NUALA WOKE me at about 1:30.
“Dermot, the house is on fire!”
I heard alarms from both back and front. An old wooden house like ours was a ready-made firetrap. Our alarms were connected to the local fire station, which was only a couple of blocks away. I had trained the family that there were three paths of escape: down the front stairs, down the back stairs, and through the kitchen, down the inside stairs to the basement, and out into the back lawn, where the dogs played. They were numbers One, Two, and Three.
I looked out the window of our bedroom. The front steps were ablaze.
“The kitchen is on fire too,” Nuala shouted. “Number Three, everyone! Number Three down to the basement!”
Smoke was filling the house, but the center stairs were still clear.
Our plan called for Nuala to lead the group down the stairs into the basement—where we played—and for me to count the number of creatures as they started down the stairs. The dogs waited with me, barking in noisy protest. I counted the kids. There were seven people in the house, four kids and three adults. Mary Anne carrying Sorcie, Julie carrying Patjo—four people. Nuala down in the basement guiding them down the stairs. Five people. Mick, confused but ready to go.
“Downstairs, Mick. Number Three.” Down the stairs he went. Six people.
“Down you go, doggies.”
They charged down the stairs. Two dogs, six people. Who was missing? I counted the people and the bedrooms. Who was missing?
It dawned on me that it was Dermot Coyne. I followed the wolfhounds. In the basement confusion and panic reigned.
“I can’t open the door, Dermot,” my wife cried.
The back door. We had to open it before the smoke filled the basement.
Key? Key? Key?
Then I remembered. I pushed my way through the mass of humans and dogs, and grabbed the key from its hook next to the door.
“Everyone out,” I ordered. “Nuala and Julie first—climb the steps to the backyard, Mary Anne and Sorcie and Mick, doggies, and now you, Dermot, you frigging eejit.”
The firemen were waiting for us in the yard.
“How many humans in the house, Mr. Coyne?” the fire marshal demanded.
“Three adults, four kids. I believe they are all out.”
“I counted seven. Now we’ll save your house for you.”
We watched, and a torrent of water doused the flames. The glowing red lights disappeared, the smoke soared higher and then disappeared. Our prize house and beloved home was a near wreck.
“Arson.” Cindasue and Peter Murphy were in the yard with us. “Beyond any doubt. Gasoline spread on the staircase. Molotov cocktails through the kitchen windows.” We were all shivering in the cold autumn air. Everyone was crying except Nuala and myself.
“Insured?” the Fire Marshal asked.
“Double the damage,” I said.
“That should take care of it.”
“Don’t worry, Nuala,” I said. “We’ll rebuild it.”
“I know we will, Dermot. It will be better than ever.”
We walked down the alley around the corner and to the front of the house. Fire truck, police cars, crowds of people, cops, Reliable people. Commander Culhane, Mary Alice Quinn with her cameraman, Mike Casey, who rushed to embrace us.
Cardinal Blackie, lurking in the background with his useless Chicago Cubs rain poncho. Father George next to him, holding an umbrella over his head.
“A high cost for a basketball game,” Mary Alice began her interview.
“We have no idea who started the fire,” my wife, radiantly lovely as Ingrid Bergman playing Joan of Arc. “And we’re making no charges. It is up to the police and the fire department to find the arsonists, our insurance company to rebuild the house, and the appropriate authorities to bring the arsonists to justice. We are jumping to no conclusions.”
I was so proud of my wife, flaky as she might be on some occasions, she was rock steady in times of stress, now the strong West of Ireland country woman in a time of grave distress as solid as the rocks of Carraroe.
“Dermot, would you ever call me ma and pa and tell them we’re safe. They won’t believe me. I’ll talk to them afterwards.”
“George?”
“I called Mom and Dad, Nuala. Why don’t you give them a ring. They have more confidence in you than in either of their sons.”
“Naturally,” she said, her wit returning and meself a lot more mature in crisis.
“You’re going to rebuild it, then?” Mary Anne Quinn asked me.
“What about it, kids?
“A unanimous vote . . . Mary Alice, we will restore it. It’s part of Chicago past as of Chicago present. We will restore it and make it even better, even more fireproof.”
Cheers from my constituency.
With outside fire escapes, I thought.
“Ma, ’tis Dermot in Chicago. Everyone is fine, a little wet and cold but we escaped with no more problems than a whiff of smoke. Here’s herself. You should be proud of her. She saved us all with her confidence in a very bad situation. I’ll put her on.”
Blackie was standing next to me.
“Tomorrow you might well go down to NWH to have the doctors check everyone’s lungs . . . They all sound healthy to me. Thank God you have survived, we need people like you in this troubled city. But I will slip away now and talk to you tomorrow because I see my revered and eminent predecessor arriving.”
The kids who had been swarming around Blackie ran to embrace Cardinal Cronin.
All except Mary Anne.
“Thank you Cardinal Blackie for saving us.”
