappeared from the group. A few years later he reentered my life & blamed me for his being ‘forced’ to leave the group & started an email harassment campaign against me. It continued for nearly 3 years, during which time I rued not getting involved in the initial charges against him. Perhaps had I confronted him, with the women, at a group he could have been shamed into never bothering with any of us again? Did I do right by not acting? The same query haunts me with regards to Alan’s drug dealing. In a sense, it’s like the dilemma faced by President Harry S. Truman in formulating his Cold War policy of engagement with the Communist world. When to act & when to not act? World War 1 was a surefire example of the dangers of taking too many actions to oppose tyranny & getting involved in a war that did not really concern our country, while World War 2 taught the exact opposite lesson- the dangers of standing back & allowing evil to go unchecked. In my cases I chose twice to do nothing- in the 1st case it led to Morgan’s continued poisoning of young children’s bodies & souls, as well as leading up to a greater & later heartbreak for the 1st woman I loved. In the 2nd case it led to my own personal aggravations due to an insect of a man I could have squashed earlier, had I not resolved to not do to Nicky Powers what Tessy Becker & her cohorts had falsely done to me. But, had I known the vile truth about Powers that I do now... & on go the ethical queries.

But, why am I so wise & prudent when it comes to the doling of power when other people are not? Recently this query came back to me. Late last year, a few weeks after Jessica & I moved to Texas, in early November, I was driving to our bank. All of a sudden a cop car going by me in the opposite direction swerves around, blares his siren, & pulls me over. Instinct takes over- I am ready for trouble. Cops ALWAYS mean trouble. Little men with big guns, & all. I ask what the problem is as the officer comes to my driver’s side window. He says my car’s registration has expired. I say no, it hasn’t- it goes to the end of November, 2003- it still has a few weeks to go. I tell him to look at the Minnesota license plates & he will see the sticker that confirms it. I also have an appointment the next day to get Texas plates & a Texas license. He looks at the plates, & then claims the old Texas registration on the car (my wife Jessica’s car from when she lived in Dallas, before moving to Minnesota to be with me) is invalid- expired in 1999. I say it does not matter since the Minnesota registration is valid & supersedes it. He goes to his car for 10 minutes or so & runs a computer check on the car. He comes back & now says it’s illegal to have 2 states’ registrations on a car. I counter- only if both are current, perhaps. He gets annoyed as his lack of legal knowledge veers toward the surface. I say that the Texas sticker was on the car for the 4 years Jessica was in Minnesota & neither of us had any problems although we had been pulled over a few times at alcohol checkpoints. We’d even been run through a checkpoint like that driving through Dallas & no officer ticketed us. It was plain that the cop had erred & was not going to back down. He told me I’d have to go to court next week & the judge would deal with it. His last words were that the plate was still expired. After he left I went to the bank, went home & scraped off the old Texas sticker, then noticed that on the ticket he had wrote I had Michigan (MI) plates not Minnesota plates (MN). He also had written the year 2002, rather than 2003, on the ticket. I was dumbfounded & pissed.

I was sick of abuses of powers- even petty 1s like this. The next Wednesday I went to the evening court to battle the ticket. I had my new Texas plates, so I brought the old Minnesota plates which clearly stated they were Minnesota not Michigan, & their plate stickers said 2003- not 2002! I hoped for quick resolution to this rather open & shut case of police stupidity & harassment. You know that was not to be. When I entered the court room the bailiff told me to go to a side room & sit- apparently I had violated this judge’s protocol by coming to court on an 82º day wearing shorts. I would have to wait until the end of the session before I could be heard. This was not any Texas court rule of which I was unaware- simply this moronic judge’s. Having recently worked in juvenile court in Minnesota it was common for even the bailiffs to wear shorts on hot days. I was dumbfounded. I sat in the left anterior room as the other traffic litigants shuffled by & looked at me as though I were a felon. But, while I was alone in that room- the room for men- across the way, in the right anterior left room sat 3 women who dared to come to court with their children. Apparently this judge had his own rule that people who wore shorts & people who came to court with children were offensive to his tastes. Thankfully I was childless & the women not in shorts or we may have been executed. Having arrived at 3:45 pm I had to wait until shortly after 6 pm before I could approach the bench- even though my case had come up 3 times in the interim. 2 of the 3 women with children simply walked out of court after their humiliation, & before being called, while the last woman was scheduled after me. During my nearly 2½ hour incarceration I stewed & a part of my inner right elbow started twitching. I curtailed it as I did not want the bailiff to see my growing anger over my mistreatment. Finally, I was called. I described the events to them as I previously did to you, my reader, & even this wack-assed judge could not figure out why in the hell this idiotic cop had wasted all of our times. He dismissed the case, though, without an official apology to me. I could have overlooked that had I not spent 2½ wasted hours because of this fool judge’s nonsense, but as I did, his lack of even a measly apology for the trouble I’d been reasonlessly doled irked me. Thus I tell you, dear reader. I did not even get the real name of the judge, as the nameplate was a woman’s & he was sitting in for her this day, or I would dutifully inform you of that as well.

