Down All the Days

By Christopher Basso

When Liam O’Shea, a hardworking law student, inherits an unexpected fortune from the father he hardly knew, he quickly learns the perils of easy wealth are many and the road to happiness is rarely paved with gold. Feeling trapped by the guilt of the mother he failed in her final days and the ghost of the father he’ll never know, he bails on a life of responsibility to embrace the louche slacker fantasies of a latter-day Lost Generation expat. As he stumbles through an ever-changing cast of well-heeled European misfits and halfwits, he tests the age old mystic conceit that for a wounded, wandering soul, the closest to the poison is where you’ll sometimes find the cure.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Christopher Basso
• Release date: Apr 12, 2018
• ISBN: 9781370242627

Christopher Basso

Christopher M. Basso is an American author who grew up in New York and Chicago. He has worked in the publishing industry for many years, as both an editor and production designer. He currently lives in New York’s Hudson Valley where he is currently at work on his next novel, Goin’ Out West.

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Down All the Days

Down All the Days

By

Christopher M. Basso

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other noncommercial uses permitted by copyright law.

Copyright by

Christopher Basso 2017

Gonzo Books Ltd.

New York London Paris Munich

And with a gentle hand, lay it where childhood’s dream are twined. In memory’s mystic band, like pilgrim’s withered wreath of flowers, plucked in a far-off land.

-Lewis Carroll

Buy the ticket, take the ride.

-Hunter Thompson

Chapter One

The Parting Glass

Sleepy, heavy-eyed, Liam O’Shea stood before the large wrought iron windows with a placid expression, and gazed over the red and yellow patchwork shades of autumn in Central Park. He waited alone in the large corner office for the return of James Quinn, Esq., executor for the estate of the former Mr. William Henry O’Shea. Though it was late in the day, a warm light still filled the windows, casting delicate trellis patterns along the floor; on the wall, an old clock hummed a lulling cadence. The young man’s eyes briefly scanned the room before settling on the photo of woman in a gilded frame. Her eyes were cold, a pale measure of a timeless contemplation. A quick thought crossed his mind, but just as soon it was gone.

Six weeks earlier, the former Mr. O’Shea was shown across when his newly purchased Ranger Rover Sport skidded off a wet road near his Westchester County pied-à-terre. His car was found down a steep ravine wedged up rather peaceably in the crook of an old stone wall. The Bedford police spent the following two days tracking down the next of kin. In the end there was Liam, his only child and last remaining family.

Now, mind you, Liam never had much use for the family brand. He and the old man had spoken only sparingly, perhaps a handful of times since childhood, and always with the stilted, halting expression of men who would rather be testing experimental parachutes than caught in the idle maw of familial chitchat. Theirs was a pact of mutually assured disengagement, fashioned through repetition and hardened with time. However, father and son recently, and at mortality’s kind urging, managed a weekend of coolly measured civility; just long enough to bury their ex-wife and mother.

In the gathering twilight shades of a world crossing over, Tara O’Shea enjoyed a final skyward glance at the two men of her life, standing shoulder to shoulder over the lip of her grave. Her expression, veiled and sad, met their wayward flickering shapes, descending in a regrettable finality. She was buried in the shade of two chestnut oaks, at Grace Zion Cemetery in Rhinebeck, NY; aged forty-nine years.

No one had called William Henry O’Shea by his God-given name in the nearly twenty years since his own mother’s death. Instead, a pair of bright blue eyes, a slightly hawkish nose, and an otherwise rakish, aboveboard countenance, earned him the handle of Handsome Henry. Those near and dear would eventually shorten it to the simple Hank, in a rather inelegant nod to fairly inelegant man.

Nicknames can be dangerous things however. Invariably, the owner feels some sense of obligation to live up to the imagined excess of an alter ego, and in this case the old man proved no exception. Handsome Henry loved a spectacle, or more precisely, he loved to be the center of the spectacle. For fifty-nine years he courted the high drama in this life, running the gauntlet from failed marriages and estranged relatives, right down to a gleeful relish in his own ham-fisted sense of timing. For the finale he managed to roll with the same thunder, crashing the high-end sports car just days before his son commenced with his final year of law school.... This was a fine shot across the bow of an aspirant little legal career, noteworthy for its hardscrabble pivot through state school, work-study character builders, right on up the big rock candy mountain of massive grad school debt, where a stylish Ivy League cachet could dovetail nicely with a life of equally stylish abject penury out in the wilds of hipster Brooklyn. Six years of this bilious rubbish were now on the cusp of the great reveal when the old boy came a-knocking.

The phone call found Liam in the wee small hours of a weekend morning, and three quick sentences from a stranger could sober you up like a bath of ice. He hung up the phone, lit up, and stared at the wall for a bit.... We’re all on our way to Heaven, the Jesuit Brothers had told him as a boy, act accordingly. This was scant comfort with not much more than a bare wall and cold stillness for the guideposts.

After a lifeless stab at the back to school meet and greets, Liam retreated to the friendly confines of his Bushwick dungeon for the mind-numbing comforts of an increasingly barley-based lifestyle, and the last of some Hindu Kush he kept squirreled away for the really special occasions. In the pale light of early morning, he watched the last of the L train Harajuku wannabes drift past his windows. Just an endless stream of wholesome trust fund scions back from a very active brand of nothing in particular. He heard tangles of conversation here and there, as those with the least to say seem to say it loudest; a cluttered white noise based on an all too real reality.... Shit, man, at least Camus gave Meursault a gun. This was too much. He stretched out on the couch, his headphones mainlining a heady dose of Houses of the Holy right into the cerebral cortex—for regenerative purposes—as he drifted off into the never-never. All in all, a measured response to the lunacy of the day and the guarantee it would assail him no further.

