Brian remembered that walk to the bakery, every word and every expression. It was the first time his father and himself had what might be regarded as an adult conversation. He liked the idea that they were going to have a conversation outside the apartment away from his mother, just the two of them, two men discussing business. Sean Flanagan had not begun the conversation with “Don’t tell your mother.” Brian was really pleased that he was trusted enough to know that this was understood between them, that he was smart enough to figure that out on his own. For the first time, he felt as if he was being treated like a man. He was also in a really good mood because the bakery they were headed for had custard Danishes to die for. His dad was partial to the cherry Danish, though why anyone would ruin perfectly good pastry with fruit was beyond him. His father always had slightly eccentric tastes in food; he liked olives too, right out of the jar with the pimento in them. Again, why people ruin a perfectly good martini was beyond him. Not that he knew much about martinis then. Contrary to common belief, young Irish kids did not generally start drinking hard liquor until they were around eighteen; with the exception of wakes, weddings and vacations to the old country, when it was closing time and the publican was trying to clear the house and would not serve another round of pints.
On the way to the bakery, they passed a bar on Bleeker Street and this gave his dad a way to open the conversation.
“You see that big pane glass window? When I was about your age, I was passing by here one morning, the glass was all broken, there were boards in the windows and the owner was out surveying the damage. He shouts over at me, ‘Hey you, your brother did this last night. Knocked a guy clear through the window and now I gotta clean all this up. What a friggin’ mess! But hell of a punch though, knocked the guy right off his feet.’ You know your Uncle Jim was a boxer, right? And that he fought professionally?”
“Yes,” Brian said. He had seen pictures of Uncle Jim as a young boxer in family photo albums.
"He could have been great but he couldn’t take the discipline of being a professional athlete. When he realized that he couldn’t be out partying seven nights a week, he went looking for another line of work. Your granddad and his brother came here from Ireland with nothing, to try to make a better life for us all. Your granddad got a job on the docks and had to work a lot of hours to keep food on the table. Your grandmother died young and left him with the kids to raise.
Your aunts, my sisters, Kate and Mary, were the eldest and they helped look after us boys and young Margaret while Dad was working but they were really just kids themselves. My dad never married again; he said he had had the best woman in the world and that he wanted no other. Anyways, your Uncle Jim was a pretty wild kid. He fell in with a pretty rough crowd of kids and they all grew up together. Uncle Jim was a tough guy himself, and I have seen him knock guys out with his right and his left hand. As I said, he was a party guy and when he left boxing, he didn’t want to come down the docks with us. I am ashamed to say that your Uncle Jim was not really interested in working for a living.
Some of his friends from the neighborhood found a good use for his talents. Jim had quite a reputation then, so when people owed them money and were late paying up, they would send Jim to collect the money for them. Now, listen, I want you to be absolutely clear on this, Jim is my brother and I love him but I am disappointed about what he does. It is wrong and he is stupid to be involved with those people. I suppose most families have a black sheep and he is ours.
This is the greatest country in the world, it is the land of opportunity, where people can come and work hard and their kids can go to college and families can progress. Speaking of college, your mother mentioned that you got a B in a Math test last week, what was that about?"
And so, the man to man chat was over and they fell back into a more familiar style of conversation.
When they had reached the bakery door, his dad said, “Cherry for me, almond for your mother and the usual prune Danish for you, I suppose?” Brian took the hint and on the walk back they talked about the oddness of people who would put a laxative on a Danish and what the punishment should be for such a crime and also how he was going to get an A on the next Math test.
When he walked anywhere in the Village with his dad, they seldom came back the exact same way. His dad would always vary the route a little. He said that it was good for Brian to know the neighborhood and not just to walk the same few streets all the time. On the way back that day they passed the store. The ‘store’ was the neighborhood version of Costco, before there was a Costco. It was for members only and the membership fee was only a dollar. The store didn’t advertise, it didn’t even have a sign over the door. The store sold all kinds of merchandise at bargain prices, cash only and no returns. The store was kind of exclusive though. You couldn’t just walk in and become a member. You had to live in the neighborhood and you had to be recommended by another member. No paper work, no membership cards, two old guys ran it and they knew all the members’ names, where they lived and who had introduced them. Brian’s dad didn’t like his mom to shop there. He heard them argue about it one time.
All the kids in the neighborhood knew about the store and they knew why their prices were so competitive. His mother had mentioned that they needed a new toaster. She heard they had some at the store and would go pick one up during the week. His dad objected and was quite strenuous about it. He thought his mother was about to get a lecture about the moral implications of purchasing hot toasters. The reality was that his dad was concerned about buying electrical goods from a store with a no returns policy. Brian asked her years later about the incident and she said that her friend, Marie, got her a membership and that she had explained that the merchandise for sale had not been obtained through any acts of violence. Apparently, in return for certain favors, the teamsters agreed to drive a certain number of trucks to designated warehouses where the drivers would even help unload the goods. Everyone got along just fine and all the goods were insured so it was not like anyone lost out. Marie knew because her brother-in-law worked at one of the warehouses. The arrangement was further confirmed by Mrs. Hegarty, whose son was in school with Brian. Her husband was a teamster and he often let his wife know so that she could tell her friends if something really good was going to show up at the store.
