Irish Crystal

by Andrew M. Greeley

  “They’re pretty good kids, but they live their own lives,” John agreed.

  She was the smarter of the two and her husband knew it and apparently did not mind.

  What good does it do to mind?

  “How much is the land worth without the house?” I asked.

  “A lot of money, I’m sure,” John Curran said with a shrug of his shoulder, “as is the land on either side. Riverfront property is suddenly very valuable in Chicago. I’m sure developers will want to gobble it up as soon as they can.”

  “You’re not planning to rebuild?”

  Estelle raised her hands in a gesture of despair.

  “We could never rebuild the memories … And it would take a long time and a lot of money … We have been thinking for some years that we ought to move our empty nest to a smaller condo or co-op downtown. Now the decision has been made for us.”

  John Curran became for a few moments the brisk, competent lawyer that he was most of the time.

  “We’ll sell the land to a developer who will promise to put up first-rate homes, pay off the rest of the mortgage we owe to my father, buy another place and furnish it, and then when we get the insurance money use most of it to fund a chair or two at Loyola.”

  “That way,” Estelle added, “we’ll feel that something good has come from it all. We’ll mourn, but it’s not like losing a child. It was only bricks and mortar … And memories.”

  She dabbed at her eyes.

  Nuala and I were silent. This was no way the same couple at whose house we had eaten a little while ago. No, they were the same couple when they weren’t, as my grandma would have said, “putting on airs.” They deserved our help.

  “How will this work out?” John Curran asked. “We really need a solution soon to clear our reputations and fend off the insurance investigators, who will take forever.”

  “’Tis easy,” Nuala Anne said, complacently I thought. “Won’t poor Dermot make the rounds and talk to everyone in the family to see if they have any ideas who might want to blow up the house and kill you two and as many others as might be there? And won’t I sit here and think?”

  And exercise and practice her singing and take care of the kids and make soda bread. And worry, which is the obligation of all mothers, one which increases with the number of people to worry about.

  And determine whether she’s pregnant yet.

  “So if you will talk to your family and tell them that I’m on your side, I’ll phone and make appointments with them for Dermot.”

  They agreed, though they seemed a little disappointed that we planned nothing more elaborate, no seances or anything like that. There was always a touch of the unusual in Nuala’s solutions, but most of the explanation came from shrewd insights and powerful intelligence.

  “We’ll sort it out,” Nuala promised. “We always do.”

  “That’s what Commander Culhane said.”

  The two mighty mutts stood up to accompany us all to the doorway.

  “Good dogs.” Estelle patted them both. “Take care of everyone in this house.”

  “And Jesus and Mary and Patrick go with you,” Nuala bade them the usual West of Ireland farewell.

  “What do you think, Dermot Michael?” she asked, after bringing me another plate of soda bread and a glass of iced tea which she knew I preferred after lunch.

  “Well, I think they’re a lot nicer than I did after dinner the other night … And a little afraid.”

  “A lot afraid or why would they trust the likes of us?”

  “Why indeed?”

  “I’m thinking that this is a deep one.”

  “Something in the family?”

  “Maybe something very dark!”

  “Are they in danger?”

  “More than they know. Whoever blew up their house might try again.”

  “They were the targets then?”

  “Och, aren’t the eejits at the Bureau stupid? Does a smart lawyer like Mr. Curran expect to get away with arson just because he’s gone out of the country? Wouldn’t it be a brilliant idea altogether to have Mr. Casey’s friends keep an eye on them?”

  “Woman, it would indeed.”

  “I asked my spiritual director, Father Charles, how I should deal with this conversation,” Annette Curran said primly. “He told me that I might be present but I should not participate unless he were here. Trevor thought that it would be inappropriate. So I will say nothing.”