The next afternoon he climbed aboard his Yamaha V Star and dodged the weekend traffic all the way up to his father’s rambling spread in the country. As he rounded the last bend in the drive he was greeted with a far more elaborate affair than had been advertised. An imposing Queen Anne Revival, cast in the darkest of stone with steep pitched gables and slate covered turrets, sat overlooking a broad expanse of delicate pastureland. Liam’s eyes trailed along the contours of the wild flower and meadow grass as they slowly resolved to a dark impenetrable forest at the edge of the borderline. He glanced back across the broad façade, broken by a line of French windows, glowing now with the soft light of the afternoon sun…. Had he the right address? As he waited for the baying of the hounds sent to greet the interloper he checked the address on his phone…this was in fact the place.

He parked the bike under the long porte-cochère and passed through the front door into a house he’d never known, and the traces of a life rarely shared. He tiptoed rather gingerly about the place at first, as the old floorboards creaked and strained under his step. With everything in its right place, Chez Henri evoked little more than a quiet sense of unease, as though its owner might yet return for the curtain call. Though no ghosts would appear, and only the creaks and groans of an old house deemed fit to greet him…. Oh well, spectral musings weren’t much his speed anyway, and once that bit of sheepishness passed, he was able to walk about the place with a bit more authority.

He studied the rather large collection of framed pictures along the walls and tables, and resting above the mantles. A half-hearted curiosity drifted through his mind as he passed from room to room looking for something familiar, the something that would let him into this world. When he reached the study, young Liam finally found what he was looking for, as the home fires of the old man’s healthy ego were still burning there to greet him.

He lingered in the doorway, surveying the scene.... The massive Georgian pedestal desk and the intricate Bokhara rugs were well within the limits of a casual poseurdom, but the bookcase, lined with rich leather-bound volumes from Herodotus to Chaucer, was probably pushing it. They looked about as pristine as the day the boys from the Easton Press stacked ‘em there. Liam’s eyes drifted about... what else? Various golfing trophies lined the end tables, and a fine bamboo fly-fishing rig sat in the corner. And lastly, not one, not two, but a trinity of nickel-plated shotguns rested on ivory mounts behind a few panes of heavy glass. This was ego scale of the first order; Versailles aspirations on Pottery Barn means, shape-shifting the disrepair of a Woolworth’s past. Well, perhaps that was playing to the gallery a bit…perhaps even an A for effort was in order? A touch of the Freudian sublimation had always been the old boy’s calling card—nothing like a big room for a little fella.

Little in a strictly pejorative sense of course—Henry was actually a bear of a man, 6’ 3" at least, with broad shoulders and a level gaze that towered over all things in his world. Standing there, with his father’s unbridled sense of self so prominently on display, generally would have annoyed the boy, but in the awkwardness of the moment it was the familiar and reassuring constant he needed. Besides, once he could laugh about it, the formidable old house felt less like a museum, but no more like a home. Liam saw all the makings for a nice bonfire stacked near one of the bookcases. Within minutes he had a fine blaze roaring away.

By the ornamental gun case in the corner sat a nicely stocked liquor cabinet. He found a few bottles of the old boy’s highly prized twenty-year old Johnnie Walker Blue, and poured himself a drink. He sank back in the leather chair behind the desk, had a sip, and soaked in the inherent queerness of this setup. All that was missing were the stuffed marlin over the fireplace and some grainy photos of Handsome, bagging lions out in the Kalahari scrub brush. Yeah, leave it to Shoddy von Assclown not to play fair with the wildlife.... Whoa there, boyo, he caught himself in mid-harangue, take it down a notch—we’ve got a job to do.

He closed his eyes and concentrated. For just a moment Liam could imagine the old man’s wandering spirit passing from room to room in his own private Elsinore, wandering, before pausing to observe this visitation with a just a measure of curiosity. The son rested his heavy boots on the desk and wondered whether this post game drive-by would have touched, or, rather, infuriated the old boy. Would it matter anyway what he thought? He was a ghost now, like all the other ghosts in the frames lining the walls and the mantels; all abstractions in that first light of reduction. Bastard spooks, they couldn’t harm anyone now.

Liam finished his first drink and quickly poured another. After rummaging through a few drawers, stuffed with old issues of Outlaw Biker and something rather frightening called Der Blonde Esel, he found an open box of Cohíbas. Bingo. He lit up, tossed the cap into the fire, and rocked back in the plush chair. He could almost picture the glee in his father’s eyes, sitting here, drinking swankish top-shelf spirits, and smoking contraband Cubanos. Papa Ernesto, sportsman and adventurer—the ultimate in genteel suburban revelry.

Liam settled in, putting his tumbler of Scotch through the paces. This was a fine test, working those half-formed shapes down from the weeping tree and breathing life into faded memories of grainy black and white. He soldiered on with this sad little séance, but in the end nothing appeared. The reductions of time, the resolution of certainty, and the final ruin of righteous belief had all conspired against him. The only revelations so easily grasped were that even expensive cheroots still tasted like mildewed death, and really good Scotch packs quite the blowback.

