Sleepers

'You know either one of 'em?' Tommy asked, chafing at the starched collar and tight tie around his neck.

'The guy,' I said, drinking from a bottle of Pepsi. 'You know him too. From the gas station. Lets us drink from his water hose.'

'You're not used to seeing him without grease on his face,' Michael said, filling the pockets of his blue blazer with salt pretzels.

'You think it's his kid?' Tommy asked.

'Could be anybody's kid,' Michael said. 'She's not exactly shy.'

'Why's he marrying her?' I said. 'I mean, if you know all about her, how come he doesn't?'

'Maybe it is his kid,' Tommy said. 'Maybe she told him it was. You don't know.'

'That's right, Tommy,' Carol Martinez said. 'You don't know.'

Carol Martinez, twelve, was as much our friend as she was Michael's steady. Carol was a Hell's Kitchen half-breed. She inherited her temper and dark good looks from her Puerto Rican father, while her sarcastic wit and sharp tongue came courtesy of a strong-willed Irish mother who died in childbirth. Carol read books, worked after school in a bakery and, by and large, stayed to herself.

She ignored the pleas of the girl gangs to join their ranks, never carried a weapon, loved Westerns as well as sappy love stories and went to church only when the nuns forced her to go. Except for her father, Carol wasn't close to any members of her family and always appeared saddest around the holidays. The mothers of the neighborhood were fond of her, the fathers looked out for her and the boys kept their distance.

Except for us. She was always comfortable in our company. She stood up to Michael's quiet authority, was conscious of my youth and Tommy's sensitivity and fretted like a nurse over John's various illnesses. John had asthma and was quick to panic when caught in closed quarters or in any place he felt at a disadvantage, such as swimming far from shore. He also had a digestive defect and could not eat dairy products. He would get severe headaches, strong enough at times to make him drowsy. While John never complained about his health problems, including his minor heart condition, we were very much aware of them and considered them whenever we pla

That night she was wearing a blue ruffled dress with a small white flower pi

'Everybody's here,' John said when he saw her.

'I'm a friend of Janet's,' Carol said.

'Who's Janet?' John said.

'The bride, asswipe,' Michael said, and led Carol by the arm off to dance.

The three men came in just as the bride and groom started slicing the three-tiered wedding cake. They stood off to the side, their backs to the front door, their hands nursing long-necked bottles of Budweiser: one of them had a lit cigarette hanging from the corner of his mouth.

We were standing in the shadows next to the disc jockey, Michael and Carol holding hands, Tommy and John sneaking beers. I held a Sam Cooke 45, 'Twistin' the Night Away', which was next on the play list.

'You know 'em?' Michael asked, putting his arm around Carol's shoulders.

'The one with the cigarette,' I said. 'I've seen him in King Be

'What's he do for him?'

'He always passed himself off as a shooter,' I said. 'I don't know. Could be nothing more than talk.'

'Why's he here?' Tommy asked.

'Maybe he likes weddings,' John said.

The three men walked toward the center of the room, their eyes on the groom, who was eating cake and sipping champagne from the back of his wife's spike-heeled shoe. They stopped directly across the table from the couple and rested their beers on a stack of paper plates.

'What do you want?' the groom asked, wiping his lips with the back of his hand.

'We come to offer our best,' the man in the middle said. 'To you and to the girl.'

'You just done that,' the groom said. 'Now maybe you should leave.'

'No cake?' the man in the middle said.

The crowd around the table had grown silent.

'C'mon, guys,' a middle-aged man said, his speech slurred, the front of his white shirt wet from beer. 'A wedding's no place for problems.'

The man stared him back into silence.

'Maybe your friend's right,' the man said. 'Maybe a wedding's no place for what we have to do. Let's take it outside.'

'I don't wa

'You got the money?'

'No,' the groom said. 'I ain't got that kind of money. I told you that already. It's go

'If you don't have the money,' the man said, nodding toward the bride, 'you know the deal.'

She had not moved since the men approached, paper plate full of cake in one hand, empty champagne glass in the other, heavily-made up face flushed red.

'I ain't go

The man in the middle was quiet for a moment. Then he nodded and said, 'Enjoy the rest of your night.'

The three men turned away from the bride and groom and disappeared into the crowd, making their way toward the back door and the dark street.

We sat braced against the thin bars of the first floor fire escape, staring at the alley below. Four garbage cans and an empty refrigerator carton stood against one wall; the shadows of a forty-watt bulb filtered across the auditorium's back door. The rain had picked up, a steady Hudson River breeze blowing newly laundered sheets across the dirt and empty cans of the alley.

Michael had positioned us there. He was positive something was going to happen and he'd picked the most strategic place to observe the action.

We watched as the bride and groom stood in the narrow doorway, arms wrapped around each other, both drunk, kissing and hugging. The harsh light from the auditorium forced us to move back toward the window ledge.

The groom took his wife by the hand and stepped into the alley, moving toward 51st Street, holding a half-empty bottle of Piels in his free hand. They stopped to wave at a handful of friends crowding across a doorway, the men drunk, the women shivering in the face of the rain.

'Don't leave any beer behind,' the groom shouted. 'It's paid for.'

'Count on that,' one of the drunks shouted back.

'Goodbye,' the bride said, still waving. 'Thank you for everything.'

'Let's go,' the groom now said to his new wife. 'It's our wedding night.' With that, a grin stretched across his face.

The first bullet came out of the darkness and hit the groom just above his brown belt buckle, sinking him to his knees, a stu

The group by the door stood motionless, frozen.

The second shot, coming from the rear of the alley, hit the groom in the throat, dropping him face first onto the pavement.

'Help!' the bride screamed. 'Jesus, God, please help! He's go

No one moved. No one spoke. The faces in the doorway had inched deeper into the shadows, more concerned with avoiding the shooter's scope than with rushing to the side of a fallen friend.

Sirens blared in the distance.

The bride was on her knees, blood staining the front of her gown, crying over the body of her dying husband. A priest ran into the alley, toward the couple. An elderly woman came out of the auditorium holding a large white towel packed with ice, water flowing down the sides of her dress. Two young men, sobered by the shooting, moved out of the doorway to stare down at the puddles of blood.

'Let's get outta here,' John said quietly.