Irish Coffee

by Ralph McInerny

  Jimmy Stewart was in the choir loft where Philip Knight joined him. Father Carmody’s homily would have fitted well into the old liturgy, that into which he had been ordained and whose passing he lamented. He mentioned Fred by name, he noted the presence of the grieving parents, he reminded the congregation that though weep they must they should not weep as those without hope. And he urged prayers for the departed, that his soul might rest in peace. For the living he prayed for the grace of a happy death. Fred was neither canonized nor condemned, but the great mystery of death and our universal need for mercy was made clear to all. Roger Knight was comforted but not surprised that Father Carmody had found just the right words.

  In the sanctuary were a dozen priests of the Congregation of Holy Cross; Father Molloy was the celebrant. The turnout was a show of respect for the deceased and a boost for the athletic department. Coaches, their spouses, and members of the various teams were in the pews. It was an impressive send-off.

  At the end of the Mass, before the priests left the altar and the casket rolled back down the aisle by the six pall-bearing coaches, Father Peter Rocca, rector of the basilica, stepped forward.

  “Because of the inclement weather, the casket will not be accompanied to its final resting place by the congregation. The Nevilles ask that you say your final farewells outside the church. Those who wish are urged to join the Nevilles at the faculty club where luncheon will be served.”

  Looks of surprise were exchanged, but they were outnumbered by expressions of relief. A trudge through the still falling snow to Cedar Grove was not a prospect that appealed. Most of those in the church had been at the wake as well and could rightly feel that they had done their duty.

  It had been deftly done, a first effort to deflect attention from the circumstances of Fred’s death and forestall any scandal. It would have been premature to announce the suspicion of the police that Fred had not died from natural causes. The unstated assumption of the rector’s announcement, for those who had ears to hear information that was not public, was that Fred was a suicide and the more quickly the results of the autopsy could be forgotten the better for the parents.

  The post-funeral brunch at the faculty club was memorable for one thing. The grieving parents were already tiring of their role, the usual banalities had been expressed too many times, most were prepared to grab a bite and go. But the presence in the room of both Mary Shuster and Naomi McTear and the instinctive sense that there was a rivalry between the women that must eventually burst forth in words or action added a note of tension. Thus far the two women had not spoken to one another though it was apparent to Roger and he was certain to others as well that neither woman was ever unaware of the presence of the other. The immediate bone of contention had to do with the rights to the Nevilles. Mary had pride of place in the funeral home during the rosary, Naomi occupied the family pew at the Mass. Score, even. Who would manage to commandeer the Nevilles at the faculty club?

  But Roger could not remain a spectator to the drama. Perhaps it was poor Marjorie’s look of trepidation that decided him. He took up his vigil with the Nevilles, chattering away to one and the other, determined to stave off any incident. Phil had gone off with Jimmy Stewart, somewhat reluctantly missing the meal at the university club. It was a buffet and Roger followed the Nevilles through the line and guided them to a table. When they were seated, there was an empty chair. A problem. He levered himself to his feet and moved the chair against the wall, thus eliminating that all-too-inviting target for the two rivals.

  “It was a lovely ceremony,” Mrs. Neville said, her eyes damp.

  “Good sermon,” her husband said.

  “That was Father Carmody.”

  And then, as if conjured into the room by mention of his name, Father Carmody appeared in the doorway. Roger rose and flayed his arms, attracting the priest’s attention. Father Carmody’s vision was not what it had been, and the room was filled with people, but it would have taken a blind man not to see Roger on his feet, churning his arms like a windmill. People stared. Eventually Father Carmody did too and he came to the table. As he approached, Roger retrieved the chair he had set against the wall and bowed Father Carmody into it.

  “I don’t have any food,” the priest said.

  “Sit still. I’ll fetch some for you.”

  And off he went to the buffet table, navigating through the crowd like an errant linebacker. Against all his principles, he went to the head of the line and began filling a plate.

  “For Father Carmody,” he explained to the world at large. He repeated the explanation several times before turning and seeing with dismay that Mary Shuster had taken the chair he had vacated. Naomi McTear was entering the room from the bar, a Bloody Mary in her hand. Her eyes met Roger’s and then by a fated triangulation they both looked at Mary. Naomi’s eyes sparked and she started across the room. Roger, balancing the plate of food for Father Carmody, headed for the table. The vector of their approaches narrowed but Roger, despite his bulk, got to the table first and, as he served Father Carmody, interposed his enormous bulk between Naomi and the table. She would have to circumnavigate him in order to have a scene. Mary was deep in conversation with Mrs. Neville, the subject Fred.

  “It was our secret,” she was saying. “I didn’t even tell my mother. Not yet. You know why we thought it wiser to wait to announce our engagement.”

  Mrs. Neville looked utterly bewildered at this remark. The source of her bewilderment then appeared, successfully getting around Roger’s bulk.

