Irish Tiger

by Andrew M. Greeley

  “Go say ‘hello’ to them.”

  They bounded over to their old friends and embraced them both.

  More cheers from the crowd.

  “Shouldn’t youse all go back to work? Isn’t there a lot to be done before Christmas?”

  Then they swarmed over me, demanding autographs. The hounds shook hands with everyone.

  Nuala Anne can do no wrong, I thought. Even when she acts like a focking eejit, out of control altogether. However would I explain it all to me poor husband?

  Dermot

  I PULLED up at the soundstage on Racine and West Ontario. There was already a crowd outside. My Irish Tiger was a celebrity. Two cops stopped me at the door. I showed them my ID. That wouldn’t do. Only relatives of the cast could come in. I showed them a picture in my wallet of Nelliecoyne. That was enough to get a faintly contemptuous wave from the cops.

  Inside they were singing an Arab Christmas carol, a young Arab woman in long dress and veil was crooning to a baby in her arms. Nuala was singing the lullaby softly along with the mother, while the tiny choir—Socra Marie, Katiesue Murphy, and some of their class were watching the baby and his mother in mute admiration. Then at a signal from herself, they began to hum. In the background a couple of strings joined in.

  “Them thar lil polecats a’singin like to call judgment day,” Katiesue’s ma, Captain Cindasue McLeod of the Yewnited States Coast Guard, whispered to me.

  “How’s it going?”

  “Hit’s a goin’ long tolerable well. Your woman say happen you come in, I should a telling you what she done this hyar mornin’. Hit tonishin!”

  Captain McLeod, some sort of gumshoe for Homeland Security, was from Stinkin Crik, West Virginia, or so she claimed. She spoke three Mercan dialects: Federal Bureaucratese, Plain English Talk, and Mountain Talk. With her friends and “plain ole folk” like her neighbors, she reveled in Mountain Talk—“hit a-bein’ talk that thar Willy Shakespeare a talkin all-ta-time.”

  So she pretended that we war down ta hollor in Stinkin Crik by the ole hard shell Baptist church and recounted the events that morning in front of St. Joseph’s Hospital. The hounds, who had been sleeping backstage, ambled up to me and sat on their haunches, doubtless aware that their praises were being sung.

  I didn’t say anything at the end of the story. My wife was still alive, so were the hounds, the kids were in various spots on the soundstage. All’s well that ends well.

  Cindasue ended the story in Plain English Talk.

  “They were going to take Ms. Connors to a whore-house, gang rape her, and throw her out in the street.”

  “Who paid them?”

  “Some man paid them twenty thousand dollars in cash. They didn’t know his name. Cops and FBI morons investigating, but they won’t find anything. This hyar place a-crawlin’ with security. Ya uns be careful.”

  “Shunuf!”

  Two large and authoritative women in pants suits a size too small elbowed their way past us and pushed out on to the soundstage.

  “I’m Ethel Showalter and I’m assistant director of the Cook County CPO, Children Protective Office. I’m closing down this performance.”

  My wife turned on her, eyes dark with rage.

  “I don’t think you are. . . . Cindy, will you take care of this witch and have security eject them?”

  My sister, the redoubtable Cynthia Coyne Hurley, mother to our wondrous Ellie, appeared on the floor. Though I was technically not part of security I ambled over behind her, knowing full well that my sister could more than take care of herself.

  “You’re guilty of harassment, Director Showalter. I will seek an injunction against you in Judge Ebenezer Brown’s courtroom in the morning and ask for punitive damages against you and the County of Cook. Please leave this soundstage immediately or I will ask security to throw you out.”

  “Federal court has no jurisdiction over us.”

  “If the Federal court makes this case its own by assuming jurisdiction, then it has jurisdiction. We will ask Judge Brown to confine you in the downtown Federal lockup.”

  My beloved Celtic Tiger was closing in on our little conversation, the two pooches acting as escorts.

  “No way he’ll do that . . . This soundstage is lousy with violations.”

