The Messiah Medal – A Dozen Ways to Die
Step into the gritty world of crime and consequence with award-winning author Lou Manfredo's first collection. A Dozen Ways to Die offers twelve meticulously crafted tales that span the breadth of American history and the depths of human nature.
From the smoky speakeasies of Prohibition to the neon-lit streets of modern cities, Manfredo's stories peel back the layers of morality, justice, and the human condition. Meet a cast of unforgettable characters: hardboiled detectives, conflicted soldiers, cunning gangsters, and ordinary people facing extraordinary choices.
Among the twelve stories in this collection, "The Alimony Prison" is a Prohibition-era tale of corruption and survival, "Last Call" is a poignant exploration of a World War II soldier's moral struggle, and "Soul Anatomy" is a contemporary story that delves into the complexities of police shootings and ethical dilemmas.
Manfredo's prose crackles with authenticity, drawing on his extensive experience in law enforcement to paint vivid, realistic portraits of crime and its consequences. His unique blend of classic noir sensibilities and modern storytelling creates a collection that is both timeless and timely.
A Dozen Ways to Die is more than just a collection of crime fiction – it's a journey through the darker corners of the American experience, where the lines between right and wrong blur, and every choice has a price.
Perfect for fans of Raymond Chandler, Dennis Lehane, and anyone who appreciates finely crafted crime fiction that goes beyond the surface to explore the complexities of the human psyche.
THE MESSIAH MEDAL
World War II
Not much of a churchgoer, I had never before met—or for that matter seen—this particular parish priest. He seemed acceptable enough—that is to say, adequate to the task at hand. He appeared to be around my age, which at the time was forty-one. But he carried himself differently, projecting more presence, and I remember taking it for some by-product of the religious life, the nature of which I could most probably never understand even if made privy. When I finished speaking, the priest stirred slightly in the black leather chair behind his somber looking desk. It was quite warm in the rectory office, and I could feel perspiration begin to bead on my brow. I wanted, suddenly, to be done with this; get to the heart of the arrangements, write out whatever check was required to satisfy the diocese and escape out into the cold, clear November night.
“So,” he said after what seemed a great while. “There was no wake, no Mass of Christian Burial? No service of any kind?”
I nodded. I had thought myself prepared to fend off any questions that might be thrown at me, but now I felt somewhat less sure. The perspiration began to move ever so slightly downward on my brow. It carried with it skin oils, and my right eye lay directly in its path. I flicked my fingers lightly across my forehead, deflecting the sweat, altering its course. I pretended the good priest hadn’t noticed.
“It was what my dad had wanted, Father,” I said. “I was bound by my promise to honor his wishes.”
The priest smiled slowly and warmly, and I could feel my shoulder muscles begin to unclench.
“Of course you were, son. Any man would be.” He allowed his smile to fade slowly. Surprisingly it hadn’t felt at all odd being called “son” by a man near my own age. I found myself liking this priest—now finding him far more than just adequate to the task at hand.
“Thank you,” I said, my voice weak.
***
And so it had been, as I said, my father’s request. When the cancer demanded surrender at discretion, and there were no further pretenses to be made, he told me privately and softly, but with that firm intonation so familiar to me, the one that said, “This is not up for discussion. This is how it’s going to be.”
The dividend of a lifetime absent blustery bravado and harsh ramblings of anger and misspent passion was justly owed my father.
Whenever he had something of serious consequence to say, those who knew him from the slightest to the most intimate degree understood clearly: He meant what he was saying, and he would not be ignored or dissuaded.
“I want to be cremated,” he said. “And I don’t want a wake or a funeral. Get me into a veterans’ cemetery. The plot and headstone are free. Or scatter my ashes, it doesn’t matter. You can do whatever your mother wants at that point. But I need you to promise me, Bob.”
I hesitated, thinking perhaps I should still deny it, tell him he could still beat this thing, and all would be well. But then I saw the pain begin to rage in his watery and suddenly dull brown eyes.
“I understand,” I said, my voice incredibly stTomg, almost normal at this most abnormal moment in all of time.
I allowed a weak smile. “On one condition, Dad,” I said in that same frighteningly normal tone.
