Brooklyn greeted me with a Bronx cheer. After the usual delays arriving at JFK, and the long lines waiting for a rental car, I began the final leg of my journey to the old neighborhood. Then I hit a patch of bumper-to-bumper traffic on the Belt Parkway, right at the Queens-Brooklyn border. My economy rental crawled past the “Welcome to Brooklyn: Home To Everyone From Everywhere!” sign.

It was July 2003, and I was on my way to my ten-year high school reunion. Perhaps I thought it would bring me some sort of an epiphany. At age 28, I was still on an uncertain and obstacle-laden path in life. Plus, the constant reminder of the successes of some of my high school mates didn’t exactly boost my confidence. Maybe networking with them would bring me clarity, return me to my roots, and thereby renew my spirit. 

After exiting onto Flatbush Avenue, and stopping and starting past Kings Plaza, I came to a full stop at a red light on Avenue U. Andy “Pooch” Pucciarello’s house was to the right. I turned left. I hoped he would be at the reunion. He was on his way to making it big.

When we were kids, Pooch and I played stickball in the schoolyard every weekend, even in the winter. We were best friends. We knew each other’s families. We practically lived in each other’s houses. But we hadn’t spoken in ten years. We had a falling out during the last month of high school. I couldn’t even remember what the reason was, but it was enough to prevent us from signing each other’s yearbooks. We eventually put aside our differences and met up during the summer just before I left for college, but it felt weird. Forced. And that was the last time I had seen or spoken to him.

When I got to my old high school, there was nowhere to park. I zigzagged the streets surrounding the school in search of a spot, and each block elicited a memory. The liquor store on Ocean Avenue, where they asked you how old you were, but never wanted to see your ID. East 21st Street, the block where I grew up. Except for new vinyl windows and a few plantings accenting the postage-stamp-sized front lawn, our old semi-attached house looked the same. Shortly after I left for college, my parents downsized considerably, moving to a small rental apartment in Kew Gardens, where they lived for another five years before migrating to Florida. Two right turns later brought me onto East 22nd, past Gayle and Robyn Siegel’s old house. I wondered if their mom still lived there or if she had abandoned the borough as well.

After several aborted attempts and numerous maneuvers, I successfully parallel-parked my Dodge Neon shitbox into a tight spot on East 24th, then trotted seven blocks in the heat to my old high school. A huge banner read: “Welcome back class of 1993.” During our senior year, the big event was the World Trade Center bombing. Little did we know what was to come eight years later. This was the first time I’d been back in New York since 9/11. But all the goodwill and human kindness in the wake of the attacks had faded. Two years was a very long time to be nice to each other and by 2003, Brooklyn was back to business as usual.

I was greeted by a slew of people that I barely recognized and whose names still didn’t ring a bell after reading them off their name tags. I found myself mingling with a bunch of the “tough kids,” the ones that were in street gangs back in high school but were now cops at the 61^st precinct—sworn officers of the law. Funny how that worked out.

“We were wondering when you’d get here,” a blonde woman with dark brown roots wearing a ‘Diane Nordquist’ name tag said. She grabbed my name tag from the registration table and stuck it on my shirt. “Pooch was just here asking about you.”

I was gregarious in high school. And really quite popular. That made my lack of success even more conspicuous. The fancy college boy returning with nothing to show for it. Then there was Andy “Pooch” Pucciarello. He was an extrovert then and apparently little had changed. I spotted him, surrounded by a gaggle of people, as he related what I assumed was a dirty joke based on the blushing and laughter that followed. I watched from the side. When he gestured, he made sure everyone noticed the Rolex on his left hand. Whether or not it was an authentic Rolex was debatable, and the manner in which he obtained it even more so.

“Look who decided to show up!” he shouted when he noticed me. Andy excused himself and greeted me. Confidence exuded from him as he handed me a red Solo cup of punch, which he then “enhanced” for me with his hip flask.

“Been a long time,” he said.

“Yeah. Ten years, I figure.”

“Staying with your folks?”

“No. They moved to Florida. I’m at a hotel near the airport.” 

“Hotel? You couldn’t find a couch to crash on?”

“I have an early flight out tomorrow morning,” I lied. “Just easier that way.”

“Where are you living now?”

“Chicago.”

“Hey! Just like Al Capone. He went to Chicago cuz he couldn’t hack it in Brooklyn.”

I smirked. I often used that same exact line in Chicago. I was still a Brooklyn boy deep down, and that arrogance would break through every now and then, much as I tried to hide it. My Brooklyn accent, which I worked tirelessly to eradicate once I’d left, would still creep out when I got excited or drunk. My Chicago friends thought it was funny and made a parlor game out of it, seeing how many beers I’d have to consume before I started pronouncing water as wawdah. Even though I wasn’t drunk now, I was fully immersed in the borough and the culture of the old neighborhood. I was speaking like a native again.

After a few more cups of spiked punch, Andy pulled me aside.

“So, what do you have going on?”

I flashed a picture of a sonogram that I kept as a wallet photo. My girlfriend was still in her first trimester, and we hadn’t told anyone about it yet. But the spiked punch loosened my lips. “Junior,” I said, although by this point I was pronouncing it joonya.

Andy squinted at the sonogram. “Looks just like you.”

I laughed. That was exactly what I would have said. We were so similar. About the same height and build, too. We both liked the same girls in high school but pretended that we didn’t, so as not to make it seem like we were competing. But we were. We were rivals for everything. I tried again to remember what our argument was about. It was probably something petty, and whatever it was, we were likely each too stubborn to compromise.

