Fingy Conners & The New Century

by Richard Sullivan

  “She looks to be a character straight out of Ma’s horror stories about poor Aunt Bridget!”

  “That she does, Jim. She looks like she’d be right at home slave drivin’ at the Magdalene Laundry.”

  “I wouldn’t be a bit surprised if that’s exactly where they scraped ‘er up from,” snarled Jim.

  The Detective paused to appraise his brother. “I gotta say, JP, you do look a little less like death-warmed-over today. I mean, compared to last week. I almost stopped by Holy Cross cemetery to pick out a fancy little headstone for you last Tuesday.”

  “Oh, what a sweet gesture, Jimmy. I thank the dear Lord for ye every night before I go to sleep. Keep in mind I’m partial to rose granite.”

  JP picked up a little hand mirror from the table, a sample submitted by a company wanting a concession for souvenirs for the Pan Am Exposition. He studied his gaunt face briefly.

  “As distinguished as ever,” he concluded, as they both laughed.

  “Doc Buchanan says I can go home day after tomorrow perhaps. He will let me know for certain late today, so I’ll call to let you know.”

  “I have to go to New York tomorrow, JP, so I can’t be here. I’ll send Junior down here so you’ll have company on your way back.”

  The detective knew JP would need someone to literally lean on, and to help carry his bag, but his proud brother would never admit to that.

  “I’m perfectly capable of going home on the train by myself,” defensively stated JP.

  “Oh no you’re not, Alderman,” said Dr. Buchanan as he walked in on the conversation. “Someone must accompany you on board the train, and then guide you home, right up to and inside your front door. And then stand there to make sure you climb into your own bed. That’s an order. Or else we can just keep you here.”

  “All right, then! This matter seems to have been settled,” chuckled the detective. “So, your favorite nephew it will be, JP.”

  “I’ll see you in the morning alderman,” the doctor announced. “I’ll be leaving for the day, now, gentlemen. Good afternoon, Detective. A pleasure to see you, as always,” smiled the doctor.

  “Likewise Dr. Buchanan. Thank you for everything,” Jim responded sincerely.

  The doctor’s footsteps could be heard descending the staircase.

  “Will Junior be able to come here? Did you talk to him already?” asked JP.

  “Of course he will, JP. Junior will do anything for the family. You know that.”

  “What’s he been doing lately?”

  “He’s obsessed with photography these days. He wants to build a little developing closet in the cellar to process his plates. He’s all excited about a photo exhibit opening tonight at The Express’ news office. I might go downtown with him if I get back in time, storm permitting, if my train’s not held up.”

  JP displayed the newspaper containing the story he’d just read, and mocked, “Say there, Detective, have you read the very latest about your famous brother-in-law?”

  Jim nodded his head. “I was there. In court. With Hannah.”

  “Hannah went to court?”

  “Yep. It finally hit her that if he were sent to prison she might never see him again. That idiot deserves prison, JP. A long, long sentence.”

  The unfairness of the world never ceased to dishearten the detective.

  “There is only so much bad meat a man can digest,” he lamented. “At least Hoyt didn’t try and present some cowardly defense, like insanity, or claiming to be defending the nation against hordes of Polish invaders, or some such malarkey. Too many malcontents try to justify the worst characteristics of their nature by cloaking their acts in the guise of religion, patriotism or some outlandish definition of morality to try and deflect from the true nature of their deeds…even to try and get away with murder. At least I have to hand that much to Hoyt.”

  “But on the other hand, Jim, what were those jurors thinking? They want to let that lump of horse shit walk free among their own families? Don’t those people fear for any of their own when they’re sitting there recommending that someone like him be allowed back on the streets?

  “People have to get it through their fool heads, JP, that prisons aren’t meant to punish—they’re meant to separate. Prisons are cages that we’ve constructed for the purpose of segregating and confining those animals who have forfeited their right to live among the rest us due to their violent behavior. And Nugent has more than proven that such a separation applies to him. Prisons exist for the purpose of keeping the rest of us, our defenseless children, our old people, safe from harm.”

