The Book of Kills

by Ralph McInerny

He did not mean the usher. The advisor left, fighting against the flow of fans returning to their seats for the second half.

  The third quarter ended and neither Noonan nor the advisor had returned to the box. The chancellor was clearly agitated. From the nearby presidential box, the university counsel came in response to an urgent gesture.

  “Neither Noonan nor Father Anselm have come back.”

  “I’ll find them.”

  “Take an escort with you.”

  The thought that anyone who left would fail to return had the chancellor in its grip. Ballast nodded grimly.

  It was a glorious victory for the home team, but there was no rejoicing in the chancellor’s party. Mrs. Noonan was, in her own words, frantic. Her husband had had open heart surgery within the month and, having seen him so reduced, his hitherto solid thereness brought into doubt by the surgery, the valedictory thoughts she’d had while he was being operated on returned. The chancellor was in no condition to reassure her. Ballast’s failure to come back with word filled him with foreboding.

  When the chancellor and his party left the box, they moved swiftly to the lower level and there, in a room reserved for security forces, the officers of the university confronted the halftime Indian. He sat in the brightly lighted room on a stool, a blanket draped around his shoulders. The paint on his body had been smeared in the struggle to take him into custody. He looked with manic cheerfulness at the administrative party. Ballast had been questioning him without result.

  “He won’t say who he is.”

  “Has he no identification?”

  “Where would he carry it?”

  Mrs. Noonan had begun to weep. Something was very wrong and she did not know what it was, only that her husband had missed half the game and nobody knew where he was. Miss Trafficant tried unsuccessfully to console her.

  “Where is Mr. Noonan?” the chancellor demanded of the captured Indian.

  “Would that be High Noonan?”

  It is a serious offense against Canon Law to strike a priest; the traffic in the opposite direction is murkier. It was all the chancellor could do not to slap the smirking face of the captive. Once the highest officers of this institution would have been able to recognize any student, but neither the chancellor nor anyone in his party knew who this lad was. Of course, none of them came into regular contact with students.

  “What should we do with him?” a security person asked Ballast, switching her ponytail as she did.

  “Is he under arrest?”

  “We don’t have the authority to arrest anyone, not properly.”

  And so, perforce, the South Bend police were called and the cat was, or soon would be, out of the bag. The chancellor took his party to the Morris Inn, the campus hotel, in awaiting limousines. He wished he were going to his room and to his bed where he could pull the covers over his head and curse the day he had been plucked from the ranks to his present eminence. At the Morris Inn they found both Noonan and Father Anselm. Some time before, they had been pushed into the lobby, cloth sacks tied over their heads, hands bound behind them, stripped to the waist. Their bodies had been painted, with especial attention paid to the scar left by Noonan’s open heart surgery.

  11

  ORION PLANT HAD SPENT the day of the football game in company with his wife, Marcia, and a graduate student in mathematics named Byers. Neither of them knew that he was establishing his alibi. He himself had had no direct contact with the man named Hessian, a mercenary in any case who was exhibitionist enough to accept the role assigned him. He thought it was a spoof, and any small reluctance he might have felt was swept away by the mention of national television. Byers had no knowledge of that particular event. Laverne had assumed the job of recruiting Hessian with dedicated loyalty and she, he was sure, would be quiet as the grave even under torture. He still had not told Marcia that he was no longer a graduate student and that now they must survive on her salary from the Huddle.

  Disappointment at his dismissal had long since given way to satisfaction, as if he had deliberately arranged his own departure. He felt free. He was no longer in thrall to the pedantic demands of academic research. He had not wasted much time on his approved project, not since he had stumbled upon what Leone had called his crusade. What Orion referred to, not facetiously, as the Younger archives had set him on the path that would take him on to glory. Whatever the outcome of his efforts, the name Orion Plant was assured of a permanent place in the annals of Notre Dame.

  The bedroom that had been occupied by Mrs. Younger before she took refuge with a married son in San Diego had been converted into a war room of research. A plain table sat among the cabinets holding the records of Younger Real Estate, but Orion’s attention had been concentrated on papers that dated from the nineteenth century. There he had come upon the plat book of property the Youngers had owned on land now occupied by the new golf course. There had been a house, of course, but it was only the ownership of the land that was of interest in the plat book. The name Andrew Jackson had caught his attention, and then Chief Pokagon’s. To Orion’s cold eye it was clear that Marcia’s forbears had jobbed the Indians out of that land at least at several removes. Under the aegis of Andrew Jackson it had passed from the Indians to white ownership and then in a direct line to Silas Younger, Marcia’s great-great-grandfather. From that point on, work on his dissertation had become a distraction and he had pursued the spoor from cabinet drawer to cabinet drawer.

  “Your relatives were natural historians,” he told Marcia. She smiled as if unsure this was a compliment. But in the Younger operation no piece of paper was considered too unimportant to be filed away and kept.

  The dossier Orion had given to Leone the lawyer was but a sampling of the goods he had gotten on the university. At the beginning, he had been motivated by a generic iconoclasm. Notre Dame was a volatile mixture of braggadocio and inferiority complex. The fact that he had been accepted by no other graduate program was held against him when he arrived, as if, he grumbled, he had aimed at the bottom and hit it.

