Episode Details

This was first published in 2019 right after my return from Europe where I saw and did things that meant nothing could ever be the same for me again - Jack.

Phil was a stone cold killer. Some of his resume is covered in my unpublished first book, but not all of it. He was still alive when I wrote it. Although he was of Polish and Italian descent, he’d made his bones in the South Bronx working as an enforcer for a woman called Ms. Iris who ran the Puerto Rican mafia and owned a string of topless bars which retailed cocaine all along Rosedale Avenue with the blessings of the NYC police department. He’d told me ten years ago that one day he would kill Richie and now he was back with a mandate from a powerful faction of the Italian mob to do just that…

After wallowing in self pity for almost a year over my failed marriage; crack pipe stuffed in my face and self-respect naught but a distant memory I had cleaned myself up, picked myself up by the bootstraps, as the limp dicked republicans like to say, just in time to be hired as Richie’s bodyguard. Without me, Richie was a dead man and so were all his make believe gangster friends. They were all terrified of Phil, whom long ago had been dubbed “Lurch” by the Long Island police, possibly because of his charming habit of playing with the severed heads of his friends.

I’d been sitting on Richie for weeks, sleeping on his couch with rounds chambered, safety’s off, in a twelve gauge pump shotgun and a semi-automatic forty caliber pistol. My only respite had been when the mostly Black bouncers from Richie’s flagship club, the Café Royale, had come over early one morning with a pile of coke and a couple of bottles of Hennessy. Since they were all armed, I allowed myself to drop my guard and party with them just that once. During those weeks, Richie and I had never left Richie’s palatial waterfront home.

About three weeks in, I was introduced to Larry, half Italian, half Black and two hundred and sixty pounds of muscle, with a resume almost as extensive as Phil’s. He had just gotten out of jail and I was told that he would now be my partner in babysitting Richie. Larry shunned the obligatory “nine” of the growing Black hip hop culture in favor of a German Luger, which was the first thing I noticed about him that made him stand out from the twenty or so Black tough guys who bounced Richie’s strip clubs. The second thing I noticed was Larry’s intelligence and his soft and articulate way of speaking, which was undermined by a steely coldness that served like the warning colors of a deadly snake…

Richie was a very intelligent man, well read and highly educated, but he was like a man without a soul and his only real concern in life was what Richie was going to get out of it. Consequently, he would double cross anyone who got in his way, including his own father and anyone foolish enough to go in with him on a business deal, which was why there were those who wanted him dead. With only Richie to talk to, Larry and I soon became fast friends.

Phil for his part burned Richie’s make believe gangster partners car in his driveway, then using his experience as a linesman for cable TV to cut off the electric in the whole neighborhood, calling his house and telling his wife he was now coming to kill the whole family. When he wasn’t amusing himself like this, he would march into bars under Richie’s control with our old crew, all screwed by Richie, take them over and split the nights take with the legitimate owners, telling them they would now pay him instead of Richie or suffer the consequences.

When he wasn’t doing that, he was relentlessly stalking Richie, who with both me and Larry now at his side, got up the courage to go to his office in the Café Royale. I remember Phil calling the Café and telling Richie what he was wearing. When I was told this I was eating lunch in the back rooms with some of the girls and I pulled my piece ri