This was going nowhere. At best, he mourned the old man with a half-hearted efficacy which never rose above a remote sincerity, despite a fifth of Johnnie Walker’s best intentions priming the well. Even then, that small glimmer of fondness was marred by a nagging intrusion of truth; truth that the old man was more like a stranger and only deserving a stranger’s modicum of grief. A swirling mix of hazy memories and half-formed visions marked the limits and boundaries of his sadness and, with it, a weary understanding that this little visitation had all the foul shades of commencement rather than conclusion.... Or maybe it was delusion? Who knew? Such half-baked epiphanies were never welcome bedfellows.

He paused and marveled how it had all been so much clearer with his mother. There had never been a distance, only the perpetual love one receives with the calm surety of a warm sun. That was, ‘til a cruel reality and a crueler fate would educate him otherwise. For Tara O’Shea’s fortune was not as gentle as a rain-slicked road and a quick reckoning; rather, she was treated to an endless-nameless of raised hopes and small retreats, snake oil charms, and charlatan fix-it cures. All the guff greasing the skids for the great ride, the final capitulation, as one’s world retreats to smaller and smaller corners, ‘til all that’s left are the measure of moments; the sleepy dreams which nature can no longer touch with decay…. No, for her the grief was honest, and lingered on like the pale twilight of a shadow passing from owner to owner.

…Though I’ll never know. His mind danced in the calm stillness of the empty room. And there, Bonaparte’s mantel, full of frozen moments glossed over, mocking merriment betraying time. Why not indeed? One image lingers though, his cheerful all-knowing face. Peer in a bit—catch a kind of questioning in the eyes. Is that how you imagined it would all play out? Unheralded and alone? In the cool shades of a summer night? Quick and blindly ushered through, or drawn out, like light and shadow vying across a chasm, slowly leveling out before they diminish and disappear…. And over the span of your own estimation, a wild, sad, and profound look in those eyes—having already gained a vision of things we cannot see, and a voice for words we dare not speak. Laugh it up, Handsome, like the old necromancer once said–it’s all a gamble when it’s just a game.

With the old man’s Scotch kicked, and the room spinning gently around, Liam O’Shea let himself down from the flimsiest of penitent crosses. He tipped his glass, borrowed from a borrowed benediction, and made the final anemic toast for another taken Irishman. Too late now, he chuckled, in every sense. But a young man should take care, lest he too ends up in the stones and briars at the bottom of the hill. He ambled over for a quick crash on the soft couch beneath the bay windows. His new latitude provisioned a rather fine view of the Heavens. The sky was a blanket of white points, laced with flashes of yellow, green, and rose. The stars shined with such brilliance, his city eyes were genuinely taken aback. The gray-blue strands of the Milky Way snaked lazily across the sky, dreamy and indifferent to all false penitents and ginned up prophets. He sank back deep into the fine grain leather. Nice couch, most comfortable, his eyes glazed over... lovely Pottery Barn indeed. The world cued to black, the rest was silence.

Well, the world wasn’t going to stand still and wait for the boy to find the right melodies of grief when, after all, the busy work of death is the ironic coda of so long life. As such, there were things to be done—calls to be made, catering to be arranged, and a first class planting to plan. And though the boy rolled a wee bit light in the empathy department, he could at least appreciate the realities of the situation. He reigned in an increasingly ephemeral sense of obligation, and marshaled some of that proper mourning gusto which did the Irish proud. Hell, he even thought to wear a black armband for the services—seemed about right for propriety’s sake.

True, Handsome Henry hadn’t much left in the way of family, but he was rich with friends. They came in force, like a herd of dyspeptic wildebeest and packed the rafters of tiny St. Ann’s Church in Albany. Every last seat in the congregation was filled, leaving some of the tardier pilgrims, mostly shady non-church-going sorts, to mill about the vestibule in the back. A sea of faces Liam had never known turned out to mourn the old man with the kindest and most reverent of venerations. He sat in the first pew, armband in place and dumbstruck on the balance, watching this procession of rubes sing their hosannas. A slight grin spread across his sun-starved face at the thought of tipping back the casket for a quick confirmation he’d made the right church…. But this grim bunch didn’t much look like the black humor sort of crowd; they might have considered such a thing, well... bad form.

Finally, the aged priest slowly climbed the pulpit for the last benediction, the one benediction that matters. All right then padre, hit us with the good stuff—the homily for the anomaly....Instead the old priest’s kind eyes shone with a genuine sincerity as he recalled fond memories of when young William was first brought around to be an altar boy in his church….Creeping Jesus, these people were starting to give Liam The Fear.

This rolling cavalcade of misfits and halfwits must have been cashing in on some cosmic chits, or perhaps seeking a little of that radial atonement for closets full of spectral peccadilloes and ever so casual perversions. Fortunately for them, the last whinging nerve of restraint for sullying the family name still ran strong. Young O’Shea thought enough to honor these misguided strangers with a kind show of appreciation. He managed to muster some sadness at the church, a note of kindness at the wake, and a quiet reverence beside the grave. The procession of sheep followed the casket of their shepherd over to Ringsend Road Cemetery, by the banks of the Hudson River. The big fella was laid to rest on a Sunday morning near Troy, NY, guarded in reliable perpetuity between the stark weatherworn graves of his mother and father; aged fifty-nine years.

