The Death of an Irish Lass Read online

  “Close?” Noreen asked. “How do you mean? Is that a euphemism?” She was carefully steering the car down a narrow, rutted laneway with low rock walls on either side that led to McAnulty’s holiday house. It was a thatched-roof cottage, recently limed so that it was nearly too bright to look at directly in the full sun. His children, having seen the car, had run into the house to get their mammy, and now she appeared in the doorway, hands on her hips. She was wearing a house dress, an apron, and red knitted socks. A black and white dog with a thick coat barked at the car and nipped at the tires.

  McGarr said a little prayer that it wouldn’t jump up and scratch the finish of O’Malley’s new Triumph.

  “Have they checked O’Connor’s mother’s house for a pitchfork? That one in the trunk of Schwerr’s car couldn’t have been the only one up there, you know. It didn’t have the paint particles from the Jaguar on it. And the rake lines down the side of that car happened in the pasture. And there wasn’t any blood on it, either, so far as we can tell out here. And the O’Connors would have one, you know.” McAnulty was loath to get out of the car. His wife’s eyes were blazing.

  “They had several,” said McGarr, “as does every house, barn, and hayrick in Clare. You know, Tom,” he added, “you can’t sit here forever. Eventually you’re going to have to pluck up the courage and go in there.”

  McAnulty’s small eyes fixed on the house and the woman standing in the dooryard. It was as though he had put family matters so far out of his mind that only now did he realize where he was. Suddenly, he looked bleak. “Noreen,” he said in a conspiratorial way, “why don’t you go talk to my missus like a good girl. There’s something desperate important I’ve got to discuss with your husband. Alone, if you don’t mind.”

  Noreen turned right around and looked at him full. “You mean you want me to break the ice.”

  “Ice is just the word,” he said, without moving his lips. “Just look at her. She’d freeze a volcano.”

  But it was too late. She’d already started toward the car.

  “Unfortunately,” said Noreen, hopping out, “I know of none in these parts.”

  Said McAnulty, “Jesus—aren’t they all the same? Ungrateful and thankless, when all we’ve been doing is a bit of work to support them in style.” He waited awhile before getting out of the car, however.

  McGarr stayed where he was.

  The black Mini picked them up again on the main road.

  Shannon was crowded with tourists and returning Irishmen whose families, with children and dogs, were clustered around the debarking gates of the vast airport buildings. McGarr marveled that these monumental expanses of green Connemara marble could ever seem filled.

  He consulted his watch: 2:10 P.M. He then tried to see the arrivals board in the distance, but the summer sun glared through the western windows, making it impossible.

  And the crowd had snatched them up, at least that part of the crowd who with bags in hand or on dollies were pushing toward the foreign-exchange counter of the Bank of Ireland, just opposite from where McGarr had wanted to go.

  That was when a pleasant female voice with just the trace of an Irish lilt began saying over the public-address system, “Miss May Quirk, Miss May Quirk—would you please come to the information booth beneath the clock.”

  McGarr checked his watch: 2:17. Paddy Sugrue could not possibly have gotten through customs and immigration with such speed unless the airplane had made time, yet only somebody who had spent the better part of the day in the air would not know of May Quirk’s fate. The murder was front-page news in every Irish paper, and Reuters and all the New York dailies were covering it as well.

  Fortunately, the crowd was driving McGarr and Noreen toward the clock, but at the last moment a rush pushed them right past.

  McGarr stopped, planted his feet, turned, and using his shoulders like paddles, dipping first one and then the other into the crowd to usher a few people past, managed to make a bit of headway toward the information booth. Noreen followed in his wake.

  But the belly of a large man stopped him. It was bound in a print shirt of some chemical weave that pictured buffaloes grazing on a limitless range with nary a cloud in the sky. The belly was very soft. “And where the hell do you think you’re going, sonny?” The man was staring down at McGarr’s head. McGarr placed the accent as decidedly west—once West of Ireland, now the Midwest of America, probably Chicago.

  Noreen, who was staring at the buffaloes, said, “I believe we’re about to hear a discouraging word.”

