“My lovely dark one insists that we should be interested. You don’t argue with Irish women, Father Leo. You surely know that.”
“Fascinating story … Tell you what: I’ll talk to some of the guys that lived with Jolly Joe, as they called him. Get at it indirectly. Won’t mention you at all. Fair enough?”
“More than fair … And, oh yes, we’ll send you a copy of the CD, and I’m sure herself will be happy to sing for you when we come back from our honeymoon.”
He wished us happiness in our marriage and prayed that God would bless the two of us, “especially Dermot who may need Your help.”
“I will indeed need the help, Father. Life with herself will never be dull.”
“She’s from Galway, isn’t she?”
We both laughed and shook hands and I left.
My next stop was at the Old Town Ale House on North Avenue, where I was to meet a veteran reporter who also covered the crime beat. Prester George had set up that interview for me. I had not told Sean about him and I would not tell him about Sean.
I entered the dark and, I suspect deliberately, dirty tavern which smelled like a men’s washroom that hadn’t been cleaned in weeks. A little bald man in a shabby suit stood up and signaled me over to his table in the corner. For a moment I thought I had entered the world of Timothy Patrick McCarthy, except the reporter across the pockmarked wooden table from me probably had not consumed quite as many shots of vodka as had McCarthy’s informant. However, he had already put away quite a few.
“Whadya want to drink?”
“Irish, straight up.”
“Any preferences?”
“Jameson’s or Bushmill’s.”
“They got both.”
“Bushmill’s.”
“A shot of Jameson’s straight up for my friend?”
“On the rocks?” the bartender asked.
“Blasphemy.”
They both laughed.
Only one. No way would I go on a date with herself tonight with more than one under my belt.
“So you want to know more about Jimmy Sullivan?” he asked genially, as he sipped slowly and lovingly from the vodka glass.
“Let me tell you what I already know: there is no death certificate; no burial certificate from Immaculate Conception Parish; his body was never taken to the morgue; the ambulance which picked him up doubled back and brought him to Carroll’s funeral home; the casket was not open; even then a few of the guys were saying that Jimmy wasn’t dead and that someday he’d come back.”
The only assertions of which I was sure were the ones about the death certificate and the closed casket. The rest was the seanachie, the storyteller, at work. They were the scenario I had made up on the spur of the moment to explain the empty tomb, a reality which I dare not deny any longer, not even to myself.
The reporter put the glass back on the table, steadied it so it wouldn’t spill, and rocked back on his chair.
“Damn good work. Really DAMN good work. Nice going.”
“Thank you.”
“Mind telling me how you dug up all that stuff?” he asked carefully, as though it were only a matter of academic interest.
“Gotta protect my sources. People are worried about what happened that day, though it was seventy years ago.”
“They sure are,” he said with a sigh. “They sure are. And with reason.”
“So I understand.”
I certainly did not understand that. Had herself communicated some of her fey intuitions to me?
“You read Tim McCarthy’s article?”
“Of course.”
“What did you think?”
“He was pulling a lot of punches.”
“He sure was. He was scared shitless.”
“I figured as much.”
“Of course,” he said as he stared into his drink, “that was a quarter century ago.”
“Probably Jimmy was alive then. He’d be ninety-nine if he were alive today.”
The journalist glanced around nervously.
“When you say things like that, say them in whispers,” he warned me. “Better never say them at all. Better don’t even think them.”
“What I don’t understand,” I said, playing tough, “is why he chose such an elaborate scam to disappear.”
“Look, I don’t know much about it, only what I heard from a friend of mine on his deathbed. I didn’t believe him, but I snooped around and found out a little more. I wish he hadn’t told me. Don’t ever quote me on any of this stuff. All right?”
He continued to stare moodily at his drink.
“Deep background.”
“Yeah … Look, it’s a lot less dangerous to mess around about Jimmy Sullivan now than it was a quarter century ago. But it’s still a mystery that you want to leave alone. Some people are still alive, get me?”
“Marie.”
“I’m NOT saying that.”
“She got a bum rap from your predecessors. She was, or more likely is, anything but an empty-headed fool.”
“You going to write a novel about this?”
“I’m not planning to at the present.”
“You could probably get away with it if you changed the city and changed the people and if you just speculated about how it was done, instead of trying to find out, get me?”
“You mean if no one could figure out that I meant Jimmy Sullivan?”
“Yeah, though you’d be better off if you waited five or six more years.”
“To tell the truth, I doubt that any publisher would be interested in a novel about a bootlegger everyone has forgotten, subplot maybe, but not the whole story.”
“Then why you so interested?”
“I like puzzles.”
“Even puzzles that might be dangerous?”
“That makes them more interesting.”
Those who know me will immediately realize that was a barefaced lie. I was slipping into Nuala’s trick of identifying with temporary roles. Mistake.
“I’ll tell you what I know, so long as you don’t quote me. Ever. But my advice is to leave the story alone. What does it matter? Seventy years is a long, long time. What does the Old Testament say? Let the dead bury their dead.”
