Irish Linen Read online

  “Any young women in his life?”

  “A lot of them would like to have been. They told me that he was adorable, but he fended them off. One kid, Siobhan, hung out with him a lot, but I had the impression that she didn’t push him very hard.”

  “Your typical Irish bachelor,” I observed.

  LOOK WHO’S TALKING.

  “Wouldja look who’s talking,” my wife said, echoing as she often does the Adversary who hides in the subbasement of my brain.

  “His mom said that she wished he’d find a nice young woman who’d settle him down. My guess is that their idea of a nice young woman and Des’s would be very different. At that stage in his life he wanted mobility, freedom. Then this damnable war started and he disappeared off to Iraq.”

  “You haven’t heard from him?” Nuala asked.

  “Not a word. He was smart enough to know that it was very dangerous. He also knew enough Arabic and enough about Islam to lose himself in the country if he wanted to—for a while anyway. He’s a very clever guy and moves very quickly when he wants to.”

  “You think he’s still alive?”

  He sighed, a Galway man again.

  “A roadside bomb, an exploding car, a suicide bomber, a stray American bullet—that could have been the end of him and we’d never hear. If the terrorists kidnapped him, we’d have seen him on television. I don’t think he’s working for the CIA or any of that bunch of gobshites.”

  “They won’t talk about him, which makes me think they know about him,” I said.

  “Or want to make us think they know about him.”

  The waitress, having served the ice-cream sundaes which were our dessert, leaned over Father O’Donovan and whispered again.

  “Ah, they’ve found a harp!”

  “Brilliant! Would you ever tell them, dear, that I’ll be out in a few minutes to sing a song or two.”

  IRISH SUBJUNCTIVE OF POLITE REQUEST, STILL OCCASIONALLY HEARD FROM SOUTH SIDE IRISH.

  I know that.

  “Better you than Britney Spears, Nuala … And what will you two do when and if you find him?”

  “It depends. We’re not on retainer, we almost never are. So if we find out that he’s alive and well, we tell his parents that he is and that he loves them and leave it at that. If he’s in trouble, we see what we can do to get him out of trouble—which does not mean sending Dermot to the desert.”

  “I’m glad to hear that!”

  “So am I!”

  “For all his enthusiasm,” Nuala said, “he sounds like someone who has sense to come in out of the rain still.”

  “You mean that you’d bet,” the good Jesuit responded, “that his trip to Iraq may not have been as spontaneous and impulsive as it seems?”

  “Something like that … I have the feeling that he’s still alive, but I keep telling meself that I’m out of me mind. You can’t trust the feelings all the time, ya know … I’d never change our investment portfolio on one of them.”

  “You’d not be all that far from wrong,” Father Bob, who was slipping into more brogue as he listened to herself, said, “if you continued to search for him.”

  “Me very thought.”

  I had finished my ice cream and Nuala’s too.

  “We’re very grateful for lunch, Father,” I said. “And it’s been good to see you again. You’ve confirmed our impression that Des is not the flaming idiot that his family thinks he is.”

  Nuala nodded solemnly.

  “We just have to work harder and dig deeper … Now if you excuse me for a minute, I have to check on the childer.”

  She walked over to the corner of the room and flipped open her cell phone.

  “They DID! He DID! She DID! Let me talk to HER! …” She rolled her eyes at me. “Miss Coyne, Ethne tells me you won’t take a NAP! Right NOW! No NOT in a little while! NOW! You understand NOW!”

  She returned to the table, produced a set of her disks for the waitress from the black bag and set about autographing them.

  “Dermot, your daughter refused to take her nap. You’ll have to deal with her when we get home.”

  “Sounded like you dealt with it already … Notice, Father Bob, when they do something wrong, they’re my kids.”

  She gave the disks to the waitress.

  “YOU’d never do anything like that, would you now, dear?”

  “All the time, Nuala Anne.”

  “All you kids are alike!”

  We all laughed at her.

  “And all men are kids … Dermot, would you ever carry me coat?”

