“Come on, woman, let’s do the pool again and then go home.”
And so we did
SHE’S WORRIED, the Adversary said, AND YOU’RE NOT WORRIED AT ALL, AT ALL.
“The hell I’m not.”
20
THE MAN in the dark gray, carefully tailored three-piece suit was waiting for me. With his razor-cut hair, his prim face, and his worried eyes behind rimless glasses, he looked like a banker who was worried about a loan. Maybe he was a banker.
“So nice of you to agree to see me, Mr. Coyne,” he said softly.
“A friend of mine,” I said, “told me that you’re a friend of a friend of his. So naturally I would talk to you.”
“Friends are really important,” he whispered again.
“And friends of friends.”
“Precisely.”
If he caught the hint of satire in my pieties, he gave no sign of it.
“You see, Mr. Coyne,” he began as he led me on a stroll around the Hancock Center, “There’s a certain individual who would like to have a little talk with you and your fiancée about a mutual problem about which he is concerned.”
The words were mild and there was no hint of a threat in them. I decided to take them as a threat.
“Is that individual threatening us?”
“No, no, no,” the man sputtered and looked around anxiously to make sure there was no one listening, though that stretch of the Magnificent Mile was deserted at such an early hour. “That’s the last impression this individual wants to create. Just a friendly conversation over tea at his house this afternoon.”
“Who is this individual?” I asked bluntly, though I knew for certain who he was.
“Mr. Albergetti. Angelo Albergetti. He’s a neighbor of your father and mother, same parish I believe.”
Angelo “The Angel” Albergetti was the current senior “godfather” or “don” or “Capo dei Tutti Capi” of the Chicago Outfit, though those terms were not used in Chicago. Locally he was known simply as the Boss.
“I went to grammar school and high school with his grandson Pete.”
“A fine young man. An excellent architect, I believe.”
Also a very shy kid who bore the burden of his background as a heavy cross.
“So I’m told.”
“We could pick you up in a limo after Mass,” he said tentatively.
“That won’t do, I’m afraid. There’s a shower at my mother’s house in River Forest for my fiancée. We could drive down to Mr. Albergetti’s home after the shower if that would be all right. Say about four o’clock?”
My companion responded with ecstatic happiness.
“That will be wonderful! Thank you very much, Mr. Coyne. Thank you very much. Mr. Albergetti will be delighted. I’m so happy you have seen your way clear to have this little talk with him. This is very gratifying indeed.”
“Would you do me a very big favor?”
“Certainly, Mr. Coyne! Certainly! Anything you want! Anything! Just name it!”
“Would you please tell Mr. Albergetti that Ms. McGrail and I have no intention of doing anything which might cause embarrassment, much less pain, to anyone.”
Just a bit of insurance.
“I will be very happy to do that, Mr. Coyne. Very happy indeed. I’m sure Mr. Albergetti will be glad to hear that. Very glad indeed.”
He shook my hand enthusiastically and hopped into a very long and very dark limo which had cruised up from nowhere.
Fascinating, I told myself. A confrontation between the Angel and my angel would be fun to watch.
I picked up the aforementioned angel in front of her house. She was wearing a tailored burnt orange dress and a matching hat and looked thoroughly elegant, not to say resplendent, in the bright autumn sunshine.
“Looking for a ride, Miss?”
“Depends on who’s driving the car … And the make of the car. Isn’t your Mercedes a trifle superannuated?”
“You mean old?” I jumped out of the car and opened the door for her.
“Well, since my real date has not come along yet, I suppose I might as well ride with you,” she said as she eased her way into the car, being careful not to disarrange her hat.
“That’s a lovely hat on your lovely head,” I said as I entered on the other side.
“Thank you, Dermot Michael … You don’t think it is too much, do you?”
“On many another woman it would be. On you it’s perfect.”
“Go long wid ya!” she tapped my arm, pleased with my approval.
Our life together should always be so easy.
“Well,” she said as I turned west on Fullerton to pick up the Kennedy Expressway, “it would appear that your novel is on its way to becoming a best-seller.”
“Irish Love?”
“The very same. Hasn’t everyone in me family bought a copy?”
“Oh,” I said cautiously. “Because your man insisted that they buy it?”
“The very same … I don’t know whether he bought it or borrowed it from someone or read it in a bookstore.”
“And his verdict?”
“What would you be thinking that would be, Dermot me darlin’ man? His favorite word on the subject is ‘degenerate.’”
“Oh boy!”
“He thinks the Church should condemn it as a threat to the morals of the young.”
“That would make my publisher’s day!”
“Didn’t I tell him that!”
“He says that everyone in our family will be humiliated if I marry you, that they will never be able to look their friends in the eye again, and that I’d be a disgrace to the Irish race.”
“And you said?”
“I said that I’d be no more a disgrace than Nora Barnacle!”
“Wasn’t that going a little far?”
“Well, you’re not a fall-down drunk like your man was.”
“The others?”
“You know how cautious and careful our kind can be, and themselves never wanting to take a stand when they can avoid it?”
“I do.”
“So didn’t me ma say that she read it all last night and that now himself was reading it and that she had to take it away from him so they could go to Mass?”
