the club,â Greg said. âBut until then you have to go.â
When we were kids, my mother used to drive Joey and me to the club if she had to see my father. We were really young, but I remember that it had wood paneling and carpeting and my fatherâs office was in the back.
Whenever my brother and I used to walk in thereâI was about eight or nine, and Joey was about six or sevenâthe guys would all give us money. Well, actually, theyâd give me money; they used to make Joey work for it.
My brother took gymnastics and he was good at it. He used to walk on his hands. He could walk across a roomâand even walk down stepsâon his hands. The guys would say to Joey, âIâm going to bet you that you canât walk from this side of the club to the other side of the club.â
âI can do it! I can do it,â Joey would say.
âAll right, twenty dollars if you can do it.â
âWell, if I walk back and forth, then I want double.â
By the time Joey walked out of the club when it was time to go home, heâd have $50 or more. Joey loved going there because it was such fun for himâmost of the time.
My fatherâs friend âScappyââColombo capo Anthony Scarpati and my fatherâs âbossââwas the one who always bet my brother couldnât walk on his hands across the club. Scappy was always teasing my brother. Heâd give him a wedgie or just do things to annoy him. It was okay if it was in good fun, but my father didnât like anybody teasing Joey or me.
One day Scappy put ice cubes down the front of my brotherâs pants. Joey got really upset and started crying. My father yelled at Scappy and told him never to do that to Joey again, which was crazy because Scappy was the boss. But Scappy never did it again. The truth is that Scappy treated us unbelievably well, but he just liked to tease my brother. And my father didnât like that at all.
We loved going to the club because there was a candy store right across the streetâwe used to say it was our candy store because we could get anything we wanted and we never had to pay for it. Then there was the luncheonette next door. When we visited my father, heâd take us there for breakfast or just to get a couple milk shakes.
They also had those chocolate egg creams, although there werenât any eggs in them. They were made with milk or half-and-half and soda water and either vanilla or chocolate syrup. Egg creams were big in Brooklyn because it was rumored that the guy who invented them came from the neighborhood. We loved going to the club because we could go to the luncheonette and sit with my father for a while.
That old club had a warm feeling to it, but the new club was kind of cold. We really didnât like it. What I remember most about the new club was the steps going downstairs. You didnât ever want to go down those steps. Well, if you were a guy, you didnât want to take the walk down those steps because you were going to get a beating or worse. We were never allowed down the steps.
You could see my fatherâs office as soon as you walked in, so he had two-way glass installed. He could see out, but nobody could see in. I always thought it was pretty cool. As I got older, I realized why that was necessary.
Joey didnât like it at that club because now that he was older, he really didnât like some of the guys. Joey told my father that he didnât want any part of them. And thatâs the way he felt throughout his life.
CHAPTER 3
DO YOU KNOW WHO YOUR FATHER IS?
We lived in the house on Fifty-Fifth Street until I was around seven; then we moved to Avenue J in Brooklyn. We moved because my parents found a better house, plus we were on a dead-end block on Fifty-Fifth. My father didnât like living on a dead-end blockâhe felt he didnât have a way out. If anything went down, he would have been trapped.
Our first