Our Lady Of Greenwich Village Read Free

could only muse what a middle-class Irish respectable gesture it was. “Didn’t have time to procure some lace curtains?” he inquired.
    His mood darkened further as he looked to table number one, up front by the window. That’s where the filthy deed was consummated. For it was there one early March night in 1968, that as a punk kid, he had sat at a table with Kennedy and pleaded with him to run for president.
    â€œThe hottest places in hell,” O’Rourke told Kennedy, as he threw one of the senator’s favorite quotes in his face, “are reserved for those who in times of great moral crisis, maintain their neutrality.” O’Rourke’s words—spoken with the rotten arrogance of the pure-ofheart—had clearly hurt the senator.
    â€œYou’re right,” Kennedy said. “I’ll have to run.” There was no joy in his voice, only dread at what he knew was coming.
    O’Rourke should have just kept his fucking trap shut. But back then, he thought he had saved the world. Little did he know he had set in motion the first major hemorrhage of his soul. There were ghosts here, all right, but they were not talking to O’Rourke right now. They were letting him stew.
    â€œToo bad about Hogan,” he said, coming back to the bar.
    â€œThe lung cancer,” said Shipman, lighting up another unfiltered Camel in defiance of the city’s anti-smoking law, “actually metastasized into his testicles.”
    â€œJesus,” said O’Rourke.
    â€œThey had to snip them off.”
    â€œWhat happened to Barney?”
    â€œYou won’t believe this,” said Shipman. “The dog got cancer of the balls, too.”
    â€œSounds like sympathy balls.”
    Shipman looked at O’Rourke for a second, then began to laugh. “You still have that vicious sense of humor, I see.”
    â€œDid they snip Barney?”
    â€œNo,” said Shipman, “they put him to sleep. But they buried them together in Green-Wood Cemetery in Brooklyn, within a stone’s throw of mobster Albert Anastasia. The mayor himself cut through the red tape to get the dog in.”
    â€œYou’re shitting me.”
    â€œIt’s the truth,” said Shipman, pointing to the framed Cyclops Reilly article on the wall. O’Rourke got up to take a closer look at Reilly’s “Eye on New York” Daily News column: DRUG BUSTING DUO REUNITED IN DEATH. There was a photo of a big coffin and a little coffin about to be lowered into the ground. A priest stood to the side, sprinkling the boxes with holy water. Reilly’s piece started out, “I don’t care if it rains or freezes, Hogan and Barney will be safe in the arms of Jesus.” O’Rourke started to laugh. “Cyclops doing okay?”
    â€œHe’s the best,” said Shipman. “You made him a star. He won that Pulitzer covering your campaign, and now he’s on TV all the time. Yeah,” he said, laughing at the thought, “you made him a pundit.”
    O’Rourke laughed, too. “Who would have thought it?” he said. “The pervasive and invasive power of television. The instrument that turns American minds to dust.”
    They both looked up at the TV, which was muted. Stock prices ran on a grid on the bottom; above it a generic blond news jockey was yakking away.
    â€œWhere do they find them?” said O’Rourke, gesturing toward the TV anchorman. “If he was any blonder, he’d be transparent.”
    â€œThey miss you,” said Shipman. O’Rourke shook his head. “The cable networks.”
    O’Rourke laughed, thinking about the summer of his infamy eight years ago. It wasn’t that long ago, but it seemed a century or more to O’Rourke. “You know, the cable networks still call me in Wexford.”
    â€œWhat do you do?” asked Shipman.
    â€œI hang up.”
    There was silence broken only by the ship’s