My father frowned and that slight physical exertion stabbed more pain at him.
“Condition?” he asked, his tone incredulous.
I nodded, striving for that same finality of authority that my father had earned over his seventy-two years, while knowing what a dismal failure I must appear. But I knew he would pretend not to notice, just as I knew that once again, and probably for the last time, he would spare me the measuring stick of his stoic dignity and quiet authority.
“It’s Mom,” I said, the normalcy slipping from my tone, crackling suddenly into some middle-aged echo of prepubescent angst.
I cleared my throat and tried again, seeing affection and sympathy nudge some of the pain from his eyes. I saw a respect, too. Man to man. It was the best and worst single second of my entire life.
“I’ll have to hear it from her,” I said.
He tried to respond, but I read his thoughts, understood his determination. I held up a hand and silenced him with a gesture so controlling and so arrogant at this, his weakest moment, that I immediately knew I would regret it many times in future reflections. Unwarranted regret, a psychiatrist would certainly insist—if ever I had the slightest interest in hearing what one of them had to say. But painfully real nonetheless.
“It doesn’t matter if she agrees or not; I just need her to know that it’s your idea, Dad, your wish. Not mine. I’ll do whatever you want. But she has to know that it’s coming from you.”
He seemed to consider that. Apparently, this aspect had never occurred to him. Then he nodded.
“Of course, I’ll tell her tonight,” he said, leaning back into the pillows which braced him in the bed. “So,” he continued, his eyes closing, “that’s done.” A moment passed and his eyes opened. He smiled at me. “Thanks, Bob.”
And suddenly I began to feel vulnerable, trapped, somehow overwhelmed. I stood and glanced at my watch, not seeing it.
“I’ve got to get going,” I lied. “I have to pick Natalie up from dance class. She says, ‘Hi to Grandpa,’ by the way.”
His eyes closed again. He smiled a broad, sad smile and my heart moved into my throat.
“My angel,” he said. In a second, the morphine taking hold, he fell into a calm sleep, the smile lingering on his face.
***
And so now I stood and reached across the rectory desk. The priest and I shook hands. The arrangements for the memorial Mass, set for a week from that coming Thursday, were complete. The small, sad pine box which held the powdery remnants of the man who had been my father now rested in the earth beneath a rectangle of bTomze grave marker some fifteen miles from the church. All that remained was this memorial mass and the closure I hoped it would bring to my mother and me, my wife, my daughter, and all who knew him. I turned and walked out to my car, one of only two parked in the darkness of the church lot. I climbed in.
He had passed away just two weeks earlier. And now, suddenly, I was hit with a sharp, paralyzing revelation: He was dead. The tears came then, and what a blessed relief to not have to fight them or deny them, or worst of all, fear them. They seemed to come in kinship, the way my friend Tom had, to comfort, to share, to ease. I sat there in the cold and cried. And yet I felt warm.
Then in the blurry windshield, a watery vision began to appear. A scene from twenty years earlier, the one and only time I had gone to the racetrack with him as an adult. My father had been a compulsive gambler; he started betting as an adolescent and never stopped. It was his greatest interest, his great love and, at the same time, the fatal flaw that proved to be the sole frailty binding him to human status. It was truly the only fault he possessed. Without it, he could not have been a mere man, but rather some earthbound god, a wise messiah sent to enlighten us, to show us how to live our lives with grace, free from bigotry and rancor. But of course, he had been no messiah; his gambling had seen to that.
After leaving Belmont Park, that pastoral palace on New York City’s outskirt, home to rogues and losers, bums and dreamers, fools and failed messiahs, we had gone to dinner together. It would be his treat as always when he held “their” money, his eyes hot and flush with that rush I could never imagine, share in, or even comprehend.
And so as we sat together, rehashing the day’s triumph, it struck me. What I had held as truth for so many years inexplicitly flared in my subconscious then vanished, like a campfire ember swallowed by the surrounding darkness. I could identify no triggering mechanism, no reason why it had come to me so vividly at that precise moment. But it had.
