The Death of an Irish Sinner (10 page)

“And you’re content to allow Mary-Jo Stanton’s murderer to go unpunished?”

“No sin goes unpunished. Ultimately.”

McGarr had heard this very woman utter that statement before, he was now certain, but where? “Do I know you?” he asked again.

Her eyes began to shy, but she pulled them back and held his gaze.

“We’ve met, I’m sure, and it’s only a matter of time before…”

Again the woman glanced at her wristwatch. “Re
ally—this is becoming tedious. And may I ask, who is this woman?”

“My wife, Noreen.”

“Should she be here?”

“The formal interview was last night. I’m just trying to piece things together, and Noreen was a longtime friend of Mary-Jo’s.”

“My parents own Ilnacullin,” Noreen put in. “I’ve been coming here all my life. Mary-Jo was a friend of my parents.”

In the silence that ensued, McGarr wracked his brain trying to remember just where, when, and under what conditions he had met Delia Manahan.

It was the problem with police work, he had been telling himself for…oh, the last decade; he met, interviewed, talked to, and observed so many people in the course of a single day—to say nothing of the decades of his career—that it was impossible to remember them all. His brain neurons were simply overloaded with stimuli, was all it was.

Yet if truth were told, he also knew that there had been a time when he forgot nothing, nobody, not a face or a statement. He could still remember telephone numbers from his youth, the number plate of his father’s first motorcar, the name of every boy in his school.

But the number plate of his own car? At the moment, he could not remember it for the life of him.

Deciding on a different tack, one that would keep Delia Manahan talking until he could remember where he had met her, McGarr asked, “At what level
are you involved in Opus Dei—numerary, supernumerary, cooperator?”

“Really, now—I’ve important things to do. As I told your assistant last night, I’m a numerary.”

“Which is the highest level.”

“No. Being an actual priest is the highest level of involvement in the work.”

“The work of God.”

The woman did not respond, but her nostrils flared in pique, McGarr supposed, at his obtuseness.

“Therefore, you’ve dedicated your life to God.”

Having twined her fingers at her waist, Delia Manahan firmed her upper body, as though steeling herself.

“To the
work
of Opus Dei, which
is
the work of God.”

Because Delia Manahan either did not possess or had plucked her eyebrows, her face—unrelieved by cosmetics of any kind that McGarr could see, and set off by her brilliant white hair—presented a severe appearance. But for her blue eyes, it was colorless, although, like the rest of her, well formed. “Work being one way to honor God,” she added.

“But do you serve Opus Dei directly as a solicitor?”

She shook her head, then touched the band of her ponytail, which raised her significant breasts, which were encased—McGarr could see through the diaphanous silk blouse—in a lacy brassiere. “No, I serve the poor and those who are oppressed, and in that way—as well as through the work of being a solicitor—I serve God.

“But again, I don’t see the purpose—”

“Do you receive compensation for your work? A salary? Fees?”

“Both, depending on what basis and for whom I work.”

“What happens to that money?”

The hand came down from the back of her head, and her eyes flashed. “Oh, I see where you’re going with this. Do I fork over my earnings to Opus Dei and live here on virtual—that’s wrong, on
spiritual
—air, whilst my earnings flow into the coffers of avaricious priests?

“The answer is yes. That’s why I drive a new Jag and have a closet full of expensive clothes, one child at the Sorbonne, the other at Brown. Really, now.” Placing her hands on the arms of the chair, Manahan pushed herself to a stand on the strength of her biceps, rather like a gymnast. “I am neither the murdered nor the murderer, and you’re disrupting the spiritual rhythm of my day. And I won’t have that on this of all days.”

Noreen moved forward on the love seat, as though to stand, but McGarr stayed her. “Sit down, please. You can answer my questions here or in Dublin. Your choice,” he said, addressing Delia Manahan.

Hands again clasped at her waist and breasts militant, she regarded him. “Really, I should have a solicitor present.”

Which would do what to the spiritual rhythm of your day, McGarr wondered. “Your choice. We’ll wait. In the meantime, tell us how you came to be involved in Opus Dei.”

The woman glanced at the clock on the mantel, then strode to the window and looked out. In spite of the flare of her shoulders and the expanse of her chest, she was a trim woman and fleet.

“Expecting somebody? Or are you looking for your brother.”

