LOUIE & THE BLACKBOID - A tale in 20 Chapters in its entirety

[sd gross]

Herein begins the tale of Louie & the Blackboid, a mostly true story written from memory.
It's 20 short chapters long and was previously posted on Wacco two chapters at a time. This is intended to supplant all the prior LOUIE postings.

Cast of Characters:

Bernie Schwartz the plumber.
Malcolm Schwartz, Bernie's son.
Big Louie Pignatelli (aka Pignuts)
Angelo (Angie the Hippo) Pignatelli
The Kelley Sisters
The Klingers (owned petshop)
Sam & Esther Shapiro (brought Martha Raye home from Florida)
Martha Raye
Sheldon Katz (received Martha as gift)
Mr. Bramley (dead of a heart atack)
Katz the Tailor (Sheldon's dad)
Minnie (nee Shapiro) Katz (Tailor's wife)
Uncle Arnie Shapiro (former bootlegger)
Cholly (animals 'ruined' his El Dorado's trunk)
Lotta Bunz (retired exotic dancer & python lady)
Primo Carnera (the Python)
Grodsky (owns hardware store)
Gribnitz (the butcher)
Enrico (the Mynah bird)
Father Loughlin (taught Louie & friends at Sacred Heart of Mary)
Vinny Pits (bad acne)
Tony Peanuts (conived the Roll)
Uncle Sal (Tony's benevolent uncle)
Fat Benny the Roll (lost ballpark wager to Tony P.)
McGroyne the Umpire
Jose Feliciano
Cauliflower McGonigle (shot by Benny the Roll)
Sweeney the Cop
Mr. Park from the Coroner's office
Franco Pischetti (aka Frankie Spaghetti)
Mooney (owner of Lakes O'Killarney Grill)
Joey White-Eye (slain by offended Frankie Spaghetti)
Petey Rags (friend of Louies & Angela's)
Cousin Angela
Bubba Bielkowitz (small, resonant cab driver)
Cher Adlowitz (WPIX newslady)
Cousin Arabella
Grandma Rosa
Rocco the midget from Lucca



Louie and the Blackboid
by Stephen D. Gross

Chapter One

My friend Malcolm was a 16-year-old copy of his father, Bernie, the Plumber. Bernie's face was always sour because he mixed the wrong foods and there was constant turmoil within. He'd look at you like you just broke the news that his mother died, but it was only his turbulent stomach. He was short and squat, jowly and square-headed, but generous and generally pleasant to be around. He combed his hair over to one side in an attempt to obscure its tribe's rapid departure, and always wore argyle pullovers, usually green, even in warm weather. Malcolm also looked sour and hurt-grumpy, but it was because that's the way his dad looked and Malcolm had heard guys say they wanted to be like their dads. Malcolm already was.
We would help Bernie out at the shop on weekends sorting pipes and answering the phone and trying to look like busy adults. The shop was in a run-down section of Williamsburg (Brooklyn, not Virginia) and was populated with a fairly even mixture of Blacks and Italians who relieved tension by "acting out". Many of them were influenced by recent arrivals. There was also a contingent of devil-may-care Chassidic Jews and God-knows-how-many Irish families.
And although Malcolm and Bernie were kind enough to help me introduce this tale, it isn't so much about them as it is about the neighborhood, its residents and its visitors.

Chapter Two
Schwartz & Son Plumbers lay in the shadow of the rickety El which carried its ancient B.M.T. coaches above the cobbled streets like a ride at Disneyland (which hadn't been built yet). A visitor from Lithuania or Sweden or Mars would probably have thought the trains very cute indeed but we thought they stunk. They were noisy and they stunk.
Sometimes people engaged in conversation in the street below would have to lean into each other or raise their voices and shout to be heard above the wheezing, scraping and clanking that rained from above. Often, after the train with its drang and sturm departed, people would continue to shout at one another just because they'd grown used to it.
There were other shops in the neighborhood, most of them well-established and filthy and they would all keep their doors wide open during warm weather. As you walked down the street you could hear people in the hardware store hollering about hammers; there were confrontations over stains at the dry cleaners; we heard bitter arguments over fatty cuts of meat at the butchers. And those doing business in the shops were treated to the yelling and screaming that went on in the street.
The entire neighborhood was in an advanced state of deterioration which meant that there was much that was being either rehabilitated or dismantled. This involved the use of heavy machinery, jackhammers, pneumatic drills, bulldozers and backhoes which provided counterpoint to the rending, shearing, grinding and collapse of glass, and brick. Abuzz with these iron insects of destruction, the streets became an obstacle course into which drivers rushed headlong, because everyone in Brooklyn is always late and in a hurry.
Incessant honking, air brakes, cabbies shouting and cursing in a dozen languages, petulant bus drivers, irritated pedestrians and rattling of egos while jockeying for position attended the rolling stock.
There was noise in the street, above the street, under and across the street and within the structures on the street. It was like a wall of shrieking, screaming birds flying by the millions into the roaring, sucking turbines of big airplanes, or an armada of Harleys racing through the Brooklyn Battery tunnel. And there was Louie Pignatelli - Louie Pignuts to the kids in the neighborhood. And some of those kids were 49 years old.

Chapter Three
Big Louie Pignatelli was only five-two but each inch of him must of weighed about eight pounds. His waistline was also about five-two and gave birth to more neighborhood jokes than the Kelly sisters had babies. Genetically Challenged, the Kellys would be called today. We gave the always-hungry, demented quartet a less delicate label back then. They would just grin and fan their knees...which wasn't so bad, except on sultry summer afternoons.
Louie was born in the neighborhood and almost never ventured outside it. He had attended the Sacred Heart Academy where the nuns had busted many a yardstick across his gnarly knuckles. They made his father, Angie, pay for all those yardsticks, too, angering him to the point where he layed his belt across Louie's prodigious rump the minute he walked through the door.
Big Louie's dad, Angie the Hippo, was connected to a group of men who all had colorful names and hearty appetites. They earned good livings for their families, which rated them as responsible citizens, but none of them were Ozzie Nelsons or Bill Bixbys.
Angie the Hippo was frequently in a position where several people owed him money which led the neighborhood yaks to believe he was some kind of generous philanthrophist. He was always passing out stacks of greenbacks or extending credit. Of course, because of the occassional untimely demise of a debtor or two, he wasn't always able to collect what was owed him. In some cases he expected the departed's widow to make good, and that's how Angie the Hippo got into the Pet Shop business.

