A skinchick begged me to stop. “You’re going to crush his fucking skull.” I paused long enough to realize she was probably right. I sat back on the couch and opened a fresh beer.
“So much for our fucking New York connection,” Jimmy said, slamming the door behind them as they huffed out, half-carrying my “pure” Irish victim.
“So much for any of youse having any balls,” I said.
“What’re you talking about?” someone asked.
“Half of youse are more Italian than me.” I scanned their guilty faces. No one met my eye. “But I was the only one who said a fucking thing.”
I walked out. No one followed me.
EVERYBODY CONNECTED TO Strike Force steered clear of me for a while after that. I think they were trying to give me space to cool off. What they gave me, though, was space to think. And they would’ve hated what I was thinking. It was like it’d been back in Lancaster County in summer of 1989, “ If you believe it, the evidence will come.” Only this time it happened in reverse. As soon as I started to question my racism, all this evidence appeared to prove I was on the right track. Thanks to the O. J. Simpson trial, every time I flipped on the television, there was a story on the news about DNA. I’d dropped out of school way before we got to that level in science class. So even though I’d heard the term
before, mostly from other inmates bucking for an appeal, I didn’t really know much about it. I became totally obsessed with what it was and how it worked. I remember staying up really late one night watching a documentary where a scientist scrolled down this long chain of genetic codes on his computer. He said only a couple of little links on that massive chain actually differed among human races, a couple little links on mile after mile of chain was all that separated whites from blacks. Not long after that, I caught a story about a white guy who’d nearly died when his body rejected an organ transplant. The donor had been a family member, but the guy was alive and well thanks to a successful transplant from a black stranger. Everything I’d ever been taught about Identity Theology, about how “mud” are a separate, inferior, subhuman species, told me that shouldn’t happen. But it had.
The Second and Porter boys were the first people to notice I was changing. One night, somebody made a racist comment and looked to me for backup. I just shook my head and said, “I don’t know. Maybe we’re not that different.” I’d dropped a couple of bombshells like that on the corner when one of the guys finally asked, “What’s up, Frankie? First you hate everybody, now you love everybody?”
I thought about it for a minute, then answered truthfully, “Pretty much, I guess, except for the Jews.”
Not even DNA evidence could dislodge my hatred of the Jews. I hadn’t been taught that Jews were an inferior, subhuman species; I’d been taught that Jews were pure evil. Jews were ZOG. Jews were devious. Jews were greedy.
I, on the other hand, was flat broke and clueless about how I was going to find a job. Everywhere I went looking for work, people just stared at my tattoos. Some places wouldn’t even let me fill out an application. But one day, a buddy of mine stopped by Tree Street with a lead. He’d been moving furniture for an antiques dealer across the river in New Jersey. They had a huge sale coming up and needed extra help.
“It’s going to be fourteen-hour days,” he said. “But it’s yours if you want it. I already put in a good word for you with the boss. He said he’ll go a hundred bucks a day if you work the whole weekend. You interested?”
I hadn’t had two hundred dollars to my name in forever. “Sign me up.”
“There’s just one thing,” my friend said. “The guy’s a Jew.”
I rolled that tidbit over in my mind for a minute, then said, “I don’t fucking care, so long as I don’t have to talk to him.”
My friend laughed and said, “That’s exactly what he said about you.”
A few days later, I showed up at this Jewish guy’s fancy store with a swastika on my neck, and he didn’t even bat an eyelash.
Education? Ninth-grade dropout. Employment history? A job on a concrete crew before I got committed to a mental institution. Criminal record? On parole for aggravated kidnapping and assault with a deadly weapon. Even if I sugarcoated the truth, these ain’t good people skills I was giving off in an interview. But after everybody else turned me away, Keith Goldstein hired me. An upper -crust Jewish antiques dealer hired an ex-convict with a swastika tattoo on his neck to deliver armoires to his suburban clients. I wasn’t the first fucked up kid Keith tried to save with a delivery job. I wasn’t even the first fucked up racist kid. I may have been the most fucked up, but that didn’t matter to Keith. He liked the challenge.
I worked my ass off the weekend of his big sale. By Sunday night I was dragging and ready to head home. But I hadn’t been paid yet, and Keith was nowhere in sight. I found my buddy.
“You sure this dude ain’t gonna Jew me?”
