“Sure, there’s not a doubt in the world like.”
We discussed the various roles we would play. Rather my wife the actress told the other two of us what to say and what she would say. I was not allotted much of a role—which was fine with me.
YOU KNEW SHE WAS DAFT WHEN YOU MARRIED HER.
I didn’t expect this.
IF YOU HAD ANY SENSE YOU WOULD HAVE.
We pulled up to the house. Mike Casey knocked on the door.
Trevor Curran admitted us. Mike introduced himself and us, though Trevor seemed to recognize me.
“I want to be clear before we begin the conversation,” he said formally. “I understand that this is not a criminal investigation and that you are not here in any way as officers of the law.”
“Mr. Curran,” Mike replied with equal formality, “we are all bound by contract to protect the Curran family, I by an explicit written contract, these young people by an implicit one.”
“Very well, come in and sit down.”
“I must say also that if we cannot resolve this problem today, police officers will come in a day or two with a formal warrant.”
Annette, taut and stiff, in a light blue Easter dress, glared at us.
“I will not talk to these people, Trevor. Father Charles has advised me not to.”
“And I, as your husband, order you to.”
Did Trevor know what was coming, perhaps only vaguely?
We all sat down.
Nuala began. She spoke so gently and so sorrowfully that I could hardly hear her.
“Annette, we know that you have been spying on the rest of your family at your husband’s grandfather’s request for some time. We have the phone records of your conversations with him on the day River House exploded, on the day the bomb was found in the car at the Four Seasons, and yesterday, when you told him that Jack and Marti were driving up to Twin Lakes this morning.”
“No, no, none of that’s true. I did only what Father Charles told me to do …”
“By the grace of God,” Nuala continued, gently implacable, “no one has been killed, though I’m thinking the angels had to be working over time. John and Estelle were not in the house at the time because they had flown to Italy and you didn’t know that when you told your husband’s grandfather they would be in the house. Mr. Casey’s agents found the bomb on the car before it exploded and some Wisconsin State Police found the criminals planting a roadside bomb on Wisconsin Highway 30 before it could destroy Jack and Marti.”
“You can’t prove it! I didn’t do any of it!”
She eased into hysteria. We let her make the trip.
“Yes, we can prove it, Annette. We don’t want to hurt you or your family but we know you spied on them.”
“You have the phone records?” her husband asked.
I walked over with the excerpts on which Nuala had marked the appropriate calls between the Ocean Reef number and Annette’s cell phone. Trevor glanced at them, shut his eyes, and shook his head.
I was supposed to note that the numbers were of her cell phone and Long Tom’s apartment. It wasn’t necessary.
“Father Charles told me that everything I did was all right. He praised me for my courage. I am not ashamed. Besides, they all hate me, they make fun of me, they despise my children! They all should die!”
“If that be the case, Father Charles will be liable to indictment as an accessory to multiple attempts at murder,” Mike the Cop said firmly, “should this information become public. You should consider that you engaged, however unintentionally, in the attempted murder of four people, all of them your in-laws or their spouses.”
“I hate them, I hate them, I’m going to talk to Father Charles and he’ll tell me that I’ve done the right thing.”
She fled from the room screaming.
Trevor opened his eyes.
“What would you people have me do?”
It was my turn.
“We presume you will seek psychiatric help for your wife.”
“Naturally, I will have no choice but to institutionalize her for some time … I should have seen this coming. I will withdraw my children from that school. They will be delighted …”
He rubbed his hand across his forehead.
“She didn’t use to be that way … Father Charles took control of her life. I should have stopped that relationship. It is truly my fault.”
“These things happen gradually,” I was extemporizing. “One doesn’t notice the change, then there are serious problems. I’m sure that with proper therapy and medication, she will recover.”
Me wife, the director, nodded in approval.
“Yes,” he said thoughtfully, “I suppose you’re right, Dermot. She always was a perfectionist—four kids, keeping the house in order, she became a prisoner of her obsessions … I know an excellent institution. I have some influence there. I’ll see that she’s placed in their care tomorrow. I will see also that Father Charles has no further contact with her. I will threaten his organization with legal action …”
“That’s wise. Legal action will not be necessary against them, however. The people at Opus are good people and they mean well. Sometimes neurotic relationships happen there as in other institutions. They are not the villains portrayed in the Da Vinci Code. I’m sure a measured discussion will be enough.”
“Thank you, Dermot, you are a very wise man.”
I shut up because I knew that if I said any more, I would be in deep trouble. Two unscripted paragraphs were all right, but a third … !
“And now, Mr. Casey, what about the Chicago Police Department, over which you presided with so much dignity and humanity.”
The play was going as planned.
“I spoke with the police and the State’s Attorney this morning. They have great respect for the Curran family and they wish to avoid any more suffering for you. The testimony of the Dominican mob the Wisconsin police arrested this morning will be enough to settle this case. If you call Commander Culhane at Area Six and tell him that you and a lawyer would like to talk to him on Tuesday morning, he will provide all the privacy arrangements you need. You will have to do nothing more than tell Commander Culhane and the State’s Attorney who will be with him what you have learned about your wife’s phone conversations with your grandfather. They agree that no useful purpose would be served at this time for that part of the story to become public.”
