4: In the Dead of Night

“That’s awful!” Popcorn said when I told her the next morning. Like all the women in his life, she has an inexplicable soft spot for Sebastian McCabe.

“It certainly is.” I oozed sympathy. “He’s hobbling around on crutches and milking it for all it’s worth. And the timing is terrible! If this had happened before the auditions for A Christmas Carol, he might have landed the role of Tiny Tim.” SBU’s theater department was about to premier a musical version of the Christmas classic at its recently acquired Davenport-Lattimore Bijou Theatre.[1]

Popcorn disfavored my humorous sally with a look of disgust. “And the ankle was really broken?”

“No. As a doctor, Mac’s a good mystery writer. It’s ‘only’ a sprain, which I understand can be more painful than a break. Not being athletic like him, I’ve never had either.”

I was spared a rejoinder by the ringing of my office phone. The call was coming from the President’s Office. That wasn’t unusual, so I had no premonition of the bomb he was about to drop on me.

“Jeff Cody,” I answered by way of standard greeting.

“Father Joe here, Jeff. Could you stop by my office right away? I’ve made a decision you need to know about. Lesley’s already here.”

For him to demand a command appearance was unusual. SOP was an email asking me to “stop by at your convenience.”

“I’ll be there before you can hang up, Father.”

That was a slight exaggeration. It took about a minute to climb up the flight of steps to his corner office on the fifth (and highest) floor of the Gamble Building, at the other end of the hall from Saylor-Mackie.

On the way I tried to figure out what was brewing. Maybe it had something to do with the upcoming capital campaign to fund major new construction on campus. Grant Kingsley, chairman of the board of trustees, was leading the charge. But any communications about that wouldn’t prompt a call to be in Father Joe’s office right away. What else could it be? A decision, he said. I couldn’t think of anything that was awaiting a thumbs up or down from the corner office, so maybe it was a new initiative he was launching. Never a dull moment.

Reverend Joseph Pirelli—“Father Joe” to at least half of Erin—looked the same as always. Seated behind a desk much smaller than Saylor-Mackie’s, with his cottony white hair and his age-defying lack of wrinkles, he seemed relaxed, rested, and ready for whatever was next. But the grim expression on his executive vice president and provost’s face made me ask, “Who died?”

Father Joe chuckled. “Hardly that, Jeff. I’ve simply decided to resign for the good of the university.”

“You can’t do that!” my mouth said before consulting my brain.

“Oh, yes, I can. And I will.”

“I’ve already tried to talk him out of it,” Saylor-Mackie informed me, “but he’s a stubborn old man.”

“Old is right,” he said. “I’ve exceeded the Biblical four-score-and-ten by a good margin, not that it matters. Age is merely chronological, I’ve always said.”

This whole conversation seemed surreal, almost an out-of-body experience. Father Joe, like Maggie Barton, had been around forever. Or so it seemed to me. They were part of the fabric of local life long before I arrived in Erin. He was even older than she, at seventy-nine. This was like the sun and all the planets were suddenly out of alignment. Father Joe wasn’t just a living legend who was my ultimate boss. He played with my kids and talked to Lynda in Italian. True, he had essentially been a figurehead since the hiring of Saylor-Mackie’s predecessor, Ralph Pendergast, to do the heavy lifting. And we all knew that he had to retire someday—he’d been musing about it for years—but not this day. Why now? He had given me a clue, my shocked mind realized.

“What do you mean, ‘for the good of the university’?” I asked.

“The sign on Harry Truman’s desk said, ‘The Buck Stops Here.’ As president of the university, I’m responsible for the agreement that let Warren Burch remain on our faculty despite his despicable behavior toward young women in his office while he was dean.”

“Blame me,” Saylor-Mackie and I said at the same time. In other circumstances, that would have been comical.

“Jeff suggested the settlement and Kelly Richards agreed,” Saylor-Mackie reminded him, “but I’m the one who talked you into going along.”

“But I did go along. What kind of leader would I be if I didn’t take responsibility for my mistake?”

“Whether it was a mistake is a matter for debate,” I said. “The alternative, firing a man who had tenure before he became dean, is no walk in the park. That’s why I suggested the settlement, to spare SBU a lawsuit, bad publicity, and a bigger settlement in the end. But in any case, you shouldn’t be the scapegoat.”