  There was a huge mob of Warriors (as Marquette students still call themselves) waiting for us in the lobby of the Student Union. A harp and a mike were set up in a corner.

  She sat next to the harp and lovingly strummed it, tightened the strings, strummed it again, and sighed.

  “’Tis good of all youse to cut class to hear me sing! I’ll do only a few songs, so youse won’t miss the next class. I’m going to sing the song about Molly Malone. ‘Tis a very sad song. Molly was younger than most of you when she died. Most poor kids in Ireland her time died young. However, up in heaven Molly knows that she’s immortal up there and down here too. Wherever in the world there are Irish and some of them sing—and that will be up midnight on the day before the last judgment—they’ll remember her. It’s my favorite song because one night in O’Neill’s just off College Green, a big dumb Yank listened to me sing and I knew that I’d have to marry him someday.”

  Somehow every time she sings it tears form in my eyes. The song is both so sad and so glorious.

  Then she did “When Irish Eyes Are Smiling” and “Galway Bay” (“Because Father O’Donovan and I are both from Galway”). Then she concluded with the “Connemara lullaby” (“Because we’re both from Connemara”).

  “She’s magical, Dermot,” my old teacher whispered.

  “Sure, you’re grand folk, but don’t I have to get home to me four childer before they tear the house apart.”

  “Did you marry the big dumb Yank?”

  “I did and isn’t the poor dear man a livin’ saint altogether. If it weren’t for him, I wouldn’t be a singer at all, at all.”

  Cheers and applause.

  We worked our way through the crowd of autograph seekers, shook hands with Father O’Donovan, and climbed into the Navigator.

  “Would you ever drive us home, Dermot love? I’m an emotional wreck.”

  “Sure,” I said, “though I don’t think I’ve been cleared for jet aircraft.”

  When she goes into those emotional wreck situations, the best course for me, I have learned, is to keep my big mouth shut till she works her way out of it.

  We were thirty miles south of Milwaukee when she signaled the end with an extra loud sigh.

  “I’m all right now,” she said. “It was all so beautiful and so sad.”

  “Marquette?”

  “And those wonderful, fresh-faced childer and you there and the poor dear Galway priest and meself a Yank now … do you take me meaning?”

  “Woman, I do.”

  “With each new kid I get more sentimental … The generations turn, don’t they, Dermot Michael?”

  “They do indeed … Maybe we should rethink these spontaneous concerts …”

  “Ah, no. If I were doing that, I wouldn’t be meself anymore would I? What did you think about your man?”

  I guessed she meant Des.

  “Well, I’d say that the poor dear Galway priest thought he was a lad with his head screwed on right.”

  “You have the right of it, Dermot. He was neither immature nor irresponsible, even if he had the glint in his eye. What does that tell us?”

  “That his brother and parents are creeps.”

  “It also tells us that his trip to Iraq wasn’t impulsive or sudden. Something must have been in the wind before your man ordered the invasion.”

  That was my Nuala Anne being insightful instead of fey.

  “’Tis true.”

>   “So, he’s up to something over there!”

  “’Tis true also.”

  WOULD YOU STOP SAYING THAT!

  “We have to find out what it was and then we’ll know where to look.”

  “That won’t be easy.”

  “At least, Dermot love, we’ll know what we’re doing.”

  I didn’t see that quite as clearly as she did, but I wasn’t going to get into a pointless argument.

  “I’m sorry I was so emotional like and meself making you drive me car.”

  The Navigator was “her” car. My Benz was “our” car.

  “I’ve always wanted to drive a tank.”

  “Des was plotting with someone. All we have to do is to find out what he was plotting … I wonder if the childer are all right.”

  “Call Ethne on your cell phone.”

  “Brilliant altogether.”

  It turned out that the little childer were just waking up and the big ones were coming out of school.

  “I feel like I’ve been away from them for years,” she admitted to me. “Whom would he know in Iraq?”

  “Maybe some Iraq-Americans.”

