Irish Gilt (10 page)

“Who was he?”

Jimmy shrugged. “We're working on it. All his pockets were empty.”

“And there were marks on his neck. Marks like bruises?”

“Feeney.”

“Ah.”

“Another?”

Phil shook his head. “Got to go.” No need to tell Jimmy about the phone call from Boris Henry.

“You want to hire a detective to find a diary?” he had said when Boris Henry explained why he was calling.

“Your brother can explain it to you. The diary is Father Zahm's!”

“Just a minute.”

Roger actually rose from his chair when Phil told him why Boris Henry was calling. That was enough for Phil. He went back to the phone.

“Are you at the Morris Inn?”

“Yes. Will you come here?”

“Tonight?”

A pause. “In the morning?”

“At the crack of dawn.”

“How about Monday? At eleven o'clock?” Henry's voice had become thoughtful, as if he were embarrassed by his earlier tone of panic.

Phil agreed and hung up.

Roger lumbered in from the study. “I'll come with you.”

“Monday morning. He thought about eleven.”

Roger was surprised. On Roger's face, expressions always had the look of primary colors. He stared at his brother. “Didn't he sound worried?”

“In a panic. At first. He calmed down.”

Roger thought about it. “I suppose there isn't much we could do tomorrow.”

We. Phil put his arm around Roger's shoulders. Well, around most of them. The Knight Brothers ride again.

*   *   *

When Phil got home from the driving range, Roger was at his computer. Father Carmody had called, and Phil dialed the priest's number.

“A body was found on campus early this morning, Phil.”

“I heard.”

“Who told you?”

“Jimmy Stewart.”

“In homicide?” The old priest's voice became more unoiled than usual when he said this.

“They seem to think he was strangled.”

There was a long pause. “Who was he?”

“John Doe. There was nothing in his pockets.”

“I don't like it. What else did Stewart say?”

Phil repeated the account he had been given.

Father Carmody said, “Campus security thinks he was a hobo who came onto campus in the night and died.”

“After emptying his pockets?”

“I don't like it.”

For Father Carmody, Notre Dame was a sacred place, and any threat of bad publicity bothered him. He asked Phil to keep in touch with Jimmy Stewart. “You will be liaison for the university on the usual terms.”

Phil agreed. Not that there seemed much danger of bad publicity. Whether or not he had been strangled, John Doe would doubtless be consigned to a pauper's grave and soon forgotten.

“Of course, I'll remember the man in my Mass,” Carmody said before hanging up.

Roger was the Catholic, not Phil, and Phil still hadn't gotten used to remarks like that. He went into the study. “We've got two cases.”

Roger seemed distracted while Phil told him the story. Phil held back the plastic bag until the end, his punch line, but Roger did not react.

Twenty minutes later, he came out of his study. “I just talked to Greg Walsh. If you'll take him to the morgue, he'll look at the body.”

“Does he know who it might be?”

“It's my hunch. Don't blame Greg if it draws a blank.”

*   *   *

Few people ever see the morgues in hospitals, let alone the county morgue, though the ultimate refrigerators await us all. Phil's career as a private investigator had involved him in a significant number of violent deaths; he had seen morgues here and there around the country, but different as they were, they all brought the same thought. How many people really believe that one day they will be dead? It was the kind of thought he could express to Roger and to practically no one else. Jimmy Stewart would think he was losing it. Roger just nodded in comprehension.

“Memento mori.”

“Gesundheit.”

“Monks used to keep a skull in their cell, as a reminder.”

“Where did they get it?”

“When conquering heroes paraded through Rome, someone kept whispering in their ear that they were mortal.”

“Cheery.”

“You brought it up, Phil.” For a moment, Phil thought his brother was going to talk to him about becoming a Catholic. Roger never did, though, and Phil didn't know whether he was relieved or resented it. Sometimes he thought he might raise the subject with Father Carmody.

“Do I pick Walsh up at the library?”

