Emerald Ridge

By William Florence

A detective hunts for a missing archbishop in Northern Ireland who may a victim of violence—or an instigator of it . . .
 
Oregon detective and former muckraking journalist Max Blake’s discovery of a long-dreaded postcard from Ireland in his mailbox is the catalyst that touches off a cross-continent search for his fiancée’s favorite uncle. The Rev. Sean “Jack” O’Lennox, the archbishop of St. Patrick’s Roman Catholic Cathedral in Armagh, Northern Ireland, is missing, and the postcard—a pre-arranged signal—is his apparent cry for help.
 
Max is prepared to do everything in his considerable power to help Caeli Brown, his longtime partner in the Blake & Brown Detective Agency and soon-to-be wife. But she slips off to Ireland without him, and he is left with a double quandary: finding Caeli, and then determining the fate of the archbishop, a complicated man who believes that British-held Ulster should be returned to the Irish Republic by any means necessary . . .

• Language: English
• Publisher: Open Road Integrated Media
• Release date: Sep 20, 2017
• ISBN: 9781947290181

Book preview

PROLOGUE

The March of Time

How do these things ever start?

Innocently, perhaps. Casually, most certainly. 

I’d just finished teaching my final Intro to Mass Comm class at the college where I’d worked for twenty-plus years. The semester was at an end, final exams were over, and I was headed toward the journalism lab to deal with the last bits of paperwork and office-cleaning when I ran into Terry Rohse in the hallway.

Professor Blake, he called out, his weathered face agreeably affable. How goes the war on this, your final day of battle?

Terry is an old friend, one of the good guys, the auditorium manager and theater instructor who moonlights as the head of the college’s classified union, and it’s generally a pleasure to get his take on the world in 30 seconds or less.

Good stuff today, Professor Rohse, given the significance of the moment, I said. How’s by you?

Exceptional, he said, adjusting his glasses a notch higher on the bridge of his nose. Truly exceptional.

Sounds newsworthy. Should I send a reporter?

I was hoping you would – along with a photographer.

Care to share your tidings of great joy, or am I forced to wait for the next edition of the student newspaper?

Come on – give it up, Max, he said, halting his stride as we approached the staircase. College newspapers are as dead as Bin Laden. You don’t have any reporters lounging about in what used to be the j-lab, and you don’t have any photographers back there, either. You don’t even have a job any more, outside of that so-called detective agency that you and your soon-to-be-bride run.

Hey, it’s OK. Terry and I have the kind of friendship where needles are always sharp.

So you caught me, I said. I can put on my reporter’s hat, if you like. It’s only been … how many years, exactly, since I scribbled facts for a living?

What about the photograph? How are you going to manage that?

I pulled the aging BlackBerry from my belt and flashed him a Got-ya grin.

Give me five minutes to figure out how to take a picture with this damned thing and we’re good to go, I said.

He laughed, heartily.

That phone is six generations old and you still don’t know how to use it – do I have that right? 

You caught me again.

No wonder journalism is dead and you, my old friend, are on your way to a musty drawer of moldy mothballs, he said, and he ambled down the corridor, his gait reminiscent of a sailor on the high seas. 

Nice to see you, Professor Blake, he called over his shoulder. Hope your days are merry and bright, and your retirement is everything you want it to be. See you at the ceremony.

He was right, of course – right about all of it. The college no longer has student reporters or photographers on hand to cover the day’s events on campus, just as there are precious few of them in real life any more. I also don’t take pictures with the BlackBerry, a device that I detest on my best day, often forgetting to turn the silly thing on unless I’m late getting home. 

I didn’t tell Terry that I was skipping the long-planned retirement ceremony entirely and would slip quietly out the back door at day’s end instead. It’s not that I didn’t appreciate the effort or the notes of good cheer that would send me off into the sunset. It’s just that, well, what’s there to say after all this time? 

They were saying a great deal in Ireland, on the other side of the Atlantic, while this scene was taking place in Oregon. I know that now, and I sure as hell wish that I’d known it as I headed back to my office for a final time, already dreading the long drive north that would take me home.

I’ll tell you, straight up, that had I known what was coming, the path that Caeli Brown and I walked together would have been far different from the one we ultimately chose – the one that cost us dearly. 

Sit back, put your feet up, and I’ll tell you about it.

ONE

Stardom and fame

Maybe Andy Warhol was right, though there’s debate that he even served up the famous everybody-gets-15-minutes quote.

