Irish Coffee (8 page)

MEMBERS OF THE ATHLETIC
department were housed in a suite of offices separate from those assigned the coaches of the major sports, and were, like those, located in the Joyce Convocation and Athletic Center. Fans entering the building for basketball or hockey games passed the doors of these suites unseeing. But then games were special occasions. The ordinary daily work of the department went on unwitnessed by the vast body of Irish fans, all but unknown to the faculty, except for those who still worked out in the Joyce Center. The building was irreverently called the geodesic bra, its pale twin domes lifting to the sky in saucy presentation. Across the street was the stadium, recently enlarged to accommodate eighty thousand fans, before which stood a magnificent bronze statue of Frank Leahy, the legendary wartime and postwar coach of the Fighting Irish. A bronze Moose Krause, the longtime athletic director, sat on a bench outside the center. The Joyce after whom the center was named was Father Ned Joyce, who had been vice president during the long presidency of Father Hesburgh. Father Joyce was a gentle giant of a man who had retained his South Carolina accent and was credited with keeping the university financially afloat during the Hesburgh years as well as making sure that the athletic program was clean as a whistle.

The death of Fred Neville had cast its brief pall over the center and especially the sports information office where he had worked but, in the manner of such things, the pall lifted, the event began to recede into the past, work resumed. Only Anthony Boule seemed unable to shake off the dazed grief the death of Fred called for.

“I can't believe he's gone,” he said to Thelma, the secretary.

“Yes.” Thelma was long of tooth and thin of body, a paragon of efficiency and matter-of-factness.

“No one will ever really replace him.”

“We'll just soldier on for now.”

“I don't suppose there's been any talk of that?”

“Of what?”

“Fred's replacement.”

Thelma looked at Anthony for a silent moment. “Are you going to apply?'

“Me!”

Anthony laid a stubby hand on where his heart was supposed to be. The unsuccessful beard was meant to compensate for his thinning hair. A favorite office sport had been for him and Fred to try to top one another with athletic lore, with the emphasis on Notre Dame. Anthony considered himself an expert on the postgraduation lives of Notre Dame athletes. Those who had gone on to professional careers were easy to track, but of course the vast majority of student athletes did not turn pro but continued in lines as various as the student body as a whole. Anthony had never been able to stump Fred, whose memory was a matter of wonderment to all. But then Fred had never stumped him in his favorite category—life after Notre Dame.

“Why not?”

“Has anyone mentioned it?”

Thelma tried her more alluring smile. “I just did.”

“But you're prejudiced.”

“In what way?”

He hesitated. Anthony did not have a long track record with women. The truth was that they frightened him, not least Thelma, whose interest carried the suggestion of some shared future. He had taken her to lunch half a dozen times; it was part of his daily ritual to take a chair beside her desk and shoot the bull. Until he realized that she did not consider herself just one of the guys and interpreted his attention in an alarming way. But in the days after the funeral, he had renewed the practice.

“You found Fred tough to work for.”

“That's true. And of course Mary Shuster always took pride of place.”

“How about her?” Anthony said.

“Her mourning? Apparently they were engaged.”

“It wasn't apparent to his parents.”

“But you saw them when she dropped by. If that was platonic I'm an Aristotelian.”

Anthony let it go. Thelma knew things that he did not. He often felt stumped when speaking with her, not that she took on the triumphalist air Fred had when he got Anthony off his speciality and shamed him with the extent of his expertise. Anthony took pleasure in impressing others with his grasp of the history of Notre Dame sports, but in the privacy of his own heart he admitted that Fred had it all over him.

“Did Fred ever speak to you about Naomi McTear?” Thelma asked.

“Not in so many words.”

She dipped her chin and looked at him over her half glasses. “How then?”

“They always got together when Naomi was in town.”

“But that was business.”

“Sure it was. But a little monkey business too.”

Thelma turned her chair toward him. “Tell.”

“There's really nothing to tell.”

“Come on.”

He made her beg before he told her of what he had heard about the network apartment Naomi used when she was in town for Notre Dame games. One of the desk clerks there was a regular at Houlihan's, a sports bar a mile from the apartment. A bulbous fellow named Scott whose tone was insinuating and who believed that everyone but himself was living a bacchanalian life.

“You wouldn't believe what goes on there on game weekends.”

They were sitting in Houlihan's, in the bar where a dozen television sets brought in every game in progress anywhere. Racing, one of several sports Anthony could not abide, was coming in on both sets in their immediate view.

“Parties?”

“You can call them that.”