  She sighed. “’Tis a deep puzzle altogether … Don’t drive too fast, Dermot. It’s raining.”

  “I’m driving the limit, which is ten miles an hour slower than when you were driving.”

  She giggled.

  The next morning our investigation ran into more trouble.

  I was in my office reading about the youthful adventures of Viscount Ridgewood with an increasing sense of doom. The kids were in school, except for Patjo, who was sleeping soundly. Nuala was downstairs reading the draft of Ethne’s dissertation and telling her that it was ded friggin’ bril.

  The doorbell rang, always a warning signal. Then a cacophony of angry sounds swirled upstairs. Nuala screamed, the doggies howled, Ethne screamed and Poraig Josefa wailed, the bell continued to clang as someone outside pushed the button insistently. I grabbed Nuala’s canogi stick (Irishwomen’s field hockey, like) and thundered down the stairs. Herself was pressed against the wall, still screaming. The dogs were scratching against the door, eager to get out and kill or maim the invader. Periodically, they paused in their efforts to vent their rage with their lost-soul-in-hell cry. Ethne was trying to console Patjo.

  “There’s one of them suits outside, he tried to push into the house and meself nursing poor Patjo. I screamed and shoved him out. The doggies went wild! Get rid of him, Dermot.”

  “Woman, I will.”

  I searched in a table drawer and found a card which would be useful.

  “Doggies, downstairs!” I ordered in my most authoritative voice.

  Two white heads swiveled in astonishment. I never ordered them to do anything. Did I really mean it?

  “I said DOWNSTAIRS!”

  Obediently they went downstairs.

  “Close the door on them and lock it, Ethne,” I commanded. “And you brat child, QUIET!”

  Poraig looked at me in astonishment. I was breaking the rules. Nonetheless he shut up.

  I put my arm around a still-weeping Nuala.

  “I’ll take care of him, Nuala love.”

  “Don’t be hitting him over the head with my canogi stick!” she sobbed.

  “It’s a shock and awe weapon. Don’t worry.”

  I opened the door and ambled out on the porch.

  The man indeed wore a dark suit and a dark raincoat (even though the sun had made a token appearance) and rainspattered horn-rimmed glasses. He looked sufficiently shabby and disconsolate that he had to be from the Bureau.

  “I’m Dermot,” I announced genially.

  “Are you Mrs. Grail’s husband?”

  “That’s an issue which need not detain us.”

  “Do you intend to abuse me with that stick?”

  “It’s a canogi stick, Special Agent. Used by women in Ireland in a version of hurling which is distantly related to our field hockey. I’ll use it on you only if you attempt again to force your way into this house or if you ring the doorbell one more time.”

  He flashed his badge and ID card at me.

  “Federal Bureau of Investigation,” he said in an attempt at terseness.

  “Forgive me for not being impressed,” I said, caressing the canogi stick. “You look and smell like Bureau.”

  “Are those big white dogs dangerous?”

  “They’re sweet and gentle and well behaved, unless they perceive you as menacing Ms. McGrail. Then your throat and genitals will be in grave danger.”

  “I will charge her with attacking a federal officer and you

  “with threatening one. I could arrest you now on both charges.”

  “Do you have a warrant for Mrs. Grail or to enter her house?”

  “I don’t need a warrant to arrest both of you.”

  “Think very carefully, Special Agent, about what you want to do. We will sue, you, the Bureau, the United States Attorney, and maybe even the vice president on the grounds that you used physical force to gain entrance into a private home without a warrant. Moreover, since I assume you are one of those hacks whom the Bureau sends out to check on National Security Agency wire taps, we will also sue them and everyone else for violation of privacy. I don’t think you want to have given the civil liberties organizations an opportunity to go after the all the snoops in the Beltway.”

  “Mrs. McGrail has been making long-distance calls in an unknown foreign language. She may be a threat to national security. It is imperative that I interview her.”

  “Could you guess what language it might be, Special Agent?”

  “The FBI doesn’t guess, sir.”

