Irish Cream

by Andrew M. Greeley

  “Good. Let me know and I’ll walk over to the Daley building and file with the judge who heard the original plea bargain.”

  “You’ll talk him into it, Nuala love?”

  “I will.”

  So that was that.

  The next afternoon I was sitting under the Billy Goat with Jim Creaghan, who did indeed think it was kind of a legendary place.

  “The first thing I gotta say,” he remarked as he sipped on a Diet Coke, “is that I love my wife. I don’t buy all the Notre Dame shit her family pushes. I mean I graduated from the Dome and it was all right. I got a pretty good education. Not MIT or even IIT but good enough for what I need to keep track of what’s going on and what the good bets are for the future and what books I should read.”

  “Which you probably knew before you went to college and Caltech would not have added to.”

  He laughed. “Might have destroyed my instincts you mean? Maybe you’re right. I want us to hire some consultants from those places. The old man won’t hear of it. Notre Dame is good enough, he says”

  “Figures.”

  “He’s not a bad engineer, a lot better than his two sons, who don’t know anything about engineering or anything else. Goofuses, if you ask me.”

  He was about five-foot-nine and wore thick horn-rimmed glasses. He did not, however, display the pocket saver full of colored pens. His brown hair was fine and his innocent smile and twinkling brown eyes suggested a man who didn’t have a clue about guile.

  “Hard to work for?”

  “Not nasty or mean, just dumb … The old man bought a company plane for them to play with—single engine Cessna Caravan, ten-seater. They painted it navy blue and gold with the words ‘Flying Irish’ in big gold letters on the back.”

  “Kind of vulgar … Can they fly it?”

  “Sean’s been cleared for instrument flying. He’s working on multiple-engine flight. He’s not making much progress if you ask me. I try to avoid the plane whenever I can … They let me do the engineering, which is not bad for someone my age—a big and important company. But we’re playing catch-up now. In the computer jungle we could lose out in a year.”

  “That’s bad”

  “Sure is. They certainly have strong family loyalties. Maura and I never have serious fights anymore except when we’re with them. I’ve learned to put up with it. Otherwise, she’s the best kind of wife that a man could hope for and a great mother. When she gets over the guilt about letting her father down, she’ll be happy that she can spend more time with Todd. That’s what she really wants to do … She’d come home from work often and sob because the work was so difficult. She had the reputation down there of being a bitch on wheels. She’s not, Dermot. Nothing like that at all, except when she’s trying to imitate the old man. Unlike him she can’t be a son of a bitch and smile at the same time.”

  “Not a nice guy.”

  He hesitated.

  “He can be awfully nice so long as you buy into his idiocies. Notre Dame is the fourth person of the Trinity, but he doesn’t like the black football players or the black coach. He objects to women students, who he says just want to get laid, preferably by a black football player. When the Notre Dame women were playing for the NCAA last year he wouldn’t let us watch the games when we were up at their house at Lake Geneva. They were just a bunch of lesbians, he told us. The money spent on them should be spent on the football team. That was the real Notre Dame.”

  John Patrick O’Sullivan was a throwback to his own era and a caricature of it at that. Yet he was a logical exaggeration of the way a lot of my own generation of Domers thought and acted. Jim Creaghan had it right. It was a good school, a fine liberal arts college, though hardly the best. It was also a Catholic theme park and hence a good place to ground your faith in something besides the wisdom and authority of the hierarchy. I had flunked out because they wanted me to study and I wanted to learn. Or so I tell myself. I wasn’t angry at it. I just didn’t fit As I had told my uncomprehending bedmate, I still cheered for them on gray autumn afternoons. It’s in the blood. I also cheer for the women’s basketball and soccer teams and the men’s baseball team and any other athletic outfit which seems to do well. Go Irish, beat Stanford!

  Would I want Nelliecoyne to go there in eleven more years? Sure, if she wanted to. Unlike her father, she’d cream it.

  “Highly selective commitment,” I replied to Jim Creaghan.

