Philadelphia Noir - Carlin Romano [73]
I had to wonder at my own tendency to be blasé about the wiseguy-on-wiseguy crime that made our neighborhood legendary. We got our slices at Lorenzo’s on the corner of 9th and Christian, and ate them just down the street under the two-story mural of the late Mayor Frank Rizzo looking vaguely off. It didn’t disturb my appetite for splashy red tomato pie to know that mob boss Sal Testa almost got his arm blown off in this same spot, eating a bucket of raw clams.
And then there was the night Nicky Scarfo, Jr. got hit at Dante & Luigi’s, a beloved old family restaurant two small blocks away from us. I actually heard that one. October 31, 1989, a balmy Halloween evening, perfect for trick-or-treating, and the kids were skipping and squealing in the streets below, all hopped up on sugar, while my husband was downstairs manning the candy bowl at the front door—also hopped up on sugar. I was in my office when I heard an unusually loud: Pop pop … Pop pop pop … Pop pop pop.
I assumed some older kids—hooligans!—were setting off firecrackers over in Palumbo Park. But within a minute I heard the sirens descending from all directions, their strobes overreaching the rooftops.
Urban dwellers are nonchalant about sirens, as long as they keep on moving—Nothing to see here—farther and farther away. We live for this Doppler effect, and only drop whatever task at hand when we hear the sirens stop, followed by that dreadful sound of police cars, ambulances, and, scariest of all, the fire engines coming to a breakneck halt. It’s way too close to home if you can hear the static-y radio dispatchers talking about your neighbors.
Nicky, Jr., a big baby-faced kid in his mid-twenties, was dining at Dante & Luigi’s, enjoying a plate of his favorite white clam sauce (always the clams—what’s with the clams?), when he was approached by a grown man in a Batman mask, carrying a plastic trick-or-treat bag emblazoned with a fiendish pumpkin. Batman reached into his candy bag and pulled out a MAC-10 machine pistol, shooting Nicky, Jr. eight times about the head and neck.
Batman took flight, eluding capture.
And Nicky, Jr. was lucky he had a very thick neck. Nine days later, he walked out of the hospital, shrugging off the assassination attempt for the local TV cameras.
As for my neighbors, everybody saw nothing.
Curious, considering so many people were always watching: mostly grandmas and great-grandmas looking out their windows and doors, or tending to their pretty flower boxes or elaborate seasonal decorations, when they weren’t sitting in their lawn chairs in yards of concrete.
Some Saturdays these ladies—in their floral-patterned house dresses, rolled Supp-Hose, and sensible nun shoes—would appear in the street with buckets of soapy water to clean their stoops and sidewalks.
The wiriest grandma, who lived in one of the houses across from us, would wash her front window standing on a stepladder, making me nervous, afraid that she would fall “on my watch.” I couldn’t concentrate on my work when she was out there. I would carry my phone around the house, peeking constantly out my own front windows just in case I had to call 911.
And yes, of course, I offered to help her. But she appeared to take this as some kind of insult, because she gave me the stink-eye. I figured it was probably because I didn’t feel compelled to give my house a bath every month. I like to think that’s why Mother Nature provided us with weather.
But I did sweep occasionally, and the first time I ventured out with a broom, I was love-bombed by the whole lot of them. Ladies I had never even seen before poked their heads out their front doors to wave and wish me a good morning. One grandma actually crossed herself. Another kissed the crucifix on her rosary beads in my general direction.
The solidarity I felt with them as