While I was pondering these painful problems, a young woman, clearly Italianate, clearly with Sabattini genes appeared at the door and pushed the bell.
I opened the door, smiled my best country gentry smile and said, “Yes?”
“I’m Tamrya. This is Mrs. Connors’s usual Christmas order of turkey dressing.”
I accepted the package.
“Thank you, Tamrya. I’ll give it to Ms. Connors.”
“Bye.”
She disappeared immediately, as if she had never been there.
Young woman, you have just become an accessory before the fact to the crime of attempted murder.
I wandered around the house, which obviously had been built in many stages, in search of the kitchen which had been hidden in a new alcove. It was the kind of modern, hyperconvenient “elegant” kitchen that Maria Elegante would have built. She was in the kitchen, huddled over a huge table with several lists and two daughters, a daughter-in-law, and a granddaughter. The latter beamed and gurgled with pleasure, perhaps because her grandmother would occasionally pick her up and swing her into the air.
“A young woman named Tamrya delivered this turkey dressing by hand for Mrs. Connors.”
“I thought we were making our own dressing?” one of the daughters said.
“We are. . . . Jackie, would you be a dear and take this package out to the man in the black car in the alley.”
“Certainly! Good morning, ladies!”
“Good morning, Jackie!”
Knowing where I did not belong I made a quick retreat.
“I think, Sergeant, that Mr. Casey was expecting this evidence.”
“Yes sir, he was. Turkey dressing. I’ll see that he gets it.”
I passed the kitchen, which was beginning to smell of many good things.
“Jackie, would you answer the phone for the next half hour please?”
“Happy to do something useful.”
I did finish the Times and the Journal before the phone rang.
“Jack Donlan,” I said, aware that this was not really my house, though as the spouse of the owner I had some minimal rights.
“Dermot . . . Nuala is on the other phone. We’re calling to make sure you’re there and all right.”
“Never been better.”
On reflection, I hoped that comment had not seemed too suggestive.
“We want to make sure you know all the details of what’s going down tomorrow.”
“I think so. The allegedly tainted but really not dressing has arrived. At herself’s instructions I gave it to a Reliable who is standing guard in a limo out in the alley.”
“And the arrest will be . . .?
“Christmas at one P.M., not an ideal time for an arrest.”
“Nor for a murder,” Dermot said. “These are bad people, Jack.”
“I know that.”
“Me point, John Patrick Donlan”—Nuala’s voice sounding like that of a worried member of the seraphim— “is that under no circumstance are you to be anywhere near the arrest when it goes down, do you understand?”
“I don’t get to ask why?”
“Absolutely not . . . You don’t argue with one of the dark ones when it’s a matter of life and death, do you understand?”
“Yes ma’am. To tell the truth I have no desire to be there.”
“’Tis a fine instinct altogether. Maria Angelica doesn’t deserve to be a widow again quite so soon.”
That was ominous. However, I had no desire to be present at the end of the chase and even less desire to disobey a witch, even if in this case it was the good witch of the West of Ireland.
I read the first two pages of the Enron book before the phone rang again.
“Jack Donlan.”
“Uncle Jack, uh, this is Camilla. I’m a niece of Aunt Maria.”
“I’ve heard of you, Camilla. It’s a pleasure to hear you. I endorse my wife’s promise to take care of you and protect you. . . .”
“Thanks, Uncle Jack . . . Could I talk to her for a sec? . . . I’m on duty at the hospital.”
“She’s meeting with the other magnates and potentates of this festival time in the kitchen and I’m the temporary switchboard.”
“Well, she invited me to come to midnight Mass and stay over tomorrow. I want her permission to bring a guest. He won’t need a room because he has to be back at the hospital by morning both days, so we won’t need an extra room. . . .”
“I’ll tell my good wife and I’m sure she’ll call you back. But I don’t think there’ll be a problem. . . . Might I tell her the name of this fast-moving guest?”
