Irish Whiskey

by Andrew M. Greeley

  “Not a chance.”

  “See you then, me darlin’ man.”

  I neglected to tell her that I loved her.

  Dummy.

  YOU AREN’T GOING TO BE MUCH OF A HUSBAND, the Adversary had crept in.

  “Get out of here,” I told him.

  The last call before I left for Arthur Andersen was from a man who had been a classmate at Fenwick, the scion of a large cleaning and drying firm.

  “Hey, Dermot,” he began enthusiastically, “it’s Geno.”

  Just like we talked on the phone every day.

  “Hey, Geno. Nice to hear from you.”

  “Say, congratulations on your upcoming marriage. Is she is as beautiful as that picture in the Trib?”

  “More beautiful.”

  “You always were a lucky guy!”

  That wasn’t the way I remembered it.

  Long pause.

  “You know, Dermot, there’s this individual who’s a friend of a friend of ours. He’d like to talk to you. It’s no big deal. I swear it isn’t. Just a very brief conversation. Something like that.”

  “Yeah?”

  “Like, are you gonna be around tomorrow?”

  “I’m taking my fiancée to the Notre Dame game.”

  “Hey, great! … What about Sunday, like maybe Sunday morning, something like that?”

  “We go to the ten o’clock Mass at Old St. Patrick’s.”

  “It’ll only take a couple of minutes. This individual wants to know whether you would be willing to talk to another individual.”

  Friend of some friends. “Individual” representing another “individual”? Four layers. And the Irish are supposed to be indirect.

  “He’s a good friend, Geno?” I asked, deciding that there was no point in not playing the game. They didn’t drag you into cars and blindfold you anymore.

  “He’s a real good friend of some real good friends. It’s no big deal, Dermot, I guarantee you that.”

  That guarantee and a buck and a half would get me a ride on Rich Daley’s subway.

  “Maybe I could talk to him about 8:30, say in the lobby of my apartment building?”

  “Yeah. Maybe you could meet him outside. Take a little walk around the block. Something like that. He’ll know you.”

  “Fine, Geno. I’ll be looking forward to it. Give my best to your family.”

  “Yeah. And you do to yours. Lots of luck with the wedding.”

  “Thanks, Geno. She’ll need it more than I do.”

  Why the hell did I say that?

  The dry-cleaning firm was “legit,” though it had not always been “legit.” Geno’s family was “legit” too. More or less.

  We weren’t about to be taken for a ride. Just the same, I’d mention the conversation to Prester George.

  Just in case we disappeared.

  Or something like that.

  There were three more calls before I left for the party at the Italian Village.

  The first was from the agent in charge of Nuala’s recording. It was selling very well, and the producers were already making a second pressing. Would she be interested in another album after our honeymoon? I admitted that she might and I would ask her to call him.

  The second was from my editor. There were two good prepublication reviews, though one thought that I might not have given enough attention to Irish Puritanism. As if Cromwell’s Puritans had not committed genocide in Ireland. The publicity was helping sales. We were already on a couple of best-seller lists.

  Normally these two pieces of good news would have made me very happy. But I was back in my self-pitying modality and I didn’t care about success.

  Then it occurred to me that the experience of being hounded by a Federal prosecutor would make a very good story. I’d better start taking notes.

  I revived enough of my energy to call Nuala and tell her about the good news.

  “Grand! Super! Brilliant!” she bellowed. “That’ll show all of them!”

  I agreed, though I wasn’t sure who “all of them” were.

  The third call was from me friend Annie, me future mother-in-law. She would make my future wife look transparent.

  “How you keeping, Annie?”

  “Sure, aren’t we both in rare form. And yourself now, Dermot love?”

  “Just brilliant, Annie. My novel and herself’s album are on their way to being big successes. So we’ll start off our marriage with even more confidence about the future.”

  Having said it aloud, I began to be more confident. “Isn’t that grand now? Sure, are there two young people in all the world who deserve it more?”

  “We’ll be looking forward to seeing you next week, Annie. I think you’ll love Chicago.”

  “Won’t we now? Though I’m not so sure I’ll be liking that airplane thing.”

  “Five minutes into the air and you’ll be loving it.”

  “That’s what himself says, as if he’s ever spent more than a day or two outside of Galway.”

  “You should spend some time touring this country of ours.”

  “Well, haven’t we thought of that and ourselves not getting any younger? So doesn’t your man say that we should spend a month in America? And, like I had as little sense as he, don’t I agree?”

  “Wonderful! I’m glad to hear it.”

  “It’s hard arguing with herself, isn’t it now?”

  “Tell me about it!”

  Nuala was certainly paying for it. Good for her. I’d praise her tonight and she’d dismiss it as being unimportant, but would nonetheless be pleased.

  “Well, just so long as nothing interferes with your happiness. Don’t I always say that the main thing about a wedding is the happiness of the bride and groom?”

  “And how right you are. Don’t worry, Annie, nothing will interfere with our happiness that day. No one will take it away from us.”

  “Doesn’t it make me terrible happy to hear you say that? … Sure, don’t I cry every time I think of you two?”

  “My mother does, too.”

  She had asked her question and I had given my answer.

