Our Lady Of Greenwich Village by Dermot McEvoy

illusionist without ideals.”
    Luigi saw O’Rourke was in genuine distress. He knew O’Rourke liked to avoid confrontation if he could, and now it was obvious that O’Rourke couldn’t look him in the eye. He was slowly turning his body away from Luigi as they talked. “It’s alright, Tone,” Luigi said quietly, feeling for his friend, “it’s just the dybbuk .”
    â€œThe what?”
    â€œThe dybbuk ,” repeated Luigi. “You got the dybbuk .” For a minute O’Rourke thought it was a disease. “You’ve been possessed by a demon.” O’Rourke looked skeptical. “It’s from Jewish folklore,” Luigi added.
    â€œA dybbuk ?” said O’Rourke.
    â€œA dybbuk ,” repeated Luigi, then added, “you always try to do good, Tone, but there’s a terrible side to your business, politics. It is a business of the bought and sold. No matter what good you do, your means of doing it—deception fueled with money and lies—has its evil side. You want to do good like your heroes—Roosevelt, the Kennedy brothers—but they sold part of their souls to do good. You are no exception. First and foremost, you are a politician, and that puts your soul in jeopardy. Most of them don’t care; they check their conscience at the door. You, Tone, I’m glad to say, are different.”
    â€œMoe,” said O’Rourke, “I think you’re more priest than doctor.” Luigi smiled. “I must be the perfect politician,” O’Rourke went on sadly, “because I am delighted by idiots and thrilled by stupidity.” Dybbuks , thought O’Rourke, fucking dybbucks .
    He still possessed the conscience of his mother and the nuns. There was right and there was wrong and O’Rourke knew the difference. It had been taught to him first by his mother and the indoctrination had continued with the Sisters of Charity at St. Bernard’s Parochial School on 13th Street in the West Village. He still remembered the time he had stolen a peapod at an Italian fruiters on the corner of West 4th and 12th Streets in 1950. He had been apprehended by his mother who made him apologize and surrender the kidnapped pod to the proprietor. He had never forgotten that. Later, the good nuns had continued his mother’s work with the help of the Baltimore Catechism . The Red Chinese and all their devilish brain-washing schemes had nothing on the Sisters of Charity and the Baltimore Catechism . He still remembered what Sister Perpetua had said to her first grade class: “What you are in the first grade, you’ll be for the rest of your life.” Years later he sometimes thought about what Sister Perpetua had said, but discarded it as the philosophy of a narrow, sheltered woman. But lately he had begun to rethink Sister Perpetua’s logic and realized she was probably right. Nearly half a century later he thanked both his mother and Sister Perpetua for the strong hand they had applied to his moral till.
    Suddenly he brightened. “Did you see this?” He picked up the Daily News headline about Jackie Swift. “Do you believe we have morons like this representing us?”
    Luigi read and started laughing. “The Virgin Mary,” he said, “has Swift flipped his lid? What’s the story, Cyclops?”
    â€œSwift,” said Reilly, “had nothing to do with the story. The Virgin shit, it’s pure fiction, I guarantee it. That drunken press secretary of his, Drumgoole, must have fucked up the real story from his chief of staff, Brogan. I bet the story behind the story is a doozy. What I do know is that they were screwin’ and snortin’, and Swift’s heart attacked him.”
    â€œIs that really true?” asked Luigi.
    â€œSure it is,” said Reilly. “Word on the street is that Smilin’ Jack loves the white powder.”
    â€œI’ve heard rumors,” said