“Uhm . . . I . . . Aunt Maria?”
“I think so . . .” I made a quick leap. . . . “Camilla?”
A rush of relief in the voice.
“Yes! Aunt Maria! How did you know it was me?”
“A pretty voice suggested a pretty young woman.”
“Thank you . . . I have to talk to you, Aunt Maria. . . . Tonight . . . I’m sorry to bother you. . . .”
“No problem . . . Can you come over here?”
“I think I’d better . . . I’m out at the hospital. . . . I’ll park behind your house in the alley and knock on your back door. . . . I hope you understand. . . .”
“Of course, hon. I’ll be in the kitchen getting ready for Christmas, so I’ll see the lights of your car.”
“Thank you, Aunt Maria, it will be nice to talk to you.”
I spent the quarter hour profitably preparing cranberry sauce. Almost to the minute a tiny car turned into our alley and stopped behind the garage. The lights went out and a slender figure emerged from the car. She was wearing a dark coat and huddling against the wind. I opened the back door as she approached it.
“Camilla,” I said, opening my arms.
“Aunt Maria,” she said, collapsing into them.
Inside the kitchen we both sobbed.
“Thank you for visiting me.”
“Thank you for letting me into your house.”
“Come into the parlor and sit down. May I get you something to drink? A glass of wine maybe?”
She hesitated.
“Just one glass. I have to drive back to the hospital. I live there now.”
I took her coat and hung it in the closet, opened one of my bottles of Barolo, filled two glasses, and brought them back into the parlor. I turned on the gas fire in the fireplace, and offered a toast.
“Welcome, Camilla! You will always be welcome in this house.”
She was wearing a nurse’s uniform into which her young body fit neatly. She looked so much like a younger Maria Angelica.
“You are more beautiful than ever, Aunt Maria,” she said. “You must be happy in your new marriage.”
“Thanks, Camilla. I am very happy, happier than I ever thought would be possible for me.”
“I am in love with a young psychiatrist on the staff, an Irish Catholic boy who is so good. He’s in love with me too, I think. We are both very careful. I couldn’t ask anyone to marry into my family. My father and uncle are both psychopaths. They have terrorized and brutalized my mom and my aunt. . . . My uncle has tried to assault me several times. I will not live in that house ever again.”
“How awful, Camilla!”
“They are plotting with a terrible man from your husband’s office to murder you and all your family here in your house on Christmas Day. I had to tell you.”
“Joseph McMahon.”
“Yes, that’s his name. Like my father and my uncle he is on fire with hate.”
“He has been behind several attempts to hurt us, hasn’t he?”
“He is such an evil man. He and my uncles delight in the thought of torturing you. They were very angry when your friends thwarted their plot to kidnap you.”
I shivered.
“We will thwart them again, Camilla, and we will protect you.”
“I don’t think I’m a psychopath. Yet I was caught up in their plan. I have to escape from the family.”
“We’ll protect you, Camilla, that I promise you.”
“They want me to steal some poison from the hospital. I am to bring it on Christmas Eve and they will give it to cousin Tammy who will put it in the turkey dressing she will deliver here later in the day. You know what she’s like. She has no conscience at all. Everything, no matter how cruel is a big joke. I’ll take something harmless. If they find out, if they test the chemicals, they will rape me and kill me.”
“They will do no such thing. You are under my protection from now on. . . . You have a cell phone of course?”
She gave me the number.
“You bring the poison to the house, early in the morning. Tell them you have to return to the hospital. And you come here instead. Will Mr. McMahon be in your house all day?”
“Yes, he wants to make sure nothing goes wrong this time.”
“It will be the last time. . . . Do your mother and your aunt try to resist them?”
“Not anymore. They were peasants brought over from Italy. They have been beaten into submission. They hate their husbands and their sons, except for my cousin Nino who is at CalTech, but are afraid to try to break free.”
“Terrible,” I murmured. So much evil at this holy time . . .