Fame is a dangerous thing. It attracts, but it also repels.

I’m one of those guys who can do without it. I say that from experience; I’ve had my brushes with its seductive touch. My detective agency work has put my face on the front page and on TV a few times, but it’s nothing that ever lasts. The news cycle keeps humming along, looking for the next big story, scandal, outrage, shiny object.

No thanks.

Here’s one for you: I played in the old Tiger Stadium in downtown Detroit once, at second base, in a 10-inning game when I was in high school and our team of misfits somehow made it to the state championship. I was 17 and had no way of knowing that I’d never come as close to hitting the big time as I had on that crisp spring day, so long ago now that I don’t easily recall the year.

We just don’t recognize the most significant moments in our lives while they are happening, old Archie Moonlight Graham told Kevin Costner’s character in the baseball movie Field of Dreams.

Damned if he wasn’t right.

No, hold on. I was on national TV ... The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson. My cousin Jerry, you see, is the fabled Dentist to the Stars, the man who keeps all of Hollywood smiling brightly, and he scored a couple of tickets when I was bumming around before finding meaningful work, long before I’d met Caeli. Hell of a deal, we all agreed, and were happy to head to Burbank and slog through the smog and the traffic and the general craziness of Southern California to experience a piece of television history.

My recollection of what took place is hazy at best – hell, it was a long time ago – but here’s some of what I recall:

We had to be in our seats early, before 4 p.m., because the show was broadcast live on the East Coast and replayed later for the Left Coast crowd. 

I remember that the theater was tiny, much smaller than it came across on TV.

I remember some of the general banter from the studio guy who came out before the cameras rolled and told us what was expected: watch the overhead flashing signs for instructions, applaud vigorously when prompted, no rushing the stage, no cat-calls … about what you’d imagine.

It was our luck that Johnny was off on the night we visited the City of Angels. His spot was filled by Sammy Davis Jr., even then an entertainment paragon. Robert Conrad, the star of a popular TV show of the day, was among the guests.

During his opening monologue, Sammy decided to take questions from the audience, and my arm shot up along with a hundred others, though I had no expectation that I’d be called or what I’d ask should the showbiz legend acknowledge my presence. But damned if he didn’t point in my direction, and damned if I didn’t figure it out a moment later, given that his glass eye was shining in the klieg lights and it was difficult to determine exactly where he was looking … or even pointing.

Still, I recovered and blurted out a question – something along the lines of, We don’t see enough of you on the big screen these days, Sammy; when are you going to make another movie? He answered with what seemed to be a heartfelt rail at all of the sex and violence and nasty language that was readily prevalent in the movies of the day, adding that he’d consider another role only when Hollywood cleaned up its act. He was rewarded with modest applause, he took another question, and I remembered sitting there thinking, Well, nuts. Now I’ve got to stay up past my bedtime and watch the same damn show that I’m watching right now. 

Of course, I did exactly that.

For what it’s worth, you needed a magnifying glass to spot my face in the audience, my voice (and question) was just barely audible, but Sammy seemed genuine regardless and I managed to make it through the entire TV showing before climbing into bed that night.

Somewhere, buried 650 feet in the earth in a former salt mine in Hutchinson, Kansas, a copy of that show is sitting in a metal storage tin, waiting for prying fingers that will never come to open it up again and take a look inside … a TV time capsule for eternity. 

And now, thanks to the amusement of the internet, you can find the exact date of the show and even gaze at a photo of Sammy Davis Jr. behind the desk and Robert Conrad, immediately across from him, laughing uproariously, or at least appearing to do so.

Conrad is looking at the camera. It’s hard to tell where Sammy is focused.

What? You were expecting the actual date? Use your own Google box.

I was at the laptop, searching for the meaning of life, or at least of my life now that I’ve retired. In time I started seeking out the lyrics to a Doobie Brothers song that I’d caught on satellite radio the day before and couldn’t immediately fathom, even after years of hearing the tune … even after an hour of off-and-on consideration about the complexity of the lyrics, which go far beyond the typical June/Moon/Swoon that you get with mindless rock love songs.

At the time, I didn’t get much past the idea that you had to hand it to a band that named itself after, well, a doobie. 

