Find Big Fat Fanny Fast (8 page)

Fifteen minutes later, they entered the town of Warwick and Tony B let out a sigh of relief. He knew the way back to Greenwood Lake from there.

When they arrived at the O'Reilly residence, Tony B's wristwatch said 10 pm. So an hour’s trip took approximately two and a half hours, because nobody awake in the car knew where the hell they were going.

Tony B dragged O'Reilly out of the car and tried to stand him up straight. It was of no use. So Tony B put O'Reilly's right arm around Tony B's shoulder. Betty did the same on the left and Ann unlocked the front door of the house. They somehow got the big lug into the house, up the stairs and into the master bedroom, where they flung him onto the bed. O'Reilly lay back, snoring with his mouth wide open, which was not a pretty sight to Tony B.

Tony B kissed Ann on the lips goodbye. A long, passionate kiss. Then he tried to kiss Betty on the cheek. She turned her head and offered her puckered lips instead. Not taking the bait, Tony did an about-face and exited the house.

    He jumped into his car, hit the ignition and headed back to civilization — good old New York City.

*****

A few days later, Tony B discovered something that made him very angry.

It seemed that this jerk who worked at Tony's Drugstore on Mulberry and Canal, thought it was cute to put pinholes in the store's condoms that neighborhood people bought at the counter in the back.

Now Tony B knew exactly how Ann had gotten pregnant and why Tony B's life would undergo a drastic change for about the next fifty years or so, if Tony B was lucky enough to live that long.

The jerk's name was Lenny the Lunkhead. Lenny was so dumb, he never got past the 4
th
grade at PS 130, a school so low in academic standards, a rock could graduate on time with high honors.

Lenny the Lunkhead (nobody knew his last name and nobody cared), spent his wretched life in a series of one insignificant job after another. The Lunkhead made the bulk of his yearly cash in the two month period before the 4
th
of July, when the streets of the 6
th
Ward, all the way to the Holland Tunnel on west Canal Street, were one gigantic firework sale.

People from all over the tri-state area rushed into the 6
th
Ward to buy fireworks for their 4
th
of July celebrations. Every block in the 6
th
Ward was manned by at least one runner, ages ten up to social security age and older. Their job was to holler loud to every passing car, “Fireworks! Fireworks! Get your fireworks here!”

When the runner found a willing customer, he told them to pull over and park by the nearest hydrant. He would then take their order and also take their money in advance, to make sure they stuck around. Then the runner would dash to the nearest drop area, usually a cellar, or a first floor apartment, or maybe even the trunk of a parked car, and give the fireworks order to the block boss, the man actually responsible for divvying out the fireworks. The block boss would fill the order, by placing the fireworks in a large brown paper shopping bag, which he handed to the runner.

The runner would dash back to the customer's parked car and hand them the bag with the fireworks saying, “Quick get out of here. There's cops all over the place.” Which indeed there were.

The truth about the cops was that they could care less about who was selling what, as long as they got their weekly cut, which they always did.

Every once in a blue moon, the police brass from uptown would order a firework crackdown in the 6
th
Ward. When this happened, the local 5
th
Precinct cops would round up the designated pinchees and load them into a Paddy Wagon for transport to the city prison called the Tombs. Every year, the people who took the pinch, were well taken care of by their associates, so in some ways it was a good thing for them. They got to stay off the hot, scorching streets for a few days, got three squares a day on the arm and still got paid as if they were in the street running the works.

The lucky runners were selected by the mob in advance to take the pinch. It usually went down like this. The cops would send word to the mob, “Tomorrow one pm, have the guys you want pinched standing in front of 123 Mulberry.” And like clockwork, the next day at one pm, half a dozen cops, in riot gear, would descend upon the building with drawn handguns, like they were after Public Enemy Number One. They were followed by an empty Paddy Wagon, which would not be empty for long.

Hoods with long criminal records, like Charlie Chickens, Waldo the Walrus and Pigeonhead, would be at the appointed area, all spruced up and ready to go. They were like kids going on a vacation upstate with the Fresh Air Fund.

The cops would go through the public act of cuffing them, but as soon as they were in the Paddy Wagon, the cops would take off the cuffs and give them ham and cheese sandwiches to eat later, while they were being processed at the Tombs, which was conveniently located around the corner on Baxter Street, smack in the middle of the 6
th
Ward firework sales extravaganza.

