“I understand,” I said, rising from my chair and putting my empty Loyola mug back on his cabinet. “I take your point. I’m not going to write anything about it now. I probably never would. I became interested in it because Sullivan’s alleged grave site is next to our family tomb out at Mount Carmel.”
When I tried later to figure out who had tipped “our friends on the West Side” (as the Outfit is often called in Chicago) to my poking around, I ruled out Tim McCarthy. If he had mentioned the grave sites to the “interested individuals,” that would have changed everything.
12
“I FOUND out two interesting items today,” Sean said to me tentatively, “which I thought I’d pass on to you.” We were sitting in a bar on the top of the John Hancock Center drinking Irish whiskey and watching the shadows of the buildings on the Drive, long and eager fingers, creep out on the deep blue Lake. He had phoned me after lunch to say that he wanted to talk to me “urgently.”
“Fire away,” I said.
“First of all, as far as I can get it from people who know more than I do, it would seem that your friends out on the West Side have inherited an oath, a very solemn oath, to protect the secret of the death of Sweet Rolls Sullivan. There are some oaths in their world that are passed on from generation to generation.”
I counted on my fingers. “That would be four generations, wouldn’t it?”
“Three. Capone’s contemporaries to Accardo’s and then Accardo’s generation to Albergetti’s.”
Anthony Accardo, known variously as “Tough Tony” and “Big Tuna” had presided over the Outfit in the seventies and eighties. Angelo “The Angel” Albergetti, who lived two blocks away from us in River Forest, was the current “don.” Unlike Capone who led the Mob when he was still in his twenties, the subsequent leadership had all been old men.
“So The Angel is bound by Scarface’s vow?”
“That’s what I hear.”
I was not about to ask him for his source.
“Permanent vow?”
“Binding all subsequent generations? I gather there’s a limit to it. My source says with a wink and a nod that there’s a time limit on it and that it might expire soon. He was more indirect than that of course.”
Elderly Irish cop, I’d bet.
Second hint today that the statute of limitations on the secret was running out.
“They don’t know I’m interested, do they?”
“My source sure didn’t, either before or after I talked to him.”
“I’m inclined to leave it alone for a while. I’ve got other things on my mind. Like a wedding.”
I sipped cautiously on my “jar.” Two hours remained before I was obliged to collect herself at her house. Our house. I wouldn’t want to seem to be under the influence, as she would say, of the drink taken. I must therefore make the jar last through our whole conversation.
“I got an invitation today. By messenger. With a prayer in a foreign language on the back. Irish, I presume. Your young woman works fast.”
“Now that you mention it, I’ve noticed that, too.”
We both laughed.
“Now your second item.”
He shifted uneasily and studied the amber liquid in his glass. “Have you heard that Dale Quade is planning to indict you?”
“It would seem that she has something like that in mind. She subpoenaed my records today. I’m told by my lawyer that it’s a fishing expedition. She won’t find anything. The CFTC and the IRS have already gone over them.”
“Dale always finds something. Not enough for a conviction, but enough for a plea if the target doesn’t have the money for a trial.”
“Lawyers in my family would love to get her disbarred. And, unlike me, they love fights.”
“Someone ought to put a stop to her. We use her leaks, of course, but even the press thinks she’s a dangerous person.”
“Then she must really be dangerous.”
“Apparently they’ve wired some guy to whom you talked?”
“Allegedly talked, Sean.”
“All right, ‘allegedly.’”
“I mean that I haven’t talked to the guy in years, save for one conversation at the beach on Labor Day. I saw no sign of a wire. But even if he was wearing one, we didn’t talk about anything that might interest a grand jury.”
“A guy named Jarry Kennedy. An old friend of yours.”
“So I understand. A certifiable psychopath.”
“Our guys think so, too. She’s teasing them with excerpts from the conversation. Apparently they are incriminating.”
“It’s a fake, Sean … This conversation is totally confidential?”
“It sure is.”
“Don’t get involved in writing the story. My legal relatives will jump on everyone with a suit as soon as this phony conversation is leaked. I don’t want you to be a target.”
He considered my advice very carefully.
“The Federal Courts are not my beat. But it sounds to me like there’s another story lurking around. Like conspiracy to commit fraud?”
“Might be.”
“Do you mind if I poke around on this Jarry Kennedy guy? Maybe get a story ready when you folks sue? I won’t go with it until you consent.”
“Be my guest … Tell me more about this Quade woman.”
“Sad case. She met her husband during their first year in law school. Married at the end of the first year. She dropped out to get a job at a pizza parlor so she could support the two of them and the kid they had. He was law bulletin and then graduated. Big job offers from around the country. Took one in New York and dumped her. She went to school at night, graduated, and went to work over there at the Dirksen Building. Worked her way up quickly. Sleeps with boss—and lots of other people, too. Hates men, perhaps with good reason. Takes big risks and loses a lot of them.”
“The guy dumped her when he got his degree,” I commented. “I didn’t think stories like that happened anymore in this feminist age.”
“You’d be surprised. Even feminists can be fools when they think they’re in love.”
