Henry Hack

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Prologue

I felt a hand pull my lunch bag from my grasp and toss it onto the subway tracks. I glanced in shock as it landed, none too gently, right in the middle of the filthy depression between the shiny rails. I turned in anger, fists balled, ready to punch the guy who did it and saw the evil grin on the face of Billy Rigney daring me to try it. Billy was a sophomore, much bigger than me, and he was backed up by two even bigger juniors. I knew them all from our elementary school days in P.S. 59, and I had a vision of my skinny body lying on the tracks next to my lunch bag if I got into it with them.

“Well, Freshie,” Billy said, leering at me and pointing down at the tracks, “go down there and get it. And if you don’t, you’ll be a pussy the rest of your life.”

Maybe not the rest of my life, I thought, but certainly the rest of my high school career which was beginning this very day. I was suddenly faced with my first real dilemma in my fourteen years of life as Rigney prodded me in the back with a stiff finger. ”You are a pussy, Danny, and I guess you’ll go hungry today.”

Billy had a point there. In that brown paper sack, well beyond my reach, sat two big bologna and cheese sandwiches and a ripe banana. At eight a.m. I was already hungry, having contemplated eating one of those sandwiches on the ride to the school. I stared down at my lunch bag sitting quietly among the old candy wrappers, chewed gum, and cigarette butts, and then glanced to my left down the tracks. It was a straight run back to the Shepherd Ave. station, and I could plainly see the yellow platform lights. I could also see the bright, white headlights of the A train stopped there. And then those lights began to twinkle as the train started to move in my direction. It was now or never.

I grabbed the filthy edge of the concrete platform and jumped down onto the tracks. The first thing I realized was that the depression was much deeper than it looked from above. The second was that I could hear the tracks humming and see that the rumbling, swaying beast was halfway here already, pushing ahead of it a wall of heated air rife with all the foul, acrid smells of the New York City subway system. With more than a bit of panic flooding my body, I scooped up the bag, turned, and grabbed the edge of the platform. I heaved myself up, but didn’t quite make it. Desperate now, but flooded with adrenaline as the train hissed and roared ever closer, I heaved mightily again, getting my right knee up on the surface, then the rest of that leg, and finally my entire body, lunch bag securely in hand. I rolled away from the edge of the platform as the train slid into the station.

As I got to my feet, Rigney and the two juniors stood looking at me open-mouthed and bug-eyed. The crush of adult rush-hour commuters near me were shaking their heads and muttering words of derision and incredulity. I heard, stupid kid, dumb jerk, idiot, and the ever-popular, what an asshole, several times.  I struggled through the crowd and entered the car well away from Rigney and his buddies. When my panic subsided and my breathing returned to normal, I devoured both sandwiches – and the banana.

The next day, and for several weeks after, I took an earlier train to avoid Rigney and his buddies. Then, my courage having returned somewhat, I resumed taking the regular train, but made sure to board a car well away from theirs. I couldn’t avoid them altogether, either on the subway platform or in the school corridors, but no further incidents occurred. In fact, a few of them, not ever Billy though, would nod at me or say, “Hi, Danny.” I would always smile and return their greeting, but kept my distance, especially on the subway platform. I no longer stood near the edge, but with my back against the tile wall, as far away from the tracks as was possible, with my lunch bag clutched tightly in my left hand and my right hand clenched into a fist, ready to throw a punch, if necessary.

                                                  *  *  *

That summer of 1979, I got a part-time job at a local Brooklyn delicatessen working from six a.m. to two p.m. We were very busy the whole time feeding the rush-hour commuters their coffee and bacon and egg sandwiches as they dashed down the subway kiosk for their trains to Manhattan. At lunchtime, our fare switched to big hero sandwiches and beers for the factory workers and smaller sandwiches and sodas for the office workers.

Hans Friedel, the deli’s owner, had agreed to pay me $5.00 an hour, but I said, “Mr. Friedel, if you let me eat whatever I want during working hours, I will work for $4.50 an hour.”

The tight-fisted German-American must have calculated that his saving four bucks a day would more than compensate for what a skinny, fifteen-year-old kid could chow down, but he was wrong. After the first week, he knew he had been conned, He grunted and said, “You put vun over on me, Danny. But ve shook on it, and I am a man of my vord.”

I grinned and said, “Maybe my appetite will decrease as the summer goes on.”

“I hope so,” he said, “but next summer you von’t get the same deal.”

“You’ll hire me back?”

“Ja, you eat like a horse, but you are a gut vorker.”

When my workday was over, hunger satisfied by a parting roast beef sandwich and a pint of potato salad, macaroni salad, or coleslaw – Hans and his wife, Linda, made the best in Brooklyn – I headed for the local gym where I had signed up for boxing lessons.

