Irish Cream

by Andrew M. Greeley

  “I had to call in a marker from the Kenilworth police to get the details on Rod Keefe’s death,” he said, with a wink of his eye. “They’re more snooty than their taxpayers, but since we hire some of their people for off-duty work at Reliable Security, they finally gave in.”

  Until he winked, he looked like Basil Rathbone in the very old Sherlock Holmes films. Then he looked like Holmes as a sometime Chicago Police Department superintendent.

  “I assume that young artist herself has taken under her wing was the alleged perpetrator in this case.” He looked at me, his blue eyes shrewd and penetrating.”

  “Naturally,” I said.

  “Well, we both know that she’s one of the dark ones and is seldom wrong. He apparently admitted his guilt, but the evidence against him was weak.”

  I recounted my interview with the good Mary Jane. Mike nodded solemnly.

  “There’s no doubt that the O’Sullivan BMW ran down Rod Keefe. Ran him down, backed up over him, then ran him down again. They found him under the car. His blood alcohol content was .22. Apparently he had collapsed on the way to his own car and fell asleep in one of the aisles of the parking lot. Whoever drove the BMW backed out of his spot, turned, and encountered the sleeping victim. Whether he deliberately hit him or not is problematic. It was a moonless night The parking lot is illuminated, but not all that well. Someone might have hit Rod Keefe without ever being aware of his presence. He might have backed up to see what he’d hit, seen Keefe, then run over him again.”

  “Or he might not have seen him in the dark and decided that he hadn’t hit anything.”

  “Especially if he were drunk,” Mike agreed, “which the alleged perp admits he was.”

  “Then what?”

  “Maura O’Sullivan, one of Jackie’s kids, came out of the club. Her Corvette was in the same aisle. She was surprised to see her father’s car in the middle of the aisle. She approached it, observed the blood under the car, and ran back to the clubhouse screaming. She had the presence of mind to call the police while the rest of the family poured out of the clubhouse. When the police arrived, Jackie identified the victim. Sobbed hysterically according to the police, though he and the victim had a loud public argument at the club shortly before.”

  “About what?”

  “About Rod’s drinking, according to all the witnesses. The trustees of the club had been debating whether to withdraw Rod’s membership because of complaints about his behavior.”

  “It must have been pretty bad for those rich Irish even to have noticed it.”

  “It was the Calcutta night, which happened every year on Labor Day weekend … You know what a Calcutta is I presume, Dermot?”

  “I golf, Mike. I’m not a big-stakes gambler. I quit that when I left the Board of Trade.”

  “And herself?”

  “She’s Irish,” I replied. “She’s willing to bet on anything, even the gender of a baby before it’s conceived. She won’t take the winnings because she says she knew beforehand. I don’t let her near a casino. The Outfit doesn’t like people who win all the time.”

  “Well, Jackie O’Sullivan lost a big bundle that night and was presiding over a celebration to give the illusion he had won. Everyone says that neither he nor any of his family had left the clubhouse. Except Damian, whom nobody seems to have remembered because he was hardly worth noticing.”

  “However, they did remember seeing that he was drunk?” I asked

  “Sort of vaguely when they were asked. He was certainly drunk when the police found him at the edge of the swimming pool.”

  “The family told the investigators that they hadn’t seen Damian for an hour or two. He had been sleeping quietly in a corner in the lobby of the clubhouse. They also said he had a long history of alcoholism and that he had been forbidden to touch the family car.”

  “Setting him up nicely?”

  “One could interpret it that way. Ms. Keefe was screaming hysterically at the investigators to find Damian and kill him. They found him at the edge of the pool and arrested him.”

  “Pretty quick rush to judgment?”

  “They had powerful people shouting at them for action, Dermot.”

  “The key was still in the ignition of the car?”

  “You’re getting good at this investigation stuff, Dermot.”

  “I read your text so that I could better help herself who, as you know, operates on a different plane of reality in this stuff.”