All in one motion, she turned to them. “How did you know Frank is my brother?”

“We could begin with his patent pseudonym,” McGarr replied, if only to shatter the high seriousness of the interchange. “Whoever gave him the surname has a sense of humor. And your last name before you married was…?”

Her wrist came up; she glanced down at her watch. “Really, now—you must go. I have to finish my prayers before the mass.”

McGarr kept his hand on Noreen’s knee. “Tell me your maiden name first. And then how you came to be involved in Opus Dei.”

“If I do, will you leave?”

McGarr now stood. “Obviously, you were married. Are you still? I have it that Opusian numeraries take a vow of celibacy.” And poverty and obedience, which vows are renewed yearly, according to the source that Ward cited in his report.

The woman was fingering the gold ring on the fourth finger of her left hand, which was, McGarr assumed, the ring she was given when, after having served five years as a novice, she swore an oath of fidelity to Opus Dei in the presence of the order’s regional vicar and two witnesses.

“It implies that the oblate, who with the ceremony becomes a numerary, is now married not to the Church but rather to Opus Dei,” the report said.

Delia Manahan turned her back to them and spoke to the window. “True, I was married. I have two chil
dren. But I was always religious. My father had been a priest, my mother a nun before…Suffice it to say that after my husband died suddenly, leaving me with two young children, I needed some emotional and spiritual support.” A hand moved to her eyes.

“Which was when…which was when Gerry helped me out enormously with…with everything, including my spiritual needs, and I decided it was time for me to turn to Christ.”

“Through Opus Dei.”

She nodded and pulled a handkerchief from the pocket of her bright blue slacks. “Thank God for Opus Dei.”

“Geraldine Breen, the…house manager? Is that what she is here?”

Again she nodded. Before blowing her nose. “Really, you’ll have to excuse me. I hope you realize how…extraordinary all of this is for me. For us.”

“Us, who?” You and your brother? McGarr wondered. Or you and Opus Dei? If Dery Parmalee was right in his claims about the history of the order, murder and other forms of
pillería
were standard operating procedure.

Slowly she rounded on him, her eyes filled with tears. “Opus Dei, you fool. Do you think all of this is mere sham?” A hand gestured to the walls, as though to mean Barbastro itself. “Do you think we’re pretending here and that all of what we profess is just a…ruse to enrich ourselves and obtain power over others?

“See this ring? When I swore my oath of fidelity to this order, I swore it before an empty cross. The cross was empty because, as our founder wrote, ‘When you
see a poor wooden Cross, alone, uncared for, and of no value and”—she sobbed—“and without its Crucified, don’t forget that that cross is your Cross…the Cross which is waiting for the Crucified it lacks, and that Crucified may be you.

“Now, get out! Your—your disbelief reeks, I can smell it on you! And I won’t have caviling heretics in my presence on this of all days!”

“Your maiden name, please.”

“Manahan,” she shouted, rushing at them. “Now get out, before I ring up Brian Doherty!”

Who was commissioner of the Garda Siochana, and McGarr’s ultimate boss.

“And your brother’s first name is actually Francis?”

“Yes, dammit, yes it is.” Wrenching the door open, she shoved Noreen into the hall. Her face was distorted with fury. “And if you report his whereabouts to
anybody,
I’ll see—
we’ll
see—that you suffer for it.”

McGarr stepped out of the room.

“Remember, the Cross and your soul, if you have one. You’ll be on it sooner than you think.”

Delia Manahan slammed the door, having uttered a lie in failing to reveal her maiden name.

McGarr had seen the woman before, but where? “Do we know her?”

“Now? She wouldn’t allow it.”

“No—before. I’ve seen and spoken to her…and as part of an investigation.” At least that much had returned.

“Well—Chief Super or Super Chief—I’m not always gracing your forensic presence, am I? And I hope that only once in my life will I be forced to clap eyes
on that piece of holy work. Severe is not the word for her. Did you catch her eyebrows? It takes planning and skill to look like that.”

Lost in thought, attempting to spool back through the compendium of cases that he’d investigated over the years, McGarr turned down the hall toward the door of the Opus Dei cleric with the Italian last name.

“And by the by,” Noreen asked, taking his arm,

“where do you stand on the issue?”

“Which issue?”

“God in particular, religion in general.”