  “He doesn’t like me much because he says I’m not committed enough. I met Maura, you see, after I went to work there. We clicked immediately, except when I was present at family gatherings. Then there were bad vibes. I still haven’t figured it out. Somehow I was not reacting enthusiastically enough. It still happens. She wonders why I don’t like her family. When I try to explain, she blows up. We don’t talk about it anymore, so things work out pretty well. I’m not going to give her up. The old man is telling everyone that Kate and Tom McBride are thinking of an annulment. I see no signs of this, but his fantasies have a way of coming true. I’m going to fight them, damn. They’re not going to take my wife away from me.”

  And this nice young man could probably beat a wet paper bag but not much else.

  “What role does the mother play in all this?”

  “Despite what you may have heard, Dermot, she’s a real witch. She oozes sweetness but pushes the kids to go along with Dad. ‘It’ll break your father’s heart if you don’t come up to Lake Geneva. Kathleen is going to be there. You know how much your father wants to keep the family together.’ Maura knows I hate those weekends. Yet she caved in and joined the general attack on Kathleen for being selfish. The Missus says that the sooner that marriage is annulled the better. Sean, Patrick, and their wives agree. So does Maura. The mother says, real sweet, ‘Don’t you agree, Jimmy?’ and I say, ‘I think it’s up to them.’ It’s like I farted in the middle of dinner. They all clam up. Maura is furious at me. She cries all the way home. The baby is upset too. I tell you, Dermot, it’s all sick, sick, sick.”

  “And Maura changes her mind the next day?”

  “Effectively. She says she doesn’t think they’re planning on annulment. They seem very happy.”

  “And you?”

  “I say I think they’re very happy too and that’s that. Someday I’m going to have to put an end to it.”

  “The sooner the better.”

  “Yeah, I guess you’re right. I don’t want to risk losing her. Yesterday he was blaming me for wanting the baby and that’s why she didn’t make partner. An odd position for a man who’s a ferocious supporter of the right to life. Today the explanation is that she has decided to leave the firm because she wants to spend more time with the baby. They all believe it, even my poor wife who does indeed want to spend more time with little Todd—though a few days ago she was dying to become a partner. The people at the plant really don’t pay much attention to Jackie’s reports on family. They couldn’t care less. The people at the club, jerks if you ask me, know how full of shit he is. Some of them actually voted to do Maura in, maybe because they dislike Jackie so much. However, what counts is that the family, especially the mother, thinks they’ve sold the new line. I suppose even Maura does. When we’re up there again for some goofy reason she will be talking about how hard it was to give up the law but at this point in her life Todd comes first … I’m sorry I’m unloading all this shit on you, Dermot. It’s good to have someone to talk two …”

  “It’s all right with me.”

  It really wasn’t. I wanted to vomit.

  “You know what I said about the people at the club seeing through his shit? That’s not the whole truth. Some of them, the guys that go to Ireland with him and the ones who vote for him for president of the club every year buy it all.”

  We ordered a refill on our Diet Cokes.

  “Do you want to talk to me about what happened that night that Rod Keefe was killed?”

  He pondered for a moment.

  “First, my wife didn’t do it. Sh
e swears to me she didn’t do it and I believe her. She knows who did it and won’t talk about it. I’m pretty sure it wasn’t poor Damian. Kid would never hurt a soul, even dead drunk. He was too drunk that night to walk to the car. It was natural enough to blame him because they blame him for all their troubles. They’re raising hell about the pictures at that Oak Street gallery. I’ll be damned if I can figure out why.”

  “Maura knows who the driver was?”

  “I think she does. I suspect that only she and the driver know. The others all blame Damian. Like I say he’s the perfect scapegoat. Anyway, they kept him out of jail.”

  I didn’t add that it was no fault of the O’Sullivans, his wife included, that Damian didn’t end up in jail, roadkill for the jailhouse queens.

  “What was the argument about between him and Rod Keefe?”

