The Green Revolution (12 page)

The only living, breathing contact Parkman and the society had at Notre Dame was Father Carmody.

“You've done well, Frank.”

“Up to a point. What do
you
think of the course Notre Dame is on?”

“I like the tone of your letters. Most letters to the administration are pretty strident.”

“They haven't been answered.”

“Because they are a rebuke, but one administered softly and thus more effectively.”

“You think the administration knows they are going off the rails?”

“How could they not?”

“Surely you can influence them, Father.”

“That was truer in the past than in the present.”

“Any advice for us?”

“Keep it up. Think of the Berlin Wall. Think of the Soviet Union.”

Parkman had thought of them on the flight back to the Coast. Apparently insuperable obstacles removed, a highly organized empire collapsing like a house of cards. Vivid indeed, but were they applicable to a Catholic university rushing headlong toward secularization?

*   *   *

When the body of Ignatius Willis was found on the practice putting green next to Rockne Memorial, there were members of the society who regarded this as a godsend. Parkman calmed them down.

“That is a tragedy, of course. We would be better advised to pray for the repose of his soul. What does it have to do with our interest?”

His view carried the day, as it had in the case of the trustee Francis O'Toole. Many had argued that O'Toole was their best bet on the board, but Parkman had opposed it.

“Why, Frank?”

“He was the dumbest one in our class.”

“So why is he sitting on the board?”

“He has the Midas touch.”

“Who was that girl he married?”

Parkman remained silent. No one else could remember Mimi. Parkman felt almost unfaithful to Marie for the way he still felt about her.

8

Larry Douglas read Grafton's account of the murder of Ignatius Willis with the same sinking depression he had felt when Jimmy Stewart took Laura up to the first tee and the ball washer there, leaving Larry ignominiously behind, guarding the corpus delicti. For him, it was axiomatic that Laura was a poor excuse for a cop. Her presence on campus security could only be explained as an exercise in affirmative action. She stayed on the job just to be close to Larry; she had admitted as much. Once, for a golden moment, the lovely Kimberley in Feeney the coroner's office had been smitten by him. He had recited poetry to her sighing delight; he had given her a peek into the depths and intricacies of the Douglas psyche. Ah, frailty, thy name is woman. She had succumbed to the blandishments of Henry Grabowski, who whispered French and Latin in her ear. Henry had left campus security and gone on to a position as watchman at a posh gated village in the northern suburbs.

“What exactly do you do?”

“Essentially nothing.”

“Come on.”

“I have an office in the gatehouse, and a small apartment there as well. The job consists of my
being
here. I sleep most of the day and then at nightfall make rounds. I have a flashing light on top of my golf mobile.”

The pay, if you could believe Henry, always a matter of doubt, was half again as much as he had earned on campus security, and the benefits were incredibly generous.

“That is why I exercise maximum discretion in the matter of guests.”

His eyes widened in a significant way. Was he referring to Kimberley?

Laura had repossessed Larry with a vengeance after his slight detour down the primrose path of dalliance. She considered them engaged, a plausible interpretation of the ring he had bought her.

“It's a friendship ring,” he protested.

She dug him in the ribs. “Oh, you.”

He had mocked her when she laid plastic over footprints on the edge of the green. Philip Knight had shared his interpretation of the action, if crossed eyes mean anything. But Phil had helped convoy Laura up to the first tee—she had a little trouble with even the slightest of grades—and there they had found other footprints to match those that Laura had covered with plastic on the green. It was her hour of triumph. She had eclipsed him. She had even earned a mention in Grafton's story. “An investigator with campus security, Laura Loftus…” Investigator! But the lowest moment of all had come when she hinted that she had done what she had done at the suggestion of her partner, Larry Douglas.

Condescended to by Laura! He considered taking a few days off. He considered looking for another job, some cushy spot like the one Henry Grabowski had found. No. That was not the Larry Douglas way. The only way to get beyond this terrible moment was to eclipse Laura, to make it clear that it was Larry Douglas who had the instincts of a cop. He must get his thoughts back on the murder of Iggie Willis.