Chapter Two

Tomorrow Never Knows

Liam remained at the sunlit windows still waiting for his host; gazing out, holding onto the calm view below. In the six weeks since the funeral he’d managed to dodge this get together, but Quinn’s persistence, and a strange twilight curiosity for the father he hardly knew, slowly brought him around. He tapped his fingers along the base of the windowpane…. He was nice to animals, never lifted a finger to any of us, good taste in cars…better taste in Scotch. O’Shea broke out a smile, only slightly aware of the spiritless attempt to eulogize a hollow man to an empty room. While this sad state of affairs rattled around his mind, Quinn slipped back into the office and closed the door.

He took quick stock of the young man staring out the windows. He bore a striking resemblance to his father, though not quite as tall, with the same roughhewn, Black Irish good looks. This was going to be strange, to say the least, nothing like closing a day with the walking echo of a voice you’ll never hear again. He cleared his throat and casually motioned the boy toward one of the chairs facing his desk.

James Quinn, Esq., was something of a study in contradictions. A tall man with broad shoulders and a boxer’s chin, who walked with the easy, confident gate of a fellow who might have been comfortable cracking heads down along the waterfront once upon an incarnation. But the dark crisp cut of his Brioni bespoke best, the sharp yellow tie, and the mane of well-coiffed salt and pepper hair were enjoying this lawyerly manifestation far too much to dwell on such crass possibilities. His looks conjured a sense of studied ease, but there was something ever so slightly off in the mix. Like perhaps a fine Porterhouse was waiting down Smith & Wollensky way, if only he could get through the unsavory facilitation of this ungrateful daddy’s boy…. Maybe a few glasses of a nice Pétrus Bordeaux to mellow things out, perhaps a bit of the give and go with his waitress? Hell, who knew, maybe even a Bourbon-fueled grab or two, should the mood move him—his heart like a Rhino, the Cialis running strong…. O’Shea caught himself in the arc of another fanciful bit of mind drift. Perhaps he’d been just a tad harsh at that.

However, the framed photos of smiling power shakes with the mayor and the governor did little to veer the budding narrative of a world run amok. It must be said, however, they did add the slight sway of mystery to the proceedings; perhaps something a bit more transcendent did wait over the horizon. But that might have been too generous. For Liam did consider the cut of this man, and didn’t like the vibe one bit. Indeed, he seemed to have nosed one of the lawyerly Burgher-Baron class he’d heretofore managed to avoid; the type of Hun who made this occasionally noble profession the cringe-worthy terrordome of modern imagination. Indeed, when Calcutta organ merchants and Sinaloa coyotes rate a higher Q score than you, then brother, trouble is most likely afoot. But, well, a sheltered Ivy League virginity and shotgunned clips to judgements aside, perhaps the oddball shyster act was just Quinn’s way of maintaining the clarity of a situation. High end legal stylists often fancy the pomp and trappings of a regal solemnity not seen this side of brain surgeons and priests. All things were rather serious in this league. But nonetheless, Quinn’s little Kinderspiel sat diametrically opposed to Liam’s easygoing affability. This was Liam’s professional Achilles heel if ever, but before the law there was life, and an only child who learned the value of working a room. It was a lonely boy’s talent for forging instant, if only transitory, connections.

...Which on some level was fairly sociopathic, but then again we each play the hand we’re dealt. Besides, when not bad mouthing the recently deceased, or his judo-legalese Doberman, he was widely considered an affable and charming young man. Throwback manners, they might have called them…. Like some proper southern gentleman who’d never actually lived in the South.

But for now, that affability was failing him. He was feeling the weight of this room and the ghoulish parade of long dead feelings and memories swirling about his mind. He needed to break the ice with this man, this stranger, who seemed to be lording something out there in the distance. But where to start?

Quinn’s desk seemed perhaps the proper inroad. It was an impressive antique looking thing of heavy rosewood, broad and deep, with crisp lines and a shine that must have required some regular tender loving care. Maritime-themed reliefs were carved along the forward face, whalers and merchant ships, long forgotten commerce and trade. It was decidedly not one of those things you found in the Pottery Barn catalog.

No, this was a trophy of some note, the kind of thing an elegant eye comes across in the salvage shops of Portsmouth or Salem, or some such Goddamn place. It was a symbol meant to convey the station of its owner; a sea captain’s desk, where atavistic puritanical types signed the deeds sending mad men off to slay the white whales of this world. Liam imagined, rather gleefully, that the likes of James Quinn got off epically rambling about the things they lorded over.

But, regrettably, Quinn was having none of it. He met any compliments and inquires with just the slightest of interest. Indeed this old desk had a story, but not today. Liam wasn’t the only one rather dreading this get together. Henry O’Shea was a close friend and a good client. Shutting this door was not something he did fondly, particularly with this boy, who might have shared the looks but seemingly none of the temperament or grit of the departed.

Rather, Quinn mumbled something vaguely gracious about his fine desk and went back to his papers. This cold office and the chilly demeanor of its owner were the legal versions of a home court advantage. Besides, his bit in this picaresque little three-parter was pushing the paper, not divining the meaning of life for his clients or, in this case, finding closure for wayward prodigal sons.

Liam retreated back across said desk, his dislike for this man increasing with each passing moment…. But at least the bastard was upfront with his bastardness, which just about conferred something of an enlightenment in this trade. However, failed small talk and daydream projections aside, it was time to get his game face on. After a few more minutes of lawyerly jabberwocky, the trailer before the legal feature, it was time to lay bare the bones of Handsome Henry’s last goodbye. Quinn leaned forward resting an elbow on the polished shine of the desk and began. In a slow clear voice he made his way down the page, rattling off each provision of the will.

