The Death of an Irish Lass Read online

  Said O’Connor, “I don’t know anything about that. I just write the books.”

  McGarr asked, “How did May Quirk feel about New York?”

  “She loved it.”

  “And your character in the novel—did he have a love relationship with his wife or girl friend or somebody?” McGarr watched O’Connor watch the southbound traffic flow by them.

  “You mean to ask what my relationship to May Quirk was?”

  McGarr said nothing.

  “At one time you could say we loved each other.” He paused for a long time. “But New York makes people different, especially two people with such different careers.”

  “But you were both writers,” said Noreen.

  “After a fashion. I’m a writer. She was a journalist.”

  McGarr said, “Which means you did your work in a room, at a desk or a typewriter, and she was out among people every day.” McGarr could see O’Connor look at the back of his head.

  “Yes.”

  “Were you jealous?”

  O’Connor didn’t answer.

  “Of her career, her success?”

  He laughed slightly. “There’s more prestige, at least in New York, in what I do. And in an actual sense I was more successful than May.”

  “You were? But she was very successful,” said Noreen.

  O’Connor said nothing.

  Finally McGarr asked, “Did you live together?”

  “Yes. Right from the first. I mean, when she arrived in New York.”

  “About a week after you?”

  “Three weeks. She took a boat from England.”

  “And, naturally, neither of you was successful then.”

  “No, but that was the best time.”

  Noreen asked, “How many years?”

  “Three and a half.”

  “What did you do for livings?” asked McGarr.

  “May tried this and that. I wrote copy for the public relations department of an insurance company and wrote my novels when I could, usually in the early hours of the morning before I went to the job.”

  “That must have been difficult, grueling,” said Noreen.

  “I only remember it as fun. The years just flew by.”

  “And then?” McGarr offered O’Connor one of his Woodbines.

  “And then,” O’Connor breathed out as though this were hard for him to say, “a publisher became interested in my work. More importantly, I made some contacts. My first novel got good reviews. They published the second right after, a third the next year. The fourth sold well.

  “In the meantime, I began meeting many of the New York media people. May mentioned how she’d like to get into the newspaper business. She was a natural. She could make the pope confess to her and thank God he had.”

  McGarr said, “And that was the end of it?”

  O’Connor said nothing.

  McGarr continued, “You either stayed home every day or went to your office, but you had to work hard and all alone to meet that next deadline or the expectations of your publisher or your readers. She, on the other hand, was out in the world and meeting all types—big people, little people, white, black, criminals, professors, day laborers, cops, and derelicts. How could a novelist not be jealous of that?”

  “What do you want, an admission?” O’Connor struck a match and lit his and McGarr’s cigarettes. “Okay. At first I loved her all the more, and she me. How could we have helped that—both of us successful, young, big people.” O’Connor paused for a moment. In present company that was something of a faux pas. “We were invited everyplace. Television people were trying to interview us. We couldn’t go anywhere without somebody snapping a camera at us. And then—

  “And then—I guess I realized—no, that’s not right, I didn’t realize anything.” He paused again.

  In the rearview mirror McGarr saw the head of the burning Woodbine glow bright as O’Connor drew on it.

  “I began to feel cheated. First from a more active life. Every day she came home with stories of this and that, this one or that interesting person. I was getting all my information second hand. People she had met and written about started appearing in my books. At first I told myself what was the difference, as long as those characters were interesting and I was doing essentially what I wanted with my life and she with hers, but then it flagged—the workroom, the desk, the typewriter, the mail, the reviews, the business of being a recluse for pay.”

  “Big pay,” said McGarr.

  “Any pay,” said O’Connor. “It was me, too, you know. I was the one who became bitchy. All was not right with me. I tried to pick a quarrel with her and she wouldn’t have any of it. That made me madder. My sixth book wasn’t the smash it was supposed to be. It ‘got out,’ by which I mean that nobody lost any money on it, but the people in the business began questioning my ability to write one hit after another. And I just couldn’t handle that. I’d been too successful in the past, too long on my own.”