What A Fool Believes, the song in question, soon morphed in my head into yet another Doobies tune, Minute by Minute, and I dialed up a YouTube version that ran in the background as I checked the latest stocks report, and I was about to click off the laptop and pass the day off as a total loss when I heard Caeli’s Camaro pull into the garage. It took her a bit longer than usual to make it inside, and I figured that she must be bringing some work home and got up from the desk to give her a hand.

Spotted this at the front door, she said, and she waved a folded sheet of paper in my general direction.

What is it?

A flyer of some kind – from one of the area churches.

And you know that because …

I gave her a kiss as she slipped through the door, and she returned it with only moderate enthusiasm.

It says so, right on the front, she said a moment later.

I’d lost track of the conversation by then and waved my hands to the side – a What’s that mean? gesture.

You asked how I knew the pamphlet came from a nearby church, she said.

Yeah, right … I remember now.

Look at the headline.

She unfolded it and pointed to the bold header: Why Did Jesus Come to Earth?

She handed it over at that point, and I’ll confess that my answer was spontaneous, if not particularly well-considered, given my upbringing and mandatory viewings of The Ten Commandments during Easter week.

I don’t think it was to have me answer the front door, I said.

Clearly. Otherwise, I wouldn’t be fishing this off the porch when I get home from a hard day.

Yup. A zinger.

Ouch. I had a hard day, too, I said.

I can see that.

At least I’m not in my bathrobe.

Yes, quite the accomplishment – a lesson learned from yesterday, apparently. It’s good to see that an old dog …

She didn’t finish the line – no need – and I grinned at her and tossed the flyer in the recycle bin with a nod to the heavens, trusting that an instant change in the weather and a sudden thunderclap wouldn’t be my immediate reward.

I was going to make dinner and even went to the store to buy some fresh goodies, I said, winding up for an apology of sorts.

But …

She flashed me the look when she said it, and every man on the planet knows exactly what look I’m referencing here.

But the fish didn’t look particularly good, and the romaine was a bit on the wilty side, and I even tried Albertson’s after abandoning Safeway.

Now she appeared to be confused.

Still no go. I figured that I’d treat you to the dinner of your dreams tonight in whatever restaurant you’d care to select: Salty’s, the Riverview, Pompello’s, Tapatio, Bumper’s, Edgefield – you name it, and I’ll wield the magic plastic when the time comes.

Let me think about it, she said, and she looked momentarily distracted, as if she’d lost interest. It’s been a long day, and I can’t shake the feeling …

She hesitated, as though the prospect of talking about whatever she was sensing in that instant would somehow make it come true.

I was tempted to ask but didn’t press, even when she brought it up again while we were waiting for our fish to arrive at Salty’s, the spot Caeli eventually selected for dinner. We’d both ordered the special (rock fish with an extra helping of steamed veggies; hold the starch), and Caeli looked as serious as I’d seen her in weeks.

Or at least since it sunk in that my retirement did little more than keep me at home during the day, working two crosswords and mindlessly editing the local newspapers for grammatical miscues and researching Doobie Brothers lyrics on the side while she was overwhelmingly busy as the vice president for communications at a large area school district.

You seem preoccupied, I said.

Just tired. There’s a lot going on.

The comment was innocent enough, but I was feeling guilty and scratched the urge to justify my existence.

I sent an application to Mount Hood this morning.

Mount Hood is the local community college that sits within walking distance of our home in the trend-setting Troutdale community, east of Portland. I figured that Caeli would be relieved that I hadn’t squandered yet another day away to nonsense.

That’s nice, she said, miles away.

Yeah. They were looking for male models for the art classes in the fall, and I figured that I’d be a shoo-in.

Good, she said, her mind still elsewhere. Sounds great.

I think I’ll look particularly good, posing nude for nubile co-eds with a mind on more than their drawing skills, I added, piling on the fuel in an effort to shake her from whatever distraction occupied her attention. But it still didn’t register.

I’m wondering if I should go to the Hair Club for Men before I take my first assignment … in case the co-eds prefer a Patrick Dempsey ’do.

She didn’t say anything for a moment and eventually checked her watch.

They’re slow tonight. I wonder if they rowed out there – she waved at the Columbia River, visible through the windows – to catch our dinner.

I’ll say it again, Caeli. You seem preoccupied.

No. I’m OK, she said. It’s just that, well, I can’t help thinking something bad is coming. Why or what, I don’t know, but … something bad.

The words drifted away, and I concluded that not only was I an unlikely candidate to be hired as a male model for college art classes but that stand-up comedy wasn’t going to work for me in retirement, either.

