Nobody saw nothin
“The whole neighborhood was always on alert. It was just natural. You were always looking. Up the block. Down the block. No matter how quiet it looked, nobody missed anybody. Late one night, right after my seventeenth birthday, I was helping in the pizzeria and dreaming about the paratroopers when I saw two of Paulie’s guys put down their coffee cups and walk toward the pizza counter window. I went over.
“Outside, Pitkin Avenue was almost empty. Theresa Bivona, who lived down the block, was walking home from the Euclid Avenue subway. There were three or four other subway people, all familiar, people we knew or at least had seen before, walking toward Blake or Glenmore avenues. And then there was this black kid in a sweatshirt and jeans who nobody had ever seen before.
“All of a sudden the kid’s got eyes all over him. He was walking very slow. He walked along the curb for a while looking in car windows. He pretended to be looking in store widows, even though the stores were closed. And the stores—a butcher shop and dry cleaner’s—didn’t have anything a kid like that would be interested in buying.
“Then the guy began to move down the block. I couldn’t tell if Theresa knew there was someone about fifty feet behind her. Across the street Branco’s Bar looked quiet, but I knew Petey Burns was watching. He used to sit on a stool leaning against the wall at the end of the bar and stare out the window until the joint closed at about two in the morning. I knew guys were watching from Pete the Killer Abbanante’s club on the other side of Crescent Street. Frank Sorace, one of Paulie’s guys, who was later murdered, and Eddy Barberra, who’s now doing twenty years in Atlanta on a bank robbery, were seated in a car parked at the curb. I knew they were armed, because their job was to drive the big winners from Babe’s card games home so they didn’t get robbed.
“To the guy following Theresa the street must have looked empty, because he never looked around. He just started walking faster. He really began running toward Theresa when she started rummaging around for her keys. As soon as Theresa got inside, the guy was right behind her. It was very fast. He stuck out his hand and caught the door just before it slammed shut. That’s when Theresa and the guy disappeared.
“By the time I got to the building it was too late. The guy was supposed to have pulled a knife and was supposed to have been pressing it against Theresa’s face, but I never saw anything. All I could see was backs. There were at least three tons of wiseguys crammed in the hallways even before I got there. They had already bashed through the front door. There were so many of them that it looked as though the hallway and stairways were made of rubber. Theresa had squashed herself flat against the mailboxes. All I could see was the top of the guy’s head and an arm of his sweatshirt. Then he was swept along with all the other bodies and arms and curses until he was carried up the stairs and out of sight.
“I backed up and went outside. Some of the guys were waiting there. I went across the street, turned around, and looked up. I could make out the small roof wall on the front of the building—it was made of brick—and then I saw the guy launched right over it into the air. He hung there for just a second, flailing arms like a broken helicopter, and then he came down hard and splattered all over the street.”