“You better get that jacket cleaned, Nelliecoyne. It’s too cool to be covered with mud.”
We spent the night at the Murphy’s house and the next morning began moving our headquarters to the Belden-Stratford Hotel on Lake Shore Drive. We needed only four suites. On the top two floors. They put meself and herself into the honeymoon suite, causing both of us to blush.
“I haven’t ever been in a honeymoon suite,” she protested. “It must cost terrible dear altogether.”
“Put it on the insurance tab,” I said.
Our electronic equipment was undamaged. Some of our clothes survived the smoke and the water. We sent them off to a special cleaners. The library was in good shape, though we sent the books off to be dried out. Also the antiques in the parlor, which I hated and Nuala Anne loved because they were “so 1850.”
We hired, at Cyndi’s direction, a firm to estimate damage and loss and the cost of reconstruction. They in turn hired an architect to design a restoration and a contractor to build it.
We were busy unloading and unpacking when the president of the insurance company called us and offered to visit us with a check that “might relieve you of a lot of worries.”
Nuala thanked him and said to me, “Get herself on the line . . .”
In this case Cyndi was undoubtedly herself.
“He’s trying to cheat you. Don’t sign anything or even appear to agree verbally. Double the loss, isn’t it? You bought that because you want to restore it as a landmark home? Then they have to pay double the loss as estimated by a reputatable evaluator of your choosing. We’re not about to settle for anything less. Watch him! He’s a genial Catholic layman of the Boston variety. He’d rob you blind.”
So the man arrived, genial, silver-haired, Boston accent. We were both in jeans and sweatshirts.
“I’ll do the talking, Dermot Michael, if you don’t mind.”
“I wasn’t planning to say a thing.”
We offered him a “morning cup of tea,” which he declined.
“I’m Jimmy Flanigan,” he said in a tone which, as Nuala later said, oozed bull shite. “When I read in the morning papers about your terrible tragedy, I remembered of course that you hold one of our policies. I got it out and spoke with some of my directors and we put together this offering which should eliminate most of the worries I’m sure you have.”
Hit them when they’re traumatized.
He handed me several pages of boilerplate to which was attached a check for what might be considered a very large sum of money, nowhere near twice the cost of restoration. I passed the file to herself.
She turned up her elegant nose at the check and read the offer. She sighed loudly and placed the offer on one thigh and the insurance policy on the other. Again she sighed loudly.
“Sir, Ms. Cyndi Hurley of Warner, Werner, Wanzer, Hurley, and Hurley will represent us in this matter. Any future, slick offers of this sort should be made to her. As you doubtless know the indemnity in this policy is very high because we feel an obligation to preserve and restore a historic landmark home. We paid a high, one might even say exorbitant premium for that security. It will not be pried loose from us by this kind of blarney. I put it to you this way, sir, one way or another, you are going to pay us a large sum of money determined by twice the losses as estimated by a reputable firm of our choosing, or that sum and more as determined by a court order after you have engaged in expensive litigation. It’s entirely your decision. However, do not deceive yourself by thinking that I am a harebrained West of Ireland entertainer who will be taken in by this kind of—you will excuse my expression, sir—bull shite.”
The man’s face turned pale.
“There might be some questions about the origins of the fire,” he said uneasily.
“There might indeed. We propose to proceed with the restoration of the house. Fortunately we can afford to do that. But you will pay for it too, sir. Of this I assure you.”
She stood up in dismissal.
“This is your position too,” he said to me, a hint of contempt in his voice.
“Yes.”
“Well then, you’ll be hearing from our lawyers.”
“It would be more convenient,” I said, “if you sent your further bull shite directly to Ms. Hurley.”
His generosity mocked, his dignity offended, Jimmy Flanigan departed with as much dudgeon as he could manage.
He was followed by Commander John Culhane of Area 6 Detectives, a man in the physical condition of a lightweight boxer, which he was.
He did welcome a morning cup of tea. Fiona, our retired police dog who can smell a cop a mile away, ambled in and offered her paw to the commander.
“It was arson, of course,” he said. “No question about it. We arrested those three young amadons and found gasoline on their hands and clothes. We also found four more paper milk containers filled with wicks ready to ignite. They denied all knowledge of the fire and accused you of planting the evidence in the Finnerty basement. We arrested them on the charge of attempted murder of seven people. They became hysterical. They insisted that four men with Irish accents had brought them the Molotov cocktails and showed them how to light them with fire starters. They were fortunate not to have killed themselves.”
“Why are the evil always the lucky ones?” me wife complained.
“I’m not sure they’re lying,” John Culhane said slowly. “I don’t think they would have known how to make such incendiary devices, much less what to do with them. Do you have any ideas we might pursue, anyone lately who might have wanted to kill you?”
“Not us,” Nuala said, that far away, communing-with-the-powers look in her searing blue eyes.
“They might want to kill Julie Crean.”
“Who is she?”
“The one with the long golden hair like a ripe wheat field in the rising sun.”