Our Lady Of Greenwich Village (3 page)

Reilly looked in the ER and there was no sign of Swift. There was only a man on a gurney in the middle of a seizure flopping up and down like a flounder out of water. All of a sudden Reilly didn't feel so good and cursed Peccadillo and his fucking story. Out of the ER and into the back. Where the fuck was Swift? St. Vincent's at night gave Reilly the willies. Dark and cavernous, it was like a haunted castle. All the lights were at a minimum, but it was still a working hospital as gurneys and wheelchairs silently moved about on their way to deliver patients for CAT scans, X-rays and MRIs. Hospitals brought back nothing but bad memories to Cyclops Reilly.

He turned the corner and literally ran into Drumgoole. “What's the scoop, Georgie?” he asked with a big smile. When Drumgoole saw Reilly he almost had a heart attack himself.

“What are you doing here?” he asked incredulously.

“Hear the congressman ain't feeling too good.”

“Yes, he's had a very severe heart attack.”

“Playing racquetball?”

The booze had lobotomized Drumgoole's brain. He had trouble remembering conversations he had only minutes ago. He concentrated hard, closing his eyes and pinching the bridge of his nose, as he tried to recall what Peggy Brogan, Swift's chief of staff, had said happened to Swift. His brain retrieved bits and pieces of the phone conversation he had with her. Then he remembered Brogan's reference to
The Song of Bernadette
.

“The congressman had a heart attack when the Blessed Virgin Mary appeared to him, urging him to strike against the abortionists.”

“What?” Reilly asked, clearly stunned.

“Yes,” said Drumgoole boozily, not comprehending what he had just done. “The Virgin appeared to the congressman and told him to fight
Roe v. Wade
.” With that, Drumgoole turned, zombie-like, and marched away from Reilly.

Reilly's jaw dropped, and he shook his head. He looked at his watch and saw it was 1:45 a.m. Fifteen minutes to the paper's deadline. He had to find out how Swift was doing. Just then a doctor came through the swinging emergency room doors. “Hey, Doc, you working on Congressman Swift?”

“Yes. Why?”

“I'm Reilly of the
Daily News
. What's his condition?”

“He's holding his own,” the doctor replied.

I bet he is, thought Reilly. “He gonna make it, or what?”

“I don't know. The cardiologist is with him now.”

“Thanks, Doc. That should be enough.” Reilly reached into his pocket for a quarter and came up with a lone crinkled five dollar bill. He had left the remainder of his money on the bar with his drink and his lady sitting in front of it. A smile of anticipation crossed his face. “Hey, Tessa, lend me a quarter, willya?”

“Why don't you use your cell phone?”

“The
News
repossessed it,” said Reilly. Tessa shook his head and handed over the two bits. Reilly dialed.

“Yeah?” said Fogarty.

“Peck, Cyclops here. Got the word. Severe heart attack for Swift. Docs don't know if he's going to make it. My guess is that there's a broad and coke involved. Something about a ‘party,' the EMS guy told Tessa.”

“Doesn't sound like much,” replied Fogarty.

“Grab a hold of your balls, Peck.”

“Why?”

“Drumgoole's official explanation is that Swift had a heart attack when the Blessed Virgin Mary appeared to him to tell him to, quote ‘fight
Roe v. Wade,'
unquote.”

Peccadillo Fogarty actually dropped the phone. Picking it up, he said, “You're fucking kidding me.”

“That's a direct quote.”

“Hold on,” Fogarty told Reilly. He picked up another phone and said something he had wanted to say his entire newspaper career: “Stop the presses!” Reilly heard and laughed out loud. “New headline,” said Fogarty to the pressman, remembering he owed the Cardinal one. “MIRACOLO!: BLESSED VIRGIN APPEARS TO SWIFT.”

“Shit,” said Reilly.

“
Holy
shit,” corrected Fogarty.

“You owe me,” Reilly said and hung up the payphone. “Have a nice night, Gino,” he said, as he ran out onto frozen 11th Street and hailed a cab: “Christopher Street and Sheridan Square.”

