Our Lady Of Greenwich Village (7 page)

“Oh my God,” he said as he stood up and straddled her, holding his arms out like wings, fists clenched. He tried not to come, but she had been too much for him and, involuntarily, he shot thick streams of semen on Brogan's freckled shoulders and back. They collapsed on the bed, each one's body fluids smeared on the other as they laughed the sex laugh, the laugh of relief and total satisfaction.

“Thanks be to God,” intoned a solemn voice from the television.

“What's that?” Brogan said as she turned the vibrator off.

“It's
The Song of Bernadette
,” said Swift. “That's what I was trying to tell you. Every great character actor in Hollywood is in it. Jerome Cowan. You remember him, don't you? He was Bogie's partner in
The Maltese Falcon
and the district attorney in
Miracle on 34th Street
. Vincent Price from
Laura
. Even Sig Ruman, the Nazi sergeant from
Stalag 17
.”

“My God,” said Brogan, “it's Jennifer Jones.”

“You know,” said Swift as if revealing something, “she was married to David O. Selznick.”

Brogan had to laugh at the irony. They couldn't escape it, the knowledge that the Church, all important in their political lives, was still somehow looking over them, even in bed. Swift, exhausted, rested his perspiring forehead in the valley of Brogan's robust breasts, looked up into her eyes, and smiled again.

“Jackie,” said Brogan in her state of relieved passion, “I love you so much.” She looked at Swift, who smiled sweetly back at her with that boy-Irish look that he had never lost and that the sisters at St. John the Evangelist's had always loved. A good Irish-Catholic lad he would always be.

“Me too,” replied Swift as he went back to playing with the cocaine on the mirror. Brogan saw how ravenous Swift was for the powder. No matter how good in bed she was, she always seemed to be playing second fiddle to the “magic,” as he sometimes called it. What a waste, she thought. He was scraping the residue together for one more line. The razor scratching across the glass made a sound that forced Brogan to grimace. Swift shot half the line up his left nostril and the other half up the right.

“Honey,” said Brogan out of the blue, “did you ever think of having a baby with me?”

Swift laughed. “Brogan,” he said, “remember? I'm already married. My wife's pregnant. I'm the ‘Family Values' Congressman from the Sodom and Gomorrah called New York City.”

“You're also for mandatory sentences for drug abusers,” Brogan said as she gestured towards the mirror with the cocaine on it.

“What's that supposed to mean?” asked Swift, annoyed. Brogan had noticed that after Swift used cocaine his personality had a tendency to change. He was developing an edge. “Don't start with me now,” said Swift. “I feel bad enough about having another kid with Madonna-Sue.”

“How could you do that to me?”

“Do what?”

“Get her pregnant.”

“I didn't plan it,” said Swift. “It just happened. I told you. We went to get our coats after Thanksgiving dinner at Vito's house and the next thing I know we're screwing on the bed. Drink was taken.”

“The Irish excuse for
everything
.”

Swift gave her a look and there was no smile attached. “Don't start now,” he repeated as he stood up to go to the bathroom, but he immediately sat back down on the bed. “I don't feel so good,” he said. “My God!” he said grimacing. He flung both hands across his chest as he fell across the bed. “Jesus,” he said as he gasped for air. “Mother of God, help me!” he uttered as the pain exploded in his chest and rushed down his arms and disintegrated his elbows. He felt nothing as a blackness engulfed him and then he thought he saw the light, so far away, but getting closer by the second.

The memory of the whole sorry episode had totally deflated Swift. “How,” he said, “in God's name did the
Daily News
get the idea that the Virgin Mary appeared to me?”

“Georgie Drumgoole,” said Brogan.

“Oh, no,” repeated Swift knowing he was doomed, “not Drumgoole.”

“Drumgoole got it wrong,” said Brogan. “I called him as soon as they took you to the hospital and told him we were watching
The Song of Bernadette
when you had your attack. Somehow he misconstrued that into an appearance by the Blessed Virgin.”

“Was he drunk again?” asked Swift.

“What do you think?”

Swift was beside himself. “How,” said Swift with growing agitation, “could he think—if that's the word—such a stupid thing? It's the most asinine thing I've ever heard of.” He plopped back onto his pillow, near exhaustion.

For a solid minute, there was nothing but silence. “You want the good news?” Brogan finally asked.

“Good news?” shouted Swift, seemingly overwhelmed by events. “What good news? That my wife and father-in-law are going to kill me? That my political career is over? What good news could you possibly have?”

