A Bandit's Tale Page 6

  “Will you teach me the English words, though?”

  Most of the boys at 45 Crosby Street—and even the padroni themselves—didn’t know much English. Some how, they got by, probably because they rarely left Little Italy. Yet, since that first day, when I couldn’t understand or yell back at Meddlin’ Mary, I’d wanted to learn as much of the language as I could.

  “Sì, that part is easy,” Carlo said, slowing to walk next to me. “First, you hold up a newspaper close to a man’s face—right where he can see it. You want the headline to catch his eye. You wave it around.”

  He pulled one of the newspapers out of his bag to demonstrate. “Then, in English, you say, ‘News, boss? Need the news today?’ ”

  “News, boss? Need the news today?” I repeated the phrases until I could say them perfectly. This was already my best day in New York. I was learning to speak English, like a real American.

  I’d never ventured as far south as Wall Street on my own before. Tony told me it was close to the tip of Manhattan. “You arrived at Castle Garden, just like we did. It isn’t far from where we are now.”

  This neighborhood seemed like a different city altogether. I was used to dismal, crowded streets lined with tenements, but here we walked by solid stone buildings, some with huge round columns, fancy arched windows, and ornate decorations. The streets weren’t packed with vendors and peddlers either. Instead, businessmen hurried by and messengers carrying packets scurried past us, looking busy and important.

  As I heard people talking, I could tell that most of these men weren’t new immigrants from Italy, Russia, or Poland. Many must be American businessmen. Suddenly I was self-conscious about the way I looked—and smelled. I didn’t belong here.

  Just as I was feeling like turning around, Tony steered me to a little corner under an overhang of a building. From this spot, I could see the grand double doors of a large building with six or seven wide stone steps leading up to it. Carlo handed me the newspaper he’d been carrying and pulled another from his bag.

  “Now, Rocco, all you need to do is stay in this spot. Don’t move, and whatever you do, don’t talk to anyone,” Tony instructed. “If anyone so much as looks at you, just hold up this paper and pretend to be reading. And make sure you hold it right side up. Got that?”

  I nodded and held up the paper correctly to show him I knew how. “Do you want me to try to sell a newspaper too?”

  “No. Just stand here,” Tony repeated. He took a large envelope from the pocket of his coat, then draped the coat over his arm again. “Keep your eyes open—and remember, not a sound out of you. I’m headed for that big bank across the street. Watch me.”

  With his bowler hat, shiny shoes, and smart clothes, Tony fit right in with the young messengers dashing by. Whistling merrily, and stepping nimbly aside to avoid a horse-drawn cab, he crossed the street to the bank and bounded up the stone steps two at a time.

  I turned to say something to Carlo, but he’d disappeared. I held the newspaper in front of my face, leaned against the building, and pretended to read. At first, nothing happened.

  A little while later, though, as I peeked over the top of the paper, I caught sight of Tony again. He was coming out of the bank behind a well-dressed older man with a round pink face. On the top step, Tony paused. He coughed and grabbed his right side, as though he had a pain there.

  The pink-faced gentleman shuffled slowly down the steps and crossed to my side of the street. When he was almost directly in front of me, Carlo suddenly reappeared, coming up the sidewalk on my right. Carlo was walking so fast he bumped into the man.

  “Sorry, boss!” Carlo cried, stopping to steady the man. Then he flashed a newspaper in front of the man’s face. “Need the news today?”

  As to what happened next, well, I admit I was as bowled over as the sucker himself! All at once Tony was back. He gave no sign that he recognized us. Instead, Tony just strolled by, coming close to the man, pausing for only a second.

  The pink-faced gentleman reached into one pocket, then another, to find a coin to pay for the newspaper. His pockets were empty.

  “Hey!” the man yelled. “What…” He whirled, trying to see who had robbed him.

  But he stood alone.

  Carlo and the newspaper had disappeared. Tony was gone too, melting into the crowd, but not before he’d slipped his hand into the man’s pocket, gently sliding the wallet up and out of it and into his own.

  After fuming for a while, the man stormed off, grumbling, “Dratted street bandits.”