Two minutes later he was back in Hogan's Moat. There wasn't a sign of the lady—or his bar money. “Where's Paige?” he asked Big Zeus.

“Some guy,” said Zeus diplomatically as he handed Reilly his drink containing his glass eye, “comes up after you leave, buys her one drink, they swap spit, and they leave.”

“Yeah. With my fucking money, too.”

“At least they left your eye.”

“Yeah,” said Reilly. “Zeus, can I run a tab?”

“Sure, Cyclops,” Zeus said as he poured an eyeless vodka on the rocks for Reilly. “That's on me.”

“Thanks, Zeus,” Reilly said as he pocketed his glass eye, gulped the drink and thought bad thoughts about Peccadillo Fogarty. Then he thought about his Virgin scoop and thought good things about Fogarty. It was time to celebrate. He looked to his left. There was a girl with an ass so big and round and firm and perfect that it could stop traffic. The girl was alone. Their eyes met and she smiled at him. Cyclops Reilly was in love.

Again.

“Hi,” he said, “can I buy you a drink?”

“Y
ou. Hey, you. Yeah, you. I'm talking to
you!
”

Wolfe Tone O'Rourke thought someone was in his bedroom yelling at him. He opened his myopic eyes, grabbed his glasses, and saw the disheveled figure on the television screen. He obviously had left the TV on the night before when he had returned from the bar at closing time. “Are you a drunk? A drug addict? Or
both?
” the voice asked in a near-shriek. “Well, you must be if you're lying there in bed, stoned, looking at
me!
”

“Jesus,” O'Rourke sighed.

“I'm Bob Stark of the Stark Institute for Addiction, and you can't fool me because I
used
to be a junkie just like you!
You
need HELP!” Bob Stark shouted at O'Rourke. “Call 1-800-ADDICTS. Remember,” Stark continued, “
I
can't call
you
. Get off your sorry, addicted butt and help yourself. Call me NOW! We take Medicare, Medicaid, and most HMO and union-sponsored plans. You supply the addict. We'll supply the tough love.”

“Fuck you,” said O'Rourke as he grabbed his remote control and flung it at the TV, hitting the cable box and turning Bob Stark's red whiskey face to black. O'Rourke couldn't believe it was already Saturday morning.

Saturday mornings always brought supreme hangovers and this one wasn't any different. It was the cotton mouth that killed him. The drycaked taste of last night's beer and whiskey was too much. O'Rourke pushed the sheets away, put his chin to his chest, and surveyed the wreck he'd become. He was swollen with fat, an off-shade of battleship gray, and quite ugly. O'Rourke was honest enough with himself to acknowledge that it was another sign that his skirt-chasing days were over.

Naked to the kitchen for his relief—a Coke gargle. It was the only thing that exorcised that taste of yesterday's frustration from his body and brain. The fridge door opened to a lone slice of two-week-old green pizza and not one old-fashioned eight-ounce glass Coke bottle. There was something magical about those thick greenish bottles that made Coca-Cola taste the way it tasted when you were a kid. To O'Rourke, everything was beginning to taste the same. It wasn't often that he could recapture a small part of the innocence of his youth. O'Rourke closed the refrigerator door, decided he would not vomit, fetched his clothes, and knew he had to seek the cure.

Wolfe Tone O'Rourke was an anachronism. In an age of physical and mental narcissism—when it seemed that everything and everyone had been molded into snobbish and pretentious three letter sequences, be it GAP or BMW or MBA—he didn't give a fuck. His personal appearance was a clue to his splendid indifference. Now the head “mover and shaker” (according to
Newsweek
magazine) at one of the most prestigious political consulting firms in the country, Northern Dispensary Associates, he dressed in what one of his colleagues had once ruefully described as “early stevedore.” This took courage because the firm was populated mostly by young eager-beaver Generation-X-types, who thought culture had begun in the United States with the invention of rollerblades and the cell phone. They were hip, but they didn't know shit. O'Rourke's shabby blue jeans and corduroy jackets tended to stand out. He would not go with the flow. Also the look of his plump appearance, his full beard set against long black, graying hair, and taut eyes guarded by thick bifocals, tended to distract and dismay the staff and clientele whenever O'Rourke escaped his corner office and poked his head around a bend.

