The Sacrificial Circumcision of the Bronx (19 page)

Paul went home that night feeling like they actually had a chance of winning this. The next day in class, he got another message asking him to please call home during his next break. When he did so, Lucretia answered the phone in hysterics. He couldn’t tell if she was laughing or crying.

“What happened?” he shouted.

“We’re staying! We’re NOT moving!”

“We won?”

“No,” she choked out, breathing deeply to regain control, “we got … a letter stating … that we’re … we were …
miscondemmed
.”

“What does that mean?”

“Due to a reappraisal, several houses on our block are going to be spared!”

“Which ones?”

“Abraham Hoff’s home, and Lori and Bill’s.”

“How about all the others?”

“I think they’re still getting evicted … but we’re spared.”

“That’s great,” he muttered, looking nervously around, “but …”

“Do you think your brother—”

“No way,” he cut her off. “But I think we should keep this under wraps for a while.”

Lucretia agreed.

Paul felt relief at first. Then, when the next period ended, he felt a gnawing guilt as he watched some of his students leaving his class, their families still facing eviction. Throughout the rest of the day he found it difficult to focus. He resolved that no matter what, he would remain in the fight with the rest of his neighbors.

Several days later, though, at the next ETNA meeting, May Kearne approached Paul and said, “We heard that your place is being spared.”

“Yeah,” he replied, embarrassed, “but I’m still with you guys.”

“It might be better if you weren’t,” she said tersely.

“Huh?”

“Paul, we all know Robert Moses is your brother. Since you were being evicted, we didn’t mind, but suddenly your house is being spared. Come on, we’re not stupid.”

“I haven’t spoken to my brother in years! He doesn’t even know I’m in the Bronx.”

“Lucretia’s a dear friend, and we’re all grateful for your help so far, but there are people here who think you’re spying for him, so it really would be safer for you guys if you just stopped coming to the meetings.”

Paul felt like a quisling as she walked away. It occurred to him that Robert could have found out he was living there and given him and Lucretia this reprieve only to alienate him from the community. Lucretia was a proud member of the neighborhood and would feel profound shame for the situation he was putting her in. Although he didn’t think she’d leave him, as Teresa had, he feared that this would drive a wedge between them. He therefore decided to keep quiet on the fact that he was asked to leave ETNA. That night, when Lucretia inquired about the meeting, he simply said it had gone well and didn’t offer another word about it.

The following week, during the time when he’d usually attend the ETNA meeting, Paul took a walk around Bronx Park. The week after that, he checked out the Jewish section of Grand Concourse and the Italian part of Arthur Avenue. Subsequently, he headed south through the Negro areas of Morrisania.

As he returned home one night, he passed by a sign that read,
Skacrowski’s Scrapyard
. A pack of dogs behind a hurricane fence barked ferociously at him until a heavyset man operating a large machine looked over.

“Hey, Paul!” he heard. It was his wife’s one-night lover, Leon.

“Howdy,” Paul greeted, walking quickly by.

“My mom told me that you guys were spared from the wrecking ball.”

“More or less,” he responded, stopping in his tracks. Abandoning discretion, he said: “Lucetia doesn’t know this yet, but I was asked to quit ETNA because they think my brother was behind our exemption.”

“You should tell her,” Leon suggested.

“I know, I just feel awful.”

“You did nothing wrong.”

“I know. But this is what happens when your brother is the devil.”

Leon’s mother was away, so he invited Paul inside for a beer. They ended up chatting for three hours. Paul found himself ranting about how much he hated his power-hungry brother.

“What can you do?” Leon asked, opening another beer.

“Give him what we used to call a Mexican send-off,” Paul said.

“What’s that?”

“Five sticks of dynamite wired to the ignition of his Packard.”

Leon laughed. “Sounds like a plan.”

“He’s more powerful than the mayor or the governor because he can’t be voted out. He single-handedly makes million-dollar decisions that take money from education and social services, not to mention buses and trains. And no one can stop him!”

“Maybe you
should
kill him,” Leon said somewhat earnestly.

Paul laughed. “I’ve been saying this for the last twenty years and finally I’ve found someone who agrees with me.”

