Paddy & Philip
The Reverend Philip Fitzgerald was meeting his father at their traditional lunch spot, the venerable expansive eatery known as Noah’s Boat House. Lunch or dinner, it was usually hard to get in, unless you were a Fitzgerald, in which case: “Lovely to see you again, we have your table, please come this way.”
Jonesy O’Dell escorted Paddy into the marine blue dining room—nautical lanterns, anchors, harpoons, wooden steering wheels, propped oars, lobster crates, nets stretched across ceilings, and one unlucky marlin mounted above the fireplace, that sort of establishment. Fortunately, the fare was better than the hackneyed décor promised. Jonesy pulled back a chair for his boss. He would not be invited to join them at table, where Philip, who had arrived early, was already seated.
“I’ll call,” said Paddy. “Don’t wander off on one your fishing expeditions, see if you find out about that thing we talked about.”
“Of course, that thing, thank you, sir,” he said, and fixed his direct attention upon the man’s son, saying, with singsong languor, drawing out and inserting a breath between the two syllables, sounding vaguely prosecutorial: “Father?”
“Mr. O’Dell.” Jonesy did not have a glass eye, but to look at him, it felt as if he had two. Whenever Philip did look closely, he met steely, inexpressive resistance. Jonesy trained his sights on Philip, as if he were sizing him up all over again. That was Jonesy O’Dell. Philip did not blink.
“Enjoy a pleasant lunch, Mr. Fitzgerald,” the man said, pausing before pointedly adding with a lilt of doubtfulness, “with your son.” He walked off, parting the air in his engulfing wake.
That was Paddy’s cue. “Philip, why you gotta bust my man’s balls like that?” A complaint but also a genuine question.
His son would not take the bait, because there was nothing to be gained sharing his contemptuous views, which his father would never endorse, and that was that for now.
“Cup of chowder, Dad, the usual?”
“Not feeling it.”
Despite the reassurances implied by its name and seafaring design, Noah’s wasn’t located near a respectable or even a negligible body of water, and nobody of Biblical pedigree had recently been sighted on the floor or at the bar. Whatever colorful, dramatic tales related to the restaurant’s historical origins had all been carried off by the tides of time.
Paddy was unclear about something, or maybe he understood every-thing perfectly, and so on this occasion, he launched. He had attended, of course, that infamous fundraiser that was sensationally covered wall-to-wall after the fact by the local media on account of what happened to the bishop—even if what it was that happened to the man was far from clear. Whatever it was, it didn’t appear to be auspicious. He feared that whatever it all meant, it was connected to a bigger picture of rampant disorder. The world had irretrievably changed around Paddy. About that, he was growing by the day increasingly convinced. The town wasn’t what it used to be. Same with family. Why, his son the priest might be in peril, and he might not know it. Was there some lunatic on the loose who was randomly assaulting bishops—which was the public’s suspicion? Or was some more sinister and calculating principle—and nefarious agency—at work?
“Jumping to conclusions, Dad. They never established Mackey was assaulted, only that he somehow found his way to a hospital, thereafter shuttling in and out of consciousness. What makes you think a mastermind had mayhem in mind?”
Paddy wanted his son to understand his paternal unease, because to his way of thinking, the appeals of mayhem, if not the product of ingrained disposition, often crossed most people’s minds. “I’m concerned. That’s what fathers feel for sons, you know. They haven’t found who pushed Mackey’s button.”
“Again, assuming there was somebody and a button was in fact pushed.”
“Explain the car then, the driver.”
Philip couldn’t, or why the car was abandoned and the driver AWOL. So yes, that was dicey. And there seemed to be no reason not to think that Mackey hadn’t been traumatized by whatever had taken place to him, or around him, or because of him.
“Things must be crazy for you guys in the Chancery. Funny word, Chancery.”
Philip had his hands full with the aftermath, and he and his father hadn’t gotten together since the gala. “You have no idea.”
“So it’s open season on the Roman collars?”
Philip didn’t think so, though everybody was more vigilant, if not more paranoid.
“You want me to assign my guys to you? They can keep a low profile, nobody’d hardly know they were around.”
Philip found that prospect amusing in a sick way—he would know they were around. That’s all he needed, enforcers tailing him, keeping tabs. “Oh, I’d love to have O’Dell on the job, and he’d love it too, in his parade of sharkskin suits.”
“My guys don’t wear the sharkskin, that’s for my swarthy Italian brethren.”
Philip reminded his dad that a priest of his stature, with a reputation like his, and a priest with his particular last name dare not risk bodyguards. Having protection conveyed fearfulness, but more important, it ran counter to his role as a priest: a man consecrated, a man existentially prepared to sacrifice himself if called upon. That’s precisely what a father doesn’t like to hear, especially one who, like Paddy Fitzgerald, has the reach and the clout to thwart perils and perpetrate a few of his own.
“You mean well, Dad, I guess—but let’s change the subject, I’m hungry.”
Then father reminded son that he had pledged his normal six figures at the event that night, which Philip knew already, and which his father knew that he knew.
“You’ve always been generous.”
“All because of you, boyo.”
His son’s mood turned testy, which happened whenever his father was patting himself on the back. “I’m sure there are other benefits besides alleviating your guilt, but honestly, thanks.”