  “Your choice of language is offensive. I have here in this manila folder all the waivers, permissions, contracts, and agreements into which we have entered for this activity and a letter from the secretary of labor of the State of Illinois stating that it is his considered judgment that we are in full compliance with the laws and regulations of the State of Illinois regarding child labor. You could have ascertained this compliance by a phone call to the State of Illinois building. . . . Young man, you’re in charge of security, are you not?”

  “Yes ma’am, Ms. Hurley, ma’am.”

  “Then will you and these police officers show these two women out of the building or direct the officers to arrest them?”

  My Irish Tiger grinned wickedly and walked back to her podium. The doggies followed, looking reluctantly it seemed to me over their shoulders.

  “We’re leaving,” Director Showalter snapped. “You haven’t heard the last of this.”

  “Nor, Director Showalter, have you! Guard!”

  “This way, please, Director.”

  Behind me, as I walked our two unwelcome guests out of the building, the hounds howled again. They had been doing that a lot lately. Bad habits!

  The media were ready for them. Ms. Showalter was prepared.

  “They are out of compliance in there,” she snapped. “We will ask the sheriff to close them down.”

  As she departed the bank of microphones I slipped in.

  “Our attorneys gave her a file with all the waivers, permissions, contracts, and agreements into which we have entered for this activity and a letter from the secretary of labor of the State of Illinois stating that it is his considered judgment that we are in full compliance with the laws and regulations of the State of Illinois regarding child labor.

  “Our attorney also pointed out that Director Showalter could have ascertained this compliance by a phone call to the State of Illinois building and suggested that her harassment of the production might put her in contempt of the order of the Honorable Ebenezer Brown, forbidding all further harassment of the production.”

  “Do you think, Dermot, that Director Showalter is another Grinch trying to spoil Christmas?”

  “They might need a whole Grinch floor over at the lockup pretty soon.”

  “Do you have any comment, Dermot, on the incident at St. Joseph’s this morning?”

  “I wasn’t there.”

  I retreated quickly to resist the additional comment that I wasn’t sure that I wanted to know what had happened.

  I returned to the building with the hounds in tow.

  My Nelliecoyne was singing the Connemara lullaby with perfect pitch. Nuala joined her on the first refrain, and the choir joined in for the second refrain.

  “That’s it,” my wife said. “Well done, everybody. Same time tomorrow. We’ll try to go through it all without any interruption.”

  Applause from everyone in the theater.

  “They a-cheerin’ like they cheered the li’l polecat down to St. Joseph’s this morning. . . . Irish Tiger, shunuff.”

  Then me wife dashed into my arms and sobbed.

  “Dermot!” she wailed. “I’m totally out of control.”

  Dermot

  “DERMOT,” SHE wailed for perhaps the fourth time that day, “I was totally out of control.”

  “Woman,” I responded firmly, “you were not out of control. You just called up one of those personalities you stored away in your preconscious, one of those characters you know pretty well. I’ve seen her work several times, like that night in the alley in Dublin when those thugs came after me . . . surely you remember that?”

  “Not at all, at all . . . I never did anything like that.”

  We were having our e
nd of the day chat with the usual splash of the creature, this time a very large splash for herself who was so tense that I feared she might break if the phone rang again.

  The last call was from Maria Angelica, complaining that her new family—her three new daughters acquired that afternoon—would not go home.

  “I’m too old for this emotion,” she had said.

  “A lot of anger and guilt being discharged?” me wife had replied, in her psychiatric mode.

  “They are sweet young women when given half a chance, but I’m not sure I’m up to them. You wouldn’t want an extra daughter or two, would you?”

  “Not at all, at all. Isn’t it hard enough with the two I have?. . . How you keeping, Maria Angelica?”

  “A little tense. . . Yourself?”

  “Feeling no pain at all, at all. Just sitting here with my man and drinking the creature like they were locking it all up tomorrow!”

  I returned to my discussion of the many faces of Nuala Anne.

  “I don’t suppose you recall the time you came charging down our stairs with the very same camogie stick and the very same dogs when those eejits were trying to beat me up in front of our own home and Cindasue coming down the street with her forty-five?”

  “I don’t remember that, at all, at all.”

