Pete Hamill - Brooklyn Noir

For decades I’d awaken with a start, sweatily, those two words in my mind, on my tongue. Born bad

When Dad first warned me that taking kids up on bridges was against the law, he’d explained, in his serious-man voice, “Here’s the tricky thing, Beetle. The laws weren’t made for People Like Us. Mostly, People Like Us have to obey the law, but we don’t have to respect it. And we sure as hell don’t have to like it. Ain’t one law says you have to respect the law.” I was proud. We were tough. We meant business. Me and my bad Dad. A tough team. Once pledged to the team, there’s no getting off. Ever.

Even after death, there’s no quitting the team. Danny loyally stuck by the Testaverde team, as the team did by him, long beyond his death — his premature payment of the ultimate union dues — two years after his transcendent ladder-climb. Violating child labor laws, and working illegally, without papers, Danny had quit high school to work iron. The walking bosses had looked the other way at his age, because Danny was a crackerjack cabler, skilled beyond his years, until the day he’d slipped and fallen off a too-slippery beam.

The men, as Dad recounted the story, struggled to catch him, nearly falling off themselves, but they only managed to grab hold of his shirt. His Alexander’s-boys’-department polyester shirt. In a wakeful nightmare, a day-mare, the men watched impotently as Danny plummeted, and his shirt flew off, and his naked back looked so startlingly white against the black water. Water as hard as concrete, water harder than steel, water that murdered bodies falling from such heights by breaking them into many pieces, even if the lungs managed miraculously to carry on functioning during the descent.

No one could bear to look at Chicky.

Finally, the men watched as, from deep within him, Danny’s intestines sprung pyrotechnically out of his insides and into the open air, unfurling like some kid’s birthday-party streamers, launching skyward, as if powered by a spring-loaded catapult. The remnants of his body sunk heavily into the water, piece by broken piece. His guts were the last part of him anyone saw. His guts — up, up, up — as they soared.

All the men removed their hard hats, tacitly arriving at a collective mandate that the workday was over — and not just for Danny. Most of them immediately headed down off the bridge, but some were immobilized, stunned still, including several who required hours of humiliating, never-to-be-mentioned-again coaching and hand-holding from other men. Three guys were physically incapable — it wasn’t emotional or anything, they swore, but sheerly, physiologically impossible — to unbolt their locked-shut eyes. The three had to be embraced and carried down the whole way.

Criminals. All of us.

“If we’re gonna climb a bridge together, I have to teach you the right way to fall off. Into water. When you know how to fall right, we can go up and know what to do if God forbid something goes wrong. But remember: None of these things are allowed. There’s rules against it, so you can’t tell anyone what we’re doing. Afterwards, you can’t tell anyone what we did.”

“If it’s not allowed on Canarsie Pier, let’s skip it. It’s rinky-dink anyway. We could jump off a real bridge in Jamaica.”

He grinned amusedly. “You think it’s legal across the county line? In Queens County, but not Kings County?”

I stood awhile, crossed and uncrossed my legs, which locked at my stiffened, knobby knees. I lost my balance a little during one crossover, caught myself, and swallowed hard. I hadn’t meant Queens. I’d meant the island. From the commercials. Ocean waves. Palm trees. Sunsets. And that music. I folded my arms across my chest. “I meant the beach.”

“Forget Bergen Beach. We’re good enough right here. Anyway, how’s stepping from flat sand into the ocean like jumping off a bridge? ’Slike taking a walk, not a fall.” I hadn’t thought through the spatial aspects that far — although secretly, anticipating our trip to the bay in for-real Jamaica, I’d packed my knapsack with my bathing suit and two towels and placed toothpaste, toothbrushes, shampoo, suntan oil, soap, and snacks in my Fonzie lunchbox. Peering down into this Jamaica’s bay, I saw that these logistics weren’t analogous to a work situation either. Canarsie Pier’s setup didn’t provide the slightest simulation of the long-distance free-fall from those heights to those depths, and that was what I’d wanted him to show me. The distance between Canarsie Pier’s cement banks and Jamaica Bay’s foul water was a matter of sad little inches — nothing compared to the vast expanses of absolute nothing between a bridge’s tensile steel and the suck of rushing, fluctuating open water. My stomach sat low, depressed with the first signs of starting-to-be-sad stomach syndrome.

“First off, when you’re falling more than twenty feet, you don’t know diddley-squat about what’s floating around you. You could hit Jimmy Hoffa for all you know. You don’t know how deep the water’s gonna be. Make like you’re blind. A leap of faith.”

I got quiet. I got cold, even though the night was hot, and when I shivered, poking through my Danskin, my nipples mortified me. He wore only pale, unpatterned blue boxers. No shirt. No one was around, so it was okay, he said. He figured cops wouldn’t hassle us at 1 a.m., so we went then, in the small hours. It was to be our secret.

The distinction between secrecy and privacy. A tough one.

The sky was yellowish and bearing down, pressing the low roofs of the attached houses with green awnings beyond Seaview Avenue, closing in on the Pier’s hot concrete. He asked, all sympathetic and paternal, “Getting cold feet?”

“What are you? High as a kite on drugs?” The question had been popping out of Canarsie’s parental mouths.

“Then pay attention. I’ll explain it as many times as you need, but I’ll only demonstrate once.”

“Why?”

His features clustered to a pinch of nose and lips — a disgusted look, I thought, standing with my squinched-raisin nipples and ignorance. “I’m not allowed to jump in even once. I can’t go twice. They’d cart me to jail if they knew you were doing it, too.” I was dry ice, frozen and burnt. “Learning how to fall is the most important thing you’ll ever learn, and they won’t teach you that in school. The trick is to do exactly what doesn’t come naturally. When you’re falling, you won’t be able to see or even think, but if somehow you can, try to fall wherever the water’s deepest.”

“But then I’ll drown.”

“Drowning’s always a risk, but that’s a swimming problem, not a falling problem. And if drowning is your main concern, you lucked out big time, because you can only drown if there’s a miracle and you survive the fall and the hit. The deepest water is furthest from shoreline. Assume the water isn’t deep enough to stop you bashing yourself against the shore bottom. Hit bottom with your head, you break your skull. Hit bottom with your legs, they snap like Pick-Up Sticks. Go for the deepest part. Stay away from all objects, especially anything that supports the bridge.”

“Then there’s nothing to hold onto. To help me. Float.”

“This is true. Nothing to help you out, but also nothing to smash yourself into. All kinds of garbage collects near bridge supports. Sure, a little raft would be nice to find, but you’re more liable to find something a lot bigger and a lot harder than you are. Then you’ll pay.” He turned around, looked behind himself. “Checking for John Law. Coast’s clear. Okay now. Jump feet first. Stay straight. If you aren’t perfectly straight, you’ll break your back when you hit.” I was trembling, and not because of the extreme temperatures my skin had touched. He said, “I thought you wanted this. What’s with the Gloomy Gus punim?”