His son might be a superstar in the diocese, but his father didn’t appreciate the snide tone and cheap implication. “Innocent until proven.”
His father was justified. “Sorry, Dad, I’m out of line. Not sleeping well these days.” That had more to do with Ruth than with the bishop, but he saw no percentage in calling that out.
“I’d be knackered, too, if I were you guys. I grant you absolution, Father, you’re welcome.” Paddy missed no opportunity to hit on the square that Father, like a physician with that rubber-head mallet employed to check reflexes. Calling one’s own son Father never failed to echo bizarrely—to both of them. Yet this all went to the man’s contentious Church dealings. Considering Paddy’s notorious career, he might have been the sort of man who reasonably calculated he should hedge bets against the grim prospects of the afterlife by giving generously to the Church. Paddy was to be confused with no such mortal. The afterlife, if there existed such an eventuality, was in and of itself not an interesting problem to ponder. That was because, by definition, it was something out of his control. Up until the Great Divide, Paddy would exert some of his own influence. Besides, there was nothing wrong with giving to the Catholics, as far as he was concerned. Deductions are deductions, and Paddy paid income taxes—at least his accountants certainly filed the paperwork and dispatched the justifiable amounts of money. And the diocese, even after taking serious direct as well as indirect financial hits as a consequence of the pedophile lawsuits, remained in a position to do business with a man like Paddy Fitzgerald. If he himself had gone to Catholic school as his own kids had, he allowed that he might have turned out different. Though really, probably not.
“I am gobsmacked, what happened to Mackey,” said his father, who couldn’t let it go. The way the bishop was touched up—close quarters—and the limo, the disrespectful disposition of the man’s beleaguered body, in the goddamned ER. “It was overkill, message he got sent, and it was definitely personal, what somebody did. What’s the latest on his condition?”
“Well, there you go again, making unsubstantiated assumptions. What are you, a conspiracy nut? Hey, he’s going to live, but he’s no spring chicken, so he’s not firing on all cylinders—which I’m not sure he himself understands. Sight’s shot in one eye, likely temporarily, his hand shakes, and he’s having memory challenges. Still, the doctors are amazed at how well he’s doing, relatively speaking. He actually goes into the office now a couple of hours a day, but he doesn’t get out much except to say Mass in his private chapel. Word is, he’s cut back on the sauce, too—which counts as a miracle.” Philip wondered what the difference between kill and overkill could possibly mean. “Wait, what kind of message do you think, and are you saying there are impersonal messages?”
Of course there were impersonal messages. Sometimes business dictated that course of action, when you needed to get your point across, with subtle but effective emphasis.
“You close, you and Mackey?”
Philip concluded that changing the subject was becoming an increasingly remote possibility. “He is my superior, the spiritual leader of the diocese.”
“So you’re saying you don’t like the guy.”
“He’s the boss.”
“Man, you really don’t like him.”
“Excellence had been drinking way too much lately, even by his standards, and he donned no velvet glove when he executed decisions. He had to shove some bad priests out of their pulpits. It got messy, a few times. He’s got the finesse of a pastry chef with a chainsaw. He also fired the Caring Street House director, a popular guy the outcast kids respected and who kept the place going on the juice of his charisma. The guy made a few stupid mistakes, so Mackey might have had justification, but he went about it the wrong way. Then, for some reason he goes and takes on the teachers with that ridiculous loyalty oath slash morality clause—which I tried to talk him out of. He wouldn’t call it that, he’d call it clarification of Catholic principles, but make no bones about it, that’s what it is. I asked him, and he was not pleased, I asked him what problem was he trying to solve. Teachers! The most dedicated people in the world, teachers. I shouldn’t be telling you all that, but same time, if I look at it from his perspective, he wasn’t on the job to make friends, he was there to save the diocese from imminent financial ruination. Big-league stuff.”
“Guy likes to pick fights, like every other jelly-armed thirty-eight or forty.”
“You think he’s a thirty-eight suit coat? Maybe,” said Philip. “You could be right, but he looks more like a plus-forty short and stout to me.”
“And with a zero drop at his forty-inch waist. Shaped like a melting stick of butter.”
As for fights, Matty Fitzgerald himself was in the thick of the political battle around the bishop’s imposition of the morality clause, which identified teachers as ministers and implied weightier moral obligations, according to the bishop. The teachers’ cause had been gathering momentum prior to the incident, and now a few weeks afterward, while Mackey’s health was on the slow upswing, the movement appeared to be accelerating all over again. Philip was proud of Matty for standing up, not that he would tell him so, but he was also concerned. As a matter of principle, his brother had consistently rejected financial assistance from his father, but if he were one day unceremoniously thrown to the gutter, that resolve might be tested. The bishop probed a bit with Philip, but he wasn’t foolish enough to pressure the priest to use his influence to call off his rabble-rousing brother. Mackey may not have been a rocket scientist, but he knew people like the Fitzgeralds were not easy to manage. As for Matty, when he had been subjected to Philip’s withering questions, he only stiffened his spine, one thing a Fitzgerald was equipped to do since birth, if not before.
“Mackey ever come after you?”
“No, not really, no. We have our differences, nothing I can’t work through.”
“Or work around?”