  “You’re right in your implication. The key was not in the ignition. Nor did they ever find it. It wasn’t on the person of Damian O’Sullivan or in the pool or anywhere on the grounds of the club, though there was an intensive search for it.”

  “But the fingerprints of the alleged perp were on the steering wheel of the car?”

  “They were not, Dermot. There were so many different prints on the wheel that it was impossible to recover most of them.”

  We were both silent for a moment.

  “It smells, Mike.”

  “It does, Dermot.”

  “My man might have done it, but they had no solid proof against him, other than his own confession, obtained spontaneously when the rest of his family was shouting at them?”

  “I don’t know that for sure, but I don’t doubt it.”

  “Maura O’Sullivan might have recognized the key case and snatched it.”

  “Arguably”—Mike tilted his head forward in a nod—“as our friend the little bishop would say.”

  “Curious about the wife, wasn’t it?”

  “Very.”

  He smiled, acknowledging the Sherlockismus. There was no mention in the story of her. She was the little woman who still wasn’t there …

  The rain had stopped when I left the Gallery. I walked down Oak Street to Michigan, crossed under the urine-drenched underpass and walked to the deserted beach. Before long it would be covered with both the fair and fat, all too willingly sacrificing their skin to the sun.

  What was I to make of the case of Damian Thomas O’Sullivan?

  At most his family had shown unseemly if unanimous (excepting his mother) taste in blaming him for the death of his father’s friend and colleague and in conspiring in his arrest, indictment, and conviction. Granted that they had formed a group think paradigm about him (much like the one my family had constructed about me, though in a very mild and not altogether unjustified mode), that was one thing. It was quite another to decide that because he lay in a drunken stupor some distance away from the dead body of Rod Keefe, he had in fact driven the family BMW over him three times. Yet they had done so instantly and apparently by unanimous consensus.

  Damian is a leper, OK. Damian is a killer? That’s a big leap.

  Yet they had made it. And quickly.

  Now if I started out with Nuala Anne’s assumption that Damian was a total innocent (and naturally I had to start out there), they were covering either for a terrible accident or a murder. They despised the youngest member of the family, but it did not seem likely that they would use the death of Jackie O’Sullivan’s partner to get rid of him unless there was some other motive. It must have been clear to Maura when she saw the bloody body that something must be done instantly. Most likely she grabbed the keys before she called the police. Was the motor still running? Had the killer abandoned both the car and the keys and fled?

  If she had taken the keys, she must have recognized the key case. Hence she knew who the killer was—if she were not the killer herself. Was she married yet? Was it possible that she would go home without her husband? Perhaps they had a marital tiff and she was running home in the family car? Had she come to the others and blamed the killing on Damian. They all quickly bought into that explanation, perhaps to protect John Patrick O’Sullivan himself, maybe half-knowing that it might not be true but happy to have an explanation that would do less harm to the family than any other.

  That might explain why she ran so quickly to Mary Jane Healy to get her out of the case.

 
All very ruthless, but they were probably a ruthless family, dominated and shaped by their father’s pride in their genes or their blood or Notre Dame loyalty or whatever. They were, after all, Irish cream, were they not?

  Where were the mysterious keys? Doubtless in the possession of the one who had driven the BMW. The police would never find them. The family would assure them that Damian had a set of keys. On the face of it, that seemed unlikely. John Patrick O’Sullivan would hardly trust his despised youngest child with the keys to his car. Damian could perhaps have borrowed them from someone, perhaps his invisible mother.

  All of these speculations assumed that Nuala was right that Damian had been framed. The explanation the police bought was less baroque.

  STOP THAT, OH YOU OF LITTLE FAITH.

  OK.

  How were we to break the case if no one in the family would talk to us?

  On the way back to Southport Avenue, I picked up the next installment of the diary from the outer edge of Europe.

  7

  July 12, Feast of St. Ultan of Cork, a disciple of St. Finbarr.

