The Mayor of Lexington Avenue

Nineteen

JULY 1967

“Johnny, wake up!” Mikey whispered from his crouched position on the fire escape next to Johnny’s bed. It was 11:30 on Saturday night.

“Shhh. I’m awake,” Johnny replied. “My mom just went to bed about a half hour ago and my dad’s still watching TV.”

“C’mon, he ain’t gonna check on you before he goes to sleep. You’re fine.” Mikey could sound so convincing when he wanted to. But he was right. Johnny’s dad never came in to check on him before he went to bed.

“All right, gimme a second.” Two minutes later he was crawling out the window onto the fire escape. Then the two of them lit out down the stairs and up the alley to Lexington Avenue like tomcats on a midnight prowl. Ten minutes later, they were on Eighty-sixth Street.

The alley was often the boys’ method of travel in the neighborhood. It was the space between the backyards of the buildings on one street and those of the buildings on the next street over. Both backyards had fences that abutted each other. The fences were all different types and sizes. Travel in the alley consisted of negotiating the various fences while moving along. Both boys were expert alley climbers.

Earlier that evening on Eighty-sixth Street, they had helped fold the different sections of the Sunday paper into one giant sandwich. It was a ritual every Saturday night. Wooden tables were set up and the folding began. The boys weren’t paid and they didn’t even know who they worked for. It was just something to do.

There was a payoff of sorts. After the papers had been arranged in bundles and tied off with copper wiring-and after the boys had gone home and returned-they had the privilege of taking a ride with “Cuz.” Sometimes it was just the two of them. Some nights Eddie and Danny came along or the Curtins, two brothers who were friends from the neighborhood.

Cuz was a smallish man, always on the move, always talking, always smiling. He acquired his nickname simply because he called everybody Cuz. It was only natural that the boys responded in kind. Nobody knew his real name.

When Cuz was ready, they loaded the papers in the back of his truck, a smallish box truck with no back door, and hopped in. Cuz’s route was a rambling, no-holds-barred race from Eighty-sixth through the streets of Harlem. At every small candy store or newspaper stand, Cuz would stop and yell back to the boys how many bundles to unload. They’d throw the bundles onto the sidewalk and off they’d go again. It was the middle of the night, it was dangerous, and it was the ride of their lives. Cuz sped through the streets and the boys either sat on the bundles and smoked cigarettes or hung on to the handles on the back and played “bustin’ bronco” as Cuz hit every pothole on the route. They didn’t appreciate that one slip and their lives might come to a tragic end. Neither did Cuz.

This Saturday night it was just Johnny and Mikey on board and they spent the entire trip riding the handles. Johnny’s foot slipped several times but he hung on. It was a rush. Afterwards, the boys were walking home still pumped up, still ready for some action. It was three o’clock in the morning.

“Hey, look at this!” Mikey called Johnny over to a little red Mustang convertible that was parked on the avenue. “The keys are in there.” He waited for Johnny to come over to look, waited for Johnny to make the suggestion. Johnny hesitated. It was a wild idea, but he was afraid. Mikey was still waiting. What the hell, Johnny thought.

“Whaddya say, Mikey, let’s go for a spin.” Mikey didn’t hear the commitment he was looking for. He decided to stall until he got it.

“I don’t know. It’s dangerous.”

“We’ll bring it back. Park it right back here. Nobody’s around. Nobody’ll ever know it was gone.”

“Are you gonna drive?” Mikey goaded him.

“Sure, I’ll drive.” Johnny had never driven a car before in his life.

The first few blocks were the roughest as the Mustang lurched forward and stopped, lurched forward and stopped. Finally, when he realized there was a very real possibility that he might go flying through the windshield, Mikey took over.

“Pull over here slowly. Put it in park. Easy.” Johnny took one last shot at killing them both before slamming on the brakes and easing the car into park.

“I’ll drive,” Mikey told him as he opened the passenger side door and got out. Mikey had driven a car many times on his uncle’s farm in Patchogue.

Pretty soon they were gliding down Lexington Avenue with the convertible top down and the stereo blaring. There were no other cars on the road at that hour, so the boys had the limelight to themselves.

The patrolman spotted them at the corner of Forty-fifth and Lex as they flew by. The speed wouldn’t have woken him but the music sure did. He also noticed that one of the headlights was out.

In the Mustang, the Stones were singing “Satisfaction” as loud as the radio could play it when Mikey just happened to glance in the mirror and saw the flashing lights-no way could he hear the siren. He wondered for a moment what he was doing wrong. He wasn’t speeding-maybe a few miles over the limit but that was supposed to be okay. Then reality set in: He was in a stolen car! There was probably an APB out! No time for rational thinking. Mikey gunned the engine.

Johnny was sitting in the passenger seat playing his imaginary drums as Mick wailed, oblivious to the crisis, until he was almost propelled into the back seat.

“What’s goin’ on?” he yelled at Mikey. The speedometer was rising: seventy, eighty. Suddenly Mikey lurched the car to the right and sped up Thirty-first Street to Park Avenue, where he made another right on two wheels and headed uptown. Johnny was in shock! What the hell was going on? Mikey hadn’t answered him. He was too intent on his driving. After a few seconds, Johnny looked behind. He counted four sets of flashing lights about three blocks back.

“Holy shit, Mikey!”

“How far back?” Mikey shouted.

“Three blocks but they’re gaining.”

“We gotta do something.” That sounded like a good idea to Johnny. They were doing ninety and the terror that eluded them on the back of Cuz’s truck had finally caught up with Johnny. “Get ready,” Mikey yelled over the still-blaring radio. “I’m gonna slam on the brakes. Then get out and run. Find an alley.”

As soon as he touched the brakes the back end started to fishtail. Mikey let up and stayed off the gas. When the car slowed up some he hit the brakes again and threw the shift into park. The car actually started to hop onto the sidewalk, sounding as if it was choking to death.

Johnny jumped out while the car was still in its death throes. He ran as fast as he could, heading east on Thirty-fifth, flew down some cellar stairs and then was out in the alley, with no sign of anyone behind him. He’d made it.

Mikey was not so lucky. He tried to jump out as the car was lurching but slipped and fell, slamming his shoulder into the pavement. The pain was almost unbearable. He struggled to get up, but the cops were already on him, guns drawn.

“Up against the wall, punk, hands over your head.”

“I can’t. I think my shoulder’s dislocated.”

“Don’t give me that shit,” one cop snarled as he grabbed Mikey’s left arm and yanked it over his head. Mikey let out a scream and passed out on the spot.

“Weren’t there two of them?” another officer asked as they waited for the ambulance.

“Not likely. We’d at least have seen the other one running away.”

Mikey was eighteen at the time, an adult legally, and was charged with the crime of grand theft auto. His lawyer convinced him and his parents to accept a plea of three to five years in prison. “He’ll be out in one, two at the max,” the lawyer told them.

Johnny’s name was never mentioned. He talked to Mikey a few times before the plea bargain but the conversation was always strained and awkward. Mikey was taking the rap for both of them-what else was there to say?