The Death of Love (31 page)

Harney straightened up in the chair and pulled the cigar from his mouth. “It occurred to me immediately, you see—why was the vehicle not searched? And in it both the rifle and the dead man he had been secretly treating and he hoped the Gardai would mistake for himself, after he drove the Land Rover over a cliff.”

McGarr knew why. As a local and a medical doctor, Gladden was probably known to the Guards who had been assigned that end of the village. He might have told them that the man was sleeping or had been sedated, and he was only waiting for the bridge to be cleared so he could drive him back to his house in Waterville or some other place to the west.

Harney stood and began pacing. “No—your command was—is—the Murder Squad. Also, you had earlier conferred with the taosieach who had advised you
not
to has
sle the poor demented Dr. Gladden. My own son was a witness to that. In retrospect, it was a mistake on O’Duffy’s part—one of the few in his illustrious career, which is unparalleled in modern Irish history—but certainly it wasn’t
your
mistake. You didn’t take Gladden in for assaulting you because his arrest would have provided him the—”

“Forum,” McGarr supplied.

“—that he so desperately desired. The note cards? Well”—he turned to McGarr—“the reason you didn’t turn them over is there
were
none. They got destroyed in your wife’s car, the one Gladden fired at. From then on it was nothing but a brilliant, brave, and selfless ruse designed to lure Gladden back to Dublin, which worked. You had to lead Farrell and the government and the press and the people on, even to filling those three plastic sacks with the blank note cards from Shane’s father’s chemist shop and carrying them with you to Rathmines.”

Again Harney examined the cigar. “Did I give you one of these, Peter? They’re grand and help a fella muse and speculate.” Out of his jacket he pulled a fistful of cigars that he placed on the bedside table. From the bottle he topped up both glasses and drank off his own in a swallow.

“What we
would
have to know, however, is that the cards—
all
copies—are destroyed. Utterly.”

But then, thought McGarr, he’d only have Harney’s word that the “government,” as it were, would fulfill its side of the—was it?—bargain.

“There’d be hell to pay, if they ever came back to haunt us.” Harney reached for his hat and topcoat. “Well, now—I’ll let you think on the matter. I must be off. You can reach me anytime through the
Spectator
. Just tell them who you are, and somebody will get back to you with a place we can meet.”

Harney began stepping toward the door but turned back. “Did I ask you how old you are? Fifty-one, I’d hazard. Four years from retirement, if you choose. Think of it, four years as commissioner and then on to something else, like the Dail. Given the publicity and how you bagged Gladden,
you’ll be a lifelong hero and simply unbeatable from wherever you choose to stand for election.

“Wife leave that?” he asked without pause, pointing to the plastic tote sack against the wall.

McGarr nodded.

“Can I ask what’s in it?”

“A photocopy of Paddy Power’s note cards.”

Harney’s body rocked; he had guessed right. A puff of fine blue smoke sailed from the cigar. He blinked. “Can I…take it with me?”

McGarr shook his head.

Harney considered the sack further. “Why not?”

“Because there are things in those cards that you weren’t meant to see.”

“Meant by a dead man.”

McGarr nodded. “Think if they were your cards.”

“But I’d be dead and what would it matter? To me.”

McGarr said nothing.

“Tell me now—I wasn’t meant to see them, but you were?”

“No, but I did in the course of an investigation.”

“And that makes you arbiter of who should and shouldn’t see them? You’ve arrogated that right to yourself and yourself alone.”

McGarr cocked his head. “It’s not as if I asked or was appointed. Another way to look at it is—Paddy Power never intended
anybody
to see them in their present form. Many of the cards are his most private thoughts, filled with confessions and confidences and the like.”

“Which are safe with you?”

“I don’t own a newspaper,”
or have a son who wishes to be taosieach
, he did not add. “Thanks for the bottle and the smokes, which are much appreciated.”

Harney’s eyes were fixed on the sack, which, used effectively, could be a potent weapon in his political arsenal. He then glanced at McGarr in the bed in his bandages.

