Our Lady Of Greenwich Village (16 page)

“Fuck you,” said Cyclops Reilly, “it's your own fucking fault.”

“Benedict,” Burke had said icily, “how is it my fault?”

“It's your fault,” replied Reilly with vitriol, “because if you don't like doing it you should tell your superiors the truth.”

“And what is that truth, Benedict?”

Reilly had had enough. “Look, you smart prick, the truth, if you really want to know, is that the Church should just get rid of these guys, not rotate them. If you didn't have these cocksucking scumbags as priests you wouldn't have a fucking problem.”

It was as clear as that and the tirade had changed Seán Pius Burke's life. He went into the office of the monsignor who ran personnel in the New York Archdiocese and told him straight: “Your problem is not these children and their parents. Your problem is your priests. Why don't you eliminate your problem?”

The monsignor had hemmed and hawed, but Burke had put it in writing and sent it to the Cardinal. The monsignor was furious when the Cardinal told him about the letter. He was furious until the Cardinal told him what a great idea Father Burke had. The monsignor went back and told him he had the blessing of the Cardinal. “What are you going to do?” asked the monsignor.

“I'm going to round up the usual suspects,” Burke had replied without humor.

He pulled the personnel files of every priest in the archdiocese and red-dotted those who had had problems with sex and children. Then he had the Cardinal send a letter inviting all of them to lunch at St. Joseph's Seminary in Dunwoodie. The Cardinal told them how wonderful it was to see them and that he hoped they enjoyed their lunch. Then he got up and walked out the door.

Seán Pius Burke stood up and looked at their mostly Irish faces and their soft, well-padded bellies, and he went at them. He was no longer the smooth priest with the law degree and the answer for everything. He was now the kid out of Hell's Kitchen who knew how the game was played. “Listen up, you cocksuckers.” A hush fell over the crowd. Burke picked up the foot-thick personnel files from the table and slammed them down with a thud. He could see Adam's apples bouncing up and down behind Roman collars. “The party is fucking over. Do you understand? Over. I am going to get rid of as many of you bums as I can. And the ones I can't get rid of, I'm going to hound night and day. I am your worst fucking nightmare. Is that understood?” There wasn't a sound in the room. “Good day, gentlemen. Enjoy your lamb chops.”

Soon after he had told his cousin Cyclops about the meeting. “You going to get rid of all of them, Johnny Pie?”

“Impossible,” replied Burke. “They're too embedded. I'll get rid of as many of them as possible and put the fear of Jesus into the rest of them.”

“Do the best you can.”

“Thank you, Benedict.”

“For what?”

“For showing me the light.” For once, Cyclops Reilly was mute.

Burke went to work at a job that no one wanted him to do and soon learned what an impossible task it was. It was impossible because he was sabotaged at almost every juncture. There was a massive conspiracy of the cloth underway. Everyone was in denial. It seemed that every pedophile priest had a rabbi. And that rabbi had a rabbi in Rome. He soon noticed a disproportional number of priests had been sent down to New York from Boston. They were in as bad a way for clergy as New York was, so why were all these guys suddenly showing up in New York? It didn't take Burke long to figure out that it was Bernard Cardinal Law up in Boston and his two pimps, Bishops Thomas Murphy and William Daly, who were doing the dirty work. Burke had enough problems with his New York pedophiles, and now Boston was sending him theirs.

He went to the Cardinal and explained what Law was doing. The Cardinal listened without saying a word. In those days the two Cardinals were known as “Law & Order,” Sweeney being the order part. They were partners in orthodoxy, but Law was closer to the Pope. “I'll see what I can do,” the Cardinal told Burke after he had finished with his presentation.

Days later the phone rang. “Father Burke?” It was the Cardinal. “Cardinal Law denies he's using New York as a dumping ground.”

“He's lying,” said Burke, the words jumping out of his mouth.

“He is a Prince of the Church,” said Sweeney.

“He's still a liar,” responded Burke, sure that his career had taken a sinister turn.

Three months later, Father Brendan Quiver—late of West Roxbury, Massachusetts, but now parish priest at St. Charles Borromeo in Harlem—was caught with his underpants around his ankles and his penis in the anus of a nine-year-old boy who was a student at the St. Charles parochial school. Burke was put on the case. He called the Cardinal.

“Was he one of Law's?”

“Yes, Eminence.”

“How much?”

“One point four million.”

“Pay it.”

“Yes, Eminence.”

“And get rid of Quiver. No counseling this time. Get him out of here.”

“Yes, Eminence.”

“And forgive me.”

“Why, Eminence?”

“Because you were right and this will never happen again. You taught me a valuable lesson.”

