We lived in a dump off of Houston in the Alphabet City area of New York City’s Lower East Side . My Mother was hardly ever home, but she paid the bills, and there was always food in the house ,and I always had nice clothes and new kicks to wear.
When ever I asked her when she got up at 5 in the evening where she went of a night time she said “to work, now do you homework,I won’t be long”, and she was always there in the morning, OK in bed and asleep but my breakfast would be on the table and there was always a few bucks for candy or what ever so the world was a wonderful place.
When I was 14 yrs old my Mother said ” her boss wanted to offer me a part time job”. I said ” sure, sounds great doing what”, turned out to be a whistler . wWhen ever a cop or an undercover cop or anyone that looked like a cop came up to my corner I would do the whistle, wave at some guy on the fifth floor of the projects and he would pass the message on with a whistle to the next block and all the slingers and hookers would move away from there dumpster until the all clear was given, pretty easy job, boring, but I was making pretty big bucks for a kid of 14 years old and I was not getting into trouble which made my Mother really happy.
I got to know my boss over the next two years, everyone called him Johnny Mango because his old man owned a small import company dealing in mangoes, he seemed to like me, he would often come by and we would sit and talk in the kids playground on the cornet of Houston and Baruch Drive about Yankees baseball , and Giants football , I loved sport, listened to the sports stations all day and all night so I could hold my own in any conversation when it came to NYC sports teams.
Then one day he said ” you got a driving license ” ? I said yeah we get them at school “and he said “good come with me” and we went off in his Jag to Jersey , pulled into a car sales place he owned and an hour later I was driving off the lot in a nice 5 year old black Ford Fusion, and I had a new career, driver for his hookers, deliver, pick up ,collect the money , take it to a guy who ran a 24 hour store on Bowrey and go home.
I did the what he called the JFK run to the hotels around the airport , the girls lived mainly in the Queens Village and Garden City area, and they were always ready to leave for work at 6 and to go home at 10, any all nighters were picked up the next morning by someone else.
A couple of times when I took this one girl home I would go in for a coffee and get a BJ, by then I was 6ft tall and had over 8 inches down there, I worked out at the gym and to tell you the truth I looked pretty fucking good.
One evening I was told to go and pick up Veronica a pretty black girl with big tits who I had seen a few times before. She was a bit of a bitch to me, questioned why I wanted to take her money from her ,gave me a hard time, so when I got the call to take her to some backwoods town in Jersey I wasn’t really looking forward to the journey.
I think after her saying ” oh it’s you “, she never said another word for over 90 minutes,until we pulled up outside a bar in Jersey. I called a number I had been given, a guy came out ,got in the car said HI, drive to the next light take a left , then keep going . We were like 3 miles out of town and he said “slow down there is a road her turn right and drive slow it’s a rough road ” and we pulled into a farm house in the middle of nowhere.
The guy got out, Veronica got out, and I sat there for a few minutes not quiet knowing what to do, then a guy came out said “come in sport, get a drink ,Johnny wants to talk to you ” , so I went into the house.
Farm house, fuck the place looked like a palace, thick carpets, big couches, one huge room with a bar and big tv ‘s showing sport. Several desks had guys manning phones and using computers . No one spoke to me,everyone seemed busy so I sat on the couch drinking a coke and listening. It soon became pretty obvious they were taking big bets often calling odds and amounts to each other , then laying the money off in Vegas or overseas .
I was watching a horse race and when I looked over there was Johnny Mango coming out of a door with several other guys, he came over and introduced me to them , made me sound like the second coming of Christ, everyone saying how great it was to find a loyal guy blah,blah,blah, and then Johnny said ” I would invite you downstairs to watch what happens to people who are the opposite of you, but it’s kind of awkward ” . I said “OK why” and they were laughing,” one of them said “don’t ask hard questions kid believe me it just is ” and they were all laughing again
I started to laugh along with the rest of them and I said “come on ,let me see ” and one of them said “how can I put this ,your Mother is down there and I don’t think you would want to see what she is going to do,” he hesitated and said ……….”would you” ?
I don’t know why I said it,I guess I was showing off, I said “I don’t care what she’s doing ,come on let me see,” and they were laughing and looking at each other, and they kind of moved away from each other and Johnny Mango pointed towards the door he had just come though and said “after you”.