“The door is behind you, sir. Why spoil an otherwise-pleasant visit?” When Harney still did not move, McGarr laboriously pulled back the covers. There, resting on his stomach, was his Walther, which collected Harney’s eyes.

“What—you’d shoot me?”

“Think of it this way. We’re already in a hospital, and you’ll probably not die, though my aim won’t be perfect.”

“Don’t you have the original cards and another copy?” Harney had been speaking to somebody—Frost, McGarr bet.

He said nothing.

“Haven’t you understood what we’ve just been discussing? It’s your future, man. These cards will either make you or break you.” Harney’s tone was now stern. “There is no third course.”

McGarr could think of several, including mailing the originals to a rival and uncommitted newspaper, though that would be as wrong as allowing Harney to walk out with the photocopy. “I appreciate the…
counseling
, is it?”

Wrinkles furrowed Harney’s brow. “You wouldn’t shoot me.”

McGarr’s hands moved toward the Walther. He worked the slide, then pointed the barrel at the sack. “As I was saying, thank you for the chat, the bottle, and the cigars. They’ll warm my afternoon.”

The muscle in Harney’s jaw tensed, as he bit down on the cigar, which puffed. He turned for the door. “I can hardly believe it! The son of a bitch would have shot me from his
hospital
bed!” He chuckled. “Now
there’s
a hard man for you. I only hope he can dial my number as easily.” At the door Harney stopped and winked. “Still friends?”

“Is it here we sing ‘It’s All in the Game’?”

Harney began laughing. It was the same rich, deep, contagious laugh that he had entered with.

The moment the door closed, McGarr made a phone call, then began the painful process of easing himself out of bed and into his clothes. At the closet he managed to fit his legs into his trousers and to slip on his shoes if not his socks. Somehow he got shirt, suit coat, and mac slipped over his shoulders, and the last garment buttoned to the chest. His hat, which he needed if only for anonymity, he put on by placing it on the back of a chair, then sitting in the chair and easing the fedora over his brow.

With the Parknasilla sack in hand, he waited until the
hallway was nearly empty of nurses, then made his break for the service stairs. A sizable group of reporters had gathered in the lobby of the hospital, but a Garda public-affairs official was speaking to them, and McGarr, walking beside a nurse who was pushing an invalid in a wheelchair, managed to make the street unseen.

There, he found a cab. Rummaging through the Parknasilla sack to make certain it contained the complete photocopy of Power’s notes, he also discovered Noreen’s voice-activated tape recorder. On it was a note that had been attached by the cord of an earplug. Written in her neat script, it said, “Cued to Frost/Osbourne exchange. Fast-Forward to beep, then Play.”

McGarr unwrapped the cord, placed the plug in his ear, and sat back and listened.

Passing Dublin Castle, where his office was located, he glanced up and was struck by how worn and dirty the place looked. Something should be done about it, but when and by whom? With staff and budget cutbacks there was no time and no money, and then nobody, not even he, really, cared for more than the few moments it took to consider some more pressing matter. Like O’Duffy, Sneem, and Gladden. Or Paddy Power and Gretta Osbourne. And the debt and who got what. And Harry Harney and son.

It was institutional plaque, he decided. A kind of governmental arteriosclerosis in which facts and figures just got lost or were vaguely and transiently remembered. Things happened and got lost. Detail piled upon detail, and particular facts, such as those in Paddy Power’s note cards and McGarr’s own files, really didn’t matter.

He studied the statue of Justice that topped the main entrance gate. He hoped the jingle that was known in the last century no longer applied, at least to him. “Statue of Justice, mark well her station/,” the lyric went, “Her face to the Castle, her back to the nation.”

THE SKY HAD turned leaden again, and wide flakes of wet snow were landing with the delicacy of holy wafers on the windscreen. Outside in the street, however, the slush reminded McGarr that he was not wearing socks, and he shuffled as quickly as his open shoes and strapped arms would allow toward the warm yellow lights of Hogan’s, a turn-of-the-century, center-city pub.