  “And so you took it out on her.”

  “Exactly. I told myself I was jealous. And then I became jealous. I followed her, made scenes in public. Eventually, she left me. I don’t—didn’t blame her. My seventh book came out then and went straight to the best-seller list and right to the top for thirty-two weeks. But it was too late. May was gone. I tried to get her back, but whenever we’d go out, she’d always go back to her place.”

  Noreen asked, “And that made you even more jealous of her affections?”

  “Yes, initially. But I managed to tell myself that what we had become in New York was better than what would have become of us if we had gotten married and raised a tribe back home in Clare.

  “And then, at the time, I began trying to write about us in an attempt to get it out of my system.”

  Noreen said, “It must be a different book from the one you described.”

  McGarr said, “I’d very much like to read that book.”

  “It didn’t sell at all,” said O’Connor. “My publisher did it just as a favor to me.”

  “And the reviews?” asked Noreen.

  “Mixed. The papers out in the boondocks loved it. New York, Chicago, L. A. said it was old hat.”

  In spite of his temper, O’Connor didn’t seem to McGarr like a man who could kill somebody with a pitchfork, especially May Quirk. She had shared too much of his life, and if he could be believed, O’Connor had been resigned to their drifting apart. On the other hand, however, this was a man who had proved himself very successful at telling all sorts of stories. “Did you have other girl friends?”

  “Yes.”

  McGarr tried to see in the darkness. He imagined that a rich, successful young man with O’Connor’s dark good looks would not want much in the way of female companionship. How many of these other women could have been persons on the order of May Quirk, however, McGarr could guess. Very few indeed. “And where was the good Dr. Fleming during all of this?”

  “Around. He was in medical school at Columbia and later interning at Roosevelt Hospital.”

  “And you saw him?”

  “Of course. Regularly.”

  “What was his attitude to May?”

  “If you mean did he hate her, would he kill her? I think you’ve got him wrong.” Suddenly O’Connor seemed on the defensive.

  “You mean she and he didn’t get along.”

  “I wouldn’t say that. It’s just that they both became different persons. At first, when we had just gotten to New York, it was like we had a conspiracy, the three of us. Us against the big merciless city.”

  “And then?” Noreen asked.

  “I don’t know. He chose to come back here, that’s all.”

  McGarr said, “And for him you two had become the city.”

  O’Connor opened a rear window and chucked the cigarette stub out. “I can’t see how you can say that. He was as good at what he did as we were at our careers. He got offers to stay on at Roosevelt as a resident. Let me tell you—that happens to very few young
doctors indeed. He got other offers, too. I just never could see why he chose to come back.”

  “And May?”

  “No. She even tried to talk him into staying. They had a big argument over it too, in Mickey Finn’s. It’s the place we met every Sunday afternoon for a drink and some talk.”

  McGarr said, “Do you know a fellow name of Paddy? He’s not half your size. He’s got curly red hair and a thick body. A dapper fellow. Likes to smile.”

  “Paddy Sugrue,” O’Connor said in a neutral voice.

  “What do you know about him?”

  “Fund raiser.”

  “I.R.A.?”

  “Ah—”

  “Don’t worry. Nothing will come of this.”

  “I think so. Yes—why not admit it. He is. Provos, too.”

  “What about him and May?”

  O’Connor laughed once. “Jesus—he’s like a hound dog, that guy. He’s got an eye for all the women and none more than May. While she and I were together, he just stood off in the wings and worshiped her from afar. I like him, mind you, but he’s got all the vices—loves to drink, he’d gamble on a change in the weather, and he’s always in some wrangle over a woman.”

  “Is he successful?”

  O’Connor snorted. “I don’t know how he has the energy left for the little work he does.”

  “Please don’t misunderstand the intent of this question, but do you think he was successful with May?” McGarr, of course, had read a letter that implied as much.