Chapter Four
The pet shop's former owners, the Klingers, were given to long afternoons on Brighton Beach and American beers with German names like Pabst and Schlitz so the shop was not what you would call antiseptic, exactly. They gave the animals plenty of food when they were there, but what the animals did with it when they weren't was another story. They had an enviable collection of exotics from time to time, depending on what was loose and going down around the neighborhood. For example, when Sam and Esther Shapiro came home from Miami, they brought their grandson, Sheldon, a baby alligator with Miami Beach, Fla. inscribed in white paint on its back. Shelly stuck it in an old aquarium with a bunch of rocks and sand and fed it stuff he would grab from under the stairwell, or find in the alleyway where the garbage can overflow provided treats for the neighborhood vermin.
Martha, the alligator (named after Martha Raye whose enormous mouth was legendary) soon grew considerably bigger than the aquarium and was moved to the bathroom, where she spent much of her time dozing in the rusty, clawfoot tub. One night after consuming a pint of Southern Comfort under the Williamsburg Bridge, a 15-year-old Sheldon staggered into the bathroom and vomited into the tub (which provided a larger target than the commode), and Martha let out a roar which, it was later rumored, caused Mr. Bramley to leap out of bed and immediately drop dead of a heart attack. Shelly's parents, Katz, the tailor and his wife, Minnie (the former Minnie Shapiro) , rather then subject themselves to hostilities from New York's uncompromising Department of Animal Control, were faced with either turning the amphibian into a handbag and a few wallets, or donating the beast to the Prospect Park Zoo. The zoo already had too many gators (they'd gotten many of the ones which had lived in the gloom of New York's sewers, until the big roundup during the early 50's), so they turned the gift down.
Sheldon was mortified at the thought of Martha being cut up for accessories, but he couldn't keep her in the apartment. Then he thought of Uncle Arnie, his mother's sister. Arnie Shapiro had a battered Dodge van which Arnie often used to carry loads of bootleg cigarettes up to New York from North Carolina. He found he could easily double his investment, no problem, with very little effort. Some neighborhood Soldiers also used Uncle Arnie and his windowless van to transport the dearly departed (or about to depart) to the Jersey mud flats beyond Bayonne. Arnie was in his 70's and looked very ordinary. He was practically invisible. Sheldon asked Uncle Arnie to help him out with Martha. If he could just take her for a ride and dump her in Jersey, Sheldon pleaded. At least if left in one piece, Martha might have a chance.
It was months later little fillers started appearing in the Post and the Daily News. Tidbits about members of the South Orange Audubon Society looking for ducks and rails and instead seeing a "monster" in the marshland. A story surfaced about an old party walking her Lhasa Apso when a "dinosaur" emerged from the reeds and snatched her dog. Terrified schoolkids raced home in tears swearing never to go out to the flats again. Arnie got some big chuckles out of these tales. Sheldon had always been one of Uncle Arnie's favorites.
Another time, a couple of neighborhood Wise Guys got a pair of black market jaguar cubs from a poacher who lived in Greenpoint but had connections in Sao Paolo. They kept the cubs in a tiny cage in a windowless room beneath the family dry cleaning establishment, and they would bring captive enemies there for the purpose of terrorizing them. They didn't have any moral problem when it came to offing people; it was the post-mortem clean-up that turned their stomachs and put a damper on many an otherwise festive occasion. Instead, they would force opposing soldiers to undress and rub raw liver all over their bodies. They would then shove them into this pitch-black room which held the cage barely containing the snarling, hungry jaguars, and make them old before their time.
One night the cubs, now frustrated yearlings comprised mostly of tooth and claw, broke out of their cage and playfully tore through the ceiling to the cleaning plant above where they had a wonderful time batting around the freshly-laundered Armani suits and expensive cocktail dresses which hung on the eliptical racks. What they didn't shred into ribbons, they pissed and sprayed on, making it theirs forever. The next morning, the proprietors smelled, before they saw, the remains of the energetic cats' debacle, and the jags would have been quickly dispatched but after what happened to the trunk of Cholly's Eldorado last August (they ended up stealing a replacement for him!), they didn't want another mess to deal with. So they traded the jaguars to the Klingers for a pair of two-foot-long Piranha in a 40-gallon tank.

Chapter Five
Angie the Hippo was on the road a lot of the time, so he got his son Big Louie to quit his after-school job as a pin-setter at the Livonia (Avenue) Lanes and come to work in the Pet Shop. Louie had been finding it harder and harder to bend down into the well at the end of the alleys and retrieve the fallen pins, and having bent, even more difficult to right himself. So when Angie sagely suggested Big Louie Pignuts make a career change, Louie was only too happy to help his dad out.
Spending time with his own flaw-riddled species kept Big Louie busy enough, but he'd been exposed to Brooklyn's wildlife for a decade and a half, and had learned how to behave around other species, too. The inter-speciel credo he lived by was: Stomp the Fuckin' Roaches, starve the rats, and don't let the goddam pigeons crap on you.
Of course he'd been to the zoo a half-dozen times, and ever since that historic school outing when he was nine-years-old, he never failed to look in on the monkeys. The 3rd-grade trip would have been far less exciting had it not been for a horny Colobus monkey who was not at all shy about advancing the children's education. Black and white and extremely hyper, Colobus monkeys are very showy and exciting to watch. Their animated hooting and wild antics always attract a crowd.
Big Louie heard a commotion around Monkey Island and waddled over to see what it was all about. "The little monkey is sick and the big one is trying to push it to the hospital", the teacher feebly explained, but these were savvy, street-wise kids and they knew what was happening. A few were even more sexually-experienced than their 30-something teacher, a pink, insecure Swede from Jackson Heights. Afterwards, Louie and a few of the boys, having learned the concept of reincarnation, talked in the schoolbus about how they wished "they could come back as monkeys", so they could do it in public whenever they wanted. A few of them did.
Running the pet shop was great fun for Big Louie and he got very creative. Sometimes, for excitement, he would put different species together which shared the same habitat in the wild, but usually had more space. He had a Rock Python that had been given to him by a lady named Lotta Bunz who used to use the snake in her act at the Palomino . Neither gravity nor the constant exposure to in St. Augustine's ultraviolet rays had been kind to her, and no one wanted to pay to see her rolls of farinaceous flesh anymore. It was no longer cost effective to feed Primo (the snake was named after Argentinian boxer, Primo Carnera), so Lotta gave him to Big Louie.
Louie's white rats had been manufacturing more white rats at an alarming rate, so he charged the neighborhood kids a quarter a piece to come in at feeding time and watch the carnage. While the rag-tag assemblage hooted, Big Louie dropped two rats into Primo's glass pit and stepped back so as not to get splattered with rat guts and blood. The frightened rats cringed in a corner and quivered, and Primo watched them. To a chorus of o-o-ohs and a-h-hs the big snake's forked tongue darted out and tasted the air. His head swung pendulously from side to side while he kept the doomed rats frozen with his unblinking gaze. This went on for a time while the kids cheered and hollered and egged the killer serpent on. But Primo wasn't in a hurry. The rats weren't going anywhere and neither was he. Everytime the black tongue lashed out cries and whoops sprung from the gallery. After about an hour, the exhausted rats shifted their pudgy bodies from one haunch to the other and continued to shake. They had been paralyzed with fear but they had shifted their weight and hadn't been eaten, so they experienced a germ of confidence. Another hour passed with more of the same. Glassy stare met with glassy stare. Bestial threat and intimidation was met with glassy helplessness, and still there was no maiming, no mangling or blood. No screams of terror. A couple of the kids wanted their quarters back, but Big Louie pulled their ears and sat on them, and they ended up giving him another quarter to "get the hell off".
It began to get dark out and most of the kids had to go home for dinner, and still Primo and the rats stared at each other. Even Big Louie grew tired and lost interest. The next morning Louie hunkered over to Primo's den to see if he'd left their tails. He had. And the two rats were still attached to them. They looked less tense then they had some eighteen hours before, and in fact, were getting along pretty well. A few months later, the rats had babies of their own and Primo didn't show much interest in them, either.