“I must go back to the hospital, Aunt Maria. . . . This is very good wine.”
“I promise I will take care of you, no matter what happens.”
We hugged again and she slipped out the back door. I should call someone.
My husband? No, I wanted to tell him personally tomorrow and calm him down. Mr. Casey? I was afraid to call him. Who then?
The answer was obvious. Our good angel.
I punched in her number.
“Nuala Anne.”
“Maria . . . I hope I’m not interrupting anything.”
“In a half hour or so, you would be, but not yet.”
Nuala Anne
I DIDN’T tell Maria Angelica the whole truth. She was interrupting us, just before what might be called the point of no return. It didn’t matter because we knew how to slip back into the proper mood again.
I grabbed the pen and pad that Dermot keeps at bedside for any stray images that he might have in the course of the night. I scribbled down her report as me husband peered over me shoulder.
“Well done, Maria Angelica,” I said when she finished. “We will stop them of course and get them with the evidence. Stay in close contact with that wonderful niece of yours. . . . She sounds like a junior Maria Angelica. Tell her that Nuala Anne and Dermot guarantee her safety. I suspect Mike Casey will want her to bring some deadly stuff so they will be able to make a good case against them. It will be the endgame for them all. Yes, we’ll see that the women are protected.
“I was right, Dermot Michael, I was right. They were going to poison everyone at Christmastime and the rodent was part of the plot.”
“You were right indeed, magical spouse. I never doubted you for a minute. I gave that up long ago. You’d better wake up Mike Casey. He will have to work this out with the Chicago cops and the local ones out there. Then we have some matters that you and I must finish.”
“Well if you think I’d be letting you escape from your solemn duties, you’re wrong altogether!”
So I called that nice Mr. Casey and spilled out the whole story.
“It’s ball game, Nuala. We’ve got them all. I’ll have to do some negotiating with the locals and the CPD. And we’ll protect that brave young woman, never fear. I should tell you that we began listening in to your good friend the rodent yesterday and we already have enough to put him in jail for the rest of his life or perhaps the loony bin of our choice. I’ll talk to you in the morning.”
“Well, Dermot Michael, we’ll go to Ireland on Boxing Day after all.”
“I didn’t know there was any doubt.”
“Your health is the only doubt. I’ll not force you to come home with me if your friggin’ cold comes back.”
“Nuala Anne McGrail, you and the kids are going home for Christmas regardless. . . . Now let’s get on with our little pas de deux.”
So we did and it was a grand dance altogether—even better because we finally had good news.
Dermot
THE NEXT day my good wife went off on patrol down Clybourn Avenue, the new shopping center for yuppies and other denizens of the North Side who needed to shop for a bunch of kids at the last moment. She wore her black boots, jeans, sweater, leather jacket, and ski cap, enough to strike terror in the heart of someone who would dare seize a present on which she had designs.
Since school was out
, this was the assigned day for the kids to pack for the Irish venture. I was deputed to supervise this agony of choice with a strict set of guidelines that herself had provided. The harshest was that each child was permitted only one toy—Nelliecoyne’s camera and the Mick’s sketchpad did not count as toys. Socra Marie stubbornly refused to leave any of her dollies at home. They would cry themselves to sleep every night if they were rejected. Patjo claimed that he would bring all his toys.
I enforced the rules with the indisputable rubric of “Ma said.” In Ma’s name I triumphed in the end despite the tears. Moreover the young ’uns were mandated to bring only two changes of clothes—sweaters and jeans which are never dysfunctional in that wet and chilly island, especially in late December when the sun, having departed for the far horizon, tentatively explores the possibility of coming back and extends daylight by tiny increments, on those rare days when the weather permits daylight. The Irish compensate with warm peat fires, even in those places which have more advanced sources of warmth, which would include our three bedrooms in the new hotel in Clifden . . . as far west in Connemara as you can go without stepping on the sands of Long Island. Carraroe, as picturesque as it is, seems to be on a direct line for the winds and the storms which blow in off the Gulf Stream. In the hotel, one could have warm showers every day without paying more, wasn’t the hotel designed for Yanks? In the homes of Connemara, that was often thought to be a needless expense, especially since it would involve removing one’s long underwear.
