The Green Revolution

by Ralph McInerny

  “How was your lunch, Roger?” Phil asked him Monday evening.

  “Memorable.”

  6

  “Like he was lining up a putt,” Bingham said, tipping his head so it was parallel to the table.

  “In the dark?”

  “I always close my eyes when I putt,” Horvath said.

  “You haven’t putted in years.”

  “The remark has cloacal connotations,” Armitage Shanks said.

  “Putt, putt,” said Bingham.

  “What?” Potts asked. He was deaf and refused to do anything about it except cup his ear.

  “I had an uncle who died on the golf course,” Horvath mused.

  “He was drunk as a lord,” Potts said out of his private world.

  “My uncle?”

  This lugubrious conversation at the Old Bastards table at the University Club had been triggered by Grafton’s creative article in the local paper.

  “I don’t even believe the obituaries in that rag.”

  “You’d think the man had been killed.”

  “He doesn’t quite say that.”

  “He doesn’t quite say anything.”

  These ancient gentlemen, now emeriti, had graced the faculty in what they all agreed was a better time, all but Bingham, who had taught law and had a contrary streak. They were either single or had lost their wives (“Or both,” Bingham amended) and had lived into a time they did not understand. When most of them had arrived, there were three or four thousand students and fewer than half the buildings, and those now the least gaudy on campus. Current members of their respective departments did not know them; they were strangers in a strange land, a group of incompatible old men who took mordant comfort in one another’s company. The club and their twice-weekly luncheons there had become a refuge and a tradition. Now the club, the one place on campus where they were still known and more or less welcomed, was scheduled to be razed.

  Debbie came to the table. “Okay, which one of you did it?”

  “Rephrase the question,” Bingham suggested.

  Debbie sat. She supposed there was some psychological explanation of it, but she liked these old guys. “The corpse on the putting green.” She laughed. “That sounds like Agatha Christie.”

  “He was drunk as a lord,” Potts said again.

  “At the Algonquin table they’re talking about his Web site.”

  Half a dozen pairs of eyes looked at her, waiting.

  “On the Web. The computer. The World Wide Web.”

  “Ah, what a tangled web we weave…” Shanks intoned.

  “It’s a way of getting in touch with the alumni,” Debbie said. “He was demanding that Weis be fired.”

  “Who’s Weis?”

  “So soon old and so late Weis.”

  “What do our distinguished colleagues at the Algonquin table say about this Web site?”

  “They think it’s a nutty effort, but they like it.”

  “Fire them all,” Potts said. “Tear down all the buildings. Tear down the damned stadium while they’re at it.”

  “You’re thinking of Lipschutz,” Debbie said.

  “I hope not.”

  “He wants the athletic programs abandoned. Back to amateur sports.”

  “Who’s Lipschutz?” Horvath asked.

  “One of the young men.”

  Debbie gave up. Lipschutz was as old as her father.

  “Maybe you should sign on with the Weeping Willows.”

  “There is a willow grows aslant a brook…” Shanks again.

  “How about another round?” Debbie suggested as she rose.

  “On the house?”

  “Oh, you can have them right here.”

  Rhythmically she walked away, her graceful movements registered by six pairs of weak eyes that, for a moment, were filled with memories of better times indeed.

  It was over that unlooked-for extra round of drinks that Armitage Shanks made his suggestion.

  “Everyone is protesting and demonstrating,” he first observed.

  “Madness,” Bingham said.

  “No doubt. But there can be method in madness. Who has a greater grievance than we?”

  His table companions nodded in agreement, although whether they were in agreement as to what their greater grievance might be was unclear.

  “This club,” Shanks went on. An ice cube had got into his mouth when he took a pull on his drink, and he spat it back into the glass. “Are we to sit complacently by until they arrive with the wrecking ball? Are we to go as lambs to the slaughter. Allons, enfants!”

  “What?” Potts asked.

  “We can chain someone to the front door.”

  “Who?”

  “Potts?”

  “Gentlemen,” Armitage Shanks said with some solemnity. “This is a time for solidarity. We must act as one.”

  “Doing what?”

  “Let’s ask Debbie.”

  7

  Frank Parkman was in far-off California when the new issue of Advocata Nostra arrived, but what are several thousand miles in the electronic age? He read Bartholomew Hanlon’s article on the football team and Catholicism. It was a Tower of Pisa raised on a brick or two, tilted away from the neutral attitude Bartholomew affected. Parkman put through a call to South Bend.

  “I wish you’d talked to me before writing that story, Bartholomew. I have learned the religious affiliations of the whole roster.”

  “The team can’t talk to reporters.”

  “Well, you talked to two of them. You couldn’t have made better choices.”

  A Methodist and a Muslim? No, Parkman meant their prowess at football. Wesley was the high scorer on the team, not unusual for kickers, and in a year when field goals outnumbered touchdowns, Wesley’s numbers rose weekly. As for Natashi, “God only knows what the man could do if only we had a quarterback who could throw the ball. You wouldn’t remember Biletnikoff.”

  “No,” Bartholomew agreed.

  “A legend. He could catch anything.”