In spite of her father’s death, Bresnahan was at the bar, a drink in front of her. Wearing some tight wrap of stylish, somber wool, she was staring down at her glass. Even sitting on a tall barstool, her long, shapely legs reached the floor; twined, they had become objects of momentary adoration, whenever a sip permitted eyes to view beyond the lip of a glass.

McGarr placed his plastic sack on the bar and waited for her to raise her head.

“Chief,” she said. “I was told you’d be coming.”

McGarr’s eyes flickered toward the snugs.

“Bernie’s already here. He’s in back now,” she went on bravely. “Hogan gave him the carton with the original note cards and the Nell Power copies.” There was a pause, while her gray eyes, which were brimming with tears, met his, then dropped to the sack. “Another copy?”

“My own kind of insurance.”

“Did you see the article in the
Cork Examiner?
I didn’t think anybody could possibly support anything about Mos
sie Gladden now, but there they are, saying if the cards had been made public, maybe Gladden wouldn’t have been moved to do what he did.”

“Busy fingers.” He meant that somebody down at the
Cork Examiner
had had some space to fill, but it showed how everything that had happened in Sneem would be played over and over in the media. McGarr waited until she glanced at him again. “You don’t have to be here.”

“Nor do you, Chief. But you are. And it’s only right that I should deliver this in person.” Across the top of the bar she slid a typewritten sheet of paper, which McGarr scanned. It was her resignation.

“But don’t you want to wait a bit to see how you feel in a couple of days, a week, a month even? I’m no longer in charge, as you know, but I’m sure Liam—”

But Bresnahan was shaking her head. “The funeral’s on Tuesday, and I have my mother to look after. I’m just in town to pick up a few things. Sorry about the phone, Chief. When we got cut off, I thought it was just a malfunction. It never occurred to me that—”

“How could you have known? And you had so much else on your mind. I hope that’s not what this is all about.” He shoved the resignation toward her, as though to have her take it back. When she did not, he went on, “We’re all very sorry about your father. If there’s anything we can do—”

She shook her head and looked up at the windows, her gray eyes bright with tears. “Even he knew it was coming, and he left the farm and my mother in good shape. She’ll not want for much.”

“And you plan to do what?
Live
there?”

She nodded, and a single tear rolled down the creamy skin of her face. Somehow McGarr just didn’t see her back on a farm in Kerry; she had grown beyond that and would be lost without Dublin.

“Heard from Hughie?”

She nodded. “They’ll be letting him out of the hospital today. In Limerick. His left leg is in a cast, but otherwise he says he’ll be fine.”

“Going down to fetch him?”

She shook her head and began digging in the purse for
a hankie. Tears were flowing freely now. “I don’t know. Rory O’Suilleabhain?” she asked. “He’s simply beside himself, asking me to marry him. I know it’s just the losses—his mother and my father—and him grieving, but he’s the fella from the next farm, and the local T.D….?” She glanced up at McGarr, her eyes defiant, as if challenging him to tell her she was wrong. “He’s not much, and Rory plans to stand for the seat. He’ll win.” She sighed. “I don’t know. Maybe I’ll be seeing you again.” She blotted her eyes, then stood and turned, as if she would simply walk away.

“Whoa! Wait a minute. Sit down for a moment.” McGarr waited until she had and looked up at him. “Tell me this now, do you love this Rory O’Suilleabhain?”

She shook her head. Tears were running freely now, and she began blowing her nose.

“What about Hughie?”

“I don’t
know
,” she said through honks.

McGarr palmed up her resignation and stuffed it into the pocket of his coat. “Do me a favor, Rut’ie? I’ve got to make a phone call. Carry that into the snug. I don’t want it hanging about.” He meant the plastic sack with the photocopies of Power’s notes.

“But aren’t you going to decide what to do with them?”

McGarr nodded. It was not his way to give advice, especially to friends, but maybe if she understood exactly what she would be missing…Power’s cards were nothing if not fascinating to somebody such as she, who would know the players by name and reputation.