  “It was about a patent we held, a very important patent. I did the paperwork on renewing it and gave it to Sean. He always patronizes me. Like don’t bother me with this unimportant stuff. I have my airplane to play with. I insisted that the application had to go out over his name. All he had to do was to sign it, put it in an envelope, and send it off. He said he’d do it, like it was a personal favor to me. I don’t think he knew what a patent was. Well, the patent expired. Rod Keefe had a bellyful of booze in him at the Calcutta dinner and chewed Jackie out. He said that his kids were incompetent dummies. He was so drunk that most of it didn’t make sense to anyone else. Jackie turned on me and blamed me. I told him I would show him a copy of the paperwork the next day and all it needed had been Sean’s signature. He continued to say that I should have made sure. Maura began to chew me out. I was a jerk. How dare I blame her brother. I guess I lost it with her. Then Jackie went through one of his redefinitions of the situation. It was nothing to worry about. He’d take care of it. I should bring him the copy and he’d get the patent renewed. He told Maura to shut up. She didn’t know what she was talking about. That’s when she stormed out of the dining room and found Rod Keefe’s body. I broke up with her the next day. We got back together later.”

  “Mr. O’Sullivan was able to renew the patent?”

  “Sure.”

  “Did he bribe someone?”

  “No other way he could have done it. Jackie always said that there was no such thing as an even playing field. It was either tilted against you or for you. Or he’d say that there were only two kinds of people, friends and enemies, and that sometimes it took money to make sure that the friends were really friends. He lived by that philosophy.”

  “He broke federal laws?”

  “I never asked how he did it. I didn’t want to know. Another time when we beat an EPA rap, he said that there was nothing he couldn’t fix from a traffic ticket on up.”

  “What a dangerous way to live!”

  “He loved it. Made him feel powerful.”

  Jackie O’Sullivan was scary. He could fix an expired patent at the same time that he was arranging to send his son to jail for a crime he didn’t commit. Probably he had persuaded himself that Damian was guilty. If he defined something as real, then it was real. We were playing a dangerous game against a madman. I’d have to call Mike Casey and ask him for more protection.

  Jim Creaghan thanked me for listening. He caught a cab on North Avenue and went home to Wrigleyville and his beautiful and half-crazy spouse. I walked up Clark Street and tried to make sense out of it all. We now had an excellent motive for the murder of Rod Keefe. He was threatening John Patrick O’Sullivan’s reputation as a brilliant CEO. He had attacked the competence of O’Sullivan’s two sons. Yet, if Keefe was a dangerous threat, why kill him that night immediately after they’d had a shouting match in the dining room of the club?

  His whole world might have seemed to be coming apart. He might have lost it then and grabbed the opportunity of driving over Keefe’s prostrate body in the parking lot. He had been able to tilt the playing field with the cops, who probably realized that Damian couldn’t possibly have driven over anyone. Then his world spun around and turned right again. He could heave a sigh of relief. He would renew the patent and Damian would finally be out of his hair. When the judge had not sent Damian to jail, he could take the line that he had saved Damian from a jail sentence.

  “Those other faggots would have eaten him alive.”

  Did he believe all the doublethink and lies?

  Probably. More or less. It might not matter. Either way he was a very scary man.

  Back on Southport Avenue, after supper and after we had worried about Socra Marie crossing the street again to join her sister and brother in school (“Me look both ways” she had said in defense as she was consigned to another time-out) and after we had put the kids to bed with stories, I rehearsed for Nuala my conversation with Jim Creaghan in her office. We sat side by side on the couch, testing one another’s predisposition for lovemaking. There ought to have been no question about my attitude. I was always ready for action.

  She had spent the afternoon with Madame and was still wearing her beige summer suit, which established that she was in her professional mode. One of them, there are several. This one was the exhausted professional.

  “The poor lad.” She sighed one of her best West of Ireland sighs. The one that suggests a possible attack of asthma.

  “He claims he really loves his wife”

  “She must be a good fock!”

  “Nuala Anne!”

