The Green Revolution

by Ralph McInerny

  “What are you doing?”

  “Laura has found some footprints.” Larry crossed his eyes. No wonder. There were footprints all over the putting surface. Maybe Laura should get a big piece of plastic and cover the whole thing.

  “You mean that?” Larry asked.

  For answer, Phil crossed his eyes.

  Father Carmody unnecessarily pointed to the body on the grass.

  “Any sign of violence, Father?”

  “You’re the detective. I assume you’ll represent the university in this?”

  Phil knelt and looked at the lifeless body of Iggie Willis. There were no marks on the face or chest. He carefully turned the body. Nothing there. So what had killed him?

  “I took this from his mouth,” Laura said, flourishing a little green towel with ND on it. It also had a metal-rimmed hole in one corner.

  “From his mouth?”

  “It was jammed in.”

  Was that how Iggie Willis had died? Phil held open one of the plastic bags he had brought, and Laura dropped it in.

  “You think that’s a murder weapon?” she asked.

  “I don’t know. He doesn’t look as if he had died from asphyxiation, but I’m no doctor. We’d better call Jimmy Stewart.”

  Jimmy Stewart was a South Bend detective with whom Phil had worked previously, when some campus disturbance necessitated it and Father Carmody had enlisted Phil’s now dormant private investigation agency. He was as much interested in the discretion he could count on as in Phil’s professional expertise. Campus security had many members who had served on various police forces in the region, but they weren’t equipped to conduct a murder investigation. If this was a murder.

  “Last night he seemed to be trying to drink himself to death,” Father Carmody said.

  “I wonder how he got here from our apartment.”

  “He was staying in the Morris Inn.”

  “So why is he here?”

  “Maybe he didn’t know where he was.”

  And lay down here and stuffed a towel in his mouth? Phil dialed Jimmy’s home number and waited out the enormous number of rings before the phone was answered.

  “Jimmy? Philip Knight.”

  “Call me back later.”

  The phone went dead. Phil punched redial and wondered if he had interrupted something. Jimmy’s wife had left him, out finding herself somewhere, but who knows what trouble a lonely single man can get into?

  “Tell her I’m sorry,” Phil said, when at last Jimmy answered again.

  “Tell who?”

  “Then you’re alone?”

  A pause. “Flattery will get you nowhere.”

  “Jimmy, we’ve got a body on the putting green next to Rockne Memorial. Any chance of your dropping by?”

  “You got coffee there?”

  “I will have. How about some doughnuts?”

  “And some juice. Tomato.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Larry asked Laura to go fetch a breakfast for Jimmy and coffee for everyone else.

  “I haven’t eaten either,” Phil said.

  “You hear that, Laura?”

  “Yes, master.” She waddled away to the patrol car, taking off with a spin of wheels.

  “I hope she doesn’t obscure any footprints,” Larry said. The two priests just looked at him. Who cared? Philip Knight understood him.

  Father Carmody had taken the plastic bag into which Laura had put the green towel. “There’s no reason to make a big thing of this, is there, Phil?”

  Father Carmody’s concern for the good name of Notre Dame was phenomenal. It pained him personally to hear criticism of the university in which he had spent his lifetime, unless of course he was doing the criticizing. Phil knew that the old priest would give much if Iggie Willis’s death could be judged natural. Cardiac arrests on game days were not a rarity. Unfortunately, the green towel cast doubt on this possibility. Even if it hadn’t been the cause of Willis’s death, there was the puzzle of what the towel was doing jammed into his mouth.

  * * *

  Father Genoux took the occasion of the lull to leave, mumbling about concelebrating in Sacred Heart. Laura got back with the food before Jimmy came. He got out of his car, looking ruffled and unshaven. He started toward them and stopped before coming onto the putting green, staring silently down at the piece of plastic Laura had laid down. Then he came to look at the body.

  “Know who he was?”

  “His name is Ignatius Willis,” Father Carmody said.

  “He was at our party last night,” Phil added.

  “Well, he’s dead, all right. I’ll call in and have them come take the body away.”