But, as I sat there I thought of the ritual & routine little abuses that go on every day in the legal system, & I thought not of my previously unknown underlife & its relation to authority, but those actual times where I had to go to court to clear my name, & how the ‘system’ had screwed me over & over. I recall how, in 1987, I had discovered proof positive of pedophilia, & hints of serial murder, being committed by a man named Johnny ‘Scummer’ Fitzpatrick on the homeless kids who hung around Finast looking to make tips by carrying groceries to people’s cars. Scummer was a short little man in his late 50s whom store manager Pat Nardi had hired to clean the parking lot after he decided I didn’t need to do so because he had better uses for me. I reported him to the cops, he attacked 1 of the front end managers, an older woman, whose husband retaliated by sending Scummer to the hospital via a Louisville Slugger. She pressed assault charges & she, I, & a few others went to Queens County court to see him locked up. If we could not nail him for sex abuse at least we could get him on assault. Instead, in walked Scummer (a name bestowed upon him by dairy manager John Bortz) when the case was called, accompanied by his brother- a crooked New York City cop who protected his brother for years from prosecution for assorted crimes gouing back to the Korean War. Before they even called the plaintiffs the brother presented a doctor’s note that stated Scummer was crazy & off his meds. He was twitchin’ & jukin’ & playing the loony tune schtick to the hilt. The judge dismissed all charges without even allowing a word from any of us. As he filed passed us he shot the older woman a glance & smirked. He never knew it was me who turned him in, for he could never believe that a street kid like me would break The Code of silence regarding street things. Not long after this, while tracking Morgan Piazza on 1 of his drug deals, I had a chance- a free shot, if you will- to kill Scummer Fitzpatrick, but again demurred- to my later chagrin. That, however, is also another tale.

The next year I was coming out of a bookstore at the Queens Mall when I saw that my car had been ticketed for being parked at an expired meter, even though I had 20+ minutes left on the meter. Far down the lot I noticed a Parking Violations Bureau meter maid slapping these same tickets on every car in a row- most of which were similarly unexpired. It was obvious she was trying to meet a quota & hoping that most of the people would come back late & just pay the ticket. I was not 1 of those few. The PVB had recently been in trouble after several scandals of this sort had rocked public trust in them. In the envelope I was supposed to remit payment in I write a letter describing their scam & vowing not to pay. Several months, & an exchange of letters went by, & still I refused to pay a false ticket. Then the Department of Motor Vehicles wrote me saying if I did not pay the fine they would revoke my driver’s license. Disgusted, I sent payment along with the most hostile letter yet! I was furious over this publicly sanctioned thievery. I had written to several local newspapers complaining about this practice in the interim. After my last letter & payment to the DMV I thought it over. Then, about 2 months after paying the damned fine I got a refund check for the amount back & a notice stating that a check of their computer records showed that I had, indeed, been at an unexpired meter. There was no apology for the months of threats & harassment, though. I assume that 1 of my letters led to a local paper’s investigation & the PVB sought to get my situation straightened out so to get the investigators off their backs. But, the fact that I was so plainly mistreated, again, was never acknowledged nor apologized for. This the way that America grinds on.

