Pin Action: Small-Time Gangsters, High-Stakes Gambling, and the Teenage Hustler Who Became a Bowling Champion by Gianmarc Manzione Page A
Authors: Gianmarc Manzione
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wide proved just as brief as Schlegel’s partnership with Lemon. Wherever the action found a new home, the cops who cleaned out the old one always seemed to come around again. The night they came around to Gun Post Lanes was one no witness would forget.
The lights that glowed through those French windows flanking the front of the place caught the attention of a couple of plainclothes cops on the beat. There is something about the sight of so many teenagers waving fistfuls of cash that catches a cop’s attention, especially when it happens to be four o’clock in the morning. One cop took a seat at the lunch counter next to Johnny Kourabas while the other had a look around. Kourabas knew there was something about the guy that didn’t belong; this was not your usual gambler waiting to arrange a match. Then he heard the other cop advising people to make sure they kept their hands nice and high in the air, and Kourabas knew the gig was up.
The comprehensiveness with which the cops dismantled the debauchery at Gun Post was that of someone who empties half a can of Raid on a roach and then steps on it to kill it again. The cops swept the place clean of cash. Then they handcuffed a scorekeeper to the table into which he scratched the names and debts of all in attendance, unscrewed the table from the floor, and took both down to the station as evidence. It was the last night of action Gun Post ever saw—and the beginning of an era’s demise.
Action bowling took its final breath at a place called Central Lanes in Yonkers, just north of New York City. Central Lanes was a long, low building that housed fifty-two lanes straight across and an enclosed coffee shop with fifteen stools and windows overlooking the parking lot. A frenetic scene buzzed in the air of that coffee shop when the action got thick late at night. Hustlers, con artists, and gamblers were brought together by matchmakers who would arrange matches as bets came in from all directions through shouts and fists full of cash. The bowlers drew their lane numbers from a pillbox full of numbers someone shook, and the match would be held on the lanes whose numbers were drawn. To adrenaline-hungry kids with dollar signs for pupils, this truly was a paradise straight out of their wildest dreams.
Gamblers trying to find the place for the first time could count on any number of signs that they had found it. They might spot the legion of kids pitching dice for cash in the parking lot. They might look through the windows enclosing the pool room at one end of the building and see the high-stakes games of eight ball raging inside. They might notice a parking lot bloated with the cars of fellow gamblers in the middle of the night and have a hard time finding a spot themselves. And if some nor’easter happened to be dumping another blast of snow over Yonkers in winter, that, too, failed to deter the circus. It was not uncommon to see cars twirling down the icy streets toward the bowling alley. Gamblers would sooner leave their cars lodged in snow piles in the middle of the street than miss a night of action at Central. A snowplow could gnash their cars into little foil balls for all they cared; Central was a place where those who placed their bets wisely could leave with enough cash to buy new ones anyway.
It also was a place where bowlers who placed bets with money borrowed from shylocks sometimes needed to bereminded of the penalties. No one at Central Lanes received that reminder more clearly than a kid known as “Checkbook” Al. Al was a skinny kid with glasses in his early twenties whose nickname said it all. At Central Lanes, he was known as much for writing bad checks as he was known for his bowling. He nearly became known for dying, too, after he borrowed money off a feared, Jewish shylock known as Maxie. Maxie was a stocky guy with fat fingers who spoke with a voice that sounded like it came from somewhere in the bottom of his gut, and he always sat the wrong way in a
The lights that glowed through those French windows flanking the front of the place caught the attention of a couple of plainclothes cops on the beat. There is something about the sight of so many teenagers waving fistfuls of cash that catches a cop’s attention, especially when it happens to be four o’clock in the morning. One cop took a seat at the lunch counter next to Johnny Kourabas while the other had a look around. Kourabas knew there was something about the guy that didn’t belong; this was not your usual gambler waiting to arrange a match. Then he heard the other cop advising people to make sure they kept their hands nice and high in the air, and Kourabas knew the gig was up.
The comprehensiveness with which the cops dismantled the debauchery at Gun Post was that of someone who empties half a can of Raid on a roach and then steps on it to kill it again. The cops swept the place clean of cash. Then they handcuffed a scorekeeper to the table into which he scratched the names and debts of all in attendance, unscrewed the table from the floor, and took both down to the station as evidence. It was the last night of action Gun Post ever saw—and the beginning of an era’s demise.
Action bowling took its final breath at a place called Central Lanes in Yonkers, just north of New York City. Central Lanes was a long, low building that housed fifty-two lanes straight across and an enclosed coffee shop with fifteen stools and windows overlooking the parking lot. A frenetic scene buzzed in the air of that coffee shop when the action got thick late at night. Hustlers, con artists, and gamblers were brought together by matchmakers who would arrange matches as bets came in from all directions through shouts and fists full of cash. The bowlers drew their lane numbers from a pillbox full of numbers someone shook, and the match would be held on the lanes whose numbers were drawn. To adrenaline-hungry kids with dollar signs for pupils, this truly was a paradise straight out of their wildest dreams.
Gamblers trying to find the place for the first time could count on any number of signs that they had found it. They might spot the legion of kids pitching dice for cash in the parking lot. They might look through the windows enclosing the pool room at one end of the building and see the high-stakes games of eight ball raging inside. They might notice a parking lot bloated with the cars of fellow gamblers in the middle of the night and have a hard time finding a spot themselves. And if some nor’easter happened to be dumping another blast of snow over Yonkers in winter, that, too, failed to deter the circus. It was not uncommon to see cars twirling down the icy streets toward the bowling alley. Gamblers would sooner leave their cars lodged in snow piles in the middle of the street than miss a night of action at Central. A snowplow could gnash their cars into little foil balls for all they cared; Central was a place where those who placed their bets wisely could leave with enough cash to buy new ones anyway.
It also was a place where bowlers who placed bets with money borrowed from shylocks sometimes needed to bereminded of the penalties. No one at Central Lanes received that reminder more clearly than a kid known as “Checkbook” Al. Al was a skinny kid with glasses in his early twenties whose nickname said it all. At Central Lanes, he was known as much for writing bad checks as he was known for his bowling. He nearly became known for dying, too, after he borrowed money off a feared, Jewish shylock known as Maxie. Maxie was a stocky guy with fat fingers who spoke with a voice that sounded like it came from somewhere in the bottom of his gut, and he always sat the wrong way in a
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