“I have to trust you, don’t I, Superintendent?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Whom better to trust … I must thank you all very much.” His voice wavered. “You’ve been very helpful, very considerate. You, Ms. McGrail, I am sure, are responsible for saving the lives of my parents … Thank you.”
“You’re welcome,” said my woebegone wife.
“I do love her,” he said, choking back tears. “I will stand by her … Now I must see to her. Would you be so kind as to show yourselves to the door.”
We did.
“Well done, everyone,” herself said. “Youse both was brilliant.”
Still, we drove back to Southport Avenue in silence.
Mike called John Culhane and filled him in.
“What about Long Tom?” I asked.
“We’ll have some of our friends in Florida keep a close eye on him. My information is that his health is failing rapidly.”
“He did a lot of bad stuff for a man who is failing rapidly.”
“If the cops get anything out of the Dominicans, we can have him arrested, but we’ll have to see what the situation is.”
Back in our house, I hugged me wife.
“Congratulations, Nuala Anne, you were the one who was brilliant.”
“I’m not quite finished yet, Dermot. Let’s go up to our study.”
So it was “ours”!
“Pick up the other phone, Dermot love.”
I did. She punched in a number.
“Tom Curran,” a voice growled.
“Tom Curran, I’m Nuala Anne McGrail.
I’m your nemesis. I’m the one who has frustrated all your plots. I will continue to do so. If you keep it up, I’ll arrest you and bring you to Chicago for trial. That will kill you, something you barely escaped in the islands so long ago—and I won’t say how you escaped either. If I were in your position, Tom Curran, I’d call a priest and confess all my sins while I still have time. Don’t waste your last chance. Good-bye, Long Tom.”
She hung up gently, then bent over and wept bitterly.
I sat next to her and put my arm around her.
“Well done, Marie Phinoulah Annagh. You just saved that man.”
“I hope so, Dermot. I hope so. Poor old bastard.”
31
“Without going into the details,” my wife began in the Four Seasons suite, “I was pretty sure that someone in the family was behind the attempted murders. ’Tis almost always someone in the family. I couldn’t see any of you wanting to murder your parents, whom you all dearly love, each in your own way. That left Long Tom. But how could he know your movements so perfectly? But wait a moment, he didn’t know about your flight to Rome. How could he have missed that? Finally, it dawned on me that one family member didn’t know about the flight.”
“Trevor!” John gasped. “That’s why he’s not here? He wasn’t in when I made my call. So I called Deirdre … and the circuit was completed!”
“No one told me to call Trevor,” Marie Therese said. “I sent an e-mail to Rory … I didn’t know …”
“So who then was the spy? Trevor? That would be absurd.”
“Annette,” Estelle gasped.
“It took me the longest time to figure it out and there it was right in front of me face. So we checked her cell phone records. There were the calls back and forth which fit perfectly with the three attempts. Nothing supernatural about that.”
Yeah, sure!
Jack caught my eye and winked that he knew better.
“Annette is in a mental institution now and her prognosis with good therapy and medication is promising,” I said. “And Trevor has sundered their ties with Opus. He also agrees that Father Charles is not typical of the group.”
“They place too much emphasis on blind obedience,” Rory observed. “That’s not a good idea.”
“Will she be indicted?” Deirdre asked anxiously.
“I shouldn’t think that will be necessary. The police have the actual bombers.”
“Dad?” Estelle said.
“He had an extraordinarily malevolent influence on your daughter-in-law,” Mike Casey replied. “He is, however, a sick old man. We will keep a close watch on him. If he has any more contacts with professional killers, we will have him arrested. I don’t think that will be necessary.”
“He’s my father,” John finally spoke. “I guess he hates me. That hurts. That the hate was so terrible … is even harder to bear.”
“He also loved you, John,” Nuala Anne told him. “He never was able to conquer the ambivalence, poor dear man. And it’s over … Rory, you have a friend or a classmate in or near Ocean Reef?”
“Why yes, I do. He’s friend, FBI, Foreign Born Irish. A very clever guy.”
“Call him and tell him that he should go see your grandfather.”
“As soon as I get back to the rectory.”
John then announced that they were going to buy a big old house in Lincoln Park, not too far from the old place and we would be neighbors and that soon they would have another dinner.
Everyone cheered.
As Rory shook hands with me, he whispered, “I’m getting to know about mystics over at the Cathedral, Dermot. I know one when I see one.”
I just laughed. Smart young man.
Back on Southport Avenue, we toasted each other in very expensive Irish whiskey, just a splasheen in each glass.
“We did it,” Nuala said with a triumphant smile.
“You did it, Nuala Anne, my Irish Crystal wife!” I said.