  “They’ll be able to tell if he died naturally, I trust,” Father Carmody said.

  Jimmy said, “Of course.”

  Phil took the plastic sack from the old priest and showed it to Jimmy.

  “What about it?”

  “It was found in his mouth.”

  “In his mouth.”

  Laura spoke up. “Just stuffed in. I took it out, It seemed the right thing to do.”

  Jimmy said nothing. He held the plastic sack to get a better looked at its contents.

  “You know what it is, don’t you?” he asked Phil.

  “The kind of towel that hangs from a golf ball washer.”

  “Where’s the nearest one?”

  Father Carmody came with them. At Jimmy’s request, so did Laura.

  Larry Douglas, left to guard the body, was devastated. It was his dream to move from campus security to the South Bend police force, and he thought Jimmy Stewart favored this plan.

  The ball washer was just off the first tee. A ball washer but no towel.

  Jimmy put out his arms as they approached. “If this is where it came from, we don’t want to muck up any prints.”

  Prints there were, many old ones, others seemingly fresh.

  Jimmy told Laura to cover the area with plastic. “Let’s hope one of these matches the ones you covered on the green.”

  Laura was aglow with the understated praise.

  Father Carmody said, as they returned to the putting green, “Maybe we’ll find Iggie Willis’s shoe prints by that washer.”

  3

  Coach critic killed was the headline in the local paper, story by P. G. Grafton. He had written beneath that “Putting Out,” but it had been deleted by Copey, his editor.

  “Why?”

  “It depends on how you pronounce it.”

  Copey explained the ambiguity, but Grafton, who seemed to have hidden behind a bush in Eden when the apple was eaten, did not understand. The explanation became more detailed. In the end, the editor settled for the suggestion “Putt-ing Out,” and that is how it was printed.

  Grafton was a self-made reporter, whose models would not have figured in any ordinary course of journalism. Not for him the weary train of w’s—who, where, what, when, and the rest. Grafton did not write, he composed; he saw the facts that he was narrating through the medium of his imagination. Why else were they called the media? The body on the putt-ing green on campus had been only a tragic object until Grafton googled the name Ignatius Stephen Willis and came upon the Web site CheerCheerForOldNotreDame.com. He would not have described the inspiration that then came to him with the banality of a light bulb going on over his narrow, sparsely thatched head. Such an intuition was too sacred for that. Reading the Web site’s passionate comments on the current Notre Dame football season and thinking of that body on the greensward—he looked up the word—something more compelling than logic linked the two beyond any doubt in the reportorial mind. A critic of Charlie Weis, a man who had rallied his fellow alumni into a virtual army of protest, demanding that the coach be sacked, had been definitively silenced.

  The suggestion was made impressionistically, of course. Let the reader’s engaged mind slide from one event as cause to the other as effect. Grafton thought of his method as Socratic. The reader could connect the dots. (In his mind, he deleted that c
liché.) Only later did he learn that the prudent Copey had run the story by the paper’s lawyer before giving his final okay. Such caution amused Grafton. If Notre Dame had been stung by the story, they certainly would not have drawn even more attention to it by protesting or threatening to go to law.

  * * *

  Grafton was particularly lucky that Feeney, the coroner, had reached a tentative verdict before his story achieved its final form. Until then, there had been ambiguity. The towel from the golf ball washer on the first tee of the old Burke course seemed an unlikely murder weapon, although Grafton was ready with a headline: THROWING IN THE TOWEL. There were no signs of violence on the body, Feeney explained to Grafton, reviewing his gruesome probing.

  Feeney was a nervous little fellow who had been talked into running for the elective office of coroner in order to ensure that his father would continue to be favored by the local political bosses.

  “I did a residency in pathology at Mayo’s,” Feeney said mournfully. “They wanted me back there on the staff.”

  “You could have been somebody?”

  “How many pathologists do you know? It’s not fame, Grafton. Not money either. I could have been rich in ten years in private practice. No, it was the admiration and approval of men I admired and wished to model myself after. It all went up in smoke.”