“Uh, he’s Johnny Burns, M.D. Senior psychiatric resident. He’s really cool.”
“I’ll tell the good Ms. Donlan and I’m sure she’ll be back to you immediately.”
“Thank you, Uncle Jack. Thanks a lot.”
I risked my life by venturing back to the kitchen.
“There was a call for the woman of the house from a sweet young woman named Camilla. She begs leave to bring a guest to the midnight Mass and to the dinner, but not an overnight guest because he has to get back to the hospital both days. His name is John Burns, M.D.”
“Thanks, Jack. I’ll call her back right away.”
“Camilla!” exclaimed the three young women.
“Why not!” their mother said. “What difference does one daughter more or less make, when we already have a horde of them.”
As the sun set on the very short Christmas Eve day, the participants in the festivity began to pour in, including my daughters who swarmed around my rocking chair.
“What a gorgeous old house!”
“Did Maria redo it? . . . It’s so her!”
“And the town is her today, picturesque but not quaint! No way!”
By repeating such assertions frequently enough, they would persuade themselves that they had been wrong about my new wife from the beginning. Evie went to her assigned room to put the baby down and unpack her and her husband’s clothes. He would arrive later in time for the collation at seven thirty—hot dogs, hamburgers, pasta, wine, ice cream, an indoor picnic.
I suggested to Mary Fran that we take a walk before twilight turned into dusk.
“I’m abandoning my guard post at the door,” I informed my wife and her helpers in the kitchen, “and going for a walk in the twilight.”
“I’ll have one of the cars follow you.”
As Mary Fran and I walked down the steps from the porch and turned toward the church, a black car started up the street and followed us at a distance.
“Car following us, Dad.”
“Security.”
“Will that always be necessary?”
“Only a little while longer. The danger is almost over. We’re going to have another M.D. here tonight, a shrink at that. . . . One John J. Burns, a senior resident at Kishwaukee Community Hospital.”
“Johnny Jim, they call him. Brilliant practitioner and so gentle. Don’t tell him I want to be a shrink. I’d be embarrassed. . . . Is he part of the family too?”
“Too early to tell.”
I told her about the call from Camilla, leaving out the plot which was to be put down tomorrow.
“Maria is such a wonderful earth mother. . . . And funny too . . . I can tell you are still happy . . . even dizzy in love.”
“Dizzier every day . . . How goes the stepmother crusade?”
“We’re making progress. . . . Maria is so wonderful it was always hard not to like her. It’s still a struggle for poor Evie. She is determined not to be wrong again. . . . Yet there are always little things that catch her up. . . . You’ll be sleeping in Maria’s room tonight?”
“If she’ll have me.”
“Oh, she’ll have you. . . . But that’s a little hard, for Evie, especially.”
“Don’t tell her, but I was in there this morning too!”
Mary Fran laughed.
“Of course you were, Daddy. Both of you are irresistible.”
&n
bsp; We had arrived at the church. Inside people were singing “Silent Night” and the stained glass windows were glowing. We turned to walk back to Maria’s house. Our house now, I guess. Two family Christmas parties, I thought, one of them about murder, the other threatened by murder.
They were singing inside powered by a determined tenor voice, one that made most of the notes. Loud applause and then “O Holy Night!”
Inside the “collation” was being distributed and the guests were gathering around tables and TV tables.
“Mom said this was for you, Dad,” Irene said as she pushed a platter of pasta Bolognese and a glass of wine. “It’s Barolo.”
I welcomed the red-haired Irishman who was obviously the tenor and the slender young woman who was leaning on his arm, Maria Angelica Sabattini of thirty years ago.
“Camilla,” I said, “you look like my wife must have thirty years ago. God bless and protect you.”
“I’ll do my best to be as kind and good as she is and leave the looks to God.”
“Johnny Burns, sir . . . And genes can be very powerful predictors, can they not?”
“Environment is equally important, sometimes more so,” Nurse Camilla insisted. “That’s why I’m so happy to be part of your family.”