Well away, McGarr thought, if Barbastro and its occupants were any measure of those who stood close.

RUTH BRESNAHAN
knew from the moment she walked into the Claddagh Arms that she was a sight for sore—no, aching—eyes.

The barman had a face, as the saying went, like a plateful of mortal sins. Not only was his nose in rosy ruin, but his eyes were downright patriotic in color. Buried in two pouches of deep bruise, they were—like the flag—a mix of green and white but mostly orange/red.

Yet Bresnahan could not fault the man on his taste. He knew rare, somewhat aged beauty when he saw it, she concluded from his fractured smile.

“Haven’t I told ya’—when was the last time I told ya’—yeh’r’ me heart’s desire,” he barked in the pancake accent of a true Dub’. “Yeh’r’ altogether the darlingest girl to set foot in this kip since…well, since I
t’rew open the doors in 1787 or thereabouts.”

“My sentiments entirely,” Bresnahan replied, sliding onto a bar stool. “Have I told
you
I enjoy candor in a man. And plain old good sense.”

She crossed her legs, which were much exposed courtesy of her chrome yellow miniskirt. “May I confide in you? Do you have a name?”

“That’s Jam.”

“Jam?”

“No,
That’s
Jam. It’s what me father uttered at the moment of my conception, and what me mither—never seeing the darlin’ man again—
preserved
in me name.”

“Her own being Crock-et, I suppose.”

The twin pouches of bruise widened, and his smile appeared again. “I like that. You have wit as well as beauty.”

“Make that
great
beauty, and you have me on toast, Jam. Because—come closer while I tell you—it’s not easy being beautiful. In fact, it’s a curse. Men ogle me, women are jealous of me, and barmen, such as yourself, come on to me so brazenly that for a moment I thought we might be old friends. Or lovers. Do I remember you? Or you me?”

Jam was aptly named. His slack jaw having dropped open, he looked only stunned.

“Now then—” Bresnahan placed her purse with its Glock and Garda credentials on the bar and squared the armament of her significant chest. “Repeat after me—‘Oh, great mistress’…say it.”

Together, they said, “Oh, great mistress.”

“Possessor of the packet entire.”

“Possessor of the packet entire.”

Bresnahan continued, “What are you having to drink this fine afternoon? A brimful glass of Chablis, thank you very much. Then, the bill of fare. As you noticed when I walked in, I’m nothing but skin and bones.”

Jam’s moiling eyes dropped down her body again. “I like you,” he managed.

“No, no, no—you love me. Say it.”

“I
love
you.”

“No, with more feeling, since you truly mean it.”

“I
love
you.”

“That will have to do for the moment. Now, my wine, Jam man. On the double—hip, hip, hip.”

Smiling slightly, Jam trudged toward the wine cooler at the other end of the bar.

Bresnahan looked around the pub/restaurant with its exposed-brick walls, checkered tablecloths, and framed front-page copies of history-making events on the walls. Plainly an eatery that hoped to attract journalists. Only a few tables were taken now at half past six. And no Dery Parmalee.

“
Ath Cliath
crowd come in here?” she asked, when the brimming goblet was placed before her.

“You mean Dery and his lads? Like clockwork. Be here”—Jam checked the clock in back of him—“in ten minutes, I’d hazard.”

“What—no lasses?”

“Tell you somethin’?”

Bresnahan leaned forward, knowing that her black
scoop-neck jumper would afford the barman a peek at her breasts.

“I don’t think he fancies lasses.”

“You’re coddin’ me.”

Jam swallowed. “Well, they say he’s a bit of a poof. Ex-priest and all.”

Who claimed he had an affair with Mary-Jo Stanton, Bresnahan remembered from the morning briefing. “No—now you
are
cod-din’ me.”

“Gets a little jarred now and then, after they’ve put the paper to bed, as they say. And he cruises the bar here, leaving as often with trousers as skirts, if yeh catch me drift.”

Which made Bresnahan’s own odds fifty-fifty. She reached for the glass.

A few minutes passed by, the bar began to fill up, and Jam again appeared by her side. “Are you ready now?” He pointed to the swing doors that gave entrance to the pub. “Foive, four, t’ree, two, two, two, two”—the doors opened, and in stepped a man who could only be Dery Parmalee, followed by several other, younger men.

