Irish Gilt (9 page)

He moved so she could squeeze in next to him at the bar. He offered her a cigarette. “I seem to remember you smoke.”

“Where there's fire,” she said, and dipped toward the lighter. She hadn't smoked for months, and when she inhaled she nearly passed out.

“Why don't you sit on this stool.”

“I'm no mountain climber.”

He picked her up and set her on the stool as if she were light as a feather. She nearly dropped her cigarette, she was so surprised. His face was only inches from hers when he lifted her. She wouldn't mind getting him into a phone booth.

“Do you ever see Bernice?” he asked.

“Oh, no, you don't. I'm not going to sit here and listen to you talk about your ex-wife.”

He shook his head. “The divorce doesn't mean a thing. I'm Catholic.”

Weren't they all? But Marjorie's bigotry was seeping away. Hadn't Bernice said Ricardo was from Argentina? Marjorie wasn't sure where that was, exactly, but it was definitely way south of the Rio Grande. There was also the cheery thought that here she was, having a drink with Bernice's former husband, whatever he thought, while Bernice was mooning over some middle-aged man.

“I have to tell you I was always jealous of Bernice,” Marjorie said.

“I thought we weren't going to talk about her.”

“I'm talking about you.”

He ordered a hamburger, but Marjorie wasn't hungry. “I'll just nibble on your french fries,” she said, giving him a sultry look.

Hours later, after four beers, he got sentimental and wanted to talk about little Henry. “You poor guy,” Marjorie said, putting her arm over his shoulders. She was feeling pretty sentimental herself. But then he was back on Bernice.

“There's another guy,” he said angrily.

“There always is.”

“Not when the woman is my wife!”

They were back to square one. Not that Marjorie would call it wasted time. They left separately; he seemed not to catch her hint that he might follow her to her place. Even so, it was a pleasant evening. Maybe she could tell Bernice that now Ricardo was stalking her.

18

Larry Douglas had been taken on by Notre Dame campus security, thus fulfilling his ambition to get a job on campus. Growing up in South Bend made it impossible not to be aware of the university on the north edge of town. Even if he could have afforded it, Larry was no student. Still, he felt more part of the university than any student could. They were there, what, four years, and then sayonara. Larry's memories of Notre Dame went back to childhood. He had gone over the fence of the golf course and learned the game with one eye out for the ranger. He had sold programs at football games, which was as good as having a ticket. And he had hung around the campus, feeding the ducks down by the lake, walking around the paths, kicking a ball around the soccer fields, a lonely figure on the deserted summer campus. He had put in an application as soon as he graduated from high school, and now, finally, he had been hired.

There are rungs on the ladder of campus security, and Larry was on the lowest. He wore a uniform and a weirdo plastic helmet and pedaled around the campus on a bike giving out parking tickets. Oh well, it was a beginning. The nice thing about tickets was that there was no quota, and who was to say when a lot or a few violations took place? This gave Larry the sense that, low as he was on the totem pole of security, he was his own boss. Wrote his own ticket, you might say. Meanwhile, Laura had been put behind a counter in the old building across from Rockne where security was housed until the new building was ready. Laura was bored skinny.

“I told you,” Larry said.

“What did you tell me?”

“Okay, you forgot.”

You could say Laura was his girl, though that didn't mean much. When he dreamed of women, Laura didn't enter the picture. There was a lot of her, and she could have used the exercise on the bicycle. Larry thought she had actually gained weight since that day they'd both been hired. The weight and the tattoo put Larry off.

He was no prize, he knew that, but he took care of himself, and he sure as hell didn't have a tattoo on his rear end.

He had been startled when she showed it to him. He danced away. “I'll call a cop.”

“I thought you were one.” She dug him in the ribs.

The great thing in Laura's favor was that she was affectionate. When they sat for hours in his car at night he felt that she had a wrestler's hold on him, and she groaned a lot, but what the heck, women are different from men. Larry's fear was that Laura would wrestle him up the aisle, and then his life would really settle into a rut.

