Sugar Pop Moon Read Free Page A

more time there than I did with my own father.
    That next evening I threw on my nicest jacket, spit-shined my black oxfords, and took the subway to the Three Aces Restaurant in Hell’s Kitchen to see Jimmy McCullough. I stood in front of him, my knees shaking inside my baggy pants, and told him I needed a job. Everybody up in Harlem knew what Jimmy did for a living. He’d show up every Sunday, walk from juice joint to juice joint, and collect bags of cash from the bar owners in exchange for hooking them up with bootleggers like Owney Madden. He was always decked out in a tailored suit and spats, his face clean-shaven and his short sideburns waxed into place. We’d never seen Jimmy raise his hands to anybody, and his droopy brown eyes could almost make him seem tired and innocent, but there was no question as to who pushed the buttons. At the time, I just figured that the poor suckers who got the brunt of Jimmy’s stick deserved it.
    â€œI’ll hijack trucks, I’ll do whatever it takes,” I told him, clasping my hands together and practically praying to him. He was my only hope at saving the Hy-Hat. “Just don’t tell my father or Old Man Santiago.”
    â€œI don’t hijack trucks,” Jimmy said, standing in the glow of the neon sign in front of the Three Aces, swigging from a bottle of cherry soda. “It’s distasteful.” As the last word came out, his lips, blood red from the pop, twisted with disgust.
    He brought me into the restaurant, which was more crowded than the A train on a weekday morning. He had his own booth in the back; its padded red upholstery was so new it smelt like a freshly oiled baseball glove. He ordered me a cola and gave me a short lecture on how to be an upstanding outlaw. Being Jimmy, he also had the balls to give me advice on being a respectable albino.
    â€œI don’t care how white you are, you’re still a nigger,” he said, looking me over and shaking his head. “You know that, right?” He waited for an answer. “You know you’re a nigger.”
    I wanted a job, so I nodded enthusiastically.
    â€œThat’s right,” he said, almost as if he needed to be sure himself. “You’re a nigger.” He spread some butter on a hunk of bread, bit into it, and kept talking as he chewed. “The cops don’t like coons. And they won’t give a buffalo shit that those splotches on your fucked-up face are as white as Sister Hannigan’s ass.”
    I laughed because I thought it was funny—at least the part about Sister Hannigan—but I’ve since found out that Jimmy always talks about Sister Hannigan’s ass, or her tits, or, when he’s really riled, her twat. Maybe she taught him in grammar school or something.
    â€œYou better smile if you even sniff a cop. Kiss their asses with those pink mambo lips of yours.”
    â€œYes, sir,” I said, my knees still shaking under the table but a smile stretching the corner of my mouth. If he was telling me how to duck the cops, he was going to give me work.
    â€œI’ll tell you something, kid,” he said. “Those bleached nuts of yours must be the size of coconuts for you to come down here and ask for work. You wanna work for me, you’re welcome to it. But let me tell you something. If you ever think about screwing me for as much as one red cent, I’ll kill you in ways you can’t imagine.”
    That night he gave me a loaded snub-nosed revolver, a pair of brass knuckles, and a grunt job at a watering hole behind a butcher shop on Ninth Avenue. For months, I’d hurry out of class and roll kegs in and out of the stock room. He paid me well, so it wasn’t long before I’d quit college, come clean to my father, and found my own place to live. The Feds eventually shut down the bar, but I’m still working for Jimmy and still using the money to keep the Hy-Hat in ping-pong balls and ice cream cones.