Jerome Charyn - Bronx Noir

Two women in their twenties sashayed by, short skirts clinging tightly to their rock-hard asses. Sonny followed them with his eyes until they turned the corner.

“Your Aunt Connie gets it,” Sonny said, “my Uncle Bennie, no problem; they can’t hurt us. But Frankie was shootin’ off his mouth about guys we had whacked for the last twenty years. He can hurt us.”

“That shit he remembers; that he wears the same friggin’ dirty sweatsuit every day, that he forgets.”

“Go figure,” Sonny said. Frank Bernardo had been a powerful captain, an old-school Mafia boss who believed in omerta , the rule of silence, like kids believed in Santa Claus. But after his wife died fifteen years ago and the Roman Cave was burned to the ground by a bunch of Albanians out to thin the competition, Frank began to lose his grip. Maybe old age had something to do with his decline, Sonny thought. He was, after all, pushing eighty, but the reasons for Frank’s condition weren’t the family’s concern. The damage Frank could inflict on the family was.

Frank had become an embarrassment. Demoted to soldier and given virtually no responsibilities, he’d been carried by the family for the last several years despite the fact that he was becoming a Class A pain in the ass. Unshaven and slovenly, he always wore that same moldy sweat suit of indeterminate color, bathed only occasionally, and harassed everyone on the street with whom he came in contact. It’d gotten so bad lately that when people from the neighborhood saw him coming, they’d duck into the first available storefront.

And forget about the young punks. Sonny had bitchslapped two of them for spitting on Frank just a few weeks ago. But loyalty only went so far; honor and fearlessness were for the young and able. And then there was that bullshit about loose lips sinking ships. Too many ships with valuable cargo floating around Arthur Avenue to be scuttled.

“When?” the man asked.

Sonny pulled an untraceable prepaid cell phone from his coat pocket.

With a tangible sadness in his voice he said, almost inaudibly, “No time like the present,” and punched buttons on the throw-away phone. He waited a few seconds and said, “Okay,” when a male voice answered. He gestured to the driver. “Head slowly down the street when I give you the word.”

They waited in silence for a few minutes until two young men dressed in black leather jackets walked briskly up the street toward the fast-food joint.

Sonny poked the driver in the side. “Now.”

With the car in gear and slowly rolling up the block, Sonny gazed with a look of melancholy through the plateglass window at the old man hunched over a cup of tepid coffee, muttering to himself and running his fingers over a bald pate. There were a few patrons in the place, but they all gave Frank Bernardo a wide berth, not out of the respect he once enjoyed, but because he was a slovenly old man who didn’t smell right.

The two young punks breezed through the door, now with ski masks securely in place. The Chrysler was almost adjacent to the storefront, and Sonny stared transfixed as the two men extended their arms, black automatic pistols at the ready in gloved hands.

Sonny had to crane his neck as the car cruised past the restaurant. He saw Frank stand, throw back his shoulders, and shake a fist at approaching death.

Sonny grabbed the driver’s shoulder. “Stop the car.”

“Here?” The driver was incredulous.

Anger flared in Sonny’s eyes. “Stop the fucking car!”

The Chrysler came to rest in the middle of Arthur Avenue, engine idling while Sonny watched an old soldier muster up a final bit of pride and face what he knew was his assassination. In those few seconds clarity returned; Frank was once again strong and would face death like a man.

Words that Sonny couldn’t hear were exchanged as the gunmen fired a barrage of rounds into Frank Bernardo. Patrons tossed Big Macs and shakes and planted themselves firmly on the greasy floor facedown. Sonny saw Frank mouth a torrent of words, though they were muffled by the thick glass and ringing shots. But Sonny knew what those word were.

Assassinato, assassinato.

As the bullets found their target, the old man got stronger. He pushed the table aside and lunged for the shooters, who retreated as they continued to fire.

“Jesus Christ,” Sonny said softly, “he’s gotta have ten slugs in him.”

Finally, Frank fell to his knees. One shooter stepped deftly around the old man, put the muzzle of the gun to the victim’s bald head, and fired one final round. Frank Bernardo toppled over like he was pulled down by a ship’s anchor. The two men spit on their motionless victim, dropped their guns, and ran to the door, flinging it open and slowing to a walk as they calmly made their way up the street to where Sonny’s car still idled. As they walked they high-fived each other like two adolescents congratulating themselves after winning a soccer game.

The driver threw the car in gear.

“Wait,” Sonny said, and clamped a hand on the driver’s arm. In the distance the muted sound of sirens pulsated.

The driver was visibly agitated. “Jesus Christ, Sonny! We gotta get outta here.”

“In a minute,” Sonny said, and stepped out of the car. He walked across the street and waited.

The two gunmen were laughing now and rapidly approaching Sonny. They smiled, seeing their boss and knowing that if this didn’t get them their buttons, nothing would.

Sonny let them get to within twenty feet before he pulled a nine-millimeter pistol and cut the two shooters down with one shot each to their torsos. Surprise and pain swept across the faces of the killers as they dropped to the ground and began crawling away. One made it under a parked car, but left no room for his partner.

Sonny, in a controlled anger, straddled the exposed shooter and put two rounds in his back. Blood pooled on the sidewalk as Sonny carefully stepped over the dead man, leaned under the car, and emptied his magazine into the remaining whimpering wounded hit man.

A crowd had gathered, and when Sonny stood up they turned their backs in unison and began scattering. Sonny jammed the gun in his waistband, walked quickly to the car, and got in. The sirens were louder now, easily within two blocks of the scene.

“What the fuck?” the driver said, as he forced himself not to leave twenty feet of rubber getting off the block.

“The old man deserved better than that. He was a caporegime , for Christ sake! Spit on a made man? Laugh? I don’t fucking think so.” Disrespect, Sonny hated it; he had learned all about respect from the late Frank Bernardo.

Sonny lit a cigarette and inhaled deeply as the car drove onto the Major Deegan Expressway. If the cops could find anyone to admit being at the scene of the killings, they wouldn’t be able to remember a face, let alone an age or the race of the shooter.

This was, after all, Arthur Avenue.

Courthouse

The young guy sitting next to me at the bar looks like an escapee from one of those rectangular states where blond people live who wind up in Los Angeles where my own kid went to escape from me.

He’s wearing a cashmere turtleneck and matching tobacco-colored corduroys and a green suede jacket that would be a couple of months’ pay if my secretary had to buy it. He’s blond, of course, with California teeth and a hundred-dollar haircut.

Two minutes ago he walked in and looks around the place like he knows everybody. Which he doesn’t. Then he walked over my way and took a load off.

How this guy found his way to a dive like the Palomino Club, let alone the Bronx, I am about to find out.