  “I didn’t apply anywhere else.”

  “That wasn’t wise. You were lucky to get in here.”

  This vacillation between self-deprecation and chest-thumping bravura fascinated for a time. It was difficult to tell which was genuine and which bogus. How could an institution draw constant attention to its rankings by one magazine or another and at the same time insist on its uniqueness? To be in the top twenty-five was perhaps comparable to being number one, but aside from football and philosophy that ranking had eluded Notre Dame. With time he became disgusted with this constant looking in the mirror for reassurance. True self-confidence would have dictated indifference to the vagaries of magazine staffs who presumed to assess the colleges and universities of the nation. Yet the current ranking was prominently featured on the university website.

  It is, of course, of the nature of graduate students to grumble and when in private assembly to damn the program and mock the faculty. But this, too, was ambiguous, a hedge against possible failure. With Orion it became wholly sincere. His contempt for his discipline was not localized. He came to despise the pointless pedantic dissertations his peers were engaged in writing. What earthly difference would one outcome or another of their research make? Professor Ranke might regard his delving into the past of the place as a diversion, but it had become a holy war for Orion. Marcia was his ally, but only up to a point. Laverne, whom she scornfully called the “professor’s daughter,” was a sore point.

  “She’s a double agent, 0.”

  007? He tried to josh away her suspicions. But he had grievances of his own. At her insistence, he had included Byers in the tribal councils, as he called them.

  “He’s in mathematics.”

  “Even so.”

  It was as if she wanted to balance his inclusion of Laverne. To tell Marcia that admitting Laverne to the campaign was a way of compromising Ranke would have been met with derision. But Orion really didn’t trust Byers. Byers had been
there at the log chapel when they disrupted the wedding in the name of the wronged Indians, but he pleaded an examination when it was a question of kidnapping the chancellor. Byers might have been making sure that he was minimally involved and keeping out of harm’s way. And Orion had the sense that he had never forgotten that once Marcia had been his girl.

  But Byers was there when they ringed the television set to see the fake leprechaun prance onto the field and then tear off his green disguise to reveal his painted body. They cheered as he escaped again and again from the clutches of the security forces.

  “He certainly earned his money.”

  Fifty dollars, collected from the reluctant group of conspirators. Orion had tossed in a twenty to sweeten the pot, avoiding Marcia’s eyes.

  Later, someone commended Laverne on her choice and Marcia bristled. “He’ll be arrested, you know. He’ll tell them everything. Let’s see what Laverne does then.”

  Orion stood and put on his coat. Marcia looked up. “Where are you going?”

  “I’m going to check out the Morris Inn, see how they’re taking it.”

  He did not see Marcia look at Byers.

  12

  THE MORRIS INN WAS packed after the game. Fans of the opposing teams had forgotten the animosities that preceded the contest and were now toasting one another in a show of good sportsmanship. The chancellor was not there, having been whisked away to a more controllable post-game celebration on the fourteenth floor of the library, an aerie from which the now emptied stadium was visible to the south, the campus to the west, Mishawaka, its mall and many satellites to the east, and to the north the long lines of traffic heading for the toll road.

  The chancellor was drinking Evian on ice with a twist. His party were imbibing more enervating potions before they went in to dinner hosted by the president. The hours all this would consume lay before the chancellor like a penitential task. He was finding it difficult to keep his chin up and show the flag in the customary way. These happy people were directly or indirectly responsible for the affluence of the university and this was small compensation for their loyal labor. Behind the chancellor’s smile, hidden from those with whom he exchanged banalities, was the memory of that half-dressed madman streaking up and down the field carrying his banner. It was one more move in a game he understood only as an effort to torment him. Suddenly, tall cadaverous Sisson stood before him, tipping his head forward so that he could both look down at the chancellor and look over his glasses.

  “Another triumph.” Sisson’s voice was heavy with sarcasm. He represented the persistent effort of some alumni to have football de-emphasized, to stop what they thought was a drift toward secularization. Sisson wanted all theologians to take the oath prescribed by Canon Law for teachers of Catholic doctrine. He wanted the chancellor to initiate and lead a movement on the part of other chancellors to accept Ex corde ecclesiae, the document on Catholic universities, unreservedly. Sisson scoffed at the excuse of academic freedom. He laughed at the suggestion that a more militantly Catholic Notre Dame would have difficulty raising money. He claimed that he himself could raise more but too many potential donors were put off by the direction the university was taking. Sisson himself possessed unmeasured wealth and he was generous to a fault, the fault being that he carefully earmarked the money he gave for projects of which he approved. Now he began a litany of complaints, things that had been passed on to him by students and faculty. Father Bloom felt under seige and abandoned by the president and his minions. He almost welcomed the bustling arrival of Ballast.

  “Mr. Sisson,” the university counselor cried. Sisson leaned forward to look at Ballast. He seemed not to remember him. “I’m going to have to ask Father to come aside with me for a moment.”

  Sisson dismissed them. Ballast got a good grip on the chancellor’s arm and led him away to the area by the elevators.