  “No,” said O’Connor without hesitating. “May wasn’t that sort of girl. She might have gone out with a lot of men, but she didn’t sleep around. Especially not with Sugrue. He was too transparent. She told me so herself.”

  Probably, McGarr thought, to keep O’Connor passive. Perhaps May Quirk had not been a loose woman, but he couldn’t believe that she had had only one affair. He said, “But the German. Schwerr. She was pregnant by him.”

  “Don’t get me wrong,” O’Connor clarified. “May probably slept with several men.”

  McGarr listened closely to O’Connor’s tone. It seemed perfectly regular. Most good writers were good actors, too.

  “The German included. It’s just that I don’t think Paddy Sugrue was her type. She used to like to banter with him in Finn’s. They had the same approach to people, you know, as much as to say, ‘I know that beneath your calm exterior you’re really a desperado with a heart as big as a cabbage and you can’t hide it from me,’ and they both set about revealing it in the same wheedling, jesting way.

  “It was marvelous to hear them squaring off against each other. I don’t think May lost once, whether he was always letting her or not. Anyhow, it was plain he’d walk through coals for her.

  “I once came into the bar and saw him mauling some big black fellow who had tried to pick her up. As small as he is, he made a mess of the man and chucked him into the street. The fellow later turned out to be a dope peddler and tried to rub Sugrue out. But Sugrue has his friends as well. Half the New York police force is Irish. Their relatives were either kicked out or forced to leave Ireland by the very people whom Sugrue purports to be fighting. The dope peddler tried to shoot Sugrue in a parking garage. Somebody called the police. An hour later there was one dead dope peddler down there and no sign of Sugrue. The bullet that killed the man was not from a police gun. Nobody—not even May—asked any questions.”

  McGarr glanced at Noreen. She was studying the road and probably thinking, as he was, of New York and all the terrible stories they had heard about the place. Doubtless, New Yorkers had heard the same about Ireland and had promised themselves they’d never go there.

  He said to O’Connor, “What’s your approach to the I.R.A.?”

  Without hesitating, O’Connor said, “I support their cause, I deplore the violence. They’re never going to bomb the British people into surrendering the Six Counties. Hitler tried bombs with a whole bloody air force, and he failed.”

  “Do you expect them to love the Unionists to death?”

  “Not if death is the point they’re trying to make. If they had just held pat in ’69, maybe Britain—. But as it is, she can’t. The bloodbath would be horrible.”

  “That sounds like hindsight, Rory.”

  “I suppose it is.”

  Suddenly McGarr was famished.

  O’Connor said, “It strikes me that you don’t think Schwerr murdered May.”

  “I’ve been trying to keep myself from thinking anything at all, until I learn the facts. And even if I had them, I couldn’t draw a conclusion without some food in my belly.” But yet another thought struck McGarr. “What brought you home after…”

  “Thirteen years,” said O’Connor. “I guess I wanted to take a look at the place again. And see my mother and cousins, of course.”

  “She lives alone, I understand.”

  “But I have seven brothers and sisters, Inspector. Half of them live in England. She has company much of the year. Twice since I went to the States she’s come over to New York to stay with my sister Agnes.”

  “And your father.”

  “Dead. Five years now.” O’Connor’s face was impassive. McGarr couldn’t read an emotion in it.

  SEVEN

  Ducks, Sour Tea, Poteen, and Gelly

  THEY STOPPED at a large roadside restaurant. The parking lot was crammed with cars. Inside, they were lucky to find an unreserved table that had just been cleared.

  Once the building had been a common roadside pub, and the new owner had taken every care to preserve the exposed ceiling beams, limed walls, tall hearth, and fireplace of gray stone while providing his guests with modern amenities such as indirect lighting, central heating for the winter, and comfortable chairs. The tables were covered with spanking white linen. The simple good taste of the restaurant cheered McGarr—so many new restaurants in Ireland tried too hard to be modern or Continental—until he saw the menu.