  “A Catholic?”

  “Ho ho. You know, I wouldn’t be surprised. It doesn’t matter, he played for Oakland.”

  However flawed, Bartholomew’s article was a public introduction of the topic. What Parkman had learned was that the percentage of Catholics on the football team was lower than on the faculty.

  “Wow.”

  “It doesn’t mean much. What are they now but hired guns? It’s like finding out that non-Catholics outnumber Catholics in maintenance, or on the grounds crew. Even so, it makes a strong rhetorical point.”

  * * *

  After a distinguished career in the law and on the bench, Frank Parkman had looked forward to an indolent retirement, hours spent among the books he had acquired over the years, taking up again interests he had first acquired in college. He had not been a gung-ho alumnus of Notre Dame. He contributed, of course—given the persistence of the Notre Dame Foundation, it would have been difficult not to—but he was an infrequent presence at the Los Angeles Notre Dame Club. He had nothing against football or drinking but chose not to think that they alone were what bound him to his alma mater. Marie was dead now, and Frank’s reading and the general nostalgia of his time of life turned his thoughts back to South Bend.

  The Notre Dame Web site was a gaudy affair, and, of course, it purveyed the official view of what was going on. Parkman subscribed to the Observer and was startled at the editorial assumptions that guided the campus paper. Surely this was a minority view. Still, he talked with several kindred spirits, and some contacts were made with members of the board, without result. When several letters of inquiry, letters that had practically begged to be persuaded that things were not as they seemed on campus, went unanswered and unacknowledged, the Weeping Willow Society was formed. It now seemed undeniable that Notre Dame was on a dangerous path.

  The only living, breathing contact Parkman and the society had at Notre Dame was Father Carmody.

  “You’ve done well, Frank.”

>   “Up to a point. What do you think of the course Notre Dame is on?”

  “I like the tone of your letters. Most letters to the administration are pretty strident.”

  “They haven’t been answered.”

  “Because they are a rebuke, but one administered softly and thus more effectively.”

  “You think the administration knows they are going off the rails?”

  “How could they not?”

  “Surely you can influence them, Father.”

  “That was truer in the past than in the present.”

  “Any advice for us?”

  “Keep it up. Think of the Berlin Wall. Think of the Soviet Union.”

  Parkman had thought of them on the flight back to the Coast. Apparently insuperable obstacles removed, a highly organized empire collapsing like a house of cards. Vivid indeed, but were they applicable to a Catholic university rushing headlong toward secularization?

  * * *

  When the body of Ignatius Willis was found on the practice putting green next to Rockne Memorial, there were members of the society who regarded this as a godsend. Parkman calmed them down.

  “That is a tragedy, of course. We would be better advised to pray for the repose of his soul. What does it have to do with our interest?”

  His view carried the day, as it had in the case of the trustee Francis O’Toole. Many had argued that O’Toole was their best bet on the board, but Parkman had opposed it.

  “Why, Frank?”

  “He was the dumbest one in our class.”

  “So why is he sitting on the board?”

  “He has the Midas touch.”

  “Who was that girl he married?”

  Parkman remained silent. No one else could remember Mimi. Parkman felt almost unfaithful to Marie for the way he still felt about her.

  8

  Larry Douglas read Grafton’s account of the murder of Ignatius Willis with the same sinking depression he had felt when Jimmy Stewart took Laura up to the first tee and the ball washer there, leaving Larry ignominiously behind, guarding the corpus delicti. For him, it was axiomatic that Laura was a poor excuse for a cop. Her presence on campus security could only be explained as an exercise in affirmative action. She stayed on the job just to be close to Larry; she had admitted as much. Once, for a golden moment, the lovely Kimberley in Feeney the coroner’s office had been smitten by him. He had recited poetry to her sighing delight; he had given her a peek into the depths and intricacies of the Douglas psyche. Ah, frailty, thy name is woman. She had succumbed to the blandishments of Henry Grabowski, who whispered French and Latin in her ear. Henry had left campus security and gone on to a position as watchman at a posh gated village in the northern suburbs.

  “What exactly do you do?”

  “Essentially nothing.”

  “Come on.”

  “I have an office in the gatehouse, and a small apartment there as well. The job consists of my being here. I sleep most of the day and then at nightfall make rounds. I have a flashing light on top of my golf mobile.”

  The pay, if you could believe Henry, always a matter of doubt, was half again as much as he had earned on campus security, and the benefits were incredibly generous.

  “That is why I exercise maximum discretion in the matter of guests.”

  His eyes widened in a significant way. Was he referring to Kimberley?

  Laura had repossessed Larry with a vengeance after his slight detour down the primrose path of dalliance. She considered them engaged, a plausible interpretation of the ring he had bought her.

  “It’s a friendship ring,” he protested.

  She dug him in the ribs. “Oh, you.”