Sweets Fitzgerald was supposedly well-known by that moniker—at least that’s how reporters referred to him in their articles on rising crime and corruption in the city. In reality, few dared use the name to his face. You had to be stupid or sleeping with him, like Caitlin, who fell into the latter category and who, as Paddy was discovering with each passing day, was much smarter than he initially presumed. The name Sweets was allegedly attributed to the man’s legendarily amiable, charming, disarming Irish temperament. The handle was nothing but ironic, which journalists missed, as some invariably do with such subtleties. Like when a guy big as a baby grand is called “Tiny,” or the eighth-grade dropout “Genius.” Paddy Fitzgerald was only affable up to the point he was provoked, and then left no doubt he was anything but sweet.
When the waiter approached, father and son were holding menus they were pretending to peruse. They needn’t have bothered, as they knew the offerings by heart. The entrées and waiters’ blue-trimmed white jackets hadn’t been updated since before people carried around phones.
“Father? Mr. Fitzgerald?” said the watery-eyed waiter by way of familiarly greeting them. “Ready, gentlemen?”
“Give us a few, would you, Seany?” said Paddy.
The waiter shuffled off arthritically, and Philip wondered what they were waiting for. They always ordered the same dishes. It wouldn’t take long before he realized his father had a lot more on his mind.
“You left early from the big bash,” said his dad. “Have a secret rendezvous?”
“You’re very amusing, Dad. Anybody ever tell you?”
“Actually, no, nobody ever has, they know better.”
“Feeling under the weather that night. I think it was food poisoning from lunch at the Thai place, went to bed soon as I could.”
“Back to the gala. That Bishop Mackey, what a right idiot, he was like three fucking sheets that night. And that was a noisy demonstration outside. Which was rude. I wanted to tell the peckers all nice to shut the fuck up, show some fucking respect. But I didn’t, and you know why. You saw Matty out there, didn’t you? I did, too.”
“He yelled louder. Free country.”
“Anyway, ask me, Mackey’d been two inches from getting whacked for a long time. Jesus, what a piss artist.”
“Whenever you slip into your Irish when we’re at Noah’s, I half-expect a brogue. Even so I wouldn’t know about getting whacked, Dad. By the way, how many ways can you Irish say drunk?”
“You Irish? You forget you’re Irish too, Father Fitzgerald, and who’s a wiseass now? Look, you can’t piss off forever the crazy kind of people he pissed off all day long, I don’t care if you’re in a Roman collar and wear the funny hat...”
“The mitre.”
“And carry the big stick.”
“They call it the crozier. Shepherds and bishops use croziers, though sheep don’t get herded into churches these days.”
“Yeah, and good thing. There are grizzly bears in the pews.”
What Paddy knew about inflicting pain upon a man would not be something he would elucidate for anybody else’s benefit, including his own son’s, but this much was plain: it was a lot harder to do than movies and TV made it appear—not that he was admitting anything because if you took your chances and asked him a direct question, he had nothing to admit. The toughest of tough guys often paid a high price for taking somebody out, no matter how much somebody richly deserved being whacked and how much they got paid to do the honors. Even those most conscienceless of guys would revisit the moment in their nightmares. Or so Paddy Fitzgerald watched dramatized in the movies, which sometimes, rarely, got it right.
Father Philip had learned how to live down—and simultaneously to capitalize upon—the family reputation. In fact, having a supposed mobster boss for a dad seemed to invest him with an air of faintly menacing authority not customarily reserved for a diocesan priest. It worked like a charm getting a table at Noah’s, that was for sure. He wasn’t a monsignor yet, though that seemed a foregone conclusion, but he had ascended the ranks in the hierarchy, moving from one post to another, from education to communications to, currently, outreach to troubled and runaway youth. Professionally, he had no ceiling. The interim position he now held at Caring Street might have constituted a demotion for the typical priest, but not for Father Philip—he would have campaigned for the job. He was often offered and often declined pastorship of the most affluent and sunny suburban parishes, but since his last parish assignment, which is where he had met Ruth, he had come to prefer other assignments and opportunities, and to revel in his status in the Chancery.
“For the record, we don’t go after men of the cloth, even if they’re douches, and some of them are, so call me reasonable. I got my own problems.”
“Especially when you and the diocese are in bed together, excuse the expression.”
“I can do business with anybody, wise guy, long as they’re sensible and fair.”
“Like when the diocese is thinking about building a new hundred-million-dollar high school on the land you’d like to sell them—”
“At a bargain price. You know how this works. You got price and you got terms. Terms and cash. I was willing to give him terrific terms—take your time paying, I told him.”
“And agree to hire your construction company.”
“We’d put in a competitive bid, of course, and keep our fingers crossed. Technically, you know, it’s not my company, I’m an investor in a privately held corporation. You gotta admit, Philip, it’s a beautiful piece of property, nice level land zoned right, and my guys are the best Teamster shop around. Everybody’ll be happy, you’ll see. The diocese gets good value and nobody’s any the worse for wear if I wet my beak, like Italians say.”
“They’ll likely want to name the institution after you. I can see it now: Saint Paddy’s Catholic High School.”
“Has a ring. The mascot should be the Irish, like Notre Dame, right? Or what do they call the Saint Monica’s, where you went to college?”