  McGarr said, “My wife—she’s going to have a baby.”

  “She is?” The man stepped back and pushed a number of people around him.

  They objected, shoving and grumbling.

  The big man began observing Noreen closely as McGarr led her through the space he had made. “When is she going to have this baby, bud?”

  “Come nine-month. Count on it.” Now McGarr was well past him. “We’ll send you an announcement.”

  The man wizened up his big puss, made pink, McGarr supposed, from a day-long bash aboard some transoceanic jet. “Nothing I hate worse than a wise guy. You wanna step outside with me?”

  “Cripes,” said McGarr. “I wouldn’t care to step on any side of you, what with all those bisons grazing on that nifty sarong of yours.”

  The man howled in outrage and tried to reach for McGarr.

  People around him began giggling.

  One woman said, “Move it!”

  “Get the lead out!” said another.

  McGarr turned to Noreen. “Americans—I love ’em. Remorseless. They’d pig-pile a pope for his first peccadillo.”

  “But they’re Irish-Americans,” said Noreen.

  “And none more savage,” said McGarr. He could see the big man in the distance. He was turning around to stare in their direction. His face was scarlet, his jaw set.

  At the information desk, McGarr said to a young woman with a round face and sloe eyes, “Who’s wanting May Quirk?”

  “I’m afraid I must reserve that information for May Quirk.” It was the same dulcet voice. With fair skin and hair parted in the middle, the young girl wore a light green suit and a white blouse open at the neck. In all, she appeared to be innocent and inexperienced, like somebody who might easily be cowed. But McGarr noticed the fire blazing in those dark eyes and decided he wouldn’t try to pass off Noreen as May Quirk.

  Instead he showed her his identity card. “May Quirk was murdered yesterday. Perhaps you’ve seen the papers.”

  The young girl nodded and wrote McGarr’s name on a pad in front of her. “What can I do for you?”

  “You can tell me why you’re paging May Quirk.”

  “I have an envelope for her. May I ask your name?”

  Noreen told her. She noted that on the paper too.

  Said McGarr, “I’d like to see it, please.”

  Without blinking, the girl said, “I’m afraid I can’t do that without permission from an officer of Aer Lingus.” She smiled at McGarr. The smile wasn’t fresh, just disarming.

  “Well, would you do that, please.” McGarr checked his wristwatch. As he had understood Paddy Sugrue’s letter to May Quirk, Sugrue was just stopping off at Shannon. Flight 509 was merely refueling here. McGarr wanted all that time to talk to Sugrue. But he wanted to know what was in the envelope first.

  “As you can see, I’m all alone here.” Still the smile. She was like something nice and soft and fragile. McGarr could imagine himself crushing her.

  “Look,” he said. “I don’t believe you understand the gravity of this situation. This is a murder investigation. You have my name. You’ve seen my identification. I’ll take all the responsibility. Time is of the essence.”

  Yet she didn’t alter her smile or those damnably soft dark eyes for the longest time, until they quavered once slightly. She said, “All right.” She reached below the counter and picked up an envelope. “If you’ll give me one of the cards I saw in your wallet.” />
  McGarr complied.

  Not only did she countercheck the card with the name she had on the pad, she also picked up a telephone and called the Shannon Airport barracks of the Garda. The officer there asked to speak to McGarr. He wondered if McGarr might need some assistance.

  McGarr said, “There’s a black Mini with Northern plates parked someplace in the airport compound, probably in lot E,” which was where Noreen had parked O’Malley’s Triumph. McGarr turned and scanned the crowd around the information booth. Cupping his hand to the speaker, he asked Noreen, “Do you see the men?”

  “Behind you, near the bank counter. They’re pretending to look at the exchange rates.”

  McGarr asked into the phone, “Do you have Gardai in the area?”

  “Seven, sir. All have radios. I can reach them immediately.”

  “Good. But I’d advise you to send armed personnel and make sure there’s nobody about. Perhaps if you could wait for them at their car.”

  “When do you think they’ll return to it?”

  “How long do you think it’ll take you to get your men in there, find the car, and clear the area?”