“I don’t have much to say about it, but my wife says you’ll be a great asset.”
“And she’s absolutely right.” Johnny Burns consumed her with an adoring smile. “I’ve just met your daughter, though I’ve known her work for at least a year. Her paper on grace and therapy is brilliant beyond her years. We’d love to have her do her residency up here, but she is set on Loyola or Illinois at Chicago.”
“I’m afraid that she’s at the state now, Johnny Burns, where she analyzes everyone she meets.”
“I did that till about eighteen months ago.”
“More like six,” Camilla murmured.
“You don’t get respect anymore.”
Then my wife appeared, freshly showered, sweetly smelling, and beaming in a long loosely flowing and yet closely fitting Christmas dress, dark green and trimmed in red. There were some gasps from the crowd at how beautiful she was. She took my arm in hers and waited till all the guests were quiet.
“I welcome everyone to our annual Christmas Eve collation and Christmas party tomorrow. As you know we have a ban on liquor from this minute until we return from midnight Mass. It is a bigger party this year and we fondly hope that it gets even bigger in the years to come. I welcome all of you, especially this gentleman here who captured me body and soul a few weeks ago. Pray for us as we all pray for you and welcome new family and old.”
She kissed my cheek. Everyone applauded.
Yet more physical love for me tonight before the dawn of “Our Lord and Savior’s Holy Birth” as Nuala Anne called it? Where was that Irish Tiger? I didn’t feel secure unless she were around.
Evie took the floor.
“I’m the oldest of the new family and this babe inside of me is, as far as we know, the youngest for the moment anyway. I want to thank you, Mom, for making my father blush with happiness and protecting us as the Bible says under the shadow of your wings. You can count on us.”
Applause, hugs, and kisses.
“That is a very seductive dress you’re wearing woman,” I said to my wife.
“I thought you wouldn’t notice.”
She hugged me again, very suggestively I thought. My somewhat austere upbringing had not prepared me for such openly seductive behavior. Either no one else noticed or they expected it.
We all trooped down to the church and crowded into it when the doors opened at eleven o’clock. There were trumpets and cellos and cymbals to stir up our emotion of joy and sadness and triumph as we sang the traditional carols. Father Matt preached a beautiful and blessedly brief homily. We were home for wine and fruitcake by one fifteen. Joy and love were back in the world and as the night wore on in our bedroom.
God, you have revealed your beauty and love in the glories of my wife’s body. Protect us from the terrors of the morrow.
Dermot
WE ARRIVED at the Sabattini plant at five minutes to one. It was at the far edge of Oakdale from the old Connors house. It consisted of two ugly modern homes (right out of The Sopranos) in front of a large storeroom and garage covering twice the distance of the combined length of the houses. While they had lost control of their casino to a Las Vegas company, they still received a large annual payment from the new operators and had messed around in various local projects, both straight and crooked, and made little money from either kind. The cops arrayed around the “plant” seemed disorganized, confused, and dangerously close to the house.
“A frigging mess,” I murmured to Mike the cop.
“I told you two not to come, with these trigger-happy goofs, it could be dangerous.”
Two characters were standing next to Mike, a study in contrasts in rural cop stereotypes, Sheriff Jake Danzig and Oakdale Chief of Police Covington Bell. The sheriff was a wizened little man in civilian clothes with a fedora that went out of style a half century ago. The chief ballooned in riding breeches and an Ike jacket with Sam Brown belt and a gun holster. He clutched a high-powered rifle with grim passion. He had come to shoot.
“Jimmie, Paulie Sabattini, Joey McMahon, we have you surrounded. We are holding warrants for your arrest on charges of conspiracy to murder. You are innocent until proven guilty. If you surrender peacefully now, you will have the right to consult your lawyers immediately. We beg you to avail yourself of this right. Please come out of the house with your hands in the air.”