“Runnin’ Whippets.”
“Pretty little dogs, them whippets. And what about where you went after college, what were they called? Great basketball team I made a bundle on back when.”
“Georgetown Hoyas, a name nobody understands. It’s Greek for…”
“I’m not saying it’s gonna be easier raising the rest of the money and building a first-class high school if Mackey was out of the picture.”
“But it is going to be easier for you with the bishop functioning not quite a hundred percent in the picture.”
“Like you and him, him and me, we had our differences. Must be something about us Fitzgeralds.”
“As I understand it, His Excellence wants to build on one site, and you want to build on another.”
“Hold on, stop right there. He was trying to play me, pretending he liked the other site, which anybody not blind could see was nowhere good as mine. Like I say, minor differences. I’m feeling like the petrale sole almondine, how about you?”
“The site Mackey said he wanted to build on—stop me if I’m wrong—the other site he might have wanted to build on was not a property you happened to own.”
“Man, my parcel’s a beauty, you’re right. Twenty-five acres, pristine, stable earth, pretty much totally out of the flood plain, what’s not to like?”
“I hear he preferred the other site, good value. The sole is always good, but it’s salmon season, that’s what I’m thinking, pesto on the side.”
“Like I say, Mackey was negotiating. Trying to, anyway, and good luck, see you in Tipperary. So fucking obvious, excuse my shanty Irish for your delicate ears. He wanted my land, only he wanted to steal it. Pesto’s too Italian for my blood, no thanks. You always had a taste for the Italian. Mackey’s so-called preference, eight acres, twenty-five-year flood plain, an old public school building that needed major renovation, nothing but headaches. You’d have to rent fields for football and soccer and baseball, and it would take years to get the plan out of zoning—if it ever did. They’d make the diocese build a new highway off-ramp, too, and put in two new stoplights. You know how much all that costs, how long that takes working with the city, county, and state?”
“But it was still a whole lot cheaper up front. Word is you and Mackey went at it behind closed doors. He wasn’t going to budge is what I hear.”
“He had his own ideas, God bless the bishop, not that he is resting in peace. Some were good ideas, others, not so much. He is stubborn, some might say difficult. Bottom line: you get what you pay for, Philip. Don’t the Catholic kids deserve the best? You always liked pesto with the salmon, not my thing, little too bitter, you hanging out with Italians? But take Anthony’s wife, I always liked that Francesca, even if she was Italian. She knew how money and cars and the ponies worked, nothing wrong with that.”
“Frankie always was terrific.”
“Her old man, Mimmo, piece of work. He was a good book back in the day—he took my action, anyway, and paid up on schedule. Word is, he lost the feeling.”
Hearing her name gave Philip pause. “You remember I introduced her to Anthony. She preferred him to me—maybe because of that little complication: me about to become a priest. But hell, that’s not true. Everybody preferred Anthony. He was a better man than all the rest of us could ever be. She and I fell out of touch, it happens, I didn’t take it personally. Now she seems to have a boyfriend she’s semi-serious about. You see her at the gala? She’s very generous, and she seems to have plenty to invest. Tell the truth, I have missed her, maybe we’ll be friends again. She’s been getting involved with Caring Street lately, so that’ll be good for us.”
“You and her have some falling out?”
“Wouldn’t say that exactly, life throws unexpected changes your way. I’ll always care for her.”
“You trying to tell me something?”
“I am. I’m taking a pass on the sole almondine, having the salmon with pesto.”
Paddy executed a sharp turn, leaving Philip wondering where this line would lead them both. “Fathers and sons,” he announced.
“Irish writers, singing an old song, they cannot get enough of fathers and sons.”
“Not that I would know anything about any kind of literature.”
“Your dad, my grandfather, you never talk about him. He must cross your mind.”
“Not once. Every day. Same thing.”
Philip had long ago given up hope of hearing his father wax elegiac about his own father. If there were charming anecdotes about the man, they never ushered forth. “I used to wonder what he must have looked like.”
“Like a man tending the furnace in hell or prodding the eternally damned with a pitchfork. Count yourself lucky I burned all the photographs. He made me who I am, son of a bitch that he was.” Paddy fell silent, and without further provocation, his mood darkened, a lunar eclipse. “You have no idea what it’s like, losing a son you loved.” He had blurted the words before he could reconsider. Before he could imagine how they might be heard. But he wouldn’t have cared one way or the other.
Philip lunged forward on the table, as if he had been shoved in the back, which in a sense he had been. “That’s right, I may never have a son. And you have no idea what it’s like to lose a brother you loved.” He had sympathy for his father when he wasn’t angry with him, or he had both feelings at the same time, like now.
Paddy surged back in his chair, as if he had been slapped, and deserved it, then recovered. “Don’t know what came over me, I get ambushed.”
“Three years.”
“Like yesterday.”
—
Abruptly and with little fanfare, the week after whatever happened with the bishop, the owner of the smaller site pulled his property off the market and the path seemed clear for the diocese to purchase Paddy Fitzgerald’s twenty-five pristine acres. Philip’s father believed the deal made more sense than ever. Win-win. Negotiations could in theory start up again whenever the bishop was up and running.