  She adjured me to hug “the daughter” for her because “Sure, I don’t dare call her at work.”

  I agreed to do so.

  I wondered after I had hung up how she and himself would feel when they arrived in Chicago in the midst of the media coverage of an indictment, especially with Larry moaning about family disgrace.

  My fists tightened. I still wanted to slug Larry.

  Despite their roundabout rhetoric, Annie and Gerry were tough people. They had to be to wrest a living from their little patch of ground in the desolate regions of Connemara. They could take whatever would happen. It was a shame that they had to.

  The vultures were waiting for me outside the lobby of the Hancock Center.

  “Why are you suing the Chicago media, Dermot?”

  “Because they defamed me.”

  “How did they do that?”

  “By attributing to me a conversation which never occurred.”

  “Are you saying that the FBI is lying about you?”

  “No. I am merely saying that the conversation never happened.”

  “You don’t expect to win the suit, do you?”

  Broad grin from the charming ex-linebacker. “Not a doubt about it … You guys should check your sources with due diligence.”

  “If you win, what will you do with all the money?”

  “Donate it to Catholic schools, especially the ones I attended—St. Luke Grammar School, Fenwick High School, and Notre Dame and Marquette Universities.”

  “Will they take tainted money?”

  I slipped into the taxi which my friend Mr. Woods had parked at the door.

  “If the money is tainted, it won’t be by me.”

  YOU’RE BEGINNING TO ENJOY THIS, the Adversary warned me. START WRITING IN YOUR NOTEBOOK.

  “I didn’t bring my notebook.”

  SURE YOU DID. I REMINDED YOU.

&nbs
p; It was indeed in my jacket pocket.

  He must be the Adversary behind the Adversary. Or the one in the edge of light. The Adversary with a halo.

  18

  EDITORIAL FREEDOM OF THE PRESS UNDER ASSAULT

  A free society requires a free press. When journalists are inhibited from reporting on cases of wanton corruption, the free press is shackled. When reckless defamation suits are filed to protect those accused of crime, freedom of the press is suppressed. Lawyers, one supposes, will do whatever is necessary to protect their clients, but when they attempt to take away from the press its rightful freedom, then they conspire to destroy all that is good in this country.

  Regardless of whether we are the target of such legal machinations, we deplore them. When we are the target of such trickery as unleashed this past week by Cynthia Coyne Hurley, the sister of Desmond Coyne, a target of the Justice Department’s “Full Platter” probe, we must resolutely decry such behavior and with equal resolution promise that we will not submit to such legal blackmail.

  Coyne has been accused in documents obtained by all Chicago media of massive theft from his clients, indeed accused in his own words. To attempt to deprive us of the right to report such accusations is an outrage. Obviously Coyne is innocent till he is proven guilty, though the evidence against him seems to be massive. We reserve the right to report the charges and leave to a jury of his peers the question of his guilt.

  We will not, however, be intimidated by Ms. Hurley’s disgraceful legal tactics.

  EDITORIAL WHAT IS DUE DILIGENCE?

  Since we are not a target of the complaint filed by lawyers for Michael Coyne, an alleged victim of the latest inept FBI sting, charmingly called “Operation Full Platter,” it might seem gratuitous for us to comment on this affair. However, lawyers for the trader-turned-novelist have caught the usual conspirators in the tactic of conviction by prosecutorial leak in the middle of their conspiracy. The media take it for granted that they have the right to print as fact any rumor which oozes out of the office of a prosecuting attorney. Prosecutors also take it for granted that they have the right to leak anything and everything which would ruin a defendant’s reputation, deny him the possibility of a fair trial, and force him into an unfavorable plea bargain.

  We submit that this is not justice as the term has normally been used in the United States.

  Mr. Coyne’s lawyers have pounced on the coconspirators in a particularly egregious assault on the assumption that an American is innocent till proven guilty. The United States Attorney has seen fit to turn over to the Chicago media (ourselves included) a transcript of a conversation that is alleged to have occurred between Mr. Coyne and an FBI informant. Mr. Coyne vigorously denies that the conversation ever occurred.

  Let us suppose for a moment that this talented young man is telling the truth. Let us suppose that he can prove that he is telling the truth and that the charges against him are faked, perhaps by an overzealous informant and an uncautious Assistant United States Attorney. Stranger things have happened.

  Should these contingencies fall into place, the Chicago media will surely seem to have been guilty of lack of due diligence. Mr. Coyne’s attorneys will have a field day. The schools which Mr. Coyne attended will profit greatly. And journalistic sleaze will be exposed for what it is.

  When we showed our own lawyers the leaked transcript, they asked us one question: how do we know that Mr. Coyne really participated in that conversation? We thought about it and said we did not know that for a fact. They threw up their hands and said if we printed it under such circumstances, we could be in deep trouble. We will watch with interest the development of this fascinating case.

  Column Note:

  Ace Fed prosecutor Dale Quade is about to add another scalp to her belt. Sources tell this column that the flurry of activity by the lawyers of Dermot Coyne, a commodity broker turned author of steamy novels, is a tactic to win him a generous plea bargain. Neither the arrest of two FBI agents by Chicago police, friendly to Coyne, nor the suits filed in county court by his sister are likely to fend off Quade. Moreover those who know this stern legal beagle think that these smoke screens will earn Coyne more rather than less time in prison.

