The Mau Maus

I was Charlie Wang’s friend and he became one of the richest men in the world as CEO of Computer Associates and then a whole host of other enterpirises including the New York Islanders hockey team. We went to Brooklyn Tech together and were in the same glasses for two years and met on the subway every morning and afternoon. We also played a lot of basketball together either t the school or at my house.  Mr. Schroegren who owned the largest head in the world, which accompanied the largest heart in the world, was our Industrial Processes teacher when we were freshmen. Charlie and I grew apart as I started to fail courses and cut classes and started to drink and use drugs.

I pissed away a great education by heading to downtown Brooklyn everyday to shoot pool with Bob Trzcinski. We stole records out of the department stores; later he owned a record store and for thirty years owning his store he looked under every customer’s coat.

Bob would ridicule me when he was feeling nasty. He’d call out “Scratch” and when I turned he’d cross his eyes and walk pigeon toed. The entire left side of my body was out and tended to face toward the right side.  My deceptive qualities allowed me to become an extremely good football and basketball player. Now, these qualities confuse and disorient any and all opposition, at every opportunity. This would include my wife, my daughters, or whoever throws me a curve in life.

As I got older and more able to deal with issues of how I am perceived there were periods when I had the detractors licked. If interrupted by somebody crossing their eye or walking pigeon toed I made jokes about my flaw. I’d tell them that my left eye liked my right so much it kept staring at it. However, learning to fob it off doesn’t take away the hurt that people conveyed. For instance, many times I’ve been in a room with a number of people in it and I would try to get someone’s attention for one thing or another. The act of making a gesture in a room full of people usually attracts at least half the people. And even though I would point specifically and accurately to the person I want, one person after another would whisper, “Do you mean me?” More often than not the person I wanted wouldn’t even be looking, which made the affair that much harder. I often put my head down and wish the scene away. After time I avoided being in those positions.

Over time things got much better. Years of practice and self instructed eye exercises and manipulations helped make my problem disappear. After the three horrible and terror filled surgeries I had undergone before the age of seven to correct my parent’s vanity and my self esteem before I knew how to look at someone and not blink, not look away out of shame but to stand there and look them straight in the eyes on issues came about. I learned to look at somebody straight in the eye. Almost! But then it was different.

It was about the time that I was no longer bothered by people making jokes about my crossed eyes. I also started to drink mostly beer as well. I’m not sure if the beer and my self-confidence were related but it didn’t matter to me then and now I only view that time as something that has passed and it may be an interesting thought now and then. But then, a few years later and with many many drinks down my throat I was contemplating the decision I had made. And as I sat there, here in this God-awful bar, her fat ass got smaller and smaller, a result of the lager that began just after breakfast, then to Bob’s house, and now here.

The Everly Brothers ballad Cathy's Clown was zinging through my head, in my head, piercing my innards with different degrees of sonic intensity.

The grass smoked had mellowed and the lyrics were impossible to differentiate, as was the money left on the bar. Grabbing the nearest pile of bills, I turned to the door to depart.

“Hey, pal, where you going with my money?”

No answer. Nothing heard.

“Hey, my money. Give me my money.”

An arm grabbed me just below the shoulder.

Fingers were pinching tightly, very tightly. I turned on my attacker, kicked him in the balls and left the scene.

Later I was so high, a man sitting next to me at another bar who was writing a book about NYC street gangs, wanted to talk with anybody who was a member of or who knew about street gang activity. I knew my own crew of friends and I also knew members of the Gaylords, the Gents, the Polk Avenue Boys, the Chiefs, the Dukes and some other gangs. I told him I had heard of other gangs, most notably a mythic Fordham Baldies. I also told him about some of the guys I knew from the Dukes and the Gents who I knew would surely go on to become Mafia.

He then asked me if I had ever heard of the Mau Maus, from Brooklyn. I hadn’t. But I had two separate run-ins with a gang of Puerto Ricans at Brooklyn Tech so I told him about them. I mentioned that Tech was on Fort Greene place and it was where I had my encounters. One was across the street from the school and the other was in Fort Green Park.

The man said, "I recognize the Corona Dukes and the Gents. I’m not familiar with the other gangs from Queens, except for the Saints. The book I’m writing is about the gang murders in Brooklyn, Manhattan and the Bronx. The Baldies are a gang from the Bronx, one of their members was killed by a Harlem gang called the Red Wings. I have the court records for that and it’s an interesting read. If you don’t mind asking, were you familiar with any of the Brooklyn gangs? One gang I’m intensely interested in is called the Mau Maus. They’re a Puerto Rican gang from Fort Greene and their allies, who are also from Fort Greene, are the Chaplains."

The man had repeated himself and though he did buy me a beer during the conversation I certainly wasn’t going to spend any time with him. Besides I already made him as a cop. And because of that I also didn’t want to get on the wrong side of him. I was on the wrong side of cops before, once on 39^th Avenue in front of the Black Horse, two cops beat the shit out of me after pulling me inside the barroom and locking the door. My friends could do nothing but watch through the window and watch the beating I took. Joey Sullivan had the same beating the week before. 

I told him what I could. “I didn’t know any gang by that name. Some gangs have jackets but most didn’t so you could never tell if the fifteen or twenty kids hanging out together were organized into a gang or just friends from the neighborhood, which was much more likely as every street in NYC has kids playing together.”

"I have some pictures. They are Mau Maus charged with the murder of a Sand Street Angel in February. So these guys might look familiar."  He looked at the pictures but nobody was familiar.