“One,” said Jam. “Shite, call it a rehearsal. I’ll give out to them about it now. Just watch me.”

The group took a corner table near the window that possessed, Bresnahan gauged, a clear view of her legs. And throughout the first round of drinks, eyes flashed her way, Parmalee’s—framed by his octagonal glasses—as often as the others’.

After pints were emptied, Parmalee rose to order more and worked his way into the now packed bar.
Wearing a white turtleneck jumper and straight-leg jeans under a blue blazer, he was a good-looking man of around forty with a square face, a straight nose, and thinning sandy hair. Tall, thin, and angular, he moved lithely, athletically, in a way that suggested he worked out. He glanced at her once more as he entered the bar crowd, and she smiled in return.

Handing back the change, Jam muttered something and canted his head toward Bresnahan, obviously saying that she’d been asking after Parmalee and perhaps he should chat her up.

Consulting her wineglass demurely, Bresnahan waited.

At length a hairy wrist appeared on the edge of the bar, and she looked up.

“You’ve been asking after me, have you?”

“Women do, surely.”

Behind the donnish spectacles, his light blue eyes closed pointedly and reopened. “But a woman of your…er, kindly disposition. What
possibly
could be your interest in me?”

“Well”—Bresnahan uncrossed her legs, and in turning to face him, her knees brushed across the front of his jeans—“as it happens, I’m seeking employment. I need a job.”

A smile appeared. Nearly as white as his jumper, Parmalee’s teeth were even if rather widely spaced. “Are you, now. In what capacity, may I ask?”

Bresnahan was prepared. “Staff writer. I admire your publication—how different it is from the stodgy rags in this town, how you’re willing to take on the thorny issues. And I’d like to”—reaching for her purse,
she aimed her smoky eyes at Parmalee—“throw my weight into the mix.”

Pulling out the résumé that she’d had a friend in Los Angeles fax her, Bresnahan handed him the several pages. At a Dublin employment agency, she’d had another friend scan the document onto his letterhead, so the packet looked somewhat legitimate and could be checked, at least on the Dublin end.

It said that Sonya Stephens had graduated from Trinity College in 1986, emigrated to the States that year, and begun a career as a journalist, working for underground and small weekly presses. After taking a master’s in journalism at the University of Missouri, she then began writing for a succession of large, well-regarded papers, such as the San José
Mercury-News
and the
Star-Ledger
of New Jersey.

It included three letters of recommendation from editors and a list of journalism awards.

Sonya and Ruth were the same age, looked rather alike, and Sonya, having left journalism to pursue other interests there in the States, would not be located easily.

Parmalee scanned the pages before sliding them onto the bar. “Great résumé, and I’d hire you in a heartbeat, were it yours.

“Charles,” he called to the barman, “could we have a round over here?”

“He told me his name was Jam. Or
That’s
Jam,” Bresnahan offered, sensing that the jig was up.

“And that you’re the darlingest girl to set foot in this kip since he opened it a few centuries ago, I should imagine. Don’t feel complimented. He tells that to all
the girls. It’s his shtick. Like yours, Miss Bresnahan. Or shall I call you Detective Inspector Bresnahan? What are you having—another glass of wine? Or—”

“A large whiskey,” Bresnahan muttered glumly.

“While nursing?” Parmalee asked, his eyes dropping down to her breasts. “Is that advisable? And while we’re on the subject of contra-marital bliss, how are you handling your…novel arrangement there in the Coombe with your colleague, Superintendent Ward, who is the father of your child, and his—Ward’s—common-law wife, Lee Sigal, and the two children he has by her?”

Parmalee had raised his voice, as though addressing those around them. “You know, I’m glad you came here this afternoon. I’ve been meaning to ask you if we might do a feature on your unique living situation. I think my four hundred thousand readers here in Catholic Ireland would be fascinated to know that polygamy, unknown since the days of Brian Boru, is staging a resurgence right here in Dublin City.

“And here she sits amongst us, gentle persons, the perpetrator of such viciousness. To look at her with that short, tight skirt and all her”—Parmalee swirled a hand—“accoutrements hanging out, you’d think…what?” Parmalee asked a man standing next to him.

“Tart, right? But you’d only be half right.”

The drinks had arrived and Bresnahan reached for hers.