Any idea what’s prompting this? I asked.

She shook her head from side to side – a gentle motion, slow and easy – but didn’t say anything more. I knew better than to prompt her, and the fish arrived then and gave us something else to talk about. She was complimentary of the meal, as well as the wine, and she even mentioned that OPB’s radio coverage of the big education story of the day included both her school district and superintendent in flattering terms.

The ride home along Marine Drive was pleasant, and the stereo, dialed into the ubiquitous satellite network, served up What A Fool Believes just as we pulled into the driveway.

Hell of a coincidence, I said as I hit the garage door button and waited for the creaking mass of rickety aluminum to rise to the occasion. I was thinking about this song earlier.

If she heard me, she didn’t reply, and we were inside within minutes and Caeli was off to bed while it was still daylight, complaining of a slight headache and being overly tired.

I didn’t give any additional thought to her off-hand comment that something bad was coming. Bad stuff always comes at you, regardless of your station in life or how much money you make or who your friends might be, or even who sits in the White House at any given moment. Bad stuff seems to be an equal opportunity caller.

It didn’t dawn on me until much later that the Doobies tune became a No. 1 single in the same year that Sammy Davis Jr. and Robert Conrad shared a Burbank sound stage while Johnny Carson took the day off. I don’t know what that says, exactly, but the essential lyric of the song, He came from somewhere back in her long ago, wouldn’t truly resonate until the next day.

But resonate, it did.

TWO

Bare Essentials

Caeli is no alarmist, nor someone who engages in idle speculation or worries about creaks and squeaks in the night, nor would she be inclined to run from danger should a ruckus or wrinkle upset the natural order of things.

Quite the contrary.

The physiological reaction of Fight or Flight or Freeze is a misnomer in Caeli’s case. She doesn’t freeze, and she sure as hell doesn’t flee. Her Krav Maga-trained fists are quick to rise, her 9mm Walther P99 semi-automatic pistol is always handy, and she’s often the first one through the door of whatever unforeseen emergency would send others scurrying for cover.

She’s been known to push me aside.

She doesn’t overthink things or ponder the imponderable or overreact to the unexpected or the unknown, nor is she given to excessive brooding about dreams or fortune tellers or omens, despite her Irish ancestry. She is, by every estimate that I could put on it, from the time that I’d first met her, as sound and as solid as solid gets.

That’s why her comments about something bad coming our way struck me as odd at the time.

That just isn’t Caeli.

On the other hand, her instincts are so consistently good, so reliable, that I’d be a fool to ignore the warning, however oddly it was delivered.

Still, there wasn’t a lot to say. She’d slipped into bed earlier than usual, without conversation or explanation of her premonition – if, in fact, that’s what it was – and she was out the door the next morning before I could so much as boil her an egg and set the toaster on stun.

The best that I got was a smile, a peck on the cheek, and a promise that she’d be home for dinner.

I’m mostly busy all day long. What do you have going? she’d asked before scurrying out to face the demons of work.

Besides trying to stir up some detective agency business?

Besides that.

I’ve got a bunch of errands to run, I’d said. Post office, cleaners, bank, car wash, plus I’ve also got an appointment for an oil change. I’ll likely stop afterward and fuel up. Do you have time for lunch? I can meet you somewhere.

No, sorry – the afternoon’s booked, she said. But I’ve got a meeting at one of the elementary schools for a media blitz, so I’ll swing by afterward and feed Mitts and Koko.

Mitts and Koko are Caeli’s cats. I say that because, even though we all share the same house, and even though I personally rescued Koko from the local Humane Society office, neither of the lazy loungers gives so much as a single meow as to whether I live or die during the course of the day … or the year. But the second that Caeli walks through the door, the cats come flying from whatever sunny cranny they’ve been sleeping in all day to curl around her leg, to ask her about her day in cat-speak (a language that Caeli is fluent in), to do all of the things that cats do with people they like.

For comparison’s sake, I don’t get so much as a backward glance when I give them a friendly scratch as I pass by or even when their bowls are empty and I take the time to feed them, although Mitts will sometimes swat at me if I pass too closely to whatever perch he’s ensconced in.

There’s an old line that says, Dogs have masters; cats have staff. The cats treat me as staff. They treat Caeli as an equal, and I get the feeling that Mitts thinks he’s the man of the house and that Caeli is rightfully his woman.

