The Gangs of New York, Part One
From Sandy Armistead: A Black Man’s Journey in a White Man’s World, Dwight Norris, High Desert Branch
Dwight Norris struck up a conversation on a tediously long line in a coffee shop. His encounter with a fascinating 97-year-old black man who looked a lot younger, led to a series of interviews that in turn led to the book Sandy Armistead: A Black Man’s Journey in a White Man’s World. This excerpt and Part Two come from Chapter 3, “The Gangs of New York.”
I’m about fourteen now, and I’m doing all right. I still got my 1933 Schwinn Aerocycle, and I’m riding it all over the city. I’m taking lessons from the big boys, the Mob and the Brothers. They run numbers, and they decided to split their territory, with the Mob taking the north side of Manhattan and the Brothers taking the south side.
Now, I’m not running numbers, but I got my territories. I shine shoes and sell my newspapers. I guess I didn’t go unnoticed, because one day I’m at one of my shoeshine locations. Suddenly, I’m surrounded by three guys, and my Schwinn is tearing down the street, ridden by one of their friends. I turn to run after my bike, but the three guys grab me. They walk me around the corner into an alleyway.
The leader of the gang was a guy named Adolfo. I remember his name; the others I forget. A skinny guy with a moustache carried a little satchel. “I am the leader of the Gauchos, a Puerto Rican gang,” Adolfo told me. “You got a problem with that?”
“No,” I said. “I got a problem that you stole my bike.”
“We will give the bike back,” he said. “If you do what we tell you.”
Adolfo and his friends explained they wanted me to steal a car.
“Why would I want to do that?” I asked.
“For one thing,” Adolfo said. “You do that, you get your bike back.
“And for another thing, we won’t beat you up,” the kid in the green shirt said. “You stay healthy.”
I can’t believe I’m hearing these words. They’re threatening to kick my ass. We’re just on the edge of the alley and I can see people walking by. Some of them are looking our way, but nobody’s saying anything or doing anything. Everybody’s in a hurry.
“And besides that, once you get good at this, you can make some real money,” Adolfo said.
“I make money,” I said. “I got my own business.”
They laughed.
“You make peanuts,” the round-faced fat guy said. “When you working for us, you be making fifteen, twenty bucks a pop, just like that.”
“Your mama ain’t gonna give you that kind of money.”
That kind of money sounded good. I knew I’d be taking a risk, and I didn’t mind that so much. But I knew I’d be doing wrong. Daddy sure taught us the difference between right and wrong. But Daddy was a goody-two-shoes. Never drove a car, never cussed, never even raised his voice. I liked that in my dad ’cause it gave me less to worry about, but I never felt like I had to be that way. Deep down, I guess I didn’t feel like a goody-two-shoes. I didn’t mind bending the rules a little bit, long as nobody got hurt.
“But I’m only fourteen. I don’t know how to drive, and I don’t know how to steal a car.”
Adolfo smiled and put his arm over my shoulders. “We fix you right up,” he said.
We walked for quite a while, blocks up and over, part of the city where there’s less foot traffic, but there were still cars parked on the street, kind of like an industrial area. We go up to this car and Adolfo gets into the satchel. Pulls out a shim—a flat piece of steel—shoves it down alongside the window by the driver’s seat and pops open the lock. Door opens just like that.
We jump into the car. A couple of the guys stay outside on the street, watching. Now, Adolfo reaches under the steering column near where the ignition is and yanks out some wires. He strips the ends of the wires with a pocket knife and touches the bare ends together, and vroom, the engine’s up and running.
Soon as the others hear the engine, they jump into the back seat and off we go. Adolfo’s driving, but he’s trying to show me how to work the clutch and the shift. Now, he’s trying to go fast to get away, but he’s also looking down and looking at me, and he doesn’t see this car coming, and kablaam! We hit pretty hard, and there we are in the middle of this big intersection, and all these guys split and start scattering like cockroaches when the lights come on.
I’m the last one to hit the streets, but the first one to get grabbed by the collar. This cop puts me in handcuffs and shoves me into the back of his car. Things are moving so fast, and all of a sudden everything’s stopped. After a long time in the back of that car, they drive me down to the police station and put me in a jail cell. I had to tell them who I was and where I lived, and they went down and picked up my mama and daddy.
Find out what happens next in Part Two,
on next month’s Showcase.