Chapter Eight
When Chuch died, I was going out with his ex-girlfriend, Michelle, who later became my second wife. She was using, I was using, and it was pretty wild. I remember getting high in the bathroom at Chuch’s funeral, shooting dope. That’s just the way it was: you’re a heroin addict, you shoot heroin and there’s no boundaries. It doesn’t matter. I shot dope in front of my daughter, I shot dope in the house. It’s just the nature of the disease. Chuch got mad at me for hanging out with Michelle. He was pissed about me seeing Michelle even though they had stopped seeing each other. He had another girl, Sally, that he hung out with, but Chuch was still having a tough time with me going out with Michelle during the couple of years that I was partners with him.
After Chuch dies, I didn’t wanna get married, I was a drug dealer. I didn’t have a job, I was on fucking probation now, again for the big drug charge. I got busted and got five years probation after going to court for two years. I was still a dealer, they caught me with guns and drugs and paraphernalia and they wanted to give me seventy-five years in jail. I had a good lawyer that got me out of it and I wanted to stay out of jail. I didn’t know how to do that, being a drug addict and being in a methadone clinic, picking up my methadone everyday and still using, still doing 120 mg of methadone and still using coke, heroin, any dope.
I wasn’t supposed to have Michelle in the house when the probation officer came and caught us. He would catch us on the Parkside, he would catch me in every fucking place I was not supposed to be because I didn’t give a fuck for him. I didn’t care. “Fuck you, you’re not telling me. I grew up in Park Slope, in this neighborhood, don’t tell me where to sit.” “I could lock you up. I told you to stay out of the park.” I looked at him and said, “I’m not in the fucking park, I’m outside, I’m on a bench, leave me alone, don’t bother me.” I was very resentful and defiant with the Probation Officer.
He used to come up to the park when me and Michelle were going out. He would say to me, “You know, you can’t be with her, you’re not supposed to be.” Even at this time we weren’t supposed to be together because we were both drug addicts. You couldn’t be with another person who is a known criminal or has a felony arrest. They didn’t want me with her because they thought she was a bad influence on me and I was a bad influence on her. He told me I couldn’t get married. He said I couldn’t hang out with her. There wasn’t a thing he told me I couldn’t do that I didn’t go out and do anyway. I just was very defiant.
He hated me and I didn’t blame him a bit. Part of him was doing his job. I just think they didn’t know how to do their job. If it were me, I would try to understand somebody that I was dealing with and show them more concern, more love, show them the way, tell them when they did good things. I would try to point out where they’re gonna wind up if their behavior continues. Instead, they waved their handcuffs in front of my face and threatened me. I said if I get married and I have a good life and I set up a house or an apartment, how the fuck could they possibly object. It was crazy.
Being that we were living together, or Michelle was coming in my house and staying with me overnight, her mother said, “Oh well, it would be better if youse two got married if youse are gonna carry on like this.” The truth is I was still married to Pat. I was very hurt from my first marriage, I never got over it, even going into my second marriage. Before we got married I had to get divorced. I did do that.
I wasn’t supposed to get married when I got married, but me, Michelle, methadone, and heroin got a marriage license at City Hall. My brother-in-law Herbie was the best man and we had a little thing in a restaurant. We lived upstairs in my sister Margie’s house, which was a disaster. We were both using. I would go to work, Michelle would be stoned on pills and dope, she was falling down staircases, getting hurt, getting fucked up . . . it was terrible. I would come home and find her laid out on the floor or stoned somewhere. Not that she didn’t find me laid out on the floor and stoned.
I got a woman probation officer after a while. I had to show that I had a job, a bank account, and that I was doing good to get off probation. From then on in it was a little bit better. I liked the woman officer, she liked me, and we got along great. I got more from her, more kindness from her. She got me a release after two or three years of being on probation from that big case. It wasn’t the last time I went to court and it wasn’t the last time I was in jail.
The children were still with the woman on Fourth Avenue and Eighth Street. Now they’re getting to be about six and seven years old. Michelle’s parents buy us a beautiful two-family house on Frail Place, right off of Coney Island Avenue—Italian marble floors, rugs, furniture, everything. I can’t even imagine this. We get a tenant, it’s great. It had three bedrooms, I built bedrooms downstairs for the kids in the basement. Bob, “Bengie,” my oldest son has his own room, Carrie, my daughter, has her own room. We proceed to live there, being on the methadone program and me working with my brother-in-law as a steamfitter, working and trying to put my life together.
At this time we have our first son Keith who is born with a methadone habit. He stayed in the hospital for a while and then we took him home. In an old Italian family the first-born male should always be named after the grandfather but I named our son Keith because I was arguing with my father-in-law, Dominick, at the time.
Our second son was also born with a methadone habit. I’m not blaming myself for the kids being on the methadone program; I mean Michelle and me being on methadone and my sons being born with a methadone habit, detoxing in the hospital for a couple of months, going up there and watching them with these tremors. I feel very guilty and ashamed of what I did and for what happened, but there’s no way I can blame myself for being an addict. I was addicted to heroin, I was a drug addict and I knew at that time there was no way out of it. Now I was in pretty good graces with my father-in-law, so this son, Dominick, we named after him. I love the name Dominick, too. When we named our son after him he was real grateful. He always truly loved the kids, his two grandchildren.