  “No more than five minutes.”

  “That’s fine.” McGarr gave their descriptions and rang off.

  He wondered why the I.R.A. had put a tail on him. It could only be that they believed his investigation of the May Quirk murder might expose them even more than it had already. That being the case, McGarr wondered what he had missed. There had to be something else. First they had tried to kill him, not caring if they got Dineen as well. Now they were watching his every move.

  The young woman handed McGarr back his card. “I hope you can understand my reticence.” She still carried that little smile, which intrigued McGarr so much he almost wished his wife hadn’t accompanied him. “We’ve been fooled before by persons misrepresenting themselves.” Her hands were folded in front of her. She seemed so calm that McGarr wondered if she was breathing.

  McGarr opened the envelope. In it was an Aer Lingus ticket to New York. The booking was for flight 603, which would depart in less than an hour. The stub had been endorsed for a return flight at an open date. On a small sheet of paper a Telex message read: “Very busy flew direct N.Y. Please follow love Paddy.”

  McGarr sighed. “Where was this sent from?”

  The girl reached for the letter and McGarr handed it to her.

  “London. Earlier today. Eleven forty-nine, Heathrow.”

  McGarr checked his watch: 2:22. That made it mid-morning in New York.

  McGarr sorely wanted to speak to Paddy Sugrue. He wondered if Sugrue had visited Ireland while in England. Also, he wanted to visit May Quirk’s haunts, to examine her apartment, her files, and just generally circulate in her milieu. True, it was a whim, but as in so many other cases when he’d been presented with a plethora of suspects, he had learned more about each only by examining the victim’s background more closely. And in this case, where as many as five men had some motive for murdering May Quirk, none had an overriding reason. Maybe McGarr might discover that in New York.

  He turned to Noreen. “What say we subject Rory O’Connor’s opinion of New York restaurants to an empirical test.”

  Noreen was surprised. “How do you mean?”

  McGarr waved the ticket. “The I.R.A. is paying your way, the Garda Soichana and Aer Lingus mine.” Officials of McGarr’s rank rode free on all Irish commercial flights.

  “Are you serious?”

  Even the girl in the information booth seemed shocked.

  “But we haven’t anything to wear.”

  “We’ll buy something there.”

  “But our passports? We’ll need money. What about Commissioner Farrell?”

  McGarr tapped his wallet. “I never go out of the house without my passport. You don’t need yours.” McGarr had had his amended to include Noreen. “We won’t really need any money, although I’ve got some. And Farrell is just a born worrier. We’ll give him something to chew on for the next couple of days.”

  “Just like that?” the girl asked McGarr.

  “No good in being an irresponsible Irishman unless it’s just like that, is there?”

  Noreen was still stunned. “I’ve always wanted to go to New York, but not exactly on the spur of the moment like this.”

  “It’s the only way to go to New York and not be disappointed. This way you’ll see all the good things and ignore its monumental ugliness.” McGarr reached for the phone again. He imagined that the Gardai were now in place and the area around the Mini cleared of people. He dialed the barracks number, then turned toward the two I.R.A. men still standing near the bank exchange-rate chart.

  When one of them glanced over at McGarr, he waved to the man, then pointed to the phone.

  The first man nudged the second. They both looked over at McGarr.

  Again McGarr pointed to the phone.

  The two men swapped glances and bolted. They couldn’t get very far very fast, however, since the terminal was still clogged with tourists. McGarr imagined it would take them at least ten minutes to get back to their car.

  “Where’s the Telex?” he asked the young woman.

  “There’s one at the Aer Lingus office over there.” The girl’s smile had changed somewhat. Now there was interest in it. She wouldn’t have minded going off to New York with McGarr, just like that.

  And McGarr wouldn’t have minded taking her along with both of them, just like that. During other times in the old pre-British Ireland, monogamy was unknown. But Noreen’s hand on his arm brought McGarr back into the twentieth century. Nevertheless, McGarr found this imaginary womanizing most enjoyable, especially when the dilemma posed necessitated a choice between two particularly fine beauties. And then again, McGarr passed through Shannon many times each year.

