CATHOLIC BOYS
"I recommend it highly"
----Bookviews
"A harrowing tale of sexual abuse and murder. . .Aficionados of "Law & Order" will like this book."
----New Jersey Star-Ledger
"An entertaining story"
----Italian Americana
SYNOPSIS: A character-driven suspense thriller set in the Bronx in 1960. Alex Ramsey, a housing detective grieving for the death of his son, hunts a killer who targets teenage boys.
Published by Livingston Press. Available at bookstores and online at Amazon.com and other e-tail outlets.
from the novel
Ramsey let himself into his house and stood listening to the silence. The
TV’s light glared across the cushions of the sofa. Uncle Milty in a dress
and a blonde wig pranced across the screen. It was Helen’s practice of late to leave the set
on, without sound. She would rarely sit and watch it, but relentlessly the characters moved in pantomime through a world quiet as dreams. He turned the set off, then climbed the stairs.
At her door, he listened first then knocked. He leaned in to find her curled on her
side. The curtains had been drawn tight across the windows. Only a night light
offered relief against the blackness. She wanted light when she slept, but not the silver-
blue light from the street lamps--the color of grave stones, she said--which gave her a
cold feeling. He didn’t argue with her when she made judgments like that, just as he
hadn’t argued when she decided that it might be better if she slept alone “for a while.”
She had suffered so much already he wanted to give her whatever she asked, whatever
she thought she needed. In the shadow of his grief, it had been easy to conceal his
disappointment at not having her beside him through the night.
She slept with her right hand pressed to the center of her chest.
The way the small fist rose and fell with her breathing made Ramsey think of the words
from the Sunday prayer mea culpa mea culpa mea maxima culpa. Through my most
grievous fault. He pulled the door closed against the gin’s bitter smell.
In the kitchen he made himself a sandwich but when he sat down he left it on the
plate and lit a cigarette instead. He was lighting his second cigarette when he heard
Helen’s slow, unsteady step and he rose immediately, crossing the living room to stand
at the foot of the stairs--in case. We begin in hope, end by adjusting. Where had he read
that?
He knew enough to turn the living room lamp on rather than the overhead light,
just as he knew not to reach too quickly for her arm. When Helen emerged from her room
she liked to do so in stages, without harsh light, with a minimum of intrusion. As she
descended in her nightgown, her eyes blank and unblinking above her high cheekbones, she managed to look regal, as she often did despite her drinking and he could not easily read her mood, the distance he would have to travel. When he offered his hand she smiled and let him guide her to the kitchen, but once there she disengaged herself. “That awful smoke,” she said.
“I’m sorry, dear. I thought you were in bed for the evening.” He waited for her to
sit but she seemed contented where she was, leaning against the counter. He took his seat
and snuffed out the cigarette.
“You haven’t eaten your sandwich.” Her tone was mildly reprimanding, almost
playful. He thought for a moment a glimmer illuminated her blue-grey eyes that were
dreamy in an unsettling way.
“There was a death last night.”
“Yes, I know. It’s been on the news all day.”
“A child--”
“I don’t want to hear the details.” The flat stare she wore like a mask drove the
light from her eyes.
“You know I’ll have to be involved in the investigation.”
“After what you’ve--we’ve--been through?”
“As Chief of Security--”
“You can’t. You simply can’t.”
Ramsey’s eyes met hers. “We’ve got to move on, don’t we? At some point?”
“Where?” she said so softly, so helplessly that he came to her and put his hands on her shoulders. She turned away but he held her firmly. “Look at me, Helen.”
She stared at his shirt or maybe her eyes were closed, he couldn’t tell. Then her
head fell against his shoulder. “We’ve got to move on,” he said gently, “the both of us.
Together or separately. But we’ve got to.”
She fought free of his embrace and stood at the sink, staring into the empty
basin. “When you left the Department, you should have gone back into law, not Security
work. You’re too good for that.”
She was moving into familiar territory. Normally he would have changed the
subject but tonight he said, “What makes me too good?”
“You know that as well as I do.”
“No, tell me.”
He knew what she would say--she had been reminding him of this ever since he
joined the PD ten years ago, reminding him of it again when he left the Department last
year--but he listened to her recital in the kitchen’s silence as if hearing it for the first time.