  So two days later as the full moon rose over the Lake I was at the home of Mr. and Mrs. Trevor Curran in suburban Winnetka. A large but not pretentious Georgian home on a street with similar homes and large frontyards and backyards and careful landscaping, this home cried out that those who lived there were affluent but not quite rich. Though I knew that they had four children, there were no signs of the presence of kids, none of the mess of abandoned toys that kids usually leave when they’re called for supper.

  Inside, the house was equally faultless. Trevor, a man in his middle thirties, wore a dark blue suit coat and tie and horn-rimmed spectacles that, combined with his high forehead, suggested a scholarly and conservative lawyer, cautious in all his dealings. Annette, in a modest beige dress, brown hair, and a rigid face, suggested a novice nun temporarily wearing lay garb. My data said that he was thirty-four, but he looked several years older. She was thirty, and despite her four children, looked much younger.

  “Father Charles is from Faith, Hope?” I asked.

  Reputedly the richest parish in the Archdiocese, SS Faith, Hope, and Charity (named after three virgin martyrs not three virtues) was often called “Faith, Hope, and Cadillac.” My observation as I picked my way carefully through its elegant streets was that “Lexus” might be a better name even if it were not alliterative with “Charity.”

  “Father Charles is my spiritual director,” she said in the tone of one who thought having a spiritual director was a high honor.

  “My wife,” Trevor said in a deep, somewhat weary bass voice, “is a member of Opus Dei. Our school-age children attend their school. I have not joined yet, though I am sympathetic to their beliefs.”

  Creeps, I thought.

  “That picture is your great-grandfather,” I asked, nodding towards a painting on the wall.

  “Yes indeed, not the founder of the firm. Alas we have no paintings of him, but Black Bart, as he is often called, is the man who in effect reconstructed the firm … Looks a little like Mephisto, does he not?”

  “I’m not the one who said it.”

  He chuckled, a gentle, wise old man laugh.

  “He flourished in the Roaring Twenties, a different era. He brought many important clients to the firm, and, to be honest, a considerable amount of money. My grandfather, Long Tom Curran, and my father saw that the times were changing and we have achieved some respectability, though even my grandfather, now retired and living in Ocean Reef, had a bit of the ‘boyo’ in him. A charming man, nonetheless, very charming.”,

  “A terrible sinner,” Annette said through tight lips.

  “Perhaps, dear, perhaps. But the Bataan Death March did strange things to him … However, that is neither here nor there, is it Mr. Coyne? My father, who is also charming but hardly a ‘boyo,’ has asked me to talk to you about the obliteration of our childhood home.”

  “We might have been inside when the old dump exploded,” Annette said with a sign of the cross.

  Trevor ignored her.

  “I assume that the police are looking into the activities of the developers who have wanted to buy the house for half a decade at least. They made my father offers that another man could not refuse. However, he and my mother loved the place, as well they might have. Besides, he pointed out that offers increased dramatically every year, thus implying that it was, even purely from the point of view of appreciating value, a property that might well be retained profitably for several more years.”

  “I see … what kind of development, Mr. Curran?”

  “Luxury homes, Mr. Co
yne, and I use ‘luxury’ in its usual connotation, not the sense that developers normally utter the word.”

  “Indeed!”

  I was sounding like Archbishop Blackie. I’d better watch it.

  “You are aware of a small community named Ravenswood Manor farther up the River, Mr. Coyne.”

  “A little bit of River Forest in the city … The governor lives there, I believe …”

  “The developers think that they could build much more luxurious homes north from Webster Avenue to Ravenswood Manor, a little bit of Kenilworth in the city. Such a development would transform, if I may use the word, the hinterland of the Chicago River in which in a few years one might be able even to swim. The city government as you may imagine is greatly interested in the project.”

  “I can imagine.”

  “The money to be made on the sale of our house and land would enable my father also to retire to Florida. While he likes working very much, Mr. Coyne, he also likes not working. My mother, however, loves Chicago.”

  “She should dress her age,” Annette snapped.

  “Nonetheless, she is my mother,” Trevor rebuked her gently. “For me and my siblings a very good mother.”

