Sleepers (45 page)

“H
AS THE JURY
reached its verdict?” Judge Weisman asked, sitting impassively behind his bench.

“We have, your honor,” answered the jury foreman, a stocky bald man in a plaid shirt.

The bailiff took the folded piece of paper from the foreman and walked it over to Judge Weisman. The judge opened the paper and looked down, his face betraying nothing.

I looked past the wall of heads and shoulders surrounding me and glanced over at John and Tommy, sitting up close to their table, their hands bunched in fists. Danny O’Connor sat next to them, rubbing a hand against the back of his neck, beneath the frayed collar of his shirt. Across from them, Michael sat and stared at the empty witness box. He was taking deep breaths, his fingers twirling a felt-tip pen over his knuckles.

Judge Weisman nodded to the foreman, who stood in front of his seat.

“On the count of murder in the second degree, how do you find the defendant, John Reilly?” Judge Weisman asked.

The foreman bit his lips and looked around the courtroom with nervous eyes.

“Not guilty,” the foreman said.

“On the count of murder in the second degree, how do you find the defendant, Thomas Marcano?”

“Not guilty,” the foreman said.

The courtroom erupted in a thunder of applause, screams, shouts, and whistles, few hearing the judge’s call to order and dismissal of charges against the defendants.

I stood up and hugged Carol.

“You did it, Shakes,” she whispered in my ear.

“We
did it,” I said, holding her tight. “We
all
did it.”

I looked over and saw Michael pick up his briefcase, shake hands with Danny O’Connor, and walk into the crowd, where he was swallowed up by the mass of bodies. I saw John and Tommy smiling and laughing, reaching out for as many hands as they could, cries of not guilty filling the air around us. I saw Judge Weisman walk down from his place behind the bench.

Flashbulbs popped.

A pair of women in the middle of the room began to cry hysterically.

Four young men in the back, heading out of the room, sang the words to “Danny Boy.”

An old lady behind me stayed seated and fingered the beads of her rosary, her lips moving to a series of silent prayers.

The jury members filed out of the box, some with their heads bowed, a few waving to people in the crowd.

Danny O’Connor, all smiles and sweat, walked out of the courtroom to a chorus of men and women chanting his name.

John and Tommy stood by their places, arms in the air, basking in the glory of their moment

Michael Sullivan was already in the elevator, heading down to the lobby, his mission completed, his career over.

I took Carol by the hand and led her out of the courtroom, the loud, happy sound of the crowd following us down the corridor.

It was the sound of justice.

Spring 1980

23

T
HE LONG TABLE
and chairs ran nearly the length of the restaurant’s back room, just off the main dining hall. Pitchers of beer and bottles of Dewar’s and Johnnie Walker Red dotted the cloth, along with candles flickering inside hurricane shells. Two large floral arrangements, resting in the middle of a pair of wicker baskets with half-moon handles, anchored the ends.

A full month had passed since the acquittal. In those few weeks, our lives had reverted back to what they had been prior to the murder of Sean Nokes.

Carol returned to her stack of social service files, helping troubled teens and single mothers fight a system that had neither time enough nor funds enough to care.

John and Tommy went back to the streets, running the West Side Boys, drinking heavily, and once again breaking laws with abandon. No one had expected them to change. It was too late.

King Benny went back to his club and Fat Mancho returned to his bodega.

I was promoted from clerk to reporter trainee, covering the entertainment beat. It meant I got to go to the movies for free, just like I used to do when I was a kid. Except now I didn’t have to sneak my way in.

Michael was the only one of us who had made any significant change in his life. As he had promised, he had resigned from his job, three weeks after working the losing end of a can’t-miss case.

I
WAS THE
first to arrive and chose a seat at the center of the table, my back to the wall. A young waiter in white shirt and black bow tie came into the room and asked if I wanted anything. I looked at the line of beer and whiskey and smiled.

“This is an Irish table,” I said. “And I’m Italian.”

“What’s missing?” the waiter asked.

“Wine.”

“Red or white?”

“Both,” I said.

The waiter bumped into John and Tommy on his way out of the room. I stood up and we stared at each other for a few minutes. Then they both came around the table and squeezed me in a long, silent hug.

“I don’t even know
how
to fuckin’ thank you,” Johnny said, holding me even tighter.

“I can’t believe what you did,” Tommy said. “And I can’t believe you got away with it.”

“What do you mean?” I said. “Don’t tell me you
really
killed him?”

They both laughed, and loosening their hold, pulled back chairs on both sides of me.

“Besides, I had nothin’ to do with it,” I said, sitting down as well. “It was all Mikey. It was his plan.”

“I gotta tell you,” John said, pouring himself a glass of beer. “When I first heard he took the case, I was gonna have him burned.”

“What stopped you?”

“He was a friend,” John said. “And if you’re gonna go away on a murder rap, who better to send you?”

“Then, the way he was handlin’ his end of the case, I thought he just sucked as a lawyer,” Tommy said. “I started feelin’ sorry for the bastard.”

“Never feel sorry for a lawyer,” Michael said, standing in front of us, a wide smile on his face.

“Get over here, counselor,” John said, grabbing Michael’s arm and dragging him around the table.

Tommy rushed in from the other side and squeezed me against them as they hugged. We were nothing more than a small circle of arms and crunched faces.

“You’re the real count!” John shouted. “Alive and well and working in downtown New York City!”

“Not after this week,” Michael said. “This count’s on the dole now.”

“What’d you do with all that buried treasure?” Tommy asked. “Gamble it away?”

“How do you think we paid off King Benny?” Michael said.

Carol stood in the entryway, her arms folded, laughing and shaking her head.