  “You’re the kind of woman I’d want behind my back when the lights go off in a room. I figure that when the lights come on, a couple of my enemies will lie smote on the floor.”

  “Nothing like that ever happened!”

  “Not yet, but face it, Nuala Anne, when your friends and family are under attack they know they can count on you. . . . and the fire engine and the hounds of heaven. . . Doesn’t it make me safe altogether?”

  You’re talking like her again.

  Go back to your hole in the wall.

  “Give over, Dermot Michael! . . . And don’t I need another splasheen!”

  “Not at all, at all! I have some special amusements to relax you and I don’t want you to be fluttered.”

  “Well then let’s get on with your silly games!”

  “Not till we talk about the case.”

  “Well then report on what you did today while I was fighting off the barbarians!”

  So we returned to our usual modality of my reciting almost verbatim my conversations with Joey McMahon and the guys at Mike’s bar. I took my sweet time.

  She nodded.

  “He probably knows some bosses in the drug gangs out there. He could have turned them loose. . . what did those poor men tell the cops? Some man they didn’t know gave them twenty thousand dollars in cash to kidnap and rape Maria? He wouldn’t have done it himself. Too risky. But a man who knows his village as well as he does, would know a discreet go-between. . . . But Dermot, isn’t this savagery? Terrible, terrible savagery?”

  “’Tis. The Outfit which can be brutal and its upset would never put out a contract like that. . . .”

  “Did you call your friend Dominic to thank him for the tip?”

  “Sure. . . His friends say that their friends are furious. The police ought to do something about it. No one is safe in Chicago anymore. They’re trying to ascertain—Dom’s word—who put out the contract. I suspect that the perpetrator has vanished in the mists. He or they or she or whatever are clumsy but they’re vicious.”

  “And they’re getting more vicious. . . . Dermot, whatever will we do!”

  A unusual plaint from herself!

  “We’ll do what we always do, we’ll solve the mystery.”

  Silence.

  “And we’ll be careful. We’ll stay close to our security people and we’ll keep the hounds a little hungry, so they’re ready to fight!”

  “We’ll not starve my poor little puppies. . . . Och Dermot, I’ve lost me sense of humor altogether. . . . And, Dermot love, as you Yanks say, I haven’t a clue. None of it makes sense. . . .”

  I didn’t like that. At all, at all. If me wife’s carefully tuned fey sensitivities hadn’t picked up any emanations we could be in deep trouble. She certainly was in contact with Archbishop Blackie. If neither of them could figure out what was going down, we’d better invest in some automatic weapons.

  “Your sis says the insurance company has to pay for the damage to me car. Isn’t that nice and it being me own fault?”

  “I bet she also said that your rate would shoot up or that they might even refuse to insure you at all, at all.”

  “She did. . . but, Dermot love, there were only a few bumps on the front, hardly to notice. I might just leave it that way. . . . Well let’s run through our suspects. . . . Thefirst ones that come to mind are those brothers of Maria. . . .”

  “Small-time punks with big-time dreams who hate their sister. But we have no evidence on them and Dom says the Outfit thinks they’re clean on this one.”

  She nodded.

  “Then there’s the Donlan daughters, but they have made peace, have they not? And with much weeping and phone calls to meself.”

  “Most unlikely suspects but they might know something.”

  “Something they don’t know they know, is it now? Won’t we have to talk to them again?”

  Which meant that I would have to talk to them again.

  “The next one on the list is Lou Garner,” I continued, “a four-flusher who envies Jack Donlan’s success and has some shady connections in the construction world. He’s nasty but not violent.”

  “What’s a four-flusher, Dermot Michael?” she said with a yawn.

  “Someone who has four cards of the same suit in a poker hand but fakes that his hidden card is also in the suit and he’s holding a flush which is five cards in the same suit. . . . A faker in other words.”

  “You must teach me that poker thing sometime, Dermot. I used to watch me classmates play when I was a young thing at Trinity College. I always knew what was in everyone’s hand.”

  “Can you still do that?”

  “I suppose so. . . I’m pretty good at predicting what your Bears will do on Sunday. . . . Why?”