“Listen,” Leon said, “if you want to work off your anger without risking the electric chair, you should come out to Ebbets Field with me. I got two tickets to the game this week and things are just beginning to heat up.”

“Sorry, but I’m a dyed-in-the-wool Yankees fan.”

“Yankees, spankies. Have you ever seen Pee Wee Reese or Jackie Robinson at bat?”

“Too bad the Giants keep kicking their asses …”

“Hey, with Gil Hodges in the infield, Duke Snider out in center, Roy Campanella behind the plate, and Don New-combe on the pitcher’s mound—”

“They still can’t beat the Yankees.”

“Give them time, they’re gonna get there. They won the pennant five times since ’41.”

“Yeah, but they were beaten by the Yankees each time.”

“Wait till next year,” Leon said. “Just wait.”

As Paul walked home, he felt calm. Just a few beers and a little ventilation and he was so much stronger. When Lucretia asked about the meeting, he sat her down and said he had something important to share, then relayed his conversation with May Kearne.

“Screw them,” she said, causing Paul to burst out laughing.

He returned to Leon’s place a few days later with a cold six-pack of beer. Once again, the two talked into the night. Paul went on about why his brother deserved to die, and Leon went on about the Brooklyn Dodgers.

After the scorpion boy had scrubbed the grease off, Uli gave him some Spam and crackers and had him draw a diagram of the fuse-box tunnel. As best as Uli could speculate, thousands of pounds of concrete had been poured down the elevator shaft, but had apparently solidified before it could ooze around the back of the tracking, thus creating this narrow passage that went straight up.

“Did you see any light coming from above?”

“No, why?”

“It might go all the way up to the surface.”

The kid looked perplexed. After a while, he rolled onto his back and dozed off. When he woke again, roughly two hours later, Uli was waiting with some gear he had assembled.

“I was thinking …” Uli began, holding up an old construction helmet, a small lantern, and some wire. “If I can attach this lantern to this helmet and we can strap it around your chin, you can use these to climb up that tracking …” He indicated two large hooks with wooden handles.

“You said you were going to come and look at my sick-ers first.”

“Well, that’s true, but you just told me the entrance is narrow, didn’t you?”

“Yes, but … you said you’d help my sickers first!”

“Fine,” Uli replied, surprised by the kid’s stubbornness. “Let’s get going.”

34

O
ver the ensuing months, Paul watched in anguish as the ETNA members fought desperately to save their homes. Neighbors in the group continued saying hi to Paul and Lucretia, but they rarely mentioned any progress in their efforts.

When Paul would see them handing out fliers on East Tremont, he had the urge to remind them that the only real power was money. He knew that if just one of them sacrificed their single-family home and sold it for ten grand, a donation like that to Lyons’s reelection fund might make all the difference.

“Paying Murder Inc. five grand to make your brother disappear could also make a difference,” Leon suggested.

One day upon opening the
New York Post,
Paul found ETNA’s entire proposal laid out over a couple of pages. An unnamed engineer had performed a feasibility study demonstrating that by swinging the highway two blocks south, 159 buildings housing more than 1,500 apartments could be saved. It would also save the city millions of dollars. The next day’s paper quoted Bronx Borough President James Lyons as stating that the proposal seemed worthy of consideration. Robert Moses countered by telling the press that the only reason Lyons was sticking his nose into this was because it was an election year.

A six-member Board of Estimates meeting scheduled for the following month was going to cast the first of a series of votes on the highway. At that meeting, which would probably be presided over by the mayor, Lyons had a key vote.

“It’s a shame we have this stooge Impellitteri in City Hall instead of La Guardia,” Paul remarked to Lucretia.

“He probably steals money just like his predecessor,” she said. The previous year, the O’Dwyer police corruption scandal had been smeared over the papers and had compelled the former mayor to resign in disgrace.

“At least La Guardia would have told Robert to move the frigging route. I’m just hoping Lyons has a backbone.”