“That is an inference,” Feeney said. “What he died of was very likely self-applied.”

“So your judgment is suicide.”

Feeney was alarmed by so unequivocal an interpretation. “No, no. It goes the other way, too. Someone else might have poured all that liquor into him.”

“It's got to be one or the other.”

“That is not for me to decide. That is up to the police.”

Larry caught just a glimpse of the lovely Kimberley in the next office. He raised his voice. “You're right, Doctor. I'll get right on it.”

“I'm not deaf,” Feeney complained.

Before leaving, Larry strode to the door of Kimberley's office. She was not there.

*   *   *

“Suspects?” Jimmy Stewart asked. “As far as I'm concerned, we've got a suicide here. Probably inadvertent.”

“But the green towel,” Larry pleaded.

“There are always unexplained things, Larry. You've got to learn to live with it.”

“And the footprints?” It cost him much to bring this up.

“They don't mean anything as far as I can see.”

A lesser man would have embraced this dismissal, perhaps eliciting as well some negative comments on Laura's enthusiasm. “I don't know. It looks as if the man who took the towel from the washer brought it down to the putting green.”

“Did your girlfriend send you down here?”

“Girlfriend?”

“Okay, fiancée. When's the wedding?”

“Over my dead body.”

“How many do you need?”

*   *   *

Grafton wore his hat as he sat at his desk. He greeted Larry with a look of benign condescension.

“Well, you did it, didn't you? It's the same old story.”

Larry sat. “Okay, what did I do?”

“Got the thing all hushed up. I've been forbidden to write anymore about the death of Iggie Willis unless there are new developments. The power of Notre Dame.”

“Don't look for any new developments.”

“Oh, I know the local police are in your pocket.”

“You made it sound like murder.”

“Did I?” He pushed back his hat. Too far. It tumbled to the floor behind him. “Of course I did. That man had enemies.”

“How so?”

“Surely you have checked out the Web site on which the dead man and others were excoriating the administration for not firing Weis.”

“How would I get hold of it?”

Grafton, hatless, swung to his computer. His fingers danced on the keyoard. “There.”

Larry had to come around the desk to see the screen clearly: CheerCheerFor
Old
NotreDame.com. Grafton scrolled down so that Larry got a sense of the inflammatory entries on the site.

“Looks like he made a lot of friends.”

Grafton swung his chair again, and Larry went back around the desk.

“Where there are friends, there are enemies. What proportion of the alumni do you think would agree with that Web site? A small, a very small percentage. That leaves the vast majority, many of whom might cheerfully have wrung his neck.”

“Or filled him full of booze.”

“A serious cop would investigate these things.”

“So would a serious reporter.”

*   *   *

Back in his car, Larry thought of Chita, the sassy little member of the cleanup crew who had found the body. No, she wanted to give that credit to Bridget. Only Bridget had been nowhere to be found. The wisest course seemed to be to go back to the very beginning and start over.

In his pad, he had noted Chita's name and address.

9

To Jimmy Stewart, Larry Douglas was both a rebuke and a pain in the whatchamacallit. The gung-ho kid from Notre Dame campus security reminded Jimmy of his own idealistic early days on the force, just back from the army, where his experience as an MP had been the open sesame. Law and order, right against wrong, the forces of peace and decency against the bad guys. Of course, the real world turned out not to be quite like that. There was a time when Jimmy might have gone over to the ostensible enemy, figuring what the hell. His wife had taken a powder; black and white were no longer vivid contrasts in South Bend. He had been saved from that by the appearance of Phil Knight on the local scene. Phil's brother, Roger, was a balloon of a man, apparently brilliant, who had been offered a lucrative position on the Notre Dame faculty and brought his private investigator brother along with him.

