IT WAS THE longest thirty-five-cent ride he’d ever had. The train howled through tunnels, climbed along viaducts that overlooked cheap, rundown neighborhoods. Finally, the train pulled into a station that said “Coney Island.”
Briganti picked up his canvas bag and headed down the ramp to the street. He had no idea where to begin, or even how; he knew only that he was looking for Vito Spazzi.
There was a phone booth on the corner. Briganti entered and turned the pages of the directory. He found several Spazzis: Angelo, Marie ... but no Vito. He put his dime in the slot and dialed Angelo. A gruff voice answered hello.
In his best Italian, Briganti said, “Buon giorno. I just arrived from Italy and I’m looking for Vito Spazzi. You know him?”
There was a long dead pause. Then a reply: “Fuck Spazzi. Fuck you, too.” The connection broke off.
Briganti’s brow went up. Apparently, not all Spazzis were on good terms. He left the booth and crossed to the newsstand, where a blind man was arranging his papers. In his best dialect, Briganti said, “Scusi. I’m a look for Vito a Spazz’. Where I find her?”
The sightless man’s head swiveled like a radar beam across Briganti’s voice. “Mister, you don’t go around asking for Vito Spazzi. If he wants you, he sends for you. But why’n’t you stop in at the Hangover? It’s up the street.” He waved loosely. “That way.”
Briganti thanked the man and walked that way.
Now that he had come to Coney Island, he liked what he saw. This was carny in spades. He passed a side show. On the platform, a barker in a straw hat and cane had his arm around a tired young belly dancer, and was exhorting the gathered crowd in a raspy voice: “Step right up, folks, alive and living on the inside ... Jo-Jo, half man, half chimpanzee ... Jerrold, the human torch ... and Little Sheba ... when she shakes, she shakes like a bowl of jello on a frosty morn in January ...”
He passed a messy little refreshment stand. A heavy-set, weary grandmother with a man’s voice called out, “Mazola ... they’re fried in Mazola ... Step up, folks, get ’em while they’re hot …”
Wherever he turned, people were eating: hot dogs, soft ice cream, French fries in little paper cups, cotton candy, jelly apples. A young man appeared to be blocking the walk, a microphone in hand. “Four photos for a quarter. Take your picture ... Four for a quarter...”
Briganti passed a bottle game, where a sailor was intent on throwing balls at wooden bottles stacked on each other ... Another, where a couple of young men were tossing darts at balloons. “Win a box of candy! A carton of your favorite brand! Everybody wins!”
He half expected to come upon old Wild Bill Brady and other friends from out of the past; but he came, instead, to a pair of wide windows with curtains drawn over them and a carved wooden door between. The neon sign overhead said, “Hangover Club”. And in the doorway, a placard read, “Jazz tonight. Moe Jarvis and his Dixieland Stompers.”
A broad grin broke out on Briganti’s dark face. Dixieland Stompers. What do you know? He would just have to go in and make himself known to the Southern gentlemen. He was, after all, from New Orleans, where they invented it all.
Briganti entered, recalling with certainty that this place had been raided by all kinds of police just the day before. Apparently, the right people with the right connections were able to perform wonders in this town.
Inside, it was properly air conditioned and properly dark. A large room, with a bar along one wall, opening on a main section with small tables, a minuscule dance floor, and against the rear wall, a bandstand. At this time of day, the tables were unoccupied. Three or four bodies were hunched over the bar staring at a TV set mounted high over one end of the bar, watching the Yankees take a pasting from the White Sox.
Briganti took up his playing position at the far turn of the bar, near the cash register. He set the bag down carefully at his feet and waited for service. The bartender, a middle-aged man with a hooked nose and the look of a whiskey sour spread over his face, had a leg up on the sink and was intent on reading the afternoon paper. He snorted and grunted as he read. Opposite him, a customer turned from the TV.
“Somethin’, eh?”
“Cocksuckers,” the bartender muttered. “They’re going crazy. First thing you know, they’ll raid every joint in town.”
“More vigorish,” the customer said. He put three fingers together, rubbed them, like money.
“They get theirs,” the bartender retorted. “Everybody, from top to bottom. Nah, this smells like a power drive.” He moved to Briganti’s section of the turf, wiped the wood clean, and stared down his nose.
“Absinthe on the rocks,” Briganti said.
