But if the only thing that ever came out of the huge building with the freight train running through it was the transistor, that would be plenty.
My dad had a best friend called Casko that lived on Morton Street. He had a wife named Jean, kids, and a Chevrolet Corvair that he was always fixing. Willy wasn’t my dad’s best friend; they were more like a married couple.
Willy’s best friend was Memphis.
Memphis was a mythical scarred-up tough with a pilot’s license and a vicious dog. Memphis’s dog knew not to bark at my dad, and Casko got an X-rated Christmas card from Willy once, but for the most part their friends didn’t mix.
Casko was an engineer, hired in the last days of the Bethune Street Bell Labs. Weeks after he was hired, the whole operation moved to a new compound in Holmdel, New Jersey. Casko would commute daily by motorcycle to program giant computers and work on defense contracts.
My dad says Casko was calculating missile trajectories. I’ve never heard these words come out of Casko’s mouth. He doesn’t talk about it so much, but he did tell me he was at a party on the block once when a hip lady asked what he did for a living. Casko answered that he “worked on defense technologies.” The woman said, “That’s a shame, man,” and walked away.
Don’t keep your neighbors up; don’t work for the army. Other than that, a very tolerant place.
Cap’n Jack would offer Casko clothes from the garbage. The clothes were almost brand-new. They came from the condos Cap’n took care of. He would comb an insane amount of trash before he put it out on the street. Cap’n would then give his finds away to anyone in his path.
“I didn’t know he was a pervert. Jean did. She never let him near the kids. She had a feeling about stuff like that,” Casko once told me.
It took my dad and Willy ten years to know.
They maybe kind of knew before. There were lots of lowlifes, and in the scheme of things Cap’n didn’t seem that bad.
But one day they are all on the stoop when Cap’n expresses his interest in a close friend’s 8-year-old daughter.
Disgust sets in.
“That is weird. You are going to get arrested and go to jail,” my dad says to Cap’n. Cap’n sort of shrugs and changes the topic.
They still shoveled Cap’n Jack’s walks. They still said “hello,” but they blocked him from the girl, and they warned anyone who had a daughter.
My dad was working part-time in the Church Street Post Office twenty hours a week. The part-time employees there were all kind of broken. He made friends with one named Frank.
Frank had a day job at a designer fabric store on Broadway. He was a compulsive gambler that was always being threatened by someone he owed money to.
Dad made the mistake of lending Frank a hundred dollars. He did this so Frank wouldn’t get beat up.
Finally my dad got angry and told Frank it was time to pay him back. It wasn’t right; he had helped him out of a jam. Frank says, come see me at work.
My dad goes over to Broadway. This is when there were factories above and textile stores up and down the block near Canal Street.
Frank’s shop is fancy, with high ceilings, plaster details, and bolts of fabric as far as the eye can see.
Dad goes to the counter; Frank wraps something up and writes out a slip. He hands it to my dad and says, “Now we are even.”
When my dad unwrapped the package at home he found a brocade bedspread in gold and red. Similar to the Unicorn Tapestries at the Cloisters but with tassels. It must have been worth a fortune, but my dad had no use for it. So he gave it to Willy and just called it even with Frank.
A month later my dad asked, “Hey, Willy, how you like the bedspread?
Great, I sold it. Got a hundred and a quarter for it.
“I gave that to you as a gift.”
You know what a gift is?
“What?”
When you give it to somebody it’s theirs. I used it how I wanted to use it.
My dad accepted that.
Dad didn’t give a shit about the blanket in the first place, and in the end it was worth the hundred bucks to give Willy the joy of putting one over.
Willy deserved that happiness. He always took care of his tenants no matter what a piece of work they were. There was a team of elderly people Willy brought food and newspapers to. This was before the rise of restaurant delivery and the Internet. If someone got sick, he visited them in the hospital and brought them their mail.
It was hard to really know Willy but it was easy to know his good parts.
When Memphis went to prison, he asked Willy to watch his German shepherd, whose name was Mother Fucker. “No problem,” said Willy to taking care of the meanest dog in Manhattan.
Willy fell in love with Mother Fucker.
They went everywhere together, and within a week he had changed the dog into a softie named Mickey. He just was so kind to the dog it forgot how to be a motherfucker.
When Memphis finally got out of jail, Willy didn’t want to give Mickey back, but he knew he had to.
Memphis took one look at Mickey and said he wanted nothing to do with a pussy dog like that.
Willy and Mickey lived together happily ever after.
Except years later, a Doberman was being a dick at the park. Went after a poodle or something. Whatever it did, Mickey snapped and turned back into Mother Fucker and killed the Doberman.
I don’t know the details, but the next week Mickey died. The owner of the Doberman had somehow poisoned Mickey.
Mickey being poisoned was the only story Willy ever told in the basement that made him cry.
Cap’n Jack was sick in the hospital.
Willy went to see him.
Why did he go see a pervert? To talk about covering his super work. To say he could not cover Jack’s buildings. To bring him some mail or news. Pick one. They are all likely true. Even if he was a pervert, Cap’n was the neighborhood pervert and Willy cared about the neighborhood.
Miserable Jack. The nurses had bathed him and taken away his shower cap. He misses his routines and hates being clean. He starts to weep and cry that he wants to die.
Jack whispers to Willy, “Kill me.”
No fucking way, Willy replies.
“There is eighty thousand dollars in cash hidden in my apartment. Kill me and it is yours.”
You ain’t got that money. Prove it.
Jack gave Willy the keys to his apartment.
Willy and my dad are walking. They have been walking for a while.
Kenny, Willy says.
“Yes, Will,” my father answers.
Words start falling out.
In Jack’s pigsty of an apartment there is eighty thousand dollars hidden under the mattress.
Jack is on death’s door.
If it were Willy, he would want to die as well. Jack is no good, nobody is going to miss the sick fuck.
What would a pastor say? Maybe put it all in the tithe tray.
My dad just listens. He didn’t say what to do.
He never told Willy what to do.
The conversation in my dad’s memory doesn’t seem like a big deal. He let Willy bounce shit off him all the time.
On the next walk my dad and Willy took there were less words, but they poured out the same.
Willy had killed Cap’n Jack in the hospital, and put all the money in the bank.