Our relationship with the cats became more interesting a year ago when Koko developed a food allergy. After hundreds of dollars and multiple vet visits, Koko has her own food and can’t eat anything that Mitts likes. If she gets into his food, we’re cleaning it up an hour later, and then again hours after that. But Mitts likes to eat often, and hand-feeding is now a must. Caeli’s visit to the house after her meeting would at least keep the big fella happy while I was running around with a long list of odds and ends that I’d put off for far too long.

I eventually shook myself free of the cats and the house and was delayed at both the post office, where the line was interminable, and at the mechanic’s shop where I keep the supercharged Cadillac tuned and serviced. I didn’t expect to find Caeli when I finally made it home, and I wasn’t even surprised to see a hastily scribbled message that she left in the kitchen.

I quickly scanned the note without picking it up, thinking that it was something as innocuous as when she’d be back and an idea about what we might do for dinner.

I wasn’t expecting this:

Max,

I’m off to Ireland; had to contact Vinny to arrange a flight because my passport expired. I’ll try to call when I can, maybe sometime tomorrow. Knew I should have paid attention – knew something was coming. The postcard will tell you everything you need to know. Hang tight. Be good to the cats.

Love you.

Caeli

P.S. Please burn this note when you’ve read it. Burn the postcard, too.

Off to Ireland? I thought. What in the hell is she talking about … off to Ireland?

For that matter, what in the hell is she thinking? – and yeah, I said that last line aloud.

She’s taking off for Ireland, without a passport, and to do that she’d need …

That’s when it really hit me. The Vinny she’d referred to was Vincenzo Giuseppe Fierro, and details of the man and his various enterprises are as legendary as they are often exaggerated. Let me introduce a few facts:

He’s one of the Pacific Northwest’s quietly successful businessmen, a man whose political connections stretch into the governor’s office in at least seven states, the U.S. Congress, and the heads of states of various foreign nations.

He is a vintner of some skill whose wines have earned him accolades and awards throughout the Western states and have been served in the White House, as well as at the Vatican and the Kremlin – or so I’m told.

And according to the FBI, at least, he’s also the capo di tutti capi of the entire West Coast … the boss of all the bosses, the godfather of all the godfathers.

Their opinion. Sure as hell not mine.

Caeli and I call him friend, though it’s a bit more complicated than that. With Don Vincenzo, everything becomes complicated.

No wonder she wants me to burn the note, I thought.

He first popped up on my radar when his son Fredo took one of my classes at the college. Sure, I knew of the old man by reputation when the kid signed on. Hell, everyone in the state did. I didn’t give it much thought. But Freddy blew the class off, he was rewarded with an appropriate grade at the end of the semester, and sometime later he determined that he wanted to go to Harvard’s prestigious law school – something he couldn’t do with an F on his transcript from a no-name college in the god-forsaken wilds of Oregon.

Enter the old man.

We eventually worked it out to everyone’s satisfaction, Freddy and Vinny and I. And out of that strange time, Don Vincenzo became not only a friend but a benefactor of sorts to both Caeli and me. There was little the man couldn’t do, and he seemed willing to extend his generosity to us without being asked or courted.

If Caeli needs to get to Ireland without a passport, there’s only one place to go, one man to call, and it’s not our senator or someone in the State Department …

… wait. Caeli mentioned a postcard that would explain everything. What postcard? I muttered.

I glanced around the kitchen, starting with the counter space beneath the cabinets and then on to the island and eventually to the table, where we generally stack the day’s mail that requires attention.

Nothing.

I even checked the refrigerator, thinking that she might have attached it – A postcard, I kept saying, over and over; who sends postcards anymore? – with a magnet.

Again, nothing.

I didn’t spot it until I picked up Caeli’s note to read a second time. She’d tucked the postcard beneath her solitary sheet of stationary, and it sent a chill straight through me the minute I saw it.

I know this. I know what it means, I said, though no one – certainly not the cats – was around to hear.

The postcard was a simple muted color photograph of William Butler Yeats’s tombstone in Drumcliff churchyard, County Sligo – with the last three lines of his 1933 masterwork Under Ben Bulben engraved on the stone monolith:

Cast a cold Eye

On Life, on Death,

Horseman pass by.