Burke wondered if he was changing anything. It was depressing work. Several months later Burke got a call from the Cardinal, who needed a personal secretary. Would Father Burke take the job?

“Yes, Eminence,” said Seán Pius Burke, taking the job and the red stripe that went with it.

After Googling both the Reverend Chester Cockburn and OFF, Reilly still didn't know much. He learned that OFF was created after the
Roe v. Wade
Supreme Court decision in 1973. They were active in picketing abortion clinics, and the home office was in Buffalo, New York.

Buffalo, New York. Reilly picked up the phone and called his friend Joe Barry, reporter for the
Buffalo News
. “What say you from the mistake by the lake?” inquired Reilly of Barry.

“Fuck you, Reilly,” said Barry to his old friend.

Reilly got right to the point. “You know a guy called the Reverend Chester Cockburn? He's with this anti-abortion organization, OFF.”

“You mean Chester the Molester?” said Barry.

“What?” said Reilly, suddenly very attentive.

“You heard me right,” said Barry. “He's one of those born-again Christian types that hates everyone,” said Barry.

“Like who?”

“Like the blacks, the Catholics, the Jews . . .” said Barry.

“Sounds like he belongs to the KKK,” said Reilly.

“Well, he's pretty good at baiting. He's cooled his act recently. Tries to play the man of God. He's had his own problems in the past.”

“Problems?”

“That's where he got his nickname,” said Barry. “Let's just say that if he has one more child molestation charge, he gets his own parish!”

“What are you talking about?”

“You never heard of the GodScou✞s?”

“GodScou✞s?” said Reilly. “What the hell are the GodScou✞s?”

“That's his front organization,” said Barry. “They're like fundamentalist boy scouts for God. They sit around the campfire and sing hymns.”

Cyclops Reilly started laughing. “Are you thinking what I am?”

“Yes, I am,” said Joe Barry. They were both a couple of cynical Harps.

“I can just see it now,” said Reilly, “hymns, marshmallows, and sodomy—all by the light of the silvery moon.”

“I like the way you think.”

“I can't help it,” said Cyclops. “I'll never forget what my old man said: ‘Any guy who works forty hours a week and wants to spend his weekend sitting in some swamp with a bunch of eleven-year-old boys is not right.'”

“You should inspect his closet,” said Barry.

“For what?”

“GodScou✞s's underwear, methinks.”

“Jesus,” said Reilly. “But is that all you have on him? The fucking GodScou✞s?”

“He's got a rap sheet,” said Barry. “He got booted as associate pastor about ten years ago over a child molestation allegation.”

“What happened?” Reilly asked.

“Some kid in the parish said they used to pray together, then later they would seal the prayer with a blow job,” said Barry.

“Explosive stuff,” said Reilly.

“Yeah,” said Barry, “but the kid wouldn't testify in court. His father had the corporation he worked for transfer him to Indiana, and he let everything drop. So they let Chester the Molester slide.”

“But the church fired him?” asked Reilly.

“Yeah, the Presbyterians kicked him out,” said Barry. “Landed running. He was made director of OFF soon after.”

“Wasn't OFF worried about the allegations about the boy?”

“Cockburn got everybody to think the boy made the whole thing up,” said Barry.

“How about his other troubles?”

“OFF wasn't too disturbed over that either,” said Barry.

“What did he do, exactly?”

“Oh, some do-gooder Catholics were helping some blacks fix up their houses. You know that shit that Jimmy Carter does?”

“Habitat for Humanity?”

“Yeah, that's it,” said Barry. “Well, he makes it out that it's a Papist plot to get all the blacks—who are all Baptists—to convert to the Catholic Church.”

“You have to be kidding,” said Reilly.

“Wish I were,” said Barry. “The bishop up here, Malloy, denounced him as a Catholic basher.”

“When was this?”

“Around 1988,” said Barry.

Reilly—the epitome of the lapsed Catholic—was pissed off. “Joe,” he said, “can you email me some clippings on this guy, pronto?”

“Yeah, Cyclops,” said Barry. “I'll email it right down. What's up?”

“Read the
Daily News
on Friday,” said Reilly as he hung up the phone.