  “He’s been arrested.”

  “Is he a student?”

  “He says not.”

  “Then who is he?”

  “He says his name is Tonto.”

  “He’s part of it.”

  He did not need to explain to the counsel what the whole was. Ballast had entered eagerly into the chancellor’s theory that there was a vendetta against him.

  “As chancellor,” Ballast insisted.

  “I’m beginning to think it’s me they’re after.”

  “The immediate question is, do we ask that charges be pressed or dismiss it as a harmless joke?”

  “Harmless! He was on national television.”

  “His message will be seen as a joke.”

  “But is it?” There was desperation in the chancellor’s eyes.

  “Half the staff of the archives is working on it.” Ballast got on tiptoe to whisper into Father Bloom’s ear. “And the Knight brothers.”

  “Ah.” He sipped his Evian as if from need. Afterward he worked his lips like a woman who had just applied lipstick. “Have him prosecuted.”

  “You’re sure.”

  “Absolutely. We have to strike back.” He paused. “Check with the president, of course.”

  Leif Quinlan, as his name suggested, was a hybrid. On the paternal side, he was disposed to be loyal to the university where he had taught some twenty-five years; on the maternal side he was a Viking eager to descend on the coast of Ireland and strike fear in the hearts of the inhabitants. Quinlan was president of the faculty senate and member ex officio of all its standing committees. Under his direction, the senate had perfected its techniques of harassing the administration, invoking the stated mission of the university against its actual practices. Quinlan had not shown his reluctance when he gave the green light to the campaign against the administration’s cruel treatment of homosexuals. Homosexuals already controlled, through puppets, the student publications and were the constant object of friendly attention there. But their organization was not officially recognized by the university so they had to add to their numbers in the usual way. Quinlan was personally appalled by the salacious solicitations written minutely between the tiles over urinals; he had stopped looking at the graffiti vandalously inscribed on desktops in the classrooms. Quinlan had once been a Marine and had been taught harsh ways of dealing with the phenomenon. But now he was a professor and a senator, and principle was principle. Academic freedom was at stake. The Inquisition must be held at bay. When the chancellor made his biannual appearance before the senate—a custom and not a requirement—Quinlan badgered him mercilessly on the subject. But his heart of hearts was not in it. The recent calling into question of the legitimacy of the university’s possession of the land on which it stood had come as a blessed relief. Here was an issue to which he could devote less troubled enthusiasm.

  “Was he a student?” Trepani the sociologist asked without preamble. Her chipmunk teeth did not need her wicked smile to be seen.

  “What else?”

  “I hope they persecute him.”

  But this course required a straightforward spunk that had not seemed in great supply in the administration. He feared that they would seek to wriggle free of a definite stand.

  “We must pray that they will.”

  “I will speak to Anita Trafficant.” There was a sisterhood of solidarity among the females on campus which encompassed faculty and staff and even one or two gate guards.

  “Do that.”

  Trepani closed her mouth and seemed to be biting her lower lip. She nodded resolutely and went away.

  Quinlan had confidence in her. Meanwhile, he moved among the fans in the lobby of the Morris Inn as a Greek god might have moved among the foe of the forces he favored. No one recognized him here and he felt the enormous power of anonymity. These were the rabid fans, the big donors, the plutocrats for whom the university could do no wrong. He was delighted to hear references to the halftime interruption. Some laughed, others frowned. In either case, the deed had registered. Quinlan was determined that the senate would stand behind that plucky lad. He would call an emergen
cy meeting of the inner council of the senate on the morrow. His arm was jostled and he turned to face an irked expression.

  “Sorry.”

  “Where’s the chancellor?” Something in this fellow’s proletarian scowl caused Quinlan to make a leap of logic. Could this be one of them? “Oh, they’re in the library, probably discussing how to handle the lad who spoiled halftime for them.”

  “What will they do?”

  “Have him prosecuted, I suppose.”

  The scowl gave way to a smile. “Do you think so?”

  “Do you know who I am?”

  “No.”

  “President of the faculty senate. Leif Quinlan.”

  The small eyes focused and seemed to recognize a friend.

  “Are you one of them?” Leif asked.

  “Why do you ask?”

  “The senate intends to back him all the way.”

  “Good!”

  “What’s your name?”

  “It doesn’t matter.”

  “It does to me.”

  Pros and cons took serial possession of the little eyes. “Plant.”

  “Just Plant?”

  “Orion.”

  Quinlan put out his hand and, after hesitating, Orion Plant took it. Thus their solidarity was expressed.

  13

  ON MONDAY, BEFORE SEEKing out Professor Ranke’s now former graduate student, Roger Knight stopped by the university archives to consult with Greg Whelan. The archivist was at work in his cubbyhole and Roger paused in the door, not wanting to disturb his friend. They had not spoken for some time and he realized how he missed their conversations. Whelan was replete with lore about the university and he knew the archives like the back of his hand. Once he might have lamented the fact that his stammer had closed off the avenues his doctorate and his later law degree qualified him to travel, but his handicap had stood athwart both paths and he had resigned himself to becoming a librarian. This had landed him in the archives and from the first day there he felt he had come home.