“Well, you have a good many footloose celebrities there.”

Scott's brows danced significantly.

“Isn't that where the network crews put up?”

“A lot of them.”

“Naomi McTear.”

Scott reacted as if he had guessed the winning number. “I suppose you know about that since you work with him.”

“Who?”

“Neville. Fred Neville.”

How could he not be curious about what the man he considered his rival was up to. If anything. He waved away the suggestion.

“Fred and Naomi McTear.”

That had been a year ago. Anthony continued to express disbelief, not giving Scott the satisfaction of thinking he believed him. But he did check it out and it was true. Back then it hadn't only been at the network apartment. Anthony had followed them one Saturday night to the Carriage House, where he waited for hours in his car, smoking surreptitiously, from time to time getting out to stretch his legs and stare at the night sky above with its sprinkling of stars. It was quiet as could be out there, though from time to time there was the distant sound of a plane taking off, one of the private craft flown in by the dozens by affluent fans. Anthony tried not to think of what he was doing, of what he would think of anyone else doing what he was doing. It was sneaky, it was low. He went back to his car and thought of leaving. Instead he lit a cigarette and continued to wait.

When finally they came out, it was clear they had supped and sipped well. In an elaborate display of joking gallantry, Fred opened the door for her and nearly fell backward as he did so. Clear tinkling laughter in the thin night air. Fred drove unsteadily out of the lot and headed back toward town. If he were stopped he would be in trouble. DUI. What a thing the local rag would make of that. Anthony, by contrast, felt as sober as a judge and it was with the eyes of a judge that he watched them emerge from the car at the building where Scott worked and go inside. So far nothing indictable. He had waited in vain. Still he decided to wait for Fred to come out and bring the whole silly evening to closure. But the minutes passed, and then a quarter hour, and Fred did not appear. Anthony, numb from lack of sleep and not welcoming the morning light, was still behind the wheel of his car when Fred appeared. It was nearly nine in the morning. He got into his car and drove off and Anthony went to his bed, pondering what he had witnessed.

It was a version of this, less unflattering to himself, that he told the toothy Thelma. No need to tell her that, while this had gone on for some months, it seemed to have stopped suddenly a few months ago. If Fred and Naomi were getting together it was not in the network apartment. His effort to strike up a friendship with Santander went nowhere.

“So he must have given her that rock.”

Anthony shrugged.

“It's odd that we're surprised that celebrities can get as lonely as we do.”

“Celebrities!”

“Naomi.”

“Oh, sure.” He had thought she meant Fred.

“It has to be a lonely life.”

“Oh, I don't know. On the move, game preparation, friends from coast to coast.”

“She wouldn't have had a Fred from coast to coast.”

“How can you tell?”

“The diamond ring.”

Anthony shrugged.

“Where are we having lunch?”

“I didn't know we were.”

“That's why I told you.”

What could he do? Thelma wouldn't be all that bad-looking if it weren't for her teeth. And they weren't that bad when she smiled. They went arm-in-arm into the snowy world.

“MARY WASN'T THE WOMAN,
Phil?”

“No. If there was such a woman. I would hate to have to rely on Santander's testimony in court. Besides, visiting someone is not a crime.”

“Provided that someone was alive when one arrived and was not dead when one left.”

“It must have been suicide, Roger.”

“Must it?”

“Who has a motive? Mary loved the guy.”

“Who was engaged to another woman.”

“Which she knew because he told her. She understood that Naomi was not giving up easily.”

Roger sat and hummed and then, as if despairing of achieving perfect pitch, said, “It is so hard to imagine Fred as the acute point of such a triangle. It was news enough when we learned about Mary, but suddenly there is Naomi. What a Bluebeard our friend has turned out to be.”

“Bluebeard did the killing, Roger.”

“You know what I mean.”

“I know what you mean. What's for dinner?”

“Why don't we ask the Shusters over.”

“To celebrate?”

“They needn't know the reason for it, but yes, to celebrate.” Mary might not appreciate their relief at her innocence.

“Why don't we ask Griselda Novak too? She and I can talk sports.”

“We'll ask Greg Whelan too.”

 

It was a festive evening. Roger kept it simple—spaghetti, garlic bread, a huge bowl of salad, and Chianti for those who wanted wine, ice water for Roger, ever abstemious.

“You're such a Puritan, Roger,” Marjorie Shuster said, her lips red with Chianti.

“Am I? The truth is, I don't tolerate alcohol well.”

