Irish Lace

by Andrew M. Greeley

  Unfortunately, I had no idea how the story would end.

  So I began a story about Letitia Walsh Murray, Lace Maker.

  I turned on the five o’clock news and discovered that controversy was again swirling around the cement head of Zack O’Hara. He had announced early in the afternoon that he had turned nine illegal immigrants over to the Immigration and Naturalization Service which, in turn, had deported them to Ireland. He had thus sought deftly to turn attention away from his mistake of arresting them as the Art Heist gang and focus instead on his resolute integrity in expelling illegal immigrants of whatever nationality.

  The media, however, had found out about his plans and filmed the Immigration agents pushing the Irish kids, in chains and looking woebegone and confused, out of the Area Six station and jamming them into a van which was too small to hold them all.

  Other clips showed the agents herding them through O’Hare and on to a Delta plane bound for Atlanta and then Dublin.

  “O’Hara’s Chain Gang!” was the teaser on one station.

  All hell broke loose. The lawyers for the immigrants, serving pro bono, bellowed that Zack had ignored the habeas corpus writs which had been handed down in the morning and that the immigrants were entitled to due process in appealing a deportation order. The Irish consul said that he was “surprised” that the American authorities had not permitted him to speak to the young women and the young men. “Expert” lawyers told the cameras that O’Hara’s action was “extraordinary.” One even accused him of covering up his mistake in arresting them in the first place, because it was now evident from the continuation of the crime wave that they were not involved.

  “How could he believe for a moment that such inexperienced greenhorns could perpetrate such sophisticated felonies? I would be surprised if those young men and young women would ever want to return to a country where such a Fascist has so much power.”

  The guy was clearly a Democrat, and more power to him!

  Parents for whom some of the young women had worked as nannies were incensed.

  “She was so sweet to the children and so kind. She loved to play with them. She was little more than a child herself. They adored her. It’s not fair that they do this to her.”

  No, nor was it fair that routinely Polish and Hispanic nannies would be treated the same way. Finally it was not fair that their employers pay the immigrant nannies and handymen below the minimum wages. But the media, faced with a choice between two paradigms—illegals expelled and O’Hara’s brutality—went for the latter.

  Then O’Hara himself appeared again at a live press conference at the County Building across from the Civic Center.

  “I think the sympathy for these criminals is misplaced. They committed the crime of entering this country illegally. By so doing and by taking jobs to which they were not entitled, they deprived American citizens of employment to which they were entitled. I think the sympathy should be directed towards those Americans, especially African- and Hispanic- and Asian-Americans who are unemployed and perhaps living off welfare, because of the greed of such criminals. If the United States as a nation cannot maintain and protect its borders, then we cannot maintain our national identity.”

  It was a valiant try. He had played the race card and the welfare card and the xenophobia card. He would win some people over with those cards. The imagery of nine young people in chains at O’Hare would remain with the citizenry of Chicago (those who watched television) for a long time. Many of the same people would have cheered enthusiastically if the deported “criminals” had skins of a somewhat darker hue.

  Nor would there be much outcry if those darkerhued people were deprived summarily of their due processes, as in fact happened every day.

  Would a mother who was paying substandard wages to, let us say, a nanny from India praise her in the same words that these mothers were using to praise the deported Irish?

  Not hardly.

  However, illegal immigration was not in O’Hara’s jurisdiction. He could turn such immigrants over to the INS for appropriate action. They, in turn, would have to follow the appropriate legal processes. The expulsion of these “alleged perpetrators” looked very much like a conspiracy between Zack and Immigration to cover Zack’s ass. I was willing to bet that lower-level personnel at Immigration, zealous to do their job, had made the decision to collect the young Irish people and throw them out of the country as a routine matter without consultation with their superiors. Didn’t they do such things in cooperation with the local authorities every day?

  I could see the editorials in both papers the next day. Yielding to the popular xenophobia, they would lecture their readers sternly about the need to protect the nation’s borders and to maintain a firm definition of national identity. However, they would add, even illegal immigrants in this country have the right to due process of law. State’s Attorney O’Hara had acted wrongly in violating that right.

  Neither editorial would mention the self-evident truth that when you had a labor demand on one side of a border and a labor supply on the other side, there would be illegal immigration if the potential workers were denied access to legal immigration.

  The last TV clip presented us with an Irish-American “activist.” I didn’t know there were any such. The activist was an oversize woman in the middle years of life. She announced a Committee for the Chicago Nine which would devote itself to securing the rights of the allegedly illegal immigrants and to finding a way by which they could return to America and remain here permanently if they wished.

  Nothing succeeds like failure.

  No doubt the legal battles would go on for years. Then a higher court would rule that the rights of the young people had been violated and that the federal government must grant them appropriate hearings. With luck they could return to America while these hearings and appeals dragged on. Meanwhile, some of them would be granted visas and return legally and others would find jobs and perhaps marry in Ireland and would not want to come back. By the time the lawyers were finished, maybe in five years, the outcome would be moot and the media would have long since lost interest. The final appeal would be reported in a two-paragraph story at the back of the local-news sections of the papers.

