The party lasted a long time at Tommy’s North Bergen cliffside retreat. Here and there, there were — as is to be expected for a dealer in rare powders — low points. A La Cosa Nostra associate showing up one night in ’77 to kidnap — and subsequently kill — his partner (a nephew of the Mayor of Hoboken) certainly was games without fun. But after a weekend of R&R at a Grateful Dead concert in Englishtown, Tommy soon was again presiding over pharmaceutical festivities, now with his new bud, Peter the Bulgarian. There also was enough zero gravity cash to go partners with one Charlie in a seafood business. Alas this alliance was brief; there was a falling out and Charlie et al. caught Tommy unawares and struck him on the head with a tire iron. Tommy confounded medical professionals by surviving, albeit with a furrow in his skull that you could fit your thumb in — if you were so declined for that sort of thing. A several year hiatus at a NJ State correctional facility helped his health, but was a career setback, ratcheting down business by many notches. In the late-80s, Tommy was meandering about North Hudson Park, his shop now in a backpack.
Some killjoys (State Troopers or something similar) finally crashed the party and pulled the plug. Not too long after that, every morning Tommy was at a bus stop on Summit and Hutton. His mother lived close by on Summit near Bowers. I didn’t give it much thought, but sorta figgered that he’d gotten probation and so had to work at a real job now. After quite a while, a court officer spotted Tommy standing on the corner and stopped for a chat. Seems he’d jumped bail and had been tried in absentia with a sentence of ten years. Tommy ran but, with the North Precinct only blocks a way, could not hide for long.