“Because what you see before you is a tart with two big differences, and I’m not talking strictly glandular, although she’ll do—and does—in that department, as you can see.”

Bresnahan gripped the glass, wondering if she could
contain herself, as she knew she must. If ever it became public knowledge how she and Ward were living, both of them would surely have to resign their posts. In gossipy Catholic Ireland they would be marked for life.

“The first is that she’s a cop tart,” Parmalee now went on, glass in hand. His eyeglasses winked as he tilted back his head to declaim, “What’s that, you ask? Pop tart? Nay, nay, nay—not
pop
tart.
Cop
tart.

“That’s a cop who gets herself all tarted up, like this, and comes in here representing herself as an agent of the Fourth Estate in the attempt to land an undercover surveillance job not
for
me and
Ath Cliath
—but rather
on
me. This woman, this cop tart sitting here before you, actually wanted to spy on me!

“Why, you ask? Will murder do?”

Now the bar crowd had quieted.

“Shhhh!” somebody in back of Bresnahan hissed.

“Dery’s a gas character, and he’s having ‘Big Red,’ there, off.”

“You, you, and even you too”—Parmalee pointed at some of the others—“you thought she was just another journalistic bimbo who’d do any little
thang
at all to join in the business at
Ath Cliath
.

“Truth is, she’s been doing some rather nuanced little
thangs,
including the business with one of her colleagues and her colleague’s common-law wife.”

Now the silence in the crowded bar was nearly palpable, and Bresnahan could feel the weight of their eyes on her bowed shoulders.

“And what a story! An amazing story, one filled with lust, perhaps love, two betrayals that we can count, two
further pregnancies, and now two common-law wives with two young children, all of whom have set up literal shop with their betrayer.

“Will you hear more, gentle persons?”

“Go, Dery!” one exhorted.

“It seems that this woman’s paramour of three years had a checkered past. And after a three-year liaison with her, it was revealed to him that, miraculously, he already possessed a ready-made family with a wealthy, handsome, eligible woman right here in Dublin City.
Who
”—Parmalee raised a hand—“quickly became pregnant by him again, after he moved in.”

Bresnahan glanced at her drink and then the door. Sliding off the stool, she reached for her purse.

“Now, now, Miss B.,” Parmalee advised, “this really isn’t the class of party where you’d want to be the first to leave. I could name names, and then where would you and your ménage à trois be?”

Bresnahan eased herself back onto the bar stool. In spite of its over half-million inhabitants, Dublin was still a small town, and any hint of scandal was circulated with the speed of a wildfire, especially concerning the police, whose personal lives were supposed to be above reproach.

“So, with her lover not merely admitting to fresh betrayal but also having left her for another woman, what’s a poor girl to do? Pine for a while, then lose herself in lust? She tried that for…how long was it, dear?”

Under hooded brows, Bresnahan glared at the man. Yes, she and Ward had maintained a three-year relationship, sometimes living together in his digs, other
times in hers. And yes, Ward—in the course of an investigation—had stumbled upon an old flame who had revealed to him that fourteen years earlier she had given birth to his child.

Then, after he had been shot and nearly killed, the woman—Lee Sigal—had both the time and the money to nurse him back to health, during which time one thing had led to another, and she had become pregnant by him again. Bresnahan could understand that—how it could happen and why.

But, yes, she had also felt grossly betrayed, even as she had pined for Hughie Ward—his love, his warmth and companionship. But she had not lost herself in lust. In fact, she had been rather repulsed by the other men who had taken her out. She had become so used to his presence and body that it was as if she had lost the other—and in many ways better—part of herself.

“Run away? Flee? Not this woman,” Parmalee went on. “Not ‘Big Red’ here. Do you like that moniker, Rut’ie?”

Bresnahan’s eyes flashed at Parmalee. If he mentioned her surname, she didn’t know what she would do, but she’d take her vengeance there, while she had him in her presence.

“No—she took a completely different and creative tack, she did. Instead of acting the part of the woman scorned, she seduced her betrayer, got herself pregnant by him, and moved in with the lucky gumshoe, who up until a year and a half ago was a confirmed bachelor.

“Now the three of them and their three children live together in common-marital bliss. The wives are buddies, the kids great pals, and everybody loves their da
da. Tell us, ‘Big Red’—how do you handle the sleeping arrangements, or do they just work themselves out?”