Tuesday, May 17, 2022

Hipster Holocaust

 

Anna Feola walked into the Brooklyn Loaf to start her shift at 6 am. Just about five feet tall she was slim but shapely with dark brown hair with auburn highlights. Anna looked like an Italian neighborhood girl even though she came from Suffolk County. She fit right in on Court Street.

Anna was always one of the first employees at the store because she liked the first shift. First of all, it was always busy so she was always moving. Anna hated having to wait around with nothing to do. Best of all she got off early at 2 o’clock so she had the rest of the day to do whatever she wanted. She could take a class or go to an audition. Or even just help out the nice old Italian lady that was her landlord. She was like her Mom. Or more like the Grandmother that she had never had back home. Her family originally came from this neighborhood even though they had moved out to Long Island back in the sixties. Even so she felt a prosperity interest in the Italian culture that was fading away in the face of all the hedge fund managers and Wall Street aholes who were buying up the neighborhood. There were still a few pockets of the old Italian American Immigrant culture left and this coffee shop was one of them even though it was only about ten years old. It featured bagels and rolls and prepared sandwiches with coffee and tea. Not fancy like Starbucks but not as declassee as the Dunkin Donuts on the corner of First Place. It was sort of in-between. Just like Anna.

She started the coffees in the giant urns and Pepe brought up a couple of paper sacks filled with fresh hot bagels. She sorted them out and put them in the wire bins designated for each flavor with a little ceramic name plate attached to the front. Plain. Salt. Poppy. Sesame. Onion. Everything. A bin for everyone and a pile of hot steaming goodness. If only life could be like that.

People started drifting in. Moms on their way to PS 58 to drop off their little monsters. Nannies with their over privileged charges in super expensive strollers. A couple of in a hurry commuters who wanted to pick up something to take on the subway. The crowd grew and the line went out the door into the street. She poured the coffee and buttered the bagels and even had to serve the one section of tables against the wall. They were easy as they were usually her regulars. The same people every day.

One of them was an older Italian gentleman with hard eyes and pure white hair. He was always elegantly dressed in an expensive leather jacket and a silk shirt. He wore expensive custom-made shoes and had a Rolex on his wrist that was worth more than everything that was in the whole shop. He wore dark glasses inside and was very quiet. Occasionally someone from the neighborhood would come and whisper something in his ear. He would nod or make a gesture with his hand or very infrequently whisper something back. His order was always the same. A cup of espresso and a plate of Italian biscotti. He never varied it unless he wanted a short snort of anisette in his coffee. They kept a bottle behind the counter just for him. He was always very kind to her and there was always something mysterious about him. Anna didn’t know much about him and was sort of intrigued.

What she really didn’t know was that he was the real owner of the joint.

You see the Mob had gone into the bagel business in a big way in the 1980’s. What’s not to like? A cash business perfect for washing money. And you didn’t even have to lose money at it to boot. So bagel stores went up in Bensonhurst and Kew Gardens and Staten Island and Ozone Park. There were two in South Brooklyn that now had the Real Estate name of Carroll Gardens. One on Smith Street was controlled by the Columbo’s and was full of cowboys. They ran guns and drugs out of it and a bunch of them got pinched and put away on a Ricco charge. This one was much cleaner. They kept the drugs and the guns and gambling out of it. It was just bagels and a schmear.

At one time the cafes in the neighborhood had been part of the fabric of their existence. People would come in and sip an espresso and talk. It was a social thing. That’s why they were called social clubs. You knew everyone and everyone knew you. Now it was like the rest of New York. Anonymous and lonely. Sometimes people might know each other and nod before they became engrossed in their phones. But most of the time they just stared at their laptops or phones as though they could find the meaning of life.

He came in around eight this morning and sat in his usual seat. The second table from the front with his back to the wall. Anna hurried over with his order. “Good morning Mr. Aiello. Here is your breakfast. How are you feeling?” she chirped as she put down the plate. “Great sweetheart” he rasped with his heavy Brooklyn accent. “Just great. Can youse bring over the papers when you get a chance.” “Yessir right away.” ”Thank youse.”

When he asked for the papers, he only wanted the Post and the News. He never touched the Times or the Wall St Journal. Tabloids were all he read. Oh well the rest were there for all the pretentious noobs who came in and hit on her. But they wouldn’t be here for hours yet, so she was safe. Maybe she would have time to practice that song for the audition she was going to hit next week. She just hoped that Mrs. DiMartino would be okay with her singing the same song over and over for hours. What was she thinking? Of course, she would be fine with it. But she was going to bring her a bag of Italian cookies just to make sure.

