Bone in the Throat by Anthony Bourdain Read Free Book Online Page B

over a hundred bucks his first day. After school, Tommy and his friends from the neighborhood sold them on the street, taking care of the carloads of kids from Jersey and Long Island who flocked in to Little Italy and Chinatown every year, looking for ashcans, cherry bombs, firecrackers, and niggerchasers.
    "You sell these," Sally had said. "You keep twenny-fi' cents onna dollar for 'em. You can make yourself a nice chunk a' change." Sally had mussed his hair, told him what he could do with his newfound riches. "Now you can take some girls out, treat 'em right for a fuckin' change, show 'em a good time. They like that." And it was nice having a pocket full of money.
    There were other favors. He'd get a call from Sally after school; he'd meet him in another parking lot, a social club, a neighborhood bar. He'd be hiding out from some threat, real or imagined, and Tommy would have to sneak around. One time he had to take a gun to somebody, an older guy who ran a parking lot. He'd run around town for Sally, delivering messages, sometimes money. One time, Tommy had to bring a message to a lawyer; another time, a bail bondsman. Once he had to go all the way out to the airport, to a motor lodge near the terminal, to hand a folded piece of paper to a frightened little man in a dark motel room. The man had not been comforted by the message, Tommy remembered.
    Then, of course, there was the time he'd been busted with a whole crate of firecrackers. Two hours in a holding cell, with the cops razzing him, trying to frighten him, until his mother came to get him. His mother had not been at all judgmental; afterward, she'd never mentioned it. But Tommy had felt ashamed.
    He remembered his father, dead long before Tommy was in high school; remembered him coming back from a stretch in the Federal penitentiary, pale and thin; dutifully heading over to the Evergreen Sportsmen's Club on Spring Street whenever the phone rang. Though Tommy's father continued to make his daily appearances at the Evergreen and in the bars, the after-hours clubs and gambling spots where the day's business was decided and delegated, though he continued to come home with the boxes of swag, the tax-free cigarettes, the perks of his profession, Tommy believed that his heart wasn't in it. His father started to refer to the bosses as the Cigars and seemed to take little pleasure in their company. He did what he was told. Until the end, he was suitably uncooperative whenever the cops came around asking questions. He faded away when somebody, one of his associates, got arrested, often returning with a small gift for Tommy.
    In the neighborhood, his father was a respected man. Tommy's school friends were deferential. Their own fathers spoke warmly, even enviously, of whatever position Tommy's father enjoyed in the criminal hierarchy; but Tommy had serious doubts. To him, his father was a tired old man, ruined by jail. He said as much.
    On those rare occasions when his father took him out of the city, to Coney, to the Jersey shore, he smiled again. He'd carry Tommy on his shoulders and charge into the surf, saying, "Watch out! Here comes a big one," laughing when the waves knocked them off their feet.
    How his mother felt about his father's business, Tommy had no idea. She enjoyed it when his friends came over because they loved to eat, and Tommy's mother liked anybody who liked her cooking.
    When his father disappeared, Tommy's mother went on with her life, cooking for the procession of wise guys and half-wise guys who marched in and out of her kitchen. She sat back in her easy chair, stoically smoking her Parliaments and watching her soaps on the TV. She cooked lasagna and manicotti and osso bucco for her guests, seemingly oblivious to the increasingly frequent overtures his father's old friends made to Tommy to come into the business. Her brother, Sally, was the most persistent of all. His father had been missing not even a week and Sally had begun his long courtship of