  “Give over, Dermot Michael! If a young man has a wife who’s crazy some of the time and he stands by her, she has to be really good in bed.”

  “You make young men sound like predatory monsters.”

  “Well, aren’t they now … I’d like to get a look at her and see if she’s really sexy.”

  “I’m not a predatory monster!”

  “’Course, you’re not, Dermot Michael. But your wife isn’t crazy.”

  “Just a little odd. She sees halos around people.”

  She giggled.

  “And she’s a very good fock too.”

  “Now that you mention it.”

  “Well, now I know that I’m right about who drove the car, just as I know that I’m right about who shot that poor Tim Allen.”

  “You’ve filled out the prediction and filed it in the usual place?”

  “Haven’t I now? And am I not always right about me predictions?”

  “’Tis true.”

  “I’m worried, Derm love.”

  “About us?”

  “Sure we’re not in any danger and Superintendent Casey taking care of us with them Reliable Security people of his … No, I’m worried about them. Something terrible altogether is about to happen to them.”

  “What?”

  “I don’t know yet. Their world is disintegrating, the only world they ever knew, and that mother keeping it alive for all these years … Maybe she’s as crazy as he is …”

  “A folie a’deux.”

  “And we’re the ones who are taking it apart.”

  “How so?”

  “Och, Dermot, we started out trying to save poor Damian. Now we’re encouraging Katie McBride in her schism. You’re after warning Jim Creaghan that if he wants to keep his sexy wife, he’ll have to pull her out of collective neurosis. Now we know who killed Rod Keefe …”

  “You know.”

  “I’m right like I always am. Still.”

  “We have to be ready to pick up whatever pieces might be left.”

  “’Tis true.”

  She unbuttoned her blouse revealing white lace, net, and swelling nipples.

  Looks like another good night for Dermot Coyne.

  DON’T TAKE ADVANTAGE OF HER!

  Why not? She’s seducing me.

  “Woman, are you trying to seduce me?”

  “Would I do that, Dermot Michael Coyne?”

  “You’ve been known to.”

  She relaxed sensuously in my arms.

  “It’s been a hard day.”

  She pulled the blouse out from h
er skirt.

  “Mine too”

  “I’m tired.”

  She slipped the blouse and bra straps off her shoulders.

  “Me too.”

  YOU EEJIT, YOU’RE CRAZY WITH DESIRE.

  “So, sure don’t we have to relax together in the shower before we go to bed?”

  AH, A GRAND NIGHT FOR DERMOT. FOREPLAY IN THE SHOWER DRIVES HIM ROUND THE BEND ALTOGETHER.

  With eager and trembling fingers I peeled off the rest of her clothes and carried her, passive and docile in my arms, to the shower. She was already groaning.

  It was one those nights when the game plan, the reasons for which escape me, was to be submissive and subservient to Dermot. I had a wonderful time. So, apparently, did she.

  Yet as I was falling asleep, totally satisfied with myself, I wondered what terrible things might happen to the O’Sullivans and from which we would have to save them.

  16

  “THERE’S DIVILMENT afoot, Dermot Michael, and we haven’t a moment to lose.”

  A paraphrase from Sherlock Holmes, conscious or not.

  The seductress who had turned me into a screaming maniac the night before was sitting calmly at the breakfast table in her robe, drinking from a large cup of tea and writing on a yellow notepad.

  I bent over and brushed her lips.

  “What’s happening?”

  I had taken the two older kids across the street to St. Josaphat school and brought Socra Marie along so she could see what school was like. When the bell rang and the kids, good Catholic school pupils that they were, lined up in silent ranks and marched into the school, Socra Marie grabbed my hand.

  “Me no go to school, Da!”

  “Not for a couple of years.”

  “Me no go to school, Da!”

  “Fair play to you, Socra Marie.”

  We marched back across the street to our home, being careful to look both ways. We had put the school monster back in its place for a while.

  I sat down across the table from my disheveled wife.

  She looked up at me, her eyes soft with affection.

  “Och, Dermot love, weren’t you brilliant last night?”