The Mayor of New York

by Charles Vermilyea Jr.

Standing in the middle of East 221st Street, facing west, I can hear the elevated train. Its rattle and clack brought to me on waves of yellow summer heat. I stare toward the sound like I’m waiting for it to deliver a message. And, there is a message. It’s my grandmother, telling me, in her broken English, to get on the sidewalk where I’ll be safe: “Ona the side-a-walk where you safe. Watch-a the car.”

I hesitate because I think the train noise reverberating through Bronx canyons is calling to me. But behind Granma, Uncle Pete. Pete DeFlorio, former Genovese caporegime, on his way to his retirement job as a bodyguard for entertainers at the Copacabana. He makes a signal, just a flick of his right hand, because Pete DeFlorio rarely needs the spoken word. A gesture will do. And I’m on the sidewalk.

“Get in the car,” says he. “I’ll take you home.”

The Chevy Coup, black like most cars of the 1940s, rattles over broken Bronx streets that look like coal in a sea of molten tar.

“Where’s your hat,” says Uncle Pete. “You don’t have anything to cover your head.”

“I don’t like hats.”

“Here! Wear my cap.” He puts his Yankees cap on my head with his right hand.

“We have to make a stop first. It’s on the way.” That is on the way to my home with my parents on Hughes Avenue in Belmont, a Bronx section closer to Manhattan, where my mother and father work—a hairdresser and a butcher—while my grandparents care for me during vacation.

“I have a job for you,” says Uncle Pete. “You have to go to a house and give the box of cookies in the back seat to a man and give him a message. Can you do this?”

“OK,” say I. Although the thought of the task makes me nervous.

“Good. His name is Chick Chickoleno. You call him Mr. Chickoleno. Got it? Mr. Chickoleno.”

We go through a neighborhood I would later know as Fordham Heights to a brick row house, like my grandparents’, but nicer.

“OK. Here’s what you do: You go to the door, ring the bell, and ask for Mr. Chickoleno. If his wife comes, say you want to see Mr. Chickoleno. He’ll be home because it’s dinner time. Got me so far?”

“Yeah.”

“Good. Now, you give the box of cookies to Chick, I mean Mr. Chickoleno! And give him this message: ‘Is everything OK with Pete?’ When you get the answer, come back to the car; I’ll be down the street.”

After making me repeat the instructions, Uncle Pete sends me off to meet Mr. Chickoleno, with Italian cookies in a delicate cardboard box fastened with even more delicate string.

The buzzer is, indeed, answered by Mrs. Chickoleno. She’s a portly, middle-aged woman with a friendly bearing.

“I want to see Mr. Chickoleno.”

“You do, do you? Anybody ever teach you to say please?”

“Please.”

“Chick! Chick!” she screams. “There’s a little Yankees fan  here, wants to talk to you.”

Mr. Chickoleno comes to the door, napkin in hand.

He’s huge, and I don’t feel he has the same friendly bearing as Mrs. Chickoleno, but not scary either. Except that I can see the impression of the handle of a pistol under his underwear shirt, which he wears out.

“Who’s this kid? Kid, who are you?”

“Look what he’s got in his hands. That will tell you,” says Mrs. Chickoleno, pointing to the box of cookies with one hand and holding the other to her forehead like she’s about to swoon.

“You with Pete?” says Mr. Chickoleno, taking the box, which he hands off to his wife, who puts it on a slender table holding a lamp, with fringes on the shade, in the form of a beautiful Chinese woman with fringes on her gown’s sleeves. I would later come to learn that the lamp’s style was known, by some, as “guinea nouveau.”

“You with Pete?” Mr. Chickoleno says again, turning back to me.

“Yeah,” says I, and stammer: “Is everything OK with Pete?”

“Chick! Fa chrissake, see what ‘the life’ does to people! A caporegime, and he sends a boy to check things out for him…I keep telling you, you have to get out of the life before you end up like this! The paranoia!”

