Page 2 of Dagger in the Sea

“Arturo, I’m your father,” he said.

He’d been a capo on the rise when he’d hooked up with a University of Chicago freshman, Erin Cavanaugh, and then left her lovelorn and pregnant. He couldn’t marry her, he’d explained, she wasn’t Italian, but he’d make sure his kid was taken care of. My mother was furious at herself for her lack of self control and lack of birth control, and for not being aware that he was so deeply connected to a crime family. She’d been duped, swept away by his dark allure and her own deep feelings.

“First love is blinding—” she’d told me on several occasions over the years,“—it grips you viciously, fiercely, and refuses to let go no matter how you chop away at it. Beware.”

She’d refused any more contact with him. Erin came from a wealthy, old Chicago, Irish American family and she didn’t need his pathetic attempts at child support—once, twice, then nothing. She made it clear that he wasn’t allowed to see me or come near me. She’d given me her grandfather’s name, Arthur, and her own surname.

He’d walked away, hands in the air.

In 1993, the year after I’d gotten out of grad school and was working with my mom at her company, I went outside on a break to grab a coffee from the new gourmet coffee shop down the street, when a man approached me. When I heard the voice.

“Arturo,” he repeated, his dark eyes glimmering.

This is my dad, this is my dad,raced through me right there on the sidewalk, numbing me and setting me on fire on a freezing, windy autumn day in Chicago. I had a father who was completely unlike any man I’d ever known. Utterly unlike my mother’s husband, who was a clean cut old moneyed WASP from Michigan, kind yet devoid of any sort of complexity. No, no. Herehewas, and he’d found me.

Mauro Guardino and I began meeting regularly. For pizza, for panna cotta and espressos. For focaccia sandwiches with incredible homemade mozzarella and sweet tomatoes. We bonded over veal parm, and messy, luscious piles of sausage and onions. He called me “Turo” short for Arturo, and I liked it. Suddenly my world was richer, more colorful.

Then he asked me to do him a favor.

“I’m in a jam, Turo, and I really need your help.”

He needed money laundered.

I knew it was wrong, of course, but he was in a tough spot. My mother ran several companies under many corporate identities. I had access to a lot of arteries within those holdings. He obviously didn’t have the advantages I grew up with. He was in a bind, and I could help. Just this once.

I did it.

My father was grateful, impressed. I thought it was a one time deal, but he kept feeding me cash, kept saying,“Just this once more. Come on, buddy. You’re really doing me a huge one here.”

And again.

And again.

That last time, when I’d sworn to myself that I’d tell him this was it—when I’d started to get uncomfortable about it, because frankly, how long can any good yet underhanded thing really last?—My mother found out. Of course she’d found out. She’d stormed into my office one evening, face red, eyes hard and sharp, drilling holes into mine.

“How could you steal from us? And for him? Expose us this way? Why? Do you hate me that much?”

“I don’t hate you, Mom.”

But she’d been right. A piece of me hated her all these years for keeping my father from me. No phone calls, no birthday cards even. What the hell would have been wrong with that?

“Then why?” she’d yelled uncharacteristically, tears filling her eyes. Tears that never spilled down her cheeks.

“He’s my father. He asked me to help him. That’s all. I wanted to do one thing for him. Something.”

“You’re not this naive!”

No, I wasn’t. “Why can’t you understand that I want some sort of contact with my own father? There’s nothing wrong with that.”

“He contacted you and immediately immersed you in illegal activity.”

“Immersed? How dramatic.”

“I told you from the very beginning that he was trouble. He’s evil,” she said.

“Evil? What does that make me then?” My voice shook.

She shut her eyes, a quake shuddering through her body, but she controlled it. She was that disgusted, that horrified?

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