Golden Years Read online

  I slipped into the pool. The cool water quieted my passions but did not extinguish them completely.

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  Mary Margaret

  “Hey, Rosie,” I shouted as she towed Shovie up and down the pool, “Erin and I are going up to North and Harlem to have a drink tonight with Sean and that Joey Moran boy. After we put Shovie to bed.”

  “You’re too young to drink in a bar,” she shouted back before she and Shovie dove beneath the surface of the pool.

  “I have my driver’s license, my passport, and my Baptismal certificate,” I yelled. “They all say I’m twenty-one, which I am.”

  “You’re not twenty-one”, she insisted. “How can a young woman like me have a twenty-one-year-old daughter?”

  She was wearing her two-piece swimsuit and looked totally bitchin’. I wondered if Chucky knew how lucky he was. Probably he did.

  “And Erin is already twenty-two.”

  “What would her mum say about her going to a local pub?”

  “Me mum and da go to their local, Mrs. O’Malley,” she said meekly, not at all sure that she wanted to risk her employer’s displeasure.

  “Well”—she splashed us—“I suppose you’ll be safe, though I don’t think that Joey Moran could fight his way out of a wet paper bag. I’m glad you’re black belt.”

  “Ro-SIE! Don’t be mean about poor Joey Moran.”

  “Did she say yes?” Erin whispered.

  “I didn’t ask her. I TOLD her.”

  “I hope she won’t be upset with me.”

  “No problem. Like I tell you my mom is totally cool.”

  “And very beautiful.”

  “Yeah, well she works at it and she says she has good genes. I hope I inherit some of them.”

  Rosie produced a Kurdish dish called kavruma for supper. For Turkish wedding feasts, she assured us. Chucky devoured it like he had been fasting for a week.

  “I really like this foreign food,” he said between gulps.

  “Charles Cronin O’Malley,” she said, “the girls are going over to North Avenue for drinks after they put Shovie to bed.”

  “Not Shovie?” he said, looking up in surprise.

  “I said after they put her to bed. She can’t go to the bar if she’s in bed.”

  “Hmm … By themselves?”

  “I think they said they might meet that kid that hangs around here and Sean at the bar.”

  “What Sean?”

  “OUR Sean.”

  This was all part of Chucky’s act.

  “Well why don’t we go along with them and share in the fun?”

  “Chuc-KY! You’re too OLD!”

  He pretended his feelings were hurt.

  “WELL, you and Rosie can walk over to Petersen’s. That’s your style anyway.”

  “They can-NOT!” Shovie protested. “They gotta stay home with me after you put me to bed!”

  “Are they ever serious?” Erin asked as we left the house.

  “I told you when you came on board that we are the Crazy O’Malleys.”

  We walked slowly up to North Avenue. The boys would drive us home. It was a soft, quiet Indian summer night with a bit of a haze in the air, which covered a modest full moon. Perfect for romance. I hoped not too perfect. We were both wearing skirts and sweaters, mine light blue and hers light green. At first she seemed self-conscious, but she’d relaxed by the time we met the boys, who were waiting for us in front of the bar.

  “Two gorgeous-looking woman,” Sean said enthusiastically when we met. He did not, thank heavens, try to kiss either of us.

  “If you like Irish,” Joey Moran said with that damn mischievous twinkle in his eye. He might be a major problem for me tonight.

  We sauntered in. The bar was not like those down on Rush Street. There were some young people around but also some older folk, a few looking for pickups and more seemingly contented middle-aged folk. Everyone’s eyes turned to us when we walked in. It was time for my act

  “A double Bushmill’s Green,” I said to the bartender. “Straight up!”

  “A young girl shouldn’t be drinking that stuff,” he said with a leer. “Let me see your driver’s license.”

  He was Irish-American, red-faced, and overweight.

  I pulled out my wallet and flipped the driver’s license open, my passport, and my copy of my Baptismal certificate from St. Ursula Church and laid them next to each other on the bar.