  “I am delighted to know that. Let me say on the record that Ms. McGrail will be only too happy to discuss her phone calls with you in her lawyer’s office. Her lawyer is one Cynthia Hurley. You may want to phone Ms. Hurley for an appointment. You may now go back to your superiors at the Everett McKinley Dirksen Federal Building and tell them that is our response. They are, I should think, not unfamiliar with either Ms. McGrail or Ms. Hurley.”

  “You haven’t heard the last of me.”

  “In all candor I think we have, but who knows. We may meet again in federal court. Now I urge you to leave our property.”

  He glared at me, turned, and stumbled down the stairs.

  The trouble with the security apparatus of the United States was that it wasted so much of its time on stupid intrusions into the lives of innocent Americans that it had no time left to find the dangerous people.

  Why not tell them that my wife’s phone calls were in the Irish language to her parents in the County Galway? Because they had no right to be snooping on her calls and because anyone with any sense would know who she was and why she would be speaking an “unknown foreign language” in an overseas call to Galway.

  No one in the government had common sense anymore.

  “’Tis all right,” I said as I returned to the parlor. “Ethne, please let the doggies upstairs.”

  I sat down next to Nuala on the couch. Patjo was sleeping contentedly in her lap.

  “The gobshite says that you might be a terrorist because after all don’t you make overseas phone calls in a strange foreign language which might be Arabic.”

  She laughed.

  “Are they that dumb, Dermot Michael?”

  “Woman, they are! But I think they—not this guy but his bosses—are not so dumb as to take Cindy and you on again.”

  “Why me?”

  “Somewhere in the bowels of the federal government there is a database with your name on it from previous struggles. They pick up your conversations in the general wiretapping of the country. Then they compare it to their lists and they send a hack out to intimidate you …”

  The hounds rushed into the room, sniffing obsessively. They had to kiss Ethne and me and Nuala and nuzzle Patjo before they settled down at Nuala’s feet, panting heavily from their exertions.

  Beautiful big dogs, but, oh, so big!
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  “I’ll call Cindy,” I said as I pushed the button on my cell phone which symbolized my sister.

  “Hi, sister, Dermot. I have thick red meat for you.”

  I told her the story.

  “Nuala was nursing that big lazy punk that looks like you when he tried to force his way into the house?”

  “He’s lucky she shoved him out before the beasts got him.”

  “I think I will make a phone call to my very good friend the United States Attorney for the Northern District of Illinois and suggest that before the end of the day I will seek an injunction against everyone in sight to cease and desist and a press conference to ask what the federal government has against my client.”

  “Sounds cool.”

  “Tell her that asshole and all his fellow assholes won’t be back.”

  “You know how me wife is shocked by that kind of language.”

  “And tell her that I’ll get that red flag off her name … Dermot, this country is truly becoming a police state.”

  “One more thing, we are investigating the case of the young man who disappeared into Iraq, trying to find out for his parents if he’s still alive. That may have stirred them up.”

  “So it’s against the law to search for a missing person? If it comes up, I’ll take care of that too … Is he still alive?”

  “Me wife says he is.”

  “That’s good enough for me, brother. Give my love to my most beautiful client.”

  Nuala collected the hounds and went across the street to bring the three kids home from school for lunch. It was always a great event for Maeve and Fiona because there is much more adoration and affection to be absorbed. There wasn’t any time to talk about my conversation with Cindy. After the kids went back to school and Socra Marie and Patjo went to bed and the pooches curled up for their afternoon naps at their respective stations, I poured her a jar of Middleton’s and put her to bed.

  “The whole family needs a nap, except me,” I said.

  “You’ll be reading about your man in Germany?”

  “I will.”

  “Thank you, Dermot.”

  Cindy called back while she was asleep.

  “Your good friend the United States Attorney for the Northern District apologizes in his name and in the name of the Agent-in-Charge. He understands that Irish is not a Semitic language. He will insist NSA drop the red flag after your bride’s name on its database. He also knows that there will be a major suit if it ever happens again.”