The trees in the churchyard are swaying as if their leaves and branches conceal some kind of great, shimmying beast, rustling with a noise like brown paper. They’re evergreens. European. They’re home to pigeons and squirrels and the occasional robin. Jimmy Whelan tells himself these things as he walks between the headstones. He finds it easiest to focus on mundanity. Other priests whisper prayers or touch their rosary beads, but Father Whelan does not wish to draw God’s eye to his actions. He has always been cautious. His prayers mention nobody by name. He does not profess to understand God’s will but he understands His erratic approach to pain and mercy and does not trust himself to offer up any individual to God’s surveillance. His prayers are opaque, unfathomable things: vague requests for forgiveness, for strength—food for the poor and peace for the troubled. He has not shared these secrets with his brother priests. The prayers he speaks aloud during Mass are different from those he says at his bedside. In church, his sermons are thoughtful studies, relevant to the congregation and the times. The God he speaks of to his congregation is just and loving, a benevolent father who asks only that his flock behave with love in their hearts and do Him honor with action, thought, and deed. The God of Father Whelan’s private moments is a different deity—a brutal patrician as liable to stop a baby’s heart as regard a barren woman’s prayers for a child.
As he walks between the headstones, it occurs to Father Whelan that when he pictures his Lord, he does not see the pale-skinned, beatific figure of the Bible whose likeness adorns the walls and windows of the church. He sees a man in a black leather coat. Black, curly hair and stubble on his jaw. Wing-tipped shoes and slender fingers, gold necklace and chunky rings. He sees the men from the neighborhood. He knows the image to be a sin and yet he cannot shake it. He personifies his God as a local crook, dispensing death and mercy with clear-eyed dispassion.
“You fucking roller-skate here, Father?” asks Paulie through a cloud of cigarette smoke. “I’m freezing my balls off.”
Father Whelan considers the man before him. Paulie Pugliesca is in his late thirties. He’s a made man—a capo with one of the Five Families that run most of the organized crime on the East Coast. He’s a handsome, charismatic man. His pink-and-purple shirt is open to his breastbone and his collar protrudes over the black leather. The medal on his gold cross shows St. Christopher.
Paulie grins at him and takes his hand. He kisses him on both cheeks. He smells of red wine and basil.
“Good to see you, Paulie,” says Father Whelan. He is a little younger than the man before him. He has heard the rumors about Paulie’s capacity for violence. His son, Sal, is said to have inherited it.
“You need all this cloak-and-dagger shit?” asks Paulie, putting his hands in his pockets. “A priest hasn’t got enough quiet places, huh? Needs to drag my sorry ass over here?”
Father Whelan looks around him. They are in the quiet, overgrown cemetery that stands in the grounds of the little Dutch church in this soft pocket of Syracuse. It is a peaceful place, far away from prying eyes. Father Whelan does not want to be seen talking to Paulie, but nor does he wish to stray far from consecrated ground. Though he fears God, he yearns for His proximity.
“You gonna ask, Father? Your message said you had a proposition for me. Ain’t been propositioned by a priest since I was an altar boy and I don’t think that sick old fuck ever did much propositioning after that.” Paulie smiles at the memory. “You enjoying Saint Colman’s? Beautiful church. We give handsome, y’know that, right? Ain’t cheap, saving souls.”
Father Whelan says nothing for a moment. Listens to the trees and concentrates on breathing. It has taken him several weeks of careful thought and prayer to persuade himself that he is right to ask this man for help. He has exhausted the other avenues open to him. He is a man of much fight but insufficient influence. The same could not be said for Pugliesca.
“You spitting it out, Father?”
Eventually, Jimmy lets himself speak. He barely recognizes his own voice as he does so.
“There’s a place on Staten Island,” he says quietly. “You know about it because you allowed your godson to be placed there. Tony. The boy you promised to care for.”
“I do right,” says Pugliesca, and he lounges back against the lichen-covered gravestone of a young Irishwoman who died two centuries before.
“It’s a terrible place, Paulie. I’ve been inside. It’s hell. The suffering those poor children endure.”
“It ain’t no picnic.” Paulie shrugs. “But hell, the kid didn’t belong nowhere else. You saw him in the neighborhood, Jimmy. Staring with those bug eyes, gasping like a fish when he tried to talk, sitting on the sidewalk scratching at his privates like a fucking monkey. He needed a hospital and they say that place will fix him.”