Brogan went over to Swift and put her hand on his arm. “It's okay, Jack,” she said, “everything will be all right.” She kissed him on his unshaven cheek. She took his hand in hers and stroked his manicured fingers. She could see him become calmer. “In fact,” she said, “I have two pieces of good news for you.” For the first time, she could see a trace of hope in Swift's eyes. “First, your cardiologist says you're out of danger.”

“Thank God,” said Swift sincerely. “And?”

“The Cardinal will be visiting you shortly.”

“Not the Cardinal,” said Swift, visibly slumping again. “Not the fucking Cardinal.” Swift looked like a beaten man, resignation clearly on his face.

With that the door opened and in stepped Declan Cardinal Sweeney, sprinkling Holy Water. “The Lord is my light and salvation,” said the Cardinal. “Though I walk in the shadow of death, I will fear no evil, for you are with me.” Swift knew instinctively that it was the last of the seven sacraments:The Sacrament of Anointing the Sick. An uneasy smile crossed Swift's face, for he knew it was an ecclesiastical euphemism. It used to be called Extreme Unction, the sacrament of the dying. Swift was Catholic enough to know that the Cardinal thought he was on the way out. The Cardinal stood over him and nearly drenched him with more Holy Water. “The Lord is my shepherd,” he said, “I shall not want. In verdant pastures he gives me repose.” Oddly enough, the very presence of the Cardinal seemed to comfort Swift. Swift laid back in the bed, watched the Cardinal's theatre, and felt at peace. He almost felt like going to confession because it was the first time he had been honest enough to admit to himself that it was his cock and his coke that was always getting him into trouble. They had gotten him into this holy mess and now he would have to face the music, which was being orchestrated in front of him by a Prince of Holy Mother Church.

V
ito Fopiano had been Jackie Swift's Dr. Frankenstein. For without there would have been no Congressman Swift.

It had all started in 1979, when Vito Fopiano, the New York City Council minority leader from Staten Island—who also happened to be the lone Republican on the council—had watched a made-for-TV movie about old Joseph P. Kennedy, the chieftain of the Kennedy clan. “If a mick prick like Kennedy can do that, why can't I?” he asked his empty living room. Unfortunately, Fopiano had no Jack, or Bobby, or even a Teddy to work with. All he had was his daughter, Madonna-Sue. Since his wife's death, he had been both mother and father to Madonna-Sue. And she had thrived, especially as a high school and college athlete. An All-American in both tennis and lacrosse, Madonna-Sue more than made up for the son that Vito never had.

New York, city and state, was solidly Democratic in 1979. Mayor Koch, Governor Carey, and Senator Moynihan were all Democrats. And the other senator—“Javits the Jew,” as Fopiano referred to him—might as well have been a Democrat. He was one of the last Rockefeller Republicans—a cross of Lincoln, Teddy Roosevelt, and Nelson's money. He was about as conservative Republican as Vito was liberal Democrat.

It was about this time that Fopiano stumbled across Alfonse D'Amato, who strangely enough, would one day become the King of the Jews. Jewish voters, that is. At that time, D'Amato was the obscure Presiding Supervisor of the Town of Hempstead, out on Long Island.

“How'd you like to be a United States Senator?” asked Vito Fopiano of D'Amato over a delightfully sautéed veal scaloppini.

“How'd I do that?” D'Amato asked, his mouth full.

“What do you get if you divide one Italian by two Jews?” asked Fopiano, as a delicate mushroom sauce inched down D'Amato's chin. There was no response from D'Amato. “A United States Senator,” said Vito Fopiano.

D'Amato's dull eyes didn't move for a second, then he nodded, swiped his chin with the sleeve of his jacket, and pumped his arm in the air. “Yes!” D'Amato said, his beady eyes ricocheting wildly in their sockets, sounding like Marv Albert.

A year later, two Jews—Jacob Javits and Elizabeth Holtzman—divided by one Italian would equal one Senator Alfonse D'Amato. It was becoming obvious that Fopiano could plot politics like a member of the Curia in a papal conclave. There were other worlds to conquer, thought Vito Fopiano. No office was too insignificant; he would start with the New York City Council.

The first thing he did was get his chief of staff, Smilin' Jackie Swift, to run as a Republican for the city council on the East Side of Manhattan. The East Side from 14th Street to 96th Street was a mixed bag. Upper-, lower-, and middle-class. Lots of rich, but most stuck solidly in the middle. Some browns, mostly white. Still a lot of ethnic Irish left over from before the war. It was the district of Roy “The Conscience of the New York State Senate” Goodman, famous for displaying his conscience on every bus in New York City every four years at election time. It became a running joke—the very notion that either Roy Goodman or the New York State Senate had a conscience, that is. And Vito Fopiano instinctively knew that this was a district where he could get Jackie Swift elected councilman.

