Prologue
Thick morning fog rolled in off New York Harbor as the old immigrant was led to a secluded spot in the back of the lot. The hanging mist and a sun that was still a few minutes from rising made him and the younger man who guided him invisible even to those who were filtering through the chain-link gate for a day's work, just fifty or so yards away.
They stopped behind a green dumpster. The old man was told to get down on his knees, and even though at seventy he was twice the age of the younger man, he did what he was told. The young man stuffed a white sweat sock into the immigrant's mouth.
"You make a sound, I'll smash your fuckin' head in, understand?" the young man threatened.
The immigrant nodded.
"Gimme your hand."
The old man complied. At first he tried to get away with offering up his left hand, but it didn't fly.
"Not that one," the young man ordered. "The one you write with."
The immigrant pulled his left hand back and slowly pushed his right hand forward, along the ground, making grooves in the earth with his fingers.
The young man removed a hammer from inside his coat pocket.
"Remember, not a sound," he warned.
The immigrant pressed his eyes closed tight.
The hammer swung down with full force. Blood shot out from all sides of the old man's hand as if someone had stepped on a sponge soaked in dark red paint. The grooves in the dirt filled in black. Despite the sock and the warnings, the immigrant let out a wail that couldn't be heard over the sound of workers unloading flatbeds by the gate.
"Motherfucker," the young man barked, and he quickly drove the hammer down into the hand two more times as punishment for the old man's disobedience.
The immigrant collapsed onto his side, grasping his mangled paw. He wept silently, the pain too great for any more screams. The young man grabbed the dumpster by its side and pushed it over. The immigrant didn't even see it coming; he just felt it land on his hand, crushing already broken bone into smaller pieces. The pain was so bad, the old man passed out.
When the other workers found him about twenty minutes later, he was unconscious, bloody, and alone.
The immigrant wasn't the first guy in Brooklyn to catch a beating—and he won't be the last. Everyone in Bensonhurst pays their dues eventually. Some pay what's fair; some pay tenfold. A lot of people feel I didn't pay nearly enough; they think I got away with murder—figuratively and literally.
And if that is how people want to look at me, I won't try to convince them otherwise. The blood on my hands and the hands of others—I caused it all. It's that knowledge that gives me the nightmares that keep me awake every night. But I deserve them; I deserve everything I got. It's my never-ending penance for what I did. Because what I did was horrible.
Excerpted from Slip & Fall. Copyright © 2007 by Nick Santora. All rights reserved.
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