Irish Gilt (4 page)

On discharge, he became a partner in Phil's detective agency. There had been wonderful years when they had worked out of Rye, New York, accepting only the most challenging and rewarding of clients. Roger had plenty of time to develop as a scholar and to enter via the Web into learned exchanges with others around the world. It was during a lull in Rye that he had written his monograph on Baron Corvo, which had known a surprising success and led to Father Carmody's coming to Rye and offering him the Huneker Chair in Catholic Studies.

“But what would you do?” he asked Phil when his brother urged him to accept.

“Do? I'll come with you.”

So he had. The various Notre Dame teams and their home-game schedules enthralled Phil. Or was this something of an act? Did he ever wish that they were back in Rye, considering a potential client's plea for help?

When Phil brought Boris Henry back to the apartment after lunch, Roger was the soul of hospitality. “Kansas City. Phil, remember the work we did for David Joseph?”

“Remind me.”

“David Joseph?” Henry said. “He's a client of mine.”

“Of yours?”

“My old firm represented him,” Henry cried.

They sorted this out, and Boris Henry could not have been any more surprised to learn of the Knight Brothers Agency than Roger was delighted to learn that their guest was a dealer in rare books. David Joseph had been accused of a murder that Roger had demonstrated had never occurred, thus earning Joseph's undying gratitude as well as a handsome fee.

The initial conversation went on like that. How could they seem strangers when they shared so many
tertia quid?
Phil glanced at Henry, but he seemed to understand Roger.

“I wonder what you have in sixteenth- and seventeenth-century Spanish literature.” Roger said.

“I'll send you my catalog.”

“One of my interests is Lope de Vega. There has never been an edition of his collected works, and I have been gathering them piecemeal.”

“Do you have a computer?”

In a trice, Henry and Roger were settled at his computer, and Henry brought up his Web site. There was a listing for the 1614 edition of the
Rimas Sacras,
and Roger bought it on the spot.

Back with Phil, Roger mentioned that he was thinking of doing parallel lives of Cervantes, John of the Cross, and de Vega. “Vega was actually ordained a priest, you know.”

Phil broke in. God only knew where all this was leading. “Boris is interested in John Zahm.”

“Oh, we've already talked of that, Phil.”

If Phil had thought this would get them back to more everyday matters, he must have been disappointed. Boris Henry wanted to know what Roger knew of the South American travels of the Holy Cross priest.

“Only that he made them.”

“I have a theory.”

Henry's theory seemed made out of whole cloth. He talked of the conquistadores; he spoke of Spanish gold; he reminded Roger of the anxious years during which it had been a daily effort to keep Notre Dame financially afloat. He had convinced himself that Zahm and Teddy Roosevelt had been in search of hidden Spanish gold.

“This is just a guess?” Phil asked, his voice indicating what he thought of such speculation.

“More than a guess. Think of the dome.”

Notre Dame's golden dome. Atop the Main Building, which had gone up in 1879, the great dome shone in the daytime sun and, in later years, in nighttime artificial light. It was coated with gold. Boris Henry sat back. Q.E.D.

Even Roger looked disappointed. “There are a number of logical leaps,” he said slowly.

But Boris Henry's great middle term was the personality of John Zahm. The man could not have been unaware of the gold that had been taken out of the Spanish colonies, creating a false sense of economic solidity in the old country. Despite all that gold, Spain had foundered and gone under because of external debt to the bankers of Europe. The defeat of the Armada by the English did not help.

“Lope de Vega was there,” Henry reminded Roger.

“Do you propose to mount an expedition?”

“Ha. Do you know what that would cost? No, Notre Dame should go after that gold. It could be Zahm's last great gift to the university.”

The glint in Boris Henry's eye might have been gold fever. Roger was aware of Phil's reaction to this wild surmise. For all that, he found it fascinating. He was still aglow from the purchase of the
Rimas Sacras
. He and Phil had pursued spoors almost as speculative as this.