“Jesus, actually.”
“Yeah … Well, whoever, but you get it?”
“Sure. I have no desire to ruin people’s lives, if that’s what you mean, and no desire to put myself at unnecessary risk either. Like I say, I have no intention of writing it up now. I probably never will.”
“That’s a sound idea. Very sound. Don’t touch it for now. Why the interest anyway?”
I could hardly tell him because my black-haired, blue-eyed affianced was one of the dark ones, could I?
“Curiosity.”
“Remember what it did to the cat?”
“Cats have nine lives.”
What was I doing sounding so tough?
“OK. I’ve warned you. One thing you should remember, however: McCarthy did publish his article. Yeah, he pulled punches. But even a quarter century ago, he avoided serious trouble because he stayed away from certain speculations. Got it?”
“Absolutely.”
“OK. I’ll tell you what I know, which isn’t much, but you don’t tell anyone you talked to me. I don’t think anyone else knows what I know.”
“Fair enough.”
“There were a couple of guys who knew what went down. Figured it out like you did, though a lot closer to the actual events. They asked some of the individuals who they suspected were involved. These individuals warned them to keep their mouths shut. They said that if certain other individuals found out what they knew, they might be in serious danger. The guys who had done the figuring, not being fools, kept their mouths shut, most of the time. Still the story kind of hung around in the atmosphere, so to speak. A lot of guys had their suspicions, but kept it to themselves, get it?”
“Urban folklore?”
“Yeah, that’s it. So the King Arthur story comes out,
mostly among the Irish guys when they have too much to drink.”
He winked and raised the glass in salute to me.
I sipped the whiskey cautiously. It did indeed clear the sinuses.
“Nothing you can do to kill a myth.”
“Right. It makes the individuals who were mainly responsible uneasy, but they let it go, because no one really believes in myths, get it?”
Actually people do believe in myths, but that was irrelevant to our discussion.
“Yeah.”
He drained his vodka in a single gulp and waved for another.
“You want another?”
“Nope.”
“No one ever had all the details about how it went down, see? A lot of speculation, I was told, and some comparing of notes and maybe an indirect question here or there. But no one knows for sure that Jimmy is not out there in his grave at Queen of Heaven Cemetery.”
“Mount Carmel, actually.”
“Whatever … the point is that there’s not a shred of evidence to prove that Scarface’s gunmen, Scalise and Anselmi, didn’t put him down that day. The only way you could begin to prove there was a plot would be to dig up the grave. Believe me, that isn’t going down. No way.”
There was another way to know that he wasn’t in his grave, but we weren’t going to talk about that. No way.
“So guys had their suspicions, but no proof. And no way of getting proof. The people who could give them proof didn’t dare talk. And the individuals on top were sworn to keeping the secret.”
“If there was one. You see we can’t be sure there was a secret … These individuals were and are heavy into this honor shit. You swear a solemn oath of honor and you never break it, not unless you want a bullet in the back of your head or a baseball bat beating you to death, get it?”
“They break their oaths occasionally, don’t they?”
“Yeah, and spend the rest of their lives looking over their shoulders, even if they’re in a fed program.”
“Witness protection program?”
“There’s some people the feds just can’t protect.”
“But these individuals have been dead a long time now.”
“The oaths get passed on to their heirs. Believe me, if Tim McCarthy had been poking around when the first generation was alive, they’d never have found his body. Now we’re into the third generation and they’re more relaxed about it. Yeah, there’s an oath all right, but it doesn’t bind the way it use to. Get it?”
I nodded.
“So they have a word with McCarthy and that straightens him out.”
“Why did Jimmy want to get out that way?”
“Your myth doesn’t say. It says he was clean. The feds never went after him on tax evasion, like they did Scarface. No one was thinking of that in those days. He was one damn clever Irishman though.”
“That he was. That he sure was … Why did the individuals you refer to help him out?”
“Beats me. Jimmy was a charmer by all accounts. Maybe he charmed them?”
“Charmed Capone?”
“He was a lot more complicated a guy than they make him out to be in the movies. But who knows why? And who knows whether this is any more than dreams, get me? Nothing to back it up and there never will be unless someone digs up the grave, and, like I say, no way that’s gonna happen.”
I paid for the drinks.
“Thanks for the information.”
“Remember, I don’t know anything about this matter and I never talked to you.”
“I promise.”
I walked over to Clark to catch a cab down to the Fine Arts Building, which once had been a carriage factory. It was a charmingly ugly old rabbit warren with artist’s and musician’s studios on the upper floor and decrepit theaters on the first floor. Madame—Nuala’s voice coach—presided in one of the studios. I would have walked the three miles, but if I were not there promptly, I’d be in trouble with herself.
He had not told me much, except that this might be a dangerous exploration. He had, however, confirmed, albeit indirectly, the main lines of the story. As he said, it was the stuff of dreams. There was no way we could ever prove it, even if we wanted to.
I would tell Nuala that and strongly urge that we forget about the whole thing.
I didn’t think that would go down at all.
