“Doesn’t it follow, me beloved bridegroom, that the Church should urge the married laity to fock as often as they possibly can so they’ll be more like God … No, I don’t mean that. What I mean is make love as often as they can?”
“I’d vote for it, my beloved bride!”
“Well,” she said happily, “that settles that.”
Fair play to you, Dermot Michael Coyne. You’re likely to have a busy couple of months ahead of you. And a busy life.
“Would you be driving me home?” she asked as our coffee was served.
“If you don’t mind, I’ll take you home in a cab. I don’t want to drive after a half bottle of wine.”
“Then could we ever have a small jar of Jameson’s to celebrate?”
“Woman, we could … What are we celebrating?”
“Me spiritual undressing …”
“Well worth celebrating!”
So we celebrated and I took her home, kissed her forcefully on the top steps of her apartment, and returned to the John Hancock Center. The Adversary left me alone on the ride home. I marveled until sleep replaced my thought with images that a woman actually desired me physically. I must always treasure that desire.
I was a very happy young man on that pleasant autumn evening.
Just before I drifted into the deepest sleep I heard thunder. Clouds must have gathered without my noticing it.
Other clouds were gathering, too. If I had known about them, my happiness would have been blighted.
10
1926
My Bill came home sad from work last night to our flat here at Austin and Washington and myself having a hard day with the little ones. I could tell that something was wrong, so I kept my complaints to myself and listened to him.
His first big project was in trouble. He’s been putting up these lovely homes in North Oak Park which wouldn’t we be lucky if one of them was for us. A grand architect designed them and there’s a waiting list of people who want to buy them. The project seemed certain to be a big success. Bill would show everyone that a greenhorn from Ireland could make it in this crazy American world.
“They want me to pay protection,” he said to me with a loud sigh.
“Who wants you to pay protection from what?”
“A man they call Klondike O’Donnell. Protection from accidents on the project.”
“But don’t you have insurance?” says I, pouring him a jar of whisky, which I do only when he needs one and ought to have it. Naturally, I poured myself one too, since it’s not good for a man to drink by himself.
“Not against delays caused to the project.”
“Well, you haven’t had any accidents yet, have you?”
“If I don’t pay this man a thousand dollars a week, won’t I have accidents?”
“You mean he’d make accidents happen?” I said, ready for a fight with this Klondike O’Donnell.
“He’s. a criminal, Nell Pat,” says my man, putting his arm around me, “a bootlegger and an extortionist. It’s what they call a protection racket.”
“Can’t you go to the police?”
“He pays off the police with ten percent of what he collects from the people he’s protecting.”
“What did you tell him, me love?”
“I told him to fock off!”
“Well good for you!”
But last night, as I was sleeping in his strong arms, I was worried. Something bad, I knew, was about to happen,
Well, like I knew it would, something bad happened. Two of Bill’s trucks were burned last night and the walls of one of his houses torn down. That Klondike O’Donnell is a mean and nasty man.
“What are you going to do?” I says to him.
“I guess we’ll have to pay him his money. Everyone else does it. There’s no other way of staying in business in this country.”
“It’s as bad as home was under the English!”
“Not quite, me love,” he says kissing me, “we can still have our own home and our own money and our own business.”
“With that gombeen man taking half your profit!”
“I don’t know what else we can do.”
“Tis true,” I said, weeping in his arms for the terrible disappointment he was feeling.
“There’s one other thing I might do.”
“What’s that?”
“There’s a man I know from the troubles that lives in Chicago now. They say he’s a lot more powerful than Klondike. Maybe if I go to see him, he’ll stop the extorting.”
“He’s a criminal too?”
“One of the biggest bootleggers in town.”
“How will he stop your man?”
“Warn him off. He’s so powerful that Klondike wouldn’t dare resist him.”
“Do we want to deal with a man like that?”
“They say he’s a perfect gentleman and likes to take care of greenhorns like himself.”
“Well, then, shouldn’t we go see him?”
“We?”
“If you think, Bill Ready, that I’m going to let you talk to a man like Al Capone without meself being along to protect you, then you have another think coming!”
“He’s not a bit like Capone.”
“I don’t care.”
Bill says, “We’ll see.”
That means I’ll go with him.
Well, wasn’t your bootleggers the nicest man in the word! Doesn’t he live in a gorgeous big apartment near Lincoln Park and the Lake with beautiful furniture and rugs and paintings and even one of them phonograph things that play music. He’s a baker as well as a bootleggers and he made the pastries we ate at tea. His fiancée was there, a lovely young American woman with red hair just like mine. She’s a smart one, too, terrible smart. I think they’re sleeping together, though wouldn’t I be a fine one to criticize that? But she’s a nice young woman and she and I hit it off real well.
We’re dressed in our finest clothes and seem to fit right in to her living room, even if we had ridden on the L train and the streetcar instead of driving in a fancy Packard or something like that. My Bill and I are pretty good at pretending that we’re classy people, even if we are peasants from the Gaeltacht. Bill says the reason is that I’m so beautiful and elegant. That’s not true, but it is nice of him to say it, isn’t it now?