Jackie Swift was perfect for this district. As an Irish Republican—GOPer, that is—Jackie was a total fraud. In fact, he wasn't even a Republican—he was still registered as a Democrat. But no one could wear a two-thousand-dollar suit like Jackie Swift, not even John Gotti. He was immaculate. He loved to shake hands, and he had the smoothest hands of any politician in New York. They were as pink as a baby's bottom and had done considerably less work. He had hands softer than an archbishop's, with beautiful sculptured cuticles and fingernails that gleamed from their careful biweekly shellacking. Not a Thursday or a Monday went by without Jackie Swift getting a manicure. And he was a master of the two-handed handshake. The right for the shake, and the left for the top of the other man's hand. Jackie, as he liked to say, could “cup-it with the best of them.” He had learned it by watching John Ford's
The Last Hurrah
. He loved the scene where Spencer Tracy worked the wake, “cupping” hands left and right.

But Jackie Swift had many flaws, all of which were exacerbated by his laziness. Swift's idea of a hard day was going to City Hall at 10:30 a.m., returning a few phone calls, then heading over to Harry's at the Woolworth Building for a three-hour lunch. After such a lunch Jackie often felt, well, tired. He found that a little white “Peruvian marching power”—as he called it—could get him through the rest of the day's boring meetings and another little pick-me-up could propel him onto the cocktail circuit looking wide awake. Soon Jackie began using a little cocaine in the morning, “just to get the heart started,” as he liked to say.

And he had something that Vito Fopiano envied: he was wellliked. Jackie could work a bar from one end to the other like an old Tammany politician. Soft handshake here, tap on the back there, a condolence whispered in an ear. Everyone knew he was lazy, but they all liked him. And Vito Fopiano's firebrand Republicanism (basically: let's scorch the niggers and the poor) left many feeling threatened. Jackie, like Ronald Reagan, was the antidote for the firebrand—he put a happy face on misery.

Of course, the Democrats cooperated in the election of Jackie Swift to the city council. They ran two candidates, the regular Democrat and a Democrat on the Liberal line. Vito Fopiano had taken care of that. Everyone knew that the Liberal Party was the ultimate political oxymoron—it wasn't a party, and it wasn't liberal. Fopiano had made a deal, and two divided by one still meant a win for the Republicans. Smilin' Jackie Swift was to become the second Republican on the city council.

Not that Jackie was without enemies. His career had started in 1968 as a young deputy press secretary for Paul O'Dwyer's U.S. Senate try. Over the years many had observed that Jackie Swift had come a long way—from working for a great man like Paul O'Dwyer to getting into bed with sleaze-bag like Vito Fopiano. In fact, many Democrats and lefties had never forgiven Swift for what they considered the ultimate betrayal. Even O'Dwyer himself refused to talk to Jackie. Swift had finally cornered O'Dwyer at City Hall one day and asked why the cold shoulder.

“Jackie,” said O'Dwyer in his soft County Mayo accent, “you don't understand.” O'Dwyer put his hand on Jackie's shoulder, “If me own brother had joined the Black and Tans I wouldn't talk to him either.” Jackie Swift felt as though he had been slapped across the face.

But now it was now time for Vito Fopiano to fry bigger fish. He was going to run for Congress and his beloved daughter, Madonna-Sue Fopiano, was about to take his seat in the city council. Madonna-Sue was cute. She was photogenic. And she learned quickly. The first time she saw herself on TV she was accompanying her father to the Al Smith Dinner at the Waldorf-Astoria. She was appalled at the way she looked on the small screen—dark Italian hair, shades of a mustache and a wide, frumpy butt. She went back to running, cut out the pasta, experimented with electrolysis, and bleached her hair blonde. And she was good. She came across as the girl next door. And although her opinions were carbon copies of her father's, she didn't frighten people the way Vito did. She always put a happy, perky face on things.

Perky.

That was the adjective most used to describe Madonna-Sue Fopiano. She had a perky nose. A perky personality. A perky sense of humor. And, as Jackie Swift would soon realize, she had perky tits.