“Fairly solid endorsement.”
“I don’t think me brothers and sisters have read it yet. But they will, thanks to your man, they all will.”
“And if they don’t like it?”
“Sure, no one ever said that all the Irish have good taste, did they?”
“How did a copy of the book get to Ireland?”
“Didn’t your man send it over to them by air express?”
“Collect?”
“How else?”
As we left the expressway at Monroe Street, I told her about my early-morning visitor.
“Well, we stirred them up, didn’t we now, Dermot?”
“We did that.”
“They’re going to have to tell us more than we know.”
“Maybe.”
“You’re not afraid of this Angel person, are you? You don’t think he’ll try to take us for a ride?”
“Not very likely, but I phoned Prester George on the way up to your house to tell him. And Mike Casey.”
She nodded thoughtfully.
“Reliable will have someone outside the house?”
“They will.”
“And if your man doesn’t like it?”
“Too bad for him.”
“Brilliant!” she exclaimed.
I thought she was enjoying it entirely too much.
Nuala and I belonged to three parishes. I lived at the Cathedral, and that’s where we would be married because that was George’s parish, too. She lived in St. Josephat’s, an old Polish national parish across the street from our house on Southport, and went to Mass there every day. On Sunday, however, we went like many other Chicago yuppies to Old St. Pat’s. It was the place for all unmarried and would-be married young adults to show up, bec
ause the liturgy was good, the homilies were superb, and “everyone else” would be there. Moreover, during one of our estrangements in the summer Nuala had joined the choir. Indeed this morning she was to sing one of her Irish songs during the offering of gifts.
It had occurred to me—though I would never dare say it—that if every Catholic parish in the country had a Nuala Anne to sing at their offering of the gifts, the financial problems of the Catholic Church would vanish.
This unacceptable notion returned to my mind when she was actually singing the hymn as the bread and wine were brought to the altar. Since the hymn was in Irish, few if any of the congregation knew what the hymn was about. Indeed it might have been a barroom ballad. But the faith and the hope and the joy of the singer filled every corner of the old church and reduced the men and women and even the kids to reverential awe.
There were several moments of respectful silence when she was finished and then thunderous applause, which I thought inappropriate, as, I suspected, the singer did, too. She had been singing for the God in whom she now half believed and not for an audience.
I wondered why the aforementioned deity had chosen me to protect this shy child. It was not a very good choice I suggested respectfully.
TOO LATE NOW, the Adversary informed me. THERE’S NO WAY YOU’LL BE ABLE TO ESCAPE MARRYING HER NOW, EVEN IF YOU ARE LOSING YOUR NERVE.
“I’m not losing my nerve.”
YES, YOU ARE.
I refused to permit him to distract my prayers.
“Boring?” I said to herself later in the day when she joined me in front of my parents’ house in River Forest.
“Totally boring,” she replied. “Wasn’t everyone very generous and very gracious and wasn’t your mom wonderful?”
“And you don’t like all-women gatherings?”
“Not at all, Dermot Michael, not at all, at all … and everyone having read these things and wondering what I thought about them.”
She handed me two clippings from gossip columns:
QUICK INDICTMENT FOR COYNE?
Sources at the Dirksen Building report that top fed prosecutor Dale Quade intends to make quick work of Dermot Coyne, the first big fish to be caught in the net of Operation Full Platter. Coyne will be questioned by the grand jury tomorrow, indicted on Tuesday, arraigned on Wednesday and will plea bargain before the week is over. Quade has yet to decide whether to grant Coyne time for his wedding to Nell McGrail, scheduled in the near future before sending him off to the federal pen. Quade, our sources say, would be much more tolerant of Coyne if his sister Cynthia Hurley had not filed suits against Chicago media outlets which challenge the integrity of FBI informants. Coyne, they say, is his own worst enemy and Hurley is as destructive to his case as he is.
FEDS ANGRY AT COYNE We hear that the feds are furious at budding novelist Dermot Coyne, whom they have trapped in their Operation Full Platter sting. Ace federal prosecutor Dale Quade is determined to punish Coyne for his suits against Chicago media which impugn the veracity of fed informant Jared Kennedy. Ms. Quade views Coyne as an incompetent crook who may be disposed of quickly so her team might get on to the bigger fish that Kennedy has hooked. Coyne’s lawyer (and sister) feisty Cindi Hurley replies that if anyone goes to jail it will be Quade and Kennedy, an accusation not likely to dispose the feds to cut a plea deal with her brother.
“Nell, is it now?” I said, as I gave the clippings back to her. “Save these for our scrapbook.”
“And your sister is Cindi with an ‘I.’”
“At least we’ve smoked Jarry out.”
“They write as if you are already convicted.”
“I am, Nuala,” I said as I opened the car door for her, “by the media rules. To be the target of investigation is evidence of guilt. An indictment merely confirms guilt. They know that most people can’t afford the costs of a trial and will have to work out a plea bargain deal. All the action is in the maneuvering before a case comes to trial.”
“This Quade woman”—Nuala spat out the name in disgust—“is behind the columns?”
I started the car for the three-block trip to the Albergetti house.
