Black Irish (14 page)

Abbie parked in the empty parking lot. A custodian was just opening the door.

“Good morning.”

He nodded, placed a sign that said “Adults $8, Children $4” next to the door, and pointed toward the desk.

“Do you have some kind of library here, an archives?” Abbie asked.

“That’d be in back. First left.”

“Who’s in charge of it?”

“Dr. Reinholdt. He’s back there, saw him come in.”

“Can you tell me what he looks like?”

The custodian looked at Abbie strangely. “Ma’am, he’s the only one back there. Look for a short, round, miserable old man with glasses. He’ll probably be hiding in the book stacks. He doesn’t like people too much.”

Abbie nodded, made the first left, and followed a dark, narrow passageway toward the back of the building. On each side of her were pictures carved into the gleaming wood: old white men, beavers chewing on wood, factories pumping smoke, the story of Erie County in pictograms.

When she got to the library, the room was dark. She pushed open the glass doors. There were tall stacks of very old books, sorted onto oak shelves that reached up to the ceiling, with three long tables between them, six chairs tucked under each. It smelled of old parchment and glue.

“Dr. Reinholdt?” she said.

The books seemed to absorb the sound of her voice.

“Dr. Reinholdt?”

She walked to the wall next to the glass door and found the light switch. She snapped it on.

Something stirred behind the shelves in the far corner.

“Who did that? Martin, you troll, I told you …”

Abbie walked toward the voice. When she turned the corner of the shelves, she found a bald man with squarish plastic-rimmed glasses and piercingly intelligent eyes, wearing a slightly dingy short-sleeve dress shirt and suspenders, seated behind a desk.

“Dr. Reinholdt?”

He smiled. “Why, yes.”

“I’m Detective Kearney with Buffalo PD.” She showed him her badge and ID. “I need to ask you some questions.”

“If it’s about the custodian, I haven’t killed him yet. Try me again in a month or two.”

“It’s not.”

He studied her, his owl eyes blinking awkwardly.

“Sit down, sit down,” he said suddenly, as if he’d just realized she was actually alive and not a mannequin to be ogled.

The only chair in front of the desk was stacked with what looked like old city directories. Reinholdt snorted in irritation and came around the desk, revealing a pair of brown polyester pants that ended two inches above his shiny black shoes, and a pair of argyle socks. He pulled the books off and dropped them to the floor next to the chair. Abbie slid into it.

“I need to know about an organization, possibly a secret one, in South Buffalo. It’s called the Clan.”

“The Klan?”

“Not the Ku Klux Klan. Apparently, there’s another one. And it has something to do with the Gaelic Club.”

“How interesting,” Reinholdt said, picking up a yellow-paged book that had been open on his desk and turning with a grunt to place it on the floor behind him. “All I really get back here is high school students wanting me to write their reports on ‘Daredevils Who Survived the Falls’ or some such nonsense. Moon-faced Mongolians. But a question about the ancient Clan na Gael from a very pretty detective?”

Abbie gave him a businesslike smile and pulled out her notebook.

“The Clan … excuse me?”

“Clan na Gael. A fascinating organization.”

“How do you spell that?”

“Clan with a ‘C.’ N-a. New word, G-a-e-l. It means ‘Family of the Gaels.’ ”

“Was it active here in Buffalo? I’ve never heard of it.”

“Very few have.”

“Can you tell me what it is exactly?”

“Well, the appropriate phrase is ‘what it was.’ The Clan today is a shadow of its former self. But in its heyday, it was filled with bomb throwers and wild-eyed radicals. Revolutionaries really. And Buffalo was one of their strongholds. Very much like the Ancient Order of Hibernians but …”

Abbie gave him a look.

“Sorry. Your Irish surname threw me; a Kearney of the old stock would know. The Ancient Order is a bunch of grizzled old men who get together, wave their shillelaghs—you do know what
those
are, right?”

She nodded. “My father had one.”

He looked at her curiously, then continued. “And tell stories about the rebels and the Wren Boys. Never mind, they’re not important either. Then the members drink some whiskey, weep about the time they left their poor mothers back on the cow farm, and go home to fall asleep in their La-Z-Boys.”

“I see. And the Clan?”