Maybe he would believe it this time, maybe it would help him sort through the confusion
and figure out where he was heading. He was educated, she told him, he held a law
degree from Fordham, he knew that man was capable of higher things, of yearnings
nobler than anything the lowlifes and criminals he chased could even imagine. He’d
been a valued member of the City Council legal staff, not someone who hung back
with the apes.
The long hours of the day ganged up on him and he leaned toward her, shoulders
sagging, hands stuffed in his pockets. You know I was never satisfied being a lawyer.”
“That’s something I’ll never understand.”
“And something you’ll never forgive, either.”
Tears clouded her eyes. “How can I?”
Ramsey wanted to explain, as he’d tried to so many times, that in committee
meetings, in paneled offices, he had felt locked away from the world, out of touch: a bit
player in a massive legal team. He’d come from a line of practical people--his own
father had been a refrigerator repairman—who held jobs with a measurable effect. A man
is someone who gets things done, that’s what he believed. Someone who moved in the
world of real and ordinary people and who managed to make a difference in that world.
Keeping the streets in order was such a job. That had given him purpose. But she knew
that. So he said nothing.
“How can I?” She turned to the cabinets, opening and closing doors until she
found what she was looking for: an unfinished bottle of gin.
“Please,” he said. She hesitated, gripping an empty glass. Then she reached for
the bottle and filled the glass--no ice, no lemon--and took it with her, climbing the stairs
without looking back.
He slid open the door to the porch and propped his arms on the rail. The
yard, a double lot situated on a corner, afforded him a sense of privacy unusual for this
section of the Bronx, this neighborhood of one and two-family homes south of Gun Hill
Road.
The air smelled of basil and parsley, though in their own garden the grass had
grown meadow-high. The hedges had to be trimmed, the flower beds replanted. One of
these days he hoped Helen would get back to it. One of these days—he’d been saying
that for nearly sixteen months now, as he watched her lose interest in everything: the
garden first, then her crocheting, walks in the neighborhood, the poetry discussion group
she belonged to at the library, the woman’s club at church.
He smoked a cigarette halfway through, before following her upstairs.
She sat on her bed, her back against the wall, the half-finished glass of gin in her
hand. “You didn’t call today.”
“I called four times, dear. You didn’t answer the phone.” He had arranged for
Mrs. DeLorenzo, one of the neighbors, to look in on her and he told himself again that he
had adjusted to her habit of not picking up the phone when she didn’t want her grief
violated. He took the glass from her hand and set it down. “Maybe you’re
right. Maybe I should think about going back into law.”
He waited for Helen’s voice to break the silence. It was easier when she
was blaming him. Then he could blame himself as well. It seemed the simplest way to
explain what happened to them. If he hadn’t become a cop, she wouldn’t have been left
alone so much, especially at night. She wouldn’t have had to drink to take the edge off
her loneliness, even during her pregnancy, especially during her pregnancy when he was
out collaring petty thieves and juvenile delinquents and she was left alone with her fears
and her depression. If she hadn’t started drinking maybe Evan wouldn’t have been born
the way he was. And if Evan had been normal, he might be alive today, he might not
have acted so heedlessly. And if Evan hadn’t died she wouldn’t have had to start drinking
so heavily again, would she? The rationale went on and on. It was Ramsey’s fault. It was
the lie that kept them from moving on.
He took her hand and held it, examining the pale skin crossed with blue veins,
the thin nervous fingers and perfectly manicured nails. What had become of the woman
he’d fallen in love with? She let her head fall against his shoulder and the smell of her
body lotion quickened his senses.
She didn’t stop him when he slipped his hand inside her robe, her skin cool
beneath his touch, his hand rising from her belly and the contours of her ribs to feel the
fullness of her breasts. For so long now she had refused to come to their room but
sometimes it would happen like this, weeks or even months apart, on the narrow confines
of a single bed. Always with the light on, always with the smell of gin on her breath.
There was no room for invention. He lifted the gown from her and she lay
beneath him, gripping his shoulders. Her cry was loud and terrible as if he had reached
inside her deepest wound to tear it open end to end. One of her hands settled on his face,
fingers splayed like a mask, and she pushed hard in a way that forced his face sideward
while her other hand, around his neck, pulled him closer.
She moved against him and cried out a second time, a wailing sound that made
him shudder. It filled the silence and she cried out again and again. It seemed to him one
continuous sound, rising and falling and rising again, gathering in this one place, this one
act, all the accumulated sadness of his life. He closed his eyes against the yellow glow of
the night light that reminded him of his room as a child, the nights he was sick with fever,
with chills, nights so long he thought he would never see real light again.
