A God in Ruins - Leon Uris [170]
The less the mother superior knew, the safer for the child. “Baby Alex,” without a surname, became “Baby Patrick.” Parents, unknown. For the next two years Patrick was a centerpiece of the convent, a greatly gifted and adored infant.
During this time the priest Sean Logan had pleaded with Monsignor Gallico for a special child for his sister, Siobhan O’Connell, and her husband, Dan, to adopt.
David Horowitz, sucked of will to live after the loss of his lover and child, succumbed to pneumonia, brought on by neglect of himself.
At first Quinn didn’t want to hear the story, felt invaded, exposed in a manner that would bring the walls down on his head.
As Ben spoke, it changed. It turned into a moment he had dreamed of and played out ten thousand times. That moment! That exact moment!
“I was thirteen when our father died,” Ben continued. “We had become very close, although any mention of Marina and Alex was simply forbidden. Grief wore him out. Guilt finished him off. He knew nothing about where you were, who you were with, how you were faring. The last year of his life was pitiful. When I reached my bar mitzvah, he revealed to me the circumstances of your disappearance, and he told me that Marina Sokolov had died in Israel, bearing their secret.”
“Hell of a bar mitzvah,” Greer said.
“Our father told me that I was a man now, and had to assume a man’s burden. I only remembered my half brother in veiled tones, and somehow the name of Alexander stuck in my mind.”
The melting away of fear in Quinn changed to a flooding gladness as Ben stopped for a drink, noting that the altitude made him dry. He took a small photograph album from his overnight bag and opened it.
“This is our dad.”
Quinn felt Rita’s hand grip his shoulder as he stared, and said nothing.
Ben drew a deep breath, turned the page. “This is the only photo I have of your mother.”
Quinn spun out of his seat and turned his back to them, mumbling to himself in a jerky voice. Ben gulped another glass of water.
“I’m sorry, Ben, I’m being very selfish. Lord, what you must have gone through.”
“I knew I’d find you. The search became the hub of my life. I went into police work to specialize in missing persons. After I made detective lieutenant, I joined the faculty of John Jay College for Criminal Justice. For years only cold trails—here are my kids, two boys and two girls. Well, they’re not kids anymore. And these are the grandchildren.”
“I’m an uncle. God, that’s strange, Uncle Quinn. And I’m going to be a grandfather, and my daughter will have cousins and an aunt and an uncle…”
“Maybe I could have picked a more appropriate time, but Ms. Crowder convinced me it would be disastrous to hold on to this information…so I came.”
Ben related the rest of his odyssey. All the principals were dead, and Alexander had disappeared as if into thin air. Ben had vague memories of Monsignor Gallico’s visits, but these stopped.
“When Dad died,” Ben said, “I was his main survivor. I was there with the family lawyer when we emptied the safe deposit box. There were a few things of value, some stocks, jewelry, certificates of ownership, insurance policies. What I did not know was that Dad had sent a sealed envelope to Monsignor Gallico and his successors. The front read: Not to Be Opened Until the Year of 2000 by Benjamin Horowitz or His Immediate Heirs. Here are the contents.”
Quinn looked at photos of Marina and David and a birth certificate for a “Baby” Horowitz.
“I tried to play the Catholic card but didn’t even get as far as the convent door. It’s a deep, dark, mystical world in there, with an understanding of God that is strange and different.”
“God sure has a weird sense of humor,” Mal grunted.
“It became a matter of numbers: matching footprints on the birth certificate. The FBI had hundreds of millions of prints, but computer clarification had not caught up to them. Footprints of a newborn infant can change, so I went by probable birth