William Kienzle - Shadow of Death

“Arra,” O’Flynn sucked in his breath, “those were the days, and especially the nights, of terror. Ye’d hear the rumble of the lorry, racin’ as fast as the horses could carry it. Then when the lorry stopped, ye’d hold yer breath. Especially if it stopped near yer own house. Then there’d be the bangin’ on the door. And the Tans’d go runnin’ through the house lookin’ for a rebel but mad enough so’s they wouldn’t leave empty-handed. There was times a man’d be shot dead before the eyes of his missus and the little ones.”

He puffed again on his pipe. “One night, they made a surprise attack: surrounded the barracks just up the street there.” He tilted his head toward the east. “Well, the lads weren’t goin’ to take that lyin’ down, so a shootin’ match started.” He looked at Koesler. “It isn’t a barracks now; it’s the doctor’s house . . . but you can still see the bullet marks.”

“There’s something wrong,” said Koesler, continuing his soliloquy, now more audibly.

“Wrong?” O’Flynn, concerned, looked at the priest intently. “What’s wrong, Father? Are ya not feelin’ all that well? Would ya like to lie down or somethin’? Is there anything I can get fer ya?”

O’Flynn started to stand, but Koesler almost absentmindedly waved him back in his chair.

“. . . something wrong with the scenario. It doesn’t fit assumption is it’s a Rastafarian plot to eliminate the papabili . . . discourage them all from becoming Pope . . . and thus do away with the Papacy itself.

“All well and good, as bizarre as the scheme is, when they actually attack prominent Cardinals. But then they attack Ramon and then the Inspector.

“Still all well and good . . . since those two have proven themselves effective guardians of Cardinal Boyle.

“But why me? How do I possibly fit into this scenario? Can they possibly believe I could be a hindrance? If so, then how? And then there were the black fists that changed to black hands . . .”

Koesler returned to his mulling. O’Flynn had listened politely to the priest’s ramblings, while understanding none of them.

After what he felt was an appropriate period of silence, O’Flynn resumed. “Arra, it was the Tans all right! They’re the ones who shot prisoners, destroyed property, burned creameries. A bad lot altogether. Young Kevin Barry, saints preserve us, they tortured the lad and then hanged him—and he no more than eighteen years!” O’Flynn sucked in his breath sharply.

“And who could forget Terence MacSwiney? Died after seventy-four days on hunger strike in an English prison, he did. ‘It’s not those who can inflict the most, but those who can suffer the most who will conquer,’ he said. Brings to mind Jaysus’ sermons: ‘The meek shall inherit the earth,’ doesn’t it? Arra, but then,” he looked at Koesler with sly eyes, “Jaysus didn’t have to contend with the Black and Tans, did he?”

Seemingly satisfied that his rhetorical question neither called for nor was about to receive a reply from his preoccupied table-mate, Patrick Joseph O’Flynn went on. “Then there was the time they caught the six Volunteers near Cork and when the bodies were found, the heart had been cut from one, the tongue from another, the nose from another, the skull of another had been battered in, and the bodies of the other two were identifiable only by their clothing. And in the west,” O’Flynn jabbed the air with his pipe stem, as he gathered verbal momentum, “the bodies of two brothers were found in a bog, tied together and their legs partially roasted away.” And thus O’Flynn continued his gory litany as he had so many times in the past. It was not often these days that he found fresh ears for his resolute recital.

“So, is it yer opinion, Father, that it was the Tans come back? Who else, I ask ya, would do such a thing to a holy priest of God?” He looked at Koesler quizzically.

“But what if it’s the wrong grouping?” Koesler’s question was right in line with his thoughts, though a non sequitur to O’Flynn’s. “ I certainly don’t fit in with the Cardinals—for any reason.” His voice rose and fell in correspondence with the strength of his conclusions. “But then, the link between the Cardinals and Toussaint isn’t that strong either. And what connection could Ramon and the Inspector possibly have with me? That doesn’t seem to make much sense either.”

O’Flynn decided to go with the flow. If Koesler would not participate in O’Flynn’s monologue, then courtesy demanded that the little Irishman join Koesler’s stream of consciousness.

“Well, now,” said O’Flynn, “not knowin’ the other two gentlemen y’ve mentioned, I must admit I’m hard put to draw a connection between them and yerself.”

“But then” —Koesler obviously needed to develop his hypothesis aloud— “it may be, as my dentist once put it, that we have more than one thing going on here. Of course he was referring to an abscess along with a root canal. Here we would have two things going on that would be related in only one direction. Is that possible?”

“Oh, indeed it is,” O’Flynn responded. “I well remember old Tillie O’Flynn, my sainted aunt, a maiden lady her whole life long. How she suffered the heart palpitations in her later years from the stress of bein’ impoverished. Bad off, she was! Worried constantly about endin’ up in the poorhouse. Which, as it turns out, was a worthy worry, for it was just there that she did indeed end. But, in any case, that is what the doctor said took her—the stress of worryin’ about bein’ poor. And bein’ poor caused the dear woman’s stress. So, ya see, it was all connected up.”

“Of course!” Koesler slapped the tabletop. “That would explain the sequence of events! It would explain the illusive symbolism. It would explain the whole thing!

“Paddy!” For the first time, he focused on O’Flynn. “I’ve got to get home!”

“Home, is it?”

“To Detroit!”

“Ya can’t get there from here.”

“Can you help me get back to Dublin?” Koesler started to rise from his chair. He was joined in this maneuver by O’Flynn, as well as the Garda who had accompanied Koesler on his return to Gurteen.

“Sure and it’ll be a pleasure, Father. Meself and, I expect, this fine young Garda here, ’ll get ya back to Dublin’s fair city, alive alive-o.” And, offering some measure of support to the battered priest, escort Patrick Joseph O’Flynn convoyed Koesler off to the strains of “Molly Malone.”

DETROIT

“Don Louis,” the petite, attractive receptionist spoke into the intercom, “there is a gentleman—a priest—to see you. His name is,” she glanced at her notepad, “Father Robert Koesler. He does not have an appointment.”

Silence.

“In a moment,” came a sepulchral voice.

“It’ll be a little while, Father,” the receptionist relayed. “Do you wish to be seated?”

“I think,” said Koesler, “I’ll take a chance on your being right about that ‘little while’ and stay standing. I don’t want to move needlessly.”

The receptionist noted several nasty bruises on Koesler’s face and hands. The rest of him was covered by a black suit and clerical collar. But from the stiff and awkward way in which he had entered the office and, indeed was now standing, she surmised that much of the rest of his body was similarly bruised.

In the inner office, a smallish dapper man sat behind an extremely large desk. Perhaps in his late fifties or early sixties, with salt-and-pepper hair and bushy black eyebrows, the man, in immaculate blue pinstripe, with contrasting tie and pocket kerchief, was clearly a very important person.

He smiled, revealing perfect teeth, as he turned to the two rather large men seated to the right of the desk. “The fly comes to be caught in the spider’s web.” He spoke in Italian.