Chapter Six
One April morning, Big Louie heard a commotion in the big sycamore outside his shop and looked up to see a mass of blackbirds swirling around in its crown. They were squawking and jabbering, making an awful racket when Louie thought he heard something unusual. It almost sounded like a little kid - a girl - stuck up there in the sycamore with that swarm of frenetic blackbirds. "Asshole", she was shrieking, "get away". He walked over to the big tree's trunk and almost leaning against it, looked straight up into the leafy crown above. All he could see was birds, but he looked again, very carefully. Convinced there was no kid in the tree he started back to his shop when he heard it again - "asshole", she piped. "Get away". This time he looked around and behind him. Very slowly and cagily so as not to alarm whomever was pulling this stunt. It was still early, but most of the neighborhood shops were open. Through the hardware store window he could see old man Grodsky aligning his boxes of screws and lag bolts. He was from the school which dictated geometry and precise order are mandatory in all things. It wasn't Grodsky.
Over at the dry cleaners, two fat men wearing suits, their ties askew, were reading the New York Post and eating buick-sized hero sandwiches. Although it was too early in the day for most people to engage a mountain of provolone, asiago, prosciutto, head cheese, Genoan salami, habanero peppers, beefsteak tomatoes, olive oil, parmesan, ham, smoked turkey and Sicilian sausages, these men had probably been up for the last two nights and this was a light lunch to hold them 'til dinner. Their jowls floated up and down, their puffy necks rippled and their cheeks were inflated like the gular pouches of Frigate birds in the mood for love. It wasn't through their greasy lips, had passed "asshole".
Gribnitz the Butcher was quartering chickens and sipping tea. He kept a cube of sugar between his teeth and sucked the hot tea through the sugar in the manner of certain men of Minsk. Big Louie thought about holding a cube of sugar in his own gate-like teeth and hissing, "asshole". He decided to try it and spent twenty minutes searching the dirty floor under the crusty sink in the back room for it, and while he was in there he heard a voice coming from the front of his shop. "Asshole", it piped. Big Louie roared through the door with blood in his eye. He couldn't wait to rearrange the dentures of the ballsy jerk who continued to bad-mouth him. "Imagine, trash-talking me in my own goddamn shop", he fumed - but no one was there! He couldn't believe it - the tinkly little bell above the door would have informed him had the foul mouth exited into the street. "Asshole", he heard. "Mother of Mercy -get away, get away". He looked up at the slowly-rotating fan in the center of the ceiling. He checked out the storage loft above the main floor. He saw something dark up there - sitting on the brass railing. It was a black bird. It was looking straight at Big Louie. It cocked its coal-black head to one side. "Asshole", it said "Mother of Mercy", said Big Louie.

Chapter Seven
You could have knocked Louie over with - excuse me - a feather! At first he was pissed. Who was this goddam bird who'd never even met him, calling him an asshole? He looked around for his push broom. "Get away", chirped the bird, "get away - asshole". Big Louie suddenly felt exhausted. Unraveling the mystery had been too draining, too much of an effort, both physically and emotionally - he was worn out. Louie sighed and started to laugh. He was a big man, and it took a few minutes for his laugh to gain momentum and really get rolling, but when it did, it rolled and roared like Niagra Falls. Big Louie's belly shook like an ocean of jello. Like venial super-highways, his veins spiraled around his ample neck. Tears gushed from narrow, slitted eyes, gushing over the ample pouches beneath them and spattering his Florsheim pumps. Huge ham-sized palms whacked yard-wide thighs. "Asshole" intoned the bird. Big Louie, for the first time since he was ten, wet himself.
He later learned it was an Indian Mynah - an escapee. Mynahs are not indigenous to Brooklyn, nor are they even casual visitors. But like Mimus Polyglottus, the common Mockingbird, Mynahs have a propensity for imitating sounds they hear. This included dogs barking, pile drivers, bus horns, other birds and, of course, human language. To hear a human voice issuing from the bill of a bird is not only endearing - it's magical! Other birds, parrots, parakeets, even crows have been known to mimic sounds, but few carry their imitations to the level that Mynahs do.
The conversation that flowed between Big Louie and his buddies was very salty and they trash-talked each other constantly. So involved, were they, in the foibles of their own worthless existences, they hardly notice the Blackboid reposing on his stand. Held fast by a metal ring Louie had affixed to his leg, the bird wasn't going anywhere and had plenty of time to kill. At night, Louie freed the bird from his perch and allowed her the run of the pet shop, and sometimes he didn't get around to recapturing it until late in the afternoon or early evening. It would sit darkly, quietly on the railing around the storage loft, and let fly with the odd comment in a totally unpredictable fashion. On sunny days, Big Louie would move the bird on its perch to the sidewalk in front of his shop where it could listen to conversations, screeching El trains, local birds and construction machinery.
One morning, Father Loughlin came in for a bag of rabbit chow for his long-eared Angora. The passive, white bunny was the softest, silkiest, most yielding animal Louie or his friends had ever seen and there were jokes among the neighborhood cognescenti about the Good Father secretly fondling his beloved Rabbit. Enrico (Big Louie's uncle Carmine named the bird after his favorite singer), was sitting on the railing taking in the sweet, morning sun when he saw the good father. "Heh, heh, heh- you horny sonofabitch", he cackled. The father couldn't believe what he was hearing! Without moving his neck, he shot glances all around the room, trying to discern where in the darkened shop this derisiveness was coming from. Big Louie knew, but he never turned his gaze from the reddening face of the angry priest. "Heh, heh, heh - you horny sonofabitch", snickered the bird. Straining his eyes now, Loughlin tried hard to see a shape up in the dimness of the storage loft. Once his eyes grew accustomed to the poor light, he could see fairly well, and he could see there wasn't anything human up there. He wondered if one of Big Louie's cronies was crouched down up there, trying to give him a bad time. He looked hard at Louie who was trying not to pee in his pants.
He remembered the conversation in his shop the night before between Little Sally Boxes and Carlo Stripes. Called "stripes" because he always wore pinstriped suits and shirts, and even striped ties, Carlo was constantly on the Hunt.for "shmundie", which was what he called anything female. He didn't care if it was old shmundie, young shmundie, wrinkled, smelly, married, Asian, or drooling and in a wheelchair. If it was once female, it was shmundie, and Carlo wanted some. Sally Boxes was an okay guy, but he had a very conspiratorial laugh that sounded like he was making fun of you. "Heh, heh, heh", he'd chortle nastily. And last night, Big Louie recalled, Little Sally and Carlo Stripes were hanging around the pet shop talking about Carlo's favorite subject.
"Heh, heh, heh - you horny sonofabitch", cooed Enrico. Slamming his money down hard on the counter, the crimson-faced priest grabbed his rabbit food and shot a lethal glance at Big Louie. "You won't get away with this!", he hollered as he stormed out the door. "Mother of Mercy! Mother of Mercy" Enrico shouted after him.
Of course he found out a few weeks later what had been mocking him from the pet shop's shadows after Louie moved the bird, attached to his perch by a leg ring and now known as Rico, out to the sidewalk in front of his shop.

