Bobby had a ‘dirty deck,’ a pack of playing cards with photographs of naked women.  Today he had brought the Queen of Spades, a gorgeous black woman with enormous, gravity-defying breasts.  ‘I’ll trade you my commando knife and rabbit’s foot for that one,’ I offered, but only to express my appreciation for his treasure.  I knew she was beyond barter. 

Bobby curled his lip and shook his head.  ‘I should make you trade something just to let you see this one, but I’m your pal,’ he said, ‘for you, the look is gratis.  Don’t let that get around though, ’cause I’m charging 8th graders two bits a peek.  It’s paying for my smokes.’

We were standing in the far corner of the school yard, separated from the world by an 8′ fence and from the school by 30 yards of mushy-hot asphalt pavement.  An old alky was sitting on the sidewalk with his back against the fence, nursing a brown-bag bottle of Ripple.  ‘Hey granddad,’ Bobby said, ‘how about giving my pal and me a taste of your short-dog?’  The bum turned and gave us a toothless grin, but waived off sharing, thank God.  He smelled worse than the public toilet in the BMT.  Still, I envied his freedom.

We were in the playground at Our Lady of Perpetual Misery, corner of Sackett Street and Atlantic Avenue.  We called it ‘BCC,’ Brooklyn Concentration Camp.  The day was stinko hot, a dog day, just a week before summer recess.  Horns blared on the avenue and the air smelled like diesel.  While we were standing there the bum’s dog took a crap on the sidewalk.  Anybody with any sense was indoors, drinking a cool one and playing 8-Ball.

‘I’m only bringing one card a day,’ Bobby said.  ‘I don’t want to risk getting the whole deck snatched.’  Yesterday he’d brought the joker, a skinny, buck-toothed girl with tits like bananas.  That one made me feel funny, but I couldn’t stop looking at it.  Bobby said, ‘That’s what your girlfriend Janey looks like with her clothes off.’  He knew I liked Janey, thought her braces and gapped front teeth only added to her unapproachable, ivory-tower radiance. 

‘You gotta be careful with your stuff around grown-ups,’ Bobby continued. ‘Particularly nuns.  Sister Patricia’s desk is stuffed with booty, a lot of it mine. She’s got pocketknives, slingshots, marbles, yo-yos,  Dracula fangs, bottles of fake blood, cap guns. You name it, she took it.  So much for Thou Shalt Not Steal.’ 

‘If Sister Patricia saw that card, she’d probably have a vapor lock,’ I said, ‘she’d fall gasping to the floor and die with a face like a cooked tomato.’

‘Nah,’ replied Bobby, ‘The old lez would take it back to the convent to share with the rest of those dykes.’

I wasn’t sure what Bobby meant, but liked my vision of Sister Patricia’s seizure, calculated how fast I’d make it to her desk to reclaim my stolen treasures. I imagined her tits up with the Queen of Spades on her chest.  I’d definitely grab that too!  Couldn’t let Sister Patricia arrive in heaven with that card in her claw.  Saint Peter would put it in his desk drawer and send her off to Purgatory.

There was no list of contraband.  You displayed possessions at your peril.  That old witch had a bag of my best aggies, ‘playing marbles is gambling,’ she’d said.  She didn’t give a reason for nabbing my autographed Joe Namath football card.  That was just meanness.   Trading football cards wasn’t exactly gambling, more like free enterprise, but it was banned in BCC. 

Sister Patricia once took a pencil from me because it wasn’t a yellow, school approved, Ticonderoga No. 2.  It was white and had a picture of a red Indy racing car.  My dad gave it to me.  I wanted to stick it through her heart the day she took it. 

We both knew that if Bobby got caught with the Queen of Spades he’d be sent to Mother Superior’s Office, Mother Mengle’s House of Terror.  The last time he’d come back he said ‘My dad gives me worse lickins every day.  Old Mengele’s got a paddle, but she’s just not strong enough.  I holler because it makes her feel good, but she ain’t nothing but an old woman with a hard-on for boys.’ 

Better him than me.  The leathery old ginch probably had an arm like DiMaggio.  Bobby was tough, sometimes came to school with angry bruises he’d got at home, but he was also a liar.   I saw the bright red welts on his ass and thighs when we changed for gym that day.  He’d taken a beating.

Bobby looked up and quickly palmed The Queen of Spades into the hip pocket of his jeans.   Sister Patricia was on yard duty and swooping our way.  ‘You know the last time Sister Mengele gave me a licking she said I’d go to Father Thomas if I got in trouble again,’ Bobby said.  ‘I nearly told her that old fruit would only want to blow me.  I’m not sure which I’d prefer, a beating or a BJ.  They both want to see my bare ass.  They just want to do different things with it.’ 

