The Consigliere, A Novel

CHAPTER ONE THE LIE Christmas, 1967 “There are only two races of men, decent men and indecent.” ~ Viktor Frankl ~ I am an indecent man. When my son recently asked me which type of man I was— I opted to lie. If the axiom is true, that peace follows justice, a time frame must be included into the fold. As three long decades had passed since the grief and consequential justice of 1933, and peace persisted to be a foreign concept to me. It felt like it was something locked inside a vault I couldn’t open, as four vital treasures in my life were gone. I lost my mother, my sister, and my beloved Judy on the same day, and the final gem and ultimate treasure—my daughter, last year. How could any man be right after life stripped all his joys away? Father Carmen told me many years ago, time heals, but I had come to realize that the passage of time was no cure for the losses of the heart and for the pains trapped in one’s soul. On most days, and in all degrees of climate, I did most of my thinking under the large oak tree overlooking a pond on my ranch located at the base of the high Sierra Nevada Mountains, and wondered if darkness would always prevail over me. One morning during the Christmas holidays, I sat and smoothed over the tan leather cover of a journal my oldest child, Andrew, gave me on Christmas Eve. I combed through its pages to a series of questions he wrote in his meticulous handwriting for me to answer. Even though my entries were blank, I wondered if perhaps at last the stars were aligned to set my pen to paper, to speak the truth, and begin to heal. I looked up towards the house and saw my son walking down the graveled path with a pair of ice skates draped over his shoulder. Seeing him startled me out of a trance as I stared out at a frozen pond located at a basin on our ranch. “Merry Christmas, Paps. Do you like your gift? Please tell me you’re going to help me out and write your thoughts down on those pages.” He tossed the skates onto the rocky ground. “Come on, you’re an alumni of Fordham and get the deep, intellectual approaches of the Jesuits,” Andrew said, taking the journal out of my hand as he took a place on the bench. “Hey, that’s my book, give it back son,” I said. He handed it back in jest. “Come on, help me out Paps, I need your answers for my thesis project. And remember, you’re the one who pushed me to get a Master’s Degree.” I looked away from my son and flipped over the pages in the journal once more. Staring over the frozen pond again, I sighed with quiet laughter and thought, God surely had a sense of humor with me. As there I was, Declan Quinn, a gangster on a sabbatical, who had a son, a would-be seminarian studying philosophy with the Jesuits, who wanted me to answer ten existential questions on the meaning of life. Indeed, I believed God punished men like me with irony. Using the scabs from our past to rip off our wounds without warning, he forced us to look straight at the sun and burn our souls of the sins we tried to hide. I understood the justice of it—I deserved to suffer for the life I had chosen and longed to laugh along with the ironic jest from the creator above. But knew, only decent men had peace. Nonetheless, life continued to move forward in spite of my mood. As Andrew sat with me in silence, we watched a cluster of teens come down the path to prepare for their scrimmage on the icy pond. “So, can you help me or what, these final courses are killing me? And don’t sweat it—I’ll give you a month to finish.” He looked at his younger brother in a group readying to play on the ice. “Hey Frankie, I’ll step in for goalie if you need.” Frankie nodded. “Sure bro, but you might mess up your sacred, holy hands if you’re not careful.” Andrew shrugged and didn’t respond, seemingly too mature for banter between brothers. On still mornings such as this, I loved how the majestic mountain range gave a backdrop of shadowy hews of pastel lavender gray with heavy snowcaps blanketing them, as they reflected onto the heavy pool of ice. Bundled against the cold, I watched the teenage boys dress in their various team jerseys. Andrew draped his ice skates over his shoulder again, as he stood up to walk toward the ice. He wore a gray Mammoth Mountain sweatshirt, with a burgundy Fordham Rams baseball cap on his head, looking more ready for a game of baseball then hockey. He is full of charm, tall with a smooth, intelligent style, looks like my mother’s side of the family. Slap an Irish brogue into his California accent, and you would have a clone of my grandfather, as his boney facial structure and deep-set emerald green eyes came from strong Quinn traits. Frankie, on the other hand, takes after my wife’s family and looks straight off the boat from Italy. He’s a dark, handsome, brawny kid, whose focus is more on hunting deer and chasing girls than doing his homework. I held a pen in my hand, as the journal with Andrew’s questions laid unopened on my lap. Andrew looked at me with a defeated expression on his face. “I don’t need your doldrums, Paps. Can see it in your eyes, you have no clue what to write, do you?