After Reilly read Barry's emails, the first person he thought of was Abe Stein of the
New York Post
. Abe had been the
Post
's chief court reporter for over thirty-five years, covering the most notorious murders and mobsters the city had to offer. Over the past several years he had covered the Cardinal's Sunday sermons and news conferences. Abe knew how to frame a story and he had become the
Post
's de facto Religion Editor. Since Stein was Jewish, the Cardinal didn't try to intimidate him like he did the Catholic reporters. Stein had an ingenious way of framing his questions in a way that always made the Cardinal stick his foot in it. Reilly was in a quandary. He didn't want to share his story with Stein—he might be able to run with the front page with this one—but he didn't want to be accused, God forbid, of “Catholic Bashing.” Abe Stein could help him out on this. He decided to show Abe only the story concerning the Reverend Chester Cockburn's encounter with Bishop Malloy. The rest—the Chester the Molester allegations—he would keep for his own ammunition.

A
specter for a guilty conscience. There she was in front of him, floating, high up. Speaking, but O'Rourke could not hear what she was saying. Her arms were outstretched to him, but O'Rourke did not reach out to her, to touch her hands. He didn't know if he was afraid or not. He tried to see her face, but it was obscured by fog or clouds or smoke; he couldn't be sure. He thought it was Mary, the Blessed Virgin. Why was she appearing to him? It must be important, but he was flummoxed by her.

Why was she here beckoning O'Rourke? Didn't she belong to Swift? That was the political thinking. The papers made it sound like Swift and the Virgin were a gossip item. Were they dating or going steady? It was really blasphemous, but the Swift camp encouraged it. Even the Cardinal knew that the Virgin was in Swift's corner, like she was a registered Republican.

She must want something, O'Rourke thought in his dream state. She swirled around again and O'Rourke remembered the Virgin of his childhood. She was the Virgin-in-the-Box. Every kid in the classroom got to take the Virgin-in-the-Box home so the whole family could kneel and say the rosary in front of her. The box was her home and her mode of transportation. Every kid in the first grade got the Virgin-in-a-Box for a night. O'Rourke remembered kneeling with his mother and father in their living room at 349 West Fourth Street. Today that behavior would be considered to be very serious Catholicism, but back in the early 1950s every Catholic family in the parish was extremely devout. Life revolved around the school and the church. Even his father, still in his work clothes, was on his knees and saying the Hail Marys which came out like whispers on steroids; more of a buzz than words. After the rosary was done the Virgin returned to her box and the next day was passed on to the next family.

In O'Rourke's youth, the Virgin was like a member of the family. The nuns at St. Bernard's Parochial School talked about the Blessed Virgin incessantly and how much she was loved by her son, Jesus. The nuns also said that May was named after Mary, and was the Virgin's month. Every May the whole student body went up on the roof of St. Bernard's and sang songs to a statue of the Virgin. “Bring flowers of the rarest, bring flowers of the fairest . . . Oh, Mary we crown thee with blossoms today . . . Queen of the angels, Queen of the May.” And all the children wrote notes to the Virgin—little prayers the nuns called ejaculations—and O'Rourke remembered how they were offered up in a fire, the smoke rising to the heavens where the Virgin now resided. O'Rourke's prayer was that Willie Mays would not be killed in the Korean War and safely returned to the Polo Grounds. O'Rourke could remember the brightness of the day and the heat of the early summer as it made tar bubbles on St. Bernard's roof. Then there was the smell of the still busy river, only blocks away, and the aroma of the bloody meat market around the corner. Today developers kill for the warehouses in the Meatpacking District; then it was an Irish-Catholic neighborhood full of stevedores.

Mary was also his mother's name. Mary Kavanagh. Named by his grandmother, Rosanna. O'Rourke never knew his Grandma Rosanna, for she had died so, so long ago. All he had was an old sepia photograph of her, sitting at a table with his grandfather. Henry Street, Dublin, was stamped on the back of it. His grandmother was a Conway and from the photograph he could tell she had a big bust and a serene face. And she was devoted to the Virgin Mary, naming her only daughter, O'Rourke's mother, after her. That's all he had of his grandmother: an old picture, a statue of the Blessed Virgin Mary that was hers, and a tombstone in Glasnevin Cemetery in Dublin with her name on it. His grandmother had a kind face, a young face. How old was she when she died? O'Rourke didn't know. His mother had few memories of her own mother because she was just seven when God had called Rosanna to heaven. “The good die young,” his mother had told him. His mother ended up in an orphanage in Sandymount. The Black and Tans used to visit, looking for rebels in the basement. But that photo of his Grandmother Rosanna stuck with O'Rourke. A mystery woman, like this mystery woman—the Virgin Mary?—in his dreams.

And now the hot roof of St. Bernard's was out of O'Rourke's dream and the mystical figure was back, dancing in front of him. Was this Virgin coming to tell him something important? The fog was lifting from the Virgin's face. He could see her white scarf and her blue wrap, which she used like a burka, and there was a lone eye and it was familiar and, my God, could it be—

“You fucking asshole,” said Dr. Moe Luigi.