The funny thing was that Jimmy and Phil had come together when Phil had been activated to represent the interest of the University of Notre Dame, that is, to thwart the efforts of the South Bend police to get too curious about anything that had happened on campus. It seemed a situation guaranteed to make the two of them hate one another. Why hadn't that happened? Phil's rock-bottom integrity, mainly. He represented his client to the hilt, but there was no way that he was going to pretend that black was white or vice versa. He wasn't a hired gun. It was a refreshing reminder, and Jimmy had responded to it. They had become friends. Jimmy had almost got used to Roger, a special case if there ever was one.

Jimmy met Phil for coffee in a place out on 31. Not much talk at the outset, and then, “Jimmy, I don't like it.”

“The coffee?”

“The body on the putting green.”

“The suicide.”

“Do you really believe that?”

“No.”

“So let's get serious.”

Getting serious involved checking out all the groups that had suddenly formed to raise hell on one basis or another. It turned out that Phil had more than an abstract interest. Roger was being harassed.

“They were waiting for him after class. His golf cart was festooned with toilet paper. A huge balloon had been attached to it. Do you know what they're calling him?”

“What?”

“The Goodyear Blimp.”

“What brought this on?”

“His name appears on a list of supporters of the proposal to shut down Notre Dame football.”

“Geez.”

“He doesn't remember giving his consent. Apparently he didn't say no forcefully enough. Now he has become the poster boy for the outfit.”

It was pretty clear that Phil did not like his little brother being made fun of. Ever since they had come to Notre Dame, Roger had been treated royally. Lots of enthusiastic students, teach anything he wanted, an ideal situation. The present situation was a complete reversal of that. Phil had gotten used to being told his brother was the best thing that had happened to Notre Dame in recent years. Now he was being made a figure of fun. The Goodyear Blimp!

“He taking it bad?”

“Jimmy, he thinks it's funny. You know Roger.”

“I'm not sure I do.”

“I know what you mean. He insists on keeping that replica of the blimp on his golf cart as he goes around campus.”

“Can this hurt him?”

“That's his point. He is the Huneker Professor of Catholic Studies. For life. Jimmy, they pay him a bundle, I'll say no more.”

“So why are you worried?”

“God damn it, he's my brother.”

“He's not heavy, he's your brother?”

“No and yes.”

That was good enough for Jimmy. So they called on Professor Lipschutz.

*   *   *

“You're Roger's brother?” Lipschutz said to Phil. “The man is a genius.”

“People keep telling me that. He's also naive. He doesn't remember giving permission to add his name to your list.”

“Oh, there's no doubt of that. Professor Bird was a witness.”

“Professor Bird doesn't remember giving permission for his name to be used either.”

“Have they asked that their names be withdrawn?”

This was the sticky point. Roger was rather enjoying being pilloried in public, and Otto Bird had simply murmured, “
o tempora, o mores.
”

“Cicero,” Roger had explained.

As far as Phil was concerned, that was an unsavory suburb of Chicago.

“Ask them to remove your name, Roger,” he had suggested.

“Phil, it's a tempest in a teapot,” Roger had replied.

Which didn't give them a lot of clout with Lipschutz. He had been regarding Phil with a sad expression.

“You represent the university, don't you?”

“Don't you?”

“In a sense, yes, a quite disinterested sense. I want this institution to regain its soul.”

“By dropping football?”

“That is only a start.”

“Do you realize what they are doing to Roger? They're calling him the Goodyear Blimp.”

“I know. He called to tell me that. He seemed exuberant about it.”

“What exactly does your group have in mind? Other than having my brother made a fool of?”

“If I told you, you would alert your employers.”

*   *   *

Father Carmody, it turned out, had a mole in the organization, Wessel.

“A good man, in his way. Simply has no appreciation for sports. It was a streak of idealism that made him susceptible to Lipschutz. I can understand that. Of course, Lipschutz's motives are complicated.”