A non fiction book, 1995

This book would not have been possible without the support of the silent citizens of Hell's Kitchen. I will honor their requests to remain anonymous voices and never forget their contributions.

Through the years, I've been fortunate to have worked with many editors who have helped me in various stages of my career. None has had more confidence in my abilities than Peter Gethers. With this book, he made a leap of faith few editors are willing to risk. Then, he guided the work and shaped it and edited it as few can. He also supplied an endless stream of jokes that helped ease me through the rough spots. No writer could have a better partner.

Any writer would love to have a great agent. I have three. Loretta Fidel was always there, always listened, and always cared. Amy Schiffinan and Adam Berkowitz believed in me as much as they did in the book. Together, they kept the wolves from the door and the book on everyone's front burner.

Clare Ferraro found a place in her heart and on her Ballantine shelf for my first book. Then, over a terrific lunch, she fell in love with my second. Then, she waited and she waited and she waited. Through it all, she supplied patience, friendship, and encouragement. I would also like to thank Steve Golin and the people at Propaganda Films for their passionate belief in Sleepers.

I need to thank my doctors, who helped me fight off a variety of illnesses during the writing of this book – Dr. Paul Chrzanowski, Dr. Nancy Nealon, and my main man David at the Rusk Institute.

Then there are the cops – Steve Collura for the kind words; Joe Lisi for the laughter and concern; and, above all, Sonny Grosso, for everything he has meant to me throughout a friendship that now numbers in the decades.

To my phone buddies – Hank Gallo, Carlo Cutolo, Mr. G., Marc Lichter, Leah Rozen, and Keith Johnson – for being there and for listening. To Liz Wagner for the laughs. And to Bill Diehl for the wisdom and the care.

To my wife, Susan Toepfer, I owe everything. She has always had my respect, will always have my love, and will always be my friend.

To my son, Nick, thank you for the smiles and the chance to forget my work for a period of time. To my daughter, Kate, thank you for showing me what a warm heart can beat beneath such a pretty face?.

And thanks to my crew of suspects – the Fat Man, Bobby C., Barn-Bam, Carmine, Doc, Big D., Mike Seven, and Sammy Weights. You were always where you were supposed to be. I never expected any less.

Sleeper (colloq.): 1. Out-of-town hit man who spends the night after a local contract is completed. 2. A juvenile sentenced to serve any period longer than nine months in a state-managed facility.

I sat across the table from the man who had battered and tortured and brutalized me nearly thirty years ago. I had imagined him to be in his sixties – he had seemed so old to me back then – but, in fact, he was in his late forties, less than a decade older than me. His thinning hair was combed straight back, and his right hand, trembling and ash white, held a filtered cigarette. His left clutched a glass of ice water. He looked at me from behind a pair of black-rimmed glasses, his brown eyes moist, his nose running, the skin at its base red and flaky.

'I don't know what you want me to say,' he said in a voice devoid of the power it once held. 'I don't know where to start.'

In my memory, he was tall and muscular, arrogant and quick-tempered, eager to lash out at those under his command at the juvenile home where I spent nine months when I was thirteen years old. In reality, sitting now before me, he was frail and timid, thin beads of cold sweat forming at the top of his forehead.

'I need to keep my job,' he said, his voice a whining plea. 'I can't lose this one. If any of my bosses find out, if anybody finds out, I'm finished.'

I wanted to stand up and grab him, reach past the coffee and the smoke and beat him until he bled. Instead, I sat there and remembered all that I had tried so hard, over so many years, to forget. Painful screams piercing silent nights. A leather belt against soft skin. Foul breath on the back of a neck. Loud laughter mixed with muffled tears.

I had waited so long for this meeting, spent so much time and money searching for the man who held the answers to so many of my questions. But now that he was here, I had nothing to say, nothing to ask. I half-listened as he talked about two failed marriages and a bankrupt business, about how the evil he committed haunts him to this very day. The words seemed cowardly and empty and I felt no urge to address them.

He and the group he was a part of had stained the future of four boys, damaged them beyond repair. Once, the sound of this man's very walk caused all our movement to stop. His laugh, low and eerie, had signaled an onslaught of torment. Now, sitting across from him, watching his mouth move and his hands flutter, I wished I had not been as afraid of him back then, that I'd somehow had the nerve and the courage to fight back. So many lives might have turned out so differently if I had.

'I didn't mean all those things,' he whispered, leaning closer toward me. 'None of us did.'

'I don't need you to be sorry,' I said. 'It doesn't do me any good.'

'I'm beggin' you,' he said, his voice breaking. 'Try to forgive me. Please. Try.'

'Learn to live with it,' I told him, getting up from the table.

'I can't,' he said. 'Not anymore.'

'Then die with it,' I said, looking at him hard. 'Just like the rest of us.'

The pained look of surrender in his eyes made my throat tighter, easing the darkness of decades.

If only my friends had been there to see it.

This is a true story about friendships that run deeper than blood. In its telling, I have changed many of the names and altered most of the dates, locations and identifying characteristics of people and institutions to protect the identities of those involved. For example, I have changed the location of the murder trial, which did not take place in Manhattan. I've also changed where people live and work – and made many of them a lot better looking than they really are. It is a story that has taken two years to write and parts of two decades to research, forcing awake in all the principals memories we would have preferred to forget. I have been helped in the re-creation of the events of this story by many friends and a few enemies, all of whom requested nothing more in return than anonymity. So while their deeds have been accurately documented, their names – heroes and villains – will remain unknown.

However hidden their identities, this is still my story and that of the only three friends in my life who have truly mattered.

Two of them were killers who never made it past the age of thirty-five. The other is a non-practicing attorney living within the pain of his past, too afraid to let it go, finding reassurance instead in confronting its horror.

I am the only one who can speak for them, and for the children we were.