Pin Action: Small-Time Gangsters, High-Stakes Gambling, and the Teenage Hustler Who Became a Bowling Champion by Gianmarc Manzione Read Free Book Online Page A

kill you, sometimes it made you wish it had. Al Rosa was a married twenty-something guy who made more money than he needed by working as a fur cutter. When he moved with his wife to an apartment across the street from Avenue M Bowl, he found just the place for people who made more money than they needed and had an itch to spend it. He also found a place where the vultures of action bowling laid in wait for the uninitiated, and Rosa definitely was among the uninitiated. One such vulture was Bernie Bananas, a fifteen-year-old Jewish kid with glasses and good grades who spent his time away from the lanes with his face in a book. Once Bernie found Avenue M Bowl, though, he was spending a lot more time rolling on the lanes than he was spending with his books. No book or classroom possibly could have furnished Bernie with the street wisdom he gleaned at Avenue M—wisdom he used to victimize Rosa.
    Rosa got a taste of action at Avenue M Bowl that kept him coming back every payday. Bernie was as adept at spotting fish as any other action bowler, and was reeling Rosa in. He would clean Rosa out of his paycheck every time. Then he would bowl Rosa yet another match on credit so Rosa would haveto pay up the next time he got his paycheck. Whenever Rosa walked into Avenue M Bowl it was like a drunk walking in to tend bar. He had to bowl Bernie again, despite the abundant evidence that he had no chance. Word on the street was that Rosa’s taste for the action cost him his job and, ultimately, his wife. Some might say Bernie ruined him; others might say Rosa ruined himself. Regardless of how Rosa’s paycheck fell into Bernie’s hands or what it cost him in things far more lasting than money, the teenaged Bernie was happy to count his cash and keep it coming. Bernie was a thin rung shy of the upper-echelon of great bowlers. Only a handful of bowlers attained those heights, but Bernie still averaged around 195. His peers knew him for a strange approach in which he looked like some bird descending out of the sky to land on the foul line as he made his shot. But Bernie did not need to be great, even though he was close to it. He just needed to know when he was facing inferior talent—better yet, inferior talent with a loose wallet. That helped Bernie accomplish two things: He did not have to bowl exceptionally well to win; and by not bowling exceptionally well, he preserved the image of a guy who could be beaten. A guy like that could always find willing challengers. With all the bowling practice Rosa had given Bernie by then, his game was more refined than ever, further lessening what slight chance of winning Rosa had.
    To another enterprising teenager living on 57th Street and 20th Avenue in the Bensonhurst section of Brooklyn, sneaking out to Avenue M Bowl despite a strict father’s curfew seemed like a perfectly good reason to risk his life. Fifteen-year-old Clifford Nordquist woke up at three A.M. in an anxious sweat, dreaming of the legends he heard about all day at Avenue M Bowl but had never seen for himself. By then, Nordquist was spending so much time at Avenue M Bowl that the place had become his second home. The old timers who kept their eyeson the kid meant only to entertain him with their stories of what they had seen the night before. But to Nordquist, those stories felt more like torture. His father’s ten P.M. curfew fell far too early for him to glimpse the gamblers, gangsters, and shylocks who filled Fish Face’s coffers while the rest of Brooklyn slept. Finally, Nordquist had had enough. He stuffed his blanket with pillows in the hope that it might be enough to allay his father’s suspicions. Just in case, he also left a bullshit note about leaving early to go fishing with buddies. Then he opened the window of his second-floor bedroom, lunged from the sill to the peach tree in the yard, climbed down the tree, and walked the half-mile to Avenue M Bowl in the middle of the night.
    The sight he beheld as he neared the