Absent Friends

BOYS' OWN BOOK

Chapter 14

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Leaving the Cat

September 2, 1979

Jimmy's sitting in the backyard with Markie. The sun's warm on his back, and everything's so quiet he can hear the Addonisios' radio from three houses away. The Addonisios are old, and they sit on their porch and listen to the opera every Sunday in the summer. A lot of the other guys rag on it, they say those wops, they like lady singers who sound like cats with their tails in the door. Jimmy doesn't mind the opera. Vinny down at the firehouse, he puts it on sometimes when they get back from a run. Jimmy likes to hear it then, it sounds kind of the way he feels, all those voices, loud and soft, alone and together. But he doesn't know anything about opera.

Jimmy looks at Markie, wonders why Sally and Kevin and his job at the garage aren't enough for Markie. He thinks about himself, the sizzling that starts deep inside him when the bell's ringing and the guys are all yanking on turnout coats, swinging onto the truck. Is this what Markie feels when he's with Jack?



Ten years old: early Sunday morning, the kids over where the new subdivision is going up, no one knows what subdivision means (someone says it sounds like math, everyone groans), but they all love the outlines of the houses drawn in wood against the sky like skeletons. They like to play here. You can jump down from a porch, or maybe it's a dining room, onto a huge pile of sand; you can hide in the dark, damp space underneath the kitchen, not big enough even for Markie to stand up in, but full of dirt and puddles so when the other army comes to find you, you can ambush them with mudballs. A big yellow machine with a claw in front is standing on top of the hill like a dinosaur. Jack knows what it's called: it's a front loader, you jerks, he says. And he says something else: he says he knows how to drive it.

Tom looks at the thing a minute, then shakes his head, says, Forget it, man. He says, I want to see if I can climb that chimney over there, and he heads that way. Jack looks in that direction, too, maybe he's thinking about going with Tom, but Markie says, Really, Jack? Can you really drive it? And Jack looks back at the dinosaur, and says, F*ckin' A, because you know, Markie, man, I saw it, I saw where the a*shole who left it there Friday, I saw where he left the keys.

And Jack and Markie are charging up the hill, kicking up sand, racing each other, of course Jack wins. Tom's shouting, but Jack's already sticking his hand into the doorless cab, feeling under the seat, and then he and Markie are in the cab and the yellow machine growls and roars, like it really is a dinosaur. Jack yanks back on a lever. His face is scrunched up, he's peering through the windshield just like Mr. Molloy trying to decide which bridge to take coming back from the Jersey shore. Markie's beside him laughing his head off. The machine jerks like it's trying to throw them out, then changes its mind; they want to go for a ride, all right, okay, they asked for it.

Jimmy watches as the machine pulls itself forward, lurching over the mud; he thinks hard, the way the hill is, the way the machine's leaning, and he runs in front, around, and yells for them to jump now! out THIS side, now! Markie laughs, slaps Jack on the back, the dinosaur's still roaring, but then Markie sees Jimmy's face, and Markie's face changes, maybe he feels how far over he's leaning, and suddenly he leaps. It's a high fall now, into the dirt, and Markie lies there forever before he gets up. All the kids stare at him and stare at the dinosaur as one side of it starts to sink into the mud. Slowly, still moving downhill, it tilts more and more, the side Markie jumped from is almost straight up in the air. Jimmy and Tom are both yelling for Jack, and then there Jack is, standing on the edge, then flying through the air, his legs pumping like he's running. He hits the ground at the same moment the dinosaur, mad because it lost its balance, roars, starts to fall, and smashes onto the corner of one of the houses. The kids hear wood splintering. Tom hauls Jack out of the mud—Markie's already on his feet—and everyone runs like hell. Jimmy's heart's pounding, Tom looks mad. But Markie's grinning as they run away, and Jack grins at Markie, too, and Jimmy sees that happen, remembers it.

This morning? We were down by the rocks, Tom says later, when the grown-ups ask. We were fishing. Yeah? says Jimmy's dad. Good morning for it, bet the bass were running. Catch anything? Jimmy shakes his head, but he doesn't say anything. Anything he'd say wouldn't be true, and he doesn't want the words to mess him up.