  JP nodded in agreement.

  “Well, you’re preaching to the choir, Jim,” he said, and then recalled a saying his mother had oft recited time and again throughout her life. “Remember what Ma used to say: ‘What determines the true character of any man is the character of the men he chooses to defend,’” he quoted.

  They both fell into silence for a few moments, thinking about their late mother.

  Jim continued. “Amongst that fool jury were laborers, or the sons or fathers of laborers, who themselves could just have easily been the victim of Dave’s insanity. What could explain their sudden sympathy? I am always perplexed by seemingly good people believing they are less likely to someday be victims of criminals than be criminals themselves. It’s as if they’re saying, ‘If I stand up for the man who committed this act, and I find myself in a similar predicament one day, I will already be on record for declaring that transgressions such as this should be forgiven. Then it is more likely that I might be forgiven as well.”

  “Hedging their bets?” JP guessed.

  “Yep.”

  “Fingy bribed them,” JP summed up.

  “Undoubtedly.”

  “But if Nugent does go to prison, will you and Hannah keep Molly?”

  “JP…” Jim began, haltingly. “Dave told me and Hannah something disturbing in court yesterday. That’s really the reason I came today.”

  “Okay. Well, what did Nugent say?” JP wondered.

  Jim expected JP to have some idea about what he planned to say, so he paused to allow his brother a comment.

  “What? What is it?” asked the alderman, claiming having heard nothing of any particular concerning nature.

  “Have you heard anything new to bolster that hunch you told me about the night the Scoopers Strike ended? Remember? About Fingy moving to Montréal? Seems like he’s been hatchin’ a scheme with millionaires in Chicago and New York to move the entirety of Buffalo’s grain business to Canada.”

  The alderman was as yet a bit discombobulated and didn’t quite understand.

  “What? …what do you mean, Jim? I...”

  “When Hannah and I went to Dave’s sentencing yesterday and Fingy was preoccupied Dave told us that Fingy had gathered together investors from all over the East and they were planning on building what Dave called “a metropolis of grain elevators” on the river in Montréal. This would mean the grain trade could completely bypass Buffalo by way of the Welland Canal, stealing Buffalo’s entire grain business away to Canada. David said Fingy is in Montréal right now surveying the sites on which he plans to erect all these new elevators, and that he might have already begun building there.”

  “What? Oh my God! So that’s the business in Montréal I’ve heard about? I thought it was something more trivial. Are you kidding? Why, that fucker!” snarled JP.

  “Fucker is just a particle of what that murderin’ bastard is, JP. So you haven’t heard nothin’ about this at all? Don’t you recall your tellin’ me this very thing the night of the scoopers strike ending? You said you thought Fingy was plannin’ on movin’ his business to Montréal.”

  “Me? No! I...oh, wait a minute. Okay, now I remember. I was just throwing out ideas back then, don’t you know? You and me, we’d been drinking and we were celebrating and happy, and I was just considering some theories...”

  “Well, it seems your drunken ‘theory’ was correct.” Jim said.
>
  “I haven’t heard a single detail about Montréal until now. Just some general gossip about him conductin’ some sort of new business up there. Oh my God. We could all be ruined. This city could be ruined. Oh! And the Exposition! News like this could knock the wind right out of that entire thing—end it right here and now!”

  “That’s exactly what you said to me that night last summer. I can’t believe you forgot. Remind me never to take laudanum.”

  JP continued his rant.

  “And after all the work and money we’ve put into it so far. All those subscriptions that all those people, hardworking people, the little students in the schools, have paid for!”

  “Well, JP, I think you need to call some of your friends and talk about what this means. Can he actually do this? I mean, does he have the power to actually divert Buffalo’s business away from the city?”

  “My God, how typical! Really! How am I surprised by this? The man is a prominent member of the Pan American Exposition Company at the same time that he’s plotting a scheme that will sabotage that very thing! He would have to move his ass out from this city entirely in any case, lest a bullet surely find him, if not a bomb.”