“Sure. She’s been a good source for these columnists, so she’s calling in some of her markers. It is the most brazen use of media leaks I have ever seen and a violation of the federal rules. No one enforces the rules anymore. Cindy will say it shows how frightened she is by our counterattack. Maybe that’s true or maybe Dale Quade has finally gone over the top. We’ll have to wait and see.”
“Can she really stop our marriage?”
“I doubt it.”
“I won’t let her,” Nuala said firmly.
“No curses, Nuala Anne.”
“We’ll see about that.”
We had arrived at the vast and forbidding Queen Anne fortress, hidden behind trees turning red and gold, in which The Angel lived, protected by a high iron fence and, it was alleged, numerous television cameras and monitors. I shivered slightly. The house was totally scary. When I was a kid we always crossed to the other side of the street so that The Angel’s gunmen would not confuse us with an enemy.
“That car down the street,” Nuala said as I helped her out of the Mercedes, “is Reliable Security?”
“Doubtless.”
“The folks inside will know that?”
“Probably.”
“Will they be angry?”
“More likely impressed.”
I pushed the bell at the gate of the fence.
We waited a long time, almost as long as if we had rung the front doorbell of a Catholic rectory.
Finally we were buzzed in.
“Scared, Nuala Anne?”
“Certainly not!”
The wait after I rang the doorbell was somewhat shorter.
“Yes?” said the handsome Italian woman, in her late fifties, who opened the door, her eyes hard with suspicion.
“Mr. Coyne and Ms. McGrail to see Mr. Albergetti.”
“Come this way.”
We were ushered into a dark parlor with thick drapes, heavy furniture from the nineteen twenties, and a plush, plum-colored carpet.
“Can you imagine what me brother would think if he knew that there was a place like this in your home parish and ourselves inside it!”
“We could make up wonderful tales, couldn’t we, Nuala?”
“We might not have to make them up.”
Again we had to wait—probably a routine psychological trick in this house.
Finally a muscular young man in a perfectly fitting navy blue suit appeared. He was supposed to intimidate us by his size and cold eyes. I sized him up and decided that, while not a cream puff, he would be no match for me should I get my Irish up.
That reaction, I admit, was a macho, testosterone-driven male response.
“Mr. Albergetti will see you now,” he said icily.
“Thank you very much,” Nuala responded politely.
If it came to a fight, she’d grab a lamp or a chair and go after him as quickly as I would.
We were ushered into a sunroom, a bright and airy place with brightly colored furniture and tasteful prints on the wall, a replica perhaps of a room in a summer villa somewhere in Calabria or Sicily.
“Dermot!” The Angel rose from a straight-backed chair next to a table. “So nice to see you again. I talked to Peter this morning and he says I should give you his very best … And this is your lovely fiancée. I’m delighted to meet you. Sit down, sit down. We can have a little tea and a little chat. I promise I won’t keep you long.”
He settled back in his chair with obvious relief.
The Angel was a man in his early eighties, frail perhaps, but lively and charming. He wore a beige sports jacket, brown slacks, and an expensive tie with a flower print. His hair was snow-white and carefully groomed, his face sallow parchment, and his jewels worth a small fortune.
Marlon Brando he was not.
“Mario,” he said to the thug, “you may bring the tea.”
“Yes, Mr. Albergetti … And the sherry?”
“Will you join me?” The Angel asked us.
“We will,” herself answered for both of us.
“Yes, Mario, bring the sherry, too.”
Of course the thug’s name was Mario.
“Before we have our little talk, Dermot, I wonder if you’d mind autographing a copy of your book for me? I said to one of my associates the other day that it was a great honor for our parish that a young man who grew up here would publish a novel, and a very good one and a very successful one at that.”
“I’d be delighted, Mr. Albergetti.”
What had the Outfit come to?
I inscribed the book to “Mr. Angelo Albergetti, with affection and respect, Dermot Michael Coyne.”
The woman peered over my shoulder to make sure I’d done it right. She tilted her head forward in approval.
“That’s very nice of you, Dermot,” the old man said, apparently quite pleased. “Very nice indeed.”
He laid the book reverently on the little desk near his chair, a desk which was empty except for a very expensive fountain pen.
“While I was waiting for you,” he said with a sigh, “I was sitting here looking out the window and remembering you walking past the house when you were going to St. Luke’s school, a big, blond, good-natured kid who was always nice to my grandson. I said to my wife, who is in heaven now, I said, Dr. Coyne’s son is going to amount to something. I’m happy that God has given me enough life to see that.”
Was there a tear in the old crook’s eye? I forced myself to remember that he had come into the mob as muscle for Frank “The Enforcer” Nitti when Capone was locked way on Alcatraz.
“Is he still that good-natured, my dear? I’m sure he is.”
“Och, isn’t he the sweetest boy in all the world!”
Nuala had decided on the persona of the nice young immigrant from the West of Ireland. For the moment.
“I knew that!” The Angel beamed approval on both of us, almost like a real angel.
He had never been convicted of anything. Yet how many contracts had he put out? That was perhaps not a relevant question for us.
Irish Whiskey Page 22