Chapter Eight
The people who lived in the neighborhood salted Rico's vocabulary with R-rated color and quickly got used to the bird mouthing off like a local. Sounding, after a few months, like a longshoreman with Tourette's syndrome, It rapidly amassed a vocabulary of almost 300 words in four languages (English, Spanish, Italian and Yiddish). The unpretentious bird would say whatever it wanted arbitrarily, with no reason other than those were the words which happened to pop into its head. Because it was a busy district with commerce being conducted on and in the street both day and night, there was usually someone around to hear what the bird was saying.
Rico's multilingual diatribes ensured that those who were in earshot weren't always able to understand what she was saying, but when they did, they usually remembered it was just Big Louie's Blackboid "dissing" the world, and they tried not to take it personally. With visitors from other neighborhoods, this was not necessarily so.
When they heard, for example, suggestions about their mothers' alleged intimate involvement with various primates, they didn't even imagine it was coming from a small bird; and like Father Loughlin before them, many would searched the sidewalks, tenement windows, and shadowy doorways for signs of a perpetrator. Because there was such a busy streetscene, there usually were any number of denizens standing idly by, chatting, or otherwise inviting someone to accuse them of some wrong-doing. From time to time, these misunderstandings would lead to hot-headed actions followed by reactions which frequently led to mayhem.
"Way to go you hairy scumbag", Rico would shout with glee, or, "Your cunt smells, you fuckin' penguin" (which she heard often, courtesy of Vinnie Pits - so called because of his losing battle with acne - who was regularly beaten by the nuns at St. Anthony's Academy). Rico's Italian, which he spoke with a Sicilian accent, was impeccable too, but very annoying to the neighborhood Genovese, Venetians and Florentines who considered Rico a lowlife - a bird with no class. His melanistic pigmentation earned him further condemnation, and from time to time, he would be regarded as a dark, armless midget and a social outcast.
Recent studies show that the content of the words people use comprise only 18% of communication. Intonation and body language make up the other 82%. Rico's body language consisted mainly of ruffling and preening feathers, shuttering his nictitating membrane up over his eye and back down again, and occasionally yawning. His tone varied slightly depending on whom he had learned a particular phrase from, but was generally evenly modulated. So the content of his speech took on greater import.
As might be imagined, Enrico's verbal ejaculations seeded many a vendetta among the emotional and uninformed (liberally sprinkled throughout the neighborhood), and were even responsible for a few heated confrontations and at least one murder.