I told the guy more about the occurrence I had in Brooklyn. “I doubt I will be able to point to anybody in the photo as somebody who confronted me. Even if I thought I recognized somebody ten minutes later I couldn’t be sure. Look when you are in a fight or about to be in a fight the last thing you do is try to remember a person’s face. You are much more interested in seeing where their hands are and how many and where they were standing.”

“The fact is that even if it were the Mau Maus, it wasn’t as if it was that important to me. To me they are just Peurto Ricans, spics.” I said, “I have to be honest with yow. I have been stabbed and had a gun at my head three times and shot at once, all in Queens and I feel lucky to be alive. Brooklyn is nothing compared to Queens in my opinion.”

“I am a street kid,” I told him, “one time it was in Fort Greene Park. Four or five Peurto Ricans jumped me from behind as I was going into the park. One kid pulled a knife and while the others were hitting and kicking me I kept my eyes on the knife, kept moving away from it, while I swung away and kicked who I could, all along screaming at the top of my lungs hoping that the football team would hear me. I hit one kid and his face split open. He was hurt but he was also mad. He came at me.” I paused a few seconds while I took another sip of beer.

“The football team was fifty yards away and as soon as they saw me in trouble at least twenty of them ran over. That ended any trouble, though a few of the Peurto Ricans told me I was a dead man.”

When I said that he looked more interested. "Appears you have something for me. Very interesting. Nicky Cruz, of the Mau Maus lived at Fort Greene place, which I believe is right across from Brooklyn Tech. He said Brooklyn Tech had protective chain link fence and bars on the windows to stop the marauding gangs. Brooklyn Tech and Fort Greene Park were in the heart of Mau Mau turf. Fort Greene Park was where the Mau Maus hung out.”

 He hesitated for a few moments to see if I was going to say anything and then he said, “they were charged with murder that took place right by the Brooklyn Paramount Theatre, a block away from where you had your altercation.”

The man pulled out a photo: “From left to right is Carl Cintron, Carlos Reyes, Melvin Torres and Israel Narvaez. If you recognize any of them, please tell me.”

“Maybe,” I responded.

The fact of the matter was that the guys in the picture were the same punks who hassled me. The other fact was that I kicked the shit out of one of them before the football team chased the others all over the streets. I just wasn’t going to tell this guy anything that could get me involved in some police scene. I remained very cool and collected even though I had had many beers. I was, however, getting tired of his fob of being a writer.

 “Israel was the founder of the Mau Maus and was a member until he was put in prison. I was wondering if you would mind me quoting you in my story about you’re Fort Greene stories?”

“I have no problem with that. Like I said the altercations were a nothing thing, not even worth a story back in my neighborhood,” I responded.

“I would love to have more details, how many taunted yow, what they said, descriptions of the guys that taunted you..."

“Okay,” I started, “it was about two thirds up the block from the GG station and was across the street when five or six Puerto Rican guys were sitting and the stoop in front of a brownstone. I noticed them only after I had stared at a beautiful Puerto Rican woman. They came across the street and although I was bigger than them they had nerve and were not afraid me. I also realized they may have weapons.”

I went on: “I don’t speak Spanish and so I didn’t know what they were saying though if had to be about me and about whether or not they should take me down. I wasn’t very far from the door to the school, maybe forty feet, so I knew if worse came to worse I could make it to the door but I was also fairly confident that they may also back off if I didn’t show fear and maybe even showed a touch of madness. I smiled, which they may have understood as friendly, or maybe understood it as me being wise, cocky. Or it may have been understood that I was psychotic. Whatever it was, the affair ended, with no altercation.”

 “Maybe there was no confrontation because they detected no hostility in you,” said the cop.

“Maybe,” I said, thinking it didn’t matter anyway.

"If you were confronted on Ft. Greene Place, right in front of Brooklyn Tech, the chances are 100% it was the Mau Maus."

For me it was absolutely no big deal at all. It wasn’t even a story I would bring back to the stoop. It was a non-event. But this guy, this cop kept on the subject.

"The four fellows in the pictures were the gang within the gang. These were the hard core Mau Maus, call the ‘Suicide Squad.’ Tough guys for sure," he said.

When he said that I was unconvinced because on the two occasions that I had with these guys I never saw them do anything to make them seem tough and indeed they seemed rather docile. If they were tough and killers they would have tried to beat me up. I smiled at the man.

"I really appreciate you telling me what you did. If you ever come across any gang members from the Bronx, Manhattan or Brooklyn, regardless of the gang, please tell them about me.

He gave me his card. Sure enough, he was no writer… Sgt. John Conroy, NYPD, 88th Precinct, it said.  The 88^th Precinct is in Brooklyn.

I learned later why I was question and why others were questioned as well. Salvador Agron, one of the Mau Maus, later led some of the Mau Maus into another gang. On the night of August 29, 1959, the gang arranged a fight in Hell’s Kitchen after a member of the Irish Gang, the Westies, who also had links to my friends in Queens, beat up a friend of theirs. Agron and Tony Hernandez went downtown to meet other members of the gang. Agron wore a black cape and carried a 14-inch dagger. Hernandez clutched an umbrella with a needle-sharp metal point. When they arrived in Hell’s Kitchen, the Westies hadn’t got there yet. Agron and the others confused six teenagers who were not affiliated with any gang for the Westies and came down on the teens yelling, "Where’s Frenchy?" Three of the boys escaped without harm, one was seriously wounded, and two were killed.