As the Board of Estimates meeting approached, Paul, who had excellent attendance at school, took one of his sick days. He watched as roughly two hundred people, mainly housewives, lined into four chartered buses on East Tremont Avenue and headed down to City Hall. In deference to the general distrust that many of them had toward him, he walked east and caught the Third Avenue El. At the Municipal Building at City Hall, he stayed in the back of the large hearing room while the wives filed in and sat in the front rows.

Five minutes after the board members, including James Lyons, entered the chamber, Robert Moses arrived, leading the mayor. Mr. Robert pointed to the chair next to his own as though Impellitteri were one of his flunkies. Soon the room was packed. Scattered throughout were members of the press.

Mayor Impellitteri introduced himself and, rapping a small gavel, called for order. “We will be hearing from everyone regarding Section Two of the Cross Bronx Expressway through East Tremont, and we’ll discuss an alternate route proposed by the East Tremont Neighborhood Association, then we will put the matter to a preliminary vote. Everyone testifying will get one minute to talk.”

The housewives of East Tremont got to speak first. One by one, in an order orchestrated by Lillian Edelstein, they rose to the mic. Each stated how long she had lived happily in their little Bronx community. They explained how the construction of the expressway would force them to move, tearing apart not just their lives, but the whole community. As they testified, Paul noticed the members of the board growing slowly disinterested. Some scribbled notes. Others whispered to their aides. One was clearly reading a newspaper. He watched as his brother chatted softly with the mayor; at one point the two men actually chuckled as if sharing a dirty joke. When a housewife went beyond her one minute, a court clerk would drop his little hammer and mumble, “Time.”

After roughly forty-five minutes, Lillian Edelstein gave a summary statement: “Mr. Mayor, Borough President Lyons, Construction Consultant Moses, and members of this esteemed board, there is simply no need for any of this grief since we have an alternate route that will save the taxpayers millions of dollars.” To the mayor, she politely presented a coil of large pages, the formal blueprints that had been carefully drawn by a sympathetic engineer. Without removing the rubber band, the mayor handed them off to some assistant.

“Mr. Moses,” the mayor said next, “would you care to respond before this board votes?”

Robert Moses stood before the mic, smiled pleasantly to all, then spoke: “We put a great deal of thought and effort into the planning of this expressway, weighing the interests of both this neighborhood and the city as a whole. My team of engineers selected the best possible route. They didn’t do this for the concerns of a few, but rather for
all
New Yorkers, present and future. Let me add that I take no pleasure in asking anyone to move and that we are all grateful for your sacrifice.”

The more vocal members of ETNA started booing, followed by others. The mayor’s gavel repeatedly hit the table as he called, “Order! Order!”

“We were told that we would be given a fair hearing!” Lillian Edelstein shouted.

“And so you shall. Mr. Moses’s opinion is not entirely the opinion of this board,” the mayor replied. He then mumbled something to a skinny, bald man who turned out to be a city engineer. He took the ETNA blueprints to a nearby table and inspected them closely. All eyes were on the engineer five minutes later when he walked over and started whispering something to Borough President Lyons. An exchange between the two lasted a few minutes before Mr. Robert tiredly rose to his feet and walked over to Lyons’s seat. He bent down and whispered something in the politician’s ear that couldn’t have been more than a word or two, then returned to his seat. Several more minutes passed before Lyons leaned forward and muttered into the mic, “In light of what I’ve just heard, I’m going to have to support Mr. Moses’s route.”

“You’ve betrayed us!” Lillian Edelstein called out. The housewives began frantically talking back and forth.

“There will be silence in the chamber!” the mayor spoke up.

“Traitor!” someone yelled.

“I said you’d get your day in court, and this is it!” Lyons shouted at Edelstein. “There are many factors that—”

“Betrayal!” she shot back.

“You owe Mr. Lyons an apology,” Impellitteri stated. Moses started snickering at the women.

After more shouts of recrimination, the mayor tapped his gavel and a group of court officers entered. The room soon slipped into silence.

“We will now put this matter to a vote,” Impellitteri said. “All in favor of the proposed route, please raise your hand.” Three arms rose. “All opposed.” The other three hands went up. It was a deadlock, the resolution would have to go to a larger vote in several weeks. But everyone knew that this had been the only real chance to stop the expressway.