  And Zack O’Hara, Fascist or not, might well be Governor of the State of Illinois. O, happy thought!

  Thank God that Nuala has a valid Morrison visa and can’t be shipped out in similar summary fashion, I prayed.

  I was, as it would turn out, unduly optimistic.

  The phone rang. I knew who it was.

  “I know Nuala, I know: It’s friggin’ awful.”

  “They’re not criminals, Dermot Michael. They’re not. Weren’t they just looking for jobs? And weren’t they just taking jobs no Americans wanted? If that’s against the law, the law ought to be changed!”

  She was sobbing as she talked, close to hysteria but not yet over the line. Basically, she was right. Some of her “pals” had come looking for jobs, some of the others on a lark, still others curious about what Yank land was like. Yet the law had to be changed. There was not a chance of that as long as the fires of xenophobia were burning brightly and the Republican candidates were pouring gasoline on the fires.

  “You’re absolutely right, Nuala, absolutely right.”

  “What can we do? Whatever can we do?”

  “All that can be done is being done. Eventually, those that want to come back probably can. It may take a lot of time, but they’ll be let in one way or another. A lot of people will take on their cause. When they come back, they’ll be legal and safe, just like you.”

  “It’s not right that I should stay and they can’t. Maybe I should go home, too, in protest.”

  “It’s absolutely not right,” I agreed, trying as always to hear what she meant and not just what she was saying. “It won’t help things for you to give up your job in this country. We have to make it easier for them to come to America if they want to and find work here if they can.”

 
“They just wanted to be Americans!” she wailed. “What’s friggin wrong with that?”

  “Nothing at all, Nuala Anne, nothing at all. It’s what my grandparents wanted, and what O’Hara’s ancestors wanted, and what the ancestors of all us American-Irish wanted. And none of us are too careful about learning how they got in. These are the kind of people who made American great. As are you. We need people like you, Nuala Anne. We need you. Don’t leave us because a few of us have behaved horribly.”

  She stopped sobbing. Sniffles replaced frenzied gasps.

  “You don’t really need me Dermot Michael, not at all, at all. You’re just saying that because you’re such a sweet man. Why ever would your United States of America need me?”

  “You mean Yank land.”

  She giggled.

  “I don’t use that slur word anymore.”

  “We need you for the reasons we need everyone who has the courage and ambition to immigrate. You’re hardworking; you’re intelligent; you’re charming; you’re dedicated. If we don’t get an influx of people like you in every generation, this nation will go to pot like France and England and Germany.”

  “You’re a darling man, Dermot Michael, even if that’s not the truth.”

  “Woman, damn it all, it is the truth.”

  “Well, maybe. Just a little bit.”

  “Didn’t your man offer you a job today? He thinks he needs you. You’re doing us a favor by coming to his country.”

  “I’ll always be Irish, Derm,” she said dubiously.

  “Who said you had to be anything else? We don’t want you to change a thing, even your friggin’ gobshite language. If you change we might send you back. You only add a few things and become Irish-American or American-Irish—take your pick.”

  “Not a friggin’ Yank?”

  Another giggle.

  “Yankees, young woman, are your frigging New England Protestants. There’s nothing wrong with being that, if that’s what one is. It is absolutely impossible for you to become one of them.”

  “Now I’m crying because I love you so much.”

  “I love you, too, Nuala Anne.”

  So we both cried a little and she said, “I’ll need a couple of days by meself to mourn and pray, Dermot.”

  “Take all you need.”

  I was reasonably pleased with myself. I had listened pretty well to what she meant. I was progressing. I’d slipped again and told her I loved her, but that was surely the truth. She was entitled to some time of silent grief and prayer, wasn’t she?

  Somehow, however, I felt uneasy. Was I missing something important?

  15

  THE NEXT morning I worked feverishly (you should excuse the expression) on my stories about young love and young passion and how the two relate to each other. Naturally, I didn’t permit myself to think through what that relationship should mean to me.

  I turned on the noon news.

  The broadcast began with clips of a shoot-out.

  Cops hiding behind police cars were banging away at a two-story wooden house, newer than the one in which Nuala lived, somewhere in the city. Someone from inside the house was banging back.

  At ten o’clock this morning, the anchorperson told me, the Chicago Police Department stormed a home in the Jefferson Park area on the northwest side of the city where they believed the Art Heist gang was hiding. Two Chicago police officers were wounded by gunfire from inside the house.

  One of the wounded officers was an African-American woman.

  The clip changed to police firing a barrage of tear gas into the building. The guys inside were in real trouble now. You shoot a cop, you’re practically dead.

  The police, the anchorperson continued, opened fire with tear-gas grenades and ordered the gunmen inside to surrender immediately.

  Yet another clip showed three men with their handkerchiefs over their faces charging out of the house, guns blazing in a fury of pops. All three of them fell to the ground.

  Three gunmen charged out of the house, the anchor went on, and fired at the police. The police returned the fire, killing one man and wounding two others critically. Three others surrendered.

