Lorenzo Carcaterra - Sleepers

'It's wrong,' she said. 'Everything I do is wrong and I don't know how to stop.'

'You must pray,' I said.

'I do, Father,' she said. 'Believe me, I do. Every day. It's not doing any good.'

'It will,' I said.

'I sleep with married men,' the woman said. 'Men with families. In the morning I tell myself it's the last time. And it never is.'

'One day it will be,' I said, watching her hands curve around a set of rosary beads.

'It's gonna have to be soon,' the woman said, holding back a rush of tears. 'I'm pregnant.'

John looked at me, both hands locked over his mouth.

'The father?' I asked.

'Take a number,' the woman said. The sarcasm could not hide the sadness in her voice.

'What are you going to do?'

'I know what you want me to do,' the woman said. 'And I know what I should do. I just don't know what I'm gonna do.'

'There's time,' I said, sweat running down my neck.

'I got lotsa things,' the woman said. 'Time just isn't one of 'em.'

The woman blessed herself, rolled up the rosary beads and put them in the front pocket of her dress. She brushed her hair away from her eyes and picked up the purse resting by her knees.

'I gotta go,' she said, and then, much to our shock, she added, 'Thanks for listening, fellas. I appreciate it and I know you'll keep it to yourselves.'

She knocked at the screen with two fingers, waved and left the booth.

'She knew,' John said.

'Yeah,' I said. 'She knew.'

'Why she tell us all that?'

'I guess she had to tell somebody.'

John stood up and brushed against the wall, accidentally sliding open the small door to the confessional. A man knelt on the other side, obscured by the screen.

'Bless me Father for I have sinned,' the man said, his voice baritone deep.

'So?' John said. 'What's that make you? Special?'

John opened the main door and we both walked out of the booth, our heads bowed, our hands folded in prayer.

We were well-schooled in revenge.

Hell's Kitchen offered graduate workshops in correcting wrongs. Any form of betrayal had to be confronted and settled. Our standing in the neighborhood depended on how quickly and in what manner the reprisals occurred. If there was no response, then the injured party earned a coward's label, its weight as great as that of any scarlet letter. Men, boys, women, girls were shot, stabbed, even killed for a variety of motives, all having to do with the simple act of getting even.

When my friends and I were young, Hell's Kitchen was run by a man named King Benny.

In his youth, King Benny had been a hit man for Charles 'Lucky' Luciano and was said to have been one of the shooters who machine-gunned 'Mad Dog' Coll on West 23rd Street on the night of February 8,1932. King Benny ran bootleg with 'Dutch' Schultz, owned a couple of clubs with 'Tough Tony' Anastasia and owned a string of tenements on West 49th Street, all listed in his mother's name. He was tall, well over six feet, with thick dark hair and eyes that never seemed to move. He was married to a woman who lived outside the neighborhood and had no children of his own.

'He was fourteen when I first met him,' my father told me one night. 'Wasn't much of anything back then. Always getting the shit kicked out of him in street fights. Then, one day, for who knows what reason, an Irish guy, about twenty-five years old, takes him and throws him down a flight of stairs. King Benny breaks all his front teeth in the fall. He waits eight years to get that Irish guy. Walks in on him in a public bath house, guy soaking in a tub. King Benny looks in a mirror, takes out his front teeth, lays them on a sink. Looks down at the guy in the tub and says, "When I look in a mirror, I see your face." King Benny pulls out gun and shoots the guy twice in each leg. Then says to him, "Now when you take a bath, you see mine." Nobody ever fucked with King Benny after that.'

His decisions were never rash and were always final. His words were, in Hell's Kitchen, respected as the law. It was the only law never broken.

King Benny used diplomacy when called for, force when necessary. He earned his money from old fashioned mob enterprises – policy running, loan sharking, truck hijacking, swag sales and prostitution. These crimes were quietly condoned by a police department warmed by weekly payoffs and supported by a neighborhood addicted to illegal action. King Benny ruled with a tight fist and lashed out with deadly purpose against any threat to his domain. A lot of people tried taking over his business during his reign and a lot of people ended up dead.

He would do favors for those he liked and ignored the financial requests of those he considered liabilities. He would listen to people with problems and offer opinions on how those problems could be solved. He was a Father confessor without a conscience.

The large room was wrapped in darkness. Three men in black jackets and black sports shirts sat at a table by an open window, playing sette bello and smoking unfiltered cigarettes. Above them, a dim bulb dangled from a knotted cord. Behind them, a jukebox played Italian love songs. None of the men spoke.

At the far, end of the room, a tall, thin man stood behind a half-moon bar, scanning the daily racing sheet.

A large white cup filled with espresso was on his left, a Kenmore alarm clock ticked away on his right. He was dressed in black shirt, sweater, shoes and slacks, with a large oval-shaped ring on the fourth finger of his left hand. His hair was slicked back and his face was clean shaven. He chewed a small piece of gum and had a thick, wood toothpick in the corner of his mouth.

I turned the knob on the old wood door that led into the room and swung it open, thin shafts of afternoon sunlight creeping in behind me. No one looked up as I walked toward King Benny, the heels of my shoes scraping against the wood floor.

'Can I talk to you for a minute?' I asked, standing across from him, on the far side of the bar, my back to the three men playing cards.

King Benny looked up from his racing sheet and nodded. He reached out for his coffee, raised it to his lips and took a slow sip, eyes still on me.

'I would like to work for you,' I said. 'Help you out, do whatever you need.'

King Benny put the cup back on the bar and wiped his lower lip with two fingers. His eyes didn't move.

'I can be a lot of help to you,' I said. 'You can count on that.'

One of the men playing cards slid his chair back, stood up and walked toward me.

'You the butcher's kid, am I right?' he asked, his three-day-old beard growing in gray, the bottoms of his teeth brown and caked.

'Yeah,' I said.

'Well, what kind of work you lookin' for?' he asked, leaning his head toward King Benny.

'Whatever,' I said. 'It doesn't matter.'

'I don't think we got anything, kid,' he said. 'Somebody musta steered you some wrong info.'

'Nobody steered me wrong,' I said. 'Everybody says this is the place to come to for jobs.'

'Who's everybody?' the man said.

'People from the neighborhood,' I said.

'Oh,' the man said. 'Them. Well, let me ask ya', what the fuck do they know?'

'They know you guys got jobs,' I said, moving my eyes from the old man and back to King Benny.

'Smart ass,' the old man said, turning away, heading back to his chair and his game.

King Benny and I looked at each other, the coffee by his side growing cold.

'Sorry I wasted your time,' I told him, looking away and heading toward the door.

I pulled the knob and opened it, letting in some gusts of air, letting out wisps of smoke.

'Hold it a minute,' King Benny finally said.

'Yeah?' I said, turning my head to face him.

'Come back tomorrow,' King Benny said. 'If you wanna work.'