Free Boogaloo On 2nd Avenue by Mark Kurlansky Page A

said Consuela. "People will root for him instead of Jimmy."
    "He is a big boy, very heavy-duty body. He will look like he can kill Jimmy. He can grow a beard and we can take him to Cristofina for some tattoos and other stuff and ..."
    Joey came out, his face looking patted and pale. "I've got to go," he said. "Gracias, Consuela."
    "Por nada." Consuela smiled sweetly as Joey went off to Sal First in his continuing investigation of the death of Eli Rabbinowitz. Consuela began wrapping up the leftover food for Chow Mein, adding to the pernil two choice pieces of cuerito, crisped fatty pork skin—the best part.
    "I think Officer Parma didn't like my food," Consuela said with a smile.
    "Eso es como la kikhl tsebrokhn," said Chow Mein, staring out at the street.
    "¿Qué?"
    "The way the cookie crumbles," said Chow Mein, already thinking of other matters.

CHAPTER SIX
Tribulations of a Tenth Man
    R ABBI L ITVAK had long ago given up on women. It wasn't sexism, merely pragmatism. The synagogue on Sixth Street had been founded in the 1880s and, it seemed, had slowly lost members ever since. It was down to eight, and it needed ten. Jewish law said so—ten men, a minyan to hold a service. When all else failed—it seemed to be happening more and more—Nathan was nearly kidnapped. Since women did not count for a minyan, they were of no help; they simply did not address the primary problem, which was trying to hold a service. They were welcome but unnecessary, and since no one tried to get women to come, no women came. The horseshoe-shaped balcony where women used to pray had been empty for years. No one ever went up there. It was rumored that squatters lived there.
    When the small congregation stood and faced the east for the silent prayer, the amidah, taking three steps forward and three back, and began furiously bowing and jerking their heads in impassioned reverence, reciting in their minds the silent prayers, Nathan stood there politely, staring at the eastern balcony.
    Suddenly, on more than one Friday, he would see a graying bush of hair appear above the balcony's dark velvet curtain. Slowly his brother Mordy's head would become visible. Mordy would be staring out with sleepy, unfocused eyes, trying to see who had disturbed his rest. Nathan would be looking on in horror as the other men recited the amidah, bowing and bobbing their heads, seeing only the Hebrew letters in the book in front of them. A minute later, a woman's head would appear on the balcony, and—though she would always be conspicuously unkosher, black or Chinese or large and blond, and always beautiful and a bit naked—Mordy would shrug and smile weakly at his brother and mouth the words, "She's Jewish," as his bushy head and the silken mane of the Chinese woman slowly disappeared below the dusty balcony velour.
    It never really happened, but ever since Nathan had heard that there were squatters living in the balcony, he had been expecting it. He would close his eyes and take three steps backward, and the hallucination would vanish.
    The men would gather early They all wore hats. They even had extra hats for the people they took off the street. If one asked for a yarmulke, Rabbi Litvak would say, "What are you, an Israeli?" Only once the answer came back "Yes."
    They wore old gray fedoras that they had been wearing since fedoras had been fashionable. They paced with their hands in their pockets. Some read Hebrew passages from the siddur. They waited anxiously— three of them, five, then seven, then eight. When they got to eight, they wandered the street looking for a ninth man. They tried to get someone from the neighborhood. This was a skill almost everyone in the neighborhood had, recognizing who was from the neighborhood. When Joey Parma found a witness to identify a suspect, one of the first questions, even before the physical description, was, "Did he come from the neighborhood?"
    They only needed a ninth man because the tenth man they knew would come