The House of Wolves (House of Wolves #1)(51)

But then I read the room and stopped myself.

I took my own deep breath and looked out at the congregation, fixing my eyes on the place in the middle of the cathedral where the Hunters Point Bears all sat. For some reason I started to think of the trip to the cemetery the family would be making once the mass was over. Thomas would be buried next to our father.

It would be the closest the two of them had been in years.

I saw Cantor standing in the back of the church. When I caught his eye, he nodded at me. In front of him, in the last row, I saw John Gallo, that sonofabitch, sitting alone.

“My brother Thomas was the best of us,” I said. “He was the best of all of us, and the toughest person I’ve ever known.”

Don’t stop.

Just keep going.

“I loved his heart,” I continued. “I loved his sense of humor, and his charm, and all the fun he had in him.”

And don’t you cry.

“And I loved his loyalty. Nobody knows better than I do that Thomas Wolf was foxhole loyal until the night he died.”

I stared down at my hands.

“But the best thing about Thomas, at least for me, was that he always told the truth—about himself and everybody else. So the only way I can properly honor him and his memory today is by telling the absolute God’s honest truth about him.”

I looked all the way down to Ben Cantor, who nodded at me again.

“My brother didn’t kill himself,” I said.





Fifty-Eight



I’D ALWAYS HEARD PEOPLE in sports saying that when their own lives seemed to have gone completely off the rails, it really was the games that kept them sane. I wasn’t so sure about the sane part right now, at least for me. But being back on the field with the kids, against a St. Francis team that was far and away the best these players had faced all season, made the world feel at least a little bit like the one I desperately wanted it to be.

The one that had Thomas still in it just a few days ago.

The game came down to the last minute, St. Francis ahead 13–12. But we had the ball and were driving down the field with enough time left to win.

Finally, it was fourth down at St. Francis’s twenty yard line. Thirty seconds left. Chris Tinelli, our quarterback, called our last time-out and came walking toward me.

I was deeply into the game by now, nearly lost in it, coaching as hard as I’d ever coached these kids. I wanted them to win so badly. But in this moment, I wanted me to win just as much.

Maybe more.

“Hey,” I heard from behind me.

I turned and saw Ryan Morrissey standing behind our bench, Wolves hat pulled down tight over his head.

“Shouldn’t you be coaching your own team?”

He pointed past me, and I saw that Chris had finally gotten to the sideline.

“Shouldn’t you be coaching yours?” he said.

“Got a play for me?”

“Nah,” he said. “You’ll figure something out.”

“Thanks a bunch.”

We needed eight yards. If we didn’t get them and keep the drive going, this would be our first loss of the season. Even if we did get the first down, we still might have only a couple of plays after that to try to win the game.

“What are we doing, Coach?” Chris said.

And then I smiled, hearing a familiar voice inside my head.

Thomas’s.

When we’d watch a game together, and there would be a moment like this, he’d always say the same thing: Throw the damn money on the table.

“Something funny?” Chris said.

I said, “Just to me,” and then told him the play I wanted him to run.

“Seriously?”

I told him I was serious but not too serious—it was just football. Not life and death.

He smiled at me and put his helmet back on and ran to the huddle and told his teammates the play they were about to run. Then he took the snap and rolled to his right, blockers in front of him, a lot of them, and made the defense think he might run for the first down.

But at the last second, he stopped and threw the ball all the way across to the other side of the field, to where Davontae Lillis was wide open in the left corner of the end zone.

And when Davontae caught the ball, it meant that the Bears had won again.

While the kids were still on the field, I went and sat by myself on our bench until I felt a tap on my shoulder and saw Ryan grinning down at me.

I looked up to the sky then and said, “Thanks.”

“I didn’t do anything,” he said.

“Wasn’t talking to you.”





Fifty-Nine



JOHN GALLO WAS IN another private room, this one at Original Joe’s, an old-school San Francisco steak house on Union Street. The room was quite narrow, with a long table stretching the length of it, ending with JOE’S written in script behind the place where Gallo sat.

Jack knew this was where Gallo came to eat most Saturday nights, sometimes with guests. Jack had been one of the invited guests a few times. Sometimes Gallo came here alone and ate at this same long table.

“I am not one of those people,” Gallo had told Jack once, “who thinks that having a good steak is a criminal offense.”

When he looked up and saw the manager escorting Jack in, Gallo did not seem surprised or upset.