On the other hand, there was the ambitious Rory O’Suilleabhain to consider. Did McGarr trust her not to tell him? Why not? Without the originals the information contained in them was merely rumor and innuendo, which had been Gladden’s dilemma.

And finally, the cards would get her mind off her father and…decisions. Hughie Ward was, after all, McGarr’s protégé, and anything he could do to advance Ward’s interests, he would. “Care for a peek?”

Like a racehorse, Bresnahan’s handsome head came up. “You’re joking.”

“I’m not. You know where the private snug is? The barman will buzz you through.”

An hour passed, then two. And three. From Hogan’s office, McGarr kept trying to phone Ward in Limerick, but all lines were continually in use. McGarr was tempted to say it was a police emergency, but—if the operator checked—it might give away both where McGarr was and the fact that he had something for Ward.

When finally McGarr entered the snug, he found Bresnahan with her legs stretched across the tiny room toward a coal fire that was glowing in the hearth. She was looking into the bottom of an empty glass.

McKeon had out his Colt Python, which he appeared to be cleaning.

O’Shaughnessy was still reading a last inch or two of cards, holding them away from his eyes at an odd angle.

McGarr set fresh glasses before each, and they waited for the older man to finish. Beyond the lathed and carved wood of the snug, beyond the leaded-glass window above it that pictured a rose, a shamrock, and a brimming pint of Guinness, McGarr listened to the city—the groan and wheeze of a bus braking, steps on the footpath, bells from the Castle, which was just up the street—and thought how it was just another moment in the lives of perhaps every other Dubliner within hearing of Hogan’s, but a crucial time in the lives of the four people gathered in the snug. Five counting Ward, who was not present.

Finally O’Shaughnessy read the last card. He then squared and banded that group and dropped it into the sack with
M.J.P. FROST, CHEMIST, SNEEM, CO. KERRY
on the side. Looking up, he said, “I don’t know exactly when it happened—sometime in the sixties with people like O’Duffy and the debt and all—but a massive—” He paused, as though groping for a word.

“Recrudescence,” Bresnahan supplied.

“Exactly, Ruthie. A massive recrudescence set in. The government discovered it could lie to the people and nobody seemed to care. And since it could lie, why not steal too, which they did, if Power can be believed.

“Then everything went haywire. The murder rate, as we
know, and drugs, and all the problems in the North. I hate to say this, but in many ways Gladden was right with all his blather about creditors being predators and returning to ancient values that were cherished by our race and forgetting about the rest of the world.”

O’Shaughnessy sighed and reached for a fresh drink on the tray on the table that separated them. “Maybe all this should be exposed and made public, but it would make me feel dirty to be Irish. Nobody wants to hear this about their leaders—all the dirty dealing, the graft, and corruption of public trust. Even their personal indiscretions and sordid affairs. Especially not now with the papers making O’Duffy out to be another Kennedy or a De Valera.”

He took a sip and added, “But, you know, it
should
be told. All of it. Which is the only way things will ever get any better.”

Said McKeon, “Who are we to censor history? What was done was done and should be exposed. Let the guilty be punished.”

There was the word again, thought McGarr. Guilt, which loomed so large in Irish life, private and public. But guilty of what? The accusations of a dead man? He wondered how much of what was alleged could actually be proven in court. And what damage any attempt to do so would cause.

No, the allegations contained in Paddy Power’s note cards, were they to be mailed, say, to each of Dublin’s four newspapers, would then be tried in the court of public opinion, which was the least fair that McGarr knew. Every word of the note cards would be considered truth, and all parties mentioned painted with the same brush. “Rut’ie?” he asked.

She was now looking down into her new drink, turning it this way and that, letting the curtain of amber fluid flow down the bevel of the squat cocktail glass. “In moral terms, it’s a genuine dilemma, is it not? As the sergeant has just said—”

“Bernie,” McKeon suggested. She was part of them now, and no matter what she decided in regard to her career, her relationship to the three men in the snug had def
initely changed. Whatever decision they made there would bind them for life.