Just as our majestic shrimp appetizers glistening on their ice beds arrived, it suddenly struck me. On that night I was twenty-one years old. It had been more than ten years since I found the six-and-a-half by three and-a-half by one inch rectangular black box stowed purposely away in the rear of my father’s dresser drawer, with gold gilt and lettering that read BTOMZE STAR MEDAL.
Such unadorned language, so proletarian. I lifted the hinged lid of the box. And there, lying against a pale gold velour-like cushion, faced by shiny gold satin, was the simple yet elegant five point bTomze star, a raised smaller twin perfectly centered upon it, the medal dangling from a pinned white trimmed red ribbon divided perfectly in half by a white bordered vertical blue stripe.
I had felt my ears begin to flush and my ten-year-old heart race. I knew he had served during the war—in France, Belgium, even Germany itself. Field Artillery, he had said. But this! A medal! I ran to him, the box in my hand, the original mission of fetching his car keys vanished. Daddy! Look at this! Look what I found! A medal! Is this yours? Tell me! How’d you get it? Were you a hero? Tell me, Daddy!
In many ways, my father’s life had not been a happy one. For all practical purposes abandoned by his Manhattan speakeasy partying parents, he had been raised by elderly Italian immigrant grandparents on the depression era streets of Brooklyn, New York, an only child without extended family. I believed it had ingrained him in some way, caused him to sometimes appear in the throes of a melancholy seemingly without visible origin.
And yet despite that, or perhaps in some odd way as a result, he had grown into a kind, caring, incredibly loving and gentle human being. In his role as father, I knew him to be a fair, generous man of clear affection yet able to command respect and instill a noble kind of fear in me. Not a fear of reprisal or punishment, for he never so much as raised his voice in anger towards me, but rather a fear of disappointing him, of somehow letting him down. I never wanted to do that, to embarrass myself in his eyes with some failure of morality or honor or dignity. And so I went to great lengths not to, often involving deceptive, carefully plotted transgressions. I chose to avoid detection rather than adhere to a more difficult and demanding course. But youth is a complex and harsh master, and I now recognize my minor failures for what they were: growing pains.
On those rare occasions when my discovered misdeeds resulted in my father’s unfavorable attention, such as my one minor brush with the police, the only real punishment meted out was his disappointment, the look of sad resignation that came into his eyes as he spoke to me about it. His demeanor said, “Yes, this is how it is sometimes. It’s the way of life. But you’re my son, and it pains me. I wish it were different, but I accept that it isn’t.”
And once dealt with, discussed, and resolved, I knew it would never be rehashed. Such discipline from belabored enmity was a mainstay of who my father was. How I grew to envy it as often I struggled in vain to mimic it with my own loved ones: my daughter, my wife, my closest friends. What eluded me as an unmastered attribute seemed to flow so effortlessly from my father. All who knew him recognized it; many reaped its rewards but few, if any, achieved successful emulation. It was just too difficult a thing to do.
I remember learning that as a young man his friends had nicknamed him “The Pope.” Although I never witnessed any formulary displays, he had apparently once been a person of deep religious conviction. Somewhere—I suspect during the war—he had lost that, or perhaps chosen to compartmentalize it, keep it sequestered. I never had the depth to ponder it much, not until after his death. And by then, it was too late. He hadn’t left any answers behind, none that I could find anyway. Not with my mother, not with his oldest and closest friends. Certainly not with me.
As to that melancholy I often saw in him, his face bearing most of it, he never quite mastered his masking technique. Usually he would drown it, or hold it at bay, or fend it off with wild, extended, almost hateful bouts of gambling which left him shattered and debt-ridden and at odds with my mother. Even as a child I had recognized the periodic sadness, the resignation to some pressing burden known only to him. I didn’t understand it, couldn’t articulate it, but somehow, either by my actions or my speech, I tipped him. I knew he knew. And that’s when he would smile at me, a sad, make-believe smile, but the best he could muster. And then suddenly it was ice cream soda time, a pony ride or go-karts at Nellie Bly Amusements, and all would be well again. How simple it had seemed. How right.