“She’s close to the Bureau?” I asked.
“To one faction over there. The Special Agent-in-Charge hates her guts. The Bureau has enough trouble these days without looking foolish in court with a bad case. There’s a lot of infighting in the Bureau between the Agent-in-Charge and the Deputy Agent-in-Charge. The Deputy has clout inside the Beltway, so he gets to do some things on his own. He’s in Quade’s corner if not in other regions.”
“Let me guess, Sean. My friend Jarry is working for the Deputy.”
“You got it … And the Agent-in-Charge is away in Bosnia helping them set up their own Bureau.”
“What’s the Deputy’s name?”
“Joe Dever … He’s a total asshole. Thinks he’s an investigative genius. Most agents can’t stand him.”
“So I’m up against a bitter, reckless woman and a guy on the make?”
“Looks like it, Dermot. Sorry.”
“And some of your colleagues are looking for blood?”
“They’re out there, too.”
“Coyote is always out there, and he’s always hungry,” I said, finishing my jar.
“Huh?”
“Native American saying …”
“If it’s a fake, they won’t get away with it.”
“At first they will,” I said with a sigh almost as loud as Nuala’s.
“I suppose so,” he admitted.
“Want another drink?”
“No thanks. I might have a date tonight … I’ll be looking forward to meeting herself. She sounds like something else altogether.”
“You can’t imagine,” I agreed.
I decided in my apartment that I had better swim before I encountered herself at 7:30.
As I plowed back and forth in the pool, still feeling sorry for myself, I realized I was in a much better position than the usual targets of the Bureau and the United States Attorney. I had a fi
rst-rate lawyer in my family and the resources to fight back. I wouldn’t be forced into a plea bargain, as Danny Rostenkowski had been when his lawyers had consumed his three million dollars long before a trial. Even if I lost the money I had won at the Exchange, I could still count on a reasonably steady income from my writing. Maybe I would be more industrious in my work if I lost all my money.
All of which was an exercise in self-pity. Cindy and her friends would eat them alive long before a trial.
If the wheel at the Federal Courthouse spun out a good judge.
13
NUALA HAD chosen a simple sheath with a low neckline and the usual miniskirt for her evening dress. The color of the dress was anything but simple, however. It was bright, bright red. She created more than the usual sensation as we entered Gordon at 500 North Clark Street. Her ring and the diamond necklace I had given her in the cab on the way down from Southport glittered dangerously.
“Woman,” I said, “you’re radiant tonight.”
“I’m about to marry a man I love,” she replied with her most glorious smile; “Sure, what better reason to shock all them eejits who are staring at me?”
There was a rigorous logic somewhere in that comment which escaped me.
Nuala loved her engagement ring and her necklace, but the dress, charming as it was, had doubtless been purchased off the rack at a markdown sale or at an outlet store. It was approved behavior for me to spend money on her, but it was wrong for her to spend money on herself. “Good taste,” she had once said to me with a sniff, “makes up for a lack of money.”
“Well,” she said after she had arranged herself at the table, “what reactions do you have to me emotional undressing last night?”
“If taking off your clothes is as much fun, I’ll be deliriously happy for the rest of my life.”
“Go long wid ya, Dermot Michael Coyne,” she said, tapping my arm with substantial force. “I’m serious.”
In truth, she was on so much of a high she was only half-serious.
I was not ready for the question. I tried to improvise, not too successfully.
“You’re a woman and a half, Nuala Anne, a constant challenge. I’ve had to grow up, too, during the last year. I’ve learned more about women than I did in all the other years of my life put together. I still have a lot to learn, so you’re going to have to be patient with me.”
“Go long wid ya,” she said again, her eyes soft with affection. “Don’t I like you just the way you are?”
This time her tap on my arm was as soft as a baby’s and the pressure of her knee under the table as inviting as the first day of summer, a promise of warmth and comfort and joy.
I think I gulped.
“Did I say last night,” she continued, “that you’ll have to put up for the rest of your life with me blather, and me contentiousness, and me loud Irish mouth and me crazy visions?”
“I don’t recall that you did, but I assume that to be the case.”
“Do you now?”
“Woman, I do. Should there be a change in those conditions, I will trade you in on a new model.”
“Don’t even think of it!”
So we ordered our dinner, or rather I ordered it because herself threw up her hands at the menu—salmon gravlax, wine-marinated pears with Stilton cheese and poached skate for the main course.
“Isn’t this a fancy place and meself never hearing of skate before,” she said, her hand managing to find my knee.
“Tis.”
We chatted happily of our future together: love, sex, children, growing old together. Much of our chatter was about sex; Nuala had been reading books on the subject and was filled with questions, indirect and roundabout, most of which I could not answer.
“Would you ever want to do this to me?” she’d say after alluding to some Ming Dynasty trick.
“Woman, I’ve never thought about that, but I’m sure I’d like it if you would.”
“Well,” she’d reply thoughtfully, “not at the very beginning anyway.”
We were engaged in one such obscure, if erotic, discussion when the little bishop appeared.
“There was so much crimson over here,” he said with his usual sigh, “that I thought it might be the Cardinal himself … I note with approval the new necklace.”