“—as Bernie has just said, who are we to censor history? But I suppose the more basic question is, who are we?” She glanced up at McGarr, who nodded to say she should go on. “We’re the police, who deal in facts that are provable in a court of law. How many suspects have we brought in whom
we
knew were guilty, but we just didn’t have the proof? And how many others have we brought to court
thinking
we had proof, only to have it dismissed or derogated or thrown out for one thing or another?

“If we’re now judging the value of the evidence before us, I’d say what we have mainly is smoke and shadow and not much more. Some of the allegations about who got what from the government for which considerations
might
be proven, but we don’t even know if laws were broken. Or at least I don’t, my brief having been murder during my tenure.

“Power’s main contention seems to be that the way the borrowed debt money was divided up and how it will be paid back is unfair. Well—that’s what the Dail is for, to dispense fairness. Often it seems to fail, but it’s the highest and best court we have, and we have to live with its shortcomings.

“Which still leaves us here with the moral dilemma—who are we to judge these cards and what should be done with them? Though we must.”

Or, rather, McGarr must. Three pair of eyes turned to him, and he explained the deal that Harney had outlined earlier in his hospital room. “It makes the decision doubly difficult. I wouldn’t want Harney to think I truckled and went along with the easy and self-interested choice.”

“Ah, the hell with Harney,” said McKeon, who was obviously tiring of the chat. “Let him and them think what he will. This country has already made all the martyrs it will ever need. Consider the job they’ve done on you already. You couldn’t resign now, if you chose, with all their allegations flying about. Half the public would think you were a party to O’Duffy’s assassination and the other half that you were the author of a cover-up.

“As long as the cards don’t fall into Harney’s hands,
we’ve done the country a favor, and if you can help yourself into the bargain, all the better.”

Said O’Shaughnessy, “Remember, now—it’s not just yourself anymore. You’ve got a wife and child to think of.”

“Here—gimme the feckin’ t’ings, I’ll show you what we should do with them.” McKeon reached into the shadows of the floor, picked up the sack of original note cards, and dumped them on the coal fire.

Bresnahan’s head snapped to McGarr. “Is that what you want, Chief? Perhaps we should keep a copy and release it—”

“After the prominent figures are dead?”

She nodded. “For the sake of history.”

McGarr had thought of that, but, he imagined, some one or other of the O’Duffy/Harney inner circle would take care of history in the way that Power had intended. And McGarr did not wish his own death be remembered primarily as the occasion of the destruction of some other persons’ reputations. “Did you ever think that releasing the cards at any time would play right into Gladden’s hands? In an oblique way it would provide a reason for what he did at the bridge.”

Obviously she had not. She looked away at the fire. “When there can be none.”

Both O’Shaughnessy and McKeon nodded.

A few of the cards had begun burning immediately.

McGarr stood. “While you’re about the rest, I’ve a phone call to make. But, mind—what just happened here is between ourselves alone.”

“
Sinn Fein
,” McKeon chortled. From between his teeth he sprayed whisky that showered the smoldering mound of note cards and burst into bright flame. “We need more accelerant here. Tell Hogan, more! Rounds and rounds!” He began laughing, flicking sheet after sheet of the photocopies onto the fire until the hearth was filled with the acrid rainbow flame of photosensitive paper.

When Harry Harney finally rang back, McGarr said, “I’ll watch with interest your rehabilitation of my good
name. If all goes according to our conversation this morning, you’ll get your wish.”

“But how will I know you’ve destroyed them?”

“You’ll just have to take my word.”

“Which is good.”

As was my name before I got involved with the likes of you, thought McGarr. “Some other things—” He now thought of Ward and Bresnahan and Rory O’Suilleabhain, who would soon be a T.D. He did not want to interfere, but at the same time he took care of his own, when he could, and he would not see Ward eclipsed by some culchie farmer with dung on his boots. “I want a special commendation for Hugh Ward.”

Harney grunted.

“Also, I’d like him named acting chief superintendent of the Murder Squad. In my absence.”