The 13th Apostle: A Novel of a Dublin Family, Michael Collins, and the Irish Uprising (45 page)

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M
ONDAY
, N
OVEMBER
22, 1920

E
oin dressed in the dark as quietly as he could, all the time keeping his eyes on the sleeping Róisín. Amidst all the chaos that his life had become, he was calmed by her love and her beauty. When everything seemed hopeless, the mere thought of Róisín kept him moving for another day.

“Come back to bed,” she said.

“Got to get going,” Eoin replied quietly, as he leaned down to give Róisín a kiss. “I’ve got to see what’s going on in Crow Street. I’ve kept my head low long enough.” Róisín pushed herself up in the bed with her elbow and exposed her breasts. The biggest surprise to Eoin was how full and round they were. Róisín had done a neat job of keeping them tucked in. Another surprise was how brown and big her nipples were. He began to feel his Parnell move and repeated, “I’ve got to go.” Róisín sighed, turned over, and went back to sleep for another hour.

Eoin came out into Walworth Street and made his way to Camden Street. He stopped in a tobacconist shop and picked up the newspapers from both Dublin and London. “Terrible, terrible day,” the newsagent commented.

“Yes,” said Eoin, absently. He knew all about it.

“Terrible carnage in Croke Park,” continued the man. “Fourteen dead, including a footballer.”

“What?”

“The murders in Croke Park.”

“Croke Park?” Eoin was befuddled.

“Look at the headline.”

DEADLY HAIL

THOUSANDS OF FOOTBALL

SPECTATORS UNDER FIRE

FOURTEEN KILLED

INDESCRIBABLE SCENES OF

PANIC AT CROKE PARK

MICHAEL HOGAN, TIPPERARY PLAYED, KILLED

The British had enacted their always-inarticulate revenge on Dublin for the elimination of their Secret Service. All the papers were crying out about the twenty-eight deaths in Dublin on what they were now calling “Bloody Sunday.”

“Oh, my God,” said Eoin, paying up. He came out of the shop and began a steady jog for Crow Street. It was still dark out when he arrived. When he entered the office, Liam Tobin was already at work. “What the fuck is going on?” he asked Tobin. Liam looked at Eoin and shook his head. “Where’s Mick?”

“McKee and Clancy are missing,” he said, not answering the question. “Mick has Boynton and Broy searching Dublin Castle for them. They were lifted late Saturday night.”

“Mick?”

“He’s gone mad,” said Tobin. “I just got off the phone with him. He’s beside himself over McKee and Clancy.”

“But you don’t know where he is?”

“I only have a phone number.”

“Let me see it,” said Eoin. It was Collins’s number at the secret office in Mespil Road. “I’ve got to go see Mick,” was the last thing Eoin said before he bolted out the door.

Years later, Eoin said the date he hated the most in the calendar year was November 22nd.

In 1963, he was on the floor of the House of Representatives, bullshitting with Republican Congressman Gerry Ford of Michigan and Congressman Tip O’Neill from Boston, when he heard the warning bell of the AP ticker go crazy in the Democratic Cloak Room. Something big had happened.

PRESIDENT KENNEDY SHOT. STOP.

Eoin ripped the paper out of the machine. “Good Jesus,” he said to his fellow congressmen.

The bell on the UPI machine, sitting side-by-side with its AP mate, rang up ten bells, signaling a “flash” message.

THREE SHOTS WERE FIRED AT PRESIDENT KENNEDY’S MOTORCADE IN DOWNTOWN DALLAS. STOP.

The AP bell began manically ringing again, as if in competition with its UPI rival.

DALLAS-AP-PRESIDENT KENNEDY WAS SHOT TO/DAY JUST AS HIS MOTORCADE LEFT DOWNTOWN DALLAS. STOP.

A small crowd began to form, and all eyes were glued to the teletype machine.

The bell rang yet again.

AP PHOTOGRAPHER JAMES W. ALTGENS SAID HE SAW/BLOOD ON THE PRESIDENT’S HEAD. STOP.

Eoin knew all about head wounds, and his heart sank into his gut. He was haunted, as if God were never going to let him forget the Dublin of 1920, now being recreated in Dallas in 1963.

The bell on the teletype machine rang once more, and this time it didn’t stop.

DALLAS-AP-KENNEDY 46 LIVED ABOUT AN HOUR/AFTER SNIPER CUT HIM DOWN AS HIS LIMOUSINE/LEFT DOWNTOWN DALLAS. AUTOMATICALLY THE MANTLE OF THE PRESIDENCY/FELL TO VICE PRESIDENT LYNDON B. JOHNSON . . .

“God help Lyndon,” Eoin murmured as he quietly broke off from the crowd around the teletype machines and went back to his office. He closed the door and called Róisín in New York. “Have you heard the news?”

“Walter Cronkite is on the TV, crying,” she said.

“I’ve known Jack Kennedy since 1947, when he was just a skinny kid with a bad back and a brand new congressional seat brought for him by his rich daddy. He couldn’t even give a speech properly. He was awful on the stump.” Eoin laughed for a minute, the way the Irish laugh when one of their own dies. “I got to get the fuck out of here,” he told her over the phone.

“Now, honey, don’t do anything rash.”

“Remember the last November 22 like this?”

There was quiet at the other end of the line. “Forty-three years ago,” said Róisín.

“To the day.”

“You’re thinking of McKee and Clancy.”

“I hate this fucking world,” said Eoin, and Róisín couldn’t argue with him.

Eoin marched through St. Stephen’s Green and continued up Lower Leeson Street. He crossed the banks of the Grand Canal and found 5 Mespil Road. He turned the key in the door and, as a precaution, pulled out his gun. He found Collins in the office, quietly reading the papers, his Colt revolver on the desk in front of him.

“I figured you would be here,” said Eoin.

“A fookin’ catastrophe,” Collins replied. “They got fourteen in Croke Park at the match yesterday afternoon. I tried to call it off, but it was too late.”

After what Tobin had told him, Eoin expected to find Collins in one of his frenzies, ready to strike out, but he was calm, as if it were any other morning of the revolution.

“And we got our fourteen,” replied Eoin.

“How did it go with the Sheik?”

“Quick.”

“Who did the shooting?”

“Vinny. And I made sure.” Collins nodded. Eoin took the paper from Collins and read about his exploits:

SHOT IN COLD BLOOD