  I did feel a teeny bit sorry for the gentleman. After all, he’d just been minding his own business. However, at that moment, my stomach growled, and I thought of the meager breakfast I’d had. Let’s just say my twinge of conscience didn’t last very long.

  Since coming to America, I’d been hungry every day. Each time I passed someone selling roasted chestnuts, my mouth watered. It was as if breathing in the aroma took me right back to those crisp fall days of gathering nuts in the woods back home.

  I will tell you that sometimes on Mulberry Street I’d stolen apples and even potatoes from vegetable carts. Hunger had driven me to do it—and I wasn’t the only one. It seemed that every street kid on the Lower East Side did the same. But I’d never imagined doing anything as bold as this.

  For, as I am sure you’ve already guessed, I’d finally discovered the secret to Tony’s fine clothes. Tony and Carlo were pickpockets.

  CHAPTER 10

  Of several new matters not expected, including sausages

  I waited. Ten minutes. Fifteen. I began to wonder if Tony and Carlo were coming back for me. Carlo appeared first. Beckoning with a nod, he led me along winding, narrow streets to a little café. Tony was already there.

  “I ordered us coffee, sausages, potatoes, and eggs,” Tony announced as we slipped into chairs around the small table.

  “Sausages?” I gasped. “Did you say sausages?”

  And then it happened—three plates were placed before us, one right under my nose. Right under it!

  “For me?” I squeaked.

  I leaned over to breathe in all the fried, spicy warmth of it. I was almost too excited to eat. Sausages!

  “Go ahead, Rocco. Dig in.” Carlo grinned and speared a piece of potato, shiny with grease. “You’re the best wire in the business, Tony. That touch was as smooth as silk.”

  I was hardly listening. All I could do was shovel forkfuls of food into my mouth. I noticed Tony staring at me, and realized I was inhaling potatoes faster than a city sewer gulps garbage in a rainstorm. I couldn’t seem to slow down.

  Then, with a flick of the wrist, Tony performed an act of kindness I’ll never forget. A few minutes later, a second plate, steaming and piled just as high as the first, appeared before me. I raised my eyebrows quizzically, wiping the dripping egg from my chin with one hand.

  “Just eat it, kid. You look like you need it.”

  Whatever else you can say about Tony, he still had a heart.

  —

  When we’d cleaned every bit of egg and potato grease off our plates with bread, Tony leaned back, cradling his coffee cup in his hands. Carlo sat up straighter. I did too. The mood had shifted, and we were about to talk business.

  “Now for the plunder.” Tony reached into his pocket and began counting out dollar bills on the table: “One, two, three, four, five, six.”

  He picked up a dollar and placed it near the edge of the table. “Fifty-five cents for our breakfast, a bit more than usual today, thanks to an extra ten cents to satisfy Rocco’s appetite.” Tony winked. “I’ll keep the change from that dollar, if you don’t mind.”

  “Grazie.” I flushed, embarrassed at how fast I’d gobbled down the food. I looked at my plate hopefully. No, it was perfectly clean, not a smudge of grease left.

  Tony put another dollar in front of me. “That’s your quota for your padrone for the day.”

  “But…but I didn’t earn it. And what about the other three dollars I owe y
ou?”

  “Well, now you owe me four.”

  Then he made two piles, one with three dollars, and one with a single bill. “And that’s the rest of the plunder, divided between Carlo and me, on account of we were the ones that did the graft.”

  Carlo scooped up his dollar quick as a frog snatching a fly with its sticky tongue. Tony pulled the last three dollars toward him. “The dip always gets the most, since he takes the most risk.”

  I stared at the money. All this—in less than five minutes!

  “Come to work for me, Rocco, and you’ll eat sausages at noon and still be able to pay your padrone,” Tony proposed. “No more standing for hours, begging on the corners for pennies.”

  “Why choose me? There must be hundreds of other boys who’d want to work for you.”

  “Well, like we said, we think you have the look a real grafter needs—and that’s not easy to find,” Tony replied. “You’re also quick, and you don’t seem afraid of much. Even on that first day, you showed spirit.”

