James Sheehan - The Mayor of Lexington Avenue

“Hi, Harry,” Rudy replied, shaking Harry’s hand. Harry seemed like a nice guy but he looked a little out of sorts dressed in blue jeans, tee shirt and running shoes. “Can I get you something, Harry? Coffee? Tea?”

H.V. looked around somewhat bewildered. They were in a small room with a table, the same room where Rudy met Tracey James the week before. H.V. wondered how the kid could order up drinks. Rudy watched him looking around but didn’t say anything.

“They let you do that?” H.V. finally asked. He saw the smile start to form on Rudy’s face and he knew he’d been had. Nothing left to do but laugh at himself.

They laughed a lot that day. Harry really enjoyed himself. It brought him back to a time in his career when he was working with kids and having fun, even making a difference. He came away from the meeting convinced that Rudy was a lot smarter than his IQ suggested, but he did have that simple, wonderful naivete of the retarded. He had convinced himself. Now he had to convince the court that Rudy could no more have refused to talk to Wesley Brume than a dog could refuse to chase a cat that ran across its path.

Before that day in court, however, H.V. had a lot of work to do: gathering school and medical records and poring over them for hours; a few more visits to Rudy; psychological tests; intelligence tests. Most of it was fluff, window dressing for his underlying opinion. But it would serve its purpose in one important regard-as justification for his exorbitant fee.

1966

It had been a sweltering summer in the city and this night in late August was no different. Johnny was in the back room of his parents’ four-room railroad flat, his room, lying in his bed by the open window trying to drift off to sleep.

“You’re not sleeping, are you?” He recognized Mikey’s voice coming from the fire escape.

“No. But not tonight, Mikey. I can’t. I’m too tired.” All summer long the boys had been saying goodnight to their parents, going to bed, and then sneaking out the back window, down the fire escape, and up the alley to the street and freedom. They didn’t do it every night, usually just Friday and Saturday, but this week had been unusual and Johnny was exhausted.

“I don’t want to go out either. Just wanted you to know I lined up a job for us when school starts.” It was the “us” that caused Johnny to sit up and take notice. Mikey was always lining up jobs for “us”-like the job at Jimmy the Shoemaker’s. Johnny loved the job but Mikey made most of the money.

“I make thirty dollars a day, sometimes forty on a Saturday,” he had told Johnny when he was recruiting him to be his understudy. Johnny had forgotten to ask how much he was going to make. And that wasn’t Mikey’s only job. In the wintertime, he worked at Schuler’s cleaners on Lex, just a few stores up from Jimmy’s, delivering dry-cleaning.

Johnny started to protest but gave up. When Mikey had an idea, he was so positive and enthusiastic there was no talking him out of it, so why try?

“So what’s the new job?” Johnny asked, his eyes still half closed. Mikey leaned against the fire escape and folded his legs up so that his knees were at the same height as his shoulders. He was dressed in nothing but his Fruit of the Looms. He never wore an undershirt.

“We’re gonna be ushers at church.”

“What? Us? Ushers? That’s a job for rich old men. They’d never hire us. Besides, I’ve had enough of church to last me a lifetime.”

His response didn’t even cause Mikey to pause. “We’re all set. I’ve already talked to Tom. We’ve got the job.” That was Mikey. Tom Roney was a funeral director who had buried almost every prominent New Yorker who’d ever lived. He supervised the ushers as a public service. Somehow he was “Tom” to Mikey. “Pays eight bucks a Mass. Four Masses a week. And we don’t have to hang around for the whole show. We just have to seat people, take their money halfway through and usher ’em out at the end. You get it? That’s why they call us ushers.”

“How’d you line this up?”

“I ran into Tom last week after church. He told me he was looking for a couple of ushers. Asked me if I knew anybody. I scoped it out a little more as to time and money, then I told him you and I would take the job.

“Why’d ya do that without talkin’ to me?”

“Hey, it might not be there tomorrow. Ya gotta strike while the iron is hot. You can always back out.” He paused for a moment like Johnny knew he would. “But you won’t wanna. This is easy work. Easy money.” Johnny just nodded. Like it was going to be real easy staying out all Saturday night and getting up at the crack of dawn on Sunday. He didn’t say anything, just smiled to himself. He knew it would be fun. Everything he did with Mikey was fun.

They started the next week, eight o’clock Mass, and they actually made it on time: black suits, black ties, black shoes, white shirts. Very white faces, at least for Johnny. He’d puked before leaving the house that morning. He was sixteen now, Mikey was seventeen, and they’d started drinking-courage for the Saturday night dance. Maybe they could meet a girl. Maybe they could “make out,” although Johnny would have been happy just to get to the meeting stage. You needed courage to do that. At least he did. Mikey just liked to drink. “Courage” was a couple of half quarts of Colt 45 Malt Liquor. Malt liquor got you buzzed quicker than the regular stuff but it also made you a whole lot sicker. Johnny spent his first day on the job seating people, puking; taking the collection, puking; ushering people out at the end of Mass, puking. So far this job was working out as expected.

Father Charles Burke was the pastor of St. Francis parish, a big Irishman with a warm heart and a predisposition for good scotch. He too was one of Mikey’s fans. In fact, he gave Mikey his nickname after nine o’clock Mass one Sunday. Johnny had just finished escorting Mikey’s mother down the church steps because Mikey was incapacitated at the time. It was his turn to “hug the bowl,” as they endearingly called it.

“Good morning, Mary,” Father Burke sang in his best Irish brogue. (He was born on Jerome Avenue in the Bronx.) “And where’s the Mayor of Lexington Avenue?” He looked at Johnny, who didn’t have a clue what he was talking about.

“Who?” Mary Kelly asked.

“Young Michael. The Mayor of Lexington Avenue.” He repeated the title as if they both should have recognized it as a matter of course.

“And why do you call him that, Father?” she asked. They were standing on the sidewalk in front of the church. It was a beautiful, sunny Sunday morning but Mary Kelly, the mother of three boys, was sure a very dark rain cloud was about to pass over her head. “The Mayor of Lexington Avenue” was a prelude to something bad, she was sure.

“Well, Mary,” Father Burke replied, “the boy serves Mass for these people. He ushers them in and out of church on Sunday. He delivers their dry-cleaning and shines their shoes-all with that smile of his. He knows everybody and everybody knows him. He’s more popular than me and I’ve got God and the pulpit on my side.”

“Why thank you, Father,” Mary replied, wondering where this was going. She found out soon enough.

“He’s seventeen now, Mary. Has he ever thought of the priesthood? He’d make an excellent priest. Perhaps you should mention it to him.” Johnny wanted to crawl under the car that he was leaning on at the time. He had no idea why Father Burke broached the subject while he was there. He just hoped he wasn’t next. His mother was already thinking that way. Just one word from Father Burke and they’d be packing him up and shipping him off to the seminary. He hadn’t even gotten laid yet. He stared straight down at the sidewalk and waited for Mrs. Kelly to give up her youngest son, his best friend. “Better him than me” was the thought that whizzed through his brain.