The Carroll Capris

It was not that we thought they were gangsters when they walked through the door. In their long coats and stingy-brim hats, in the way they stood and the expressions on their faces, we could see they were from the rackets squad, and they were scary. By the time I was fourteen years old, I had attracted the attention of the police a few times, and I thought I knew what they were like. But the calm, almost bored look of these guys, who had simply strolled into the Capri Athletic Club on Carroll Street, was new to me.

They told us to stand up. The head detective asked us kids what we were doing there. We said we were members of the club. He told us to move to one side of the room and empty our pockets on the table by the far wall. The room was filled

Illustration by Liz Priddy, with background and textures from Bittbox.net; trophy courtesy of Red Weir Athletic Supply and photographed by Gene Royer.

with the usual athletic-club furniture—a few tables and chairs, a bar with bar stools and a TV set on a high shelf. The head detective, looking around the room while his men searched us, spotted the picture of Gypsy Rose Lee, which someone had taped up on the wall. The movie Gypsy was just then a hit in the theaters, and the movie poster on the wall showed Natalie Wood posing in a pink satin one-piece corset. Almost in a growl, he told us to take it down.

Mousey, our football coach, who was standing on the other side of the room with the rest of the men, went over to the wall and deliberately removed the offending image. Even at the time, in that tense moment, I understood the irony of these cops—who seemed to have felt themselves insulted at having to occupy the same room with a bunch of small-time hoods and some fawning kids—acting out a piety I felt sure was just for show. Maybe the cops had shown up because the Capri A.C. had decided to allow us kids to hang out there. In the fall weather most of us played on the Carroll Capris sandlot football team, which the club sponsored. Like goslings we had taken to following Mousey around, no matter the time of the year. He took a real interest in us, and so we were allowed to hang out at the club. And now we were getting rousted.

I watched as the detective moved from one boy to the next, feeling each one of us carefully and methodically, while his superior stood by looking on. Over on the other side of the room, one of the men, Tommy Pescara, got into a scuffle with two of the detectives because they had found a snubnosed .38 revolver on him and were trying to handcuff him. Tommy, who was tall and muscular and who himself was a cop, was trying to show them his police badge. The detectives didn’t care. They got him handcuffed finally and hauled him away, apparently satisfied with their catch and that they had made their point.

Tommy showed up at the club the next day, explained that everything was all right and then went out into the street to toss a football around with a couple of the other guys, as if nothing out of the ordinary had happened. I never learned anything more about the encounter. But that was the milieu in which I was moving. This was a neighborhood known in 1962 as South Brooklyn, and this part of New York City had its own rhythms and rules that we all obeyed.

A lot went on, some of it showing up in the newspapers. For the most part, though, except when an incident touched one of us boys personally, we were left in our more-or-less innocence. Of course, we knew we were consorting with gangsters. It’s just that we didn’t really appreciate...