Flustered, Nuala turned as crimson as her dress. “Your rivrence! Isn’t it meself that’s glad to see you and your man wanting to talk about nothing but sex? Isn’t it terrible altogether that he has nothing else on his mind and himself about to receive a sacrament?”
“God looks like sex,” the bishop said.
“What?” I gulped.
“Is not the Trinity an intimate, ecstatic, and permanent union between two persons which generates a third person? Is not therefore married love an excellent metaphor and indeed a reflection of the most inner and personal activity of the deity?”
“That’s beautiful!” I exclaimed.
“Och, the Church doesn’t say that to people.”
“It just did.”
“Sure, you never hear it from the altar, do you now?”
“I have just heard it from the esteemed Father Barron … Should I mount the Cathedral pulpit next year on the Feast of the Holy Trinity and preach this metaphor, you may be sure that letters would go off to the Congregation for the Defense of the Faith before the day was over.”
“So you won’t do it?” I asked.
“Oh, no. I will most certainly do it, Herself granting me life till then,” he replied, and drifted away in his usual bemused style, as though he were unsure of where he was or where he ought to be going.
Following the immemorial Irish custom, we finished our dinner and turned to business only over dessert, in this case flourless chocolate cake with espresso ice cream.
“Here are the pertinent excerpts from Ma’s diary,” I said, removing them from my jacket pocket and handing them across the table to her.
She read the pages silently and then, as was her wont, read them for a second time.
“They got themselves into something dangerous, didn’t they?” she said.
“I thought so, too.”
“And herself loving it all the time.”
“We don’t know, Nuala, exactly what it was or why they were needed or why Sweet Rolls Sullivan chose that way to disappear.”
She nodded thoughtfully, her forehead creased in a puzzled frown.
I reported on my conversations with Tim McCarthy and with Sean, though I left out the second part of the latter conversation.
“So,” I said, summing up, “we know most of the story. Jimmy Sullivan was tired of the danger and the violence. He wanted to get out of the racket, disappear completely. He persuaded Capone to help him stage his vanishing act. Ma and Pa provided some kind of indispensable assistance. Capone swore an oath which was passed on to his successors. They buried the empty casket at Mount Carmel. A couple of months later Marie Sullivan disappeared. Jimmy has been dead for some time. Marie is still alive. The oath dies when she dies … Don’t we know enough now, Nuala?”
“I don’t think so, Dermot me love,” she said as she finished off the last tiny piece of her cake and looked around as if she were wondering whether it would be “too much altogether” if she ordered another piece.
“What else do we have to find out?”
“I don’t know. Isn’t it all surmise? Doesn’t it all rest on me vision, if you want to call it that, of the empty grave and ourselves not having the slightest idea why James Sullivan chose to disappear that way and why Al Capone cooperated in such a scheme, if he did. Maybe Sullivan died the week after his apparent murder. Maybe Marie has been dead a long time. We don’t have any proof of anything, do we now, me darling man?”
“Tis true,” I agreed.
“We don’t know enough of the story, not yet.”
She pushed the cake plate aside reluctantly.
“And what do we do now?”
“We wait. Something more has to happen.”
“We just wait?”
“We just wait … And now, Dermot Michael Coyne, tell me the bad news you’ve been saving to the end.”
I ought not to have been surprised that she knew there would be bad news. Nuala had been seeing right through me since the night we met at O’Neill’s pub in Dublin’s fair city.
I told her about Dale Quade and Joe Dever and about the indictment which was almost certain to be handed down against me.
“Under the circumstances, Nuala, it might not be a bad idea if we think about postponing …”
A firm hand on my mouth shut off the rest of the sentence.
“Don’t you dare say it, Dermot Michael Coyne! Don’t you dare even think it! I’ll marry you on our wedding day even if I have to go to jail to do it.”
“I’m not likely to be in jail. Nothing will happen for a couple of weeks, maybe a couple of months. But the media will have a great time with it, even though they know that Kennedy and Quade and Dever are all crooks.”
“You feel sorry for yourself, don’t you, Dermot?” she said accusingly.
“I guess so. I haven’t done anything wrong. Yet my reputation will be ruined and most of my money spent, even if Cindy won’t charge me.”
“Tis your worst fault,” she informed me. “And yourself not having many of them.”
“What’s my worst fault?” I demanded.
“You don’t get angry when you should. You should be furious at these terrible people. I’ve seen you when you’re angry and aren’t you brilliant? But it takes you a long time to, as you Yanks say, get your Irish up.”
“The Irish are a peace-loving and gentle people,” I said. “Well, most of the time.”
“I saw you jump your man with the knife in front of me house and I read in the Dublin papers about the three thugs you tossed through the window on Upper Baggot Street. You have to become that wild Irishman against them gobshites.”
“They were attacking me physically and I fought back physically. This is different …”
“Tis not, not at all at all.”
She was right. If I were to fight back effectively I would have to bestir myself out of my placid self-pity. It was fortunate that Nuala had reminded me of that. The course of the next couple of days would have been different if she had not.
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