& it is America- not just New York or Texas. In Minnesota I twice had to go to court to battle tickets. I lost twice. The 1st was in the summer of ’92 where I got a speeding ticket from a Bloomington, Minnesota cop for going almost 40 in a 35 mph zone. While technically I was speeding I’ve always wondered why police manhours are not put to far better use- like solving unsolved crimes? Or, if they have to be used for traffic purposes why not pull over tailgaters- who are far more dangerous than even the worst speeders. More accidents occur for tailgating at 50 mph than do for speeding at 80 mph. In 1995 I got a 2nd speeding ticket in Golden Valley, Minnesota, while going down a hill on Glenwood Avenue after work at Gopher News. The car picked up speed & this time I was ticketed for going 41 in a 35 mph zone. The cop car was hidden under an overpass & when I asked him why he ticketed me when obviously I was just picking up speed he did not answer. When I saw he deliberately lied & wrote 51- not 41- mph on the ticket I told him I guess Golden Valley needs some more swing sets for the playground across the street. A few weeks later I went to court & the female judge said that 41 was still over the limit. She would not address the cop’s deceitful adding of 10 mph to the ticket, & told me that I would have to appear again if I wanted a trial for the cop was not required to appear for this hearing. Not wanting to lose another ½ day of pay I just paid the ticket but told the judge it was these little corruptions, like making an honest man have to go out of his way twice to battle a wrongful ticket, that erode public trust in people like her. It was 1 of the best public moments I’ve ever had & the embarrassed & disgraced judge blushed in shame & called a recess before calling the next case. Still, the point is that she did not do the right thing.

It was a few months later that the troubled Tessy Becker claimed I was harassing her after months of leading me on, breaking dates, claiming my import like no other in her life, & then getting the poetry group we went to to turn on me (although they were just looking for an excuse to attack me for exposing the silliness & deceit of their Political Correctness). Among her absurd claims were that I was a necrophile, Neo-Nazi, & a Hispanic gangster who led a posses of rapists to sexually abuse her. The referee in Ramsey County Court in St. Paul Court did not believe a word Tessy burbled & even threatened her with contempt of court, until I interceded. Even though he believed me innocent of Tessy’s ludicrous charges he told me that county law still held that he had to place a restraining order on the accused party, even if innocent, if the accuser ‘felt’ that they were scared of the accused. But, since he thought that the case clearly was an act of violation perpetrated against my name he said he was reducing the mandatory 2 year restraining order to 1 year, as a show of faith in my innocence. While I appreciated the referee’s actions I was still peeved that ‘the system’ did not allow him to do what was right- totally dismiss the charges.

A few years later I had to go to court against a local journalist who had attacked me in the press, then started to harass me by leaving threatening messages on my answering machine. Jessica was scared he would become violent. I took him to court, & his guilt was manifest. Amazingly, he appeared in a 1970s style multi-colored velvet suit looking like The Jeffersons tv show character George Jefferson- in a suit 3 sizes too small. He was accompanied by a white woman from his ½way house for the emotionally disturbed. She was there because he claimed I was persecuting him for being black. I played the answering machine but still the journalist denied it was his voice. Had I had it analyzed? He then broke down & claimed that if the harassment came out his career as a ‘reputable journalist’ would be over. Not wanting to have to come back for a later trial I asked the judge for a compromise. I would drop the charges without the writer admitting his guilt, if he would swear in front of the court that he would never contact me again by any means. He swore this in front of the judge. I promised that I would never mention the journalist’s name as long as he kept his promise. He has. So have I. Finally, there was a just outcome- of sorts. In truth, I’m sure this harasser merely turned his attention to others he hated- but it’s the best I could finagle out of the circumstances.

About a year later this fat, blond girl rear-ended me during a snowstorm, on the way to work. After initially admitting her guilt she reneged after talking to her insurance company. She refused to pay for totaling my car. So, I sued her, took photos of my & her car, & found out of her long history of accidents. I won nearly $3000 in damages. The photos & her obvious lies undid her. She sneered, then hissed at me as she walked away from the courtroom.