…O’Shea the elder, had been generous with his boy—well, sod it, when you’ve taken on the task of shaking an entire absolute, resolute, and destitute world to its plates, then a word like generous was the only polite place to start. And should generous be far too cheeky a metric for the occasion, swap out the euphemistic for the proper-literal and call it damn near everything. The scarcely prodigal son had struck the mother lode of misbegotten generosity. Damn near everything included: titles to two homes—the estate in Bedford and a summer place up in Maine; a fractional share of a golfing retreat in Bermuda; a broad portfolio of stocks and bonds—Microsoft, Boeing, Oracle, managed ever so diligently by the last man standing over at Citigroup; one undamaged Mercedes Coupe; a vintage 1937 Brough Superior—truly a collector’s bike; and not to mention all the incidentals—good Scotch, contraband smokes, nickel-plated shotguns, and bougie mail order furniture. Then came the final wisdom—Liam James O’Shea was sole beneficiary of one very large life insurance policy.

Quinn had gone ahead and converted the old man’s time on Earth to the estimated whole dollar amount. Uncle Sam would take his tribute, the piepowder his commission, and Handsome left something sizeable to charity—maybe hoping a tithe could buy him out of a reckoning. But even then, the boy was left sitting on an amount which could only be described as unexpectedly prodigious.

Given life’s variable uncertainty, it had always been something of a comfort to fall back on the old man’s reliable unreliability. It was the fixed star you could steer your ship by and, over the years, it became the unwavering constant in the equation of life. So now, it was with no small sense of dash that the vagabond playboy could laugh from beyond the grave, at the dawning reclamation of his soul spreading across the ashen face of his hardworking son.

In the span of a few moments all the concrete surety measuring a father’s lifelong apathy was toppled and, in its place, succeeded by a rising sense of dread; a dread which Liam lacked both the age and perhaps the guile to conceal. The words were just a bit hard to find. Rather, he rolled one of Quinn’s silver pens through his fingers and impassively shifted his glance out the windows. Quinn reached the end of the page and replaced it alongside the others. He leaned back in his chair, gathering himself a moment before speaking.

Well… that’s it. he let it hang there for a moment. "I think it’s fairly straightforward. He left his second and third wives of the settlement entirely. Now there is a possibility his third wife might contest some of this—they were married for seven years, but I wouldn’t worry about that for now. There was a knowing grin across his face. Here, I need you to sign and initial these."

Liam reached across the desk and signed the last three pages before falling back in his chair. His mind had gone around the sun and back in the last two minutes. Quite a thing to find your entire fatalist certainty thrown under the ol’ metaphysical bus—replaced with the stark, sucker-punched reality that everything you’d known was wrong. The mixings for a fine headache had aligned and he suddenly very much wanted out… But that would have been for softer sorts, and he’d rather be the company fluffer in a travelling rent boy revue than be one of those chirpy sorts who goes all wobble when life serves up a little brushback pitch. He took a few deep breaths, found his happy place, and summoned the best fuck you aplomb he could muster from the psychic cupboard.

"Jesus... you’re going to have to excuse me. The words came soft as he slowly rubbed his eyes. This is, needless to say... unexpected. I’d heard rumors my father was doing well the last couple of years. I’d even been up to that house in Westchester—but this?"

Quinn looked at Liam. Liam looked at Quinn. From across that desk, the shyster’s eyes were a perfectly paired union of dead and still…. O’Shea didn’t seem to be reaching this man. He continued with a bit more force.

"I mean… he dies and a week later I get a call from you to come on in and discuss the disposition of his estate—his estate? He let out a cackle. C’mon now—William Henry O’Shea having an estate? That’s a touch of the pearls before the swine, don’t you think?"

But the still eyes only glimmered back, an appraiser’s wheels still kicking the tires on his half-formed appraisal. Liam shifted in his chair before continuing, a slight recalibration might be necessary

Look, Mr. Quinn—

No, Liam, you can call me Jim.

The boy smiled weakly, not quite thinking before he spoke. "Here’s the thing… I mean a nice house out in the country is one thing, maybe even a nice car or two—but this? His shifted ever so slightly in the chair, Phone calls from out the blue, from people I’ve never met, to discuss a father I hardly knew—regarding an estate that now carries my name? He shook his head in a final gesture of the most sublime clown shoe bewilderment. To be honest, this felt—coming here—I was feeling more the process server, disgruntled creditor kind of vibe. Yeah, kitted out with a house mortgaged like Venezuela and credit card bills that would’ve made the Borgias blush…I mean, the ethos of ‘never keeping a dollar past sunset’ was really more the old boy’s speed. Liam shifted again, his eyes meeting Quinn’s in the breach, So you’ll have to excuse me, because none of this really makes sense; that house in Bedford; the garage full of cars, the Fifth Avenue attorney…. My father was a contractor, he let the accusation hang there for a moment, a bit of a salesman I suppose, but with all due respect, kind of a bum."

The boy could feel the coils unwinding a bit, the words more or less finding themselves. His newfound lawyer however didn’t seem to share in this karmic détente. O’Shea could sense he still wasn’t reaching this man. It was time to muster his best Dickensian orphan bravado from the time fog.