His great secret was that he liked poetry. What had hooked him at first? Maybe the verse on a birthday card when he was nine, but then he looked into the
Golden Treasury of Poetry
his mother had had since she was a kid. She let Larry have it, and it became his bedside book. Most of the poems were pretty hard to follow, but some were as easy as a greeting card. Like Emily Dickinson. Larry loved Emily Dickinson. He studied the little photograph of her in the back of the book and couldn't figure her out. She seemed to be wearing a First Communion dress, but she was too old for that.

It was Monday morning when Larry emerged from the headquarters of campus security. Laura was already behind the desk, complaining about this and that. Larry didn't put on his helmet until he was outside. He felt like a damned fool wearing the thing, or an alien in
Star Wars
. He threw his leg over the bike and pushed off, heading toward the lake.

Spring just couldn't make up its mind to put in an appearance. It was an overcast day, and there was enough of a wind to make riding a bike twice the work. On the lake, mean-looking waves tumbled the ducks around. Larry went zigzagging along the road to the firehouse, then took a right. The cars in the crescent next to Flanner belonged to people who worked in the North Dining Hall. He could have ticketed them all, but what the heck. He took the sidewalk past the entrance of Flanner and then braked when he came to an area where benches faced one another. A man was sitting there.

Larry touched his helmet in salute, but there was no response from the man. He just sat there, staring straight ahead.

“You feeling all right?” Larry asked. He straddled the bike, his feet on the ground. Still nothing. He leaned down and waved, but the man just kept staring. His radio crackled, and he could hear Laura talking to someone.

“Hey,” Larry cried, but still the man didn't budge.

Irked now, Larry put down the kickstand of his bike and went over to the bench. He laid a hand on the man's shoulder, and the fellow just tipped to the side, lying down on the bench. Larry put his hand on the man's forehead. It was ice cold. His first impulse was to get the hell out of there, but then he remembered he was campus security. He plucked his radio from his belt and called in to Laura.

“Laura,” he began, and his voice sounded like a kid's. He cleared his throat. “Laura, this is Larry. There's a dead man on a bench in front of Grace.”

“Ha ha.”

“Damn it. I'm serious. Do something, will you?”

“What?'

“Send someone over here. Right now!”

He signed off and then stood there as if he were on sentry duty, waiting for reinforcements. The guy was middle-aged. A professor? Larry's great fear was that someone would come along before Laura got word to a cruiser. It didn't make any sense, but Larry felt responsible for the dead guy. He just didn't want to look at him.

PART TWO

G
OLD
L
EAF

1

Any possibility of tension and rivalry between Notre Dame security and the South Bend police department was lessened by the fact that a good many members of the former had put in their time and retired from the latter. Double dippers. Their pension and their Notre Dame salary. But it was Crenshaw, who had served his time on the Elkhart force, who was there at the bench to meet the contingent from downtown. Jimmy Stewart from homicide was in charge. He acknowledged Crenshaw's greeting, but he was already taking in the scene. It was now 8:20
A.M
. He looked around.

“What is it, a holiday?”

“How do you mean?”

“Where is everybody?”

“Oh, it's still early here. Things don't begin until maybe nine.”

Jimmy shook his head and turned to the bench. The 911 wagon had rolled right across the lawn to the bench where the body was, and the coroner's assistant, Feeney, had just officially pronounced the dead man dead.

“What of?” Stewart asked.

“I'm not sure.”

“Take a guess.”

“A heart attack?”

Jimmy Stewart groaned. A heart attack! Then what the hell was South Bend homicide doing on the scene? Crenshaw seemed to be avoiding his eyes.

“Who's Flash Gordon?” Jimmy asked him.

“Who?”

Jimmy indicated the young guy straddling the bike and wearing a futuristic helmet.

“He found the body,” Crenshaw said. “Hey. Douglas. Come here.”

Not only did the kid have to wear that silly helmet, he wore wraparound sunglasses, too, a precaution in case the sun ever put in an appearance. Douglas saluted when he came up to Stewart and Crenshaw. Because of the glasses, it was hard to tell if the kid was smarting off.