  He leaned forward, though Tony, unlike Carlo, would never put his elbows on the table. “I’d like to give you the chance to pay me back by working for me. Besides, Carlo and I recently lost the other member of our mob. He took a fall.”

  “He fell down?” I asked, confused.

  My question set Carlo to giggling. He whispered, “Taking a fall means getting arrested.”

  “A quick little lad like you doesn’t need to concern yourself with things like that,” Tony assured me. “We’ll start you off on a trial basis. You’ll learn to be a stall. But you are sworn to secrecy or else…”

  He let the end of the sentence trail off.

  “Rocco, don’t pass up this chance. You’re perfect for this line of work, with your smooth cheeks and big eyes,” Tony went on. “As soon as I saw you standing on the corner in the snow that day, I thought, This boy has the potential to make lots of money. He has the sweet, innocent face of an angel.”

  Lots of money! Tony said I had the chance to make lots of money. Here was the answer to all my problems. And maybe he was right about my face—Mama had called me her angel boy.

  “What exactly would I do as…um…as a stall?”

  “The job of a stall is to distract the sucker—the person being robbed,” Carlo explained. “I usually act as the stall since I’m not as fast a pick as Tony. I have big, clumsy feet.”

  He pulled a toothpick from his pocket and began cleaning his teeth. He seemed to have fun no matter what he did. Now he grinned, showing bits of sausage dotting the crevices between his teeth like dark sheep on a bright hillside.

  “What I’m good at is talking loud and shoving—creating a distraction,” Carlo boasted. “But even with me in the mob, it’s definitely safer to use two stalls when you make a touch. That’s what Tony says. Right, Tony?”

  “That’s right.” Tony sipped his coffee. “Like today, usually we’d have another stall as backup to Carlo while the pick makes the actual touch. Were you able to follow what we were doing?”

  “I think so,” I said slowly. “You worked together to position the man to make picking his pocket easy. But how…how did you know where the man’s wallet was?”

  Tony produced the envelope I’d seen earlier. “As I was standing in the bank lobby, supposedly busy checking the contents of this packet, I was actually scouting around for a likely sucker.

  “Once I spotted that man with the pink face, all I had to do was watch where he put his leather,” he went on. “I signaled that information to Carlo from the steps by coughing and holding my right side. That’s how Carlo knew to create a distraction on the sucker’s left side.”

  “Leather,” I figured, meant wallet. He’d said the word “sucker” in English, so I asked about that.

  “The sucker is the target of our operation, Rocco,” Carlo told me. “And there ain’t anyone more skilled than Tony at spotting them. You’re in good hands.”

  I leaned my elbows on the table and matched Carlo’s whisper. “Let me be sure I understand. Carlo, when you waved the newspaper in his face, you were forcing the man to turn toward you so Tony would be free to dip into his other pocket.”

  “Exactly! I knew you’d be a quick one.” Carlo beamed at me and nodded, like a young uncle watching a favorite nephew take his first steps.

  “If we have two stalls, I might sometimes pass the plunder to one of you,” Tony went on. “That way, if I’m seen with my hand in a pocket and a copper shows up, I’m clean.”

  He paused. I knew what the next question would be. “So, Rocco, are you in? Do you have what it takes to be a pickpocket?”

  Looking Tony straight in the eyes, I nodded. “Actually, I was a pickpocket before. Back home in Calvello.”

  “You were?” asked Carlo, gazing at me with new respect.

  “Yes. I once picked the pocket of Signor Ferri, the richest man in town,” I boasted.

  But even that was a lie.

  CHAPTER 11

  I embark on a rewarding new pastime, which virtuous readers will undoubtedly find objectionable

  The summer I became part of Tony’s mob was by far the most thrilling (and rewarding) chapter in my short life. By the time my twelfth birthday—and the feast of Saint Rocco—rolled around in the middle of August, I’d picked up the tools of my new trade and even added some suggestions of my own.

  In other words, I took to grafting like a fish to water. I will admit that from time to time doubts did crop up, like little mushrooms dotting the forest floor after a rainstorm. What would Mama say if she saw me? Is this really the way to make Papa proud?