And as for the gambling, that damnable curse which tormented him with agony and passion, anguish and pleasure, sorrow and joy, how to explain that? He once told me that gamblers were doomed to failure, that ultimately, at the end of the year, the losses would outweigh the winnings. Unless, he elaborated, the gambler was faithful to poker alone. Then, with minimal luck, maximum insight into the game and a true knowledge of the odds, one could win consistently just as his own father, a professional gambler and prize fighter, had done.
Why, then, I asked, do you still bet on horses and sports? Why do it if you already know that, in the end, you’ll lose?
He smiled when I asked, and just shook his head slightly. I took his actions to mean, “You don’t understand, so why should I try and explain it? You could never understand.” At the time, as an adolescent of maybe fifteen or so, I remember my confusion seeming a shortcoming or failure on my part.
But, of course, it hadn’t been.
It was so much simpler and so much more complex than that.
He didn’t understand it. And in a sad, unsettling manner his own perplexion was an almost masochistic penance for him, perhaps a validation of some darkly rooted subliminal belief that he, like all mankind, was merely a flawed and ultimately doomed experiment. I didn’t know. I still don’t know. His inherent intelligence had confTomted his compulsion. And the gambling had won.
***
So as I sat in my cold car in that church parking lot, crying therapeutically, all this came back to me. Starting with the BTomze Star. When I had run to him with that medal, shown it to him, he just smiled that enigmatic half smile and shrugged.
“No, buddy. No hero,” he had said. “One day, the captain announced he had some extra medals and did anybody want one. I said, ‘Sure, I’ll take one.’ So he gave that one to me. I forgot I still had it.”
Disappointed, angered by his answer, I walked slump-shouldered back to his dresser and replaced the box. I would, over the next couple of years, visit it every once in a while. I’d pretend it was real. Make believe he had won it. Make believe he had been a hero. Then one day when I went to visit it, it was gone. But I didn’t ask him about it, and until I had recently gone through his personal belongings for documentation I would need to bury him in the veterans’ cemetery, I hadn’t seen it again.
So on that long ago evening in the restaurant, looking down at my shrimp, over ten years since it had first been told to me, my father’s Johnny Appleseed captain-and-the-medal story came rushing back into my head and burst like a bubble. My, God, had I been that stupid? They don’t just hand out BTomze Stars. What was I thinking? Okay, when I was ten years old I believed it, sure, but how about fourteen? Sixteen? Twenty, for God’s sake! I looked up into his shining, winning gambler’s eyes. “You lied to me, Dad,” I said. “I can’t believe it, after all these years you lied to me. And I just now realized it.”
My father answered with the assurance of a man who did not lie; not with arrogance or attitude, but quiet assurance and ease of conscience.
“Nope,” he said with a genuine smile. “Whatever it is, I didn’t lie to you. Unless you’re still mad about that Santa Claus-Easter Bunny thing. And that was mostly your mother’s doing.”
I shook my head and watched as, conscience clear, he popped a shrimp into his mouth.
“No,” I said. “Not the Easter Bunny. Not Santa Clause. The BTomze Star. Remember that? I found it and you told me they were handing them out and you took one? Remember?”
My father’s chewing slowed and his smile faded. He reached for his glass of soda and took a sip. No matter what he was eating, or where, it was always accompanied by soda. Any kind of soda, it made no difference: cola, root beer, ginger ale, whatever.
He put the glass down and looked at me. “I always wondered why you never followed up on that.” His head shook suddenly, as if to clear itself. Looking back, I guess his little mind trip back to Germany began at that very moment, although, at the time, I was too young-smart to see it.
“Because I always believed it, Dad, that’s why,” I said, realizing the sheer absurdity for the very first time. “I believed it because that’s what you told me. And so I believed it. I still did, until about a minute ago.”
He smiled again and ate another shrimp. “You’d make a lousy detective, son.”
I laughed. “Sure, make jokes. I can’t believe this. All these years. Well, tonight, get ready to come clean. I want to know. I have a right to know.”
With that, the mood changed. He put down his fork. He patted his lips with the linen napkin. He sipped again at his soda. It was a technique of his, one I was only vaguely aware of at the time, but later came to admire more and more. When emotion or passion stirred him, he stalled a bit, just seconds, really, but a stall nonetheless, before speaking. It was why he never sounded like a fool, or at least partially why, the larger part being he was in no way a fool. Certainly many people who aren’t fools manage to sound like they are, myself chief among them. But not my father.