“We have to talk with Greg Walsh,” Roger said.

“Walsh.”

“In the archives. I'll bet he'll come up with something.”

“I never bet,” Boris Henry said piously.

7

When Bernice Esperanza told people that she worked at Notre Dame she said no more, letting the name of the university conjure up in inquiring minds as exalted a position as they wished. Such hints as she gave created the pardonable impression that, while not exactly on the faculty, she was centrally engaged in the educational task of the university. If pressed, she would mention Grace Hall. It was there, in the eatery called Café de Grasta, that Bernice worked, gliding among the tables, neatening up after diners left. There were slots through which customers were supposed to slide the remains of their meals into discreetly concealed trash receptacles, but for the most part the faculty and administrative staff who had their lunches there left everything on the table. It was Bernice's task to clear things away, give the tabletop a few restorative swipes, and straighten the chairs. She worked from eleven to three and spent most of that time trying to look like a customer rather than one of the help. A graduate student, perhaps.

She told herself that hers was the kind of job that many aspiring writers had before their moment of recognition came. She was thirty-four years old and what was now demurely called a single mom, and the hours of her employment coincided nicely with the time that little Henry spent in day care. Ricardo, her former husband, worked in university maintenance, and the fact that she was on campus five days a week and never ran into him added to her sense that her employment was a disguise.

The divorce had been her idea, arising out of her realization that Ricardo was a clod. She had been twenty-four when they married, and she stuck it out for half a dozen years before she broke the news. Her realization that she was bound to an incompatible mate began when she mentioned enrolling in a creative writing course at IUSB.

Ricardo just stared at her with his mouth hanging open. “What for?”

“For what it says. To learn how to write.”

“Write what?”

“Oh, for heaven's sake.”

“If you're bored, get a job and bring in some money rather than spend it. What have you ever written?”

Their apartment was cluttered with the romantic novels that made life tolerable for her. Little Henry had been a distraction, of course, but she was careful not to let Ricardo think that she found fussing over a baby the meaning of life. He had an unsettling way of referring to Henry as their
first
child.

Bernice had met Marjorie, another first-time mother, in the hospital.

“What are you going to name him?” Marjorie asked.

“Henry.”

Marjorie's brows went up and her eyes widened. “Henry Esperanza?”

Henry had been Bernice's father's name. “My maiden name was Carlyle.”

“Mine was Waters.” Marjorie paused. “It still is.”

“Oh.”

That explained why there was no husband in evidence. Given her equivocal status as an unwed mother, Marjorie had a nerve putting on airs. She barely acknowledged it when Bernice introduced her to Ricardo. When he left, Marjorie asked if he was a Mexican.

“Argentine.”

“What's that?”

“Is your husband coming?”

“I don't have one.”

There was no way to score against Marjorie. She seemed to think that she was striking a blow for independence. She said she might call her daughter Conception. Bernice glowered at her.

“Miss Conception,” Marjorie explained.

“Ha ha.” It was kind of funny.

Despite everything, they became friends of a sort, and in the subsequent months they got together from time to time. Ricardo didn't like it when Marjorie tried to speak Spanish to him:
Cómo está usted?
When the two women exchanged grievances, Bernice let it go when Marjorie began to refer to Ricardo as Green Card or made a point of how dark Henry was. It was from Marjorie that Bernice learned to think of taking care of Henry as cruel and unusual punishment. She left her daughter with her parents a lot. “I want to resume my career,” she had told Bernice in the maternity ward.

“Where do you work?”

She was a receptionist in a realty office and went on about the money she hoped to make selling houses when she passed the exams.

Did she still see her daughter's father? Bernice asked.

“I don't even think of him. What do you plan to do?”

Do? She was a wife and mother. Somehow she knew Marjorie wouldn't take that for an answer. “I may go back to school.”

“Where?”

