It was 11 in the morning on the day before Christmas in 1968, and Johnny Machine, 6-2, skinny, ruddy, unshaven, nose like the prow of a tugboat, was sitting at the far end of the bar in the 55 on Christopher Street sipping a coffee with a splash of Jameson’s. Ice from a two-day-old snow was still brown and chunky in the gutters, the winter light coming through the window at the street end of the room barely making a dent in the gloom. The door opened, sending a gust of freezing wind down the bar. A squat figure waddled in.
“Fookin’ Mikey screwed us, Johnny. Said he had a .38, but it was bulls**t. Fookin’ single shot .22 anybody’d laugh at soon as stick up their hands.”
They were meeting up to plan another robbery that very night, Christmas Eve, less than a block away. Neither the robbery nor the timing made much sense, but making sense wasn’t on the menu for either Johnny Machine or Beansie, his friend since they were kids on Avenue C on the Lower East Side. It seemed like a long time ago they were sprinting down Eighth Street in the West Village, snatching purses, coming up behind tourist couples as they came out of bars at night, sticking a wooden dowel in the back of the guy like it was a gun, warning them not to turn around or they’d shoot ‘em, croaking gimme your fookin’ wallet in as deep a voice as they could muster, then taking off in their stolen sneakers down McDougal into the dark corners of Washington Square.
They had each been in Sing-Sing up the river the year before, Johnny at the end of a three-year stretch for, what else, robbery, Beansie finishing up five years for pistol-whipping a bartender near to death on Avenue B in ’62. Cops caught him a few blocks away on St. Marks Place in a joint where his girlfriend, Roberta, worked tables flashing her boobs and getting her butt pinched for tips.
Beansie was short, round as a barrel, with a crew cut that looked like he barbered it himself, which he did standing at the sink in the kitchen of Roberta’s sixth-floor walk-up on Avenue C, a block from where he grew up on 11th Street. It was a railroad tenement, three rooms, you walked into the kitchen and you could see into the living room in one direction, a bedroom the size of a horizontal phone booth in the other, toilet down the hall, window in the kitchen stuck open six inches, you got slammed with blast furnace heat from the airshaft in the summer, snow swirling down off the roof in the winter, misery in every breath, every corner of the dump tenement, but with forty dollar rent, who was complaining.
Johnny slept on a daybed in the front room the nights he didn’t score a hippie chick hanging out in Thompkins Square Park or a waitress in one of the coffee shops on 14th Street where you could get coffee and an egg and two slices of toast for fifty cents. Women’s knees folded like a lawn chair for Johnny, somebody once said, watching him do his act in a corner booth one-night, dark, hooded eyes he got from his father who beat him Saturday nights after losing at the track and a mother he had to scrape out of junkie crash pads when he was still in grade school. Chicks love the wounded ones, he told guys he played poker with when they marveled at his prowess with the women.
Beansie said poker had Johnny by the balls. Johnny was always short of money. He was into loan sharks in Hells Kitchen, on the Lower East Side, the Village, all over town when it came right down to it. Johnny and Beansie were what they called take-off artists. They had knocked over a bar in Chelsea two nights ago, but the owner had taken most of the cash out of the register when he went home an hour before closing and all they got was a couple hundred which didn’t cover the vig on even one of Johnny’s loans. So, a day later, they were in the 55 Bar gaming out how they were going to hit the Buffalo Roadhouse, half a block away down Seventh Avenue at the corner of Barrow. The Roadhouse was a hip bar with a younger crowd. Johnny had had a thing with one of the waitresses who told him that the take on Christmas Eve would be enough to retire on, crowded with dudes flashing cash to impress their dates and look big. Champagne assholes, she called them.
Gay bars had more money, but the mob owned the gay bars, so they were off limits. The Stonewall, next door to the 55 on Christopher, was owned by the Demartinos and raked in gazillions from Wall Street closet cases cruising the boys after work, but you didn’t take off joints owned by the mob.
