Bronx Noir

Sonny let them get to within twenty feet before he pulled a nine-millimeter pistol and cut the two shooters down with one shot each to their torsos. Surprise and pain swept across the faces of the killers as they dropped to the ground and began crawling away. One made it under a parked car, but left no room for his partner.

Sonny, in a controlled anger, straddled the exposed shooter and put two rounds in his back. Blood pooled on the sidewalk as Sonny carefully stepped over the dead man, leaned under the car, and emptied his magazine into the remaining whimpering wounded hit man.

A crowd had gathered, and when Sonny stood up they turned their backs in unison and began scattering. Sonny jammed the gun in his waistband, walked quickly to the car, and got in. The sirens were louder now, easily within two blocks of the scene.

“What the fuck?” the driver said, as he forced himself not to leave twenty feet of rubber getting off the block.

“The old man deserved better than that. He was a caporegime, for Christ sake! Spit on a made man? Laugh? I don’t fucking think so.” Disrespect, Sonny hated it; he had learned all about respect from the late Frank Bernardo.

Sonny lit a cigarette and inhaled deeply as the car drove onto the Major Deegan Expressway. If the cops could find anyone to admit being at the scene of the killings, they wouldn’t be able to remember a face, let alone an age or the race of the shooter.

This was, after all, Arthur Avenue.

YOU WANT I SHOULD WHACK MONKEY BOY?

BY THOMAS ADCOCK

Courthouse

The young guy sitting next to me at the bar looks like an escapee from one of those rectangular states where blond people live who wind up in Los Angeles where my own kid went to escape from me.

He’s wearing a cashmere turtleneck and matching tobacco-colored corduroys and a green suede jacket that would be a couple of months’ pay if my secretary had to buy it. He’s blond, of course, with California teeth and a hundred-dollar haircut.

Two minutes ago he walked in and looks around the place like he knows everybody. Which he doesn’t. Then he walked over my way and took a load off.

How this guy found his way to a dive like the Palomino Club, let alone the Bronx, I am about to find out.

So who am I, sitting next to this Jack Armstrong type and doing my bit to be one-half of an odd couple? And what’s this bar about?

The Palomino Club is neutral territory for a bunch of us who depend on one another to keep the criminal justice system of the Bronx a going concern. Meaning the cops and the crooks and guys like me, since all roads lead to lawyers.

Over the bar right where I’m sitting, there’s a creased photograph of a curly-haired squirt with his ears folded under a cowboy hat and he’s sitting up on a big cream-colored horse with a flowing white mane. At the bottom of the picture it says, Camp Hiawatha 1953.

That’s me in the saddle, by the way. I always sit near the picture of my youth.

I am now a grown-up man of five-foot-six, if you can call that grown. I am sort of round and practically bald-headed. I have lived on the Concourse since my days in short pants. The fact I now get my suits made by a tailor with liver spots over on Grant Avenue who claims he sewed for Tony Curtis after he stopped being Bernie Schwartz from Hunts Point doesn’t fool anybody. So says my kid.

My kid says I’m so Bronx haimish there’s no way my name could be anything besides Stanley, which it is.

So imagine how curious I am about this tall, sun-kissed, golden-haired guy—goy—who took stool next to me when he could have sat down in a lot of other spots.

The guy orders a cosmopolitan. Nate the bartender cuts me a look that says, Nu?

Naturally, I am wondering myself. So I start chatting up Jack Armstrong.

“Look at these,” I tell him, holding up both hands so he can see my pink palms. “Soft, hey? Nice?”

“For crying out loud, Stanley—”

This is from Nate, who is rolling his eyeballs like Jerry Colonna used to do on The Ed Sullivan Show. I am not currently speaking to Nate on account of he encouraged my kid to break up the firm of Katz & Katz.

Yeah, I get your point, he says to my kid. You got to be your own person, he says to her. You have to find your own space. Feh! Since when is Nathan Blum talking hippie?

“—Not with the schtick already, Stanley.”

I think about telling Nate, Life is schtick, numb nuts. But instead I keep him on my list of people to ice, which I hope irritates him like a nail in the neck. He picks up another Hamilton from the little pile of cash on the wet mahogany in front of me and pads off, knowing to bring back another Grey Goose marty, the hump.

I get back to business.

“No kidding, Jack,” I tell the golden boy. “Look at these hands.”

“It’s Blake, actually.” He smiles, which blinds me. “Blake Lewis. I’m in from the coast.”

Who says this?