I already knew how to brawl in the schoolyard street style and could hold my own most of the time, but I didn’t know how to box and defend myself very well against getting hit. In East New York, you had to fight all the time unless you were happy to never leave your house for the great outdoors. So I wanted to learn to fight like the professional boxers I watched Friday nights on the TV instead of just throwing wild roundhouse punches all the time and then tackling my opponent and throwing him on the ground raining fists on him. But, known to no one but me, the real reason for learning to fight was fucking Billy Rigney and my burning desire for revenge.

By the end of that summer, what with all I had eaten and the workouts at the gym, I had gained twenty-two pounds of muscle which went nicely with a three-inch growth spurt. I could hit hard and fast with short, power-packed punches and could defend myself well against the other guys in the ring. As the first day of school approached, all I could think of was the evil grin on Billy Rigney’s face and my lunch bag on the subway tracks.

Then I began to have some doubts.

                                                  *  *  *

Along with learning how to box that summer, I learned some valuable lessons about life from the variety of people I came in contact with at the gym and the deli. I fought and worked out with numerous black and brown-skinned guys from the local area and from Central and South America. As I accepted them with praise and respect for their dedication and skills, they did likewise and shared their hopes and dreams with me.

 Though my family was not considered poor, we were definitely lower middle class on the socio-economic scale, but many of my new friends had come from pure poverty where my two bologna and cheese sandwiches would have fed their entire large families. They looked to the world of professional boxing as their ticket to fame, fortune, and full bellies. I truly wished them success, but knew that the vast majority would never make it up the rankings to where the real money was while getting their brains scrambled and faces cut up along the way.

On my last day at the gym I cleaned out my locker and went up to the counter to pay up. After I did, my trainer, Moses Brown, grabbed my shoulder and said, “You’re a fast learner, Danny, but you never did tell me why you spent the entire summer in this sweaty, smelly, dingy rat hole.”

I smiled and said, “I wanted to learn how to handle myself in an upcoming fight.”

“Upcoming fight? With who? Are you going to continue and try to have a career at this game?”

“No, sir,” I said. “I don’t think this racket is for me.”

“I’m still confused. What the hell upcoming fight you talkin’ about?”

“A fight with Billy Rigney. To get even.”

“To fucking get even? You wasted your whole summer for revenge?”

“It wasn’t a waste, Mr. Brown. With your training I will now beat the shit out of Billy Rigney, fair and square.”

“And just what did this Rigney guy do to you to justify all your sweat and effort? It must have been something terrible.”

I hesitated, suddenly realizing how ridiculous this was going to sound to Moses, but I plunged ahead. “The bastard threw my lunch on the subway tracks.”

Moses’ eyes and mouth opened wide and he shook his head back and forth – like a big brown horse – several times. He looked me in the eyes and said, “That is the dumbest fucking thing I have ever heard in all my years. For a white guy, you’re dumber than all the dark-skinned, uneducated wannabees in here. There’s got to be more to this story. Tell me.”

So I told him what happened that first day of high school last year and how now that I had the strength and confidence I would get even with Billy. Moses said, “So you’re going to do to him what he did to you last year? Walk up to him, grab his lunch bag, and throw it on the tracks?”

“Yeah.”

“Suppose he don’t jump down there to go get it like a normal, sane person wouldn’t do?”

“Then he’s a fucking pussy,” I said.

“Ah, not like you. You weren’t a pussy. You went down on them tracks tempting death because you were o so brave, and you showed them, right?”

“Well, yeah.”

Suppose this Rigney guy does go down there after his lunch and gets hit and killed by the fucking A train?”

“But –”

“Suppose he gets killed ‘cause he twists his ankle and falls on the third rail? Six-hundred volts fryin’ his ass!”

“But –”

“Suppose he breaks a leg or arm and can’t get back up on the platform? Would you help him back up?”

“Yeah, I guess I would,” I said, starting to feel uncomfortable with Moses’ questions.

“First sensible thing you said since we began this talk, Danny.”

“Okay, you got me thinking.”

“That’s good. Now think about this. Suppose he don’t have a lunch bag? Maybe he’s buying his lunch now.”

“I didn’t think about that. Maybe I’ll throw his books on the tracks then.”

“Oh, my Lawd! And what do you think Billy would do in that situation? Go down there after them?”

I shifted my feet and said, “He probably wouldn’t go after them.”

“Why?”

“Because he’s not as crazy as I am…was,” I said, starting to really feel stupid now.

“For sure, Danny. And what do you think he would do about that situation?”