Bill and her fiancé have a long talk about the Troubles, though I’m not sure which side your man was on. They both lament the death of the Big Fella, though Bill doesn’t tell him what we know about that.
Your man explains that this Prohibition is a terrible thing and that the bootleggers are just businessmen who are supplying a product that everyone wants and should be able to get. He says the violence is caused by a few greedy men who will not abide by the rules, men like Klondike, who might just get himself killed if he isn’t careful.
I sort of shiver when he says that.
Then he says that Mr. Capone is a frightening man sometimes, especially when he loses his temper, but other times he’s a nice and very generous man. He says that it’s a shame that people like Klondike don’t abide by the rules Mr. Capone makes because they’re sensible rules.
I don’t know what to make of any of that. But I notice his woman frowns. She’s not convinced, I think to myself.
“You have to understand,” your man says, “that people like Klondike are petty criminals, clumsy thugs, cheap crooks, They make plenty of money providing beer for the marketplace. But they cannot resist the temptation to engage in other activities like robbery and extortion more, or less for the fun of it.”
“Tis true,” my Bill agrees.
“Well, you need not worry about them. I can promise you that they will not interfere with your enterprise in the future. I will have a word with Klondike first thing in the morning.”
“That’s very kind of you,” Bill says. “Nell Pat and I are very grateful.
“We are indeed, says I, not being one to keep my mouth shut.
“Not at all,” your man say
s. “you’re the kind of Irish immigrant who is a credit to our homeland and to our new country.”
“Thank you, sir,” my man says. “We owe you a favor.”
“I’ll remember,” says the bootlegger, with a flash of his fine white teeth. “Someday I may need a favor.
Then he invites us to join him and his woman at their “club” over on Wells Street. Bill seems a little sky because neither of us have ever been in a speakeasy in all our lives. But I think it will be fun to do it just once. So I says, “That’s very generous of you, sir.”
Bill smiles because he knows there’s no sense arguing with me.
So his chauffeur drivels the four of us over to the “club.” A man in a tuxedo greets us at the door, opens the door, and then leads us down a long narrow hallway. He opens another door and we enter this big room, which is the most fancy place I’ve ever seen. A Negro band is playing jazz music, the people are all wearing fancy clothes, the waiters are in tuxedos, the lights are soft and low, and some couples are dancing. At first I’m a little scared because I think it’s sinful altogether. Then I realize that me man and I must act like we’re just as refined as the rest of them and probably more. So I walk in like I belong there and maybe have been to better places. I’m not a flapper at all, at all—and meself the mother of two children even if I am only twenty-four. But if I want to pretend that I’m a flapper, I can pretend with the best of them. The men and women stare at me, which happens sometimes when I get all dressed up. A few of the men look at me like they want to take my clothes off. I just stick my nose higher in the air and ignore them. Bill smiles like he’s very proud of me.
Well we have a jar of Irish whisky and, to be honest, a second one, which I never do, and we dance and me man holds me very close and I feel happy in his arms.
Then Bill tells your man that we should really get home to our kiddies. He asks about the kiddies and I let Bill do the bragging. Then doesn’t he insist that his chauffeur drive us home. Bill says that isn’t necessary at all at all. But I cut him of and say wouldn’t we be terrible grateful altogether and meself not sure I can walk a straight line after the two jars.
When we are home again in our snug little flat and the kiddies in bed, Bill says it’s been a long day and maybe we should get some sleep, I agree with him, though I know it’s not sleep he wants.
We don’t have to worry about. Klondike anymore, but I wonder about the poor bootlegger man and his nice young fiancée. They don’t seem very happy.
Well, aren’t we. invited to the wedding! Bill says he doesn’t think we ought to go because the criminal element will be there. And I says that, sure, we’ll never get a chance to see them again. Won’t it be, nice to be able to tell our children about them when they’ve grown up. He says that he’ll make up his mind about it later. That always means that he’s going to do what I want him to do—like he always, does.
Well, we went to the wedding and met Al Capone, who is a big, greasy man in fancy clothes—spats and all—with hard eyes, a charming smile, and a fat cigar in his mouth. He looks at me like I’m a piece of Fannie May candy to be swallowed in a single bite and I get away from him in a hurry. I admit to me man that he was probably right: we don’t belong at this wedding with all the crooked bootleggers, and crooked politicians and crooked police. We stay at the party at their club only long enough to congratulate your man and his wife and then we get out of there in a hurry.
The bride looks happy, as brides should. But I can tell by her eyes that she doesn’t like the crowd any more than I do and that she’s afraid of Mr. Capone just like I am.
“Pray for us, Nell Pat,” she says to me. “Pray for us every day.”
And don’t I promise her that I will.
“Isn’t that the craziest idea I’ve ever heard in all me life?” I says to himself when he tells me what we’re going to do for our friend the bootlegger man and his wife.
“Tis,” he says.
“I suppose we have to do it.”
“Woman, we do.”
“And crazy as it is, it isn’t dangerous?”