The guy rolled his eyes at me. “He’ll pay you. Relax, already.”
But I couldn’t relax. Every second I didn’t see Keith Goldstein walking my way with two hundred-dollar bills in his hand reinforced everything the white supremacy movement had ever taught me about Jews. That bastard Keith was so devious, sneaking out like that when I was sweating my balls off for his
business. That bastard Keith was so greedy, stealing my pay like that after I’d busted my ass carrying his goddamn furniture. That bastard Keith was so…so…so fucking ZOG.
Then that bastard Keith showed up and did something even worse than Jewing me out of my pay: he blew the living freaking crap out of the one and only stereotype I still had to hold on to. He thanked me for my hard work, paid me a hundred bucks more than the wage he’d promised me, and asked if I wanted to come to work for him full-time.
Part of me wanted to scream, “Stop being fucking nice to me!” Fortunately, the part of me desperate for money got control of my mouth. All I said was, “Yes. Thanks.”
The next morning, Keith stomped on another one of my long-held beliefs about Jewish people: I didn’t think there was a Jew alive who followed hockey. But Keith Goldstein lived for the Philadelphia Flyers. And if there’s anything in this world that can cross a gap as wide as the gap between a Jew and a Nazi, it’s loyalty to the legacy of the Broad Street Bullies. By the end of my first week at the store, Keith had filled me in on practically every play in every game I’d missed while I was in prison. And in between the play-by-play, I managed to carry what felt like a million pieces of furniture. When I clocked out Friday afternoon, Keith once again paid me in full plus a bonus.
Riding home on the bus, I realized something about the Jews: until Keith, I’d never met one. I’d spent most of my life in either South Philly or prison; there ain’t a lot of Jews in either place. But I had a whole lot of theories about the Jews, and until I met Keith Goldstein, I would’ve sworn I had facts to back every one of those theories. Then I met Keith, and the fact was he disproved every theory I had. He was about the nicest, coolest dude I’d ever met.
That night after I climbed out of the shower, I stared at myself in the mirror for a long time. My tattoos screamed against my pale white skin. “
Sieg Heil
” on my head. The swastika on my neck. The portrait of Joseph Goebbels on my chest. A crucified
skinhead, nearly ten inches long, running the length of one forearm. The Celtic cross and other symbols of white supremacy scattered elsewhere on my arms. I raised my fists to my own face: “SKINHEAD” my knuckles declared, as if begging me to remember my identity. I dropped my fists. I took in the full view of my naked body. I still looked like a skinhead. But when I looked deep into my own eyes, the hate was gone. I never officially resigned my position as head of Strike Force; I just disappeared. None of the skinheads came looking for me. If they had, they would’ ve found me working for a Jew I considered a friend by day, and partying with my Second and Porter druggie friends by night.
One night, Vicey asked, “You
still
sticking with beer?”
For the first time since I’d been hanging on the corner, I hesitated on answering that question. It was another moment of truth: South Philly versus White Supremacy? Second and Porter versus Skinhead Alley? Margaret and Big Frankie’s baby boy versus Hitler’s Youth?
I made the choice with my nose. Within a few weeks, I was snorting coke, smoking weed, or dropping acid damn near every night. Some weekend nights, I did all three. But I tried to control myself on weeknights so I’d be okay for work the next morning. I didn’t want to disappoint Keith, and I couldn’t afford to miss work. By then, I needed all the money I could get to cover my growing tabs with the dealers.
ONE NIGHT IN early October, I was laying around watching TV, thinking it was about time for me to wander down to Second and Porter, when the phone rang.
“It’s David Conover.”
My blood froze. David Conover from Reading, the guy who’d given me my most hardcore Nazi tattoos, by then the highest-ranked skinhead in all of Pennsylvania. When I heard David’s voice on the other end of the telephone, I figured word had finally filtered up the chain of command that I wasn’t exactly fighting
the good fight in Philly anymore. I knew when I stepped away from Strike Force there was a good chance somebody’d jump me out. I was surprised it hadn’t happened to Louie. Of course, that they’d let him go peacefully made it even more likely they’d come after me: one crew leader defecting is an embarrassment; two is a public relations nightmare.
“I need you to gather your troops,” David said.
So word clearly had not spread up the chain of command.