The trust between the fireworks runners and the customers, who paid for their stash in advance, was indeed a sacred thing. The block boss made sure all his runners understood that shorting a customer was not a good idea, because it would be very bad for business. If the word got around that customers were getting screwed, the firework business, and it was a very profitable business for the mob indeed, would be in danger of extinction. And if a runner was caught shorting his customer, the runner would be in danger of extinction too.

None of this made any impression on Lenny the Lunkhead. Whenever he felt the urge (which usually meant after he had a bad night at Yonkers Raceway), and after receiving the fireworks from his street boss, the Lunkhead would go to his own hidden drop area, usually the first floor apartment he shared with his grandmother on Hester St. There the Lunkhead would remove half the fireworks, fill the bottom of the bag with crumpled newspapers, then throw the other half of the fireworks on top of the newspapers.

The Lunkhead would then run to the customer's car, hand them the shopping bag and yell, “Put this on the floor in the back seat, then scram. Don't stop until you get to where you're going. The streets are flooded with cops.”

After he had accumulated enough stash fill two huge boxes, The Lunkhead would take a cab to South Brooklyn and drop off the works with his cousin, who would then sell them on the streets, splitting the profits with Lenny the Lunkhead.

This went on for a few fireworks seasons, until The Lunkhead's scheme just went blotto. One of the customers whom he had shorted, just happened to be the cousin of one of the 5
th
Precinct cops on the take. The customer reported the shortage to his cop cousin and soon the Lunkhead was out of a job and minus a few front teeth to boot.

With The Lunkhead's academic limitations, and the fact he was banned from doing anything even remotely connected to the mob, The Lunkhead got a job at Tony's Drugstore at the corner of Mulberry and Canal. It was a combination luncheonette, soda fountain, with a full drug store in the back.

The Lunkhead's job at Tony's was refilling the shelves with whatever and making a few chocolate, or vanilla eggs creams at the soda fountain up front. But The Lunkhead was soon relieved of his fountain duties and with good reason.

One day, mob captain Boots Latoure sauntered into Tony's Drug Store. His
goumada
, a bleach blond named Cuddles, sat in his Caddy Convertible double-parked outside, with the top down. The thing was, Boots didn't like to use rubbers when he performed the horizontal mambo, so Cuddles told him there was a new foam spermicide contraceptive called Emco, that would kill the little buggers before they had a chance to do any damage.

Boots never heard of Emco and Cuddles was too embarrassed to go inside Tony's Drug store to ask for anything that would indicate she was engaging in sexual relations with half the neighborhood, which she certainly was.

So Boots Latoure moseyed up to the soda fountain where Lenny the Lunkhead was ostensibly reading Sports Illustrated, except Playboy Magazine, stuffed inside the sports magazine, was really the object of his attention.

Boots didn't want anyone to know why he was there and wasn't sure the drugstore sold Emco anyway, so he motioned for the Lenny the Lunkhead to come over to him.

He whispered into The Lunkhead's ear, “You got any Emco in the back?”

Now what Boots and any normal human being would expect, was for The Lunkhead to go quietly to the back of the drug store and ask his boss about the Emco.

Instead, The Lunkhead cupped both hands to his mouth and yelled towards the back of the store, “HEY TONY, YOU GOT ANY EMCO?”

With The Lunkhead yelling so loud, Boots' ears felt like they were bleeding, and the entire neighborhood, including Cuddles sitting in the Caddy outside, knew Boots and Cuddles were planning to do some sexual experimentation in the near, or even immediate future.

As Boots was strangling Lenny the Lunkhead so bad The Lunkhead's eyes were hyper-extending from his skull, Tony the Druggist ran from the back of the store and used every ounce of his strength to extricate The Lunkhead's throat from Boots' death grip.

From that day on, The Lunkhead was banned to the back of the store, to refill the shelves, wash, the floors, dust the cabinets and do anything that didn't include him being anywhere near the soda fountain up front.

The Lunkhead did not like this too much and he was hell bent on revenge. Only at first, he did not know exactly how he was going to exact that revenge.

Tony's Drugstore also did a brisk neighborhood business in condoms, which were not on the shelves, but in the back behind the drug counter under the cash register.

If someone wanted a pack of condoms, all they had to do was pass the soda fountain, walk to the back of the store and ask Tony the Druggist, in a nice soft voice, to give them a pack of Trojans; ribbed, lubricated, or maybe just plain.
Tony the Druggist was the model of discretion and no one, but the customer and Tony the Druggist ever knew about the rubber transaction.