  “Is your father still working?”

  “Well, he’s drawing a salary.”

  “What do you make of that green towel?”

  “How do you mean?”

  “Why was it stuffed in his mouth?”

  “Search me. All I know is it didn’t kill him.”

  A light had begun to shine in Feeney’s eyes, and Grafton knew they were coming to the big conclusion.

  “Something toxic, Grafton. Something taken internally.”

  “Poison?”

  “Do you drink?”

  “Alcohol? Very, very rarely. It is the bane of my profession.”

  “Just about anything can kill, you know. Things usually taken in moderation, or in less than murderous doses. Think of drowning. Willis’s body had as much alcohol as blood in it. You could call it a kind of suicide.”

  Feeney might want to call it that, only it turned out he wouldn’t—what basis did he have?—but Grafton wanted murder. Somehow it all seemed to hinge on the green towel with ND on it that had been taken from the ball washer on the first tee.

  Grafton had omitted from his story what he had wrung out of Stewart about the shoe prints. All it came down to was that prints by the ball washer matched the ones on the putting green that had fascinated Laura.

  “That doesn’t tell us whose shoes they are.”

  “Not Willis’s?”

  “None of his prints are among those around the ball washer.”

  “All you have to do is find a shoe that matches those prints.”

  “What a brilliant idea.”

  For a moment, Grafton had thought Stewart was serious.

  4

  On Monday, Roger went in his golf cart to the Morris Inn, approaching it from the rear. A huge tent erected to accommodate the overflow of celebrating fans made it impossible to see if Mimi O’Toole was waiting for him on the patio. He should have called to confirm the luncheon date to which he had agreed during the distractions of their party Saturday night. Roger managed to maneuver his vehicle into the great tent. He left it there and lumbered through the tent. When he emerged onto the sidewalk leading to the patio, there were expressions of astonishment and at least one of welcome on the face of a pretty little lady at one of the tables. She raised her hand and several pounds of jewelry slipped from her wrist toward her elbow.

  “Mrs. O’Toole?” She looked up at Roger hovering over her, some alarm mixed with the pleasure she took from the effect this was having on the others there on the patio.

  “Professor Knight!” she cried, like the starter at a tournament announcing the next player.

  Roger with great concentration managed to get his nether half into the wrought-iron chair. A tight fit, a very tight fit. Not a chair for the endowed. Mimi O’Toole half rose to her feet, as if she meant to help him, but when he settled in she sat back down. Would he like a Bloody Mary? It was what she was having. From her glass, celery sprouted; pickles and olives floated about; two straws rose from the foliage.

  “Is it nonalcoholic?” he asked. It might have been some vegetarian drink.

  “It better not be. Such a weekend.”

  A harried waitress came to ask Roger what he would drink. The suggestion was iced tea. It seemed the path of least resistance. They ordered food then, too. “Diners on the patio are easily forgotten,” Mimi explained. “Another of these,” she said to the waitress, tapping her glass.

  The further harried waitress scuttled away.

  “Now then.” Mimi crossed her arms on the table and leaned toward Roger. “I want to hear all about your book on Baron Corvo.”

  “I’m surprised you’ve even heard of it.”

  “If it hadn’t been mentioned in your bio in the booklet identifying all the endowed professors, I never would have known of it.”

  Roger had no experience of the enthusiastic reader; his was scarcely the kind of book that called for personal appearances and signings.

  “Did you know him personally, Professor?”

  Roger was taken aback. Baron Corvo’s misspent life had long been over before Roger’s began.

  “He lived in Venice, you know.”

  Mimi made a face and sat back. “I hate Venice.” She leaned forward again and whispered, “The smell.”

  “There’s some truth in that.”

  “Did he have children?”

  It was clear that Mimi O’Toole knew nothing of Baron Corvo. If she had read his book, it must have been upside down. Desperate for an alternative topic, he asked her if she had known Iggie Willis. Her mouth dropped open and her pretty green eyes widened.