  A clip showed three terrified men coming out of the house, hands over their heads. The cops swarmed all over them with handcuffs.

  “We understand that in the basement of the house the police found many art treasures which fit the descriptions of those taken by the Art Heist gang. Now we have Commander John Culhane of Area Six, whose detectives broke the case, live with Andrea Smith from Jefferson Park.”

  John Culhane was wearing a flak jacket and a helmet. He appeared tense and distraught.

  “First of all, Commander, how are the two police officers doing?”

  “I understand that they are both considered ‘serious,’ but that they both will recover, thanks be to God.”

  “Did you expect to encounter resistance?”

  “We were ready for it in the sense that we were all wearing helmets and flak jackets. Art thieves usually have no taste for gunfights. These guys were different. One of them waved a sheet from the second floor. Our advance team was moving into position when they opened up. If it wasn’t for the flak jackets and the helmets, they’d be dead.”

  “Are you certain that they are the Art Heist gang?”

  “It would seem probable that they are since we found many works of art that were reported stolen from the galleries.”

  “Who are they?”

  “We’re not sure yet, Andrea. None of the survivors speaks English. They appear to be from Eastern Europe. Some of them may be Russians.”

  “Are they former members of the Black Berets, as people are saying around here?”

  “They may be. We’re looking into that.”

  “How did you learn of their whereabouts?”

  He smiled thinly.

  “Good detective work.”

  And a tip from the Outfit. The Wise Men must have figured that it was safer to let the Chicago cops dispose of these foreign intruders. The Outfit is as xenophobic as anyone else. As American as pumpkin pie.

  “Did you recover the priceless Monets from the Armacost Gallery.”

  “We are still examining the artwork we have recovered.”

  It doesn’t take much examination to spot a Monet. That meant there would be a raid on the Armacost Gallery this afternoon before Paula and Wayne figured out what Culhane’s remarks meant.

  Why not go over there and see what happened?

  I walked over to Superior Street in shorts and a T-shirt and found myself a ringside seat.

  Just as I arrived at the corner across the street from the gallery, a half-dozen patrol cars and a couple of plainclothes cars roared up to the gallery. Cops poured out, guns in their hands. No risks of being shot without warning this time.

  A couple of television trucks pulled up, and camera persons and journalists tumbled out.

  The cops, led by a man in civilian clothes who, from my distance, looked like Commander Culhane, pushed their way in the door. A TV crew tried to rush in after him. A couple of determined cops blocked their way.

  Then there was a wait, presumably while they searched the basement for the Monets. I wandered across the street and stood among the journalists as if I belonged. Seanachies have some rights, don’t they?

  After a half-hour, two women detectives appeared, one holding each arm of Julia Armacost. She was wearing handcuffs and sobbing. Poor woman, she’d look awful on the five- and ten-o’clock news. Wayne was right behind her, seemingly stunned.

  John Culhane appeared, and the media flocked around him.

  “All I can say at the present is that we have found the alleged Monets in a safe in an old coal bin the basement of the gallery. It would appear that they never left the gallery. We are holding Ms. Julia Armacost, and we are not holding Mr. Wayne Armacost.”

  He caught my eye and, with an almost-invisible flick of his head, signaled me to follow him. He murmured something to the uniformed officer a
t the door, who greeted me with the same flick of his head.

  They must teach these gestures at the Police Academy.

  John was waiting for me.

  “I want to show you the coal bin.”

  “What went down here?”

  “She broke down as soon as we demanded the key to the coal bin. She wanted to protect her husband from an exposé of the fake Monets. She had arranged to purchase them in Europe, asked an expert to evaluate them, and then bought them cheap from the crooks who were trying to sell them. They were insured only for their values as imitations, which I gather is still considerable. She says she intended them as ornaments for the gallery, and that she expected no one would ever buy them. If anyone did, she swore she would tell them the truth. I kind of believe her. When she heard about the Monet show, she was terrified. Someone suggested this Billy Hernon to her, and you know the rest.”

  “Who will charge her?”

  “Probably the feds. They’ll charge her and the Art Heist gang. Your good friend Zack wants no part of this anymore. Her lawyers will plea, and she’ll get off with a year, less time off for good behavior. The husband is standing by her.”

  “The joke is that the fake Monets and the love story will attract more people here than the supposed real ones.”

  Culhane twitched his eyebrows. “Yeah, you’re probably right. It’s a crazy world, Dermot.”

  “Don’t forget about Billy Hernon. He’s the bad one.”

  “We won’t … you want to see the coal bin?”

  “You bet.”

  We went down to the basement, through the storerooms, and behind the red and black furnace. The iron door was ajar. The commander bent low and crawled into the coal bin. I followed him.

  We both stood up, and he flicked a light switch. Two powerful floodlights came on and illumined the bin, which had been plastered and painted and looked as modern as the rest of the gallery. Against the far wall, where the coal chute probably had been, stood a very serious-looking safe, bright and shining and formidable. The door was open.

  “They were both in here,” he said. “Beautiful. I couldn’t tell them from the real thing. I’ll take her word that they are imitations.”