“A right?” His voice was soft, easy. There was no anger, but there was clearly something. I just couldn’t identify it. “What gives you this right?”
A few moments passed. Suddenly, it was as if we were alone in that place, alone on the planet. Our eyes locked, and without challenge or anger, without fear or discomfort, I answered with the only thing available to me.
“Being your son,” I said. “That gives me the right.”
My father pondered it for a moment. Then, apparently satisfied, he nodded.
“Alright,” he said.
And so, as the meal unfolded, he told me his story.
He had been a Tech4—a rank equivalent to buck sergeant in today’s Army.
“If you were still alive in nineteen forty-five and could count to ten, they promoted you,” he explained.
He and two soldiers under him were riding in a jeep. It was early April, 1945, in the countryside outside of Weisenfeld, a small town in Germany. Their job was to scout out favorable positions for placement of field artillery in anticipated support of the forward movement of U. S. infantry forces. “The war was winding down—we all knew that. The Russians were closing in on Berlin, and we were basically just trying to survive. Our biggest fear was re-deployment to the Pacific for an invasion of Japan. Fortunately, that never took place.”
My father was driving and as the jeep moved around a bend in the winding dirt road that skirted a densely wooded area, they saw something.
“We had surprised them. Three SS men, two officers and a sergeant. They were taking a breather, sitting on some tree stumps in the woods, smoking. By that point, the SS were scattering like rats from a flooded sewer. When they saw us, they jumped up and took off deeper into the woods.”
He told me about the SS then. By 1945, he had been in Europe for almost two years. He had seen two of the camps: He knew what the Nazis were capable of.
“They were really bad guys. Cut and dry, no shades of grey like nowadays. They were bad guys, period.”
My father slammed the jeep to a halt skidding on the dry, loose soil of the road. The other two G.I.’s jumped out, dust swirling around them, their M-1 rifles locked and loaded in their hands.
“I knew the area. I had been there a day or two before. So I put the jeep in gear and took off. The two guys with me chased the Germans into the woods.”
My father knew that the road curved around to the left about a quarter mile ahead. It ran up to and over a small stone bridge which spanned a crystal clear rock-bottomed stream which emerged from the woods, flowing as irrigation onto a flat expanse of open farmland.
“When I got to the stream, I left the jeep behind some bushes and grabbed my rifle. I ran up onto the bridge and took cover behind the stone wall. I braced the rifle on top of the wall and waited. I knew my guys would flush the Germans out of the woods and into the open. They’d have to come right at me. I waited.”
Sure enough, in moments the three SS men emerged from the woods, the bright afternoon sun flooding their black uniforms, glistening off polished leather and shiny SS insignia. As they ran for cover on the bridge one of them pivoted, a raised black Luger in his outstretched hand, firing three shots in quick succession into the tree line behind him. A volley of M-1 rounds answered from deep inside the woods, their muzzles flashing flame in the dark greenery.
“I heard one of the rifle rounds as it flew past the bridge. It sounded like an angry, speeding bumblebee. I sighted in and fired,” he said, his voice suddenly lower, emotionless. “One shot.”
I remember that moment suddenly becoming very quiet. The sound of diners and waiters, rustling clothing, and tinkling dinnerware vanished in an instant of—what? I couldn’t define it.
Another moment or two passed before I realized that my father had no intention of continuing his narrative.
“So what happened next?” I asked. The words sounded strange in my ears, as if I were hearing someone else’s voice.
A confused look moved across my father’s face. The gambler’s glee, long since faded from his eyes, was now replaced with something else, something I couldn’t identify. He appeared almost frightened, surprised, somehow pensive as though revelation had suddenly struck him. He shivered briefly before answering.
“They surrendered,” he said, dropping his eyes to his steak, retrieving his forgotten utensils and cutting into the meat. His voice had casually morphed, turned conversational—how-is-the-weather like.
He chewed a small piece of steak, then reached for his glass of soda, that stall technique used before speaking during an emotional moment.