  “And,” I added in the interest of truth and respect, “a very beautiful woman.”

  Trevor Curran beamed.

  “I am pleased you agree, Mr. Coyne. I can in full honesty return the compliment about your wife.”

  Annette’s face was transformed by a moment of pure hatred—for both beautiful women, perhaps for all beautiful women. I gave Trevor full credit. He knew how to deal with his wife. But why had he married her in the first place?

  People change.

  “So this disaster might please the developers?”

  “Oh, indeed yes. Moreover the destruction of adjoining yards will give them a wide space of frontage. They can advertise three or four elegant and spacious homes in what they might well call Riverview.”

  “Assuming that no buyers will remember the honky-tonk amusement park of the same name.”

  “Precisely”—he beamed—“not that you or I really remember it either … But you grasp my point surely. We have no reason to destroy the old house, but now the development can begin. At the end of the day, my father will not really retire to Florida. He loves the city too. I have made it clear that I will never accept a managerial role and my little brother Jack requires more, ah, seasoning.”

  Annette opened her mouth to say something, but thought better of it.

  “So you doubtless get my drift, Mr. Coyne. One or other of the potential developers contact an outside, ah, firm that specializes in dramatic arson. Like the legendary hit men, they come to Chicago, do their job, and vanish. The police are not likely to find them.”

  In the distance I heard a sound like television. Annette Curran jumped from her chair and dashed, with the fury of the just woman, out of the room.

  “The children and their mother disagree about the use of the television,” he said. “I try to preserve a benign neutrality.”

  We shook hands and I departed.

  Riding back to Chicago I pondered that little scene of family life in Winnetka. There might be just a touch of sadism in Trevor Curran. He seemed to enjoy tormenting his wife, bound by her Opus rules, to honor and obey him in all things. One might find some sort of amusement in such behavior as well as pleasure if one played the cards well.

  He was a bore and a bore deep in love with the sound of his own voice, half the battle if you’re playing the role of a very wise tax lawyer.

  As I rode back to Chicago, I discovered slowly all the loopholes in what he had said. His sonorous legal scholar voice had bemused me. He was in fact talking nonsense. If I wanted to make a lot of money for myself and my family, I might just pay someone to torch my house and force the developers, egged on the city administration, to engage in a bidding war for the land that was finally available, even if this wasn’t the best time to try to build truly luxury homes in the city—and in the meantime collect insurance money on the house. Moreover, in Chicago of the present big-time developers, even those connected to the Outfit—especially those connected to the Outfit—would not be likely to put out a contract on a historic landmark.

  The Currans were what the Irish call a “cute” family, each generation knowing how far to push the envelope without ending up in jail. But Trevor Curran’s explanation pushed the envelope too far.

  When I returned to Southport Avenue the house was quiet. The sleepy dogs came to the door when I opened it, sniffed in approval, and went back to their stations. The kids were all abed. Nuala was in the exercise room maintaining her figure. I had been explicitly forbidden to enter the room when she was working out on the grounds that I would ogle her in her shorts and running bra and that would distract her from the task at hand.

  The charge was true on both counts.

  So I called Mike Casey. His wife, Annie Reilly, answered the phone.

  “Hi, Dermot, why don’t we see you and that beautiful wench of yours over here in our swimming pool anymore?”

  “Busy,” I said. “Three kids.”

  They lived in the Hancock Center, where herself and I kept my old studio apartment as our “athletic club,” which appreciated in value every year—and also as a secret love nest when we wanted one.

  “Mike,” I said, “tell me more about Grandfather Curran.”

  “John’s grandfather?”

  “Right.

  “Let me see what I got here in my notes—Bart Curran born in 1896, died in 1960. Three sons died in the war. The oldest, Thomas or Long Tom—John Curran’s father—was a victim of the Bataan Death March. He was a lieutenant in the First Cavalry Regiment. He had volunteered for the army in 1938, when he was eighteen years old, to get away from his father, Black Bart as everyone called him. Battlefield promotion. Somehow escaped and worked his way down the islands to Australia. After his escape he became a major in the Thirty-third Division—Illinois National Guard—when MacArthur returned to the Philippines at Leyte Gulf. Real war hero. He never talked about it and usually showed no effects.”

