EPILOGUE
REFLECTIONS
I D LIKE TO THINK Im not just older but wiser now as I write this, that I can reflect back on the things that have happened to me and around me during my youth and young adulthood with some sort of perspective.
Ive seen friends kill friends. Ive seen guys grow up and kill their mentors. Ive seen mentors kill the guys they were grooming. Why? Usually it was because they were paranoid. They got so scared from so much time in the Life that they could no longer tell the good guys from the bad guys. Or maybe that was the trouble: Maybe we were all bad guys.
Ive seen guys so loyal they would die for each other and then break up over money or rank in the crew. In this world, youre good as long as youre needed. Looking back over everything Ive seen and heard, I feel like my life in the Life took place in a mirror, built on backward rules and never quite real. It was an oxymoronic world based on loyalty and comprised of rats. You were expected to be loyal to bosses who were in turn ratting on you. I thought they were gods, but they all died.
Ricky lived much longer than he should have, after having been shot three different times and surviving two bad car crashes. The joke was that Ricky had nine liveslike a cat. We always said he was so bad that even the devil wouldnt take him. When he was actually dying, in 2010, we still suspected he might pull through. His mind was still there, but his body was failing him.
The last words that I ever spoke with him were over the phone. I didnt want to go to Florida to visit him, because I didnt want to see him actually dying. I didnt want to believe it. On the phone I could pretend it wasnt really true.
He said to me, Hey, pal, dont worry. Im going to be fine.
I told him I knew it.
You come down here, and well have dinner and drinks, he said.
Then he died and left me all alone. It was a shock, because hed never left me alone in the fifty years Id been with him.
* * *
The following year, 2011, my mom and I visited my godfather, Bobby Darrow Bongiovi, at the Coxsackie Medical Center, where he was dying of throat cancer, just finishing up his life sentence for killing that guy in the mens room of the bar way back in 1973. He was a sick man, but when he saw me he still smiled.
Hed refused treatment for his cancer. He knew he was going to die. Why prolong the inevitable? He spoke to me with a raspy voice, The only thing I have left is my hair, and Im not losing it.
He had with him two mirrors, a comb, and a stack of lettershis entire lot of worldly possessions after seventy-four years of life.
He told me it was time for him to go and be with my dad. He apologized for not being at Rickys funeral. I told him he had a good excuse. I knew he wouldve been there if he could.
We laughed and talked about the times when he was young and I was a kid and all of the good times wed had. He asked me if I remembered him picking me up and driving around. I did. I asked him if he remembered throwing coffee out the window of his Avenue L apartment into the cemetery below. He did.
I still think thats nuts, I said.
Why, do you think were normal? he asked with a smile.
It was getting late, and I knew I wouldnt be seeing him again.
I said, Besides being in prison, what do you regret?
He said, Frankie Boy, I have a few regrets. One, I should never have gotten caught for killing that prick in the bar. The Law railroaded me, and the guys left me out to rot. Two, I never got the chance to kill Pete the Greek, the bodyguard with Joey Gallo the night Joey got whacked. Pete was involved. I should have realized something was up when he told me to leave the Copa, that he had it covered. He couldnt protect himself, never mind Joey. Pete got a gun pinch, then I got picked up, and I never got a chance to kill the mutt. Three, if I had known that Albert was the piece of shit that he is, I wouldnt have wasted the bullet on that prick in the bar. He left me here like a dog. What a mutt!
(Note to Albert: If you are reading this book, I am just reporting the words that came out of Bobbys mouth. I have no opinion on the matter. Im just telling the story. Even after we left the Gallos, I always stood up for you when anyone would say any not-so-nice things. I believe that if youre with someone, its got to be all the way, and you never did anything wrong to menothing serious, anyway.)
I said, Bobby, youve been in here for thirty-seven years. Youve had a lot of time to think about it. You dont regret doing any of this shit at all?
He said, Frankie Boy, I did so much more work. This is what I am. If I regret it, Im going to hell as a punk. Id rather go to hell recommended.
There was a little more talk, and I knew he was growing weaker, so I said to my mother, Lets go.
I leaned over and kissed Bobby good-bye, and with a tear in my eye, I left.
Driving home, I said to my mom, I just lost the two guys I loved the most within a year. I got that scary feeling of being alone again. Two days later we got the call: Bobby had died in his sleep.
* * *
Mom and I went to see Punchy at his restaurant on Columbia Street. I didnt realize how long it had been since Id last seen him. He was a tough, hard guy, but hed grown old.
I felt a little bit nostalgic for the old days, but not entirely. Punchy had always been good to me, but hed never really stopped seeing me as a kid, and I had to get away from him because he wasnt treating me like a grown man.
No matter what I did, I got no recognition. I know that in this Life you dont always get a pat on the back or a star in your book, but there are still ways to let people know that what they did in the Life is recognized, and I could have used more of that from Punchy. Now I saw how much time had changed him, and all I could think about was how old I now was. When I saw Punchy, I got a flashback to the day hed gotten shot on President Street while standing with Tony Bernardo, getting a hot dog. I didnt mind when they had me staying with him in the hospital. I liked him and he was one of the big boys. I thought guarding him would be a feather in my cap. Now I looked at him after years of not seeing him, and it felt like my world was coming to an endagain. He looked old, sick, and frail. It was still him, but I felt like he wasnt there.
