Report From Engine Co. 82 - Dennis Smith [100]
The day has begun to come alive. I have watched the mist around the street lights fade as the morning light appeared. It is now 7:00 A.M., and the kitchen is filled with men and empty coffee cups. Engine 85 has returned from the third alarm, and stories are being exchanged about fires. Billy Valenzio has relieved Knipps at housewatch, and Knipps and I sit at a table talking of the first day we walked into the quarters of Engine 82. He, Kelsey, and I were assigned together. Kelsey is sleeping, his eye bandaged. Knipps will drive him home when the tour is done. Tony Indio has been admitted into the hospital.
An alarm comes in, and the men of Engine 85 move out as Valenzio hollers “Eighty-five only.” Minutes pass, and the bells ring again. Box 2743, the inevitable 2743—Charlotte and 170th Streets. Valenzio yells, in an attempt at early morning humor, “Eighty-two and Thirty-one goes, you know where. Chief goes too.”
We reach the corner of Charlotte Street, and see an old man lying at the base of the alarm box. His throat is cut, and he lies in a small sea of his own plasma. We are too late to help him for his head is thrown to one side, and I can see into the hole in his neck. His eyes have rolled back under his open lids, lost forever. Nothing could have helped him but the prevention of the murder. McCartty comes over with a blanket, and lays it gently over him, shielding him from the filth of Charlotte Street.
A passerby stands next to us, a middle-aged black with graying hair. His face is sullen, but distinguished and proud. “He was a nice man,” he says looking down at the blanketed body.
“Do you know him?” Lieutenant Welch asks. “Do you know his name?”
“No,” the man replies, “I don’t know his name. They called him ‘the old Jew,’ that’s all. He owns the laundromat, and he came here every morning with a bag of change for the machines. I guess they killed him for a bag of nickels and dimes.”
Ten years ago the South Bronx was a mostly Jewish and Irish neighborhood, but as they progressed economically in the American system they moved from the tenements to better buildings in the North Bronx, or to small ranch houses in the surburbs of Long Island. As they moved out, blacks and Puerto Ricans moved in. As blacks and Puerto Ricans moved in, the less successful whites moved out to other tenements, but in white neighborhoods. There are still bars in the neighborhood named “Shannon’s,” and “The Emerald Gem,” but they are frequented by men with black faces, and there are signs in Spanish saying “Iglesia Christiana de Dios,” hanging obtrusively in front of stain-glassed Stars of David on abandoned synagogues. But, some merchants have lingered on, working hard for a dollar-by-dollar survival. Like this old man whose last act in life was to call the Fire Department, to pull the alarm that would keep him alive.
There is a trail of blood from the laundromat to the alarm box, a distance of ten steps. There are footprints in the trail, placed there by careless passersby, who pause momentarily on their way to work, ask a question or two, and continue their journeys.
The ambulance comes, and we place the body on an antiseptic, sheeted stretcher. McCartty folds the red-stained blanket as he steps from the ambulance. It will have to go to the cleaners, or to a laundromat. The police have arrived, and are talking to Chief Niebrock. Our job is finished. From the back step of the apparatus I can see the old man’s keys, hanging, still and forgotten, from the padlock