W. B. Yeats

June 13th 1865

January 28th 1939

I pulled out my BlackBerry and rang Caeli’s smartphone, using speed dial. The call went directly to her voice mail, and I left a message as though I hadn’t read the part about hanging tight at home.

Caeli. Got your note. Understand. Will do my best to get there quickly, but my passport’s also expired. I’ll figure something out. Love you. Get back to me when you can.

My next call went to Vinny Fierro’s direct line – it’s No. 3 on my semi-smart phone’s speed dial feature – and he usually picks up. But I was surprised when Leonard, my longtime nemesis and one of the don’s two primary bodyguards, answered on the fourth ring with a grunt, followed by a choice expletive, followed by a humorless chuckle.

He told me to expect you, he eventually said.

What the hell, Leonard, I said – hardly a question. What’s …

Stop calling me Leonard, dammit, he muttered.

Never mind. Where is he?

He’s on his way to Ireland with your woman, Leonard said. They left in the big jet – he paused, perhaps checking his watch, perhaps counting time with his fingers and toes – I don’t know, 90 minutes ago, maybe. A couple of hours at most.

Leonard is somewhat mercurial. He can come off as thoroughly bored in one moment and through-the-ceiling angry in the next – a rare trick when you figure that he seldom fires for effect, so far as I know. What you see, what you hear … that’s the genuine article in whatever precise moment you catch him. 

He’d sounded indifferent when he relayed the essentials to me here.

But indifferent wasn’t going to work – not for me, not at that moment.

The don is flying Caeli to Ireland? I said, more as a line to establish my own understanding of the facts than as a request for a repeat. God a’mighty, Leonard. Are you kidding me?

You catch on quick, Blake, he said. How come you grasp the obvious here but can’t figure out that my name ain’t Leonard – that it’s never been Leonard, that I hate you and despise your nonsense and only tolerate you ’cause the boss says I gotta? How come you can’t figure that out?

OK, so he was having a bad day. But I didn’t much care about his disapproval.

Look, get over it, I said. I don’t remember your real name, and I don’t give a damn anyway. All I care about is …

The connection was severed, and I stared at the phone for a second or two, wondering whether the don’s chief henchman had really just hung up on me or whether the BlackBerry had blown a fuse or a gasket or whatever was inside the damn thing that made it tick.

Rather than calling Leonard again, I dialed his partner, Elmore, who also has a place of honor on the BlackBerry’s speed-dial rotation.

Figured I’d be hearing from you, he said after picking up on the second ring. How are you, Professor Blake?

I’ve been better, I said, bypassing the social amenities. Can you tell me what’s going on? I was just on the phone with …

Yeah, I know – I’m standing next to him, Elmore said, and I could detect a hint of mirth in his voice. You two need to work out your issues sometime – maybe head to the gym and go a few rounds, or to counseling, maybe, or to …

… or to the gun range, I said, interrupting.

I’m not sure you’d want to be around him when he’s got a loaded gun in his hand, Professor B, Elmore said.

I could hear Leonard in the background, firing off a couple of nasty expletives and his assessment of where I could stick my Walther, and the absurdity of both the situation and the conversation struck me in that instant.

Never mind Leonard, for god’s sake. What’s your boss up to? I said, the frustration in my voice painfully obvious. And for that matter, what’s up with Caeli?

I might be able to help you with the first part of that, Elmore said. As to the second …

He let his voice trail off, and this time I detected no amusement in his words.

Tell me what you know, Elmore, I said after a moment. I’ll owe you one.

You already do, he said. Leonard’s pissed that I answered the phone.

I could hear Leonard again in the background, his voice rising like a Fourth of July bottle rocket.

You’re damn right I’m pissed off – and stop calling me Leonard, he shouted, loudly enough for me to easily hear him.

All right, calm down, Elmore said, and I figured that he was addressing Leonard that time and not me.

As an aside, it’s worth filling you in on at least one reason why Leonard was upset. The first time I’d met the two bodyguards, they showed up at my detective agency office in downtown Salem and tried to shanghai me – take me to the don’s estate across the Willamette River for a forced sit-down with the boss – all linking back to son Fredo’s failing grade in my journalism class. They rolled in with guns drawn, and I made the offhand remark that the scene reminded me of something out of an Elmore Leonard novel … thus the names.

Elmore, at least, likes his appellation. Hell, the reference turned him into a steady reader of excellent crime fiction.

As to Leonard, I could still hear him in the background, hammering away at his partner, at me, at Caeli, at the world.