Chapter Nine
Tony Peanuts was heavily into gambling, and if it weren't for the Respect demanded by his Uncle Sal, he would of been modeling a concrete kimono at the bottom of the Narrows (the waterway between Brooklyn and Staten Island, which was deep, turbulent, and virtually drag-proof) long ago. As it was, Tony was rude and obnoxious and got away with more than he should have because he was well connected. Fat Benny the Roll (short for 'jellyroll') owned a poolhall over in Greenpoint with a big screen TV and Tony would visit it for the purpose of wagering on sporting events and inhaling some of that Neopolitan cuisine that made Benny so fat in the first place. Unfortunately (for Tony), he had built up quite a large debt betting on the Knicks and the Mets (not to mention an assortment of "thoroughbreds" who had since gone to their rewards as boxes of Jell-O at the local A & P). Because they were his 'homeys', Tony Peanuts felt some sense of loyalty toward the Knicks and Mets, and it wasn't long before his emotions, rather than his brain governed his wagering. A regular visitor to Shea Stadium, Tony would go through several bags of peanuts per game, and that was why they labled Tony Potenza, Tony Peanuts. Benny the Roll would sometimes join him at the ballpark and the pair would engage in friendly verbal jousting, which served to pepper their bets.
One day, tired of consistently losing to Benny the Roll, Tony worked out a devious and elaborate (for him) plan to get even. Taking home a bag of ballpark peanuts without actually consuming them, Tony carefully ran his thumbnail along one of the nuts' seams. managing to seperate its halves without cracking the shell. He then pried open the rusted kishkes of an old Buick and removing two pea-sized ball bearings, he packed them into the empty peanut shells which he then carefully glued together. Parking the spurious peanut in the zippered pocket of his windbreaker, Tony went to the ballpark every day for a week until he finally ran into Fat Benny the Roll.
The Mets were involved in a close one with the Cubs and the enormous crowd was very loud, roaring and weaving like a multi-headed Hydra, and growing more agitated with each pitch. Sitting together in the upper reserved seats behind first base, Tony proposed a wager he knew the big man couldn't possibly turn down. He owed the Roll a bundle and Fat Benny's greed knew no limits. With his lap covered in peanut shells and already three empty bags lying at his feet, Tony cracked another shell between his thumb and forefinger and refering to the umpire behind the plate said, "That fuckin' McGroyne is fuckin' blind." "Yeah", grunted the Roll who, although big around the middle, was not big with words. Said Tony, "I'd like to plant my fuckin' toe up his butt." "Unh", replied the reticent Benny. Tony grabbed a peanut and chucked it in the directon of the playing field. It sailed about twenty feet and harmlessly brushed a woman on the shoulder. Amid the roar and excitement, she didn't notice it. "Strike three" gestured McGroyne. "Muthafucka", moaned Tony, firing another peanut toward the field. This one travelled almost thirty feet, landing in the aisle about fifty feet from the Mets dugout.
"'Cha doin'?" growled the Roll. Fuckin' Tony was throwing food away. Benny was from the Old School where no one ever tossed food away. Not that food hung around Benny's family's house long enough to grow Blue Hair or anything. There weren't even leftovers. Benny and his brothers and sisters would sometimes visit their friends after mealtimes so they could find out if they had any leftovers. He couldn't believe Tony was tossing edibles where strangers could pick them up and scoff them. "'Cha fuckin' doin'?", he whined. "Gonna bean that fuckin' McGroyne" came the casual reply. "Da umpire?" said the incredulous Roll. "Think you gonna hit da fuckin' umpire?" Benny knew something about physics. He'd help pour concrete a few times. He'd hefted a couple of sides of beef. He knew you couldn't sail a peanut anywhere near the playing field. "Whyn'tchoo give it up? Doan want yer friggin' peanuts I'll eatem." One of the Roll's longer speeches. "Why? You don't think I can reach McGroyne wid a fuckin' peanut?" "Aw, give it up!" bellowed the Roll. This is what Tony was waiting for. "Yeah? You don't think so, putcha money where yer fuckin' mouth is." "What about what choo owe me, asshole?" chided, Benny. "I tole you my Uncle Sal's gonna help me out." Benny had heard for years about Uncle Sal from Detroit. His nefarious deeds and fat bankroll were legendary. He knew better than to disparage Uncle Sal's name. At least he thought he knew. "SCUMBAG" screamed Tony, standing up and firing another peanut toward the field. It shot out of his hand then abruptly slowed as it met the early afternoon breeze blowing in from Flushing Meadow. After a promising start, It fell eleven rows in front Tony Peanuts and Fat Benny the Roll. "Come on, muthafucka", yelled Tony, reaching into his pants pocket and drawing out a fat wad of long green. The sight of the roll of bills was more than Benny's greed could stand. "How much ya got?" hollered the Roll. Tony reached over and whispered in Benny's cabbage-sized ear . The big man turned pink. "Okay, the deal is, I have to reach McGroyne with a peanut, agreed?" Hippo neck stretching like an accordian's bellows, the Roll nodded. "Double or nuthin', right?" The Neopolitan grunted his agreement.
This was the moment Tony had been steering toward all week - he turned and looked away from Benny so the latter wouldn't catch his smirk. Craftily palming the loaded peanut he reached into the bag he was working on to make it all look normal. Palms sweaty with the taste of victory, Tony almost dropped the ringer in among the other peanuts - but he didn't. Grunting and waggling his massive rhino head, the excitement the Roll felt was beginning to tax his overworked heart. He looked at McGroyne in the distance, oblivious in his mask and chest protector and cup, to the fact that his body marked the line over which the dimpled nut must fly. There was no way Tony Fuckin' Peanuts could heave a peanut that far - not Satchel Paige, not Sandy Koufax, not even Willie Mays could muster that much force behind one of those suckers - they were just too light weight. Not looking at the flesh-mountain beside him, Tony cocked his right arm and let the loaded peanut fly.
There are a lot of hungry gulls who hang around Shea Stadium. Most stay right through football season. They're opportunistic birds who know this heaving mass of humanity, often 50,000 strong and in constant need of an oral fix, always leaves tons of food scraps around. These gulls are a very competitive lot and don't allow edibles to lie around for too long.
Benny the Roll knew something was up by the way the peanut shot out of Tony's fist. It didn't get caught up in the stiff wind blowing off Flushing Meadows. The freshet off Long Island Sound gave it no pause. It cleared the roof of the Mets dugout. It whistled past the imaginary line between McGroyne and the on-deck circle. It hardly slowed as it past the pitchers mound, and finally it dropped like a lead bullet on the grass just beyond the infield. Tony's grin was too quick and too smug. Benny was oafish, he was slow and sometimes acted as if congealed olive oil ran through his veins. But he wasn't stupid. He was street-wise, he'd grown up around a thousand goniffs like Tony Peanuts and he wasn't stupid. There was a flash of dirty gray between the shortstop and the second baseman. A motivated gull had taken off with Tony's errant peanut. There was no way Benny could prove that Tony had tampered with the nut which, by now, was what he suspected. But he wasn't about to let go all that kale without doing something. After all, sixteen-five doubled was 33 large. So he decided to go after the pigeon that lifted the peanut The sociable birds had a safe roost in the light tower above section 42 in the left field bleachers, and the bleachers were usually devoid of people. There was a contingent of first-timers but they always moved to section 38 by the third inning, leaving the section 42 empty.
Benny the Roll glanced at Tony's smug mug and gave him the hard cold stare of a large, soulless saltwater grouper. He lifted his bulk out of his seat and trudged up the aisle toward the food concessions and souvenir stands. He was gone for about twenty minutes, Tony wondering about the big man's reaction and what the hell he was up to and just how pissed was he, anyway? A little nervous, was Tony Peanuts, trying to get back into the ballgame, but not knowing exactly what to do. He heard a pop, like a firecracker but almost lost among the crowd noises, it didn't register. A minute or two passed and he heard another pop and it had a familiar ring to it. His gaze wandered out to right field, up to the bleachers and once more he heard a sharp pop followed this time by a faint tinkle. The familiar sound of a 9mm Baretta and the substantial bulk of Benny the Roll standing among a rain of broken glass as he blasted away at the pigeons in the light tower caught Tony by surprise. After each successful shot the Roll gathered up the dead pigeon and sliced open its belly with his pig sticker. He didn't know what he'd find but he had a feeling he'd find something. He was alone up there long enough to shoot five or six birds - the flock would fly off and then immediately return - before a New York City police SWAT team moved in and Benny ran out of bullets.
While Benny was thus preoccupied Tony Peanuts prudently took his leave and has not been heard from. Rumor has it he's working for his Uncle Giacomo in Key West.
Rumor also has it that when Benny was released from the Tombs after a three-night stay, he went back to Shea Stadium to see what he could see. Of course he had been banned for the rest of the season but he gave the ticket guy a C-note and one of his grouper-fish stares and he got in. What happened next sounds like the stuff of urban legends but those that were there swear it's true. Jose Feliciano, accompanying himself on guitar, was singing the National Anthem and just as he reached "...so prou-u-udly we hail..." a pigeon fell dead from the sky and landed on the pitcher's mound right behind where Jose was seated. The pigeon story, which appeared on page two of the New York Post, went on to say that the poor bird had died of lead poisoning! It also said that Feliciano, although blind, was able to tell a pigeon had fallen dead out of the sky because, being a musician and a blind one at that, his hearing was especially accute. Reading the story in the office of his pool hall-bar Benny looked more like a fish than ever.


Chapter Ten

A couple of weeks had elapsed since the Jellyroll had been stung and the Roll was taking his time cooling down. He had business in Williamsburg and so he came down one Sunday and was slowly driving down President Street, admiring the sights, when he heard this: "Hey fatso, why doncha' sit on a peanut"! It was early in the morning and the usual crowds were absent from the streets, and all the Roll could see was a blackbird on a stand with a ring around its leg and Cauliflower McGonigle leaning against the wall of O'Grady's Garden Room and Grill.
A small-time chiseler/hustler/bookie/pimp, McGonigle was always pissing people off and getting his eyes blackened which was why he always wore dark glasses. You couldn't see his shiners, but neither could you see which way he was looking. This, combined with his slouch and his trademark brown fedora tilted over one eye, showcased McGonigle in a very shifty light. He had a rep for a nasty mouth and was not long on ethics.
Not liking what he heard - you might call it salting his wounds - Benny the Roll drove down to the corner and turned his black Coupe de Ville around in an attempt to pinpoint the source of this insult. He had just passed McGonigle, who made it a point to look (turn his head, actually - you couldn't be sure where he was looking) away from Benny. The bird was preening itself and looking like a bird. "Stuff it up yer ass, stuff it up yer ass" a voice squawked. The Jellyroll braked abruptly. This guy must have brass cajones, he thought. He backed up until he was abreast of McGonigle, who was pulling a pack of Lucky Strikes out of his jacket pocket. "Hey, smart ass!" hollered the Roll. It was a Williamsburg morning quieter than most and his thick voice thudded against the sunwashed brick. McGonigle paused with the pack of Luckies in his hand and looked over at the tinted windows of the Cadillac. One had come down almost half way. "Dumb, fuckin' donkey, stuff this!", wheezed the Roll and in rapid succession, he fired three shots. The first bullet ran right through the circle on McGonigle's pack of Luckies and went directly into his heart. The second entered the unfortunate's spleen and the third chipped its way into the brick facing next to O'Grady's plate glass window. The medical examiner reported the forensic tech had found shreds of latakia tobacco in McGonigle's heart and joked about how tobacco had killed him.
The cops from the 56th precinct arrived not ten minutes later led by Lieutenant Sweeney. Sweeney the Meanie, the neighborhood called him, but never to his face. He was bending over Cauliflower McGonigle's torn body, secretly pleased but managing to look grim and concerned, when a voice sounding like shards of broken glass turned him the color of a beet. "Dumb fuckin' donkey", it shrieked, "stuff this!" Sweeney, flushed the color of a ripe eggplant, couldn't believe what he'd heard. Who in this neighborhood would be crazy enough to bad mouth the nastiest cop in Brooklyn? More than angered, Sweeney was stunned - that someone would actually have the balls to call him a "donkey" on his turf... He looked up the street and up at the windows of the nearby apartment houses. If anyone so much as heard what he'd been called he'd throw their ass in jail. The morning sunlight blasted through the El tracks painting stripes on the slick cobblestones below. A fresh breeze dusted lightly with deisel and the smell of fresh roasted coffee assaulted Sweeney's yam-like nose. He looked down the street - but all he saw was this sorry-looking blackbird chained to a stand in front of Big Louie's Pet Emporium preoccupied with scratching. Obviously, it had a few pests of its own. Glancing back down at McGonigle, Sweeney saw he was still leaking and he recalled hearing WNBC's morning weather girl predicting a high of 96 degrees. When Mr. Park from the coroner's office arrived, Sweeney was glad to see him. "Thirty-three months until retirement", he thought, "I'll be lucky if I live that long!"


