Brooklyn Noir 3: Nothing but the Truth by Tim McLoughlin Page B

wiseguys that the late Joseph “Crazy Joey” Gallo, along with four helpers, did the deed. Before Mr. Gallo likewise succumbed to a notable shower of lead—while dining at a Mulberry Street clam house called Umberto’s, of all names—he often referred to himself as a member of “The Barbershop Quintet.”
    Crazy Joey (probably) whacked the Lord High Executioner at the behest of the late Carlo Gambino (more than likely), who looked and sounded like everybody’s nonno despite his being the namesake of what remains as the most prominent of New York’s five traditional mob families. As a lad fresh off the boat, Mr. Gambino had peddled Italian ices on Brownsville’s main stem, Belmont Avenue.
    Mr. Gambino died of old age in 1976. His elaborate sendoff was orchestrated by a society funeral parlor and attended by a number of respectable New Yorkers, after which his body was buried in St. John’s Cemetery in Queens.
    On the other hand, few had mourned the rude demise of Mr. Anastasia, largely due to his disgusting table manners. The Lord High Executioner lies below the sod of Brooklyn’s Green-Wood Cemetery.
    The Brownsville district of central Brooklyn is slightly more than two square miles in size. It is located downwind from the old bone-boiling glue factories of Jamaica Bay, which accounts for the fact that nobody with serious money ever lived in the neighborhood.
    It has always been a tough place, Brownsville. Full of tough characters hanging out on the corners, glaring at you and spitting on the sidewalks. Tough gets you respect.
    Sometimes respect grows, and festers, and turns to fear. People who can will leave a neighborhood at this point. They will tell new neighbors in new places about the glares and the spit they left behind. And soon enough the whole city is scared of a place like Brownsville, and content to let it rot.
    The local police precinct, the 73rd, routinely tops New York in uniform crime statistics measured by the Federal Bureau of Investigation. Unsurprisingly, Brownsville ranks dead last in expenditures for city services—medical clinics, street sanitation, health inspections, public schools, housing code enforcement.
    Emotionally inclined immigrants almost anywhere else in the fable of New York, New York say the city’s streets are paved with gold. On sunny days, when the sidewalks of Gotham sparkle like gemstones, they swear they hear Frank Sinatra crooning, If I can make it there / I’ll make it anywhere …
    In Brownsville, there is no percentage in looking for sunny lyrics in sidewalks as gray and dull as thrown-away chewing gum.
    Before World War II, Brownsville was mostly Jewish and Italian, with an enclave of Syrians along Thatford Avenue and a longtime Moorish colony on Livonia Avenue. Today it is predominantly black, largely poor, and frequently combustible.
    Many African Americans consider the ambitious neighborhood newcomers—working-class Caribbean strivers and entrepreneurs from Senegal, Burkina Faso, Mali, and Mauritania—as yet another reminder of how they have been profoundly shortchanged.
    On busy Belmont Avenue, a fresh-cooked meal of tiebou djen may be enjoyed at the several lively Senegalese cafés. The fragrant bowls of steaming hot fish and saffron-laced barley have become as ubiquitous in Brownsville as red beans and rice on paper plates.
    You used to hear English on Belmont Avenue, even if the people speaking it used some other language at home. The people spending money today on Belmont mostly speak French.
    Those with little to spend dream of hitting a good number and leaving Brownsville. When slim hope is dashed, there is always something to smoke or drink or inject in order to keep the faith.
    Getting out is elusive. Getting high is total victory.
    2. “Amy Fisher popped some bitch in the head …”
    The plague came early to Brownsville. In the 1970s and ’80s and ’90s, the streets were conveniently full of decrepit buildings favored by crack cocaine dealers who