“What about you?” I asked. “You seem to be doing well.”

“I just sold my restaurant last week.”

“Congratulations,” I said. I didn’t ask what kind of restaurant or where it was. I didn’t want to know. Was I jealous? Definitely. Andy took another gulp of punch, waiting for me to ask him more about his business. When he figured out that I wasn’t playing along, he continued.

“Anyway, now I’m going in on a couple of tanning salons in Manhattan. Big money. Lots of potential.”

“Great,” I said, not really meaning it.

“I could use another partner, though. My buddy Sal’s got the capital, but he doesn’t exactly have a giant brain.” He paused and gave me that look of his. Or was it that look of mine? It was one that I had perfected over the years but not sure which one of us came up with it first. Nonetheless, I knew exactly what it meant.

“I’m having a kid. I can’t afford any investments.”

“I’m not asking for any money,” he said. “Just a meeting. A conversation.”

He looked past me and waved to a couple of people as they walked by. “Be with you in a minute,” he said to them. “Look, just meet me tomorrow. To discuss it. No pressure. It’ll be good to catch up anyway.”

“I can’t promise anything.”

“I don’t want you to promise anything. I just want you to listen to the pitch. You remember where my parents’ house is?”

“Bergen Beach?” I asked, even though I knew exactly where it was.

“Yeah. On East 73rd. Meet me there tomorrow morning. Around ten-thirty.”

“Why there?”

“It’s a nice house. It makes a good impression.”

“Who are you trying to impress?”

“Just be there.”

“I have an early flight,” I lied again. 

“Fuhgeddaboudit,” he shouted. “Change your flight. Stay with us for a couple of days.” He flashed that winning smile. “Come on, it’ll be fun. Like old times.”

“I’ll see what I can do,” I said. And I was tipsy enough to actually mean it.

He walked off towards his entourage, then gave me a thumbs up and pointed at me. “Ten-thirty,” he shouted over the crowd. “You know you wanna.”

I walked out of the school a short time later. I slept in the backseat of my crappy rental car. My budget allowed for either a car or a hotel room, not both. Why did I go to this reunion? What did I think I would gain from it? What was the epiphany I sought? Unfinished business?

At ten o’clock the next morning, I found myself parked across the street from the Pucciarello house on East 73rd Street. I sat in the car, reminiscing. I spent a lot of time in that house with my friend, who was so much like me it was scary. It scared me now. There was just something “off” about all this. But what about “Junior,” the little embryo in the sonogram? Would I regret it if I didn’t at least listen? And how much would it hurt if I didn’t and Andy became a millionaire? Could I bear it? The thought of it made me nauseous. I rolled down the car window and attempted to lean my head out in case I needed to throw up, but the seat belt’s shoulder harness decided to tighten against me when I jerked forward. I was trapped.

And in that brief moment of odd terror, the elusive epiphany finally hit me. I didn’t come back to Brooklyn to reclaim who I might have been. I came to Brooklyn to validate my decision not to stay. The uneasiness, both physical and emotional, that I felt in that moment was proof of that. I couldn’t bear being imprisoned in the borough a moment longer. I put the car into gear and drove straight to JFK, even though my flight wasn’t until that evening. As I approached the Brooklyn-Queens border a sign read: “Leaving Brooklyn: Fuhgeddaboudit.” Good advice.

I called Andy from the airport and left a message saying thanks, but no thanks. I told him if he was ever planning on coming out to Chicago, I had a place for him to stay. I flew standby, got myself onto an earlier flight, boarded the plane, and closed my eyes for an hour. It was over. Fuhgeddaboudit. 

Andy never called me back. At first, I just assumed that I had insulted him and we were entering a new phase of petty disagreements. But that wasn’t it. Not this time. Andy Pucciarello was dead. He was murdered that morning, right around the time I was supposed to be listening to his pitch. An article appeared in the New York Post a few days later:

A Brooklyn man whose burned body was discovered in his kitchen was shot to death before being set ablaze, police said. Andrew Pucciarello, 28, was shot four times – once in the head, once in the chest and twice in the arms. Then his killer or killers poured an accelerant on him and set him on fire in an attempt to cover up the shooting, according to police. The fire caused only minor damage to the kitchen.

There was no sign of forced entry and it appears Pucciarello let the gunman or gunmen into his house. A knife also was found near the body.

More than twenty years have passed since Andy Pucciarello’s still-unsolved murder. I doubt the police put much effort into the case. Just another gangland hit with no collateral damage. As far as I knew, Andy was never connected to the mob. (Although I did find it strange that his parents had racks and racks of brand-new leather coats in various sizes in the basement, and it never registered with my teenage brain that they might have “fallen off a truck.”)

After twenty plus years, it has faded into obscurity. All the promise and potential he spoke of in that old high school building that night literally went out with a bang and a puff of smoke. The passage of time has lessened the shock, yet it still haunts me. Why did Andy really want me there that morning? Was it just a coincidence? Or was it that my height, build, and demeanor were so much like his that he wanted me to stand in for him and take a bullet if things went awry? I try not to believe that. If we really were that similar, then I know he could never have planned that.

I recently leafed through my high school yearbook. There’s a big picture of Andy on page 36. Susan Rosen signed that page: “I can’t believe Pooch didn’t sign here,” her inscription began. Pooch didn’t sign anywhere. We weren’t speaking then for some reason that I still can’t remember. Or maybe, I just choose not to remember. I choose to forget about it.

– Sloan Richman