“It’s a free country, Philip, and the gentleman who owned the pitiable site had a change of heart, so I wish him a long and prosperous life. And I gave the diocese a bargain price, too. Shaved twenty percent off my original asking, though I didn’t need to, I had him by the balls. Like the lawyers say at over a thousand bucks an hour, it’s all moot now. They should be drawing up a letter of intent, case Mackey ever sees the light in this lifetime.”
“Land you’ve owned since forever, and your original asking price represented, what, a five hundred percent profit?”
“That’s what accountants are for. I always liked that piece of property. I enjoyed going there, being by myself, nobody around.”
“Should we get some wine?”
“Who knew real estate was going to skyrocket like it has? One day I was going to get polo ponies, wear those funny boots with the tucked-in pants.”
“Jodhpurs.”
“Look, Philip, they call it real estate. Real. Estate. Like I always say, they don’t make too much of that stuff anymore.”
It was an old line, but Philip laughed, couldn’t help himself. “Yeah, Mackey told me you said that. Which totally pissed him off. That’s the generous kind of guy you are, Dad.”
“Thanks, Father. Besides, you’d think the old bastard would have remembered how I made music for him.”
—
Because he did. Before the bishop and Paddy Fitzgerald tangled on the real estate, the diocese never seemed worried in the slightest about the family ties between a mobster—critical to note, an unarrested, unindicted, unconvicted, alleged mobster—and one of the diocese’s insider, glamorous priests. Mackey, if anything, was pleased and charmed. Soon after being installed with tremendous fanfare in the cathedral, for instance, the bishop tugged on the sleeve of Philip’s father.
“Mind if I call you Paddy?”
“Knock yourself out, Bishop.”
“May sound stuffy, Paddy, but bishops are addressed Excellence.”
“No kidding? No offense, Excellency. Say, that was a nice ceremony in the cathedral for you, very spiritually uplifting.”
“Excellence, and it was, it was indeed. I was moved. It was missing the one thing every great cathedral in a great diocese like ours positively needs. You can help.”
Mackey spelled out what that need was: a new pipe organ. The old one was sad and often out of commission, for all practical purposes on its last legs. Paddy Fitzgerald would indeed help. Twenty-four hours and a pledge of a half-million dollars later, the bishop’s—His Excellence’s—prayer was answered, with the divine intercession of a Fitzgerald.
Philip wasn’t that concerned about the affiliation, either. He was untainted, at least when it came to his connections to the family business. At the same time, he was wondering if and when the other shoe would drop—if there was another shoe—and who was wearing it.
—
“Dad, about the proposed high school site, you’re not concerned about appearances?”
“We had the property assessed, good price I offered, like I said. I gotta work, so no wine for me, but order a glass if you want.”
“Could be seen as an insider deal.”
“Tell me one good deal that isn’t an insider deal. If you don’t have a conflict, you’re not worth doing business with in the first place. You of all people should know that. And appearances, least of my problems. Me, I got the DA up my ass all day long for twenty years, I ain’t worried about nothing, my big Irish nose is clean. And my Jewish lawyers like to steal the Mick Catholic prosecutors’ lunch. How come district attorneys are all Irish Catholic in this town, can you tell me that? God, I’m glad Anthony never tried out for the wrong team, the prosecutors.” The reality was Paddy Fitzgerald had over the years summarily taken care of all his rivals, encouraging them to engage in other enterprises, someplace far away. One by one they departed, never to be heard from again. Nothing the Irish Catholic DA could pin on him, of course.
“All this news comes as great big relief for your son, who is a simple man of the cloth.”
“Where did I go wrong? One son a priest, another an egghead teacher, a daughter who likes girls, lives I think on a farm, calls herself vegan. I always thought you’d be the lawyer in the family, every Irish family needs to have one, and not Anthony. If anything, he should’ve been the priest, not you.”
Philip didn’t argue, it made sense, not that he had ever consciously conceived of such a vocation for Anthony, which in and of itself surprised him. Because Father Anthony seemed eminently plausible. Only after a few seconds did he register the knife his father had inserted in his back. Expert assassins deliver the fatal blow the way Paddy had, before the mark sees it coming.
Philip took mental notes of this moment, and this whole lunch, and he knew why. It was for the purposes of ultimately crafting the old man’s eulogy he would someday deliver at his funeral high Mass, where that magnificent pipe organ would enrapture the cathedral up to the rafters. That would have sounded heartless had it been expressed out loud, but it didn’t make it less true.
“And the Colleen vegan thing, which, what does that mean anyway?”
“For starters, like Mom found out, rest in peace, it means you can forget Hilda cooking corned beef for Sunday supper.”
“Like Colleen’d ever come to the Family Fitzgerald house to eat dinner, she’s so busy protesting against police brutality—which, have to say, makes her old man proud. But Philip. Tell me something. When you going to be a bishop? I mean, Mackey moseys on down the primrose lane and there’s an opening. And that big petition that’s circulating, to give him the boot, does the trick.”