  “When we’ve solved this puzzle, we might go down to Vegas and win enough money to repair your Lincoln.”

  “Wouldn’t that be cheating?” She yawned again. “Let’s finish this conversation or won’t I be too sleepy to satisfy your obscene needs?”

  That would be most unlikely since she wanted lovemaking as much as I did.

  “There’s your man down at the office and out in the neighborhood?”

  “Isn’t he the prime suspect? I don’t suppose you asked Dom to check him out?”

  “Dom and Mike Casey both. He doesn’t seem to be the kind of man that would have underworld contacts. But I’d bet he’s a sneaky little guy.”

  “Still himself talking to people in the pub which is pretty clumsy and all this stuff being clumsy?”

  “I agree that he’s the prime suspect, but I want to know more about Sterling Stafford. He sounds like the kind of man who doesn’t like to lose, either elections or women.”

  “You’re not thinking of going out there by yourself, are you now Dermot Michael Coyne?”

  Actually I was.

  “I’ll ask Mike Casey whether he can provide me a chauffeur for the ride out to Sunshine in Kishwaukee County. Tomorrow about noon.”

  “And meself with another rehearsal.”

  “It will be swarming with cops and Cindasue will be carrying her forty-five.”

  “It’s not meself that I’d be worrying about.”

  “There are rumors about me kicking around in the empyrean?”

  She pondered thoughtfully.

  “Just wifely concern.”

  “Speaking of which, it is now time for an exercise of your wifely duties.”

  “Wifely rights. . . But not till we say our decade of the rosary and drink a toast to one another.”

  So we did both and what happened afterward exorcised at least temporarily whatever demons had been hounding my wife since her adventures in the morning.

 
Dermot

  Memo

  From: Michael Casey

  To: Dermot Coyne

  Subject: Sterling Silver Stafford

  Representative Sterling Silver Stafford (Rep. Ill.) is your classic rural Middle Western Republican Congressman of the Reagan era. Not very bright, not very articulate, but very loyal to the party and never guilty of thinking for himself. Born in 1940, he inherited from his father, Fair Profit Silver, his hard shell Baptist religion, his good looks, his populist Republican style and his ability to go for the main chance. He also inherited his father’s General Motors franchise in DeKalb and a thousand acres of prime Illinois prairie. Before running for Congress in 1984 (at the time of the second Reagan election, a Republican sweep) he had transferred his GM franchise to Rockford and transformed it into the largest Cadillac agency in Northern Illinois. He also increased his land holdings in Sunshine County to three thousand acres at the time when the American farm belt was feeding much of the world. It was easy for him to get on the Agriculture Committee and not much more difficult to take over the subcommittee responsible for farm subsidies, a position which in the heydays of the Newt Gingrich Congress and the K Street lobbies, enabled him to become a multimillionaire. He played high school football at Sunshine High School but, despite his campaign claims he was never All-State. Indeed he was a perennial second string, though as his friends say, with a touch of irony, he sure did look like a football star. He was described in journals like TIME as a leader of the Farm Block, but in fact Sterling never led anything and was more a docile member of the Agribusiness Block. He sure did look like a congressman, however—white suit, white shirt, white shoes, black string tie, silver hair, rich baritone voice which could make the most unoriginal right-wing clichés sound like Gospel truth. He was compared to the late Everett McKinley Dirksen as a speaker, a comparison he reveled in, though he was not in the same ballpark as the “Great Ooze” when it came to oleaginous and shrewd statements.

  He was twenty-six when he married Vivian Whither-spoon, a nineteen-year-old former cheerleader and stenographer at the Silver Cadillac agency. Their firstborn, Ron Silver, was born five months later. Vivie was a poor white trash country girl who wanted the good life. She hated Kishwaukee County and its memories of poverty and enjoyed the District and all its ceremony. She fit in perfectly with the rich white trash environment of the Reagan and Bush years, so much so that she rarely returned home on weekends with her husband or on recesses. Nor in Washington did she attend church with him at the upper end Southern Baptist Church where he occasionally preached on Sunday.