  “Now,” I said with a touch of anger, “will you please give me my Bushmill’s Green, straight up?”

  Erin showed him her passport without his asking for it and wondered if he’d ever have a small pint of Guinness? I have never figured out the difference between a small pint and a pint, but who am I to criticize the funny way the Irish talk.

  Sean ordered an Amstel light and goofy Joey Moran said he wanted a Diet Coke on the rocks.

  The bartender brought the others the drinks they ordered. My whiskey had ice in it.

  I stared at him dyspeptically.

  “Are you a focking eejit or you just plain deaf. Only a focking eejid pollutes good whiskey with ice, especially when these three people will confirm that I ordered it straight up.”

  I stared him down and he went back to his whiskey bottles and poured me a drink straight up. I watched him to make sure that he didn’t take the ice cubes out with his fingers. We adjourned to a table.

  “Well, I said, no one will think of harassing us in here.”

  “I didn’t know you drink whiskey,” poor Seano said, kind of goggle-eyed. “You never drink it at home.”

  “Seano, love, I’m not home … besides this is sipping whiskey, isn’t it Erin?”

  “’Tis. Don’t they say it’s very powerful stuff?”

  “It clears the sinuses,” I said, taking a very small sip, lest I humiliate myself with a coughing fit.

  “I don’t suppose you’d ever let me have a tiny sip, would you?”

  “Very tiny,” I offered her the drink.

  She did have a coughing fit.

  “Guys?”

  “Well,” said my big brother, “I’ve never tasted it before.”

  His eyes blinked as he took a big sip.

  “It does clear the sinuses, sis, it does that.”

  “Joey?” I offered the tumbler to my amused and bemused swain.

  “I’ll stick with my Diet Coke”—he lifted his glass—“on the rocks.”

  Brat.

  We had a very nice time. No one in the bar dared to bother us, that’s for sure. We talked about anything and everything, school, Ireland, America, Reagan, television, films.

  “You do that act,” Sean asked carefully, “to keep the hasslers off, don’t you, Mary Margaret?”

  “A redhead with an Irish temper who drinks Bushmill’s Green straight up is patently not a woman to trifle with.”

  “I could have told them that,” dumb Joey Moran said.

  “Have you ever done it with your da an’ mum present?”

  That was a marvelous idea. Why hadn’t I thought of it?

  “I wouldn’t be caught dead in a bar with Rosie and Chuck. They’re old. Petersen’s ice cream shop is their speed.”

  “Let’s go there later,” Joey Moran said. “It’s about my speed too.”

  He was telling the truth, though sometimes he said stupid things like that just to egg me on.

  The chemistry between my brother and Erin Ryan was sweet. It wasn’t like that between Rosie and Chuck—which will blow you right out of the room—though it’s sweet in its own way. Poor Seano was happy and relaxed with a nice, pretty Irish girl who would never be mean to him. For her part, she glanced at him occasionally and with a quick smile. Okay, I had done my part. The rest was up to them.

  I could not leave without finishing my drink. I should never have ordered a double. My sinuses would be clear for the next five years. Yet I walked straight and confidently to the curb to wait for Sean’s car to pick us up. Well, I had found my limit with whiskey
and that was useful knowledge.

  I also walked a straight line into Petersen’s though I was feeling a little woozy. I thought I had gone over the deep end when I saw Chuck and Rosie sitting in their favorite corner booth, looking dreamy eyed at each other.

  “Who’s watching Shovie?” I demanded, perhaps too shrilly.

  Everyone laughed, everyone in the whole ice-cream shop. We pulled up chairs by their booth and Chucky, the big deal impresario, ordered a round of double malts with whipped cream.

  The impossible Joey Moran giggled at that.

  Rosie was still laughing at me. Did she know that I had too much of the drink taken? If she did, she’d never say anything.

  “Jimmy came in from the seminary for some meeting and decided he’d stay at the house. So he’s watching Shovie.”