I could feel my cold coming on.
The kids responded to their shrinking lifestyle by demanding to know why we had to go to Ireland for the week after Christmas when some of the other kids on the block or in the school were headed for warmer climes, like Florida or Puerto Rico or Arizona or Mexico. My response was that Ma had the right to be with her family at Christmas and to celebrate Mother’s Christmas with her own ma. There were no assaults on the propriety of such a choice.
Mother’s Christmas, aka Little Christmas, Twelfth Night, and the Feast of the Epiphany, which in the present state of the confused Catholic liturgy happens around or about January 6, usually earlier. However, the kids must be back in school on January 3, so in Connemara we reschedule Ma’s Christmas to happen on December 31. It is called Mother’s Christmas because it is supposed to reverse the protocol of Christmas Day on which mothers do all the work. On Mother’s Christmas, the ma is not supposed to do any work at all, at all. Only one who knows nothing of the compulsions of Irish and Irish-American women will accept the possibility of such a phenomenon.
Anyway, while I was pondering these mysteries of our annual pilgrimage to the West of Ireland and wondering whether my sinuses were more clogged than normal, Mike Casey called me.
“Well, I’ve lined it all up,” he said. “The arrest of the suspected perpetrators is in the jurisdiction of Kishwaukee County and its sheriff with help from the town police of Oakdale and back up from the Illinois State Police. However, since Chicago has a claim on some of the perps and almost a monopoly on the evidence, we will offer part of Tactical One— thirty sharpshooters who will be authorized to take out any perps who emerge from the house with human shields. The local cops will arrest all of the surviving perps, with the understanding that Joseph McMahon will be delivered to the sheriff of Cook County within the week.”
“And the innocent women and children?”
“Everyone understands Camilla Sabattini is working with the police of her own volition and will be treated with gratitude and respect by arresting officers. We assume that she will be with Maria Connors Donlan. Reliable will have a cordon of armed cops at her home, just in case. The other women who may be in the Sabattini house will be taken into protective custody and perhaps brought to the local hospital for such treatment as is necessary.”
“The local sheriff is in command?”
“Legally there can be no question about that. Your friend Terry Glen doesn’t like that, but he knows he has to live with it. He also believes that there is enough evidence from the tapes of phone messages to obtain convictions in the courts of Cook County for all previous attacks. Finally, I am convinced that the sheriff is rock solid.”
“Who authorizes the thirty snipers to shoot?”
“There will be only three, two primary, one secondary. The authority has been given to a consultant who has something of a reputation for coolness under fire.”
“Michael Patrick Vincent Casey.”
“And you’re not even psychic!”
“What do we tell the heroic Camilla?”
“We tell her to deliver the harmless material she has obtained, no one wants to take chances with any foul-ups. We also tell her to leave her house and return to the hospital or to Ms. Connors’s house. Under no circumstances is she to return to her family home until I personally tell Maria Angelica that it is secure. Moreover, under no circumstance is Maria to leave her own home and the protection of the Reliables assigned there until she is authorized to do so by me personally. I will relay all these instructions to her, but you or your good wife should pass them on to her today. I will keep her informed on her mobile phone minute by minute.”
“You’re not going to activate Godzilla?”
“I wanted to, but the locals didn’t like the idea. It’s their turf.”
“What time will this all go down?”
“Precisely at one P.M. and don’t you dare show up. You’ve taken too many risks in this mess.”
“Do the locals know that if this plan fails, our friends out on the West Side will handle it themselves?”
“I doubt it. No point in complicating their lives.”
I wasn’t a cop, never had been. Much less was my Irish Tiger. No way that Mike the cop would dictate to her where she should be and when.