“He said he'd come here.”

“Just so he doesn't talk my ear off. You should come along, Roger.” Walsh could talk with Roger around.

“I intend to.”

Walsh sat in the back of the van with Roger. A swivel chair was rigged up there, large enough for Roger and giving him the advantages of a turret gunner. Of course, there was a computer within reach.

Phil called Boris Henry when they were under way. “It will have to be later than eleven.”

“Now see here…”

Phil passed the cell phone to Roger, who finally figured out how to use it. “Boris? Roger Knight. A body was found on campus this morning, and my brother and I have to run an errand concerning it. We will be with you as soon as possible.”

“Roger, we are talking about the diary of Father John Zahm.”

“I understand.”

“It is priceless.”

“Exactly. That is why nothing is going to happen to it.”

“Happen to it! It's been stolen.”

“I meant until we get it back.”

*   *   *

Phil stayed in Feeney's office while the assistant coroner took Roger and Greg Walsh into the depths. Feeney had given Phil his notes. Phil saw that he was putting the time of death six to eight hours before the discovery of the body. Say midnight. Phil wondered what he had been doing at midnight. Sleeping, that's what. Did he think that his life was connected with the dead man's? Maybe all human lives were connected. Phil shook the thought away. The morgue was exerting its usual effect.

When Roger and Greg returned with Feeney, John Doe was no longer John Doe.

“His name was Xavier Kittock,” Roger said, sparing Walsh the effort.

Kittock had been doing research in the archives for a couple of weeks. An alumnus. Father Carmody would be interested in knowing that. It would be surprising if he didn't remember the man from when he was a student.

From the morgue they went to Jimmy Stewart's office.

“He's been on campus for two weeks?” Stewart asked Walsh.

“Working in the archives.” It took a while for Walsh to get this out.

“So where was he staying?”

A rhetorical question. Jimmy was indicating that he had a lead of sorts. Phil dropped Walsh off at the library and continued home with Roger, where he got on the phone and called around to local motels. His sixth call was to the Jamison Inn.

“Would you like me to ring his room?”

“Yes.”

Phil waited. Had the guy been wearing a wedding ring? He hadn't noticed. He listened to the phone ringing in a room in the Jamison Inn, hoping it wouldn't be answered by a wife or someone. It wasn't. So he called Father Carmody.

“Class of '74,” Carmody said, after consulting the hard drive of his memory.

“You remember him?”

“He used to send me postcards when he was in the navy. He put in over twenty years.”

That was a bit of information Phil would pass on to Jimmy.

The doorbell rang, and Phil answered it.

“I'm Rebecca. Your brother called and asked me to come over.”

Phil remembered her, but it wasn't until Roger came out of his study and took the girl into a bear hug that Phil remembered that she was the niece of Xavier Kittock.

“I'm off to the Morris Inn, Roger.”

His brother nodded. “Of course.” There was a trace of regret in his voice.

3

In the University Club the old Bastards table was still occupied at 2:30, much to the chagrin of the staff, who wanted to get out of there for a few hours before the dinner rush. In the lobby, Pete Grande and Paul Conway were discussing club business. Debbie, the hostess, had learned about the identification of the body, and she brought the news to the table. They had ordered another round of drinks even though no one was sure he remembered the man.

“Those damned benches are a mixed blessing.” The benches, set along the campus walks at intervals, each bore a little plaque commemorating the donor. That made them a mixed blessing for Armitage Shanks.

“Listen, they are one innovation that is unequivocally good.”

“They make me feel like a guest,” Shanks complained.

A murmur around the round table. A major grievance with emeriti was that they soon became strangers on the campus where they had spent their careers. The lack of institutional memory was a recurrent theme.

“They should be dedicated to retired professors.”

“Some are.”

“They all should be!”

“You could sponsor one for yourself.”

“And have a fool for a client?”

“Don't be so hard on yourself.”