  “You can’t bottle those things up.”

  “Well Long Tom Curran did … He went to college, then law school. Married his grammar school sweetheart—Liz Manion when he was still in law school. Joined the family firm and shoved old Black Bart into the background, took over the firm and cleaned it up. Tough, honorable man. Mostly. Usually.”

  “So?”

  “I’m of his generation, Dermot, a little younger. He was a good guy—until he went into his black moods. He was usually even-tempered, but rarely and unpredictably moody. He would go into towering rages, drink himself out of it, then apologize. We all wrote it off as some kind of war memories. Liz knew how to deal with him, poor woman. She insisted that he was never violent to her. But he got into fights for which his friends had to cover up. John was born as you know in 1946. There weren’t any more pregnancies. No one asked why.”

  “He’s still alive down in Florida, isn’t he?”

  “Oh, yeah. Never comes up to Chicago. Washed his hands of the whole business. Liz died in 1960, not even forty. Cancer. Wonderful woman. I imagine she stood between John and his father. You will never hear a bad word from one about the other. Maybe not much affection between either. Old Black Bart died the same year. The loss of the wife whom he loved and the father he never much liked put him into a long-term black mood. He kept the firm alive for John who joined as a clerk while he was in Loyola and then as a partner when he graduated from law school in 1970. Long Tom let the firm drift, taking care of the business he had built up but not seeking much else. He still made a lot of money, all of it honest. I wonder what it was like in that old house when Long Tom and John lived in it alone.”

  “Probably didn’t talk much at all outside the office.”

  “Real Irish way of coping with grief. Liz was a great lady … Anyway when John married Stelle in 1970, Long Tom moved out of the house, then two yea
rs later went off to Florida—three decades ago—where he practiced a little law when the mood suited him. He was only fifty-two when he gave up on Chicago and the firm. He’s been in Florida for thirty years.”

  “His troubles, which his friends covered up, got worse after his wife died?”

  “They did … Also a few love affairs, always discreet, always ending quietly. They say he was a womanizer for a while when he moved to Florida. Probably not anymore, though age doesn’t end the game.”

  “I hope not,” I agreed.

  My wife insisted that Mike and Annie were still lovers. That was fine with me.

  “Sad life, Dermot. I can’t imagine that he’s involved at all in the destruction of the old house. It was Liz’s after all.”

  I thanked Mike and hung up to wait for the noise of the exercise machine to cease.

  I fantasized a bit about having a wife whom I could not only compel to have sex but also compel to enjoy it—obviously Trevor’s game, for which Opus was a major support.

  I dismissed the fantasy before the voice of my Adversary pointed out that such a relationship was not in the cards for me and I wouldn’t have liked it anyway.

  Finally, my wife, in a Chicago Bulls sweat jacket and with a towel around her neck, bounded down the corridor. Nuala rarely walks, save when she is on public display. She bounds.

  “Dermot Michael Coyne! Why didn’t you come down to the exercise room and meself wondering what had happened up in Winnetka? Just sitting here lollygagging while I’m losing me mind!”

  “Just keeping the rules.”

  Needless to say I had anticipated this encounter.

  “What friggin’ rules!”

  “The friggin’ rules which says I may not come into the exercise room when you’re working out because I’ll ogle you and distract you from what you’re doing.”

  “EEJIT!” she shouted. “You know there’s exceptions to all the rules.”

  “Indeed, when the legislator makes exceptions. But I’m not the legislator.”

  “You’re a gobshite too.” She leaned over me and kissed my forehead.

  I held her close.

  “Dermot, I’m all sweaty and I smell! I gotta take me shower!”