Chapter 11

Enrico spent two years associating with Big Louie and his pals. Although it wasn't quite the same as living in a courtyard in Calcutta, the medium-sized brown bird with the black head and white on its wings found life in Brooklyn to be very stimulating. He managed to instigate several bloody fights and was responsible for two fatalities - McGonigle's shooting and the stabbing of Joey White-eye, who was more or less in the same line of work as McGonigle, by Frankie Spaghetti.
Franco Pischetti, a fairly recent immigrant from Napoli, had gotten a job cooking in Mooney's Lakes O' Killarney Grill. By law, Mooney had to dispense food to his clients along with the booze, so he hired Pischetti to sling pasta in the tiny kitchen in back. Not only did he work for below minimum wage, but it turned out Franco made world-class spaghetti and meatballs, and people from all over the neighborhood would send their kids to pick up a couple of cartons of take-out on the nights Franco worked. A simple, very amiable guy, Franco especially adored kids because they were often the same size he was, which was very small. Muscular, energetic and quick-tempered, Franco stood 4ft 9 in his narrow Milanese shoes, and was very sensitive about his height. With matted black curls dangling over his sweaty brow, Frankie always had a quick smile and a handful of pretzels for any kid who came within range, but God help the adult who would allude to his abbreviated stature. A few of Mooney's customers with more than one Guinesses under their belt had made the mistake of smart-mouthing Mr. Pischetti and he'd taken them to task with the tools of his trade. One had lost an ear and a second man, not having heard about the first, found his butt impaled on the twin tines of a spaghetti fork. Hurrying to work one Friday afternoon, Frankie, who spoke very little English, was about to duck into Mooney's when he heard this: "Dumb, fuckin' midget!" That last word Frankie recognized, and it froze him on the spot. Hunching his petite but muscular shoulders, he slowly turned about and saw Joey White-Eye, back turned to Frankie, on the pay phone between Louie's and Mooney's Grill - and a black bird tied to a perch cracking a sunflower seed. Wheeling and dealing, Joey paid neither Frankie or the bird any attention, but then he saw a very contorted face the color of smoke looking up at him. "You call me?", barked Frankie. Deeply involved in negotiations, Joey White-Eye had no idea what Frankie was talking about. "You call me midju?, "you talk to me?" he asked, in what would have been considered a terrible imitation of Robert De Niro in "Taxi Driver". Annoyed and a bit preoccupied, Joey made a fatal mistake. "Take a hike, squirt", he rasped, and again turned his back to Frankie. The last thing Joey White-eye ever heard was shattering glass and his own voice starting to say, "Wha...?" Frankie had grabbed an empty bottle of Dr. Brown's Celray Tonic out of the gutter, smashed it against the curb, and shoved the jagged glass into poor Joey's kidneys as hard as he could. Satisfied, he then tossed the broken bottleneck back into the gutter, turned back toward Mooney's and went to work. Someone discovered Joey fifteen minutes later, but by that time, both eyes had turned white and Joey had no breath left with which to speak. Turned out Rico was the only witness to what happened, and neither he nor Frankie Spaghetti ever said anything about it. Frankie worked for Mooney for almost twenty years, preserving the Neopolitan reputation for warmth, amiability, good humor and fine cuisine - and all the kids in the neighborhood loved him!


Chapter 12

Louie Pignuts grew even bigger, Enrico developed an impressive vocabulary, and one night, while watching The Johnny Carson Show with Petey Rags and his cousin Angela, Louie got a terrific idea. Carson often had people come on the show with dogs who had learned tricks, and that night there was a lady with a parrot who sang "I Left My Heart in San Francisco". It could have been that they were high on smoke or just enjoying each other's company, but Angela, Petey and Louie laughed so hard they almost peed in their pants. "My boid talks as good as that - better!" announced Louie with conviction. He tried to call the show's producers to make an appointment, but impressive as he was in person, Louie lacked telephone skills.
The three of them decided to put Rico in a box and take him into Manhattan in a cab. Enrico pissed off the driver on the way downtown and nearly got the three humans accompanying him thrown out in Crown Heights. "You got a fat ass, you got a fat ass" he squawked over and over again until the driver jerked the cab against the curb and slammed on the brake. "I don't give a shit which one a youse is mouthin' off but if you don't shut the fuck up, you're all in da gutter!", he proclaimed. "Mother of Mercy, Mother of Mercy" hollered the suicidal bird. The ever-resourceful Angela peeled a strip of duct tape from where it was holding the torn back seat together, and they gently wrapped it around Rico's bill. If this wasn't an all-Black neighborhood, they might have taken their chances, but right now it seemed prudent to stay on the driver's good side.


Chapter 13

"Your mother's tits" hollered the small box as they tried to ferret it past the studio's doorman. He was about to advise them they couldn't come in unless they had an appointment, but the hollering box stopped him. The duct tape had obviously worked loose and Enrico had been silent long enough. "What's in the box?", said the doorman. "'S my boid what talks" answered Louie. "Yeah, sure", the disbelieving door guard remarked, "lemme see 'em". Carefully, Louie's banana-sized fingers lifted the edge of the box - and shouting "your mother's tits", out flew Enrico.
The lobby of the R.C.A. building had great expanses of marble and glass, and a very high ceiling. It had been years since Rico had tasted freedom and he was making the most of it. Enrico was clever and evasive, and there was just too much lobby for him to be caught. Louie tried calling him in that booming baritone of his, but Rico had no particular love for Big Louie and besides, there were so many new things to see and do. Having access to the big building's hallways left the foul-mouthed bird virtually uncatchable and there was no way to shut him up. "Fat ass, fat ass", he'd shriek merrily, turning people crimson with self-consciousness. "You horny sonofabitch, heh, heh, heh..., "fuckoff", fuckoff", he'd intone with abominable timing. At first the people who worked there thought it was funny, but they soon tired of the random verbal abuse. Tourists couldn't believe what they were hearing, and would cover their kids' ears while the youngsters giggled with glee. The city schools suspended elementary school outings to the building because there was no controlling Enrico and no one ever knew when or where he'd show up. He had discovered the newsstand in the lobby which also sold snacks and candy, and he learned to forage for food in the hallways near the cafeterias. There were those too, who found him quirky and adorable, and they'd leave tidbits for him in odd places. The building's workforce attempted to eliminate him. "Remove him", they said, " we're going to relocate the poor thing". After a few frustrating weeks they wanted to "kill the sonofabitch", said the building's chief of security in an interview with Cher Adlowitz, "on-the-scene" for WPIX-TV. The janitorial staff didn't care for Enrico's guano spotting the marble. The security people's ineptness threatened their collective Manhood. They tried poisoning Enrico but the City Health Department threatened to fine them. A falconer offered to release his trained Peregrine in the lobby's vaulted heights but it grew fat on wayward pigeons, while from on high a Brooklynese voice urged, "kill the sonofabitch, heh-heh-heh!....kill the sonofabitch".