“He's new,” Crenshaw explained.

“You found the body?” Stewart asked.

“Yes, sir.”

“Tell him everything you know,” Crenshaw ordered.

It wasn't much of a choice, but Jimmy would take the kid over Crenshaw any day. He took his sleeve and led him away from the activity around the bench. Crenshaw got the hint and didn't follow. Jimmy got out his cigarettes and lit up.

“This is a smoke-free campus,” the kid said, but he grinned.

“I forgot to bring my sunglasses,” Jimmy said.

The kid took off the wraparounds. He looked even younger.

“When did you start working here?”

“This is my second week.”

And this was Monday.

“Was he lying on his side like that?”

“No, he was sitting up straight. When he didn't answer, I only touched his shoulder, and he tipped onto his side.”

“He hasn't moved since?”

“No.”

A nice kid. Maybe not too smart, but nice. “You like the job?”

“Not this morning.”

“Well, there shouldn't be too much of this.” Jimmy flipped his cigarette in a high arc into a shrub.

“Three-pointer,” the kid said.

Feeney was still checking out the body. If coroners wore helmets like the kid's, you could pick them out of a crowd. Of course, Feeney's shaved head was helmet enough. Once he started to lose his hair he had decided to take baldness by storm, making a preemptive strike with his razor. He stood up, his head white as a mushroom, and looked around. When he saw Jimmy he hurried over.

“It wasn't a heart attack.”

Jimmy just waited.

“I mean it wasn't just a heart attack. Come on, I'll show you.”

Feeney talked all the way to the body. Everyone was freeze-framed because of what Feeney had found. The dead man was now in a seated position. Feeney put a finger on the shirt collar, pulled it down, and invited Jimmy to inspect the bruise marks on his throat.

“Geez! I never noticed those.” It was Douglas, the space cadet.

“I missed it myself at first,” Feeney said.

Stewart went through the pockets. There was nothing but lint to be found. No ID. So who was the dead man? He was carted off to the morgue as John Doe. His clothes would be checked out for an indication of who he was, but that would take time. Jimmy could have put the body completely out of his mind, consigning the matter to the routine work of underlings, if it weren't for those bruise marks and the fact that the man had apparently been killed on the campus of Notre Dame. Later, he did make a call to Feeney to make sure that the bruises meant the man had been strangled.

“Not necessarily,” Feeney said.

“Yeah?”

“That young man on campus security found a plastic bag in a trash receptacle not far from the body. The kind shirts come back from the dry cleaners in. I'll have tests run on it.”

2

The version of these events that became official in Notre Dame security was due to Crenshaw, who had left the scene early and found the circumstances of the death similar to several instances in the past. Some homeless guy wanders onto the campus and is found frozen to death the following morning.

“In April?”

“The point is, he doesn't belong here, but anyone can walk onto the campus. He settles on a bench and bingo, the big one.”

“A heart attack?”

“Isn't that what the coroner thought, Douglas?”

“Before he found the marks on his neck.”

“What marks?”

“And there's also the plastic bag I found in a trash receptacle.”

“No one mentioned that stuff to me. They're pulling your leg, kid.”

The kid went outside, put his leg over his bike, adjusted his helmet, and rode away.

*   *   *

Phil Knight hadn't golfed since January in Florida, and he wanted to limber up. He arranged to meet Jimmy Stewart at a driving range on 31, nearly to Niles, but he had already hit a couple of buckets of balls before Jimmy showed up. So he took a breather. Watching Jimmy, he might have told him what was wrong with his swing, but friends let friends drive in peace. On the way back, they stopped for a beer.

“You hear about the body on campus, Phil?”

“There are roughly ten thousand bodies on campus.”

“The dead one.”

“When?”

“This morning.”

Jimmy told Phil most of it.

“Why was homicide there?”

Jimmy told him of the marks on the guy's neck and the plastic bag. “The coroner calls it an assisted heart attack.”