"I tell you, I haven’t many memories of my old man, the homesteader—but here’s one. When I was a kid, maybe seven or eight, the GM dealership sent their finance collection arm out to pay us a visit late one night. The bank, I guess, didn’t quite see the freak flag humor in my father’s egalitarian statement of dodging those various obligations. So, it was decided, that repossessing my mother’s LeSabre would be the finest way to render unto Caesar. And, so it goes, his minions show up late one night to collect, but they’re just a bit clumsy in their trade and soon manage to wake the half the world that wasn’t already sleeping."

Liam leaned back in his chair, a bit of a gathering grin, catching a quick glance of the governor grinning back.

"So, in short order, the old man is beating down the front door with my Little League bat in one hand and a still hot fireplace poker in the other, screaming ‘call the police! Some bastards just stole the car!’ At this point, old Henry launches the poker like some cranked up backwoods Olympian, misses the mark completely, and nearly kills my dog Freddy in the process… Well, by now we, and I mean the collective neighborhood we, are all out on the sidewalk in our unmentionables watching the lights of my mother’s car growing smaller and smaller in the distance, as our guy stands there, resplendent in his predawn best, railing on the rotten sons of bitches who did him in."

Well, Quinn smiled, perhaps irritated, but then again, perhaps not. That’s just a wonderful story; very Capraesque. I’m surprised he never got around to sharing that one.

Well, I expect he kept it to tales of the Brough Superior and playing through Ross Perot down Bermuda way. Liam nodded, fairly satisfied with himself. "Just thought it was important to paint a little context into the thing. Anyway, I’ve got a few others down that road—but that was more your typical evening out O’Shea way. Needless to say marital fallout was severe…. And, well, I guess most marriages have their entropy point—hard to say if that was exactly it, but I suspect it was close…Five months later and he was gone. The memories become a little sporadic after that."

"Anyway, that’s about the man I knew. Liam said. So, Cafe Society—they bought all this? The old boy who could follow you through a revolving door and come out ahead? He shook his head and chuckled again, ….Well played Hank, well played."

Quinn studied the boy for a moment, his own waxwork poetic perhaps flowing, Well, big things can have small beginnings, and all that.

And the trick of course is just not minding when it hurts. Liam grumbled back, as the litany of the epiphany took a momentary tack inward…Must have been something indeed; the mischief making philistine tumbleweeds through life leaving little landmines in his wake; until this. He should have seen it coming. Various attempts at righteous expropriation over the years had met with only middling success; some men, after all, were probably better lost than found. There were the various rumors and musings; tea in the Sahara, smoking dope with Robert Mugabe in an Ankara baiginio, collecting native heads down along the Congo; just the usual out and about patter…. This was definitely shaping up as some next level, Seventh Seal type business. He glanced up, his honor, the mayor, now mocking him with an evil grin. Could he, could the mayor perhaps grasp the chi sting of piling on mountains of debt while your father dabbled in bearer bonds when he wasn’t hacking out the Bermudian bluegrass at the Mid Ocean Club? Doubtful. However, we can probably all gin the fear of being some microscopic cog in some catastrophic plan…at least at the margins. Now then, the only question remained; who would the boy have to garrote to get out of here?

Quinn, thankfully, was still rather in control of his end of the astral plane. He thought to keep things moving along at the orderly pace. Well, all things aside, I know this must be a rather shocking turn. This is a great gift your father has left you. And I’m sorry to have thrown everything at you at once…but you’re a hard man to reach—I wasn’t sure if or when I’d ever get you down here.

There were enough bells and whistles behind those words to get the boy on edge. He held his tongue and let this breathing machine for legal malfeasance continue.

Listen, I know it’d been a while for you two, but things started to change in his life. Your father worked hard, had a successful business he started from the ground up, and made some wise decisions with the things he had. Give it enough time and you can see the results.

Quinn weaved this little spiel with the slight, telling air of a low key indictment. As though a son should know, damn well, the particulars of his father’s life for the better part of the past decade. Who knows, maybe Quinn had his own wayward progeny meandering down the road to filial perdition, or maybe it was something else. The slight contempt in his voice had Liam reeling a bit, wondering how well Quinn and the old man had known each other. Was this reading of the will merely a formality, another box in the day planner, or was this the chance for a cold man with a grudge to air some grievances and lay the seeds of guilt? Either way, it must have annoyed him having to be the facilitator for all this. Maybe those still eyes needed to pass some judgment along with the blessings of The Golden Ticket. Though, like any good lawyer, Quinn dropped his innuendo, his own J'accuse, and retreated across the polished shine of his desk saying nothing more.

O’Shea felt a renewed unease; the affability act fading, an agitated preparation beginning to find its depth. The light was fading from the windows, slowly retreating along the floor, bleeding into smaller and smaller shadows…. And having money is the way of being free of money, or so the wise fellow once said. Indeed, guess you had to be of the manor to see a certain humor in some things. That friendly light was quite gone now, a cold grayness followed fast on its heels. With the need for such niceties rather gone, O’Shea dug in and switched tacks.

"Okay, Jim, where did all this good fortune come from—illuminate me."

What followed was a brief history of the rise of Handsome Henry, Inc., an inspirational tale of how an occasionally pickled hustler type had fallen ass backwards into a fortune. The opening gambit came ten years ago with a lucrative divorce settlement from well-to-do wife number two. Poor woman, she came in with good intentions and a bit of cash, and she left a bit poorer on both counts. In the past the big fella probably would have shot that wad right back into the gaming and service sectors, and the bosses down in Atlantic City, or at The Belmont, would’ve seen a nice spike for a month or two.

