It was a rainy night in Manhattan on the night of the third. The neon lights that headed pizzerias and clam houses reflected there electric blues and whites back onto the puddled streets of Little Italy. The war of 73’ was about to get underway.
Crazy Joe had done a stiff eight year stint in Attica for racketeering and a weapons charge. He left the prison gates in ’72 in a pinstripe suit and a trilby, later on the boss looked up from his meatballs to see Joey, hat tipped to one side, ‘I have returned and now I want what’s mine’. He renounced gun slinging for about a year saying nobody earns a nickel in a street war. But the intensity of the Brooklyn streets got too much for him. He left his tenement building in a long coat and hat and strolled into the clubhouse of his lifelong deadly foe, shot the bartender in the foot, emptied the till, took off his hat in his fingertip and thumb and winked ‘Tell ‘em it was Crazy Joe’. After this they tried to strangle his brother after they lured him to a club in Harlem but a patrol officer disturbed them and saved his life. When the news filtered through to Joey about his brother he was out the door before the messenger could finish speaking, in a big coat with a Tommy gun and a 44 magnum. They never did pin the murder of those three Colombo soldiers to anybody, but I was looking after my mother when she took ill that same night, I’d just shut the door behind me and was about to walk to the car, the streets were empty. Then out of nowhere three shots rang out and a woman screamed and I couldn’t find the car key on the ring for scrambling quick enough. Just as I’d found the right key all went silent except for the slow tapping of Italian leather brogues getting louder. I looked up to see Crazy Joe, those broad shoulders like a bulls, walking coolly on his way back to Brooklyn. Joey would later get shot to death outside Umberto’s clam house in the war that followed, but I’ll never forget him as he walked through the rain and tipped his hat at me as the sirens grew louder in the background.
Crazy Joe had done a stiff eight year stint in Attica for racketeering and a weapons charge. He left the prison gates in ’72 in a pinstripe suit and a trilby, later on the boss looked up from his meatballs to see Joey, hat tipped to one side, ‘I have returned and now I want what’s mine’. He renounced gun slinging for about a year saying nobody earns a nickel in a street war. But the intensity of the Brooklyn streets got too much for him. He left his tenement building in a long coat and hat and strolled into the clubhouse of his lifelong deadly foe, shot the bartender in the foot, emptied the till, took off his hat in his fingertip and thumb and winked ‘Tell ‘em it was Crazy Joe’. After this they tried to strangle his brother after they lured him to a club in Harlem but a patrol officer disturbed them and saved his life. When the news filtered through to Joey about his brother he was out the door before the messenger could finish speaking, in a big coat with a Tommy gun and a 44 magnum. They never did pin the murder of those three Colombo soldiers to anybody, but I was looking after my mother when she took ill that same night, I’d just shut the door behind me and was about to walk to the car, the streets were empty. Then out of nowhere three shots rang out and a woman screamed and I couldn’t find the car key on the ring for scrambling quick enough. Just as I’d found the right key all went silent except for the slow tapping of Italian leather brogues getting louder. I looked up to see Crazy Joe, those broad shoulders like a bulls, walking coolly on his way back to Brooklyn. Joey would later get shot to death outside Umberto’s clam house in the war that followed, but I’ll never forget him as he walked through the rain and tipped his hat at me as the sirens grew louder in the background.
(Drawing by Tony Blythe)
1 comment:
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