  “Well, since you can walk downstairs by yourself now, why don’t you telephone a few people to see if others know what Fingy’s up to. I gotta get home before the storm hits.”

  Jim stood and put his coat on, then wrapped his wool plaid muffler around his neck twice.

  “Already? I’m bored to tears and jumpy as a racehorse. Can’t you just sneak me out under your coat?”

  “I’ll see you at home day after tomorrow, JP. Make a few calls, rattle some cages, and then get some sleep.”

  “I won’t sleep until I’m in my own bed with my arms around my Annie.”

  “Bye. You heard me. Try and sleep.”

  “All right. Bye.”

  Jim disappeared out the door while JP began calculating who he needed to call.

  As he descended the oak staircase the Detective passed Sister Mary Seraphim on her way up. She completely disregarded him despite the narrowness of the stairway. In his mind he pictured her bouncing back down the stairs head over heels. How good it would feel to set that apparition in motion.

  He continued to delight in the fantasy of the nun’s mortal tumble as he trudged toward the station.

  The Magdelene Laundry

  The train was not crowded. Jim had already read all the newspapers. Feeling unsettled, he noticed an irritation at his back. He turned to look. The leather seat wore a clean slash in it, most likely from a bored young vandal’s pocket knife, he surmised. Stuffing had been removed, leaving an uncomfortable void. He got up to find another seat more accommodating. The car was warm, the windows frosted over with a pattern faithfully imitating a forest of beautiful ferns etched in ice. This miracle of nature always enchanted him, but others seemed not to take much notice.

  People on board were quiet. He closed his eyes.

  His conversation with JP had reminded him of the terrible fate of Aunt Bridget. He hadn’t thought about the story for years. He thought also of the pernicious Sister Seraphim back at the hospital, wondering what turned her into that damaged thing she’d become. Then he began to recollect his mother’s emotional telling of the story of his late father’s younger sister, the aunt he never knew. She always wept whenever she told Bridget’s tale, even though the two had never met.

  ...

  In Limerick, there exists a house of horrors still in full operation, even now into this new century, infamous throughout the South of Ireland. It is the Good Shepherd Convent and Magdalene Laundry, a place of enforced servitude of young women, unspeakable cruelty and unfathomable sadness.

  It stands in Clare Street on the very site of Farrancroghy, the place of public executions in the 16th and 17th centuries. “You best be good or we’ll else send you off to the Good Shepherd!” parents at their wits’ end would threaten their misbehaving children, and the children would immediately fall silent.

  The Sullivan brothers’ father’s sister, Bridget Sullivan, had been seduced by their parish priest in Ennis when she was just fifteen. That pious agent of Christ left her with child. While performing the insidious act he whispered that he loved her, and promised he would take care of her. Instead, the shame of her pregnancy and the ruin that such a revelation would surely bring the priest as well as to the parish he would lose dominion over summoned into being an evil collusion between Ireland’s Catholic Church and Bridget’s father to pack the little girl up like so much garbage and deliver her to the nuns at Good Shepherd.

  The shame of such an immoral failing in that society at that time was intolerable, and girls of her type, for she was indeed seen as being to blame, were sent to the nuns at Good Shepherd Asylum where they would give birth in secret and live out an anonymous, shamed, and pointlessly cruel life behind high gray walls topped with shards of broken glass meant to keep them from escaping. No one need ever know.

  Many such girls, made pregnant by their priests, their doctors, their own drunken fathers or brothers, were discarded there. Other unfortunates banished to Good Shepherd had not become pregnant at all, but were placed by families who perceived that their raped daughters had been made unmarriageable by the act, as they were now forever tainted. One such star-crossed unfortunate who Bridget labored alongside in the convent laundry had been sodomized repeatedly at only age eleven and afterward dragged here by her rapist brothers.

  Such a blighted victim was deemed from the day of her assault forward to be an actual moral danger to Irish society, and so she was removed from it, permanently.