“What are we gonna do, Johnny? I tole’ you we shouldn’t have dumped those pieces.”
“I told you the rule, man. You don’t use the same piece twice.”
“We didn’t even shoot the fookin’ things, Johnny. Cops can’t trace them without a bullet.”
“Bad luck, Beansie. You know that better’n anybody. The place you put a gun after a job is the East River. That’s that.”
Beansie pointed to Johnny’s cup and raised two fingers. The bartender grabbed the pot, refilled Johnny, poured another cup, and topped off both with Jameson’s.
Johnny said, “You still got that shotgun we stole off that guy up at Bear Mountain?”
“What good’s a fookin’ shotgun gonna do us. You can’t walk around carrying a fookin’ shotgun on the street, man.”
“I got an idea,” Johnny said.
An hour later, Johnny and Beansie were at the Salvation Army storefront south of Canal off Broadway, volunteering to be street Santas, ringing bells, quarters clanking into their tin buckets.
As they walked out in their beards and red suits and Santa hats, Johnny ran down the scam.
“It’s perfect,” he told Beansie. “Nobody will recognize us in these beards, and we can carry the shotgun in a sack, you know, like it’s full of presents. We walk in, pull out the shotgun, blow out the back bar, wave it around, tell the assholes to hand over their wallets. The bartender will shit bricks, give us the whole take.”
“We’re gonna rob the Roadhouse wearing Santa suits. You’re outta your fookin’ mind.”
“You got a better idea?”
Beansie pointed at Johnny’s nose. “What we gonna do ‘bout that beak of yours? Anybody at that bar will be able to pick you out of a mugshot book.”
“We’ll glue a couple of clown balls on our noses. C’mon. I know where we can get ‘em. Magic shop on 27th Street.”
“Fookin’ magic store?”
“Magicians, man. Losers workin’ kids birthday parties as clowns. They rent’em the whole outfit.”
* * *
The storm hit in the late afternoon. When they headed south from Roberta’s apartment on Avenue C around 10, there were two-foot drifts against the side of stoops. The snow was blowing sideways so hard, when they reached 9th Street, they couldn’t see Thompkins Square Park at the end of the block. On the corner of East 4th Street, the all-night fried chicken joint was empty, and the counter man was sitting at one of the tables reading a copy of the News.
Johnny pulled his Santa hat down over his ears as they turned west on East 3rd, leaning into the wind. Beansie was walking behind him trying to stay out of the wind, complaining with every step. The gates were down and the lights were off in Slugs Saloon when they walked past. By the time they reached the Bowery, the snow was a foot deep on the sidewalk. They hadn’t passed a single person the whole way.
At LaGuardia Place, a cop car pulled alongside. The driver’s window rolled down. “What are you two doing out so late?” the cop asked.
“Headed home, officer,” said Johnny. His feet were freezing, and his Santa beard was caked with snow.
“You want a ride? It’s fuckin’ freezing out there.”
“Thank you, sir, but we just got a couple more blocks.”
Beansie was clapping his hands together, trying to keep the blood flowing.
“What you got in the sack?” the cop asked.
“Presents, sir,” answered Beansie.
The cop shot him a look, shook his head as he rolled up the window and drove on.
As they reached the corner of Sullivan Street and turned uptown, a door opened. A thick figure in a bathrobe grabbed Johnny by the arm. Beansie skidded to a stop. Everyone knew who the man in the bathrobe was: Vincent “The Chin” Gigante, the biggest bookie and loan shark in the West Village.
Gigante took the cigar out of his mouth and dragged Johnny inside, signaling Beansie to follow. He did. The room was dimly lit, with an espresso machine and several small tables where men in suits sat with tiny cups and saucers before them.
“Fuckin’ mook.” Gigante pulled the red ball from Johnny’s nose. “You owe me two fuckin’ grand, Machine, you loser. I’m guessing you don’t have it on you.”
“You’re right, Chin,” said Johnny. His face broke into a smile. “But I know where I can get it.”