  Let’s just say that whenever that happened, my stomach stepped in and swept those niggling misgivings away as quickly as my sisters and I could clear a mushroom patch and run home with baskets full of tasty delicacies.

  Besides, as I asked myself each night when I lay itching and miserable on the straw of my padrone’s den, what other choice did I have? How else could I get out of there?

  —

  Tony, Carlo, and I became a smooth-working mob, as finely tuned as a team of high-stepping carriage horses. We perfected our technique all over the area around lower Broadway, from Fulton down to Wall Street. Sometimes we targeted businessmen coming out of a bank after withdrawing money, the way Tony and Carlo had demonstrated. Other times we didn’t bother with anything so elaborate.

  We got adept at spotting messengers and junior clerks, looking puffed up and important as they made their way to the bank carrying leathers stuffed with dollars. A nod from Tony, and we’d make the touch on a crowded sidewalk, right on the spur of the moment. Older gents remained our favorite targets for two reasons: They usually provided the most plunder, and they didn’t move very fast.

  It worked like this: I’d stop a fellow and wave a newspaper in his face. Then I’d smile sweetly and say the words Carlo had taught me: “News, boss?”

  Before the man could answer, Carlo would come barreling down the sidewalk, just as he had that first morning. Now, though, he’d crash right into me so hard I’d go flying against the sucker.

  Carlo would pretend to be angry, yelling that the collision was my fault. “Hey, watch where you’re going, you little alley rat!”

  Carlo was heavier than I was, and his crooked nose (it had been broken, he said, in a fight two years before, when he was twelve) gave him an odd, fierce expression when he set his face into a glare. As he glowered, I would cower and wail for the stranger to protect me.

  Once in a while, a man might push me away in disgust. Usually, though, the sucker would reach out to help me, a poor, innocent boy being picked on by a bully. It didn’t matter. The end result was the same. While the target focused on me, Tony would be in and out of his pocket in a flash.

  Now, while this scheme did require us knowing where the plunder was, I soon found it didn’t take more than a few minutes to see where a target was carrying the goods. Nine times out of ten, if the man was right-handed, it would be in his right pocket.
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br />   There were other clues too. If a young clerk was carrying a good amount of money, or a messenger was worried about losing his packet to a thief, he’d almost always reach into the pocket we wanted as he walked along, just to reassure himself the bills were still safe. Once our little mob saw him do this, the chance of that money reaching its destination was slim, very slim indeed.

  Of course, it’s always nice to have variations in routine. Sometimes Carlo would trip me, and I’d land right on the victim’s shoes. The sucker would bend down to help me up (since he couldn’t very well walk over me), leaving a pocket exposed and ripe for the picking.

  Once we got started, there seemed to be no stopping us. From some fellow grafters, Tony had learned how to “bang a super,” or, as we sometimes called it, “get a man’s front”—take his watch by detaching it from the chain. This involved some clever handiwork, as Tony had to quickly use his thumb and forefinger to break one of the rings of the chain, then slip the watch free and into his pocket.

  To do this, usually Carlo elbowed me in the head as he bumped into the victim and me both. (Come to think of it, I was always the one getting injured.) I’d throw back my head, cover my eye with my hands, and pretend to be even more hurt than I was. (And, believe me, Carlo could be rough.) I’d start wailing in English, “Ow! Ouch! My eye. Sir, will you look at my eye?”

  As the gent reached out to take my hands away and examine my eye, Tony would be behind him, deftly reaching around his middle, and have the watch in his hand in a quick minute. At the same time, I’d yelp again, or bark a harsh cough, to mask the sound of the ring breaking, just in case the man happened to hear it.

  If the sucker felt a slight brush against his waist, why, he just assumed it was the little monkey squirming in pain in front of him. Once the “super,” or watch, was in his hand, Tony would swiftly pass it to Carlo, who would clear out. That way, if the victim got wise and tried to stop Tony, or point him out to a copper, Tony would be clean. By the time the gent noticed his chain dangling, the watch long gone, we’d be gone too.