That wasn’t how it worked. “First, the Church won’t respond to public pressure or protests about Mackey. Or if they are so inclined to shuttle him off, they’ll make sure nobody knows it. Second, the pope personally appoints bishops. Third, they don’t place new bishops in their hometown. And fourth, I won’t ever be a bishop—I’m not their kind of guy.” Philip may have been largely correct. Yes, the pope made the final call from Rome, but in practice, he relied upon a country’s cardinals and archbishops for input. No bishop would be appointed without their going to bat for a candidate. As a result, the process was more Byzantine, and political, than the Holy See’s on-high administration, and that meant bishops were beholden to somebody else besides the pontiff on his throne in the Vatican. “Funny thing, Dad, Mackey himself the other day made some offhand crack about my being a bishop someday.”
“See what I’m talking about? A groundswell of support for you builds. And he’s thinking you would protect and extend the piss artist’s legacy.”
“Yeah, well, that’s not gonna happen.”
“I’ll have my associates at the Vatican Bank put in a good word. They can be persuasive.”
“I’m sure they can, but no thanks, and if you have incriminating information having to do with the Vatican and all the scandals, I don’t want to hear about it.”
“Fair enough, boyo. I have a question. You happy, Philip?” His dad was making breathtaking transitions, swinging for the fences today.
Philip was struck dumb. His father had never exhibited such curiosity before.
“Happy. I asked if you were happy. That such a strange question?”
When he found his voice again, he said, “From you, kind of.”
“Put it this way. Ever want a pretty wife, kids, your own brood, my grandkids?”
“Moving fast, you’re making me dizzy, Pops. First I’m a wheeling dealing bishop, then a dad taking his kids to the park.”
“I’m not getting any younger, could use some Fitzgerald rug rats. I’m so old, I say whatever I want whenever I want.”
“Like that’s a new development? Okay, what the heck, I’ll play along. Sure, the notion occurs, not so much as it used to when I was a young man in the seminary. But that train left the station a long, long time ago, not long after you and mom dropped me off at the seminary.”
“Never forget, your mother of sainted memory cried all the way home. Stayed in bed a week.”
Philip was genuinely sorry to be reminded.
“Your sister, she fancies the girls. I hear lesbians can somehow have babies now, but she seems to have one new girlfriend after another. Guess the only one who’s got a real chance of giving me grandkids to spoil someday is your egghead brother, Little Matty. If his ball-busting wife ever lets him take his dick out to play.”
Philip grimaced and leaned across the table to embody his unease. “Dad, we’re in public. People see I’m a priest. But yeah, Little Matty is thirty-nine and in no evident haste to reproduce, continue the family line. Don’t forget his wife is still early thirties.” He didn’t mention that he heard Matty and Claire were on the outs, that it looked like they might split up. “Not tracking all your switches, Dad, but I love Matty and Colleen, you love Matty and Colleen if not Claire. Where you going with this?”
“You I understand, Philip. You’re just like me. Matty talks like a high school teacher.”
“Which he is, so that’s kind of to be expected. But how am I like you?”
“It’s obvious. And then Colleen. I’ve always treated Colly right, with respect, haven’t I? I have an open mind. I got guys in my crew—it’s not like the old days—I got guys who, you know, swing that way. I got my black Irish crew chief. They perform, lissename, hotshot, I got no problem.”
“This is a first. You want to ask me if I’m gay and if I have some sort of sex life, Pops, excuse the expression?”
“Excusing a lot of expressions today, Philip. You want to tell me?”
“Because I took a vow of celibacy doesn’t mean I’m gay. And in case you missed this, I am a Roman Catholic priest, and until the Church changes the rules, which they won’t in our lifetime, there’ll be no married clergy in America—though married priests are all over the landscape in Italy and South America, and the Church looks the other way.”
“Not talking about marriage.”
“Very sophisticated distinction, Dad, you know that? You can be heterosexual or homosexual or bisexual, for that matter, if there is such a thing as bisexual, which some malpracticing evangelist psychologizer somewhere may doubt, but you’re forbidden to act on those desires.”
“So you have those type desires?”
“You’re not going to let this go, are you?”
“You’re still young enough. And you take after your mother, which might account for you being the best-looking padre in town. It’s not too late to begin a family, Philip.”
“You have no idea.”
“I know more than you think I do.”
“Speaking of—what did you call it, such desires? You socializing with anybody these days?”
“You’re being coy. You implying you want to know if I am seeing somebody?”
“No, I was asking you straight up. Don’t expect you to tell me.”
“Nobody’ll ever take your mother of sainted memory’s place. My age, I don’t need a ball and chain.”
“Matty thinks you’re dating.”
“That’s because your puffin brother bumped into me outside a restaurant one night with a pretty skirt, nothing but an acquaintance of the female persuasion.”
“She’s a dish, he said, and—how old is she?”
“I’ll have to look at her baptismal certificate someday. Man, your brother has some kind of fantasy life. Me, I don’t operate under no illusions.”
“Tell me something I don’t know. Nobody ever called you dumb.”
“They never called me Sweets either, unless I was okay with that, which basically I ain’t. So lemme ask. You got an idea? Who you think busted up the bishop?”
“If Mackey was assaulted, if, cops don’t have any suspects, at least any they want to talk about. And Mackey doesn’t clearly remember that night, so he’s no help. Of course, he could also come around someday and remember everything. For the cops, in an investigation like this, the person they always like first is somebody connected to the spouse, or is the spouse.”
“Yeah, being that the guy was kind of married to the Church, that means there’s a lot of suspects.”