“What is this?” she asked. “A gay bar?”

We turned when we heard her voice. Her hair was freshly cut and styled, and she wore a short, tight black dress, a black purse hanging off her shoulder on a long strap.

“It
was,”
John said. “Till you walked in.”

“You want us to hug you too?” Tommy asked.

“How about just a hello,” Carol said.

“How about a kiss to go with the hello?” John asked.

“Deal,” Carol said, coming around to our end.

“Hurry up,” I said. “Before the waiter comes in.”

“Yeah,” Tommy said. “Then we’re gonna have to kiss him too.”

“I saw him on my way in,” Carol said. “He’s cute. I’d throw him a kiss.”

“That’s funny,” John said. “That’s what Shakes said.”

We sat around the table, ordered our dinners, poured our drinks, and talked until night turned to morning.

We talked about everything we could think of, five friends with so many shared moments, afraid to let our time together come to an end. We talked about everything but the trial. And the months we had sworn never to resurrect with speech.

Carol let loose her frustration with city bureaucracy and the battles she lost each day.

John and Tommy talked about their lives of crime. They knew it was a fast lane that could end only with a bullet or iron bars. But it was the only way they knew to feel in control, to push away the demons that gnawed at them during their rare sober moments.

Michael was at peace with his decision and curious about where it would take him. He had saved enough money to live for a year without working and had already invested in a one-way ticket on a plane leaving for London the following weekend. He had made no plans beyond that.

I half joked that my career choices were narrowed down to two. I was either going to be a reporter or an usher at one of the theaters whose running times I knew so well.

Eventually, the beer, wine, and liquor took hold and we switched gears, laughing over simpler times, in the years before Wilkinson starved us of laughter. Over and over we recalled our many pranks, relishing the freedom and foolishness a Hell’s Kitchen childhood allowed.

“You guys remember when you formed that stupid singing group?” Carol asked, pouring water into a glass.

“The Four Gladiators,” Michael said, smiling. “Best quartet to ever hold a Hell’s Kitchen corner.”

“Remember what Shakes wanted to call the group?” Johnny said, lighting a cigarette.

“The Count and His Cristos,” Tommy said. “Man, that woulda sent albums flyin’ outta the stores.”

“We weren’t
that
bad,” I said. “Some people
wanted
to hear us sing.”

“That group from the deaf school don’t count,” John said.

“Why not?” I said. “They applauded.”

“You guys were
awful,”
Carol said, laughing. “Kids cried when they heard you sing.”

“They were sad songs,” I said.

“Fat Mancho was gonna be our manager,” Tommy said. “And King Benny was gonna be the bankroll. You know, get us suits and travel money, shit like that.”

“What happened to
that
plan?” Carol asked.

“They heard us sing,” I said.

“Fat Mancho said he’d eat flesh before he put his name next to ours,” John said.

“What’d King Benny say?” Carol asked.

“He didn’t say anything,” I said. “He walked back into his club and closed the door.”

“We stole from everybody we liked,” Tommy said, finishing a mug of beer.

“So what’s changed?” Carol asked, watching me pour her a fresh glass of wine.

“We had enough cuts to make an album,” I said. “We ripped off Frankie Valli, Dion, Bobby Darin.”

“The cream,” Carol said.

“Only with us it was sour cream,” Tommy said.

“Let’s do a song from our album,” Michael said, leaning across the table, smiling. “For Carol.”

“Don’t you guys have to go out and shoot somebody?” Carol said, hiding her face in her hands.

“We
always
got time for a song,” John said, standing and leaning against the wall.

“You pick it, Mikey,” Tommy said, standing next to Johnny. “Nothin’ too slow. We wanna keep Carol on her toes.”

“Let’s do ‘Walk Like a Man,’” Michael said. “Shakes does a good Valli on that one.”

“Back us up,” I said to Carol, handing her two soupspoons. “Hit these against some glasses when I point.”

“Not too loud,” Carol said, looking through the doorway behind her. “Some people might be eating.”

“We sing better in men’s rooms,” Tommy said. “The walls there hold the sound.”

“There’s one downstairs,” Carol said. “I’ll wait here.”

“This is like the Beatles getting together again,” I said.

Carol just snorted.

The four of us huddled in a corner of the room, me in front. Michael, Tommy, and John each kept one hand on my shoulder, snapping their fingers to an imaginary beat. Carol sat back in her chair, looked at the four of us, and smiled.

She clapped her hands as we started to sing “Walk
Like a Man” in our best Frankie Valli and the Four Seasons voices.

Then we all cupped a hand to an ear, fingers still snapping, and hit all the right a cappella notes.

Carol stood on her chair and slapped the spoons against the side of her leg, mixing in with the beat.

Three waiters stood in the doorway and joined in.

Two diners standing behind them whistled their approval.

The bartender drummed his hands against the counter and handed out free drinks to all.

An elderly couple, in for a late-night espresso, wrapped their arms around each other and danced.

It was our special night and we held it for as long as we could. It was something that belonged to us. A night that would be added to our long list of memories.

It was our happy ending.

And it was the last time we would ever be together again.

24

E
ARLY ON THE
morning of March 16, 1984, John Reilly’s bloated body was found faceup in the hallway of a tenement on West 46th Street. His right hand held the neck of the bottle of lethal boiler-room gin that killed him. He had six dollars in the front pocket of his black leather coat and a ten-dollar bill in the flap of his hunter’s shirt. A .44-caliber bulldog nestled at the
base of his spine and a stiletto switchblade was jammed inside his jeans.

At the time of his death, he was a suspect in five unsolved homicides.

He was two weeks past his thirty-second birthday.