But the old man took his seed money and threw it into something he vaguely understood: sales. Selling himself that is, his father was anything if not persuasive. That sly boots could sell a Torah to Hezbollah and speedos to the Inuit. Henry put his charm and money into the construction business, specializing in the kind of municipal projects that get bid out for state and federal contracts. Plenty of purveyors of the public good lined up at the trough and Henry was there to work every one of them. Hell, he even put his vices to work, weekends with the movers and shakers at Mohegan Sun, Saturdays in August out at the stately track in Saratoga with the politicos from the New York State machine. He probably knew more than a few of them from the Albany of his youth. No matter, Handsome Henry could charm them to the last.

But Liam had never shaken the image of his old man as a wayfaring oddball. It was forever frozen in his mind; a hard estimation that made no allowance for change. But something had obviously changed. Maybe time finally caught up with him? Maybe, just maybe, twenty years of a mid-life crisis had been enough.

Either way, he must have felt a bit of that bright light shining down the other end of the tunnel. And while the old lout never got around to making that proper jump from Sanhedrin to Savior, he netted a pretty good stockbroker along the way. With his guidance, Handsome Henry flourished in that pre-crash bull market where a gambler’s nerves, or even a drunk’s, could pave the road in gold. Well, one frightful morning the sun rose in the west and a snowball sailed through the halls of Hell, as William Henry O’Shea found one of those lucky moments where paper tigers find their paper fortunes.... Bastard hitched his wagon to a little star called Google. Liam’s stomach churned a bit at the image of the old man gloating like some hellish Lilliputian Gordon Gecko, grinning away, suitably impressed with his shrewd dealings and virile, bare-chested financial acumen.

Fitzgerald said there were no second acts in American lives, but Handsome Henry was chomping at the bit to get on with his third, fourth, and fifth; as this windfall was not enough to ease the nervous tremor of idle hands. After squaring away his love for the finer things, he jumped head first into a world of painless philanthropy.

With Quinn’s help he set up the Colleen Margaret O’Shea Memorial Foundation. Ah, even Liam’s grandmother might have been proud of this one, her black sheep finally making good. The Quinn-O’Shea brain trust hatched a variety of tax-friendly charity schemes, perhaps none more successful than The O’Shea Overachievers. Poor little urchins with some smarts and the good grades to match; city kids mostly from Boston and New York getting to spend their summers rusticating on the shores of Lake Winnipesaukee at the camp his father built. For some of the luckier ones there were even scholarships waiting—full rides to the redemption of their choice. Quinn mentioned that the little overachievers were to be funded out of a trust for the next ten years… Liam saw no problem with that. Hell, he even encouraged Quinn to throw a little extra loot their way. Not everyone should have to wear their flare, busing tables at Chotchkie’s and jockeying the Kinko’s overnight to get an education—unlike the original O’Shea overachiever. Besides, he chuckled, sour grapes weren’t worth the picking.

Liam took a deep breath. He had to hand it to his father on some level. After all those years wandering out in the desert he had, at last, arrived. He found the elusive confluence of the fates that stab right to the heart of our American dream. Even those blue blood bastards down at the Union Club would have him now—he had finally gained a certain measure of respect.

At that point Henry was nearing sixty, and it’d been a hard sixty. A dissipated lifestyle and three failed marriages must have finally roused the firm stirrings of mortality. He became thoroughly obsessed with his legacy, and the notion of leaving something which endured beyond his own failings. Estranged from his family, he could at best imagine a memory elevated by the admiration of strangers. He hoped the reputation of a respected, civic-minded businessman would be enough to secure such a thing. In the last years of his life he poured all his energy into these projects, possessed like a man who thought his efforts might still snatch a kind of immortality from the gathering blackness. But never, in his wildest dreams, did he think an automobile would do him in…. Sinking battleship, charging lion, maybe, but not the neighbor’s orange tomcat standing out in the road…. Shit, at least the cat made it home.

And who knows; had Liam just dimbulbed a bit more of that guile from beyond the venom, he might also have seen it for what it was. Sometimes, for some men, there’s just a bridge that can’t be built between the self-serving elegance of one’s madder instincts and the self-destructive carnival of one’s reality. It’s a con and a ruse one supposes, an ostrich act for the frightened American man-child…but at least some fellows manage to pull it off with a touch of dash.

However, sans feline, Quinn recounted this particular fairytale with something bordering on adulation. He rocked back in his chair with his best ‘gather round the campfire’ face, and piled on the hyperbole like these were open callbacks and the resurrected Oprah would be doling out the free cars again. Here we have a fallen man, beaten down by life, forsaken by most who knew him. He finds the strength to take control of his destiny and makes a fortune in a uniquely American way. But then, he is struck down in the prime of his life, at the apex of his moment, by that cruel hand of fate.

Liam smiled as he listened—the shyster was on a roll. Must have been a trial lawyer back in his stud days. Amazing. Henry’s arc had steered from the thinnest of penny dreadfuls, to something out of Aeschylus or Euripides; like a modern day P. T. Barnum, Mark Twain, and Horatio Alger all rolled into one. Too bad Liam knew the principal, otherwise he might have been touched by this inspirational tale. Quinn ended his story with something of a maudlin nostalgia in his voice.

It’s a hell of a shame when a good man is taken before his time.