“Who do you think? Who would want to hurt the guy and why?”
“First of all, whoever did it was no pro, a professional would’ve finished him off, instead of leaving him like that, all fucked up…”
“Damn, Pops, again? We’re in public. I’m in public.”
“And maybe leaving a potential witness, too. Of course, the guy might have thought he had killed him because the guy was possibly also a dumb mook.”
“So not a pro, then who?”
“Or he was a pro and wanted to leave the impression he wasn’t. Maybe he was pretty cute. Mackey brought a shitstorm down on those priests who were guilty, and he may have covered up for some of those molester fucking priests, for reasons we’ll never know. Then again, those molester sons of bitches who are hiding in the woodwork might feel a little bit vulnerable themselves. And Mackey kicked the skunk when he rammed that contract down the teachers’ throats like a fucking Teamster boss. Saint Paddy’s High School should have the best teachers, like your brother Matty. I don’t care what teachers do in their fucking private lives, how about you?”
“You can’t curb your tongue, can you? Well, those are the places where I imagine the cops are going in their investigation. But you know, for the record, Mackey has plenty of faults, but he was fair when it came to financial settlements with survivors in the lawsuits.”
“Exactly, another thing. All that money flying out the window to pay off lawsuits, including some of my hard-earned cash. In my book, it all adds up to him being a problem for some nasty son of a bitch. Problem men naturally get what they got coming.”
“Good bet, but don’t all enforcers feel that way?”
“Yeah, and you know what else? Even the ones they take out of their misery. It’s a big relief when they turn out the lights, the party’s over.”
“That’s beautiful, Pops. Touching up somebody as a public service.”
“You sure you know what you want?”
Philip hesitated, irritated that he had heard yet another crazy question about his personal life, but his father filled in.
“To eat, Philip. What do you want to eat? Seany’s got Maine Lobster on special.”
“I’ll stick with salmon.”
“Me, too, sole. Two peas in a pod, both set in our ways, aren’t we?”
“Hope you’re not right, fuck.”
“We’re in public, Father Philip, watch your tongue, you’re a priest for Christ’s sake. Hey, another thing, you know if Matty’s going to keep his job? Did he sign that contract?”
“He didn’t sign, he was adamant. Matty’s got some big balls but he’ll be adamantly unemployed with his principled testicles. I admire his integrity, but I tried to talk him into signing, just go along for now, let it all play out.”
“Unless you can talk some sense into Mackey and take care of your little brother, who’s going to give me a grandson?”
“If Mackey is ever lucid again, I will give it a shot. After all, one day they might name the place Bishop Mackey High School.”
“Fat chance that, if I have any clout. I’d like my boy to teach at Saint Paddy’s Catholic, a name which I am liking more all the time. Now that I think about it, I won’t sell the diocese the land after all—unless Mackey drops the teacher contract demands. If Mackey wants the new school, he needs to pick his battles and get his shit together.”
“You wouldn’t hold up a sale, and turn down all those bucks, would you, Pops?”
“Try me. Matty’s my boy, and it’s my land, and now that I think about it, I’ll shave the price a little bit more, maybe a lot more, to whet his appetite. It’s only money. I’m too old to be fucking around and way too old to be fucked with by a too-big-for-his-britches cleric. He needs me more than he knows. Listen and learn, Father Philip, that’s the key to forging a good deal. When you know something the buyer doesn’t: that he needs you more than he is willing to admit to himself.” Paddy wasn’t too proud to acknowledge to himself that he was working his own son.
Philip saw through him, as usual. He was processing the new information. He would have something to negotiate with the bishop, after all. It would have to be done subtly, he couldn’t strong-arm Mackey, especially Mackey in a somewhat debilitated state. The bishop would have to think this was his bright, peacemaking idea, and his father would have to think he got one over on the diocese. This would require the fullest application of Philip’s artfulness. It might possibly bring him back into conversation with Frankie, too, which he sorely missed. Evidently, the first thing Mackey did upon coming back into his office was call her. She was ready to head the capital campaign, and she and Philip could talk again—in theory at least.
“Coming up with a new plan always makes me hungry,” said Paddy, “let’s eat.”
—
Seany lumbered off with the lunch order into the back kitchen, and a moment later, as if he were lying in the weeds, Jonesy O’Dell turned up. That doesn’t capture his mode of reincarnation. His was the sort of presence that purely materialized, displacing the air, as if he never quite arrived, but was already there before you were conscious of him, like a bird on the windowsill, like a migraine after you found yourself, blackout shades pulled down, in bed. He had worked for Paddy for as long as Philip could remember, and he was there to reinforce Paddy’s positions, to underscore his preferences. He was also there to drive the car and accompany and assist him in whatever way deemed necessary, before Paddy was conscious of what he needed. Therefore, indispensable as he was, he might have been called his right-hand man, except that the term could have registered off-key, considering that his right hand was mangled, bent back at the wrist, fingers permanently curled. No transfixing backstory related to the appendage was spun pertaining, say, to a tragic industrial mishap or to a heroic deed in military combat, at least one Philip ever heard. Maybe Paddy knew the facts, or the condition was congenital, and if O’Dell had information to impart, he did not have any Facebook friends with whom to share it. O’Dell’s disfigured hand frightened small children who unhappily crossed his path, and among adults he was infamous for his downbeat demeanor and ferocious eloquence and natty suits, which never appeared susceptible to the threat of a wrinkle. Notwithstanding his appearance, he never considered himself disabled, and no one regarded him that way, because he wasn’t limited in any domestic or professional regard. He had no difficulty doing whatever was physically required—pouring the Irish on the zinc bar, driving the getaway car, lifting boulders out of the way, physically encouraging someone to come to Jesus or, if not to Jesus, to Jonesy. His boyish face made him look twenty years younger than he was and he looked immune to breaking a sweat, and so he appeared despite the detectible limp, allegedly the byproduct of a disagreement that could not be settled by means that were civil. He stood out among Paddy’s crew, which he ruthlessly captained, because none dressed half as elegantly as he, and all the rest of them were white. O’Dell leaned down to whisper in his boss’s ear.