Or so it seemed.

Look, Professor B, best I can tell you is come on out and read what’s in the envelope the boss left you. It’s all explained in …

Wait. I interrupted him again but couldn’t help it. He left something for me – at the estate?

Yeah, exactly. There was a pause, and he added, Leonard says you catch on quick – and how come you can’t grasp the obvious about his name not being Leonard.

Geez, Elmore. You’ve got the phone on speaker?

Of course, he said, laughing.

Give me a break – and kindly tell Leonard that he’ll always be Leonard to me. Listen, I’m way the hell in East Dogpatch, a couple of hours away with the traffic. Why can’t you just read me whatever’s in the envelope?

Mister F’s orders, Elmore said easily. He knew you’d call, he knew you’d ask, he knew you’d want me to read it to you. That’s not the way he wants it done this time. You’ll have to come out here to see it.

Will Leonard be there?

I don’t know. Let me ask him.

He must have placed his hand over the receiver this time because I couldn’t hear anything for a few seconds. He sounded amused when he spoke again.

He wouldn’t miss it for the world.

Good. Tell him I can’t wait – and tell him I’m bringing my Walther along.

I thanked Elmore for his time without waiting for a reply, severed the connection, and grabbed the keys to the Cadillac for the trip south. 

I was halfway to West Salem, fighting the congestion on the interstate near Wilsonville after a dreadful hour of parking-lot-busy idiocy on the 205, when I realized that the Doobie Brothers and Michael McDonald’s voice were running a constant refrain through my head.

Minute by minute by minute by minute … I keep holding on.

THREE

The Long and the Short of It

OK, so let me tell you what I knew at the time.

Or at least let me tell you what I knew when I saw the postcard with William Butler Yeats’s tombstone plastered across the front and nothing but our address scribbled in ink in a wavering script on the back.

Well, nuts. An hour has passed since I started this piece of the story, and I’m still trying to figure out how to easily explain the situation. That’s likely because there isn’t an easy explanation to the complicated mess that we found ourselves in, especially one that makes much sense, even to me – and hell, I was right in the middle of it.

All right, let me try this. We’ll see how it goes:

Caeli’s uncle on her mother’s side is an archbishop in Ireland, Roman Catholic royalty in a land that prides itself on its association with and dedication to the church. He resides in Armagh, the English equivalent of the Irish Ard Mhacha, which translates to Macha’s Height. And for what it’s worth, Macha – the wife of Nemed; the daughter of Ernmas; the daughter of Partholon; the wife of Cruinniuc; Macha Mong Ruad (Red Mane), the only queen in the list of the High Kings of Ireland; and yeah, more than a few deities with the name appear in Irish folklore and literature through the centuries – is the goddess of, among other choice items, war, horses, and sovereignty.

It doesn’t take a genius to figure out that Armagh is in Northern Ireland, called Ulster locally, the six counties on the island that belong to Great Britain.

You also don’t have to be a student of the ’60s or ’70s or ’80s, or even a casual reader of newspapers or a viewer of nightly TV news, to know that Northern Ireland and The Troubles are as synonymous as Laurel and Hardy, salt and pepper, Blake & Brown.

The city is the ecclesiastical capital of Ireland, the seat of the Archbishops (note the plural) of Armagh, with representatives of both the Roman Catholic Church and the Church of Ireland in residence. You can, as they say, look it up.

And yeah, it’s also convoluted.

Caeli’s uncle, a distinguished man in his mid-60s who enjoys a pint of stout as much as he does the Mysteries of the Rosary and the Litany of the Dead and all varieties of prayers and services and celebrations, church-related or otherwise, is a well-regarded clergyman. He has a high moral sense, a deep understanding of Irish law and tradition, a deeper insight into the mystical separation of church and state as it exists in Ireland today, and he’s also a student of The Troubles, the religious unrest and national fervor that has swept the country for centuries, resulting in the deaths of many thousands of innocents and more than a few terrorists on both sides of the cause.

Forget tallying the issues of centuries. Since 1969, the death toll attributed to sectarian strife in Northern Ireland is listed at 3,568 men, women, and children. Some estimates place the figure much higher. 