“There is no out!” shouts Mr. Chickoleno. “You’re in it for good! I took an oath!”

He holds the napkin up with his right hand like it’s a battle flag and with his left signals Mrs. Chickoleno to quiet down. His expression projects a noble purpose.

Then, gently, and bending toward me: “Are you related to Pete?”

“He’s my uncle.”

“Where is he?”

I point down the street.

Mrs. Chickoleno: “Oh, my God! How pathetic!” looking down the street, although I doubt she can spot the car.

“You give this message to your uncle,” says Mr. Chickoleno with an earnest tone, “that everything is OK, and that he shouldn’t worry. OK? And, oh, thanks for the cookies!”

“OK.”

“Chick, give the kid something. How old are you little boy?”

“I’m 10.”

“Last time Pete sent a girl, his niece, with the cookies. She was older,” says  Mrs. Chickoleno.

Mr. Chickoleno takes a roll out of his pocket, big enough to choke a horse. He peels off a 10 and hands it to me as Mrs. Chickoleno smiles approvingly.

“Kid, what are you going to buy with the ten spot?” says Mr. Chickoleno.

I hesitate, then: “A Spalding Hi-Bounce ball…Maybe a lot of them!”

“He’s a Bronx kid! See the hat! A Yankees fan!” says Mr. Chickoleno. “Stick ball! Punch ball! Box ball! They all need a Hi-Bounce! ”

“I don’t know,” says Mrs. Chickoleno. “Maybe he should use some of it to light a votary candle and say a prayer to a saint for his uncle.”

“Say a prayer to a saint?…He’s a kid. Why would he do that?”

“Well, little boy, I bet you go to a nice Catholic school,” Mrs. Chickoleno counters.

“Do you?” adds her husband.

“No.”

“Then where?…It’s like pulling teeth with this kid,” says she.

“P.S. 21.”

“Where’s that?”

“Belmont.”

“Belmont! How wonderful! You at least take religious instruction at that beautiful Our Lady of Mount Carmel church?…You know. The Catholic Cathechism.”

“Yeah, well kinda,” I lie. Then, out of annoyance over the interrogation: “No. No, I don’t take religious instruction. I don’t know the Catechism.”

Mrs. Chickoleno gasps, then looks at me with an expression as if she’s fighting off an impure thought.

“OK. Enough is enough!” says Mr. Chickoleno. “Lay off the kid!…What’s your name?”

Mrs. Chickoleno: “It doesn’t matter.” And she slams the door in my face.

Back in the car, Uncle Pete asks how did it go, and is relieved by my response.

“Did he give you any money?” says Uncle Pete.

I show him the 10.

“You did good! Your cousin got only a five,” he says with a laugh that sounds more like a cough. “You keep that money, but give me my hat,” which he takes from my head.

He asks what I plan to do with the money, and I give the same answer I gave to the Chickolenos: A Hi-Bounce. Maybe many Hi-Bounces, I’m thinking, like the ones I see in their pink glory on the back shelf of Mr. Katz’s drugstore, in a wire basket and covered with talc to keep them from sticking together.

“I’ll buy you a Hi-Bounce,” says Uncle Pete. “And, now listen I’ve got a message for you. I’m going to tell your parents to use the 10 to start a savings account in your name.  Then, when you get older, you use the money to go to Fordham University.”

“I’m going to Fordham? Why?”

“So you don’t end up like me!” he shouts with an air of resolve.

And then, with a big smile, says, “And maybe so you can become the mayor of New York!”

*Originally published in Freshwater Literary Magazine.

BIO: Charles R. Vermilyea Jr. lives in Mansfield, Conn., with his little dog, Tino. Vermilyea is a retired Hartford Courant news copy editor. B.A. English/history, University of Connecticut (1967). Army veteran, 2/10 Cavalry Buffalo Soldiers (Korea, 1962/63). Son Jon, a West Coast artist. Daughter Elizabeth, an East Coast actress.