“What’s up?” I asked, playing it cool, like I still had troops. I leaned against the wall and prepared myself to listen to yet another skinhead diatribe about “Sharpie ZOG dupes” or some other bullshit I really didn’t give a crap about anymore.
“We’re going on a road trip. Some motherfucking nigger just killed Joe Morgan.”
If it’d been anybody other than Joe, I might not have made the calls I made that night. But it was Joe Morgan, the same Joe Morgan who’d saved my ass by making the calls that got me off the East Coast when I was sure the cops were circling in on me.
Joe and his band had been playing at a white power music festival south of Milwaukee. When the concert ended, Joe and some of the other performers stopped by a convenience store to buy beer for a post-gig party. That’s where they ran smack into a bunch of black guys. Sneers became words. Words became shoves. Shoves became punches. Then one of the black guys pulled a gun and opened fire.
The second David hung up, I called down the Strike Force roster. When they heard the tone in my voice, not one guy dared ask me where I’d been for more than a month. It didn’t matter where I’d been or what I’d been doing; Joe Morgan was dead, and I was back in command of Strike Force, no questions asked. A few hours later I had close to twenty skinheads ready to move out on David’s signal. While we waited, Matt Hanson tattooed “In Memory of Joe Morgan” on the back of my neck, just above “Strike Force.” Then David called again.
“I just got off the phone with my guys. It’s still too fucking hot. Cops are everywhere. We can’t do anything right now.”
My hand shook violently as I hung up the telephone. I leaned against the wall for support. I felt like my brain was imploding. For hours, all I’d wanted to do was kill the “motherfucking nigger” who’d killed Joe Morgan. For hours, there was no Jello, no Little G, no Keith in this world, only “mud” and “ZOG ” and my steel-toed combat boots. For hours, all I heard inside my brain was “Kill! Kill! Kill!” All it had taken was one fucking phone call. One lousy, fucking phone call and I’d flipped right back into warrior-skinhead mode. I staggered across the kitchen and collapsed under the realization of how close to the edge I’d been. I’d only been one phone call away from going back to war, back to hate, straight to hell. I sat at the kitchen table, staring at the telephone. Then I broke down crying.
Joe’s body was shipped back to the East Coast a few days later. Nearly every skinhead in a three-hundred mile radius turned out for the memorial service. Even my cousin Shawn and the Lancaster County crew came to pay their respects; it was the first time I’d seen Shawn in nearly three years. He nodded to me across the packed room as I waited in line to view the body.
Waves of skinheads marched up to the casket, saluting their fallen hero, “
Sieg Heil
!” I didn’t salute Joe. I stood alone by his body for a few moments and remembered what he had done for me; he’d helped me when no one else could, or would. I hadn’t come to the funeral home to pay respect to a skinhead; I’d come to pay respect to a friend. I leaned into the casket and kissed Joe’s forehead. “Thank you,” I whispered.
The skinheads threw a party in his honor. I hadn’t planned to go; I had no desire to go, but Matt Hanson talked me into it, saying he missed me, assuring me everybody missed me since I’d stopped spending my nights in Skinhead Alley.
I walked up a long flight of steps to the second-floor apartment carrying the case of beer Matt had been told to bring. The host, a member of the Nazi Alliance, patted me on the back and
said, “Glad you came.” He asked me to put the beer in the refrigerator and waved me down a hallway toward the kitchen.
Three gigantic Axis Skinheads were leaning against the counter. Not one of them spoke to me. That’s when I knew. I just fucking knew. I’d walked into a trap and there wasn’t a thing I could do to escape. As I reached for the refrigerator door, the biggest one sucker punched me in the side of the head. Twenty-four bottles of beer shattered across the floor, leaving the linoleum as slick as ice. I knew it would be my only advantage. I lodged my shoulder into the Axis skin who’d hit me like I was checking an opposing hockey player. He teetered on the slippery floor. I clung to his shirt and used my weight to drag him down.
I only got in one shot before he screamed, “Axis Stomp!” That notorious battle cry has preceded many a bloodbath. It’s their special code; it means all Axis Skinheads within earshot must jump in the fight. They all came running. So did all the other crews, who were jostling for ringside seats. As the first torrent of blows rained down on my head and chest, I heard the echo of a familiar tune in the back of my mind.