“It was like roller skating in the ice rink to track his slippery derrière,” Philip overheard Jonesy.
“You’re very good,” said Paddy, clearly pleased to praise.
“Mr. Fitzgerald, that’s nothing other than scurrilous buzz talk advanced by diverse louts and roustabouts regarding this humble and obedient servant, yours truly.”
“When I’m done having lunch with my son, then,” Paddy told O’Dell, and that was it, leaving out precisely how the matter, whatever it may have been, was something that they would take care of in due course.
His man nodded and addressed Paddy’s son with his characteristic sham deference.
“Father Fitzgerald, how are you this fine day?” he said, as if it were his regrettable duty and distasteful obligation to say as much, and for all intents and purposes, it was.
“Thank you for inquiring, Jonesy.” The priest sipped ice water and did not answer the question. Here he made direct eye contact with O’Dell and didn’t bother to fake deference.
But Jonesy relished every chance to poke the priest’s puffed-out chest—passive aggressively, as he was well aware of his ranking in Fitzgerald social hierarchy. “This Sunday’s Gospel reading’s a favorite of mine, Father.”
“I never see you at Mass, Jonesy, but miraculously, you’re always up on the Scriptures.”
“Matthew 22, as you may remember. Many are called, few are chosen. Jesus, he speaks in parables.”
“Yes, verse twelve,” Philip noted.
“Verse fourteen, you mean, and the parable concerns a man who tries to crash a wedding party, and that’s where the many-are-called-few-are-chosen wisecrack comes into play, though it’s sometimes made an object of fun by iconoclasts and pissant doubters, as in Many are cold, few are frozen. In any case, that’s when the king, who is hosting the wedding party, regally and righteously denies admission into the big bash to somebody who was undeserving. Some guests are unworthy, don’t you know. You see, it is what we humble Irish students of the Bible call a parable, Father Fitzgerald.”
“I’ve noticed you yourself often attempt to speak in parables, Jonesy. Like Jesus Himself.”
“Our Lord and Savior died on a cross that we all might live, a rumor you may have heard. And I’m sure you agree that Semitic Jesus was black. Just like me.”
“He was certainly blacker than somebody white like me. But black like you? Biblical scholars, with the exception of Jonesy O’Dell, might regard that notion with skepticism.”
“So you’re agreeing with me, he’s more along my spectrum, Black Irish.” And then he turned to Paddy and deferentially declared, “With your permission, I think my work here is done, Mr. Fitzgerald.”
Jonesy and Father Philip didn’t shake left hands marking their farewells to each other, and they wordlessly communicated they wouldn’t wish to do so if the ceremonial last-ditch prospect presented itself on an otherwise deserted island to which they had both been exiled. Philip didn’t trust the man and didn’t approve the access to his father, and the sentiment was reciprocated. It was a matter of chemistry, which made everything possible. Chemistry accounts for falling in love and for cooking a great meal. And also for bombs.
—
Paddy had a poker face, and was proud of it, too proud. Perhaps another man couldn’t tell if his father was rocking four aces or bluffing with nothing but pig slop in his hand, but his son had the sense that he was on the make for the only card necessary to achieve an inside straight. Hard to earn a living banking on a draw like that. As everybody knows, you have to play the cards you’ve been dealt. Anybody can play a royal flush. It takes a poker player to make something out of nothing. That is, Philip suspected Jonesy had highlighted for his dad a complex if not challenging opportunity, one which he had not quite anticipated. If so, that would have been a surefire way to stimulate his appetite, and to enhance the prospect of petrale sole for a man for whom disappointment was never on any day’s menu. Unpredictable opportunities, if not problems, seemed to be presenting themselves for all men named Fitzgerald.
Once O’Dell dematerialized, they returned their attention to the wine list, where Philip identified what he declared to be an excellent Sancerre. It would perfectly complement their entrees.
In a minute, Seany popped the bottle and poured the chilled, straw-colored wine. Paddy was not overly fond of the grape, and certainly not the white varieties in general, but how could he not graciously accede to the wishes of his son? And yet, he also wondered how he managed to raise a boy who actually ordered white wine. Such inclination exhibited in others, that is, non-Fitzgeralds, amounted to a character flaw. Where else had he gone wrong with his boys?
“Sláinte, Father Philip.” They clinked glasses.
“Your health, too, Pops.”