I wasn’t sure what Bobby was talking about, but nodded knowingly, trying to look cool.  He was two years older than me.  I kept my ears open and mouth shut around him.

As it turned out, that was Bobby’s lucky day.  Old hawk-eye Sister Patricia had seen his furtive gesture, discovered The Queen of Spades, but didn’t die choking on the playground.  She came close, saying ‘What is this?’ as she pulled the card out of Bobby’s pocket.  Looking at her discovery, Sister Patricia made a face I’d never seen before, like she was puking, but smiling at the same time.  Then, she said ‘Oh, dear Jesus, forgive me,’ and frog walked Bobby to the office. 

That’s where his luck turned solid gold. Instead of being sent to Father Thomas, Bobby was expelled for the remainder of the term.  He got paroled a week early for bad behavior.  Go figure.

The following day, I saw him across Sackett Street outside the Italian Club, talking with the wise guys.   He gave me the high sign and grin.  ‘If I’d known it was a free pass out of school, I’d have turned myself in weeks ago,’  he hollered.

I was still stuck in BCC.

*  *  *

That summer we didn’t see as much of each other as we had other summers.  We’d always lived a few blocks away because my dad wasn’t Italian.  Only Italians could live in Carroll Gardens, everybody knew that.  My mom was Italian, if fact, she was Bobby’s dad’s cousin.  But she’d married a Casey and that was that.  We lived in Borum Hill.

The thing is that Bobby was growing in different directions, getting interested in girls, but he still made time for me.  We both had our first jobs.  I was working for Cohen’s Market as a delivery boy and Bobby was running errands for the wise guys.  Sometimes he picked up the numbers bags or took their cars to the car wash.  We’d see each other, me with my big three wheeled delivery bike and Bobby with a canvas bag the mob used for numbers tickets and cash.  Sometimes he’d be driving a car.

One day near the end of summer we stopped on the corner to talk.  Bobby was really proud.  He said, ‘You know my dad, is a made guy. I’m on my way up.  I’ve already got flash money and a moniker.  Everybody’s calling me ‘Bobby Spade’ because of me getting kicked out of school over that titty card.  My dad thought it was funny.  I won’t be going back.  What do I need school for? I got a job.’ Later on, he smiled and asked, ‘Are you gonna be around the corner on Sunday?  I got something for you.  Meet me at BCC after mass.’

When I got there, Bobby was sitting in the driver’s seat of a panel truck and, seeing me, he said ‘You still saving up for that 10-speed bike?’  He knew I was, but they were expensive and I was giving Mom most of my earnings.  There was a longshoreman’s strike going on and things were tight at home.  My dad only got strike benefit from the union all that summer.

Inside the truck Bobby had a Peugeot UO-18, the best bike on the market!  I was only dreaming of the UO-8, the cheaper import.  The 18 was a class bike made from butted tubing with Campy components.  Bobby saw me light up. ‘It’s a pretty good bike, right,’ he said.  ‘Personally, I think you’re turning into a geek.  You ain’t gonna get laid on a bicycle.

‘This bike is leftovers from a truckload me and a couple of friends of mine found.  We sold the others, but I kept this one for you.’  I was speechless.  It felt like Christmas.  Bobby just laughed.  ‘You can say thank you, asshole, but this don’t mean we’re going steady and are gonna start taking showers together, alright.’

I did manage to say thank you, but got on the bike and rode off to Prospect Park to join the Sunday cyclists on the closed circuit around the park.  In a sense, I never got off that bike.  Everything changed for me because of where it took me.

* * *

Two years later Bobby got popped for dealing in marijuana he a cousin were importing from Vietnam on military supply planes.  Luckily, his bust was federal and he got sentenced as a youth offender.  Because he wouldn’t give up his partners he bought a nickel, five years, but he only actually served 37 months in ‘Club Fed,’ a non-secure facility in Virginia.  It was a kind of VIP prison and he made some good connections.  I visited him and the food wasn’t bad.  The cooks were all Italian.

Bobby’s a full-fledged wise guy now, a made guy moving up in his world.  But he’s still Bobby.  We get together whenever he comes to Hollywood and usually at Christmas when I come back to Brooklyn to visit my folks.  I’m an actor and, since I got my mom’s Sicilian good looks, am in demand to play a mobster.  Bobby gives me tips.

When I’m in the old neighborhood, I just go down to the corner and ask for my old pal Bobby, Bobby Spade.