That night she was wearing a blue ruffled dress with a small white flower pinned at the waist. She had on ankle socks and her Buster Browns were shiny and new. Her hair was in a pony tail.
'Everybody's here,' John said when he saw her.
'I'm a friend of Janet's,' Carol said.
'Who's Janet?' John said.
'The bride, asswipe,' Michael said, and led Carol by the arm off to dance.
The three men came in just as the bride and groom started slicing the three-tiered wedding cake. They stood off to the side, their backs to the front door, their hands nursing long-necked bottles of Budweiser: one of them had a lit cigarette hanging from the corner of his mouth.
We were standing in the shadows next to the disc jockey, Michael and Carol holding hands, Tommy and John sneaking beers. I held a Sam Cooke 45, 'Twistin' the Night Away', which was next on the play list.
'You know 'em?' Michael asked, putting his arm around Carol's shoulders.
'The one with the cigarette,' I said. 'I've seen him in King Benny's place a few times.'
'What's he do for him?'
'He always passed himself off as a shooter,' I said. 'I don't know. Could be nothing more than talk.'
'Why's he here?' Tommy asked.
'Maybe he likes weddings,' John said.
The three men walked toward the center of the room, their eyes on the groom, who was eating cake and sipping champagne from the back of his wife's spike-heeled shoe. They stopped directly across the table from the couple and rested their beers on a stack of paper plates.
'What do you want?' the groom asked, wiping his lips with the back of his hand.
'We come to offer our best,' the man in the middle said. 'To you and to the girl.'
'You just done that,' the groom said. 'Now maybe you should leave.'
'No cake?' the man in the middle said.
The crowd around the table had grown silent.
'C'mon, guys,' a middle-aged man said, his speech slurred, the front of his white shirt wet from beer. 'A wedding's no place for problems.'
The man stared him back into silence.
'Maybe your friend's right,' the man said. 'Maybe a wedding's no place for what we have to do. Let's take it outside.'
'I don't wanna go outside,' the groom said.
'You got the money?'
'No,' the groom said. 'I ain't got that kind of money. I told you that already. It's gonna take a while.'
'If you don't have the money,' the man said, nodding toward the bride, 'you know the deal.'
She had not moved since the men approached, paper plate full of cake in one hand, empty champagne glass in the other, heavily-made up face flushed red.
'I ain't gonna give her up,' the groom said in a firm voice. 'I ain't ever gonna give her up.'
The man in the middle was quiet for a moment. Then he nodded and said, 'Enjoy the rest of your night.'
The three men turned away from the bride and groom and disappeared into the crowd, making their way toward the back door and the dark street.
We sat braced against the thin bars of the first floor fire escape, staring at the alley below. Four garbage cans and an empty refrigerator carton stood against one wall; the shadows of a forty-watt bulb filtered across the auditorium's back door. The rain had picked up, a steady Hudson River breeze blowing newly laundered sheets across the dirt and empty cans of the alley.
Michael had positioned us there. He was positive something was going to happen and he'd picked the most strategic place to observe the action.
We watched as the bride and groom stood in the narrow doorway, arms wrapped around each other, both drunk, kissing and hugging. The harsh light from the auditorium forced us to move back toward the window ledge.
The groom took his wife by the hand and stepped into the alley, moving toward 51st Street, holding a half-empty bottle of Piels in his free hand. They stopped to wave at a handful of friends crowding across a doorway, the men drunk, the women shivering in the face of the rain.
'Don't leave any beer behind,' the groom shouted. 'It's paid for.'
'Count on that,' one of the drunks shouted back.
'Goodbye,' the bride said, still waving. 'Thank you for everything.'
'Let's go,' the groom now said to his new wife. 'It's our wedding night.' With that, a grin stretched across his face.
The first bullet came out of the darkness and hit the groom just above his brown belt buckle, sinking him to his knees, a stunned look on his face. The bride gave out a loud scream, hands held across her chest, eyes wide, her husband bleeding just inches away.
The group by the door stood motionless, frozen.
The second shot, coming from the rear of the alley, hit the groom in the throat, dropping him face first onto the pavement.
'Help!' the bride screamed. 'Jesus, God, please help! He's gonna die! Please help, please!'
No one moved. No one spoke. The faces in the doorway had inched deeper into the shadows, more concerned with avoiding the shooter's scope than with rushing to the side of a fallen friend.
Sirens blared in the distance.
The bride was on her knees, blood staining the front of her gown, crying over the body of her dying husband. A priest ran into the alley, toward the couple. An elderly woman came out of the auditorium holding a large white towel packed with ice, water flowing down the sides of her dress. Two young men, sobered by the shooting, moved out of the doorway to stare down at the puddles of blood.
'Let's get outta here,' John said quietly.
'So much for getting married,' I said, just as quietly.
Michael, Tommy and Carol said nothing. But I knew what they were thinking. It was what we were all thinking. The street had won. The street would always win.
Fall 1965
SEVEN
My friends and I were united in trust.
There was never a question about our loyalty. We fed off each other, talked our way into and out of problems and served as buffers against the violence we encountered daily. Our friendship was a tactic of survival.
We each wanted a better life, but were unsure how to get it. We knew enough, though, to anchor our hopes in simple goals. In our idle moments, we never imagined running large companies or finding cures for diseases or holding elected office. Those dreams belonged to other places, other boys.
Our fantasies were shaped by the books we read and reread and the movies we watched over and over until even the dullest dialogue was committed to memory. Stories of romance and adventure, of great escapes and greater tastes of freedom. Stories that brought victory and cheers to the poor, allowing them to bask in the afterglow of revenge.
We never needed to leave the cocoon of Hell's Kitchen to glimpse those dreams.
We lived inside every book we read, every movie we saw. We were Cagney in Angels With Dirty Faces and Gable in The Call of the Wild. We were Ivanhoe on our own city streets and the Knights of the Round Table in our clubhouse.
It was during those uninhibited moments of pretend play that we were allowed the luxury of childhood. Faced by outsiders, we had to be tough, acting older than our years. In our homes we had to be wary, never knowing when the next violent moment would come. But when we were alone we could be who we really were – kids.
We never pictured ourselves, as adults, living far from Hell's Kitchen. Our lives were plotted out at birth. We would try to finish high school, fall in love with a local girl, get a working man's job and move into a railroad apartment at a reasonable rent. We didn't see it as confining, but rather as a dramatic step in the right direction. Our fathers were men with sinful pasts and criminal records. We would not be.
I loved my parents. I respected King Benny. But my friends meant more to me than any adult. They were my lifeblood and my strength. Our simple dreams nourished by a common soil.