At all.
9
IN THE lobby of the Fine Arts Building, a gorgeous woman enveloped me in a radiant smile that turned my legs to water. Then she hugged me, caressed my face, and kissed me. My brain stopped working.
“I’m so happy to see you, Dermot Michael. I’ve missed you something terrible!”
It was herself, I realized, slowly recapturing my sanity. She was dressed in a rather tight-fitting black suit, with the miniest of miniskirts, and a V neck with a swath of lace providing either modesty or invitation depending on your perspective. Her scent made me dizzy again. She didn’t seem to want to let me go, which was all right with me.
“Are you going to take off my clothes now?” I asked her.
“‘Course not. Not just yet … Madame let me out a few minutes early. Didn’t she say that I was improving rapidly in me breathing? … And you shouldn’t worry anymore about my obsession with punctuality. Isn’t that immature? Shouldn’t a married woman be mature?”
A new persona was emerging: Nuala, the sexy, mature wife. Who was I to fight it?
“Shall we see the movie?” I asked weakly.
“Haven’t I bought the tickets already? You can buy the popcorn. Large for me.”
“Won’t it spoil your supper?”
“Sure, won’t I starve to death before then?”
I bought the popcorn and the natural water.
“I think Ma and Pa were involved with the Sullivans.” I said as we—or more precisely my bride-to-be—selected our seats in the back corner of the main theater.
“Well, why wouldn’t they have been? And herself telling me about the empty grave? And isn’t she the one who insists that we should solve this mystery?”
“Ah,” I said. “Do you remember anything from Ma’s diary?”
“I don’t but then I wasn’t looking for it. Don’t you have the whole translation in your apartment?”
“I’ll look for it tomorrow morning.”
“Good.” She patted my arm. “Now let’s enjoy the fillum and worry about our mystery after it’s over.”
Attending a “fillum” with Nuala Anne is a vigorous experience. She laughs, cries, grabs one’s arm, shouts in protest, demands that one do something about what is happening, and intermittently cheers enthusiastically. This time, however, she engaged in another activity. During those interludes when she was sitting in relative repose, her hand found its way to my knee and thigh.
Well.
So I began my own explorations, a quest facilitated by her miniskirt. I did not proceed very far, but far enough to make her gasp in surprise and, I thought, pleasure. At any rate she didn’t try to stop me.
“Weren’t you just a little fresh in there,” she said, after she had led a standing ovation at the end of the film.
“You started it.”
“Tis true … I don’t suppose you’ll be interested in doing that at the fillums after we’re married?”
“Don’t you now?”
She laughed happily, linked her arm in mine, and more or less dragged me up Michigan Avenue in the soft autumn twilight.
“Do you want me to report my adventures during the day?”
“Och, Dermot Michael, aren’t you terrible unromantic altogether this evening?”
“Am I now?”
“Well,” she said feigning resignation, “I suppose I have to listen.”
I finished my report as we passed the Chicago Cultural Center and neared the River. Nuala’s exuberance had disappeared. She was serious, solemn, thoughtful.
“Well at least you don’t think I’m crazy anymore.”
“I never thought you were crazy, Nual
a Anne. Now I know that all the evidence we have fits your model.”
“You certainly tricked that poor reporter.”
“I’m pretty good in the Watson role … I still can’t figure out why Sullivan wanted to disappear, especially that way. Or why Capone wanted to help him. He couldn’t have done it without Al Brown’s help.”
She nodded.
“Or why, after all these years, it’s such a terrible dark secret. Dark and dangerous.”
“Maybe we should stop searching.”
That was my thought, too.
“If you want.”
“Yet I know that it is important for us to do it and that it’s not really dangerous.”
“What will happen if we don’t do it?”
She paused, perhaps consulting the fairie folk or the angels or whoever was whispering in her ear.
“Well, won’t a good thing not happen for us?”
“You’re sure of that?”
“Yes,” she said. “Very sure.”
“I see no reason why I shouldn’t poke around a little more—check Ma’s diary, talk to Tim McCarthy, see what my friend Sean and Father Leo come up with.”
“You’ll do that tomorrow?”
“I will.”
“Then we can talk about it tomorrow night … Where are we going to eat tomorrow night, Dermot Michael?”
“Am I taking you out for supper tomorrow night?”
“Naturally! Don’t I want to eat supper with you every night for the rest of me life?”
“Well, why don’t I take you some place where you can dress up in your finest clothes and astonish everyone in the dining room?”
“What you really mean is wear practically nothing at all so you can ogle me all night long?”
“That’s the general idea.”
“Well, I don’t think I’d mind that at all, at all … So long as the food is good, mind you.”
“Absolutely.”
“I have to go for me last fitting for me bridal dress. Actually I don’t have to go at all, but if I don’t, I’ll spoil the day for your ma and your sis. And they’ll want to talk about the flowers again and meeting people at the airport and all that stuff.”
Well, she didn’t say “all that shite.”
“Seven-thirty at Gordon.”
Irish Whiskey Page 12