“Much more … hardcore, as they would say now. Back in the late 1800s and early 1900s, they were the true believers, the ‘action men,’ as they were known. Irish immigrants who’d come to America to build the railroads or the Erie Canal paid part of their wages to the Clan to buy guns that would be used to make Ireland free. They smuggled Irish rebels who were on the Black and Tans’ list—the Black and Tans were the British terror squads—into America and hid them. And then there was the money. The Irish War of Independence in the 1920s was largely funded by the Clan, out of Buffalo and a few other cities.”

Guns or IRA money, Abbie thought. It might fit.

“Let me get this straight,” she said, leaning forward in her chair. “The Clan na Gael were running guns to Ireland? How long ago?”

“Well …” Dr. Reinholdt sat back in his chair and his perfectly round stomach rose into view above the desk. “That’s the question, isn’t it?”

He smiled at Abbie. She smiled back.

“If this is an exercise in mind reading, Doctor, it’s not working.”

The doctor frowned. “What I mean to say is that here we shift from the provenance of history to … mere rumor.”

“I’ll take the rumors,” Abbie said.

The doctor’s eyes regarded her, twinkling behind his glasses.

“One moment,” he said, and he stood and disappeared into the library stacks behind him.

Abbie heard him rustling around back there. She turned to look out the window at a pair of ducks swimming across the Society’s tiny lake, which for some reason had remained unfrozen.
Could Jimmy Ryan have been running guns into Canada and then on to Ireland?
she wondered.
And using Gerald Decatur to set up the connections across the Peace Bridge?

Dr. Reinholdt reappeared carrying a gray archival box. He opened the hinged lid, stuck his pudgy hand in and pulled out a small sheaf of newspaper articles.

“Here we are,” he said.

He read for a second, then nodded.

“When the twenty-six counties of Ireland won their independence in 1921, the Clan became a supporter of the IRA, who didn’t accept the peace treaty. That particular organization I’m sure you’re familiar with. For decades, the Irish-American community funneled money to the IRA. They bankrolled the bombs and the bullets that were directed at the British Army in Northern Ireland. They held fund-raisers, protest marches for rebels imprisoned in Ulster, and did God knows what else.”

Abbie nodded. Her father had slapped a bumper sticker on the old Nova, “26 + 6 = 1.” The twenty-six counties of the Republic plus the six counties of Northern Ireland equaled one nation. In other words, England out of Ireland. When as a girl she’d gone to retrieve him from the Gaelic Club, she’d see the posters of pale faces on the wall with the words in blood red, “Free the Belfast 8” or “Free the Derry 10,” on and on. It had been the background noise of her childhood. She’d never taken it seriously.

Now she leaned her arm on the desk and peered at Reinholdt. “That went on
here
, in Buffalo?”

“Yes. I mean no.”

She gave him a look. “Doctor?”

“Not
officially
. No one was ever convicted. But there were … incidents.”

“Incidents connected with the Gaelic Club?”

“Yes. Men were arrested. Supporting a terrorist organization was the usual charge. I was here for most of the trials. The Clan na Gael had always interested me, so I followed them quite closely. Let’s just say that there was considerable evidence to convict, but the juries—always filled with McFaddens and O’Neills and Riordans—always found a technicality on which to release their fair-haired young men back into the arms of a cheering crowd.”

“And this happened as late as the eighties?”

“Yes.”

“Now, Dr. Reinholdt. Can you remember whether a man named Jimmy Ryan was ever charged in these cases?”

Dr. Reinholdt looked up at the ceiling, whispering the name
“Ryan” through his lips. He sat up straight, then plunged a hand into the gray box. He pulled out several articles, began to read the first one, put it on the desk, and looked at the next one. He did this three times before adjusting his glasses and beginning to read with his lips moving slightly.

“No. There was a Patrick Ryan accused in the last trial, in 1988, but no Jimmy.”

Abbie grimaced. If Jimmy had been part of the smuggling, it would have given the investigation a motive. Which it so desperately needed.

“But, Detective, you never told me what this was all about. Why would a homicide detective—yes, I caught that on your credentials, despite how quickly you flashed them—be interested in this piece of ancient history?”

Abbie thought about it. With one phone call, Reinholdt could make the connection. Better to have an ally than an enemy.