“Mother of God,” replied O'Rourke, waking up.

“Dr. Luigi!” said the woman in white.

“Oh,” said Luigi embarrassed, “excuse my language.”

“Where are my fucking glasses?” said O'Rourke to the white figure. O'Rourke was out of it. He didn't know where he was. He was woozy and still high and everything seemed out of sync. Plus he couldn't see a goddamned thing.

“Here you are, Mr. O'Rourke,” said the woman.

O'Rourke put his glasses on and saw the aged nun in the white Sisters of Charity habit. She must be eighty. She looked just like Sister Perpetua from the first grade. “Oh, Sister,” he said, “where am I?”

“You're in St. Vincent's,” the nun said.

“What in God's name were you doing?” demanded Luigi.

O'Rourke was embarrassed. “I was fucking around.” He looked at the nun and felt remorse.

“With what?” asked Luigi.

“Cognac and blow.” The nun wondered what this blow was.

“Fool!” said Luigi. “You almost blew a gasket. Your blood pressure went through the roof, and you fainted. Lucky you didn't have a stroke. Better clean up your act!”

“Moe,” said O'Rourke, “I'm sorry.”

“You'll be sorry if you continue like this.” Now Luigi felt remorse because of the way he had read down O'Rourke. “I'll never get any rest with friends like you,” he said by way of apology. “Why does stuff like this always happen in the middle of the night?” Luigi covered his friend with a sheet and brushed O'Rourke's hair off his forehead. “Sister says you have a visitor. Do you want to see him?”

“Who?”

“Sam McGuire. Want to see him?”

O'Rourke smiled at Luigi's misdirection. “Sure.”

“You'll feel better in the morning,” said Luigi. “The blood pressure's coming down. Then we'll do some tests. I'll send your friend in.” He put his hand on O'Rourke's wrist and squeezed. “I'll see you then.”

“Moe,” said O'Rourke sincerely, “thanks.”

Both Luigi and the nun left, leaving O'Rourke alone in the room. His eyes grew heavy and the truncated dream came back and he cocked his head at the ceiling, as if a slant would make the apparition reappear. He almost knew who it was when he was awoken by Luigi. Just a few seconds more and he would have solved the mystery.

“You okay?” asked Sam McGuire.

“Thanks for coming.”

“That's my job.”

“How'd you know?”

“Mr. Pepoon called me,” she said. “I came right over.”

“Sorry I'm such a sorry pain in the ass.”

“You're not,” said McGuire as she slowly bent down and kissed him on the forehead. She hesitated. “You're my hero.”

“I'm nobody's hero.”

“Well,” replied McGuire, “you're mine.”

“Why?”

“Let's see,” said McGuire, beginning to count on her fingers. “You're kind. You're passionate. You care. And even more important—you make me laugh.”

“All I am,” said O'Rourke, “is one drunken, fat Irish fuck.”

“Hey,” returned McGuire, “we'll knock thirty pounds off you, and you'll be a new man.”

O'Rourke shook his head. “I'm an asshole.”

“Yes, maybe,” she said, “but you're
my
asshole.” Now McGuire showed her edge. “You're too hard on yourself. You put yourself down too much. Everybody loves you. Don't you know?”

O'Rourke was actually embarrassed. “Thanks, honey,” he muttered under his breath, afraid that the “honey” would insult her. O'Rourke knew he didn't deserve to be treated this kindly.

“Get some sleep. I'll see you in the morning.”

O'Rourke cocked his head. “Do you hear it?” he asked McGuire.

“Hear what?” McGuire thought he was hallucinating; maybe he was still high.

“The keening.”

“I don't hear anything,” said McGuire, “and I think it's time for you to go to sleep.” She took O'Rourke's hand in hers and O'Rourke wanted to hold her all night, but she slid from his grasp and left with a wave and that dazzling smile.

Why him? What did the Virgin want? It was haunting O'Rourke. He had never had a dream like that before. Who was it? He almost knew. He almost saw the Virgin's eyes. He was full of
pishogue
, as they say in the Irish. Full of ghosts, full of superstition, full of the unknown. He remembered that his mother fervently believed in the “Three Knocks at the Door” as a harbinger of death. She swore it had happened to her in the late 1920s as she was caring for a dying boy in Dublin. All alone in the house with the child, she went to answer the door. No one was there. When she went back to the lad, he was dead. O'Rourke wondered about all the ghost stories his parents had regaled him with when he was a child. He smiled at the memory of his wonderful childhood, his wonderful parents, and wondered about the wail of the banshee that he was sure he just heard, out there, on West 12th Street.