Just after eight o'clock, Tone O'Rourke bought a
Daily News
at the newsstand in Sheridan Square and looked at the morning headline: MIRACOLO! He stopped dead in his tracks and followed the story to page three. BLESSED VIRGIN APPEARS TO SWIFT, the headline said. REP. CRITICAL AFTER HEART ATTACK, read the deck. O'Rourke forgot all about his hangover as he read the byline: Benedict Reilly. “GOP Congressman Jackie Swift is resting in critical condition this morning at St. Vincent's Hospital in Greenwich Village after suffering a heart attack at his West 10th Street apartment. According to Swift's press secretary, George Drumgoole, the congressman was stricken after the Blessed Virgin Mary appeared to him and urged him to ‘fight
Roe v. Wade
.' Neither his wife, fellow U.S. Representative Madonna-Sue Fopiano Swift, nor his father-in-law, former Staten Island congressman Vito Fopiano, could be reached for comment.” The item concluded by saying that additional reporting was supplied by Henry Fogarty.

O'Rourke turned the corner onto Christopher Street and dropped the three steps into Hogan's Moat. And a typical Saturday morning it was at the Moat, as the bar jumped from end to end with the same febrile crowd. O'Rourke needed a taste desperately and he swung into the corner of the bar by the window.

“Oh, don't we look like hell this morning, Doc,” said Cyclops Reilly, his one eye dancing. Reilly stood out in any room because of his mismatched eyes. The right one was like a brilliant blue gemstone while the left eye looked like a cheap replacement, which, in a way, it was.

“Fuck you,” said O'Rourke. He turned to the barman. “A Remy and coffee, please.” Reilly was unshaven and looked a mess. “What's with the eye patch?”

“I can't get used to that fucking glass eye,” said Reilly.

“The new one?”

“The new one, the old ones,” said Reilly. “It's like sand in there. I'd rather wear the fucking patch.” Then Reilly brightened, relishing O'Rourke's sorry condition. “Jesus, Doc, you look great. Your fucking eyes look like maraschino cherries floating in sour cream!” Reilly roared with delight.

“Cyclops,” said O'Rourke, “as Betty Ford would put it, I think I ‘over-medicated' myself last night—again.” O'Rourke looked up as a cup of black coffee and a snifter of Remy Martin were placed in front of him. “Congratulations,” O'Rourke said as he held up the
Daily News
headline. Reilly grinned feverishly. “The fucking
Virgin
?”

“Well,” said Reilly, “that's Swift's version of the story.”

“Drumgoole didn't actually say that, did he?”

“Yes, he did,” said Cyclops.

“The shit will be hitting the fan this morning,” warned O'Rourke. “I think Madonna-Sue and Big Daddy Vito will be personally removing Swift's balls, one at a time. What really happened?”

“My educated guess,” said Reilly as haughtily as he possibly could, “is that he was balling his chief of staff, Peggy Brogan. Apparently there was also some ‘magic' involved.”

“Magic?”

“Coke that wasn't cola.”

O'Rourke shook his head. He wondered how politicians got themselves into such jams. “How was the
craic
last night?” he asked.

“The
craic
,” said Reilly, referring to the Irish word for fun, “was grand. But there was no other kind of crack to be had,” meaning crack, as in the crack of a woman's backside, or the kind that was either sniffed or smoked.

“You need more crack,” said O'Rourke, “like Custer needed another Injun.” O'Rourke, looking for an immediate caffeine boost, dropped the Remy into the coffee, took a taste, and shook his head violently. “Jesus, how do we keep drinking this shit?”

Cyclops pointed to the money on the bar and said, “That's with me.”

“God bless you,” said O'Rourke as he again tasted his coffee. As O'Rourke looked down the cacophonous bar of morning he knew that those who had opposed Franklin D. Roosevelt and the repeal of the 18th Amendment to the United States Constitution had been right.

