January 11, 1968

The auditorium of St. Bernadette’s Church in Bay Ridge, Brooklyn was set up with rows of long tables covered with paper tablecloths. A dais festooned with American-flag bunting stood on a stage at the front of the hall. American flags were arranged in stands behind the dais. Miniature flags were in the center of every table in the audience.

Pitchers of orange juice were distributed to each table as the young men and their fathers began to arrive for the Seventeenth Annual Father-Son Communion Breakfast of St. Bernadette’s Parish. The sons scrambled between the rows of tables to snare chairs so they could sit with their friends and fathers. The moderator-priest grabbed a couple of overexuberant boys by their ears to calm them down. He was an Italian priest, and most of the fathers and sons of St. Bernadette’s were also Italian, so a little ear-grabbing for discipline incurred no protest.

Carl Stern lived in St. Bernadette’s parish and was on the breakfast committee that coordinated the annual affair. The German-American Stern family had blended immediately into the St. Bernadette parish activities when they moved into Bay Ridge fourteen months before. Several things accounted for the easy blending of the new German stock into the Italian enclave. Stern found many policemen and ex-policemen living in Bay Ridge. Only the stereotypical movie police department is still dominated by Irishmen; the major ethnic group in the New York Police Department is Italian, which makes up more than a third of the force. Those parishioners who were not policemen themselves were police buffs and supporters, conservatives who quickly accepted Stern and his tough stance on law and order.

Stern’s close work with J.T. Wright did not affect him adversely in his neighbors’ eyes. To the people of Bay Ridge, J.T. Wright was a crusader, a knight astride the white steed of righteousness, whose every skirmish in the press was met with vociferous support. The lambasting that Wright received from what were considered the liberal, pinko, double-dome Jews in the Times were met with rank outrage in Bay Ridge.

When Stern reported to the breakfast planning committee that J.T. Wright had agreed to be the guest speaker at this year’s affair, they were ecstatic. Tickets sold out immediately. Extra tables had to be squeezed in to accommodate the record crowd.

Minutes before the breakfast was to begin, Carl Stern was in the rectory, a phone to his ear, listening to it ring at J.T.’s house. Monsignor Bonacci, short and heavyset in his crimson-trimmed cassock, hovered anxiously nearby.

“No answer,” said Stern, putting the phone down.

“Are you sure he’s coming?” asked Eddie Cardone, the president of the Parish Council.

Monsignor Bonacci looked very serious as he listened.

“I reminded him verbally and I left a note for him. I don’t know what else I could have done,” replied Stern. He was getting nervous.

“All right, everyone find places. There are plenty of empty chairs all around the auditorium. We’re not going to set up any new tables while there are still places open,” announced Jim DeFranco, vice-president of the Parish Council, as he stood behind the microphone on the dais, watching stragglers from the church wander around the auditorium.

“Are you sure he knows how to get here?” asked the Monsignor.

“Sure,” replied Stern. “Besides, his driver can look up the address in the phone book.”

“I thought you drove for him,” said Cardone.

“Not on weekends.” Stern was feeling queasy. He knew how unreliable J.T. was, how he could never get anywhere on time. Why had he put himself on the line like this? The Parish Council would drum him out of the neighborhood if J.T. ruined this breakfast.

“I’ll start the breakfast. He should be here by then,” the Monsignor said threateningly.

“No question,” Stern assured him nervously.

There was a big cheer from the kids, who were in high spirits, when the Monsignor came into the hall. He waddled up to the dais, where the officials of the Parish Council and the honored guests waited. Everyone looked past the Monsignor for J.T. Wright.

“Good morning,” said the Monsignor, walking directly to the microphone. He had to lower the mike head so he could reach it. He couldn’t tighten the mike to stay at one height. Jim DeFranco fixed it for him.

“Good morning,” he repeated into the mike. A deafening feedback whistle seared the room. The kids laughed. The Monsignor, annoyed, looked toward the control box just behind the curtain. One of the men hastily lowered the volume.