  Here he was within sound of the sea along a coast so singularly well provided with fish that the Russians and Japanese sent whole navies to exploit the resource, and only fillet of sole was offered. More than any other fish McGarr had ever tasted, sole did not take kindly to having been frozen. The rest of the menu was standard Continental dishes that were now usually bad, even at their points of origin, where the youngest and as yet unjaded chefs early learned to shudder at their mention: Cassoulet Toulousain, Kasseler Ribchin, Sauerbraten und Kartoffelkloss, Pork Chops Robert, Chicken Kiev, Côte d’Agneau, and Vitello Arrosto. McGarr asked the waiter if the sole had been frozen. He said no, but McGarr disbelieved him and thus ordered the soup de jour—onion—and found it undistinguished. It was thick. The gratinée was a rubbery Emmenthaler and not Gruyère.

  While sipping this, McGarr watched the women who assisted the waiter in carrying appetizers to neighboring tables: the inevitable paté maison either canned or, McGarr guessed unfairly, a pork liver concoction with freeze-dried truffles; prawn cocktail swimming in some red sauce; clams casino, and a melon that hadn’t seen anything but the inside of a refrigerator for the last month.

  When McGarr asked the waiter if roast beef was offered, he received a peremptory reply that such fare was offered in the barroom.

  O’Connor said, “That’s for me. I’ve seen this menu maybe a thousand times before.”

  “You’ve eaten here?” Noreen asked.

  “Never been here in my life.” O’Connor was adjusting the belt of his pants. It was thick, with a silver buckle and a large turquoise stone in the center. The cowboy gesture of stuffing his shirt down his pants seemed out of place in that setting. People at other tables turned to look at the large young man. Eyebrows were being raised. He then pulled his fisherman’s knit sweater over his belt. It was the sort only New Yorkers now wore. Otherwise he was wearing jeans and black cowboy boots with green cacti and bright red pears embossed on the sides. “Thousands of pretentious joints like this all over Manhattan,” he said loud enough for the waiter and most of the guests t
o hear. He then ambled out to the bar. He soon returned with a slab of roast beef and two pints of lager. The waiter said not a word to O’Connor.

  Noreen ordered veal.

  McGarr sighed and said, “I had wanted fish,” and waved the waiter off when he tried to point out the sole. McGarr nearly got his first wish, however. He ordered the Côte d’Agneau, which tasted like fish.

  When the three of them climbed back in the car, he said to Noreen, “You know, good cooking has nothing to do with sauces and oils and expensive, complicated preparations. Good cooking should enhance the individual flavors of the materials the chef is working with. For instance, lamb has an exquisite and delicate flavor all its own, and anything applied to it that takes from that flavor is a mistake.”

  Noreen didn’t say anything, though she knew he expected a reply. After a while she said, “Well, the atmosphere was pleasant.”

  “Ah. Even the waiter was a loss. He was trying to be snide, without knowing how.” McGarr was feeling grumpy. He was still hungry, too. “How was your entree?”

  “Tasted like duck.”

  “That’s it! I thought my lamb tasted like fish. I was wrong. It tasted like duck.”

  “At least they could have served us a trencher of candied cherries.”

  McGarr laughed. “The sempiternal bing cherry! The necessary item in the creation of an unabashedly third-rate restaurant. How was the roast beef, Rory?”

  O’Connor removed a fat cigar from his mouth. The back seat of the little car was a cloud of fine blue smoke. “Quack, quack.”

  McGarr chuckled. His mood had changed.

  A half hour later they arrived in the vicinity of the dance hall in Salthill. They knew they were there because for at least a half mile both sides of the highway were solid with parked cars and both lanes were jammed. Young boys with pocket torches were directing cars into the driveways and onto the lawns of their families’ bungalows for fifty pence. McGarr quickly tired of waiting in traffic and swung through a gate, around a garage, and under a clothesline.