Later that year Jess & I parked in Uptown, Minneapolis, in the small parking lot next to the Steeple People Surplus Store, where for years the Uptown Poetry Group I ran met. We met each other about an hour early, parked, & then went for some food. 20 minutes later we returned & 1 of our cars was being towed. I had Jess go park the other car around the block as I stood in front of the tow truck & would not let it leave the parking lot. The driver, I dubbed him ‘Tow Scum’, was a fat 30something punk with oily blond hair & a small child in his truck’s cab, who thought he was the shit. When I would not back down he was amazed, then got pissed that he could not intimidate me. I always found it amusing how even the toughest of Twin Citians could not match up with even the most mild-mannered of New Yorkers. Bruce Ario, who worked at the store had always allowed us & others to park in the parking lot for the group. The United Methodist Church which owned & ran the store had let us do so, also. But the owner of the property the store was rented from- a boob named Oscar Blue- decided he would tow us anyway. He had been cleaning the lot when we parked the car, but we took him for a bum, as he was dressed like a homeless vagrant. Over a block away we heard him shouting, waving his arms & making a scene. We thought he was another of the mental patients that trolled Uptown. Why he simply did not ask us to move while we were in the lot is still beyond me. 2 Minneapolis cops finally came after we called them on 911, & despite having permission to park there they would not order Tow Scum to lower our car. He drove it away to their lot. Jason Sanford drove by a minute later, coming for the group that night, & took us to the lot. The owner- a crusty old fat bleached blond cunt would not let us write a check or use a credit card because we had ‘given her driver a hard time’, so we had to withdraw $ from both of our credit cards. We then sued Oscar for wrongfully towing our car. All of the UPG regulars wrote statements that we had all been told we could park in the lot by Bruce & the Steeple People store. Bruce- a man with excellent writing ability but a history of substance abuse & mental problems- said he was being threatened by Oscar via the church that if he admitted to the truth he would be fired. Bruce cowered, & gave in to the evil, & would not stand up for us, nor what was right. I was disappointed in him, but it did not matter as Oscar made a fool of himself in court. When he told the judge that his shouting in the lot was to warn us we would be towed he had no logical reason for why he simply did not tell us to move our cars while we were still in the lot. He then claimed we were in the lot when he yelled & waved, but had no answer for why he was yelling & waving if we were in the lot, close to him. Nor could he explain why he towed us if he knew the UPG had met there on Fridays for years- something we did not even know he knew. We won a total victory & reimbursement for all our costs after we had to embarrass him, by sending a Hennepin County Sheriff’s deputy to his home to collect on the judgment. Finally, justice was served in full- yet the moronic Oscar could never admit his stupidity, nor lies.

But when I peer off out of my Texas den’s window & think of 1 of the grossest abuses of power that I can recall as a child it all comes back to the corner of Forest & Myrtle Avenues in Ridgewood. Every day after school, coming home from St. John’s, I would get off the bus at that corner & greet Tony, the old Italian man who sold soft bretzels there. Sometimes, if I had some change & was hungry I’d spree a nickel for a bretzel. Tony & I would usually bullshit awhile as people passed by the busy corner. He told me all about his family & boyhood in Italy- most things of which I’ve long since forgotten, except that his family fled Mussolini’s Black Shirts in the 1920s. Tony had been kidnapped into ‘volunteering’ to serve his native country until 1 day he deserted to Switzerland, made his way to France, then signed on for a tour of duty in the French Foreign Legion. After a few years in Algeria Tony had sought to return home, but his parents had ‘disappeared’, his siblings’ whereabouts were unknown, so like many other uprooted people, his gaze turned to Ellis Island. He had had some uncles who had moved to America to resist Mafia persecution years earlier, so he would attempt to seek them out. By the time the Great Depression hit Tony had become a naturalized citizen. An avid nationalist Tony came to love his adopted homeland. He had been training as an apprentice stonemason when Mussolini made him a soldier, so he went in search of work where his skills could be of service. He heard of a project to bring fresh water to the deserts of California, Nevada, & Arizona. Soon, he hopped a freight train & rode the rails out west, where he signed on as a digger in the Colorado River diversion tunnels on the Boulder Dam project- the largest public works project in American History. For several years Tony worked hard- 60+ hours a week- until he worked himself out of the hellish & dangerous diversion tunnels. When he was promoted, to work pouring the concrete sections that would make up the actual dam, Tony even got a raise. He saved all his money- except that he needed to live on. When the dam was done & good times returned Tony planned to open up his own grocery store or butcher shop in the Ridgewood nabe- he had not decided yet. When his job was completed Tony treated himself to a ride home to New York on a Pullman Porter train.

He got a loan from a bank & with his earnings opened up a small shop. Then an old foe interceded. Goons from the local Mafia kingpin trashed his shop & beat him nearly to death several times after he refused to pay ‘protection’. His family did not do it in Palermo, nor would they do it in Brooklyn. Unable to turn a profit, & unable to stand on his feet for more than a few hours at a time, Tony’s lone solace came from the woman he married & who bore him 3 sons. Again, their names are lost, but Tony moved on. When the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor & President Roosevelt & the Congress declared war on Germany & Italy as well, Tony was 1 of the 1st men to volunteer to serve in the cause to liberate his beloved homeland. But, the repeated beatings from Mafiosi & the fact that Tony was almost 45 years old made him- like my disappointed dad- a 4F; physically unfit to serve their country. Neither could Tony get a high-paying job in a factory. His wife went to work in a munitions plant where she made good money, while Tony’s cousin got him a job selling bretzels 6 days a week, except in winter. Surprisingly, it was a job Tony enjoyed- save for when it rained. In the winter months Tony & his cousin did odd jobs to get by until the spring thaw.