  I celebrated the day by preventing Tim Allen from dispossessing a family.

  Mrs. O’Flynn came to my study after breakfast while I was reading my breviary and thinking, irreverently, that David was not a Christian.

  “Isn’t Tim Allen evicting the Hanleys over by the sea and themselves with five young children?”

  “How much money do they owe?” I put aside my breviary.

  “Ten pounds, Your Reverence. ’Tis a lot of money.”

  “I think I’ll ride over and put a stop to it … Are they the ones in the tiny cottage at the highest part of the bluff?”

  “And the winds tearing it apart every day?”

  I took ten pounds out of my desk, collected my mare, and rode over towards the bluff.

  The day was spectacular. A clean wind had swept away the fog, the ocean was brilliantly blue with big whitecaps breaking against the rocks. Not a cloud marked the clean sky. A perfect Irish-summer day.

  A wonderful day to be thrown out of your home.

  I arrived just as Tim Allen finished reading the notice of eviction.

  Three constables, including Sergeant Kyle, stood awkwardly by. Two formally dressed bailiffs waited on either side of Allen.

  He was a tall, lean man, dressed like he was an English lord in riding boots and tweed jacket and astride a huge white stallion. It was the first time I had seen him, since he did not come to church. He was, I guessed, in his early forties and had the look of a Kerry man about him—wild, handsome, and hateful.

  “Bailiffs, take possession of that shack and destroy it. Constables, drive these people off His Lordship’s land. If they do not take this rubbish with them, push it over the edge of the cliff.”

  I rode into the scene. The Hanleys were young, hardly thirty. The children were poorly dressed, but attractive. The parents had not lost the bloom of youth, despite the despair that froze their faces. Their pitiable possessions were piled near the edge of the cliff. Neighbors stood around watching. Some of the neighbor children were chasing one another as children always do, no matter what the setting.

  I rode into the center of the group.

  “Do not obey those orders,” I barked. The demon was upon me. My temper, usually under tight rein, flamed like a bonfire.

  “Don’t interfere, Father,” Allen snarled. “This is the law.”

  “English law,” I replied. “How much do these poor Irish people owe?”

  “Ten pounds … His Lordship has been patient …”

  “His Lordship be damned! Here is ten pounds, traitor. Now take his money to His Lordship and take your police and bailiffs with you.”

  I threw the ten pounds at the feet of his horse. One of the bailiffs picked it up and handed it to Allen.

  “The debt is paid, sir,” he said anxiously.

  “You have no right to interfere.”

  “Right or not, I just did. Now leave these poor people alone.”

  He turned his horse and rode off, the constables and the bailiffs riding behind him.

  “Now, you people, stop gawking and help the Hanleys move back into their house.”

  I dismounted and picked up a battered chair and walked into the house. Finbarr Hanley, tears pouring down his cheeks, grabbed my hand.”

  “God bless you, Father. With a good harvest we’ll be able to pay.”

  “Let me know if he ever tries this again.”

  I calmed down as I rode back to the parish house. I felt complacent for a few moments, then guilty about my outrageous behavior. Tales about my being a wild man would spread around the parish before sunset.

  “Did you drive him off?” Mrs. O’Flynn asked when I returned and picked up my breviary.

  I looked up at her.

  “He’s a terrible man.”

  “He is, Your Reverence. Poor man has lived a hard life.”

  Irishwomen are by nature contrarian.

  “And himself keeping a slave woman up in the hills,” I continued.

  “That’s not quite the way of it, Your Reverence, if it ever were … Sure, wouldn’t she be dead or worse if it weren’t for him. Her husband’s family drove her out when he died.”

  “Just like yours?”

  “In a manner of speaking.”

  “What’s wrong with Allen?”

  “The old lord treated him unkindly when his family died and no one in the parish would take him in. He’s still angry at us all.”

  That was another side to the story.

  A couple of hours later, His Lordship entered, gently brushing Mrs. O’Flynn aside, a broad grin on his face.