John Patrick
I TRIED to persuade myself as we drove out to Oakdale that I would not climb all over my wife immediately upon arrival at her house. A proper and gentle lover should know when restraint is appropriate. However, my head throbbed as I walked up to the door of the house and my desire exploded as she opened the door and smiled at me. She was unbearably, intolerably attractive and I was wildly hungry for her. I crushed her in my arms, kissed her passionately, bore her to the floor, peeled off her red and green Christmas robe, and devoured her. We both laughed insanely as our game continued.
“Best yet,” she sighed compliantly when I was finished. “Let’s go to my bedroom and act like civilized people.”
“I haven’t had enough of you,” I protested.
“I didn’t think you had. But I have some news to report.”
She told me that Joe McMahon, my trusted aide, was the architect of our problems and now with the eager and clumsy cooperation of her own brothers. I was dumbfounded.
“He thought the scandals would force you to sell the firm and that he could buy it for much less than it was worth. He was envious of your success and resentful of his, as he saw it, subordinate position. He became more and more obsessed with his anger as we fended off his attacks.”
“He is good at what he does, I’ll admit that. He saw in your firm a real bargain without reckoning that you would be part of the bargain. But he is incapable of making a decision. I often asked him bluntly whether I should buy or sell stocks which were on the edge. He saw both sides of the decision but couldn’t move beyond that. That was my responsibility and, among other things, he probably resented the fact that I found it so easy. He did not want to make mistakes. I realized that making mistakes was part of the game.”
“You liked him,” she said.
“I did. I’ll miss him. I took him for granted, but I paid him well, not well enough I guess.”
“From what I’m told it was not the substance of the payment but the fact that you made it. . . . What are you doing to me, husband?”
“Amusing myself . . . What will happen to him?”
“He’ll be tried and go to jail. Nuala apparently suggested to the cops that they c
heck the number of calls from his phone in your office to my brothers’ plant out here. Then they obtained permission for a phone tap. They’re planning to poison the lot of us at dinner on Christmas Day. . . . I didn’t say you should stop playing with me. . . . It was a long, lonely night without you.”
Then she told me about the visit from her niece Camilla and her promise to, in effect, adopt Camilla as one of her own.
“I knew, Maria Angelica, when I married you that you were beautiful, brilliant, witty, and a good bedmate. I didn’t know then that you were a great woman. I now know you are. You’ve absorbed my three daughters into your clan without blinking an eye and now you take under your wing a frightened young woman who was raised to hate you. You are, as the young people would say, like totally awesome. The longer I know you, the more I see in you all that is love.”
“Just so you don’t leave me in a lonely bed too often. . . . Now let’s finish what you started out in the parlor before the crowds assemble.”
We did finish it, but I wanted more. Perhaps I would always want more.
“I suppose young ‘just marrieds’ act like we do,” I gasped.
“I don’t remember, but they don’t have the experience with the opposite gender that we do and they don’t know how important it is.”
“Also,” I added, “just how limited time can be.”
“Speaking of time, the throngs will arrive soon. I’d better be up at work when they come, instead of lolling around like a libertine. Make yourself at home. This is our bedroom. Unpack your clothes and things and put them anywhere you can find room. If you disrupt any of my stuff I may take you into court.”
Naturally there was an empty closet and several empty drawers which had been assigned to me along with a place in the marital bed. I showered and dressed in corduroy clothes that said rural gentry. I ensconced myself in a rocking chair in an enclosed front porch where a rural magnate might belong and opened the Times and the Journal and a book about the Enron scandal. However, I could not dismiss Joe McMahon from my mind. My dad had trusted him completely. I inherited that trust. I had never seen any evidence of resentment or disloyalty. Yet his anger must have festered through the long years. And he must have resented Maria immediately. I was responsible in some way for him. The least I could do was see that he got a good lawyer. No, that wouldn’t do. Conflict of interest. Would they plead him on insanity? Who was there to stand by him?
Irish Tiger Page 27
