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So Canidy told himself that it wasn’t the ugly under-belly of the mob that really disturbed him.
It was more the fact that he innately, and perhaps too easily, understood how and why the mafia worked.
And he understood that he now had to work with it—“to dance with the devil,” as Colonel Donovan had said.
What the mob does is not a good thing. But it is better than anything that Hitler and Mussolini have in mind.
Just shy of crossing Canal Street, Canidy passed a series of storefronts and noticed the window of one in particular that advertised a sale on religious books.
It caused him to wonder, as he continued north, how much of an impact the news of his association with the underworld would make on his father. That is, if he told him—and he had absolutely no intention of even suggesting it to him.
The Reverend George Crater Canidy, Ph.D., D.D., was the headmaster of St. Paul’s School in Cedar Rapids, Iowa. He was a kind and good man—a true gentle man—whose faith in the Lord Jesus Christ was surpassed—if that was at all possible—by his dedication to the education and well-being of the students put under his care.
The Reverend Dr. Canidy lived in the Episcopal school’s dormitory, in a small, separate apartment there, and had his office nearby, which allowed him to spend every possible minute on the mission that he devoutly believed to be one of the highest and most noble callings a man could have.
Dick Canidy loved his father. He respected him—genuinely, in the truest definition of the word, not the bastardized version that he had used with that Guinea sonofabitch just now.
The Reverend Dr. Canidy had had his share of disappointments in life, yet he always had stayed strong while he suffered them silently.
He had long been a widower; Dick had no real memory of his mother—other than a vague recollection of visits to a hospital room with a bad odor in her final months—but knew that her illness had not been a short one and that his father had shouldered the responsibility of her care with remarkable strength and quiet courage.
Afterward, he also had delicately handled the new role of single parent and teacher.
That might have been his toughest challenge, Canidy thought now, and grinned mischievously as he approached Houston Street.
Young Dick had been somewhat difficult, and the troubles really reached a head when a young man name Eric Fulmar was enrolled a grade behind him in the lower school.
Eric had arrived at St. Paul’s with a bad attitude—he knew that he was being stuck somewhere safe for the convenience of his mother, Monica Carlisle, the vivacious and—if you believed the studio publicity people—young actress prone to playing coed roles.
It absolutely was not good PR for Miss Carlisle to have a son—and one so old!—and, even worse, if the truth got out, a child who was unwanted, whose father was a German industrialist close to Hitler.
So off Eric was shipped to Iowa.
There, he and Canidy made fast friends, and in no time they were boys being boys—the pinnacle of which was misbehavior that resulted in piles of fall leaves being set afire…and their flames accidentally following a path to the fuel tank of a Studebaker President.
The explosion was spectacular, as was the reaction of everyone to it.
To smooth things over, Miss Carlisle’s studio sent a sharp young lawyer—one by the name of Stanley Fine—and with the miracle of a calm demeanor and a checkbook, all was made right.
Everything except the disappointment young Dick saw in his father’s eyes.
It was much the same look that, not much later, when Dick was determined to learn to fly at the local airfield, he had seen in his father’s eyes when it became clear that the son had no desire to follow the path that the father had hoped—into either the church or academia.
Canidy, dodging a cab as he crossed Tenth Street, knew that it would be quite the same look if the Reverend Dr. Canidy were to learn of his most recent dealings with the murderous and the corrupt.
Dad would not care for it one bit. He’s like most people. He wants to believe in the good, and only the good—and that’s okay.
It just leaves dealing with the bad to guys like me, and that’s okay, too.
Except…except maybe that’s what’s so troubling to me.
How can a father and son be so different?
Then again, maybe we’re not.
It’s not as though I’m dealing with these goddamned Guinea gangsters because I want to; in fact, I don’t want to.
I’m doing it beca