  I drank my malt slowly and carefully. I said nothing because I was afraid I might say something stupid. Everyone had a lot of fun and we sang a couple of songs, which is what the Crazy O’Malleys do when they go to Petersen’s. Then stupid Seano had to tell his story of how I had established “credibility” at the North Avenue. I was acutely embarrassed.

  “You don’t hassle a red-haired woman who drinks Bushmill’s Green straight up!” I insisted piously.

  Rosie smiled. Chucky, the boor, howled. I suppose Rosie was worried just a little bit about whether I had inherited the alcoholic gene. It was time to reassure her.

  “WELL, at least I learned what my limit is tonight. Downtown I always drink one straight up. Here I was showing off for the locals and it was a bit much. Never again, and you stop laughing at me, Joey Moran, with your diet cola on the rocks.”

  “You weren’t a bit fluthered at all, at all,” Erin said, defending me.

  “Only a tiny bit,” I said. “That’s why I shouted when I saw my parents sitting here waiting for me.”

  Soon the parents withdrew. They both had busy days ahead of them. They also wanted to give the boys a chance to kiss us good night.

  Good old Seano was so gentle and so sweet with Erin that it almost broke my heart. My own swain is not a great one for passionate kisses either. So he was even more gentle than Sean. The whiskey still inside me took over and I responded more passionately than I had ever done to any boy.

  “You’re fun, Mary Margaret Anne O’Malley,” he said with a laugh. “And you’re also wonderful.”

  I tried to think of something funny to say, but the words wouldn’t come.

  All I could manage was, “Thank you, Joey Moran.”

  Erin and I went to our rooms silently, both of us with our own dreams.

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  Chuck

  After supper my wife pleaded work to finish on her desk and I said that I would go downstairs and think about the mystery of the two women named Bride Mary.

  I did not want to think and I don’t think she wanted to finish any work. My impulsive assault on her breast earlier in the day had kind of knocked us both out. How does one live in the same house with a woman who infatuates you and whose body is available for play all day—especially if you have work to do. Doubtless she had similar questions.

  My first move was to make a call to DC to a man I knew in my completely crazy adventure in Vietnam. He had left government service a few years later and was the CEO of an important consulting firm, which in his case didn’t mean working with spooks. He knew just about everything on the subject, however.

  After an exchange of pleasantries and my telling him about taking pictures of the president, I said to him, “Whitney, I have a couple of questions to ask in this conversation which has never occurred, okay?”

  “I was here watching TV all night and waiting for my wife to come home from a gala at the Kennedy Center.”

  “When I was in Bonn, some of the spooks executed their own people because they suspected the Stasi had turned them. Does that still happen?”

  “Were the victims American? That doesn’t change the morality of the action, but from the point of view of their employers it would make a big difference.”

  “Germans.”

  “I imagine that those cowboys were not employed with the Company for long.”

  “Company” was what the insiders called the CIA for whatever twisted reason.

  “If the people whom they terminated with extreme prejudice were Americans and indeed fellow agents?”

  “They themselves would be dead in a week. You can’t do that without explicit permission from the top and that is almost never given. That doesn’t mean that some rogues don’t try it, but they themselves will end up sanctioned.”

  “Sanction” meant the same thing as “terminate with extreme prejudice.” Murder in other words.

  “You sure?”

  “Absolutely. Through the years the rule has always been that if you sanction one of ours, we’ll sanction you. Everyone knows that.”

  So maybe there was still some hope for the second Bride Mary O’Brien.

  “What about the occasional agent that seems to disappear from the face of the earth?”

  Silence for a moment on the other end of the line.

  “Chuck, I will answer your questions because I know you are always on the side of the good guys. But I won’t ask you any, as much as I would like to. Fair enough?”

  “Absolutely.”