3 decades later Tony would tell these facts & many other forgotten 1s to me. But, there was a recurring problem. For the past few years the local cops, who shook down store owners just like the mob goons did, had been harassing him & his cousin over the validity of their vending license. Tony always displayed it under his stand’s umbrella, but the cops would always threaten to take it or bring him in if he did not give them a little spending cash, or at least a free bretzel & soda on a long day. As he had done years earlier, to the Mafia & Mussolini’s thugs, Tony refused to partake in such. Then, he was gone. A few months had gone by in the spring of 1972 without my seeing Tony. A few weeks later than usual I saw his cousin on the corner & asked where Tony was. I’d feared he’d died over the winter. His cousin told me he was in the hospital because a couple of policeman had split open his skull in ‘an argument’. I knew what that meant. A few days later as the 3:15 pm bus pulled in to the Forest & Myrtle Avenue stop I saw Tony’s cousin being talked to by 2 cops from the 104th Precinct. As I debarked I rushed up to the stand & began shouting at the cops to leave Tony’s cousin alone. 1 of them turned around & smooshed my face in with his palm & pushed me to the ground. He bent down & threatened to send me to juvy for attacking an officer. As I got up Tony’s cousin said everything was alright & handed the cop a bag filled with bretzels & some money I could hear jingling. As I walked away the other cop- a big guinea- whacked me on the ass with a billy club & told me to keep on walking. I knew this fucker though. He was 1 of the cops who regularly cruised Cypress Avenue & would fuck the hookers in the squad car. He also had beaten up a hooker named Mary, once- she was a friend of Debby’s who was well-liked by Ziggy, Georgey, & me. He didn’t seem to recognize me. I guess all urchins looked alike to him.

The next day I asked Tony’s cousin what we could do to fuck the cops over. I knew that Tony’s cousin felt he had no choice but to cooperate, but surely he & Tony didn’t have to take such bullshit? But, Tony’s cousin was not Tony. He was a man who accommodated. Tony was more like me, & my later life would be scarred for that quality just as Tony’s was. Tony’s cousin asked me not to make any more trouble for him. I promised I wouldn’t. Whenever I saw the 2 scumbag cops coming down Forest Avenue towards their corner I kept silent. I would say no more to them or of them in Ridgewood. Years later, with all that a memory, I wrote my reply:

TO THE COPS WHO USED TO SHAKE DOWN THE OLD BRETZEL MAN
AT THE CORNER OF FOREST AND MYRTLE AVENUES

Twenty-five years is too long to let fester;
so here is my venom, held in a reproach,
for all you scumbags decked in silver and blue.
Suffer it as a hell- my only treasure!

You, who aced profits from the old bretzel man.
You, who beat poor kids under guise of the law,
and opened your fist only at graft’s approach,
and fingered stoned drug-cunts- they were not women

to you, who would hammer- then stiff- any whore
you could lay in your backseats. I saw the cum
dried on vinyl. I used to score them for you!

You pigs! Yes, I cheer when you lay in the street,
shot dead by your own; such the aim of a gun
dead-on as truth- this hate sown- which I fete.

When Tony returned a few weeks later he had promised his cousin there’d be no more trouble from him, as well. He was too old to fight. As he spoke of his promise he stifled a tear. There would always be some 1 who would treat him poorly, anyway. Besides, he wanted to spend his last years out in the fresh air talking to people, & telling them his stories. Ridgewood was a great nabe to meet & talk to people. Tony preferred it over Italy. He had almost forgotten how much he loved the homeland, anyway.

A year or so later Tony was gone- again. I asked his cousin but before he could answer I knew Tony would not be coming back again. Then, Tony’s cousin’s eyes squinted. I did not even have to turn around to know it was the 2 flatfoots making their way to this corner for their share. That’s the way it always was- 1st hit Sergio the Italian Ice vendor on Catalpa & Forest Avenues, then down to Tony’s corner. As they approached I could smell the cologne of the cop who whacked me on the ass that day last year. My right arm tensed up. I massaged it. I wanted to lash out at him & all the scumbags like him. A May rain started falling. Tony was still with me.

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