  “Have you met Naomi?” Mrs. Neville cried. She looked desperately at her husband. His hearing was not what it had been and was further impeded by the expensive hearing aid he wore. He was explaining the theory of the device to Father Carmody, who might have caught every other word, his own hearing not what it was. Besides, the background noise was the classic instance of what could make a hearing aid fail. The intricacies of Mr. Neville’s digital device fascinated Father Carmody. Neville popped it from his ear and handed it to Father Carmody. The priest drew back as if reluctant to handle so complicated and expensive a piece of equipment.

  “An ear horn would work better,” Neville said.

  Father Carmody was surprised by this, having just heard Neville explain how the device had been programmed to correct the precise weaknesses in his hearing, that it was a veritable little computer in itself, adjusting to changes in the circumambient acoustical situation.

  “You’re not satisfied with it?”

  “You know what digital hearing aids are?” He paused and then stuck a digit into both ears and grinned. Father Carmody’s barking laugh rewarded him and he beamed. An observer might have thought that Neville was stopping his ears to some communication from Carmody. Roger took all this in in the interval between Mrs. Neville’s acknowledgment of the arrival of Naomi and that young lady’s response.

  “I was Fred’s fiancée,” Naomi said. She switched her drink to the other hand and extended the free one to Mary.

  “Yes. I know you were. Fred told me all about it.”

  “It was hardly a secret.”

  Mrs. Neville glanced furtively at Mary, whose claim had been characterized as secret.

  “No,” Mary said. “Nor that he had broken the engagement.”

  “Broken!” Naomi glared at Mary and then thrust forth the hand on which the massive diamond was all too visible. “Haven’t you noticed this?”

  “I know all about that.”

  “I love your dress,” Naomi said.

  “It’s what one wears in mourning.”

  Naomi was expensively clothed in a bright dress of subdued floral pattern, a very short skirt and a long jacket. The height of her heels was a marvel to Roger. His eye caught Marjorie’s and he beckoned her to the table, hoping that in numbers there would be an impediment to an open quarrel.

  “Haven’t I seen you on television?” Father Carmody asked Naomi.

  Her anger fled and she smiled brightly at the priest. “I do sideline
color on television.”

  “At football games?”

  “Yes.”

  “An odd job for a woman.”

  The smiled disappeared. “People used to think so.”

  Marjorie arrived and looked anxiously at the others. Roger explained to Naomi who she was.

  “Ah. Miss Havisham’s mother.”

  At that Father Carmody launched into an account of a woman sports reporter who had insisted on gaining entry to the locker room where players in various stages of undress had understandably taken her presence to be provocative. Things were said, parts of her anatomy were patted, she fled.

  “Then she had the effrontery to bring suit against the players,” Father Carmody said with disgust. “For being in their birthday suits, I guess.”

  Naomi’s chin lifted and she looked frostily at the priest. It did not help that Mary decided to break her mourning by bursting into laughter. Naomi left them, moving majestically across the room. Others recognized her and soon she was the object of adulation.

  “Bless you, Father,” Mary said.

  “For I have sinned?”

  3

  FRED NEVILLE’S APARTMENT was a surprise—sparsely furnished with very modern furniture, a contour chair over which a futuristic lamp craned like a tropical bird, on one wall a large canvas covered with streaks of primary colors, a couch that was little more than a slab of leather randomly covered with a dozen pillows. Another tropical bird looked down on it. The carpet was plush, greenish, the walls chalk white. When Phil and Jimmy Stewart checked out the bedroom they found an austere room. A single bed, one chair, a lamp affixed to the wall over the bed in which Fred’s body had been found. Chalk-white walls here too, but no pictures. It was a relief to go into the study.

  Here there was clutter and dozens of unmatching colors, pictures Scotch-taped to the walls, one a photograph of Lilac House, apparently taken by Fred himself. And books, books everywhere, books on shelves, books in piles, books beside the old-fashioned easy chair and on the footstool in front of it. The desk seemed to be a trestle table but its nature was obscured by the burden it bore—a computer, a printer, a fax machine. There were piles of paper on it and beneath it stacks of magazines. The chair before the computer was a stenographer’s chair, armless, firm back support. Messages were taped to the computer and to the walls. Even Jimmy Stewart seemed relieved by the study’s contrast with the other rooms in the apartment.

  “What are we looking for?” Phil asked.

  “If we knew, we wouldn’t be here. Let’s start with the notes.”

  Most of them were reminders to do things on dates that had long since passed. There was a fax message in the basket of the machine. Jimmy Stewart looked at it and then passed it to Phil without comment.

  Isadore of Seville loved etymology,

  Loved to analyse the source of words,

  Or invented them without apology,

  Visigoths and others with their herds

  Exchanged their tongues for Latin, more or less,

  Mixing barbarian dialects with it.

  Ancient authors always had the wit,

  Received, then polished, with which they could express

  Young thoughts in language old.

  Soon the wine was watered, the language bastardized,

  Harsh sounds, with meanings harsh with northern cold,

  Upset the tongue that Virgil standardized.

  Subject to invasion like the empire,

  True Latin, having risen, fell.

  Eventually in Seville our Isadore

  Reverently misread the words in his provincial cell.

  Jimmy Stewart watched Phil as he read it. “What do you make of that?”