  “I know of an aviator who vanished during the Vietnam War, under very mysterious circumstances. His friends claimed that he was never shot down, till someone told them to shut up. He went underground, ended up at GPU headquarters in Moscow. Fooled them for years. Then our people ordered him to come in out of the cold. They were afraid he’d be caught and the Commies would eliminate all the, uh, resources he had. I don’t know the details. The Russians thought he was dead. When he came back here, they told him that they would take care of him for the rest of his life, but they had to give him a new identity, even some plastic surgery. He could never see his family again. He knew that this would happen when he took the assignment. The family somehow is convinced that he is still alive. The Feds brush them off. They also quiet down any congressman who takes an interest. He lives near his family, so he can see them from a distance occasionally. Our people encourage that because they believe it keeps the agent in the reservation. He never remarried. I heard recently that now, twenty years later, his resources from Russia are all dried up. They may release him. Too soon to know … Brave, patriotic man.”

  “Resources” meant agents, human agents. It’s easier to pretend that you’re losing something abstract than a human person.

  “You ever talk to him?”

  “Yes.”

  “What does he say about Russia?”

  “Same thing you told Ronnie the other day.”

  “You heard about that?”

  “Everyone in the business heard about it. Some of us think you’re absolutely right.”

  “Is the present crowd strong enough to prevent any sanctions against an agent who is as brave as your friend?”

  “No termination, maybe hide him for a while. Some of those guys broke the rules for Dick Nixon and lived to regret it. Never again.”

  “You’re sure?”

  “Look, Chuck, you know that I don’t like the business. That’s why I got out of it. There are, however, a number of good reasons why we don’t sanction our own. First of all, we are Americans, we are the good guys, we wear the white hats. We stand by our own. We bring out our wounded and dead, right? If we were Russians, we’d simply liquidate them and be done with it. That’s not the American way. Secondly, if we did terminate the pilot I was talking about, the word would get around pretty quickly and no one would ever take risks like that again.”

  “What if he simply told your friends someday that he was going back to his wife and family?”

  Silence.

  “Well, there’d be some cowboys who would want to terminate him. Too much of a risk, they’d say. He’s gone rogue. Can’t tell what he might do.”

  “Then?”
/>   “Then they would be told firmly that they wouldn’t themselves last another week.”

  “Ugh,” I murmured.

  “That’s why I got out of it Chuck. I hate the cowboys. But even they don’t want to die. Maybe we’d lock the pilot up for a time, then we’d let him go. He’s not about to do that, however. He’s a real American patriot.”

  “I guess so,”I said.

  Or a flaming nut. But what did I know?

  I thought a long time about our conversation. Bride Mary and Samantha were most likely still alive. I could threaten the Feds, who knew me well enough from Bonn and Saigon not to mess around with me, that I’d go public with the whole story. I didn’t think they’d try to sanction me, but I would build in all the safeguards that would make it pretty certain that they wouldn’t try.

  “We don’t fuck around with Charlie O’Malley,” a spook had told me in Saigon. “He’s a crazy little bastard and very dangerous.”

  I was and still am very proud of that evaluation, but it gives me credit for a lot more courage than I really possess.

  I needed one more piece of evidence to lock it up. I didn’t have to know what Bride Mary O’Brien II had done for the Feds. I needed some evidence however, that they had pulled the switch. Then I could go ahead with the almost diabolically clever scheme that was turning around in my head.

  I had to turn off the scheming machine or I wouldn’t sleep at all. There was one cure for it and she was upstairs. I glanced at my watch—11:30. What an idiot I was! I claimed that I was infatuated with her and had forgotten about her.

  I hurried up to our room, which was dark, undressed quickly, and slipped into bed. I was in deep trouble. She wasn’t wearing a nightgown. “Sorry to be late,” I whispered.

  “Chucky Ducky, I love you so much I’d wait for you forever!”

  Then, sentimental fool that I am, I began to cry. She did too.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  Chuck

  The next morning after an inexcusably late breakfast, I returned to my darkroom office and called my friend Whitney again.