A Wiseguy Neighbor in Little Italy

Dear Diary:

Back in 1985, I lived at the top of a shabby, six-floor tenement on Mulberry Street. Across the street, in between a live chicken emporium and a bodega, there was a storefront with the name Members Only scripted on a glass window, with red drapes masking the stories beyond. I guessed it was a hangout belonging to the local wiseguys. Outside, spilling over a bentwood soda fountain chair and balancing an ever-present espresso cup on his knee, was Fat Mike.

“Hey Ange,” he yelled the week I moved in. “Anybody ever bothers you, you see anybody don’t belong here, lemme know. We’ll roll a few heads.”

How he knew my name continues to be a mystery, but I’d laugh and be not so secretly glad he was there.

One bubbling hot July afternoon, my Depression-era Sicilian parents had me chauffeur them from Queens to see my first post-college home. Pulling up, I accidentally ran over the curb. As my mother hissed out Italian slang, Fat Mike bellowed congenially from his perch, “Yo, Ange, where’d ya get ya license - Sears Roe-BUCK?”

My father cracked a crooked smile as my mother glared at Fat Mike, who was jiggling in laughter, waving his empty cup.

“Who is THAT?”

“That’s just Fat Mike, Ma. He’s O.K.”

“I knew guys like that. I hate that bunch. I’d better not find out. … ”

She held on to those memories as tightly as she did her purse.

“I lived in a dump like that. I’m not going up. No thanks.”

So while she convened with her angry reverie, my father (Big Sal) got out and huffed and puffed his way up those six flights. There, he slipped me two 20s.

“You’ll be safe here.” And I was.

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