When I write a book, I generally have a title—maybe just a working title or the absolute title itself that has been sleeping inside me for a good amount of time. I usually like short titles for some reason. BESA, Justified, Intercession—one-word titles feel good to me. The title makes a statement, I suppose, unlike "A Long Day's Journey into Night." But that's a play, not a book. It worked well for Eugene O'Neill.
With Silent Partners, the name came after the book was completed. Before completion, I referred to the work as "The New Vic Book."
In Silent Partners, the partners' names and their personalities just flowed out of me like I had written about them before. The Gonnella-Ruiz-Deegan characters and their families melded around the new characters. Cardinal O'Connell, Frank McCormick, Vincent J. Russo, Vito Martucci, and William Vandermeer were taken from actual real-life people I have encountered along the way. Father Martin Dolan was an actual priest I knew from my elementary school parish. He was a good man and a real solid priest. Father George was a made-up priest.
This book was great fun for me. The mob characters like Guy Pipolo and Louis Borelli are also modeled after real-life people I knew along the way. Neither of them were gangsters.
When someone says there is no such thing as the mafia, I stay quiet.
I was just a boy when my dad's uncle owned a restaurant in the Little Italy section of the Bronx. Back then, we referred to it as the neighborhood, or Fordham, or Belmont. When a wise guy walked into the restaurant, everyone knew he was somebody. They seemed to fill the room with their presence. The tough guy's cologne fought with the aroma of garlic, tomato sauce, charcoal oven-baked pizza, and steamed mussels in white sauce. They carried themselves in a certain way that exuded confidence, power, respect, and a "don't screw with me" attitude. Tall, short, skinny, fat, old, or young made no difference.
One night in the early 1960s, Mom, Dad, and my two brothers were having a pizza supper at the family restaurant. We sat at a rectangular table overlooking the brick oven. It was fun watching the pie man make art. A gangster friend of my father came over to say hello and tell my dad what a lucky man he was. These tough guys had a certain charm about them. Mom was all smiles as he gave each of us boys a crisp dollar bill. Keep in mind, a whole pizza was about a buck in those days.
The moment he walked away in his slicked-back dark hair, tapered gray shark-skin suit, pointed shoes, and see-through silk socks, Mom made a face that could only be described as disdain. I think I heard her say "guinea bastard" under her breath. At twelve years old, I had instinctively known not to pursue the conversation.