“Good morning,” the Monsignor said again. “Let’s all say grace so we can begin our Seventeenth Annual St. Bernadette’s Communion Breakfast.”

Steve Russo was crestfallen as the Monsignor started grace. He was the perennial MC, and had prepared a punchy speech, peppered with a few new jokes, to open the proceedings. After that, the Monsignor was supposed to be introduced to say grace.

The Monsignor gave one of his rambling graces, talking about all the things in the parish that God had blessed, and that He should continue to bless, as well as the food they were about to eat. When he finished, there was a big cheer as the young guests grabbed for their chairs and the cornflakes.

Stern and Cardone waited at the front window of the rectory, watching for J.T.’s car. Stern was becoming pale.

“Is he always like this?” asked Cardone.

“Most of the time.”

“Christ.”

A few minutes passed.

“Is that his car?” Cardone asked suddenly.

Stern stretched to look. “No. Shit.”

A few people were on their way to the ten o’clock mass. Others were walking to Thirteenth Avenue to buy bread and pastries in the corner store, which stayed open until after the last mass.

J.T., who knew nothing whatever about Brooklyn, and his driver, who knew little more, had wandered about the streets for three-quarters of an hour. They finally arrived, leaving the car in the no-parking zone in front of the church. The head usher moved toward them officiously until he saw who it was. He smiled and told the driver to leave the car there; the ushers would watch it. J.T. was led down a stairway from the rear vestibule of the church to the back of the auditorium.

J.T. poked his head out from the stairwell. He saw a mass of people sitting at the tables, their flashing spoons in the cornflakes. He pulled back, but not before someone had seen him.

“Hey, he’s here!” a boy shouted.

“Where?”

“In the backstairs.”

The message flashed across the room instantly.

J.T. nodded to countless smiling faces as he walked across the auditorium to a standing ovation, picking up an entourage of well-wishers and handshakers. Men reached over to pat his back and shake his hand.

“Wright’s here,” an usher shouted to Cardone and Stern.

“Where?”

“Downstairs.”

The two men raced downstairs, arriving at the dais just after J.T.

“God, am I glad to see you,” Stern said as he took his place next to J.T., trying to catch his breath. “This is Eddie Cardone, our president.”

J.T. shook Cardone’s hand.

“A pleasure,” said Cardone.

“Oh, and this is Monsignor Bonacci,” said Stern.

“A very great pleasure to meet you,” the Monsignor said.

“Thank you, Father.”

“Monsignor,” the Monsignor corrected.

“Thank you, Monsignor.”

The milling around on the dais subsided and J.T. took his chair. As the others began to eat, J.T. wrote some notes on the back of a program, putting together a few remarks for the gathering.

“You’re very popular around here,” the Monsignor whispered to J.T.

“Really?”

“Absolutely. You stand for law and order, and we support that wholeheartedly.”

“Oh?”

“Eddie,” the Monsignor said to Cardone, who was sitting next to him, “Mr. Wright doesn’t know how popular he is in our parish.”

“Are you kidding, Mr. Wright? We appreciate the stand you’re taking against crime, against permissiveness. We’re from the old school around here, where people believe criminals have to pay. Around here there’s right and wrong, and no in-between.”

“Except Purgatory,” added the Monsignor.

“Yeah,” Cardone chuckled. “You’re our kind of people, Mr. Wright. In fact, we were talking about you the other night at the Parish Council. You’re the kind of man who should be in office to do something about crime.”

“That’s why we invited you here,” added another voice near Cardone. “We like your style.”

“You have our endorsement,” Monsignor Bonacci said. “And in an Italian parish, that goes a long way.”

“And now, fathers and sons,” said Steve Russo from behind the lectern, “we have an exciting program this morning, some football Giants films …” The kids cheered. “We have our own Rocky Marchette …” They cheered again. Marchette was a minor-league ball player from the neighborhood. “And we have Special Prosecutor J.T. Wright.” The youngsters were unimpressed, but their fathers were on their feet, cheering and whistling. They loved him. J.T. felt a surge of exhilaration.