Читать книгу The Kid from the South Bronx Who Never Gave Up - John Giordano - Страница 9

While living with Marilyn, I started smoking a lot of pot and doing LSD every couple of months. This got old fast, so I cut way back. It was getting in the way of my karate.

Marilyn finally found the courage to tell her parents that we were living together, and we wanted to get married. At first, her parents were all upset but I guess they finally realized that they could not do anything about it. Eventually, they met my parents and really got to like them. These were nice Jewish people from Rockville Centre, New York. Her father was a lawyer and the president of the Masonic lodge; her mother was the head of the P.T.A. This was a match made in heaven or hell, it depends how you look at it. My father was a drug dealer, my grandfather a shylock, and the rest of my family was a mix of law-biding and not-so-law-bidding citizens.

In order to keep everything neutral, we went to New York to get married by a justice of the peace. My uncle was kind enough to pay for the party. It was a wonderful wedding. On one side of the room was Marilyn’s family: some lawyers and some business types; and on my side of the room: a mixed group of racketeers and other types of interesting people, to say the least. It was kind of like one of those Soprano-type movies. I could not believe it; on one side some people were carrying guns and on the other side they were carrying pens. What a diverse crowd!

The wedding party went smooth, so I thought. The next day, both families were at my grandmother’s house having fun when the phone rang. My grandmother nervously pulled me over to the side and said, “The police are coming over to question your uncle.”

“Why?” I asked.

“They think he may have been involved in the killing of the caterer,” she said quietly.

“What do you mean? The caterer’s dead?”

“Yes. They said your uncle got into an argument with him. They found him dead this morning.”

I could not believe it. I had to get my new in-laws out of there and quick. I told them that we had to leave for the airport early because I get anxiety. “There’s so much traffic,” I complained.

“Awe, we have plenty of time,” someone piped in.

“I know but can we leave anyway?” I asked hoping the desperation in my voice wasn’t showing.

Thank God for my mom. She must have sensed something was up because she stood up and said, “Okay, let’s go anyway.” Everyone listened to her and began to file out of the house. We had barely enough time to get everyone away before the police showed up minutes later. What a nightmare.

Marilyn’s father and mother finally got on the plane. Marilyn and I went back home to our apartment, arguing about what had happened. It was not the best way to start a marriage. I believe that this marriage was doomed from the beginning.

That night my mother called and told us that they arrested my uncle on suspicion of murder. My mother told me that when they arrested my uncle, he started acting crazy, they put him in a straitjacket, and while they were taking him down the stairs, he dove down the whole flight of stairs headfirst. They then locked him up in a mental institution. They could not prove that he was guilty, but they locked him up for two years in a mental institution. I believe he may have really done it, but who knows. I guess he does, but he is not talking anytime soon.

When we arrived back in Miami, everything seemed to be going all right. Marilyn was still shaken up about what had happened. “Look,” I said, “Shit happens. Unfortunately, it happens to us.” What more could I say? I was used to this kind of life, but she was not.

We went back to our lives. Marilyn was working as a go-go dancer at the Bel Aire Hotel and I was still teaching karate. I needed to make more money so I walked into the bar at the Bel Aire Hotel and asked Sid and Jimmy, the owners, if I could work on the weekends as a bouncer. They sized me up, but I assured them I was much more skilled than my skinny frame showed. They agreed. The real reason I wanted to work there was so I could keep an eye on Marilyn because I did not trust her; I was so insecure and immature. But in a way I had a good reason, she had an extremely hard time telling the truth; what a wonderful way to begin a marriage.

If I had known then what I know now, I would never have married Marilyn in the first place. Hindsight is always 20/20. This was my life at that time, sad but true. But, as you know, life has many twists and turns; you never know what is going to happen next. So as my story unfolds, life with Marilyn had its ups and downs almost to the point of insanity. When you have two young people in an immature relationship, and you add drugs and alcohol, it becomes an accident waiting to happen. Have you ever been in a nightmare that seems never to end no matter how hard you try to get out? Well, welcome to my life.

I seemed to get lucky as far as life and work was concerned.

Norman and his children were my students; Norman felt a special connection with me and wanted me to work for him. Norman owned a company that built a top-secret gunboat that many countries were interested in. The initial prototype was unique at this time. She was forty-five feet long and twenty feet wide. The ship was made from welded aluminum with four Pratt and Whitney water jet engines that were attached to two hydraulic skis. This craft could go forty-five knots per hour and maintain stability in a five to seven-foot sea state where you were able to have a drink and not spill one drop. It was able to turn easily within its own circumference. Ahead of it’s time, this craft was later called a hydro ski and boasted retractable skis as well.

Norman took a liking to me. He told me that he felt as if we had known each other in another time, and we were comrades in arms. He thought that I had a special gift of intuitiveness so he felt that he could use my skill set-in high-level meetings with government officials. Of course, I took the job. I started as an office boy in between meetings. Some of the people that worked there were engineers and scientists from NASA. They were deeply religious and conservative people who did not like hippies like me. They would leave religious articles on my desk to read and tried to get me to go to their church, but, after a while, that subsided.

Some of the other people did not like that I was so close to the owner and felt that I got special attention. They were right, but that was the way it was. Everyone had to make an appointment in order to see the president, except me. I even got a company car, which made them dislike me even more. I sat at these high-level meetings with Norman, dignitaries, and ambassadors. Then, after the meeting was over, Norman and I would sit down and discuss what transpired during the meeting. He asked my opinion of what I thought of each person and their real intentions. The funny part was that I was usually correct in my assumptions.

Norman felt that there was some theft going on in the company. I asked if he knew who might be stealing or where it was happening. He told me it was more of a feeling he had, so I checked it out. He was right. After business/working hours, I went into the files of the purchases of material for the company and I found purchasing orders for the last six months of buying. I compared the purchases and found huge differences. Through more investigation I found out that the purchasing agent was also getting kickbacks from the vendors. Norman fired him and put me in charge of purchasing. I told him that I knew nothing about how to be a purchasing agent, so he threw a book on my desk on how to be a purchasing agent. He told me to read it, so I did.

Norman always pushed me beyond what I thought I could do. Unfortunately, at that time, funding dried up and the company went out of business. Thanks to Norman’s belief in me I was able to challenge myself to do things I thought I could not do. This lesson served me well, even today.