But it was all an act. Madonna-Sue Fopiano couldn't give a fuck about the national debt, drugs, abortion, or the regulations on rent control. She was only doing what her father wanted her to do. Vito Fopiano thought, some said, with Alfonse D'Amato getting on in years, that maybe, just maybe, she would some day make a United States senator.

Vito was no fool. Before he left the City Council to move on to Congress he got Madonna-Sue a job in the office of his friend, Councilman Menachem Mandelstam of Brooklyn. Mandelstam was a nominal Democrat—he would later change to the Republican Party at Vito's urging—and his job was to teach Madonna-Sue the ropes, out of the presence and spotlight that Vito Fopiano inevitably had focused on him. Mandelstam was a politician made out of the same mold as Vito Fopiano—divide and conquer. He was a master at using the race card. He could play it better than Fopiano and Johnnie Cochran combined. If things got tough in Crown Heights, he would hiss one word—
schwartze
—and his problems were over. He told Fopiano and Rudy Giuliani to use it against African-American David Dinkins in the 1989 mayor contest, but Giuliani wouldn't. By 1993 he had no such qualms. “It'll look like the second parting of the Red Sea,” said Mandelstam to Fopiano and Giuliani, “with all the Jews rushing to the polls to vote against the
schwartze
.” It took Giuliani two tries to get it right, but in the end Mandelstam's theory stood up. Madonna-Sue couldn't be in better hands. She kept her mouth shut, learned the routine, and was ready when her father did his Mr.-Smith-Goes-to-Washington routine.

So when Vito went to Washington as a congressman, Madonna-Sue went to the City Council, representing the whole of Staten Island and parts of Brooklyn. She sat on the Finance, the Environmental, and Zoning committees, just as her father had. And the money, most of it meant for Vito, flowed in. It flowed in in briefcases from landlords and developers disguised as campaign contributions. Wall Street contributed in the form of lucrative preempted stock market IPOs and insider information that had once allowed Vito to make $27,000 in the market in one day. But, of course, Madonna-Sue Fopiano was for campaign finance reform. Vito would write the bills and she would introduce them and more money would flow to the elected representatives of the people of the City of New York, slowly strangling the political process into an absolute plutocracy.

And while she sat on these committees, her father managed to get three more Republican members elected to the city council. By 1990, forty-four-year-old Smilin' Jackie Swift was the minority leader and Madonna-Sue was his whip. She would often end the day in Jackie's office, and they would go out for a drink near City Hall. Then they would work their way to one of the small, discreet restaurants around the Village, where Jackie would regale her with stories of the Irish rogues he grew up with on the East Side. He was so smooth. Soon Madonna-Sue was using Jackie's cocaine. Then the whip ended up getting spanked.

Then she missed her period.

What was she to do? Jackie was terrified. “Maybe an abortion?” Jackie, the anti-abortion candidate, meekly offered.

“Marriage sounds better,” said Madonna-Sue curtly.

Marriage it was and Vito pulled the strings—St. Patrick's Cathedral and Declan Cardinal Sweeney himself presiding. The Cardinal owed Vito big-time for his opposition to abortion and this was a good way to show that the Cardinal would always back his friends to the limit.

“Lord, bless this marriage,” said Declan Cardinal Sweeney, “like you would sanctify the hands of a great surgeon—or a Hispanic shortstop.” People looked around St. Patrick's Cathedral at one another and it was the first clue that the Cardinal was beginning to lose his marbles.

Seven months later a baby girl, Vitoessa, was born at St. Vincent's Hospital in Greenwich Village. George Drumgoole, Swift's press secretary, called an impromptu press conference in the lobby of St. Vincent's to announce the birth. Abe Stein of the
New York Post
began counting on his fingers. “That's seven months, Georgie.” Drumgoole looked baffled. The reason Drumgoole looked baffled was that he was drunk. In fact, he was drunk so frequently that he was known as George the Fifth, for the fifth of bourbon he nurtured throughout the day until he could do some real drinking, come cocktail hour. Then he was terrified. Seven months! He could see the foggy
Post
headline now: GOP BABY WAS IN OVEN! “Seven months,” Abe Stein repeated, a small smile appearing on his face. This was better than covering Al Sharpton, Stein was thinking as he watched Drumgoole in an alcoholic daze try to figure out what to do.

“The baby's birth was normal,” Drumgoole muttered, “and Councilman Swift is doing fine.”

“How's the
mother
?” Roche of the
News
asked pointedly.

“It would be,” began Drumgoole onerously, “premature of me to comment on Madonna-Sue Fopiano Swift's condition at this time.”