Sleepers

'You got it,' I agreed.

'Swear on it?'

'You can't swear in church,' I said.

The woman's voice was soft and low, barely above a whisper. The edge of a veil hung across her face, her hands curled against the darkness of the booth, the tips of her fingernails scraping the base of the wood.

'Bless me Father,' she began. 'It has been six weeks since my last confession.'

We both knew who she was, had seen her more than once walking the streets of Hell's Kitchen, arm in arm with the latest man to catch her fancy. She was a woman our fathers smiled about and our mothers told us to ignore.

'I'm not happy about my life, Father,' she said. 'It's like I don't want to wake up in the morning anymore.'

'Why?' I asked, my voice muffled by the back of John's shirt.

'It's wrong,' she said. 'Everything I do is wrong and I don't know how to stop.'

'You must pray,' I said.

'I do, Father,' she said. 'Believe me, I do. Every day. It's not doing any good.'

'It will,' I said.

'I sleep with married men,' the woman said. 'Men with families. In the morning I tell myself it's the last time. And it never is.'

'One day it will be,' I said, watching her hands curve around a set of rosary beads.

'It's go

John looked at me, both hands locked over his mouth.

'The father?' I asked.

'Take a number,' the woman said. The sarcasm could not hide the sadness in her voice.

'What are you going to do?'

'I know what you want me to do,' the woman said. 'And I know what I should do. I just don't know what I'm go

'There's time,' I said, sweat ru

'I got lotsa things,' the woman said. 'Time just isn't one of 'em.'

The woman blessed herself, rolled up the rosary beads and put them in the front pocket of her dress. She brushed her hair away from her eyes and picked up the purse resting by her knees.

'I gotta go,' she said, and then, much to our shock, she added, 'Thanks for listening, fellas. I appreciate it and I know you'll keep it to yourselves.'

She knocked at the screen with two fingers, waved and left the booth.

'She knew,' John said.

'Yeah,' I said. 'She knew.'

'Why she tell us all that?'

'I guess she had to tell somebody.'

John stood up and brushed against the wall, accidentally sliding open the small door to the confessional. A man knelt on the other side, obscured by the screen.

'Bless me Father for I have si

'So?' John said. 'What's that make you? Special?'

John opened the main door and we both walked out of the booth, our heads bowed, our hands folded in prayer.

Summer 1964

FOUR

We were well-schooled in revenge.

Hell's Kitchen offered graduate workshops in correcting wrongs. Any form of betrayal had to be confronted and settled. Our standing in the neighborhood depended on how quickly and in what ma

When my friends and I were young, Hell's Kitchen was run by a man named King Be

In his youth, King Be

'He was fourteen when I first met him,' my father told me one night. 'Wasn't much of anything back then. Always getting the shit kicked out of him in street fights. Then, one day, for who knows what reason, an Irish guy, about twenty-five years old, takes him and throws him down a flight of stairs. King Be

His decisions were never rash and were always final. His words were, in Hell's Kitchen, respected as the law. It was the only law never broken.

King Be

He would do favors for those he liked and ignored the financial requests of those he considered liabilities. He would listen to people with problems and offer opinions on how those problems could be solved. He was a Father confessor without a conscience.

The large room was wrapped in darkness. Three men in black jackets and black sports shirts sat at a table by an open window, playing sette bello and smoking unfiltered cigarettes. Above them, a dim bulb dangled from a knotted cord. Behind them, a jukebox played Italian love songs. None of the men spoke.

At the far, end of the room, a tall, thin man stood behind a half-moon bar, sca

A large white cup filled with espresso was on his left, a Kenmore alarm clock ticked away on his right. He was dressed in black shirt, sweater, shoes and slacks, with a large oval-shaped ring on the fourth finger of his left hand. His hair was slicked back and his face was clean shaven. He chewed a small piece of gum and had a thick, wood toothpick in the corner of his mouth.

I turned the knob on the old wood door that led into the room and swung it open, thin shafts of afternoon sunlight creeping in behind me. No one looked up as I walked toward King Be

'Can I talk to you for a minute?' I asked, standing across from him, on the far side of the bar, my back to the three men playing cards.

King Be

'I would like to work for you,' I said. 'Help you out, do whatever you need.'

King Be

'I can be a lot of help to you,' I said. 'You can count on that.'

One of the men playing cards slid his chair back, stood up and walked toward me.

'You the butcher's kid, am I right?' he asked, his three-day-old beard growing in gray, the bottoms of his teeth brown and caked.

'Yeah,' I said.

'Well, what kind of work you lookin' for?' he asked, leaning his head toward King Be

'Whatever,' I said. 'It doesn't matter.'

'I don't think we got anything, kid,' he said. 'Somebody musta steered you some wrong info.'