James Sheehan - The Law of Second Chances

“Sorry, Benny. I can’t do that, but we’ll talk about what I can do for you in a few minutes. Why don’t you tell me a little bit about yourself-where are you from?”

“Well, I was born in Spanish Harlem.”

“Really? So was I-Ninety-seventh and Park.”

“How about that,” Benny replied. “I was born on Ninety-ninth between Third and Lex. My father grew up there but I didn’t live there too long. My mother and father were drug addicts and she split from him after a couple of years, and we lived all over the city until she got strung out and I got put in a foster home.”

“Sounds like an all-American childhood.”

“Yeah. I guess the best I can say is, I survived.” Something happened at that point in the conversation that Nick Walsh had not and could not have anticipated. For some strange reason, as he looked at this skinny little Puerto Rican sitting in that chair trying to pretend he wasn’t scared, he thought of his younger brother Jimmy, and a feeling of both empathy and sorrow for Benny and his plight rushed over him like a tidal wave.

They didn’t look alike at all-Jimmy had been tall and fair-skinned. If anything, Jimmy had been more like Benny’s father-he found his courage and his pleasure at the end of a needle. He was younger than Benny when he died of an overdose.

Nick had interrogated hundreds of drug addicts since Jimmy’s death. Why does this Benny conjure up memories of my brother? he asked himself. Why do I care about this guy? Maybe it was the neighborhood connection, he didn’t know for sure. He tried to put it from his mind.

“Benny, listen to me. You’re not in a strong bargaining position here. I’ve got two eyewitnesses who have picked you out of a lineup and identified you as the person they saw leaning over a man who had just been shot on Seventy-eighth Street and East End Avenue on August twenty-ninth of this year.”

Behind the mirror Angelo Amato and Tony Severino looked at each other in surprise. Nick Walsh did not usually cut to the chase that quickly.

Benny didn’t reply, so Nick continued.

“Which means you are the prime suspect in the murder. You may not know this, but we now have the death penalty in New York and our good governor was elected in part because of his sworn promise to use it. I can’t get you out of here but if you work with me-if you tell me who the woman was who was your accomplice-maybe I can get you life imprisonment.”

Nick watched as the words death penalty and life imprisonment hit Benny like a torpedo to the chest. The little man lost his breath for a minute and started hyperventilating. It wouldn’t be long before he was spilling his guts. But Benny surprised Nick, although he couldn’t keep his mouth shut totally, as Joe Fogarty had advised.

“I’m sorry Nick, I can’t talk to you. I need to see a lawyer. This woman you’re talking about. I don’t know her name or where she came from.”

Nick now had his opening with Benny’s half answer about the woman, and he could easily drive a steel tank through that opening with a barrage of questions. Nobody was better at it than he was. He took one last look at Benny-and saw Jimmy again.

“All right, Benny. If that’s what you want, we’ll get you a lawyer.” Nick stood up and walked out of the room.

Behind the two-way mirror, Tony and Angelo looked at each other in shock.

Everybody started to walk with an air of confidence, a swagger, after the team won their fourth game. They felt unbeatable. But it didn’t last long. They lost the very next week to the Redskins by a score of thirteen to twelve. They missed both extra points, and that had cost them the game. They hadn’t made an extra point all season .

“If we could have made just one kick we could have tied the game,” the coach, Joe Sheffield, reminded the team several times afterward. Joe was angry at himself, not the team. He knew he should have worked harder on the kicking game before the season started. Normally he was just trying to field a decent team, not vie for a championship. This year was different. He shared that thought with the team .

“Now, we’re going to have to win every game if we want to make the championship,” he told them. It was the first time that he had mentioned the championship game since the season started-and it certainly got the boys’ attention .

They won the next two games and were tied for the lead going into the last game of the season, against the Tremont Avenue Vikings .

Two teams in the league were consistent winners-the Tremont Avenue Vikings and the Mount Vernon Navajos. Both had great organizations and money behind them. Every year they got new jerseys and their equipment was updated. They leased a team bus for all their away games. The Navajos were tearing up the other division as they usually did. Both teams had that arrogance about them that comes with a winning tradition .

The odds were stacked against a motley crew like the Lexingtons beating both teams in back-to-back games in a three-week period .

The Vikings game started off slow. The Vikings were a running team, and they liked to pound it up the middle. They were finding it hard to run against the heart of the Lexingtons’ run defense, however. It was only a matter of time before they changed their plan of attack .

“Watch the ends,” Frankie O’Connor told everybody in the huddle. “They’ll be testing us outside real soon.”

Sure enough, on the very next play the Vikings halfback came around the left side. He got past Mikey, who was playing outside linebacker, but Rico and Floyd converged on him, catching him at the same time from opposite angles. The hits were clean and hard, but everybody in the vicinity heard a loud snap as the man went down .

“Oh shit, shit, shit,” the guy shrieked. “Get off! Get the fuck off!”

Both Rico and Floyd scrambled to get off, but it was too late. One of the bones in the man’s right leg had snapped just below the knee and was protruding from the skin. It hurt just to look at, and Johnny winced at the sight. Blood was everywhere, and the man lay on the field groaning. The referees stopped the game to call an ambulance .

Meanwhile, somebody brought the guy with the broken leg a beer and a cigarette, and as the wait extended from ten minutes to twenty, another beer and then another. Pretty soon the guy was sitting up talking to his buddies-despite the fact that one part of his leg was going one way and the other part the other way. The bone was still sticking out, but the blood had slowed to a trickle even though nobody had thought to apply a tourniquet .

When the ambulance pulled onto the field, everybody turned to look-except Johnny, whose eyes were riveted on the man with the broken leg. Johnny had seen him drop the cigarette and slump over .

Johnny ran to him. The man was not moving. “He’s unconscious!” Johnny yelled at the top of his lungs. “Tell them to hurry up!”

The emergency guys tried to revive him on the field but couldn’t. They transferred him to a stretcher, put him in the ambulance, and drove off. Before the sound of the siren had faded and the lights were out of sight, the referee blew his whistle and yelled, “Play ball!”

Johnny was bewildered. Football was the last thing on his mind, but he did what everybody else did. He huddled up and got ready for the next play .

“Stay focused,” Frankie told them in the huddle. “They just lost their best guy.”

Even though they had lost their best guy, the Vikings didn’t give up. The game the Lexingtons absolutely needed to win ended in a tie .