She had learned her lessons well. She was morphing into a real neighborhood girl.


Hipster Holocaust


Detective Charlie McCarthy looked over the rail on the Carroll Street Bridge over the Gowanus Canal and spit while a thin drizzle fell on everything and bounced off the surface. A six-foot-tall pale Irishman he had the map of Ireland on his face. With the landmarks represented by the veins and broken blood vessels of a life spent with his gut pressed against a bar. He wore what he always wore. A cheap suit with a $5 tie from the bodega. One look at him and you said cop. Bad cop. Drunk cop. Dangerous cop. Not that he felt dangerous these days. Mostly he felt gassy.

A police diver fell backwards of the side of the police launch. And bounced. He had to cut a hole through the surface scum as though he was an ice fisherman freezing his balls off on a lake in Minnesota. How he was going to find anything was a mystery, but they still had to try. They had a report that there had been a jumper last night and some blood evidence on the rail that was enough for the shit heel captain to demand that they investigate.

His partner Julio Torrez walked up carrying two cups of coffee with the plastic tops attached. A slim slick Puerto Rica with a pencil thin mustache that went out of style in the fifties. He had a moderate fro and a decided limp from an old gunshot wound from the Red Hook Projects during the crack years. They had been partners for a long time. 

“Hey Dummy, what’s happening?” He handed over a coffee and they both ripped off a small piece of the top so they could sip the coffee while keeping the cover on to protect it from the rain. “Did they find anything or are we just jerking ourselves off here?”

“Nothing yet Beaner but they just started. How the fuck they gonna find anything in this shit is beyond my freaking understanding. I think that twat captain is just busting our balls with this shit.”

“I don’t know jefe. They said they had a witness. Some old biddy looking through her window. Said she saw some dude in a hoodie push a girl over the side.”

“How the fuck did she see that. There nearest house is half a block away. What the fuck does she have Xray fucking eyes?”

“Opera man.”

“What the fuck are you talking about? Opera. What she was singing? You are one dumb Rican you know that.”

“Nah man she had Opera Glasses. She is one of the liberals that moved in. A fucking college professor or some such shit. She had a pair of Opera glasses and she looks out her window and writes down what she sees so she can call 411 to complain. Logged over 100 complaints so far this month. Only this time she called and got right through to the Captain.”

“Well how the fuck did she do that? What did they just put her through? What da fuck?”

“No dude her name is Karen Cohen. She went to summer camp with the Captain and shit. They probably licked each other like a lemon ice.”

“Great another Jew bag. I shoulda retired like my third wife told me too before she split. What a shit show.”

 

The diver burst though the scum blanket that cover the canal and not without effort. He was about five yards from the boat and was waving his hand. The boat putt putted over to him and they threw him a line. He went back down and everyone waited for a minute holding their breath. Too be fair everyone had been holding their breath the whole time since it smelled like the monkey house at the Prospect Park zoo. There was a series of tugs on the line and the two coppers in the boat started pulling up the line. They had caught something. A body. Covered in slime and debries. Pampers, plastic bags. Maybe a condom or three. They rolled the body into the skiff and waited for the diver to come up. When he did they pulled him in the boat. The maneuvered up to the bridge and the sergeant in the boat called up. “Hey Dummy we got a fresh one for ya. Wadda wanna us to do? Bring it to the dock or bring it over there to youse and you can take custody?” 

“Shit forensic is on the way and they need some space to work. Just bring it over to the dock in the back of the furniture warehouse on 9th. I’ll have these guys go over and take custody so they can bag her. No need to take it back to your shop. Thanks Flynn. Thanks a lot. Now I got another body on my tab. Fuck it never ends.”

The partners looked at each other and sighed in unison. “Let’s get over there and get this shit show on the road. Oh and give Captain Jew Bag a call and let her know we found a stiff. That will give her a lady hard on now that she is finally right about something.” “Ok Dummy I will call it in.”

They went to the unmarked Toyota and drove on to Third Avenue. This was really going to be a shit show. Cause the stiff looked white. And young. And a cooze. A shit show of the first water. Fuck. Some days it didn’t even pay to get up.