Sleepers

EIGHT

As we grew older, the violence around us intensified. The moment a boy's age hit double digits, he was no longer a mere nuisance to the older neighborhood kids; he was a potential threat. The most minor infractions could easily escalate into major street brawls.

We had now also reached an age where we were targeted by outsiders looking for quick scores.

Puerto Ricans coming down from San Juan Hill in upper Manhattan would jump a kid, lift his money and head back home. Blacks from Inwood, near the Heights, would cross the designated racial divide of Ninth Avenue. Traveling in packs of a half dozen or more, they would swarm, attack and leave before any retaliation could be mounted.

A number of the local street gangs attempted to recruit us, without success. The idea of being a gang member never held much appeal and neither did the idea that we had to kick back portions of earnings to the leader of the pack we joined.

We also weren't keen on the initiation process most gangs required: rubbing hot pieces of iron on your arm until all the skin came off; scarring you with strange, permanent tattoos; forcing you to pick a fight with the toughest guy from a rival gang, and if you beat him you were in. If you lost, you were a forgotten man. It wasn't for us. We stayed with who we trusted and we covered each other's backs. Just like in the western movies we admired.

The worst beating I ever got in Hell's Kitchen came not from my father or any other man or boy. It was at the hands of Janet Rivera, street leader of the Tornadoes.

Girl gangs had, throughout Hell's Kitchen history, been in many ways the most vicious. Unlike their male counterparts, the girls often attacked without warning or reason. They were also the more aggressive criminals, wantonly stalking passersby for street muggings and casing buildings for doorway robberies. They did not belong to any organized crime faction, but worked as independent operators, hired out for the best price.

In the sixties, these gangs could already trace their lineage back to the Lady Gophers, who terrorized the Manhattan waterfront at the turn of the century. The Lady Gophers had a special calling card: They left the amputated hands and fingers of their victims behind. A few years later, Sadie the Cat and her crew beat and mugged at will. Gallus Meg was a match for any man she came across, boasting till death of never having lost a fist fight. Hell Cat Maggie was said to have once beaten four of the toughest members of the Pug Uglies Gang into submission on a 10th Avenue street corner, then taken a fifth one home to her boarding house bed.

A number of the female gang leaders who lived long enough to survive their street battles opened saloons in their later years. Not surprisingly, many served as bouncers in their own watering holes.

'They demanded respect, those women,' one of King Be

The prevailing image of the mid-twentieth-century Hell's Kitchen street gang comes from the musical West Side Story. While Leonard Bernstein's masterpiece contains traces of truth – the racial tensions, a sense of place, the fear of falling in love on forbidden turf, the inability to move beyond social labels – such elements weren't enough for neighborhood cynics.

West Side Story was the most hated film in Hell's Kitchen.

'That movie sucked,' Fat Mancho complained. 'Guys dancin' around like jerks, girls hangin' on to their boys for life, cops dumb as flies. All bullshit. Made the gangs look soft. Made everybody look soft. In real life, soft didn't last long. They buried soft in Hell's Kitchen.'

Janet Rivera stood in front of the monument at the entrance to De Witt Clinton Park and popped the lid of a can of Reingold. She was with three friends, all members of her street gang. One of them, Vickie Gonzalez, had a straight razor in the back pocket of her Levis. Janet swigged the beer and watched me walk into the park with John, both of us bouncing spauldeens against the ground.

'Hey!' she yelled. 'Get your asses over where I can see them.'

'Now what,' John muttered.

'They're just breakin' balls,' I said. 'We got no beef with them.'

'We got no time for this,' John said.

'Let's see what they want,' I said.

'C'mon,' Rivera said. 'Don't be draggin' ass on me.'

'She is one ugly girl,' John said as we made our way toward the monument. 'Her family must take ugly pills.'

'You pricks walk through the park like you own it,' Rivera said, pointing at us with the hand holding the beer. 'Where the fuck you think you're goin'?'

'We're go

'You're wrong,' Rivera said. 'There is a major fuckin' problem.'

'Fill us in, gorgeous,' John said.

We knew what the problem was. Two weeks earlier, Michael, rushing to Tommy's defense, got into a street brawl with a Puerto Rican kid named Hector from the West 60s. He won the fight and forced Hector to walk out of Hell's Kitchen buck naked. Unfortunately, Hector was Janet Rivera's cousin, and she was looking to us for a payback.

Vickie Gonzalez put a hand in the pocket that held the razor. The other two girls wrapped sets of brass knuckles around their hands. Janet Rivera tossed her beer can into a clump of grass behind her. None of them looked happy. What would make them happy would be to leave me and John the way Michael had left Rivera's cousin – beaten, bruised and naked. Neither of us was eager to see that happen and it left us with only one choice, one that any tough, street-savvy, Hell's Kitchen hard-case would have made. We decided to run.

'Through the fence!' I yelled to John as we started. 'Head for the candy store.'

'They catch us, we're dead,' John said. 'That ugly one wants to kill me. I can tell.'

'They're all ugly,' I said, looking over my shoulder. 'And what's worse is they're all fast.'

We ran through a circular hole in a fence on the 11th Avenue side of the fields, across the red clay pitcher's mound and out the other side, past the Parkies' way station and the sprinkler pool. We were crisscrossing around the black pool bars when I slipped on a sandhill and landed on my side against a cement edge.

John stopped when he saw me fall.

'Get up, Shakes,' he urged. 'They're right on us.'

'I can't,' I said.

'You better,' John said.

The pain in my side was intense, jolts sharp and sudden.

'You keep ru

'I can't leave you,' John said.

'You'll be back in five minutes,' I said a lot more bravely than I felt. 'What can they do to me in five minutes?'

I stayed on the ground, clutching my side, watching John run down the hills of De Witt Clinton Park.

It was not the fear of getting a beating that held me. It was the fear of catching that beating from a girl gang. As I lay there, watching Rivera and her crew close in, I imagined the taunts and ridicule that would come, from friends and strangers alike. A lot of boys in Hell's Kitchen took home cuts and bruises handed out by Rivera and her Tornadoes. Not one of them ever admitted to it, at least publicly, and I was not about to be the first.

Janet Rivera stood over me and smiled, exposing a thin row of cracked teeth. 'I knew a little fucker like you couldn't outrun us.'