  “I’m no judge.”

  “Did you notice the sender?”

  The message was from Fred Neville as well as to him. Phil shrugged.

  “What’s a sports guy doing collecting stuff like that?”

  “At least he didn’t send it to someone else.”

  “I don’t suppose it matters where he found it.”

  “We can ask Roger.”

  Phil made a copy of it on the machine that emerged from beneath a pile of paper, folded it and put it in the jacket pocket of his good suit.

  The two men went systematically through the items in the study, read old fax messages, none of them poetic, all from senders other than Fred. Often they were acknowledgments of data he had sent reporters, Notre Dame statistics to facilitate reporting of a game. From time to time, one showed something to the other. Phil passed a fax to Stewart from Naomi McTear, acknowledging receipt of such statistics.

  “What’s that mean?” Stewart pointed to the final line: XOXOXOXO.

  Phil thought about it. “Those are the letters used to diagram plays.”

  “This one make any sense?”

  “Maybe the X’s represent the defense and the O’s the offense.”

  “Maybe.”

  “It doesn’t read like a message from his fiancée.”

  “Business,” Jimmy Stewart said.

  And they got back to business. It was difficult to know why Fred had kept most of the papers stacked on the desk and scattered on the floor around it. He seemed never to have thrown anything away. Of course they went through all the books, looking for anything Fred might have inserted in them. There were stubs from airline tickets, a holy card depicting Blessed Brother André, the holy man who had lived a life of obscurity in Montreal whom the Congregation of Holy Cross was hoping to get canonized, another of a youthful Pope John XXIII. A postcard from Fred’s parents when they had been on a Carribean cruise. Nothing at all relevant to his death. Some hours after they had entered the study, only the computer was left. Neither man trusted himself to check it out.

  “Would Roger do it?”

  “He’d probably ask Greg Whelan to come with him.”

  “That’s good enough for me. But it should be done fairly soon.”

  From the kitchen they took the canister of sugar as well as the sugar bowl on the table where Fred had taken his solitary meals when he ate at home. The refrigerator was full of TV dinners and other microwaveable goodies. And lots of beer.

  “Care for one?”

  “I don’t suppose it could be called destroying evidence.”

  “Not by me.”

  Jimmy Stewart decided to put a bag of popcorn in the microwave and when he popped open the door there was a wallet lying on the round tray. He found a kind of tongs in a drawer, extracted the wallet and dropped it in a baggie.

  “That explains why there was no wallet in his trousers.”

  “Was he dressed when he was found?”

  “I thought you knew that.”

  They sat at the kitchen table, drank beer, and went over what they knew about Fred Neville’s death, which wasn’t much. He hadn’t shown up at his office for a few days but no one seemed surprised at first.

  “I wonder if he took days off regularly,” Jimmy Stewart said.

  “You can ask.”

  “I will.”

  After Fred had failed to show up at his office for three days, Roger had been induced to check on Fred and was let into the apartment after explaining the concern of the Notre Dame athletic department. Roger’s first reaction had been to think Fred had suffered a youthful heart attack, or perhaps had some illness he’d never mentioned. A diabetic might slip away while in a coma. Because of the length of time from Fred’s failing to show up at his office and the discovery of the body, an autopsy was made. Traces of poison had shown up in Fred’s system, sufficient to account for his death.

  “Did he have any enemies?” Jimmy asked.

  “Everybody liked Fred,” Phil said.

  “Meaning you and Roger did.”

  “Ask anybody in the athletic department.”

  “I’ll ask everybody in the athletic department.”

  “They’ll tell you. He was just a guy people liked.”

  “So it was suicide.”

  “I wou
ld never believe that. Fred was a devout Catholic.”

  “And that rules out suicide. Are you ever loyal.”

  “Loyal? I’m not a Catholic.”

  “You’re not?” Stewart was surprised. Did he think everybody was Catholic?

  “Roger is a convert. He’s the Catholic in the family.”

  “But you’re so gung-ho Notre Dame.”

  “That makes me a Catholic?”

  “An honorary one at least.”

  The building manager, a man named Santander, had an apartment in the basement of the building. He was in his sixties, bald but with hair sprouting from his ears and nostrils, and unhappy to be disturbed. Behind him in the apartment a television roared. Jimmy Stewart identified himself and Santander became cooperative.

  “Come in, come in.”

  It was a snug little place he had, redolent of garlic and pepper. A Notre Dame blanket was thrown over the beat-up couch.

  “What do you pay for this place?” Stewart asked.

  “Pay? I’m the manager. This is one of the perks of the job.”

  “Free rent? I hope you declare it on your income tax. That would come to quite a sum each year.”

  “Income tax! I thought you were city police.”

  “We’re investigating the death of Fred Neville.”

  Santander waved them to twin beat-up chairs and sat on the edge of the couch. “What a great guy he was.”

  “You liked him?”

  “Everybody liked him. See this blanket? He gave me this.”

  “Better report that too.”

  “Hey, stop that.”

  Jimmy Stewart stopped it. He began to ask Santander about the days before Fred’s body was found. The manager shrugged.