Michelle’s mother and father were very good to us, they treated us well, they bought us cars, televisions, a refrigerator. They were our greatest enablers—that’s what they did. And we were two strung-out heroin addicts.
Our house turned into a shooting gallery. I remember not shooting anything, any kind of drugs for a couple of months. Then somebody would bring something over and I would test it for them. I would tie up and shoot it to see what it was. The house turned into a crazy house—women and sex. Women came to the house and if they wanted to have sex with me I had sex with them. No matter which woman came into the house, it didn’t matter to me. I was cheating on Michelle and Michelle was cheating on me.
The kids, Bengie and Carrie, are in the house at the time and have to spend a lot of time in their rooms down in the basement. They heard and saw so much. They saw people OD, they saw me carry them out of the house like a dead body, they saw me put them in cars. My daughter came up out of the basement one time and actually saw me in the kitchen with a needle in my arm. She must have been seven or eight at the time. I told her to go back downstairs and she turned and ran back. They were told not to come up, and they knew enough not to come up until whatever we were doing upstairs was over. Sometimes it stayed like that for two or three hours. They watched me and Michelle OD. Her mother and father came in one day and took the kids right outta the house. We both woke up on the floor. For the kids it was a torture, we tortured them with all these crazy people that came around, all different times of the day or night. When you’re dealing drugs people would bang on your window at two or three o’clock in the morning. They wanted something, they needed to come in, they wanted a place to shoot up. It was fucking crazy.
In the basement with the kids I also had a safe filled with money. Holy Christ it was incredible what took place in the house . . . always living in this state of anxiety that goes on forever. Every day you get up, you leave the house. If Michelle wasn’t there or if Michelle was stoned, somebody else was there minding the kids. She would get high without me. We would fight and blame each other for what went on. We were always fighting. Battles every night, throwing shit out the window, cops coming to the house. I was very physical with her, she was very physical with me. I would go out sometimes on Friday night after work and sell some drugs and not come home until fucking Sunday, just calling her every couple of hours. I’m here, I’m there. It was nuts, it was fucking nuts.
It was very painful living in the house and it was very painful in the marriage. The kids were in terrible pain and they led a terrible life. We tried to have them going to school, I tried to do the football thing with them. We tried to do the fucking Leave It To Beaver, Ozzie and Harriet type of thing, but it was an impossible task. I was making a ton of money, that was the most important thing that I could do; the most important thing I could do was make money. As long as I made money, everything was fine. The kids were getting older and they were getting fucked up. They hated me and they hated her, but what could they do? They couldn’t do anything just as I couldn’t when I was a kid with the shit that was going on in my family.
There came a time when I was in the bar one night. I just came back from robbing somebody, we had a lot of drugs, I was on a lot of speed—it was called Dysoxin at the time. I used to soak twenty or thirty Dysoxins in a bottle, mix it with some cocaine after it dissolved in the bottle and it would turn into a urine yellow, piss-like color, and you’d know it was very strong. These pills, you couldn’t break them or nothing. They had to be heated up in hot water to dissolve, and when you suck all the chemicals out of them, that was Dysoxin, that was speed. Then I used to draw that up, shoot it and go totally out of my mind, whacked out. I loved being on speed, running around doing a hundred different things. Your mind was so spaced out you didn’t know where you were.
I had just came back from this guy’s house who owed me a lot of money and I had two .32 automatic pistols with the clips in them. We’re all sitting in the house and I got this dope out on the table. I put some of the money on the table. Everybody’s getting high, wandering around. Michelle is sitting on the couch and I’m cocking the gun trying to take the clip out. I took the clip and shell out of one gun, because when you’re in a house full of addicts you can’t have loaded guns around. I go to do the same thing with the other gun and I’m turning around facing the wall so nobody’s in front of me and I take the clip out, and then I go to take the bullet out of the chamber and it won’t eject. As I’m doing this, I’m talking. There are people asking me questions like “Are we gonna do this? When are we?” . . . and I’m saying, “Shut the fuck up. Just let me, relax. Sit down. Let me finish this. One thing at a time. Let me get this done.” My head’s wacky. As I turn, I lifted up the gun and I hit the back of the gun with the palm of my hand to put the barrel back up front because somehow or another I thought if I hit it the bullet would shoot up in the air. Well the bullet didn’t come out. It went back into the chamber. I hit it, the gun fired, and the bullet went clean through Michelle. She was sitting on the couch. It went right in by her thigh and came out the top of her belt, clean through her into the couch. And all she did was say, “Ooooh, I’m shot.” I looked at her and said, “Get the fuck out of here, you’re shot.” And all of a sudden we looked at the dungarees and we saw this blood, and it’s pouring out all over the fucking place.