“We’re a team, Dermot love, and that’s that … Speaking of which, do you know what your daughter said to me before she left for school this morning?”
“Ah, it must be bad if she’s my daughter again. Socra Marie?”
“No, that little spy, Nelliecoyne. She asked me what we were going to name our little boy baby.”
“And you told her?”
“I told her that we had no such plans and she shouldn’t listen to the wild things her little sister said. She was very disappointed.”
“Then you’re not pregnant?”
“I’m not, Dermot, and I always know when I’m pregnant. And you’re the first one I tell.”
That was that.
Rory called the next day around noon. I was back working on my poetry and also trying to figure out how to turn the priesteen’s manuscript into a story.
“Well, my friend, Father Enright, went to see Granddad last night. He called me to tell me that he had made a very good confession. Then he called me this morning just a few minutes ago to report that, when he arrived at the apartment this morning to bring him Communion, he was dying. Yet he gobbled down the host and kissed the crucifix, then sat up, stretched out his arms, and cried, ‘Elizabeth, take me home with you!”’
“Extraordinary!”
“Sure is. I’m going to call the family now. We’ll probably fly down there. He wanted to be buried near Ocean Reef. I wanted Nuala to know. Tell her for me that I said thanks.”
“I certainly will.”
32
The only crisis on First Communion day was not over the dress—which, with Danuta’s assistance, was wondrous. It was over why Nelliecoyne’s mother was not singing as she had at Johnpete’s baptism.
“I’d love to, dear, but that wouldn’t be fair to the other children whose mothers can’t do anything special at First Communion.”
She rolled her eyes at me.
Nelliecoyne accepted the explanation. Sometime soon we’d have to explain to her about the pastor.
Nonetheless, the ceremony was lovely. Our daughter was the perfect model of the reverent, solemn seven-year-old, though she grinned at my camera.
The pastor preached for a half hour on the evils of abortion.
Nuala filled several handkerchiefs with tears.
Then at breakfast on Wednesday morning, Nuala said brightly over our tea and soda bread, “You probably ought to know, Dermot Michael Coyne, that you’re going to have a son. He’ll be full-term and it will be an easy pregnancy and I vote that we call him Patrick Joseph after me grandfather and I’m not going to put on a lot of weight.”
I cheered, leaped out of my chair, and hugged her.
“How do you know! Are you sick?”
“Certainly not! I don’t need to be sick to know!”
“Do you know all the other details? You never did before.”
“I knew that Socra Marie would be early. I didn’t know how early. I didn’t want to worry you. But there’s nothing to worry about this time.”
“I’m so happy,” I said.
LIAR.
No way.
“And your grandfather was called Patjo, as I remember?”
“’Tis true!”
“I like that.”
Not that I had any choice.
Author’s Note
This story is a work of fiction. All the characters—clerical and lay—and situations in Chicago are products of my imagination. There is a parish on Southport, but the one in the story is also a figment of my imagination. I have taken some liberties with the Lincoln Park West (or DePaul) area of Chicago between .Clyborn and the River. There never was, as far as I know, a house like the Curran House. The unnamed priest who describes Ireland at the turn of the eighteenth century is also a product of my imagination. The conversations he reports are mostly fictional, though the conversation between General the Lord Cornwallis and George Washington actually happened. I will defer to the note at the end a discussion of the “Irish question.” However, I do agree completely with Nuala Anne that if the English
government had the sense not to postpone Home Rule till after the end of the Great War, none of the subsequent violence—even to the present—would have occurred.
My attempts at verisimilitude on the two Irish brogues in the story are intended to make fun of neither but rather to revel in the variety of ways English is spoken.
ALSO BY ANDREW M. GREELEY
FROM TOM DOHERTY ASSOCIATES
NUALA ANNE MCGRAIL NOVELS
Irish Gold
Irish Lace
Irish Whiskey
Irish Mist
Irish Eyes
Irish Love
Irish Stew!
Irish Cream
Irish Crystal
Irish Linen
BISHOP BLACKIE RYAN MYSTERIES
The Bishop and the Missing L Train
The Bishop and the Beggar Girl of St. Germain
The Bishop in the West Wing
The Bishop Goes to The University
The Bishop in the Old Neighborhood
THE O’MALLEYS IN THE TWENTIETH CENTURY
A Midwinter’s Tale
Younger Than Springtime
A Christmas Wedding
September Song
Second Spring
Golden Years
The Senator and the Priest
All About Women
Angel Fire
Angel Light
Contract with an Angel
Faithful Attraction
The Final Planet
Furthermore!
God Game
Jesus
Star Bright!
Summer at the Lake
The Priestly Sins
White Smoke
Sacred Visions (editor with Michael Cassutt)
The Book of Love (editor with Mary G. Durkin)
Emerald Magic (editor)
PRAISE FOR ANDREW M. GREELEY
“An unexpected smidge of gravitas helps Irish Cream rise to the top of the series.”
Irish Crystal Page 26