Chapter 14

They tried to locate the robust man who had indiscriminately turned this winged hell loose on them, but along with his two friends he had rapidly absented the scene shortly after the Mynah's escape. Big Louie had quickly determined there was no way they were ever going to catch Enrico without shooting him, and then he'd just be a dead bird, no good to anyone. Louie Pignuts, Petey Rags and Louie's cousin Angela took the subway back to Williamsburg so they could think about what to do next. Things had quieted down since Enrico's departure, but then there was that business with the gerbils.
His second cousin Arabella who lived on Mulberry Street in Manhattan had been paying her annual visit to Grandma Rosa with a couple of her friends from Greenwich Village in tow, and she stopped by the pet shop to say hello. Her friends, two girlish young men, started giggling and poking one another as soon as they saw Louie's gerbils. He couldn't figure out what the hell it was about the gerbils that amused them but they bought one along with a little cage to keep it in. A week later they came back with two other guys with similar tastes, and although they really annoyed Louie with all their prodding and pinching and squeezing, he kept himself from breaking their faces - mostly as a courtesy to Arabella - and instead sold them more gerbils.
Over the next few weeks he had several more visits from gerbil-lovers. What in the world was going on? Now Louie was curious as hell. He asked Carlo Stripes and Little Sally. They poked each other like those swishy guys from the Village and laughed at him. He asked Father Loughlin when he came by for his rabbit food. Loughlin hosed Louie with a scowl and left leaving his change on the counter. Big Louie talked to Petey Rags who, as usual, didn't have a clue. He even asked Gribnitz the Butcher. "Jews know everything", thought Louie, "Those Hebes are real smart." Gribnitz speculated maybe they were racing the gerbils or spreading them on crackers with a pickle, or making tiny fur coats out of them. Grodsky tried to sell him a five-way screwdriver for three dollars.
One day he was sitting in Tony's waiting for his turn in the chair when he picked up a copy of The Globe. There was a horrid story about a Hollywood actor whose name sounded familiar to Louie, who had done sexually perverse things with an anatomically- modified gerbil. The more he read, the further Big Louie's jaw dropped. "Who could do such stuff?", he thought, growing slowly outraged. He felt terrible sympathy for the poor gerbil, at the same time soothing himself with thoughts of how well his own gerbils were treated - although there really weren't that many left. Lately they'd been selling like little furry hotcakes. Slowly Louie's synapses sparked to life, flickered, made connections. What about all those gerbils? What was it, with all those guys that seemed so weird?
The sun came on in Louie's head and he exploded out of Tony's Barber Shop and into the street. Lumbering rapidly into his pet shop, he dialed Arabella's number. "What are they doin' to my fuckin' gerbils?", he yelled into the phone, "If they fuck with my gerbils I'll drown their skinny asses!" Arabella laughed for a full minute before she could talk. She thought it hysterically funny that her naive cousin Louie would think what he was thinking. "Of course they're not hurting your gerbils", she explained soothingly, "they're just sensitive, touchy-feely guys who like to have something soft and furry and warm around in case they want to pet it". There was a long silence as Louie wondered if he'd lost his next-in-line at Tony's.


Chapter 15

Uncle Arnie had had a few fingers mashed in a friendly game of eight ball with a short-tempered midget from Lucca named Rocco, so Louie, Petey Rags and Carlo Stripes decided to pay Arnie a visit. They wanted to pay their respects and cheer him up with a bottle of Dago Red and a couple of cartons of Frankie Spaghetti's special Linguine in Clam Sauce with Extra Garlic.
Arnie was kicked back watching an old Edward G. Robinson movie which was drawing to a splashy, staccato finish. He held his ham-sized palm up for silence and motioned his visitors to be seated. "Little Caesar" had been gunned down by the Law and now he lay dying amidst the alleyway's garbage and puddles. Louie started to speak but was immediately "shushed" into silence by Arnie. Rivulets of blood- his life- draining from the fifty holes in his body, Edward G. looks up at the cops in disbelief. What Louie and the boys hear next almost tips them off the sofa. "Mother of Mercy", says Little Caesar, "can this be the end of Rico?"

Chapter 16

It had been close to a year since Louie had last seen his winged friend. New growth had sprung from every crack in the sidewalk and the big Sycamore was nodding to passersby and showing off. Feeling lush and splendiferous, it towered elegantly above the crumpled Pall Mall packs and broken Pepsi bottles nestled against the curb, and dappled the old neighborhood with cool shadowy fingers of shade. With predictions of unseasonably high temperatures in the upper 80's echoing in his ear, Louie resolved to open the front door wide enough to let a good dose of summer bathe the musty cages and spidery corners in sweetness and light. Hearing a buzz spilling down from the Sycamore's crown Louie looked skyward, recalling that April morning which now seemed so long ago....
"Back off asshole", shouted the Sycamore in Heckel-and-Jeckle tones. Big Louie's first thought was that for such a huge tree, this one had a ridiculously high voice, and then he thought of his tactless black friend. Like a glob of asphalt dangling from a string, a dark form arced through the pungent Brooklyn air and swung through the pet shop's doorway. Enrico was back! Quickly shutting the door, Louie let out a hoarse "whoop" and did a little dance. Thinking he'd only been in it for the fame and the money. Louie sensed the warm glow of having been validated by Enrico's return. He wasn't always sure whether people actually liked hanging out with him because he was cool, clever and sharp (not to mention influential around the Heights), or because people felt intimidated and therefore, obliged to indulge him. He could see fear in the eyes of those whom he wanted to feel threatened, but among casual acquaintances (and even a few friends) he wasn't always sure about the sincerity of their feelings. Enrico, he knew, had tasted freedom. In fact, Louie figured he'd probably had his fill of it and had opted to return to his Brooklyn buddy and the Easy Life. Louie wished he could be sure Enrico returned because he longed for Louie's companionship. But he wasn't that dumb and he couldn't quite convince himself. Heading up into the familiarity of the storage loft, Enrico kept himself relatively quiet and laid low. Louie left food out for him when he closed down at night and something had obviously been eating it, but he wasn't sure it was Enrico.