“Not very.”
“We do owe him a favor,” I say.
“We do … Tis a strange kind of favor, isn’t it, Nell Pat, me love.”
“Tis,” I say with me loudest sigh.
“And yourself pregnant.”
“That has nothing to do with it,” I insist.
So we’re going to help them. Your man says that we’re the only ones he can trust to keep the secret. That may be true enough, but I can’t for the life of me understand why he wants to do things this way.
That’s none of our business, says me man. As usual, he’s right.
It’s done now. And it wasn’t a bit dangerous. Nothing like what Happened out in Connemara when we tracked down the man responsible for the death of the Big Fella. Aren’t me and Bill glad it’s all over? And don’t we own a grave site out at Amount Carmel, not that either of us are planning to use it for a long time?
Someday won’t we be in the ground with everyone else that has gone before us? And ourselves in heaven with God who, Bill says, loves us even more than we love one another.
I hope the two of them find happiness.
And wasn’t it clever of them to ask us for help? No one in all the world would suspect the greenhorn contractor and his pregnant wife of getting involved in such a crazy scheme.
It will always be a secret. Bill and I won’t dare. to tell anyone else. Neither will the others who were involved. I understand why it was necessary.
11
I PONDERED the sheets I had copied out of the files which contained Ma’s diary. Only when I searched for entries which fit the story we already knew, did those selections fit together.
There was no way that Nuala could have seen the pattern when she was translating the diaries or that I would have recognized it when I was editing the translations. What would have happened, I wondered, if I had decided to include those passages in the published edition? Would anyone have figured out what they meant? Would the people that were still interested in protecting the empty grave have read them? If they had, what would they have done?
And exactly what had Ma and Pa done?
I had awakened while it was still dark, made copies of my statement of net worth, addressed the FedEx envelopes to her four siblings, and dropped them off at the still-unopened FedEx counter on the fourteenth floor of the John Hancock Center. Then I dashed back to the apartment to read through Ma’s diaries for 1926 and 1927.
The whole story was there. Nuala had been right from the beginning. Naturally. The grave was empty. Ma and Pa had been involved in the plot to keep it empty. Moreover our family grave site had been a reward for cooperation in the plot.
Jimmy “Sweet Rolls” Sullivan was buried somewhere else. So was Marie Kavanagh Sullivan, if she were dead. Somehow I thought she was probably still alive.
Would we meet her before the story was over? Somehow I wouldn’t be surprised if we did.
I was also impressed again by how much Ma was like Nuala. Different in many ways, of course, and not at all fey; but the same courage, the same determination, the same ability to play whatever role she thought fit the occasion. The old saw is that a man falls in love with a wife who will be like his mother. In my case it would be a wife who is like my grandmother.
As soon as I figured herself would be in her office, I called.
“Nuala Anne McGrail,” she said brightly.
“Wasn’t I looking for Marie McGrail?”
“That woman is no longer with us!”
“I kind of liked her.”
“She was a bit of a creep.”
“She had lovely breasts.”
“Dermot Michael Coyne! At this hour of the morning!”
Not a word about bothering her at her work! Another soul transplant.
“I found the parts in Ma’s diary about the Sullivans.”
“What does she say?”
“I’ll bring them
along tonight. Briefly, they were involved in the plot, just as you said they were.”
“Didn’t I know that!”
“Woman, you did … The entries are charming. They re-create the era. They were brave young people.”
“Didn’t we know that!”
“And one thing we didn’t know: our family grave site was a gift from Sullivan for helping them.”
“YOU didn’t know that.”
“Did you?”
Silence.
“Och, Dermot, do I have to know everything?”
Still the imp, the woman leprechaun. I was glad she was. I didn’t want her ever to become a complete adult.
We agreed I’d pick her up at 7:00 for dinner at Gordon.
“Gordon’s, is it?”
“Woman, it is not. Gordon. No s.”
“Humpf,” she snorted.
Then she added. “I’m crazy in love with you, Dermot Michael Coyne. Worse every day.”
“And I with you, Nuala Anne McGrail.”
“I’d better be getting back to work.”
“I’m sorry Marie McGrail isn’t there,” I said. “She’s not psychic at all, but, like I say, her breasts are gorgeous, especially when they’re naked.”
She hung up on me.
I sat in my massive easy chair, daydreaming about this remarkable woman who would soon be my wife.
The reveries were ended, as most good reveries are, by the ringing telephone.
“Dermot Michael Coyne,” I told the phone.
“Cindy.”
“Ah?”
“Dale Quade has handed me a subpoena for your financial records for the last three years.”
A lump of dry ice manifested itself in the pit of my stomach.
“My accountant has them. There’s nothing in them, Cindy. The CFTC and the IRS both went through them with a microscope.”
“I know that, Derm. I told her that. She sneered.”
“I’m a target?”
“I asked her that. She laughed and said that it was too early to answer that question. My hunch is that she’s on a fishing expedition. She’ll try to tie whatever she can find with whatever your old buddy Jarry Kennedy has on his wire.”
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