  TEN

  Finnlandia—Orchestrated Deals

  THE FLIGHT WAS pleasantly uneventful. McGarr never felt comfortable on an airplane. There was no margin for error. One fault and the whole ship and its passengers were dashed to bits or, worse, immolated. McGarr enjoyed gambling in all its forms, but the odds against surviving an air disaster were just too unequal.

  But after the first meal had been served, he felt drowsy. Noreen rested her head on his shoulder, the curtains were drawn for the movie, and they both nodded off.

  McGarr’s sleep was fitful. Occasionally he awoke and glanced at the screen, which offered the saga of a South African goldmine venture, or out the window at the clouds or the ocean far below. Flying due west, they were chasing the sun. Newfoundland and Nova Scotia seemed like barren islands, as treeless as Clare. The Maine coast was rugged, but low cloud cover quickly obscured the rest of New England.

  McGarr began to feel queasy and knew it would get worse. He could skimp on either sleep or food, but never on both. Thus, he forced himself to eat some of the two undistinguished meals that were served aboard the jet and also later a fine dinner at the Irish consulate in New York.

  That began with a Caesar salad of crisp romaine lettuce, progressed to roast chicken rosemary served with Franconia potatoes and fresh asparagus tips hollandaise, and ended with a lovely Black Forest cake from which McGarr’s sempiternal bing cherries were gushing. “But they belong in the cake,” McGarr observed, and Noreen nodded. The wine was a hearty California red with lots of body and just the hint of muskiness that McGarr enjoyed, especially with the aroma of the rosemary in the chicken. Cuban cigars and cognac completed the repast, and, if the venture to New York proved no more useful than to have assuaged McGarr’s yen for a good meal, he believed he would think it well worth the cost, for he was a belly bourgeois.

  From Shannon, McGarr had Telexed for a consulate car to meet them at JFK Airport. McGarr dreaded driving in New York as much as driving in New York with a New York cabbie, and thus he had trusted in his own. The choice had been correct. An ancient Hibernian with a face as creased and folded as that of a lizard had guided the long Cadillac into the city.
In a deep green hush it whispered through the dark canyons of the metropolis. It was Sunday here too, and, although the streets in the center of Manhattan near Central Park were crowded with strollers, there was little vehicular traffic.

  Now the Cadillac pulled to the curb outside Mickey Finn’s on East Sixty-third Street. McGarr had an official from the New York Police Department with him. Noreen was back at the consulate resting up. Tomorrow the consul’s eldest daughter was going to take her to a Pierre Lesage retrospective at the Museum of Modern Art. Later Noreen wanted to tour the art galleries in Soho. Of course, there was the question of clothes to be bought. And the consul had invited them to dinner at what he claimed was one of New York’s finest restaurants.

  The N.Y.P.D. official was a tall man who had arrived at the consulate after dinner. He was wearing a shiny gray suit, like a weave of some special alloy, and walked like a duck. His nose was flat, his face sagging, and his lips seemed very wet from the long green cigar that stuck between two fingers of his left hand. All in all, however, the impression he created was that of a still handsome and jaunty man.

  His arms had swung slightly with each odd step he took through the long room toward the consul and his guests. He hadn’t waited for the consular official to introduce him. “Simonds here. I’m from the commissioner’s office. Don’t worry about my name. I’ve worked with so many Irishmen in my time I’m greener than the guano on the bells of Saint Patrick’s Cathedral.

  “Just look at this.” He had reached into the jacket pocket of the gray suit coat. Somehow the material didn’t bend in any recognizable way and was more like armor than cloth. Simonds had extracted a long pocket secretary, which he opened. From this he took cards, as he said, “Gaelic Hurling and Football Club, Hibernians Unlimited, Friends of the Knights of Columbus, the Dingle Club, the Irish Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Non-Irish Cops—that’s a joke—and, of course, the St. Columcille’s Boys Club. I’m not going to bore you with the names of the several dozen Irish barrooms I subsidize whenever my boss wants to talk in private.