So when Markie looks down at the grass now, in his own backyard, like he needs to check it out, Jimmy knows.

Yeah, says Markie. Yeah, I guess I saw Jack around. How come?

Just wondering, I don't know, says Jimmy. Just, I heard something.

Something like what?

Jimmy drinks some beer. That crew Jack's got, Jimmy says. They fly kind of high.

I don't get you.

Yeah, says Jimmy, shaking his head. Like, Mr. Molloy? He stays pretty much under the radar. You know? Doesn't embarrass anyone.

Embarrass who?

Anyone. You're a mosquito, you sneak up and bite someone, fly away, you could do okay for yourself like that. You buzz around their ear, they're gonna squash you.

Jimmy drinks some beer, thinks that that's not exactly what he means. Still, it's close enough.

I'm gonna tell Big Mike, says Markie. That you said he was like a mosquito.

They both grin, but Markie's is the grin that makes Jimmy worried, the one he's been seeing since they were kids, seeing more of lately, when Markie's got a family and Jimmy thought he ought to be seeing it less. The grin Markie had just before he and Jack climbed into the dinosaur all those years ago.

And Jimmy's saying Mr. Molloy, same as since they were kids. But Markie's saying Big Mike.

But I'm talking about the buzzing, says Jimmy. That's Jack's problem, that's what I heard about.

Markie says again, I don't get you.

The cops, Jimmy says. The cops are getting ready to roll up Jack, his whole crew.

For a few seconds Markie says nothing. The water's not running in the sink anymore, but Jimmy hears Marian's voice, she's singing a song to Kevin. Jimmy loves Marian's voice: when he listens to her sing, he believes the words in the songs.

Shit, says Markie finally. Oh shit, you sure?

Jimmy shrugs. I don't know that much, he says. I mean, maybe I didn't hear it right. Somebody said somebody said, you know how it goes?

What about Big Mike? Does he know?

Maybe. But if he does, what's he gonna do? Everything he could do, he must've done already.

Markie nods. Jimmy watches him, sees that Markie knows that what Jimmy's saying is true, that Mike the Bear can't help Jack out anymore.

Jack's crew, they don't keep their heads down.

For one thing, they operate too close to home. Some of the businesses Mike the Bear runs—the shylocking, the bookmaking out of Flanagan's—are in the neighborhood, they have to be. And everybody always said Mike has some girls, in a boring-looking two-family you'd never notice, in the old section. But when Mike's crew takes off a truck or second-stories some fancy house, you can bet it's not around here. Not on Staten Island at all, usually, but someplace like Brooklyn or Queens or New Jersey, where the bridges go. (Jimmy remembers when the Verrazano Narrows Bridge opened, how he heard Mr. Molloy say that was the best thing the city ever did for him. Jimmy was a little kid then, but he already knew Mr. Molloy was Mike the Bear: didn't know yet what that meant, but was not surprised to hear the city did things for him.)

But Jack, ever since Mike the Bear gave him the go-ahead to put a crew together, to get something started on his own, Jack doesn't keep a lid on it. Even when they boost goods from somewhere else, there's usually stuff, watches or whatever, sometimes a car, that ends up in the neighborhood. Or some guy, from some other crew, from outside—maybe a Puerto Rican from Harlem, something like that—gets beat to shit, everybody's asking each other what the spics are doing in the neighborhood: but knowing he came to do business, he wouldn't take No for an answer, this is just Jack's way of saying he means No. It's trouble: it's not the way it's done. Over the years there've been lots of people Mike the Bear doesn't want to do business with: they get talked to, roughed up a little if they have to be, but not like this. And if it has to be this, you use the bridges, the guy gets found somewhere else.

Markie and Jimmy both know this, everyone does.

Tom and Jack have argued about it more than once, evenings in Flanagan's, Tom tight-jawed, low-voiced, while Jack leans back, drains his beer, says, Yeah, yeah, all right, like Tom's making a big deal out of nothing. These arguments leak from Flanagan's into the surrounding streets, get passed from neighbor to neighbor over backyard fences or in the aisles of the A&P.

And sometimes something even gets in the paper; the Advance runs a story, “Crime on the Rise.” Sometimes things flare up, then suddenly go quiet, and you know Mike the Bear's had a word with someone, cash has changed hands somewhere, something has been promised, or delivered.