“It isn’t fixing him,” says Jimmy. “Not at all. Not anyone. It’s an ugly, horrible abomination of a place.”
“If it were all that bad it would be shut down,” says Paulie. He looks at his watch and seems disappointed that he has made this trip for such trivialities.
“Senator Kennedy wants it closed. The doctors want it closed. But the state won’t close the doors. I’ve written letters. I’ve begged the bishops. The TV interviewed me and I’ve called every reporter who owes me a favor. No difference. It’s still open.”
Paulie cocks his head. “And what do you want me to do about it?” he asks.
Jimmy closes his eyes. He wants to pray but forces himself not to attract God’s glance.
“I want you to take Tony home,” he says. “Bring him into your family. Treat him with love. Care for him. Make his life a happy one.”
Paulie laughs and grinds out the cigarette on the headstone. “You want me to bring that crazy fuck back into my house? Back to where my wife and daughters sleep?”
“Sal always cared for him,” says Father Whelan. “I saw them together often enough. Tony used to follow him and Sal would help him fit in. I saw affection there.”
Paulie rubs his jaw. “Sal’s got a soft spot for dumb animals. He always bitches at me for letting him go into that place.”
“So you’ll take him home?” asks Father Whelan.
Paulie shrugs. “You want more. I know you want more.”
“That place can’t be allowed to continue,” says Father Whelan. “It has to be stopped. I don’t know how to make that happen. But maybe you do.”
Paulie runs a long, thin finger across his lower lip. “That’d be the Church’s work, would it? That’d be me serving God? Because I tell you, Father, I need some currency with the man upstairs. The Church don’t like me and mine one little bit. You hear we ain’t allowed to bury our dead no more? Priests in the city won’t say a Mass for the poor bastards who die for our thing.”
“Your thing, as you call it, is the Mafia.”
“Ain’t no Mafia.” Paulie shrugs. “Just men trying to make a living.”
They both fall silent, considering each other The wheels in Pugliesca’s mind turn more swiftly than Father Whelan’s.
“I’m a reader,” says Pugliesca suddenly. “I like old books—the ones thick like a sandwich. Old stories. Heroes. Villains. Damsels in distress. They tell stories from a time I understand, when men did what they could to get by and God understood that.”
“God understands all,” says Father Whelan reflexively.
“But the things I do—they’ll have me sent to hell,” says Pugliesca.
“God forgives all,” says Whelan.
“He do it if you confess,” says Pugliesca. “But you think I’m gonna walk into confession and tell Father Patrizio that I just spent the night fucking two Chinese whores in the back of a meat store? You think I’m going to tell him that I put my gun up the ass of a loan shark from Long Island and shot him in his guts and that me and my son went back to where we had him every other day to see how much closer to death he had drifted? You think I’m going to tell that old Italian fuck that I beat a man with golf clubs and raped his wife because they were skimming off the take? You think that?”
Father Whelan closes his eyes. He already understands.
“God forgives all,” he says quietly.
“And you’re God, ain’t that right? You’re His consigliere. You say who gets in and who goes the other way. You can forgive me, that right, Father? For this and for anything else.”
“If you are truly sorry . . .” begins Whelan.
Paulie smiles. It’s an attractive sight but there is an ugliness that lurks just underneath.
“There were men like you back home,” he says, lighting a new cigarette. “Specialist priests who looked after the souls of the old Sicilians. Listened to their confessions and kept them pure.”
Whelan clings to what he believes. “That place has to close. Tony deserves love. I’ll help you. I’ll assist in any way I can . . .”
“Forgiveness,” says Paulie. “For now and always. For me. For my son. You keep our souls safe and I’ll have that place closed. All those poor suffering bastards will get clean bedsheets and loving hugs wherever the fuck you want them putting. But you become my friend, Father. You listen to whatever I tell you and you get me through to heaven. You say the words at my men’s funerals. You keep us good, yes? Keep us fucking holy.”
Father Whelan finds his breath catching in his chest. He knew today would cost him part of himself. He did not know it would be his soul.
“Bless me, Father,” says Pugliesca, and he drops to his knees before Whelan, who steps back in fright. His shoe crushes a small blue flower that pushes up through the cold, hard ground.
Whelan fights with himself for a moment, and then places his hand on the killer’s head.
“I absolve thee,” he says in a voice that shakes. “Of all now and future sin . . .”