After high school, Bernice had enrolled at IUSB and attended classes fitfully for a few years. The idea was that she would meet someone and get married. She met Ricardo in a sports bar. He was good-looking, no doubt of that, and when he said he worked at Notre Dame she got interested. He was Catholic, so they got married that way; it was all right with Bernice. She believed in God but didn't want to go into any details.

Ricardo didn't make her go to Mass, although Henry was baptized, but it all became an issue when she had had enough. “I don't believe in divorce.”

“Ricardo, I'm through.”

“Don't you remember what you promised?”

Sometimes Bernice thought that if she didn't have the album of photographs she would never even remember the day she made the mistake of her life. Ricardo dragged her off to a priest who told her that marriage was for life. A life sentence. That's what it felt like, and she wanted a pardon. Ricardo contested the divorce, but he didn't stand a chance. She had half a mind to let him have Henry.

Marjorie stood by her during the battle. Afterward, she urged Bernice to resume her maiden name.

“I can't do that.”

“Why not? It's yours.”

“It's the name I intend to write under.” She said it on an impulse, to scare away the frightening thought of what she was going to do now. Freedom had looked pretty good until she had it.

“You're going to be an underwriter?”

“Oh ha.”

“I'm sorry. Tell me about it.”

It was like putting a daydream into words. On the backs of the novels Bernice liked, there were photographs of the authors, and after she finished one Bernice would study the picture and imagine what it would be like to be rich and famous and a novelist. The ambition she described to Marjorie seemed to have been lurking in the back of her mind forever. It was the first time she had ever impressed Marjorie. Later, when she told Marjorie she was at Notre Dame, she tried to make it sound as if she were a student there, but Marjorie just dipped her head and looked at her. Even so, Bernice never told her she worked in the eatery in Grace Hall. If she mentioned her work at all, she referred to “the office.” It was Marjorie who encouraged her actually to take the course in creative writing at IUSB. She intended to take it herself. And so they became rivals.

But not for long. Marjorie decided that her talent lay in the direction of descriptive writing. She talked of becoming a reporter. So much for real estate. She took a job answering the phone and accepting ads for a local shoppers' guide. Bernice found it painful to hear her talk about getting out the paper and make odd references to the publishing game, so she told Marjorie she was writing a novel.

“Can I read it?”

“When I'm done.”

First she'd have to start it. In the meantime, the course got her going on making notes and keeping a journal and reading with new attention to how a story was told. In her heart of hearts, she was a novelist. That was what drew her to X. Kittock.

That was how she thought of him after noting the name embossed on his briefcase. X the unknown quantity. For a while she played a guessing game about him. He was too old to be a student, even a graduate student, and yet he didn't seem to be faculty. He usually came in about 12:30, and he was still there when the place was empty, everyone else gone. Bernice told herself he hung around because of her. It was only after most people had left that he opened the briefcase and took out a sheaf of papers. When closing time came, it fell to Bernice to tell him they would be locking up. He looked up at her. He looked at the name tag pinned to the flap of her shirt pocket.
B. ESPERANZA
.

“What's the
B
for?”

She told him and asked about the
X
. He told her.

When she left he was waiting in the lobby, and they went outside, where they sat on a bench. He lit a cigarette. Once he started talking, he couldn't stop. Good Lord, how lonely he seemed. He wouldn't be bad-looking if he took better care of himself.

He shook his head when she asked if he were on the faculty. “I'm here doing research.” He exhaled smoke. “I'm a writer.”

8

Of late Father Carmody had felt on the shelf, and there were times when he regretted having moved into Holy Cross House, where he was surrounded by ancients, many content to be old, preparing themselves for their personal last trump, seemingly glad that their active lives were over. Father Carmody was by no means the youngest man in the house, but he was the only one who regarded himself as still active. This conviction required involvement in the events of the day, and as time went by without any indication that the Notre Dame administration still thought of him as a major player, long thoughts came. So it was that the call from the provost was doubly welcome.