From the novel’s prologue:
The air smelled of rotting fish.
The girl, breathing through her mouth to avoid it, heard the river gurgling at the
edges of the mudflats, and beyond that the whoosh of cars on the parkway towering on
cement buttresses above the swamp grass.
In the firelight she began to undress--her top first, a white jersey that fit tight, and then her shorts, hooking her thumbs inside the waistline and pushing down, first one side then the other, a motion more jagged than she intended. She had done it before and they liked it, even though she wasn’t yet graceful like the women in the movies. From the shadows at the fire’s edge, they cheered her on.
Baby, baby! Sweet baby!
Her shorts fell to her feet and she kicked free of them. Naked now, she stood
waiting. She was thin with small breasts that she apologized for by hunching forward
The heat of the fire warmed her back. Damper, cooler air from the river tingled her arms and legs. Usually they played these games in the hallways but she liked the thrill of this, outdoors, only several hundred yards from the housing project, swamp grass and mud sucking at her toes, boys calling to her from the shadows.
A song played inside her head: come to me baby, whisper in my ear. . . . She
closed her eyes and let her body drift with the music, this way and that, far across the river and the swamp grass that in her mind went on and on forever--until hands wrapped around her arms, thick and calloused hands that squeezed through to her bones. It hurt a little but she kept her eyes closed while the hands brought her down to the grass and mud.
Spread ‘em, honey, a voice said.
She did as she was told, opening her legs and lying back so that the grass tickled
and the rank smell of mud bloomed around her. Her boyfriend, the leader, tall and hard in his black leather jacket, shoved a boy toward her. She didn’t know his name but had seen him around: playground, candy store, wherever. He was pale, thin as she was, shaking like he was cold, like it wasn’t hot-as-hell June.
Faggot here’s got something to prove, her boyfriend said. He shoved the boy again.
Don’t cha? Don’t cha? The boy stumbled but regained his balance, bent double, arms
flailed back. Her boyfriend grabbed his neck and squeezed, the boy making gurgling noises like the river, her boyfriend squeezing tighter, shaking him harder as she watched the kid’s eyes bulge like they were filling with air; for a moment she thought they might pop, spitting blood and membrane all over her.
Don’t cha?
The boy was kneeling now, his narrow face wagging between the knobby posts of
her knees, her boyfriend forcing him down until his face was flush against her, wiping
like a rag across hair and the folds of her crack, the boy coughing and choking.
He a faggot homo pole-sucker, or a man? Which one? Which one?
A man, the boy said, choking, barely getting the words out. A man like you.
Her boyfriend let go of the kid’s neck and the others came forward. Two of them held the boy while the others ripped open his belt and yanked his shirt and pants off. He crawled to his knees and cringed like a dog. And then the kick came: her boyfriend’s black shit-kicker on his butt, sending him sprawling on top of her. Prove you’re not a faggot. Prove it!
She watched him prop himself on his hands like he was going to do pushups
over her, his eyes focused on her throat or neck, anywhere but her face. He froze there
propped like that: soft between his legs, shriveled up. Her boyfriend shouted, Prove it, homo fucking pansy.
The boy’s eyes shut tight. Lips clenched, neck veins taut, he began to move: slow at first then faster, up down, up down, up down: crying now, but faster faster, his soft flesh squashing against her thighs. He held her tighter and tighter and she squirmed to free herself, sliding side to side; but he clung to her, sobbing and pumping harder than ever, too hard, way too hard she was thinking--what kind of a freak are you anyway?--and then he was pushing his face between her breasts like he wanted to crawl inside through flesh and bone to somewhere deep and dark and quiet and then he quit everything except the sobbing, louder now, too loud she thought for such a skinny kid.
She tried to push him away--he was disgusting, no man at all, not like the other
guys, strong and hard before she even put her mouth there--but she didn’t have to push
very long because the other boys were dragging him to his feet, pulling and shoving him.
He was spinning between them, between punches and kicks, words and groans, faggot
faggot faggot faggot, spinning spinning, a thin lithe shadow colliding with the larger
shadows of the older boys, get him get the little faggot. No chance--he had no chance at
all--and for the first time that night she felt both fear and sorrow rise inside her like trapped birds.
There was something helplessly soft about the boy: for a moment against the river’s dark motion his body seemed to glow, the firelight like a fading sun setting on his kin.