Debbie joined them, taking a chair. “Do you all intend to take your naps here? We want to get the place ready for tonight.”

Someone asked what members had their dinner here. The Old Bastards were day persons to a man.

“Lots of townies.”

Another groan. Opening club membership to local residents was another grievance. At the outset, the place had been called the Faculty Club.

Debbie asked if any of them had known the dead man. “He was an alumnus.”

“All alumni are mortal.”

“I may have had him in class,” Goucher said, and his milky eyes seemed to search the past.

“How many students do you remember by name?”

“You'd be surprised.”

“Indeed I would.”

With Shanks it was a point of honor not to remember the names of students. Let them remember him, that was his view. A professor in front of the class was a lot easier to remember than rows of students who changed every semester yet always seemed anonymously the same.

When Debbie stood and then remained beside the table, drinks were drained and chairs began to be pushed back. The old men were always docile with Debbie, and she in turn liked them, more or less. Once she had addressed the Old Bastards as “OB's” and was misunderstood. More than one embarked on a diet.

Goucher asked Debbie to give him his walker. He went first, of course, to ensure that the recessional would be prolonged.

“I suppose he'll be buried here,” Debbie said in the lobby.

“Welcome to the club.”

4

Rebecca listened to what Roger Knight told her about Uncle X, and her first thought was that she had to call her father. She felt more empty than sad, confused, and she couldn't cry. It had been kind of fun having X on campus. He had always been more of a rumor than a fact in the family, off in the navy to exotic places. And he never married. A girl in every port? She remembered the young woman she had seen at the Morris Inn with X. She had found it kind of funny that he denied knowing the woman. Imagine a grown man being that bashful. Or maybe he just didn't want Rebecca to think he was human. It was hard to imagine her uncle as a ladies' man, no matter the incident on the campus walk. Rebecca hadn't heard of that, so Roger told her.

“The woman was married?”

“Oh, I'm sure he was just being nice to her. She works in Grace.”

“But the man threatened him?”

Suddenly Rebecca saw the significance of this. Her eyes widened as she looked at Roger, but he didn't say what she was sure he was thinking.

“Phil will look into it,” he said instead.

“He was staying in the Jamison Inn?”

“Yes.”

“What was he writing?” Roger asked.

“Was he writing something?”

“Wasn't he doing research?”

Rebecca thought about it. She never did get a straight answer from him about what he was doing on campus. Research? What did that mean? It would have been more plausible if he had told her he was enrolling in graduate school. “It could have had to do with Notre Dame sports. He was a total fan.”

“Isn't everyone?”

“Are you?”

“Indirectly.” He meant his brother.

“I have to call my father.”

Roger pushed his phone toward her, rising from his special chair. He shuffled out of the room, and Rebecca sat for a moment. She actually had to think to remember her parents' phone number. Her mother answered.

“Mom? Beckie.” And then, like an idiot, she began to cry.

“What is it, sweetheart?”

“Uncle X. He's dead.”

“Oh my God.”

She managed to tell her mother what she knew. Her mother got her father on the line, and then the three of them talked.

“What exactly happened?” her father asked. He tried to sound brisk and businesslike, but there was the sound of her mother crying. Her little brother was dead.

“They found him this morning on a bench on campus.”

“On a bench?”

The story seemed to rob Uncle X of any dignity.

Then her father was making plans to fly to South Bend earlier than they had planned. “We'll both come,” her mother put in. They would leave the details of their travel plans on her answering machine, they said.

“Are you all right, Beckie?”

“Of course. I'm calling from Professor Knight's. He gave me the news.”

Her father said, “Let me talk to him.”

Rebecca went in search of Roger Knight and stayed in the living room while he went back to his study. She looked around at the bookshelves. There were bookshelves in every room, and his office in Brownson was four walls of books. Rebecca thought of all the things she didn't know. At the moment, she felt that she didn't know anything. Her uncle was dead, and that seemed to drain everything from her mind.