  RADIO EDITORIAL

  Management of this station has felt for some time that commodity markets in this city are the biggest gambling casinos and that many of the men and women who scream at each other in the “pits” of these exchanges are not much better than members of the Mafia. So we’re delighted to hear that the United States Attorney has trapped a young punk from those exchanges in his own words. We hope that this upcoming indictment won’t give undue publicity to his potboiler novel. We expect he’ll have leisure time behind the bars of a federal correctional institution to work on his next novel.

  Conversation heard on LaSalle Street

  Trader A: I hear the Feds are going to get Dermot Coyne. A guy with a wire got him to admit that he cheated a customer.

  Trader B: No one cheats customers.

  Trader C: Some dumb guys try.

  Trader A: Do you think Dermot was dumb enough to try?

  Trader B: Poor Dermot was a nice kid. Never belonged on the floor. He was so dumb that he couldn’t cheat anyone if he wanted to try.

  19

  THE PARTY at the Italian Village was Nuala’s. The Notre Dame game was my party, indeed my class’s fifth reunion. So naturally I was the leading figure in the Arthur Andersen party, and she stole the stage in the shadow of the Golden Dome.

  Figures.

  At her party she wore the shy child from the West of Ireland mask, the demure bride with her arm around the astonishing man whose love she had managed to win through no merit of her own. At Notre Dame she was the exuberant hoyden who led the singing and the cheering. I might just as well have not been there, save for the formalities of introducing her to my classmates and friends and handing in the tickets as we entered the stadium.

  Figures.

  Which Nuala was the real one? Both of them, of course. Both were equally attractive, and both sent my hormones racing. The shy child, however, was closer to the ur-Nuala, the little girl that raced barefoot down the unpaved lanes and along the rocky beaches of Carraroe.

  In both venues I had become something of a folk hero for taking on the media. I had forgotten how much the average American hates journalists, especially good-looking and empty-headed television journalists.

  “Go get ’em, Dermot!”

  “Take ’em for all they’re worth!”

  “About time someone said they’re a pack of liars.”

  “Dermot, I hope you get every penny.”

  Prester George had told me that this would happen, but what did he know?

  “Dermot, they’ll forget you never graduated. Just watch the Holy Cross priests flock around you. Nothing changes the memory of college administrators like the smell of a large gift.”

  I saw no reason to tell Nuala about the call from my old friend Geno until I talked to the friend of his friends before Mass on Sunday. Doubtless this man would be a messenger for a certain “individual” who was a friend of friends of his. How did they keep all those links straight?

  As we were leaving the Italian Village and I was waiting for Nuala to emerge from the women’s room, I overheard a conversation between her and one of her (women) coworkers, not unlike one I had heard at the beach earlier in the summer.

  “No, we’re not living together, and we’re not sleeping together either.”

  “Why not?”

  None of her damn business.

  “Because he never asked me.”

  “Would you if he asked?”

  The Adversary, who had appeared from nowhere, told me that I should not eavesdrop. I ignored him.

  “I knew he’d never ask so I never had to worry about it.”

  “He sounds a little weird.”

  “I don’t think it’s weird at all, at all. He respects me and cherishes me and I like that.”

  The las
t was said with considerable vigor and a return of the strong West of Ireland brogue. Good enough for the witch who was asking such personal questions.

  “See!” I said to the Adversary.

  I did tell her about the conversation with her mother as I drove her home from the party. The rain had cleared away and a sly moon crescent was winking at us in the sky above Southport Avenue, as if to say I know what the two of you are thinking about.

  “Och, aren’t they all worried sick about us,” Nuala replied to my account of the phone call from the Gaeltacht. “That amadon Laurence is calling everyone every day. He is determined to stop our marriage. He’s not going to do it, but he upset everyone.”

  “He should be concentrating on his own business which needs full-time attention now, instead of running up long-distance phone bills.”

  “Doesn’t he call everyone collect?”

  “He calls collect?”

  “Doesn’t he say that the whole family should share the costs of preventing this disgrace? Me brother Pedar won’t accept the charges anymore.”

  “Why is he doing this, Nuala?”

  “Sure, he hates me. He was the admired prince of the family until the little demon came along at the end of the line and got all the attention.”

  “Which she deserved.”

  “Well, the poor little thing didn’t have much choice, did she now? … Don’t worry about me ma. I’ll call her before we leave for the game tomorrow. We’ll have a nice long talk in Irish which will calm her down for a while.”

  She dressed the part for The Game, tight white jeans, a somewhat less tight blue-and-gold Notre Dame sweatshirt, and a blue baseball cap with the word “Irish” emblazoned on the front. Truth in advertising. She had tied her hair back with a blue-and-gold ribbon and carried a blue-and-gold bag over her shoulder in lieu of a purse.

  “You mean to tell me, Dermot Michael, they really can’t have a small jar inside the stadium, not even to wash down their sandwiches?”

  “Woman, they cannot. There was too much of the drink taken in ages past.”