The Moat, as the regulars called it, was narcotic. They cashed your checks. They extended credit. They took telephone messages. They mothered their drunks. It was, thought O'Rourke, the only bar that had actually been left a suicide note by one of its writer patrons. (“Best fucking thing he ever wrote,” was the consensus of the regulars.) But the Moat in all its wood, brick, and darkness was only a room. To outsiders—“tourist” was the pejorative term with the Moat regulars—it was a “literary bar.” Dust jackets haphazardly clung to every available wall space, stuck there with yellowing scotch tape. Most of the professional writers in the Moat were either too drunk to write or ended up getting their work published between beaver shots in “gentlemen's magazines.” Once, a little old lady from Des Moines asked, “Is this the place where writers with drinking problems come?” To which one of the regulars replied in truth, “No, this is where drinkers with writing problems come.”

But to O'Rourke it was the people who came there regularly—who actually lived there—that gave the Moat its personality. O'Rourke loved rogues and he found plenty of them in the rhythmic, decadent cadence that defined Village drinkers. Most of those at the bar had closed the Moat at four o'clock that morning, gone to one of the illegal after-hour places that were known as “blind pigs,” and as the sun approached, had swayed back to the Moat before it opened at eight. The porter usually had to sweep around the customers, they flooded in so fast, the bar filling with ladies and gentlemen left over from the night before embracing each other in some sort of sexual glide that would never be realized—at least not this morning. Men, alone, slumped over the bar, cognac in front of them untouched, fighting and defying the sleep that had already slugged them. What were they looking for? Why had they reduced their lives to the companionship of a bar and neutering alcohol? Why had they allowed life to reduce their will power so that comatose alcoholism was preferable to the dread of reality—reality being failure and loneliness? One only had to look to figure out that the regulars were the legion of men who habitually woke to empty beds and rolled naked by themselves, pushing the piss hard-on against cool sheets with the wish that the one girl that they had once loved, that one girl with the pretty face and the ass chiseled by the Almighty Himself, were there. But of course she never would be. There would be no morning rolls, just laments for a lonely hard-on. Relief was just a drink and a laugh away at Hogan's Moat. And O'Rourke, no matter how many times he would try to deny it to himself, knew it. He couldn't escape and he knew that the Moat, in a benevolent way, was slowly killing him.

O'Rourke heard the door opening and in walked Aloysius Hogan, proprietor of the Moat, and Barney, his trusty German shepherd. Barney looked at the customers and growled. Then his eyes met O'Rourke's and a whine came out of Barney as he backed away and tried to slide under the cigarette machine.

“Fucking pussy,” said Hogan to his dog.

Hogan was in his early sixties and although now slightly stooped, you could see that he had once been an athlete. He had played Class D ball in the Milwaukee Braves organization in the early '60s, but his inability to hit the curve ball had sent him back to New York. Not lacking in ego, he saw himself as Humphrey Bogart in
Casablanca
with the Moat being his Café Américain. Essentially a shy man, conversation did not come easy to him. Often he threw out curious asides such as “An unemployed jester is nobody's fool” and “Did you know that Cy Young never won a Cy Young Award?” to the bafflement of his customers. When silence followed, he would head for his office in the basement.

Barney was a retired DEA cocaine detection dog who had been given to Hogan as a birthday gift by his old handler. Hogan, an ex-cop himself, had kept friendly with the law, which was a good thing to do if you were sniffing three grams of coke a day. Hogan's coke habit had put the Moat in financial jeopardy as the profits went up his nose rather than to the IRS.

First day on the job, Barney came through. Hogan moseyed up to a regular at the bar and whispered, “Got any blow?”

“Not today, Hogan,” the regular lied. Immediately Barney jumped on the man's back and pinned him to the bar. “On second thought, I remember I do have some.” Barney had saved the Moat from the IRS. Hogan still did three grams a day, but he wasn't paying for it anymore.

O'Rourke had already seen Barney in action before Hogan approached him one night and squeezed in beside him to ask, “Holding?” Out of the corner of his eye O'Rourke saw Barney approaching and as he began to pounce, O'Rourke spun and cold-cocked the dog between the eyes, sending him flying across the bar where he landed in a heap, whimpering. “Well,” said Aloysius Hogan, “I guess you don't have any.”