Road to Rome

Marco checked the bullets a second time, put the holster on his belt, put on his suit jacket, and went downstairs.

This Sunday was different, the hall was quiet, no mother's picnic basket, no three hundred rowdy nephews and nieces, no one urging Marco to hurry up.Long before the news of the FBI's raid on the Hoboken shipyard, Marco sent his mother and sister's family far away from New York City, booked a comfortable but remote vacation cabin near the US-Canada border, and arranged various excursions , bird watching and whiskey distillery visits.Even in the worst-case scenario, Marco knows that mom and sister can at least escape into the woods.But if that happened, he probably wouldn't live to hear their end.

It was my father's idea to attend Mass as usual.Marco prefers to stay at home, or go to the bar run by his family, treat the dock workers to drinks, and listen to what new news is circulating on the street.But my father thought that if all the Costa family suddenly missed Mass, it would attract more unnecessary attention.Marco had to go to the church early in the morning, and the performance was all right.

The congregation looked the same as usual, there were no conspicuous strangers, and they were all Italian immigrant families from the diocese.Marco sat alone in the first row, singing mechanically, standing up, sitting down, listening, smiling, and keeping an eye out for the entrance and exit.If the German gang decides to take revenge, they know where to find Marco.The Costa family's Sunday schedule hasn't changed over the years.

Holy Communion completed.There was another song after that, but the children who were too young were already impatient, and the people near the gate began to move silently, taking the young children who were ready to cry at any time outside.Marco went out the side door, smoked a cigarette, and watched the people scattered on the front steps.No one came to talk to him, and no one seemed to give him a second look.Marco glanced at the hedge, of course Antonio wasn't there.

He went back to the church, took a spot where everyone could see him, pretended to pray, and wondered if der Seefahrer knew who had provided the FBI with an anonymous tip.For a wharf gang, the name Voyager isn't exactly a new idea.Father knew the previous leader of the Seefahrer and thought he was crueler than wise, and Marco had the same evaluation of the current leader Bruch.The old navigator died of a stroke last March, but it wasn't until last August that Bruch ended the long infighting, stepping on the backs of many corpses and grabbing the gang's reins.Maybe Bruch hasn't been able to rebuild the intelligence network that he personally destroyed during the power struggle, maybe he can't imagine the relationship between the Italians and the church, maybe he's busy torturing some hapless sailor at the moment, one by one Cut off his fingers and ask who leaked the news.Look at the risks I'm taking for you.Marco opened his eyes, looked at the crucifix behind the altar, and stared at the drooping head under the crown of thorns.But I bet these little feuds don't interest you.He drove home without a hitch, not even at a red light.No one drove around him and shot him into a sieve, not yet today.

-

The Costa family runs a bar in a longshore workers' settlement.My father bought it from a down-and-out Irish immigrant.If the Irishman had lived, he would have found the pub exactly as he remembered it, small and old, still named "McNeill," and the sign, door, and doorframes the same bad-quality fir wood that had been eroded by sea fog for years, Swelling, distorting, blackening, and blending into the surrounding gray apartment.The tables and chairs haven't been changed either, they've just gotten older and dirtier.A pipe-smoking sailor had somehow ignited the Christmas decorations in previous winters, leaving permanent burn marks on the ceiling to the right of the entrance.

Even counting the bar counter, the bar can only provide eighteen seats at most.However, customers seldom linger, and usually stand directly beside the bar, pour wine down their throats, put on their hats, and leave without saying a word.Whiskey sales soar on paydays, while bland, cheap beer sells the most at other times.

After Pearl Harbor, Marco installed new wiring and installed a radio on the bar, which attracted three times as many sailors and dockworkers as a magnet, especially when the President's "fireside chats" were on air.But this evening, it was a wartime national debt advertisement, and not everyone was interested.Several porters chatted about the arson case that happened not long ago, guessing who set fire to the gate of the New York Archbishop's mansion in the middle of the night, and threw Molotov cocktails into the room facing the street.One of the porters' uncles ran a glass factory and had a big order to replace the windows for the bishop's residence.That's not all the damage, masons were called in, doctors were there, and a priest was almost burned to death in his room.

Marco was lazily drinking his second glass of gin and tonic tonight behind the bar. Hearing this, he couldn't help raising his head, glanced at the porter who was talking, and immediately looked away, pretending to look for lemon slices, so as not to let One could see that he was interested in the subject.Antonio lives in one of the "rooms facing the street". The third floor is not too low, but it's not higher than the throwing range of Molotov cocktails.The room looked purely designed for function rather than comfort. Marco had noticed it when he sneaked in to deliver the "signal" earlier. There was no bathroom, no carpet, and even the chairs were hard wood without cushions.He left the brown paper bag on the desk, which didn't even have a picture frame on it.

The waiter opened the kitchen door with his shoulder, and walked to the porter's table with grilled sausages and hot French fries.Marco stopped him, took the tray, dug out a few packets of potato chips, walked around the bar, handed out free snacks to regular customers, chatted with them one by one, and finally delivered the food to its destination, asking customers if they needed more There was too much salt and pepper, and he pretended to go to the kitchen, but the porter shouted to hold him back, and found a chair for him with great fanfare. Marco shrugged and sat down with a gesture of "that's all right".

