The Mayor of Flatbush

Flatbush Ave. has been an iconic street in Brooklyn since the days when the Dodgers were still in town. “The Avenue,” as the locals call it, cuts diagonally across the borough from the Manhattan Bridge that links Brooklyn with “the city,” all the way to the Marine Parkway Bridge that spans Jamaica Bay near the marshlands around Floyd Bennet Field, on the north shore of the bay.

About halfway across Brooklyn, Flatbush Ave. crosses Nostrand Ave above the Brooklyn College station, the last stop of the number 2 IRT subway line. This intersection was known locally as The Junction. From The Junction one could catch city buses that took one farther south, along Nostrand or southeast, along Flatbush. There was also a private bus line that one could take to the beaches along the Rockaway peninsula.

Midwood High School, just a block or two from the Brooklyn College campus was within walking distance of The Junction and its many attractions, two or three bars, a bagel shop, newsstand, drug store, beauty parlor, a record store and other miscellaneous retailers. For the crowd I hung out with the main attraction was the Four Kings Restaurant and the pool hall above it. I didn’t play but I spent many hours watching Eddie Fischetti win at eight ball. He was great with the geometry of ivory and wood, even in tenth grade. I marveled at the way he could use the cue ball to kiss the eight ball as it sat against the rail and send it rolling into the far corner, having called it that way. It wasn’t slop.

It was at the Four Kings that some Brooklyn Prep classmates and I would gather on the way home with some girls from Bishop McDonnell HS for a slice of pizza & a cherry coke. Midwood kids mingled with students and professors from Brooklyn College lining up for a slice and a drink from the guy that everybody called “Twinkies” because he had an extra digit growing from each pinkie. Fat Arnie, the owner, always sat in a booth next to the Nostrand Ave. entrance, away from the pizza counter, on the Flatbush side, where the teenyboppers congregated.

The pool hall was a magnet for neighborhood hipsters, hustlers and the teeny boppers who wanted to be like the hipsters who we thought looked so cool in the non-conformist uniform of the time, sandals, bell-bottom jeans and a tee shirt. Among those hipsters the alpha dog was a street hustler, cough syrup imbiber and local legend named Pat Kearny, also known as the Mayor of Flatbush, by the denizens of The Junction. He was like a character out of a Tom Waits song. Wild red hair leaped off his head like fire, burning to be free. Nondescript jailhouse tattoos on his scrawny looking arms made him look like a Gilbert Shelton drawing, Freewheeling Franklin’s lunatic cousin.

The wild look in his Irish eyes was not what one would describe as smiling. He was reputed to have bitten a guy's ear off during one of his many fights to maintain his alpha dog status at "The Junction." There was an incident near the Brooklyn College Campus that is probably the most repeated story about the Mayor of Flatbush. The way I heard it four decades ago, a gun-wielding junkie in need of a fix accosted Kearney.

Witnesses disagree on details but one thing they all agree on is that he fixed the assailant with a stare from those deranged Celtic eyes and said “You shoot me and I’ll kill you!” Some say he punctuated the "I'll kill you" threat with the N-word. Others say that the N-word was interjected right after “You shoot me.” Either way, it didn’t dawn on him that the politically incorrect & offensive racial slur would make it more likely that he would be shot. I wasn’t there so I can’t say for sure but I bet that junkie’s eyes opened wider than they had in months. “This crazy motherfucker probably would.” He must’ve thought before he backed down and put his gun away. Maybe he didn’t have any bullets? It didn’t matter, the Mayor of Flatbush had dramatically increased his street cred.

I managed to get a job making pizzas at the Four Kings for the summer after my junior year at the Prep. On one of my first days manning the pizza counter one of the neighborhood junkies emptied the cash register which I forgot to lock when I went in the back for a can of tomato sauce. His honor the mayor came in a couple of minutes later on his daily rounds and, when he heard what had happened he told me not to worry, that he would get the money back. About a half-hour later he came back with most of the money; he probably kept some for his daily dose of codeine.

The NYPD, whom Fat Arnie had called as soon as he heard that the junkie took the money, showed up about 2 hours later, when it was all over. Even though Arnie told them that the money had been recovered they interrogated me for about half an hour to get my statement. After I told them that the register had been opened & emptied while I was in the store room behind the oven they had me demonstrate how I made my way from in front of the oven to the big closet that Arnie called a store room. Two steps from the oven to the cash register and two steps from there to the store room door and another couple of steps from there to where the tomato sauce cans were stored.

Then they worked on getting me to ID the perp even though I told them that I hadn’t seen who had done it. The heavy set cop, who clearly had seniority and was the lead interrogator asked:

“Didja see anyone in heah b’fore yew went in da stoah room dat looked like they was waiting for a chance ta take da cash?”

All I could say at that time was no. But, looking back at it now, the proper answer would’ve been: “Do you see the people that hang out here? Every single one looks like he’s waiting for a chance to take the money and run.” But I did get over my nervousness enough to point out that, like Arnie had already told them, Pat Kearney had recovered the money two hours earlier, they should ask him what the perp looks like. Officer cupcake didn’t seem too happy with that last fact but he did tell me I could leave soon after I said it.