  No policeman had arrested these girls. No lawyer had represented them. No court tried or sentenced them. No Judge reviewed the case. No challenge was permitted. No release or parole date was ever set. Imposed complicitly by the Holy Catholic Church of Ireland and the families of the unfortunates, it was a life sentence for most, particularly for those who could not survive the desolation and deprivation of their unjustified imprisonment. The barbaric Medieval Ages that were ancient history elsewhere in Europe had yet to see their end in St. Patrick’s land.

  John Sullivan was horrified for his younger sister. He had plotted scenarios within which to garotte the guilty priest and sink his sacrilegious bulk, rocks filling his pockets—and a few more shoved up his arse for good and proper measure—beneath the river Shannon. He shadowed the priest for some time and learned his routine. On a visit to his Kerry cousin Michael Sullivan across the estuary in Abbeydorney, the two discussed the particulars. John had hoped to find a way to pull it off immediately before his departure for Queenstown, to be safely aboard a ship on the high seas before they found the decomposing vow breaker, if indeed they ever did.

  He was infuriated with his father and ashamed of his mother for agreeing to the diabolical solution. He promised himself he would find some way to make things right for Bridget and her baby. It was a calamity, he railed, “...we Irish having to fight off both the Church and the British!” The social mores of that time and place, and the might of the Catholic Church allowed that this cruel course of action be followed. Any girl who’d been ruined in this way whether by romantic seduction or violent rape had to be expunged.

  Months before he left Ireland to emigrate to America, John made application for permission to visit with his sister and her baby. It was a daunting and complicated process, requiring meeting a long list of preconditions, making written permission of the nuns a dozen weeks in advance, and then finally obtaining the approval for the visit from the Bishop himself.

  The very Sunday before John was to embark for Queenstown, he was finally notified that he could come to the Good Shepherd Asylum to say his good-byes to Bridget and his nephew.

  The famine that had devastated Ireland was still raging. John Sullivan’s involvement in the failed Young Ireland Insurrection, exacerbated by the famine, drove him to seek a new life in the New World.

  “People in Ireland aren’t even acting in
their right minds anymore. They’re barely human,” he told his friends, “with merely surviving another day their sole and overriding preoccupation.”

  As draconian as the nun’s Good Shepherd Asylum was, most people accepted that a girl who was defiled was doomed anyway, and unless placed in such an institution would otherwise never survive. She had stigmatized herself and besmirched her family by becoming someone’s unwitting victim. Getting one’s self pregnant in a country where living breathing children were already dying from starvation by the tens of thousands was considered a terrible enough sin for moral reasons, but substantially worse now because it meant literally taking food out of some other starving child’s mouth, a child legitimately born of parents properly sanctified by the Holy Church.

  “At least these girls and their babies had food and shelter,“ cowardly people could tell themselves, in an attempt to assuage any feelings of angst and misgivings they may have felt as the stories of what went on behind those walls circulated. Some brazen townsfolk even acted as apologists for the conditions by praising the nuns for providing some semblance of a life and an education to girls who otherwise, they claimed, would have remained homeless and illiterate. They failed to recognize, or perhaps never knew, that the girls were slave labor, never paid a cent for their exhausting servitude.

  “Certain professions, such as politicians, policemen, priests and nuns attract more than their share of a particular kind of damaged person to their ranks,” Mary McGrady would later tell her eldest son and future police officer Jim as he grew up. “And all kinds of formerly abused and discarded little girls were to be found inhabiting the costumes worn by nuns in convents, those rotten apples disguised inconspicuously among the good,” she warned. “And you will see, Jim, if you go through with your plan of becoming a policeman, that you’ll find yourself working side by side with some very damaged boys as well, boys who were cursed with the most cruel and abusive kinds of parents, and suffering the most frightening living conditions. And these boys will take their anger, that which they should rightly be venting on the very people who damaged them, and instead land it squarely on the backs of those perceived as weaker than they, over whom, as policemen, they have been awarded free rein to victimize without penalty.”