Page 44 of The Bootlegger’s Bride

Other expectations proved wrong as well.

A.J. had anticipated an ill-lit and funereal Slavic sanctuary with dark, grisly murals and iconography like he had seen in Guatemalan churches when deployed there.

The décor warning parishioners of the wages of sin and the pains of eternal damnation.

However, the spacious Saint Stanislaus Kostka Polish Catholic Church interior signaled the opposite: a bright and heavenly optimism.

Large stained-glass windows allowed multi-colored sunshine to stream into the sanctuary, illuminating shining marble pillars, light pink walls, and a gleaming gold-and-white altar, above which sat a mural of Calvary with a sky blue, rose, and lavender palette.

Even Bogdan Zawadski’s casket, a gleaming silver, worked to deter dark thoughts.

The lengthy Requiem Mass—conducted at turns in Latin, Polish, and English—allowed A.J. periods of incomprehension when he might reminisce. So, he sought to summon the high times and camaraderie they had shared, pushing aside darker remembrances.

Those happy memories, however, worked only to exacerbate his sense of loss.

His godfather, mentor, protector, and best friend all rolled into one man now forever gone.

Bogdan’s passing signaled to A.J. the end of an era, closing the vault door on a bank of knowledge and know-how from the past he could never again access.

It felt a bit like being orphaned once more.

Afterward, outside on marble steps lying in the shade of the massive redbrick structure and its twin six-story steeples, he approached an older woman dressed in black who had been seated in the front pew and who now received condolences from attendees.

Perhaps seventy years old, she stood tall and elegant, with the same strong features and dark eyes of Bogdan.

“I take it that you are Bogdan’s sister, Magdalena.”

“Yes, I am.”

“I am Bogdan’s godson, A.J. Nowak.”

She gasped and embraced him, tears springing to her eyes. Such emotional outbursts not uncommon among the Zawadski clan.

“My dear Janusz’s son! Bogdan was so proud of you.”

“He was a good and true godfather to me,” A.J. told her. “A guide and friend. He took care of me just as he did my father.”

“My brother cared for and protected us all, even when we didn’t realize it. Such a crafty and secretive soul.”

Exactly, thought A.J. Good traits for a gambler. “And a good soul, with a big heart.”

Speechless, she bit her lips and cried more, nodding.

A.J. went on. “I saw him just a month ago. He came to visit me at Long Lake when I was home on leave and talked about being best man at my parents’ wedding in 1940 and crying throughout the ceremony.

” A memory keyed in part by A.J. telling him of his plan to marry Lana and asking Bogdan to be his best man. Never to happen on a couple scores now.

Magdalena smiled through her tears. “Sentimentalists one and all. It runs in the family.”

“He was in high spirits that day. Full of life.”

“As always. He died at the racetrack, sitting on a bench at the finish line with the Daily Racing Form on his lap and winning tickets in his pocket.”

A.J. pictured it and nodded approval. “Going out winners. I couldn’t imagine a better finish.

§

A.J. drove the rental car the few blocks from the church to the Cass Avenue Bank & Trust building at 13th Street and Cass Avenue. There he was shown into a vault and left alone with the safe-deposit box to which Bogdan had given him a key years earlier.

It held but few items. An envelope containing his signed confession to Richard Dupuis’s murder. Four gold double eagle coins wrapped in cheesecloth, along with a note reading, “For the new Nowak generation.” And Bogdan’s U.S. Navy dog tags.

A. J. slipped the envelope and the coins into his suitcoat pocket and grasped the dog tags in his fist.