“They dropped their weapons and put up their hands. The two guys with me, Ruggiero and some kid from Tennessee, I forget his name, came out of the woods and grabbed them. We took them in and turned them over to the M.P.s. Later on, right after the war ended, they gave us medals. We all got the BTomze Star.”
He sipped again at the soda, and then his lips formed a smile. The smile fell short of his eyes.
“End of story,” he said.
A moment passed as I looked across the table at the gentle, soft-spoken man I knew as my father. The man who had once stopped the family car on a country road and gotten out to lift up a crossing turtle from the pavement and carry it to safety on the other side.
A road probably not unlike that far away road in Germany.
“When you fired,” I asked, my voice inadvertently carrying incredulity, “were you trying to hit one of them? Really trying?”
Another look of surprise came over him, as if he had never before considered this. Then the look faded, replaced with an almost somber defiance, and he nodded.
“Of course I was,” he said. His tone was flat. Final.
And yes, that was the moment. If ever there was to be one, that was the brief, fleeting, intimate moment to ask. The only time I could have asked.
Had he? Had he actually killed that German? Had my father killed a total stranger, thousands of miles from that restaurant, twenty-five years earlier on a bright, clear April afternoon?
But I didn’t ask.
And days later, when I related the whole story to my friend Tom, and he asked me why, why I hadn’t asked, I told him I didn’t know. I just hadn’t.
But I knew. I still know.
When my father finished speaking, I saw it in his face. That melancholy. His surprise and defiance had vanished and the sadness I had so often seen stood in its stead.
And so I hadn’t asked.
***
As I sat in my car in the church parking lot, my eyes wet with tears, remembering all of this, I believed that I knew the truth, had known all along.
At the very moment he told me about his taking that one, carefully aimed, shot, my father was finally coming to terms with it himself. Whether or not he had killed that German was almost beside the point: He had certainly tried his best to. He had braced his rifle and aimed as best he could. And that night in the restaurant he was admitting it, admitting it as much to himself as to me.
He was able to admit trying to kill, but still denying he had. Denying it in a silent, internal way, but so expertly and so practiced and familiar a way that on that long ago night I could not discern actuality.
But sitting in my car almost twenty years later, I knew.
He had balanced it all so delicately. He allowed himself the admission of the attempt, acknowledging to himself as well as to his son that, yes, he had aimed and fired. He had tried to kill that SS man.
But my father would admit nothing further. Not to himself, not to me. Any killing must never enter his consciousness. It must remain buried within his heart until ultimately it would be buried beneath the earth.
I suppose sometimes even the most honest of men must lie; they lie to their sons, to their loved ones, and they must lie to themselves.
But the reality remains: Denial does not erase.
And there are always consequences.
Until finally it becomes one more thing too late to be asked about.
I realized on that sad, lonely night in the church lot what a truly cruel absurdity it was. And I saw the equally cruel iTomy.
They had honored my father with a decoration for doing something he would feel obligated to lie about to his only son. Not once, but twice; once to a ten-year-old boy and again by omission to a twenty-one-year-old man.
And in a sense, the sheer tragedy made all of it just lies. The false story of the captain handing out free medals to anyone who wanted one was just as much a lie as the actual truth was a lie and equally as absurd.
So what was true? What was false? Where did real truth end and false truth begin?
Truth grows relevant to time and events, situations and surroundings. As they change, so changes the truth. The old adage that truth is consistent is incorrect. My father, the man I knew him to be, was not capable of shooting anyone, regardless of who or what that person was or may have been guilty of. Yes, his gambling often put him in the company of bookies and loan sharks and hoodlums. But believe me, he was no mere lamb amongst those lions: My father commanded the same respect from them as he did from everyone else in his life.
But kill someone?
And so ultimately, what are our inherited legacies? Neither truth nor falsehood, but something else—something much more tangible and so much less threatening. We inherit stories. The fact is, there are no real truths. There are no real lies. There are just stories. Stories to be evaluated and accepted, or evaluated and rejected.
Just stories.
Some happened, some didn’t. But at the day’s end, they’re all just stories.
Make peace with yours.
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