The man blinked, his mouth open. Then he began to laugh—short barks, that sounded like coughing. “This ain’t Paris, France, buddy. How about a beer?”
Briganti returned the grin. “Oh, you’re fresh out. Make it Cinzano, instead.”
The bartender nodded. He reached for the colorful bottle, poured into a short, stubby glass with rocks.
Briganti looked back to the bandstand, empty except for the instruments in cases, resting on wooden chairs.
“When does the music start?”
“’Bout eight tonight. Stick around. They’re pretty good.” He took Briganti’s five-dollar bill, made change, then went back to the paper.
Further up the bar, one of the bodies turned out to be a girl. She was leaning on her chin, staring into the TV. “Shit on this game,” she said. She unwound, tossed a dollar bill at the bartender. “Hey, Al, gimme some quarters.”
Al paid no attention; he was deep into the paper.
She wasn’t bad looking. A perky little thing, thirty or so, neat body. She’d have been even nicer if she were sober.
“Hey, fuck-face,” she said loudly. “Gimme change!”
Al looked up, frowning. “Watch your language, Beth. There could be some old ladies around.”
“I’m sorry,” she said, in a little girl voice. “May I please have some change, you shit-head?”
Al and all the other bodies broke up on that one. Al took her dollar and spread four quarters on the bar.
“Thanks for nothing.” She wrinkled a pert little nose at him and moved to the big juke box on the opposite wall. Quarter in the slot, record up, and James Brown came on with a big rock beat. Beth went into her big number, bouncing, jiggling, gyrating like a thirty-year-old drunk.
She became aware of Briganti and danced her way to his side. “Hello, handsome stranger. Anybody ever tell you you were handsome, stranger?”
Briganti grinned. “Nobody ever like you.”
“Whatcha drinking?”
“Cinzano.”
She wrinkled her nose again; it could have been her specialty. “That’s a guinea drink. You a guinea?”
“I’m a hundred percent, white, American wop. What are you?”
“I’m Beth. Buy me a drink?”
Briganti nodded. “Al, a drink for the lady.”
“You one of Spazzi’s girls?” he asked.
“Isn’t everybody? You one of his boys?”
“Isn’t everybody?”
You never know, Briganti thought. She could be Spazzi’s best girl. Or second best.
Her Jack Daniels with a splash arrived, and she took a long swig. She climbed onto the stool beside Briganti. “I got an itch,” she said. “You ever get an itch?”
“Sometimes.”
“I got an itch.” She took his hand, placed it on her crotch. “Right here.” She began to squirm in her seat. “Scratch it, honey.”
“You ought to do something about it. Drugstore ...”
“Oh, silly!” She sounded annoyed. “Not that kind. Just an itch, y’know ... for some action.”
“A pretty girl like you? That shouldn’t be a problem.”
“Oh ho! She paused to drink. “I was born with it. Never enough.” With her free hand, she began to stroke Briganti’s thigh.
A thin, bony-faced man wearing a sport coat came in, looking breathless. The only purpose of a sport coat on a hot summer afternoon in Coney Island was to conceal a gun. “Where’s Tonto?”
The bartender shrugged. “He went up the street, Tommy. He should be back. Where’s the fire?”
“Vito’s hot. Tell him to get his ass up there.” He hurried out again.
Briganti sipped his drink. He was in the right place, now, headed in the right direction. Pretty soon, he would meet Tonto, Tonto Barola, who should have been in jail at this hour, but was back on the street, thanks to whoever had put up his bail.
Beside him, Beth was trying to focus on his face. “I like you. You got a name?”
“Erroll,” he said. “Erroll Garner.”
“Hah, you’re kidding. That’s a dinge piano player.”
“That’s my name,” he insisted. “My daddy gave it to me.”
“Maybe he was a dinge.”
“It’s entirely possible,” Briganti said.
Up front, a thick-set figure came through the door, his full chest and thick arms straining against a dark polo shirt. He strode behind the bar, pushed Al aside.
“Eh, Tommy Trip was just looking for you,” Al said. “Vito wants to see you.”
“Okay,” Tonto Barola said sourly. “One thing at a time.” He opened the cash register, took a thick wad of bills from his pocket and started to count them.
Briganti drained his glass. To the girl beside him, he said, “So long, honey, I gotta go now.”
“We were just getting acquainted,” Beth whined. “Don’t bug out ...”