“Amateur night,” Mike muttered. “Someone is going to get hurt.”
“The men inside are frightened, terrified,” Nuala said, her hands clasped in something like prayer. “They can’t think straight, they’re so afraid. Poor scared little forest creatures.”
“These cops are clueless,” Mike said. “You guys don’t belong here.”
“They’re not cool,” Nuala said, caressing her weapon of choice, her camogie stick. “The people inside. They are about to do something wild. Be careful . . . Mike, they are terribly scared and terribly dangerous. Warn them that there have been no killings. There are no murder charges yet. Tell them not to take any chances.”
Mike reached for the PA microphone. The sheriff, confused and befuddled by it all willingly gave it up.
“This is Superintendent Michael Casey. I am talking to James Sabattini, Paul Sabattini, and Joseph McMahon. The warrants we are holding for you are for attempted murder. That is not a capital crime. Your plot has been frustrated. No one has died. No one needs to die. Please come out with your hands up. No one needs to die today.”
“These locals will start shooting as soon as they come out the door,” Mike whispered. “They’re trigger happy, worse even than the Bureau.”
The door of the house on the left swung open. Two men pushed out with two women in front of them, shields against the police bullets. Two cops, sheriff’s deputies by the look of their uniforms, who had been standing casually at the door, pulled forty-fives from their holsters. Pistol fire crackled. Both cops reeled and fell to the ground. A fusillade rang out from all around the police circle.
“Damn it to hell,” the sheriff screamed on his PA. “Cease fire. I told you no one shoots unless I give an order. The next one who fires a gun will be instantly dismissed from the force.
“I’m sorry, Mike,” he said to Superintendent Casey. “I thought I could keep them under control.”
The Oakdale chief standing next to the sheriff lowered his rifle reluctantly.
“Watch that man, Mike,” Nuala warned. “He wants to kill someone!”
“I see that,” Mike whispered.
“You fuckers move back and let us through to our cars or we’ll waste these cunts. Anybody shoot again and they die.”
The city chief raised his gun.
“I’ll take those fuckers out.”
Mike shoved the rifle out of his hands
.
“Asshole! You are not authorized to shoot! Do that again and you’ll never be a cop anywhere in the world.”
“Cov, I’m in charge. You obey the rules or I’ll destroy you.”
He turned on his PA again.
“Jimmie, Paulie, don’t do anything stupid. No one is dead. You haven’t killed anyone yet. The charge isn’t murder.”
“Liar! They’re all dead by now, that cunt Maria and all her friends! We have no choice! We gotta get out of here! We’ll kill these cunts if anyone moves on us. They’re fucking useless anyway.”
“Hold your fire. I repeat, everyone hold your fire. . . . Jimmie, Paulie, we intercepted your poison.”
“Go fuck yourself, liar!”
“I beg you,” the sheriff pleaded, “give yourselves a chance.”
“Just to show you I mean business, I’m going to kill this cunt. Then you get out of the way.”
“Poor, crazy, stupid man.” Nuala fell to the ground to pray.
“Jake?” Mike said.
The sheriff nodded his head.
“Do it, Mike!”
Mike nodded ever so slightly to three Chicago Tac men in grey who stood to one side by a tree. They raised their weapons, aimed carefully, and fired. Both Sabattinis folded up and collapsed on the ground with holes in the center of their foreheads. The two women were still standing, freed from certain death. Police began to pull weapons from their holsters and aim their rifles. Trigger-happy goons.
“Everyone hold their fire,” the sheriff bellowed. “Put your guns back in your holsters, break open your rifles, and shotguns. That is an order. Both men are dead. No more shooting. Anyone who shoots I will have up on charges today. I repeat, they’re dead. No more shooting. They’re dead.”
The cops reluctantly sheathed their weapons as the two women began to wail like banshees. That the dead men were about to kill them did not matter. We had killed their husbands. A younger woman, Tammy most likely, joined her mother wailing on the body of one of the dead.
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