  “That’s all right, Mary Catherine, the priest has damned me to hell and I come to seek absolution.”

  So Mary Catherine was her name. I had never asked.

  “His Lordship be damned! Ah, ’tis yourself, Father, that has the terrible temper! I never would have thought it.”

  He threw himself on my couch and laughed loudly.

  “Can I buy an indulgence or something of the sort?”

  I found my face turn hot.

  “I was not speaking literally.”

  “Well, I’m glad to hear it. I would think that a curse from a Catholic priest, especially one with a degree from Salamanca, would have great effect!”

  He laughed again.

  “Here’s your ten pounds back, by the way … I would love to have been there and witness the scene. Our regimental padre out in the Northwest territories was the same kind of man. Dressed me down repeatedly, God be good to him.”

  “He’s dead?”

  “Killed by a Pathan sniper … I’ve told Tim no more evictions without my explicit approval. Which means there won’t be any. This is not a good holding, but ten pounds from poor people won’t make any difference. I have my pensions and Mary Margaret has an excellent income. I tell her all the time that I married her for her money. She thinks that’s very funny.”

  Milord was in an expansive mood.

  So Mary Margaret was not impoverished nobility after all.

  “It wouldn’t hurt,” I said, “if you rode over to the Hanley house and told them not to worry.”

  “That’s exactly what Mary Margaret told me.” He slapped his boot with his hand and stood up. “It’s safe to do it now that I know your curse is not real.”

  Laughing still, he left the house.

  “Don’t cross him, Mary Catherine,” he called to Mrs. O’Flynn. “Doesn’t he have a terrible temper?”

  I put aside the breviary and went to my piano. Eileen and her crowd of urchins appeared from nowhere, even though it was early in the day for them to come.

  August 14, Vigil of the Assumption of Mary, Lady Day in Harvest.

  Not a great harvest here, but good enough and better than many.

  I went to my first wake last night. Granny Murtaugh, to whom I had administered the final rites last week, passed away in her sleep. She looked like she was eighty bu
t in fact she was only sixty, worn-out by miscarriages and hard work. The family had not seemed greatly worried by her sickness. The doctor, a Protestant who drinks too much but all we have, had told them there was nothing he could do. Sure, we’re terrible crowded in the cottage, her daughter Kate told me. Granny has lived too long.

  Granny had brought that woman into the world, nursed her, bathed her, seen her through sickness, rejoiced at her marriage, adored her children and now the poor old woman meant nothing more than an extra bed.

  That’s what happens to poor and oppressed people, I tell myself. Blame the English. Blame Bob Skeffington and his ancestors. Yet I wonder if we Irish are to blame and maybe we priests. Maybe we talk too much about heaven and not enough about decent lives for people here on earth. Or maybe since the Famine our people are cruel because they have no choice. Too many died.

  I do not know why I am wasting good ink in these ruminations.

  In any event, the priest is expected to minister to the sick person, then slip quietly away lest he interfere with preparations for the wake. I have been told by priests out here in the West of Ireland that wakes are the only entertainment that the people have. If we succeed in crushing them, we will make their lives all the more miserable. And are they not a celebration of the life that is to come?

  I don’t know. However, perhaps because I thought that Granny was a gallant woman, I resolved to go to the wake and lead the Rosary.

  It may not have been a wise decision. The insufferable Branigan warned me not to, but I told myself he feared that less of his drink would be consumed if I was present even for a half hour.

  It was still light when I approached the cottage. I heard singing and dancing and the fiddles and the tin whistles from perhaps a half mile away and also the ungodly keening which is counterfeit sorrow. I encountered no lovers in the fields, but if that custom persisted—and I have been assured that it does—it would probably be practiced after dark.

  Somehow they must have learned that I was coming, because by the time I reached the cottage, silence had come upon it, a resentful silence I thought. I resolved that I would not let their sullen faces intimidate me.