…Well, hells bells. A big hand was in order for the Poet Laureate of the Upper East Side. This certainly sealed the deal on the burning question of whether Handsome Henry was cozy with his lawyer. But now it was Liam’s turn to lean back in his chair and play around with the same story. Interesting legacy. A house built on the ironies of favorable divorce laws, lucky half-assed timing, and the smoke and mirror charm of a man better suited to chasing impressionable doe-eyed skirts than grasping the nuances of hard work and high finance. This was a bad funeral flashback. Here was another coquettish little Sally in Handsome’s own Memphis Mafia, singing the praises of a man who so casually abandoned his wife and child twenty years ago. Yep, just like it was for so many scoundrels, all rose petals falling right past the thorns—at least ‘til history gets a hold of them.

Well, maybe time was the ultimate expiation for sin, and no matter how many sins you’ve committed you are bound to receive an absolution from time. If no one else, time had forgiven his father, and that might just have been enough. The brass works on the clock had frozen on his early, wayward ways, and he was able to carve a new life free from those echoes of his past. Quinn was just a small piece of that new life. The church up in Albany was filled with other such pieces collected by his father on that long march home.

And then, as if lost in the daydream, rather abruptly and with little fanfare; a few more stroke of a pen and it was done. The who, the where, and the how much now all official, and with it a fairly confusing resolution to things. He’d take his money—what else could he do? What else would he want to do? Rather, he would accept the vagaries of Handsome Henry for the fait accompli they’d always been, but for once, in spectacular neutron bomb fashion, the karmic ledger seemed to have landed in the black.

What was the etiquette then? Fall on the floor like some babbling wingnut, all false contrition and giddy abandon? Perhaps play that Camus card after all—father died today, or maybe it was yesterday…. No, the good money said find the thin sincerity on both ends of your foul genetic impulse and run with it. Well, either way it was nice to be back in the warm embrace of the familial fold. All in all, another fine airing of the O’Shea dirty laundry—at least some things hadn’t changed. All Liam could do was accept his fortune with a puzzled face that revealed the incredulity of a man struck by lightning in the rainless desert, and the knowledge that his benefactor was gone before he could even acknowledge the gift; though Quinn remained. He lingered on like the after clap of thunder, waiting to hear the echoes.

Quinn gathered up the paperwork, placed it in the folders, and for the first time that afternoon actually seemed to mellow a bit—he even smiled. It was a weird grin, Cheshire-like, bright and full of teeth. He extended a mitt for one of those steroid-fueled power grasps, as they made their way towards the door. The room was in the half light, and the dark shades had finally arrived. But Quinn still had the look of a man waiting to have his ring kissed or, at the very least, shined a bit.

It was he, after all, who tracked down the runaway son with all due diligence and led him ass backwards, kicking and screaming, into a small fortune…. Well, there’d be none of that action. An honest sincerity was wasted on a calculating intention, and a calculating intention wouldn’t quite know what to do with an honest sincerity. Basically these boys cancelled each other out. All that was left was a spot in the funny papers. James Quinn, life counselor, raconteur, and cubist legal scholar, would have to settle for that.

O’Shea took a few breaths and thought about the smoke waiting for him down on the sidewalk. His anger began to fade, like a stone splashing in the water, rippling in ever descending waves of energy, fading out as they fade away. Instead, frustration gave way to a sudden weary desire to fuck with this charmless fellow a bit.

So, you knew my father well?

We went back a ways, about ten or twelve years. Yeah, old Hank was a hell of a guy. Quinn paused a second, letting his face gather a twill sort of silly look. You know, he was really quite proud of you.

Uh oh, and what rough beast was this? A hard aspect returned to the boy’s eye. He imagined such a dance having a few more steps. A bit of Voltaire suddenly seemed to inform the moment—one owes respect to the living, they say, and to the dead we owe only the truth—wise words, wise words for perhaps a more noble milieu. To guilt we might owe even less.

Really? Guess you had to know him to know…. Know what I mean?

Well, he was. Damn, I can remember when you got into Columbia, the smile you brought to that man’s face…. ‘My son, the lawyer. First one in this family who isn’t going to make a living with his hands,’ he said.

The boy could only nod and smile.

He had high hopes for you. He always thought you were going to make everyone proud. We used to talk about it sometimes. They paused for a second in the half light of the foyer. Ah, well it’s a shame you two weren’t closer.

Well you know how things can go. The boy paused, lining up the crosshairs. "Ten years, huh? You know I can’t remember, that day was such a fog, but did I forget to say hello to you at the funeral?"

No, unfortunately, I wasn’t able to make it.

That’s a shame. You missed a good one. We had a hell of send off—old world, grill to the hill blarney craic, and all that bullshit he loved.

I’m sure he would have liked it.

They walked through the narrow darkened lobby towards the elevators. Quinn looked worn, but not quite beaten.

So, any thoughts on what type of law you’re going to focus on? The words barely hanging as a question before he continued, "You should think about this—estate planning. Not too sexy I'll grant you that, but a good living to be made here, an easy living."

…Well, I was thinking I might like a job in government.

He laughed, "Sweet Jesus, where—the DA’s office? Manhattan? A graveyard for a promising young legal career, nothing but a bunch of misanthropes and recovering idealists burnt to their bitter ends. He smiled, That is, unless of course, you’re an idealist?"

Quinn enunciated idealist as if it were the hard-charging business end of a medical probe out to violate every one of the boy’s