“Jimmy Ryan was found tortured and murdered in South Buffalo five days ago.”

The smile on Dr. Reinholdt’s face melted away.

“You don’t say?” he said softly.

Abbie watched him. “Do you think it’s possible the murder could—hypothetically, of course—be connected to what we’ve been talking about?”

His eyes went wide as he thought, then he turned to Abbie.

“It’s possible. Yes, indeed, very possible.”

“And who would they want to kill? The British?”

“Of course. Or any informers. They have a long history of those, and a very severe policy in dealing with them.”

Abbie nodded. The thought of an internal betrayal had never occurred to her. Perhaps the killer was eliminating the impure from the ranks of the Clan.

“Thank you, Dr. Reinholdt,” she said briskly. “Now I need to tell you that this conversation is confidential. As much as I’ve enjoyed our talk …”

“Not as much as me, Detective. It’s not often …” He was obviously
going to attempt a compliment, but the effort failed and he looked at her blankly.

“Thank you. But I don’t want to hear that you’re going around telling your friends about Ryan and the Clan.”

“I have no friends,” he said, spreading his hands wide. “The position is open.”

Abbie nodded.

“Where are you parked?”

“Out back in the lot.”

“Let me walk you out. There’s something I want to show you.”

Reinholdt got up and led the way back not through the glass doors but through an aisle cut through the tall stacks of books behind his desk. She followed. As he neared a green wooden door set into the back wall, he reached for a chain snapped to his belt and produced a bright silver-colored key, which he inserted into the lock. He held the door open for her.

“After you, my dear.”

The door opened onto a set of dimly lit stairs that led down. Abbie gave Reinholdt a look and then started down. He followed her through, then closed the door with a bang. She heard him lock it as she felt her way down the darkened stairs. Abbie was wearing her riding boots again, and the heels clicked on the metal stairs.

“Straight ahead,” he said, breathing heavily over her right shoulder.

When they reached the basement floor, Reinholdt hit a switch and hidden ceiling lights glowed yellow. Abbie looked around and knew immediately where she was.
Of course
, she thought,
the dioramas
.

On those high school field trips, the dioramas had been her favorite exhibits. They were exiled to the basement, but they’d always fascinated her and now she saw them again as she and Reinholdt walked slowly along the passageway. Here was the one showing the Seneca Indians who’d lived in Buffalo before the white men came, a young mother with severe cheekbones and a thick black hank of hair falling over her buckskin robe carrying a sleeping baby in some kind
of papoose as she sat grinding corn. Here was the frontiersman in a coonskin cap sinking down on one knee as he sighted a bear (painted, awkwardly, on the wall to his left), his rifle gleaming with silver and polished wood.

“You’ve seen these before?”

“Of course,” Abbie said. “We came here when I was at Mount Mercy.”

“Ah, if I’d only spied you then from my little perch.”

At the end of the row, Abbie saw a man rearing back, his body caught in furious recoil. She came around the front of the diorama and stopped.

“I remember this one.”

It was the only moment in Buffalo history that had made the city world-famous: the assassination of William McKinley by some kind of crazy anarchist. That diorama, encased behind thick glass, had always horrified Abbie as she stared at it in her tartan skirt, knee-high blue socks, and white blouse. McKinley, his face pale with fright, was shown in the instant before he was shot. The assassin, his neck muscles straining with the tension, had the gun wrapped up in a huge bandage that covered his right arm, which was leveled directly at the president’s chest. The gun had not yet gone off.

“The curse of McKinley,” Abbie said.

“Do you really believe that?”

“No. Do you?”

“Of course not. This city has been doomed by geography and its business class. Not by old Bill McKinley.”

He pointed to a hall to her right. “This is what I wanted to show you.”

Reinholdt led the way to a hallway where swirls of dust were visible on the hardwood floor. Two metal poles at either side and a thin gold chain spanned the passageway. Reinholdt unhooked it and let it fall. The sound echoed like a fistful of nails thrown to the floor.

Ten steps into the dim hallway and they were standing in front of a black-curtained exhibit.

“We were forced to cover this one up,” Reinholdt said. “Local
sensitivities. But I thought you’d like to see it. More killing, I’m afraid.”