Chapter 17
It was the morning the U.P.S. driver arrived with the cattle prods from Kansas City that Enrico tried to kill himself. He was really trying to exit the shop and hadn't grasped the concept of windows, but Louie took it personally and got so upset he had to call Arabella. She calmed Louie down, convincing him that 'Rico just wanted out for awhile. "The bird wouldn'a come back if he didn't like youse, would he?", Arabella argued. Louie sniffled into the telephone's mouthpiece. Arabella was real smart and always helped him see the positive side of things. The thought of having someone he could call, comforted him. He was lucky to have such a brainy broad for a cousin, he mused gratefully. Arabella told Louie to open the door as wide as he could and allow 'Rico to leave when he wanted to. "You can't ever tell what's goin' on in a bird's mind", she pointed out. "He's got needs you couldn't even dream about", Louie's cousin said wisely.
Flying out the open door, Rico returned a short while later with some twigs and assorted street debris. Making repeated forays into the crowded, junk-strewn avenues Rico returned time and again with tiny treasures. After a few days of this the bird seemed to settle down. Except for the occasional vile oath, 'Rico again appeared to enjoy life at Big Louie Pignuts' Animal Emporium.

Chapter 18
Big Louie continued to leave food out at night, and it was gone the following morning, so he took it as a sign that Enrico was well fed and healthy. A little more than a month had passed and Louie was dreaming of Brighton Beach and a little redhead named Heather Glick. The only redheads Louie had known were students at the Sacred Heart of Mary Academy, and he wasn't big on the uniforms. Plaid skirts, starched Peter Pan collars and brown flats were not a big turn on. And now there was Heather whom he had met at Bay 6 Beach and he couldn't get her 86 lb. frame out of his mind. She had thin, tubular white legs on which you could almost see the word "Bic" and her green Speedo made her look slippery and slick as a fish lure. When Louie first saw her she was working her tiny feet down into the cooler subsurface beneath the burning sand with a wretched expression on her face. On her way to the Boardwalk for a soda and a cherry cheese knish, her soft, virginal soles had seared like a pan-fried catfish and she had rooted herself in an attempt to get some relief. Louie's confederates had blankets laid end-to-end and when Louie saw her suffering he took pity and invited her to walk on their cooler surface, which would bring her within striking distance of the Boardwalk's steps.
Grateful at being rescued she squeaked an impassioned 'thank-you' in Louie's direction and the big man was hooked. After learning her name, he finagled the information that the Glicks were Bay 6 regulars. If he was to see her again, he'd have to come out to Brighton and hope he got lucky. Her small voice creaked when she spoke and Louie was amazed at how it had aroused him! After a few moments cooling off, she took off leaping lightly from blanket to blanket taking care to minimize the contact between her feet and whatever they touched. It was then that Louie glimpsed the hair. Staring at her strawberry-gold, curling tendrils Louie had wondered, as was the habit of certain young men, whether Heather was "red all over" - in other words, that rarest of the rare, an authentic, original redhead. As she sprang, fawn-like, he spied one single wisp of auburn escaping from the leg opening of her green Speedo and curling wildly down her marbleized thigh. It was as if someone had shoved a lit firecracker up the big man's nose. Lips limp, Louie stared and forgot to breathe.

Chapter 19
Hardly a day passed when he didn't think of Heather. He'd been out to Bay 6 half-a-dozen times but all he'd gotten for his trouble was a nasty sunburn. Petey Rags had given him little white pills to ease the itching but they made Louie drowsy. One warm, lazy afternoon, Louie was alone in his shop dreaming of Heather Glick. She was hopping lightly from one aquarium to another, wearing her emerald Speedo and teasing him with brief flashes of crimson. He suddenly found himself in a tank with an Oscar who was giving him a look of annoyance but he was more interested in Heather. She was atop the tank in which Louie swam, pronking like a little springbok and calling to him in that erotic, albeit froggy voice of hers. His ears couldn't make out the words traveling through the water, but he knew she was talking dirty to him and he began to get excited. Grinning at his foolishness, the predatory Oscar swam about nipping Louie where he wished to be nipped least. He tried to leap up out of the tank but the Oscar held him fast and wouldn't let him escape. All the while Heather's cracked voice grew louder and more seductive. Mad with frustration, Louie mounted a supreme effort and pulled himself free of the aquarium shaking the water from his hippo-like head like a St. Bernard. "Horny bastard, horny bastard", screeched Enrico. "Asshole- horny asshole". It was as if Enrico was enjoying a bout of Tourette's Syndrome.
Cursing the bird mightily, Louie, soaked with sweat, tried to deal with being conscious. He didn't like it. He was pissed at Enrico for awakening him and he hated him for tricking him into believing he was Heather Glick. Itchy, foggy and enraged, Louie stumbled into the backroom and got his ladder. He was heading up into the storage loft to kill the goddamn bird. He didn't like being made a fool of. He hated being taunted and teased. Especially by something not human. It was just too much to take. Shakily, slowly he climbed the ladder, steadying himself on each rung. He heard his enemy fussing up there, celebrating Louie's emotional defeat. When he had climbed high enough he cautiously peeked over the edge of the loft's floor. The nest was wedged between a ceiling beam and a vertical support. Rico flew around his head protectively as the baby Mynahs waved their wide maws at him.
He stood there and looked at them in wonder for what seemed a very long time. Enrico wasn't a guy - she was a chick. For a moment he felt deceived, but in the next moment it turned to delight. In his hurry to climb down and phone Arabella. Louie almost fell off the ladder.
She sounded out of breath when she answered the phone and he wondered what his good looking cousin was up to at ten o'clock in the morning. As he told her the good news he heard giggling in the background and thought about how when he one day had daughters of his own, he would never let them get away with this kind of shit. Arabella told him how happy she was to hear about the blessed event, and reminded him to keep the door to his shop open so Rico could come and go with food for her babies. Tactfully she explained that even though Louie was a good provider, there were things out there in the Bird World that Rico had to tend to herself. Feeling validated and grandfatherly, Big Louie went into the kitchen and built himself a towering Hero sandwich for lunch.

Chapter 20
It was with a thread of prosciutto hanging from his prodigious lower lip and a brush stroke of Guilden's mustard on his chin that she found him when she came into Louie's emporium. Although he never expected her to come by, he had told Heather about the pet shop and Mother of Mercy, here she was, red curls and all walking through the door. In a flash his thoughts turned to Jesus and all that stuff about Faith he'd withstood as a kid at St. Mario's. Tentatively she stood in the doorway, unable to decide whether to come in or run away on those little antelope legs of hers. His mouth full, his heart even fuller, Louie was unable to speak. Suddenly there was the light chatter of tiny wings as Enrico's three babies left the storage loft and buzzed bravely about the pet shop's high ceiling. They circled a few times, alit on tables, tanks, window mouldings and happily flew about gaining confidence. Both speechless now, Heather and Big Louie watched as the nestlings made their way toward the open door, the wide streets of Williamsburg and the huge sky above Brooklyn. Emancipated, the first two broke into the blue vault as if the whole sky belonged to them. The third one paused at the door and hesitantly circled back toward its corpulent benefactor and his dusky pet shop. Eyeballing Louie with its tiny, shiny black eye the little bird relived itself, cocked its head and squeaked, "HORNY BASTARD" and then slowly disappeared in the direction of Prospect Park.