The Short Sweet Dream of Eduardo Gutierrez by Jimmy Breslin Page A

business that folded and he owed $100,000. It was discovered that he used two driver’s licenses. He had to leave the regular citygovernment and take over a private neighborhood organization called a Business Improvement District. His former wife, JoAnna Aniello, received a job in city housing.
    The grandson, Anthony Carbonetti, was made the patronage dispenser for the city, under Bruce Teitelbaum. He then was made the chief of staff of the whole administration. Carbonetti’s resumé is nonexistent. His last job before City Hall was that of a bartender in Boston. On his 1994 financial disclosure forms he listed a scorching hand at Atlantic City as a source of income.
    By 1998, he didn’t need slot machines. His salary at City Hall was $115,000. Public jobs are never supposed to give the appearance of impropriety. While gambling in Atlantic City is legal, and you’re even entitled to report winnings no matter how preposterous the claim, for somebody in New York’s City Hall, it still looks at least lousy.
    Carbonetti and the English language were opponents. Some of the most painful moments in City Hall came whenever he sat in his small office and dictated letters. Incidentally, the size and location of a government office is meaningless. Bare and shabby are common. It is the phone or the memo that does it.
    Anthony Carbonetti also was as subtle as a thrown brick. On the phone, he told commissioners, “You’ve got to do this. Just do it. Don’t ask me anything. Just do it. This is for a friend of the mayor’s.” His special interest was the Brooklyn Hasidic community. He didn’t have to bother with calls and return calls with Hasidim. Sitting in his office was Joseph Spitzer, who owns a huge four-story house in Borough Park. It has a marble front and a stoop with polished brass banisters. Records show that residents of this house included Chaim Ostreicher, Eugene’s son, and Faye Schwimmer, Ostreicher’s daughter and Leon Schwimmer’s daughter-in-law. It was helpful to find this on record, for Ostreicher and those around him denied the fact that the house even existed. “We don’t know Spitzer,” one yelled. “He has zero to do with us.”
    Spitzer talked to Carbonetti, and Carbonetti talked to a commissioner.
    If you had building violations or even a building collapse and were Hasidic, City Hall took care of everything. What did a report by a building inspector or a fireman mean? The builder was the mayor’s friend, or had relatives raising funds for him.
    A Mexican immigrant like Eduardo Daniel Gutiérrez didn’t count.

CHAPTER TWELVE
    E duardo moved into a space on an upstairs floor in an attached frame house that was across the street from Grady High School in Brighton Beach. The landlord, who lived on the first floor, was never seen, and the Mexicans were crowded onto the second. There was a kitchen, bathroom, a small bedroom, and a large front bedroom with dark brown paneling and a blue carpet. The large bedroom had two windows looking down at the stoop and street. A television set was in one corner of the room. Eight from Mexico slept and lived there when Eduardo arrived. They slept on the floor on thin pads and pillows. You picked your place to sleep and then it became yours. Eduardo slept between Alejandro and Mariano Ramirez, Gustavo’s brother. They had their heads to the wall under the windows. The room was long enough so that their feet did not touch those of the others sleeping with their heads against the opposite wall.
    Eduardo was stunned by the bathroom. Never before had he seen one in a house. With nine people and one bathroom, there was an implied agreement that each would take no more than ten minutes. He soon learned that each time somebody slipped pasthim, it would be ten minutes of listening to running water. Let three get ahead and you lose a half hour. He realized that he had to stand around as if thinking of something and then suddenly jump at first click of the bathroom door