They were all yelling at me, “You gotta get rid of the guns” and I’m saying, “No, I ain’t getting rid of no fucking guns. You gotta take her to the hospital.” So a couple of the guys take her to the hospital. I can’t go because they know me at the hospital. The cops will come in there and they’ll say, “What were you doing with this person?” So I tell them, “Youse got to take her and you tell them any fucking story you want. Tell them that the Puerto Ricans on Third Street fucking shot you. Blame it on them. Fuck it.” So that’s what they did. They went to the hospital. Detectives came in. They let her out of the hospital about two hours later. The bullet went clean through her leg, out the top of her leg. She still has the mark. It hit not one vital organ. All fat. It was like a million to one shot. Right through and into the couch. I used to have the bullet and wear it around my neck.
When the cops investigated in the hospital they said, “This is such a bullshit story,” that she got shot coming out of a car going to get cigarettes. They said, “What happened? The guy come up out of a manhole cover to shoot you?” It was such a fantastic story but everybody stuck to it, so we got cut loose. Now Michelle’s uncles, wise guys, wanted to know how she got shot. And they were saying, “Oh, these Puerto Ricans on Third Street . . . ”And I’m saying, “There’s going to be a fucking war.” I’m thinking, they’re gonna start shooting people and people are gonna get hurt. How the fuck are we gonna get outta this thing? Michelle wasn’t saying anything, she told one uncle who was her godfather and a pretty big guy at the time, that it happened in a house and it was an accident. She’s not saying who did it, but it was just an accident so don’t go out after nobody.
Now two, three weeks go by and they want to know who caused the fucking accident. So they get Chuch and they say, “We want to know what the fuck happened.” They sit him down and Chuch says, “I don’t know. It was like this guy, his name is Bengie . . . ” and he gives my fucking name. Nobody knew that it was me. So Chuch comes back to me and he says, “There are a lot of Bengies.” I said, “Yeah? Where? How many fucking Bengies in the neighborhood does what we do?” So it was just so stupid and he copped to it, like he fucked up. And the next minute I was down talking to her uncles. I had to go down and see them because at this particular time they found out what I was doing, that I was dealing. So I wound up doing some work for them, selling some guns, selling hundreds of pounds of reefer. Now I was this tough guy, and “wow, this guy is cool,” or whatever the fuck they thought. Anyway, it all wound up okay. They didn’t beat me to death or shoot me and they didn’t take me out and whack me partly because I was married to Michelle. That was a big part of it. I was scared to death. I thought, this is it. I’m gonna fucking die. They’re gonna kill me. You don’t fool around with these guys. These guys are killers. They’ll fucking murder you.
I was in the bar, I was drinking and a fight broke out. Michelle was with me and four or five other guys. They had me backed up against the wall and were beating me with bats and clubs. I had a big twelve-inch dagger on me and I stabbed a couple of guys and one of them almost died, actually both of them almost died. They were kids in the neighborhood. At this particular time I’m gonna be thirty-five years old and I’m still going strong with the drugs and everything, always carrying guns and knives. My dagger was like a big Mussolini Honor Guard knife—one of my antique knives. I stabbed this guy in the belly, the knife goes through his stomach. People are outside, I stabbed another guy. It was a terrible night. My wife was there.
I remember running away, holding the knife, blood all over me, then running down the block and into this couple outside a house. I ran into their house, they looked at me like I was I crazy and I told them to shut up and don’t tell nothing to nobody, but within a half an hour the place was loaded with cops. They told on me. The cops came up and found the knife.
To me, still today, it was totally self-defense. I was protecting myself. It was a bar fight, I was getting beaten with bats, I was terribly scared and paranoid, and I did what I did. You back me against the wall and I have to hurt you. It was pretty scary at the time. One of the guys that I stabbed was the son of a mother who worked with my mother in the Holy Family Home. I had to go to the hospital and be identified by the guys, but they couldn’t identify me. They were both half-ass in a coma or something. I naturally denied the whole thing. They knew I was there, yeah, but I denied stabbing them.
From that day on no matter what I did in the neighborhood, the cops were locking me up. I was out on $10,000 bail at that time I think. When I stabbed these guys it was pretty wild. Now I was going to jail; there was no more probation. I went to court for about a year, I paid my lawyer, sold all the kid’s insurance policies to pay this lawyer because I would do anything not to go. I wasn’t gonna suck my father-in-law in for any more money or my mother or anybody. We paid for what we did. I told my lawyer I didn’t wanna go to jail. He did the best he could and I wound up getting nine months in Rikers for attempted homicide or some shit—but it was broken down into a felony attempted assault and I wound up going away for six months.
At this particular time my father-in-law was gonna sell the house and get out because we totally destroyed the whole neighborhood. After I stabbed the two guys, people came to the house, broke the windows, and wanted to kill me. They put death threats on the door—notes with skulls and stuff like that. They wanted to murder me and my kids. That was part of why we had to leave—we didn’t just sell the house, we had to get outta of the house. People had died. One of the twins across the street died, the daughter of a bar owner who hung out with us. These weren’t the first ones, and they weren’t the last ones. There would be many people that died around me. I just didn’t know it then.