But that has its natural limit. Cops are like anyone else: you can pay them to protect your ass, but not if it costs them theirs. Sooner or later, if there's enough complaining, something has to be done, or at least it has to look that way.



And this is what Mike the Bear told Jimmy in Flanagan's yesterday, and this is what Mike wants Jack to learn. From wherever he gets things, Mike the Bear got this: the cops are coming for Jack, and Mike can't stop them. Jack's only chance is to back off, cut his crew loose, turn into Mr. Model Citizen, at least for the duration. Of what? Until the NYPD forgets about him. However long that is.

Jimmy looks up from his beer, realizes Markie's asking him a question he asked once already.

What's gonna happen? Markie wants to know.

Jack's got to go straight, Jimmy says. He's got to start going to church and helping little old ladies across the street. He has to quiet down.

He's gonna hate that. Like wearing a tie.

Jimmy smiles, because he's remembering Jack yanking off his tie at the party after his first communion, and every time since that he had to wear one, funerals and weddings and every time, saying, I'm smothering, this thing's gonna choke me, man, I got to get out of it. Jack, always afraid of smothering, always needing to get out.

Jimmy says to Markie, But that's what's got to happen.

You think he'll do it?

Only, Jimmy says, if someone tells him to.

Who? Big Mike? Tom?

Jimmy shakes his head. If they did that, he says, Jack'll just say it's because Tom wants his operation.

Tom? What does he want that for? When Big Mike retires to Florida or something, Tom's gonna have everything. What does he want what Jack has for?

I didn't say he does. I said Jack'll think he does.

Markie frowns, then looks up. You, Jimmy. You gotta tell Jack. You gotta warn him.

Yeah, I guess, I guess I better. Trouble is, all the people around here, I'm the one he's most going to think is bullshitting him. What the hell does a fireman know about this shit? You know what, I'll bet he'll think Tom told me to. Or even I thought it up by myself, because now I'm too straight, I don't want guys like him having any fun.

Markie laughs. Yeah, it's true, he thinks you got pretty uptight since you went on the Job.

Jimmy shrugs. Probably I did.

Yeah, says Markie, Jimmy, man, you don't hang out no more. Markie's using Jack's growly voice, has his jaw stuck out the way Jack's gets. All's you do anymore, man, Markie says, still being Jack, you sit in front of the firehouse with that old fart McCardle, like the two of you, you're in charge of looking at stuff.

Jimmy flips his empty beer can into the air, swats it over so Markie has to duck.

Oh, man, says Markie, you're lucky the girls took the potato salad inside.

What, you're telling me you'd start a food fight? In your own backyard?

You started it already! Anyway, it's not my backyard, it's old man O'Neill's.

Marian comes out onto the porch right then, asks if Jimmy's ready to go. Markie says, Marian, you just did a really good thing, you just saved Jimmy's ass.

From what? Marian says, looking around to the back of Jimmy, like she needs to see what's wrong with his ass.

Potato salad, says Markie, nodding darkly, like that's his most serious weapon.

Oh my God, says Marian, her eyes getting wide.

Yeah, says Jimmy, I'm getting scared, we better go.

Markie walks with Jimmy and Marian up the driveway to the front of the house. When they get to the sidewalk, Markie says, Jimmy, man, that stuff we were talking about? Maybe I could do it.

Jimmy looks at him. Maybe, he says.

Yeah, why not?

Jimmy nods. Just, you have to not say you got it from me. Because he'd blow it off then.

Got you.

What are you guys talking about? Marian wants to know.

Boy talk. I ask you what you and Sally were cracking up about in the kitchen? Jimmy kisses Marian on the nose.

No, but if you had, I'd have told you.

That's because you're nicer than me.

Marian smacks him on the arm, lightly.

Markie says, Jimmy, you're in trouble now.

Yeah, says Jimmy, but I know a way out. He wraps his arms around Marian, presses her close, kisses her in a way he doesn't usually do out on the street. Finally he moves his face an inch away from hers, asks, Am I still in trouble?

You sure are, says Marian, but now it's a completely different kind.