The real reason was that he did not like to muddle his mind, however convivial wine was. To the nondrinker, the effect of alcohol on others is far more obvious than it is to them. Voices rise, laughter comes more easily—but that, as both Belloc and Chesterton said, is the point of drinking. Roger could appreciate that, without the need to verify it in his own case. Besides, he was the principal host and wanted to be on the qui vive for his guests. Griselda too had ice water with her meal, having decided between that and milk.

“I don't want to corrupt minors,” Roger said.

“When I had dinner with Fred Neville, we shared a bottle of wine.”

There was an uneasy silence, with Mary looking uncomfortable.

“God rest his soul,” Roger said.

“Amen.”

That difficult moment was soon behind them. Poor Phil had no luck in getting Griselda to talk about the upcoming Lady Irish home game the following night.

“Is it nationally televised?”

Griselda nodded. “Naomi McTear stayed on for this game. On assignment.”

Another awkward moment.

Phil said, “When do the television crews arrive?”

“Oh, she comes days before. In order to prepare. That means she will have been here over a week.”

“How so?” Roger asked.

“She came in on Friday for the Sunday game before Fred…” Asif aware that her remarks caused Mary discomfort, Griselda let her voice drift away. She said to Roger, “Your class today was great.”

“Now, now. You don't have to sing for your supper.”

Griselda told the others, “He analyzed some sonnets of Maurice Francis Egan. They hadn't seemed much to me when I first read them.”

“Those were poems Fred especially liked.”

“He loved poetry.”

Marjorie professed to be astounded. “Fred?”

“He wrote it too,” said Phil.

Phil pushed back and clapped his head. “Good Lord, I forgot all about that.”

The others stared at him. He rose and went off to his room. When he came back he held a folded sheet of paper.

“Jimmy Stewart and I found this in the fax machine in his apartment. Apparently he had sent it to himself from the office.”

Mary asked to see it and began to read it, her lips moving.

“Read it aloud,” Roger suggested. And she did.

“Let me see it,” Roger said, and Mary passed the poem to him.

“My Nathaniel wrote poetry,” Marjorie said. “I must say it was far more intelligible than that.”

“The poem is perfectly intelligible,” said Mary.

“I'm with you, Marjorie,” Phil said.

Griselda began again on Maurice Francis Egan's poetry but Roger was brooding over the page. His concentration silenced the others. He looked at Mary.

“You realize this is a love letter,” he said to her.

“To whom?” Marjorie asked, and Mary just glanced at her mother.

“What do you mean, Roger?” Mary asked.

Roger handed the poem to her. “Read the first letters of the lines.” Mary did so and as she did she fairly glowed. “For heaven's sake.”

“Well, what is it?” Marjorie asked, and was echoed by Phil.

Mary handed the poem to her mother, who frowned over it for some minutes, then said, “I don't get it.”

“Read the first letters of the lines. From top to bottom.”

Marjorie did as she was instructed. “
I.L.O.V.E.M.A.R.Y.S.H.U.S.T.E.R.
Well!”

“That's beautiful,” Griselda said.

“And it was written just days before he died. It is dated, you see.”

“That is nice,” Marjorie said, somewhat grudgingly. “Very nice.”

“So you see, Mother, I was not making it up.”

“Did I say you made it up?”

Griselda wanted to see the poem. She traced her finger down the page, silently pronouncing the opening letters. She then surrendered it to Mary. “You must keep it always.”

But then Greg Whelan asked to see it. When he had read the poem for himself, he said to Mary, “I'll want a copy for the archives.”

“That is a copy,” Phil said. “The original is being held as possible evidence.”

“Of what?”

“Oh, Mother.”

 

Phil drove the Shusters and Griselda home, leaving Roger and Greg to talk. Greg had had his share of the wine and soon waxed sentimental.

“That poem certainly proves which of his two fiancées Fred loved.”

“Only a man in love would use such an old trick.”

“It must be hard to do.”

“You and I will never know, Greg.”

“Maybe, like Socrates, you will turn to writing poetry in your old age.”

“Only if, like Socrates, I am condemned to death.”

“How is the investigation into Neville's death going?”

“Why don't we wait for Phil before taking up that topic?”

When Phil returned he said, “Well, I broke down.”

“The car?”

“No, no. I told the Shusters that Jimmy Stewart had been told Mary had visited Fred during the days he was missing but that this had been disproved.”

Phil told Greg the story of Santander. “He said it was Fred's girl but when shown a photograph of Mary Shuster said she wasn't the woman.”

“So who was?” Greg asked.

But all three of them were thinking the same thing, despite the profession of love that Fred had made in his last poem.