  He had mocked her when she laid plastic over footprints on the edge of the green. Philip Knight had shared his interpretation of the action, if crossed eyes mean anything. But Phil had helped convoy Laura up to the first tee—she had a little trouble with even the slightest of grades—and there they had found other footprints to match those that Laura had covered with plastic on the green. It was her hour of triumph. She had eclipsed him. She had even earned a mention in Grafton’s story. “An investigator with campus security, Laura Loftus…” Investigator! But the lowest moment of all had come when she hinted that she had done what she had done at the suggestion of her partner, Larry Douglas.

  Condescended to by Laura! He considered taking a few days off. He considered looking for another job, some cushy spot like the one Henry Grabowski had found. No. That was not the Larry Douglas way. The only way to get beyond this terrible moment was to eclipse Laura, to make it clear that it was Larry Douglas who had the instincts of a cop. He must get his thoughts back on the murder of Iggie Willis.

  “That is an inference,” Feeney said. “What he died of was very likely self-applied.”

  “So your judgment is suicide.”

  Feeney was alarmed by so unequivocal an interpretation. “No, no. It goes the other way, too. Someone else might have poured all that liquor into him.”

  “It’s got to be one or the other.”

  “That is not for me to decide. That is up to the police.”

  Larry caught just a glimpse of the lovely Kimberley in the next office. He raised his voice. “You’re right, Doctor. I’ll get right on it.”

  “I’m not deaf,” Feeney complained.

  Before leaving, Larry strode to the door of Kimberley’s office. She was not there.

  * * *

  “Suspects?” Jimmy Stewart asked. “As far as I’m concerned, we’ve got a suicide here. Probably inadvertent.”

  “But the green towel,” Larry pleaded.

  “There are always unexplained things, Larry. You’ve got to learn to live with it.”

  “And the footprints?” It cost him much to bring this up.

  “They don’t mean anything as far as I can see.”

  A lesser man would have embraced this dismissal, perhaps eliciting as well some negative comments on Laura’s enthusiasm. “I don’t know. It looks as if the man who took the towel from the washer brought it down to the putting green.”

  “Did your girlfriend send you down here?”

  “Girlfriend?”

  “Okay, fiancée. When’s the wedding?”

  “Over my dead body.”

  “How many do you need?”

  * * *

  Grafton wore his hat as he sat at his desk. He greeted Larry with a look of benign condescension.

  “Well, you did it, didn’t you? It’s the same old story.”

  Larry sat. “Okay, what did I do?”

  “Got the thing all hushed up. I’ve been forbidden to write anymore about the death of Iggie Willis unless there are new developments. The power of Notre Dame.”

  “Don’t look for any new developments.”

  “Oh, I know the local police are in your pocket.”

  “You made it sound like murder.”

  “Did I?” He pushed back his hat. Too far. It tumbled to the floor behind him. “Of course I did. That man had enemies.”

  “How so?”

  “Surely you have checked out the Web site on which the dead man and others were excoriating the administration for not firing Weis.”

  “How would I get hold of it?”

  Grafton, hatless, swung to his computer. His fingers danced on the keyoard. “There.”

  Larry had to come around the desk to see the screen clearly: CheerCheerForOldNotreDame.com. Grafton scrolled down so that Larry got a sense of the inflammatory entries on the site.

  “Looks like he made a lot of friends.”

  Grafton swung his chair again, and Larry went back around the desk.

  “Where there are friends, there are enemies. What proportion of the alumni do you think would agree with that Web site? A small, a very small percentage. That leaves the vast majority, many of whom might cheerfully have wrung his neck.”

  “Or filled him full of booze.”

  “A serious cop would investigate these things.” />
  “So would a serious reporter.”

  * * *

  Back in his car, Larry thought of Chita, the sassy little member of the cleanup crew who had found the body. No, she wanted to give that credit to Bridget. Only Bridget had been nowhere to be found. The wisest course seemed to be to go back to the very beginning and start over.

  In his pad, he had noted Chita’s name and address.

  9

  To Jimmy Stewart, Larry Douglas was both a rebuke and a pain in the whatchamacallit. The gung-ho kid from Notre Dame campus security reminded Jimmy of his own idealistic early days on the force, just back from the army, where his experience as an MP had been the open sesame. Law and order, right against wrong, the forces of peace and decency against the bad guys. Of course, the real world turned out not to be quite like that. There was a time when Jimmy might have gone over to the ostensible enemy, figuring what the hell. His wife had taken a powder; black and white were no longer vivid contrasts in South Bend. He had been saved from that by the appearance of Phil Knight on the local scene. Phil’s brother, Roger, was a balloon of a man, apparently brilliant, who had been offered a lucrative position on the Notre Dame faculty and brought his private investigator brother along with him.

  The funny thing was that Jimmy and Phil had come together when Phil had been activated to represent the interest of the University of Notre Dame, that is, to thwart the efforts of the South Bend police to get too curious about anything that had happened on campus. It seemed a situation guaranteed to make the two of them hate one another. Why hadn’t that happened? Phil’s rock-bottom integrity, mainly. He represented his client to the hilt, but there was no way that he was going to pretend that black was white or vice versa. He wasn’t a hired gun. It was a refreshing reminder, and Jimmy had responded to it. They had become friends. Jimmy had almost got used to Roger, a special case if there ever was one.