The archbishop also is a big fan of Caeli, as Caeli is of him. They connected early on, during Caeli’s First Communion, and have been loyal friends since, enjoying phone calls and letters and emails and visits and reunions on both sides of the Atlantic. We’d hosted the archbishop a couple of years back, ferrying him around to some of Oregon’s lesser-known tourist destinations. The John Day Fossil Beds in the central part of the state particularly caught his eye, as did the state parks along the northern and central parts of the coast. We were particularly pleased when he welcomed us for a lengthy stay at his residence when we spent two glorious summer weeks in the Irish Republic a year ago before traveling north of the border. As Caeli put it, a visit to Ireland would be no visit at all if we didn’t spend time with His Eminence, the Most Rev. Sean J. O’Lennox, the Archbishop of Armagh.

She calls him Uncle Jack and would move heaven and earth for the man.

I’ve always had a difficult time with that lack of formality and general refer to him as Sir or Your Eminence, at least in his presence.

He’s easy enough to like. Among other fine traits, a keen wit and a lovely tenor among them, he hasn’t given either one of us a lecture or ration of damnation for living together without yet being married.

When last we saw him, before heading to Shannon and the long flight to Boston, which in turn would lead us to Seattle and then on to Portland, we’d stayed up late in the parsonage, as he calls his home, enjoying a glass of Power’s, and he began talking about the history of The Troubles and the alarming rise in violence he’d noted during his time in Armagh that had yet to make it into the various international news reports. Perhaps it was the whiskey that got him talking that night, or his natural reserve was momentarily placed on hold in Caeli’s presence. Perhaps it was because we prodded him along, asking questions that any good investigative journalist would fire off to a trusted source. The picture he painted was all the more horrifying because it established that The Troubles hadn’t disappeared at all, except from the nightly news.

Worse, he seemed to think that high-ranking officials on both sides of the border separating the Irish Republic from British Ulster were not only aware of the new surge in violence but also seemed to have a ready hand in stirring the proverbial pot.

Worse yet, it was the archbishop’s strong belief that members of the clergy and other key figures representing his own church, as well as that of the Church of Ireland, were up to their cassocks in the mess – and he was damned well going to do something about it.

Caeli was adamant that he leave that role to others.

He was equally inflexible, insisting that he was a player of instruments, surely not a mere conductor of the orchestra.

You know these boys play for keeps, Caeli said that night.

Aye – I do at that, he’d replied, and a smile crept across his handsome face when he spoke those words.

It’ll do no good to see you caught up in something that would reflect poorly on you, on the office you hold, or on the church itself, she’d said.

And what good would I be if I sat by and did nothing, Caeli dear? he’d said. How could I look meself in the mirror each morning? How could I look Himself in the eye when the time comes, knowing I didn’t do everything I could?

I found myself in an odd position that night. I fully understood Caeli’s viewpoint. But I also could empathize with the archbishop’s take and his willingness – no, his adamancy – that he get his hands dirty in a cause that he thoroughly believed in.

You’d do the same, Caeli, I’d argued at one point. I’ve seen it – many times.

Of course I would, she’d said quickly, her eyes aflame. But keep in mind, Max – both of you should keep in mind – that I’m hardly an archbishop. And that, to my way of thinking, makes a great deal of difference when you get down to rubbing shoulders … or knocking heads.

I could feel the heat in her voice, the passion in her response, and I tried to make light of it, given the circumstances.

The church is less of a place because it wouldn’t admit you to the role, I’d said.

But Caeli was well aware of my penchant for derailing a difficult conversational path, especially in the presence of others.

The idea that she was willing to take on the archbishop, even if the man was her uncle and friend, hardly seemed logical at the time. Hell, we were in his home, drinking his whiskey, and he was, after all, family.

None of that seemed to matter.

This won’t end well, Uncle Jack, she’d said.

Only if it’s God’s will, he’d replied.

Bullshit. God’s not forcing you to take on the IRA and UDA – referencing the Irish Republican Army and the Ulster Defense Association, two of the main combatants in The Troubles. You’re making that call on your own, choosing to keep God on the sidelines, she’d said.

I thought that we were straying into dangerous territory and shifted uncomfortably in my seat, mumbling, "I’d opt for ‘Bullshit, Your Eminence,’ " emphasizing the courtesy title. But he merely smiled, a bit sadly, I thought, and waved off the vulgarism with a flick of his hand.

It’s quite all right, Max, he’d said. I know better than most how feelings and emotions run high in our family.

Caeli’s eyes lit up again, but he kept going before she could jump in with a heated protest.

"And to you, dearest Caeli, I