Brian and his dad also passed a local barber shop. This was the closest barber shop to their apartment but when it was time to get a haircut his dad would actually pass this place to go to another one, about six blocks further away. When Brian was old enough to go by himself, he asked his mother if he could go to the closer one. She said his dad wouldn’t like it and he should go where he always went. He asked her what his dad had against the place. She suggested that he ask his father. When he asked him, his father said that they were all Italians in there. They didn’t speak good English and if he went in there for a haircut and didn’t speak Italian, he could come out bald. When he pressed the issue with his mother, she was more forth coming.
Her friend Marie’s husband, Aldo (also a good friend of his dad), had gone in there one time for a haircut. The place had a few chairs and a phone booth near the back. Aldo was minding his own business getting his hair cut and a man comes in to use the phone. The man did not fully close the door of the booth and Aldo was in the last chair and he could hear the guy. The guy was speaking a Sicilian dialect from a very remote part of Sicily. The same part of Sicily Aldo’s family was from. It was a dialect Aldo had heard at home all his life. The man was talking about a debt that needed to get paid by the next day and when and where the guy would be who needed to be paid. Aldo had to pretend like he didn’t understand a word, he was worried that he would break out in a sweat, he couldn’t wait to get out of there. The next day a major figure in organized crime in the city departed this mortal coil. Aldo, being a good friend, explained to Brian’s dad that the recently departed had a lot of friends and those friends might pay a visit to the barbershop someday. If they did, things could get out of hand for innocent bystanders.
Brian asked his dad one time if the Mafia was good for the neighborhood. His friend, Bobby’s dad had been down in Little Italy visiting a relative and he had been mugged just a few blocks away from their apartment. Some kid produced a knife and demanded that he hand over his wallet, which he did, no problem. He hadn’t lost much, forty bucks and a credit card that could be replaced. He mentioned it to his wife when he got home and apparently she took it a lot worse than he had. She called her sister who made another phone call and low and behold the very next evening they heard a knock on their apartment door. The father opened the door but left the chain on. Standing in the hallway was the mugger with the wallet and what sounded like a very sincere apology. Now Brian’s friend Bobby thought this was the coolest thing ever and evidence that the Mafia helped to control crime in their neighborhoods. His dad listened quietly to the story and agreed that it was good that Bobby’s father had gotten his wallet back but he did explain that the reason behind the Mafia was like the reason behind most things; it was all about money.
He explained that while they might help with things like a stolen wallet and their presence might keep away certain undesirable elements, you might have a different view of them if you were a shop keeper or a restaurant owner in the neighborhood. These people had to pay protection and had to buy services from Mafia controlled firms, everything from window cleaning to linen supply. The company had to bear the extra cost or they could pass it on to the consumer, the ordinary person in the street. It was like a giant tax and someone had to pay it. His dad thought that taxes were high enough already without having to pay extra but he figured if it didn’t go to them it would go to someone else. So, the bottom line was that these guys, although they might do some good from time to time, were criminals, not Robin Hoods. The people he should respect and admire were the people who came to this country, the land of opportunity, and worked hard and made something of themselves, not the criminals who stole from others.
For all that, he never heard his father go out his way to condemn them. He certainly did not agitate to clean up his union local like Marlon Brando in On the Waterfront. He never liked the movie. He thought Rod Steiger was good, but he found Marlon Brando unconvincing as a tough guy. Like a lot of men on the waterfront, Sean saw the Mafia as a fact of life, part of the way things were. Brian knew that his dad played the numbers regularly and he knew that the Mafia ran that. For a fifty cent bet on three numbers you could win six hundred dollars. The winning numbers were the last three digits of the daily racetrack attendance which was published in the papers. Brian remembered the evening his father came home to their apartment with a brown paper bag full of money. He remembered watching his father counting it out on the kitchen table. To him, it looked like at least a thousand dollars. His mom was thrilled and had the money spent in her mind before Sean had finished counting it. Brian thought about making a joke and asking his dad if this was like a tax return, but for once in his life he kept his mouth shut. He was hoping if he showed the right amount of enthusiasm he might get a couple of new model airplanes out of it.
Later on, as an idealistic teenager, he was surprised when his father did not show any enthusiasm for the Knapp Commission that had been set up to investigate police corruption. His father’s take was that a bunch of low level cops would get in a lot of trouble and that instead of investigating them, a commission should be set up to investigate corrupt politicians who made deals with the fat cat developers to destroy the city and line their own pockets with the taxpayers’ money. He also had the Irishman’s dislike for informers of any kind. His view was that the famous whistle-blower Serpico should have been a prosecutor, or should have chosen some other line of work. “You don’t walk among people, break bread with them and then rat them out…” his father had once said.