Briganti picked up his change, patted Beth on the rump, and with a slight nod to the bartender, walked out into the bright sunlight. He moved a dozen steps up the street, then found something of interest in the display window of a souvenir shop.
Two minutes later, Tonto appeared and strode up the street into the afternoon sun. Briganti fell in behind him, not too close, and followed, weaving among strollers and gaping tourists, past the crush of standup hot dog eaters at Nathan’s Famous. At 13th Street, Tonto turned up the long thoroughfare that led to the beach. Briganti stayed to the opposite side of the street, moving past souvenir shops and scales for guessing your weight, past custard stands and cut-rate swim suits.
A high, barren wall occupied a major section of the street on Tonto’s side. There was a door set in the wall. Tonto stopped, pressed a buzzer. The door was opened by someone on the other side. He stepped in and the door slammed shut.
Briganti continued along the street, noting that the wall was electrically wired against trespassers. At the beach end of the wall, there was the Bath House fronting on the boardwalk. Briganti mounted the ramp to the walk. Here, the atmosphere was less hectic, more casual. Knots of people sat on benches or leaned against the guard rails overlooking the beach.
Briganti walked the full block along the boardwalk, then doubled back on the next street, most of which was taken up by the superstructure and tracks of the rollercoaster .
The ride stood spidery on a network of tall, joined timbers, that twisted and turned back upon itself, with tracks operating on three different levels. He stood by and watched as the open chain of cars wormed its way up the steep initial climb to the top, then plummeted pell-mell down the deep gorge. It twisted sharply to the left before thrusting up to another peak. The passengers thrilled to the core, screamed and shouted as the roaring, clanking cars charged ahead blindly, up, down, around hairpin curves, to come finally, to an abrupt, exhausting halt at the starting line once again.
The ride was called the Thunderball. Briganti paid his fifty cents and was helped by a bored young man into a seat in the middle section of the three-car train. Then, along with half a dozen other intrepid adventurers looking for thrills, the brake was released and the train moved forward, up the steep grade. It moved slowly—so slowly, that there was some doubt that it would make it. But Briganti was satisfied. It gave him an excellent opportunity to gaze down at the Spazzi house.
He saw a low-slung, clapboard and stucco structure that had obviously been built sections at a time. Architecturally, it was a disaster, a series of joined, unadorned boxes. As the train moved higher, he was able to see a court, enclosed on all sides, with a few unoccupied chaises gleaming in the late afternoon sun. He caught a glimpse, too, of two men seated in the shade of the high wall, as two others tossed bocce balls down a narrow course. Then the train started to plummet and Briganti could only hang on to keep his heart from leaping into his mouth. Up, down and around it went, enough to shake the fight out of a rattlesnake. At one point, as it headed into a curve on the bottom tier, the train slowed to a crawl. An enterprising fellow, Briganti thought, could almost get out and walk at this point. Especially, if he wanted to walk into Mr. Spazzi’s backyard. It was something to remember.
Briganti was having such a good time, he remained in his seat when the ride pulled to a halt and paid another fifty cents to ride again. This time, he pressed his stop watch the moment the Spazzi house appeared in view on the upward climb, then noted the time in which it remained in view. Again, when the train slowed to its crawl, he noted the time; and once more, on the final turn, where the tracks appeared to head directly into the house before veering sharply off on another, final hairpin curve.
Briganti was nothing if not thorough. He had no patience with half-assed technicians or artisans who did slipshod work, who failed to check results. Briganti was on to something, he believed, and he had to make sure. Though his stomach muscles ached and fluttered and his head was beginning to spin, he stayed for yet another ride. This time, he was particularly aware of the deafening roar and clank and rattle of the open cars as they churned along the narrow-gauge tracks, pulled by heavy, ratcheting chains. Beneath him, the timbers of the superstructure creaked and groaned; the rushing air whipped about the passengers, making them totally insensitive to anything that might be going on around them. He studied their thrill-soaked faces, listened to their hoarse cries, the blood-curdling screams. To the rider, the total experience was like a match being tossed about in a cyclone.
Briganti’s research was complete. Along with the others, he more or less staggered from the Thunderball and moved up the street. Past more games where everybody wins a prize; past the souvenir and food stands along the Bowery. He would have liked to linger and try his hand at some of these games, even though he knew they were rigged against the player. But though the blood of a carny man raced through him, he had a job to do, and first things first.