They talked for a while about Costa Sr.'s health, during which time no one mentioned the word "prison" and everyone pretended that Marco's father was just out on a trip.Then Marco chatted about the priest he knew together, and naturally asked about the recent "church arson case".The porters hurriedly corrected that it was not the "church" that had been set on fire, but the residence of the bishop.Realizing that they were actually better informed than Marco Costa, the three dock workers were very proud and rushed to provide various details, trying to appear more knowledgeable than the others.

The fire alarm went off around four o'clock, and all three gave consistent times.When firefighters arrived, they thought the whole house was doomed, but after kicking down the gate, there was no smoke in the corridors and stairs.The other fire started upstairs.Fearing that someone might be trapped, firefighters immediately went upstairs.

At this point, the accounts diverged, with one porter saying that someone in the kitchen had also come out in pajamas, while the other two insisted that the mansion was actually an office and that no one should be living in it, since the cardinal was out of state recently.Well, maybe a cook or two or a cleaner, but they have their own quarters and won't be there at night!Marco let them argue for a while, stole a chip, bit off half, and chewed slowly.Finally, the porter who claimed his uncle was in the glass business raised his hand, stopped the other two, and turned to Marco.

"Anyway, there are actually people living upstairs. On the third floor, there is a priest. I don't know if he is dead after being carried out. He has been sent to the hospital."

Marco ate the remaining half of the French fries: "Unlucky guy."

The porters murmured agreement.

"And why would he spend the night in it?" asked the man closest to Marco.

"Probably coming from somewhere else and needing free accommodation," guessed another porter, beer foam quivering on his mustache.

"Maybe a secretary or something."

"Can't you be a cook? Can a priest be a cook?"

"Why should a priest be a cook? You fool."

"How can your stinky fish head get any better?"

"But why would anyone want to destroy the Episcopal Palace?" Marco inserted a question at the right time, preventing the conversation from spiraling into meaningless swear words, "If I was a radical atheist, I was struggling to find a little gasoline, I would rather go It's easier to get in the papers, too—not that I want to be in the papers that way."

The porters suddenly stopped talking and exchanged glances with each other.Marco pretended not to notice, but secretly cursed in his heart.Just as he was thinking about how to escape back to the bar naturally, the porter with beard stained with beer foam ticked his fingers at him, motioning him to approach, and lowered his voice.

"I heard it all from the street, and I'm only telling you for your father's sake. After listening to it—"

"After listening, we never talked about the church and the arson, I came to deliver the food, said hello, stole some chips, that's all."

The porter winked at him and wiped the foam off his beard with the palm of his hand. "Did you know that a dozen Germans were caught in Hoboken the other day?"

More than knowing, Marco shrugged: "It was said several times on the radio."

"Wharf rumors, the Catholic Church bought several gangs and let them deal with 'voyagers'."

"Church!" Marco pretended to be surprised, deliberately raised his voice, and immediately lowered it, "How could they mix with port mice like us?"

"You don't know about this either?"

Marco shook his head.

"It is conceivable that Bruch was mad. But no one knows which gangs the group of priests colluded with, when they talked about it, how they talked about it, and whether they found a middleman. If so," the porter cleared Throat, looked away, "Some people may suspect that it is an Italian, but of course I don't know anything, so I can't be sure."

"It's not unreasonable to think so." Marco answered.

All three at the table stared at him for a moment, perhaps wondering why he wasn't angry.Marco put on a serious look, then laughed, and patted the bearded porter's arm: "I have to say that fortunately my father was 'inside' at the time, otherwise it would be too difficult to clear the suspicion."

The three dock workers competed to express that they never doubted the Costa family for a second.Even though they didn't like Bruch and his group of rabid "navigators", assisting "outsiders" to interfere with dock affairs was ultimately a kind of betrayal, and the old Costa would definitely not do such a thing.

Faithful words are much worse than bad-sounding words, my father always thought so, but don't tell me it's a matter of manners.Marco waived the beer fee for this table and gave three extra glasses of whiskey.He went back behind the bar, wiped his glasses for a while, and made sure that no one was paying attention to him, then opened the door and walked into the kitchen, and left the bar through the back door.

This is good news.He sat for a while in the dark car, looking at the harbor, where the sea turned to turbulent asphalt in the night.Bruch didn't know which side of the burrow the rat was in, so he set fire to it, hoping to smoke some prey.This is very good. It was originally entrusted by the church to let the church deal with the mad dogs they themselves provoked.My contract has terminated.He started the engine, and the headlights turned on, unexpectedly showing a pair of man and woman caressing each other in the bushes. The two screamed in surprise, then laughed, and hid in the depths of the shadows with their clothes in their arms.Marco rolled his eyes, stepped on the accelerator, and the car bumped across a gravel field and turned onto the road illuminated by street lights.He'd be home by eleven, and if his father was still up, he'd grab a bottle of whiskey and talk to him about everything he'd heard tonight.

However, a thought trembled in my mind, like a mushroom that sprang up quickly after a rainy day. Before that, maybe I could go and see Antonio. It was not difficult to guess which hospital it was. The church always likes to send its own people to the same hospital. In a hospital run by charity.Just a glance, it won't take long.He quickly dismissed the idea, but changed his mind before getting on the bridge, glanced at his watch through the streetlight, and turned towards the hospital.

Twenty-five minutes later, Marco Costa slipped a one-dollar bill into the hand of a janitor and walked through the staff entrance into the quiet Lourdes Teaching Hospital.

The author has something to say:

The bar and the hospital are purely fictitious