Then the light dawned on me and I said, “He would report me to the principal who would believe him because he had all his buddies as witnesses.”

“Correct, and what would the principal do?”

I thought about that for a few seconds and said, “He would probably make me pay for Billy’s replacement books and give me a few days’ detention.”

“Or a suspension and a call home to your parents.”

“Shit!”

“Listen to me, Danny. All life is about the choices we make, each and every day. We gotta think before we choose. All the time. Understand?”

“I think so. I made a bad choice going down on those tracks, but I had no money to buy lunch.”

“Your choice that day was missing a meal versus risking death. You made the wrong choice and you are lucky you got back up just in time and lucky to be alive. But luck gets you only so far in life, as you will soon find out.”

I nodded my head as I absorbed all of Moses’ words of advice and said, “So I do nothing?”

“You slowly walk up to Rigney on that subway platform on the first day of school to give him time to size you up. Then you smile and say, ‘Hey, Billy, how was your summer?’”

“And then I punch him in the jaw?”

“Goddammit, Danny! You ain’t listening –”

I burst out laughing and said, “Gotcha, Mr. Brown.”

He chuckled and said, “You sure did. Now, are you gonna do as I told you?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Then I believe I taught you more in the last half hour than I taught you in the gym and the ring all this summer. You are now a boxer and a thinker and no longer a dumb street brawler. You may drop the Mr. Brown and Sir and call me Moses from now on. There’s no need for you to come back here anymore. Have a good life, Danny.”

“Wait a minute,” I said. “I made a lot of friends here, and I want to keep in touch with them, especially you. Is it okay to come in on Saturdays? I won’t need a locker.”

Moses hugged me and said, “That will definitely be okay – and the locker is on me.”

                                                *  *  *

That Wednesday, the first day of school, I did exactly as Moses instructed and a wide-eyed Billy Rigney, surrounded by a few wide-eyed juniors and seniors, said, “Uh, summer was great. Uh, how was yours.”

“Great also, Billy. I learned a lot in the past few weeks.”

One of the juniors said, “Geez, Danny, you really shot up and filled out over the summer. What did you eat, an elephant?”

I laughed and said, “No, Tommy, but I did eat plenty. And I would have been just a bit smaller if I hadn’t gotten my bologna sandwiches off the tracks last year.”

Rigney touched my shoulder and said, “Danny, I’m sorry I did that. I never thought you would go down there after it.”

Before I responded I remembered Hans Friedel, after successfully breaking up an argument at the deli and leaving both guys smiling, saying to me, “Remember this, Danny, Never make an enemy when you can make a friend. Verstehen Sie?”

I did understand and said, “Yeah, Billy, I did a real stupid thing, for sure.”

“Hey!” Tommy shouted, “Where’s your lunch bag? Billy wants another toss, this time on the third rail.”

We all laughed and I said, “No more lunch bags. I got a job and some money, and I’m buying my eats from now on.”

Billy grabbed my shoulder again, harder this time, and said, “Not today, Danny. I’m buying lunch. I owe you one.”

“Thanks, Billy,” I said.

“My pleasure – friend.”

 Billy and I remained friends throughout high school and I continued working at the deli and working out at the gym. Despite Moses’ advice and my knowledge of the difficulty of making a living at this sport, I knew I was getting better at it. I won six amateur club fights – four-rounders – even winning two by knockouts. When I turned seventeen I said to Moses, “What do you think about me turning pro and getting paid for this?”

He shook that big brown head at me which was not a good sign. “How about gettin’ that stupid notion out of your thick Irish head and going to college after graduation?”

“You don’t think I’m good enough?”

“No, I certainly do not think so.”

“Well, I damn well think I am,” I said, anger rising in me.

Moses sighed and said, “I’ve been around the fight game for forty years. You ain’t ready to turn pro.”

“I want a shot, Moses. Now.”

A sigh, another shake of his head, and he said, “I guess you gotta find out for your own self. I’ll set it up.”

It took just two six-round bouts for me to accept Moses’ conclusion. Well, they were supposed to be six-rounders. I got TKO’d in the third round of the first one, and knocked out cold in the fourth round of the second one. I definitely got the message and hung up the gloves for good.

Billy Rigney graduated the year before me and went on to college and out of my life forever, or so I thought at the time. I graduated the following year, did a two-year hitch in the Army, and then joined the New York City Police Department at the age of twenty-two. But that’s not where this story begins. It begins a few years after I retired from the NYPD as a First Grade Detective after serving thirty-five years. It begins with a phone call from the Slick Spick exclaiming, “Hey there, Danny Boy. I hope you’re sitting down because I have a great proposition for you!”