  “Of course I knew him. He has been pestering us to join him in an effort to fire the coach. Such an excitable man. And he was a dentist.”

  “They’re having difficulty locating the widow.”

  “Was it his heart?”

  The coroner’s verdict was not yet firm, but Roger thought the heart must have been involved in Iggie’s death—by stopping, at least.

  “Francis, my husband, has had a quadruple bypass. He’s supposed to exercise and eat sensibly, but he just won’t. He keeps saying, ‘I could already be dead. Fifty years ago I would have been dead.’ He says his life is like continuing the play after a flag has been thrown on the other team.”

  “That’s good,” Roger said.

  “He says we should now call him OT.”

  “What does your husband do?”

  She sat back. “Well, I’m not often asked that question.” Then, after a moment, “Isn’t it strange? The trustees don’t know the faculty and the faculty don’t know the trustees.”

  “You shouldn’t judge the faculty by me.”

  Roger sat on for half an hour, feeling he was performing a favor for Father Genoux, doing his bit for Notre Dame, but it was a painful lunch. Mimi O’Toole was a lovely person in many ways, Roger was sure of that. There was an expensive look about her. Roger had no idea how old she was or what went on beneath her perhaps artfully blond hair. The green eyes were her best feature.

  Two men emerged from the tent and came along the path to the patio.

  “Frank!” Mimi cried as they approached. “Frank Parkman!”

  Parkman introduced the man with him. Professor Rimini. Mimi then presented Roger to them.

  “Oh, Mr. Parkman and I are old friends,” Roger said.

  “So are we,” Mimi said.

  At the moment, Roger was more interested in Rimini. Bartholomew Hanlon’s interview had appeared in Advocata Nostra.

  Rimini said they were getting together with other former players. It was time someone spoke up in defense of the team.

  Parkman took the hand Mimi offered and held
it perhaps a trifle longer than necessary. And then he and Rimini were gone.

  “Why don’t we have more alumni like that?” Mimi O’Toole sighed.

  “You were students here together.”

  She hesitated. “Yes. We were here together.”

  5

  “This makes us almost accomplices, Phil,” Roger said when he had read the newspaper account of Willis’s death.

  “In suicide?”

  “That isn’t what it says.”

  “Grafton, Roger. Jimmy is staying with suicide. The guy drank himself to death. He was pouring it down as if there were no tomorrow. Well, for him, there wasn’t.”

  “What about the towel?”

  Phil didn’t know. Jimmy Stewart didn’t know. Feeney, the coroner, didn’t know.

  “He didn’t choke to death,” Feeney had said. From him that was a strong statement. His job put few demands on his medical knowledge, and he had become fascinated with the many logically possible explanations of events.

  “Could he have stuffed it in his own mouth?”

  Feeney’s caution had returned. “He had thrown up sometime before he died. His shoes.”

  “Just wiping his mouth,” Jimmy suggested.

  Jimmy didn’t like it, and neither did Phil. Sometimes he wished he had followed Father Carmody’s suggestion and gotten rid of the towel.

  Roger became fascinated with the enigma of the towel from the ball washer on the first tee.

  “Someone went up there to get it and brought it back to the putting green.”

  “Where Willis was probably already dead.”

  “That’s guessing.”

  “The towel didn’t kill him, Roger.”

  Somehow that towel seemed connected, not only with Willis’s Web site, but with all the other agitation that had been going on because of the football team’s losing streak.

  * * *

  It could not be said that Roger had slipped away from the party Saturday night, but he had gone off to bed without fanfare, put in earplugs, and was soon asleep. Thus he had no idea when Iggie Willis had left, or whether he had gone alone or not. Reading Grafton’s story was thus somewhat like reading of events in the next county. With the great difference that Roger knew quite well that Iggie, who had arrived at the party less than sober, throughout the night had poured drink after drink into himself. Roger remembered that Father Carmody had chided him about it. Thank God, Iggie hadn’t been driving. Even so, it was hard to imagine anyone in his condition covering the distance from the apartment to the practice putting green next to Rockne.