His remarkable blue eyes looked bemused. “That’s a Biblical concept, you know—the goat cast into the desert to carry away the sins of the community. It first appears in Leviticus. I’ve often thought of writing a book about the concept of the scapegoat throughout history and cultures. But in this case the term doesn’t apply. I’m not taking the hit for anybody else. I should have overruled you two, and the lawyer as well, and insisted that Burch be separated from SBU. Let me be clear: I don’t blame you for giving me the advice you thought best. I blame myself for taking it. I’ve made up my mind. I’m going to resign immediately, not wait until the end of the school year. This is a resignation, not a retirement. I want you to make that clear in the press release you write, Jeff.”

This was said in his “tough father” voice, which he’d hardly ever used on me.

“The timing is not good,” Saylor-Mackie tried. “You would leave us rudderless for the rest of the academic year.” It was less than a week before exams, and nine days before the end of the fall term.

“Hardly rudderless, Lesley. I’m sure the board will appoint an interim president and immediately launch a search for my permanent replacement.”

“How do you expect them to find a good candidate if the next president is going to be threatened with job insecurity in fifty years?” I cracked in a desperate effort to cheer myself up.

Saylor-Mackie shot me a “we are not amused” look, but Father Joe gave a wan smile.

“It’s been a good run, my friends, and an extraordinarily long one. But there is a time for everything under the sun, as Ecclesiastes says, and my time as president is up. I’m sorry to go out like this, but so be it.”

“I feel like an orphan,” Saylor-Mackie said. Her eyes glistened.

“And I feel like a failed father.” He cleared his throat. “I didn’t just call you here to keep you in the loop. We have a bit of planning to do together.”

We did it. Father Joe would inform each board member confidentially by the end of the day, and the public announcement would go out the next day. I already had the press release mostly written in my head by the time I left the presidential quarters.

“This is a dark day,” Saylor-Mackie said back in her office. “I think I need a drink.”

“Have one for me. I’ve got too much work to do.”

“All right, I will.”

“Do you keep an office bottle?”

“Several.”

Who am I to judge?

Popcorn was waiting expectantly when I got back to my office.

“Big news, Boss?”

“You could say that.”

I told her.

“But that’s not right!” she burst out.

“No, it stinks. I’m going to be infuriated with Burch eventually for his role in this, but I don’t have time for that now. You and I need to get cracking. Father Joe wants to make the announcement tomorrow.”

“Is he holding a press conference?”

“He says not, but I’m going to talk him into it. If he’s going to fall on his sword, he might as well bleed in public.”

“Ouch.”

“Don’t mind me. I’m just in a sour mood. The real reason I want to get him in front of the media is to have him deny in person any speculation that he was forced out. The public and the alumni love him as much as we do. It would hurt the university if the directors were blamed for his exit.

“But, news conference or not, we have to write the release with some quotes from him which I’ll invent, based on what I know he wants to say, and he’ll approve. And we need a retrospective on ‘The Father Pirelli Years’ for the new issue of the alumni mag. We’ll have to tear out something to make room for it. Talk about a rush job!”

“Hire Lynda.” After a quick dive into her desk drawer, Popcorn handed me my wife’s business card. “It says here ‘Storyteller,’ and Father is a heck of a story.”

“That’s a great idea! Lynda’s a fast writer and she already has a running start on the subject. I bet she’ll say yes in a heartbeat—her first freelance job. Kate can watch the kids for a few afternoons while she works her word magic.”

“But Ben is almost ready to go to press. What do we cut out at this late date?”

“Hold that feature on the assistant chief of campus police and about half the letters to the editor.”

“It sounds like you want me to write a glowing life story, kind of like an obit,” Lynda said when I’d outlined the task over dinner of white chicken chili for three and mother’s milk for two.

“That’s the general idea, but you also have to interview the great man himself.”

“Sure. Not exactly a chore. He’s such a sweetheart.”

“Fortunately, nobody expects Ben to be objective. Think of your story as a love letter from the university.”

“I think I’ve got it, Chief.”

I almost choked on my Caffeine-Free Diet Coke. “Chief?”

“Don’t get used to it. Now what are you looking so sober about?”

“I was just thinking of the irony: Father Joe, who’s innocent of any wrong-doing, is ending his career over this flap while the real villain will be giving his end-of-term exam as usual on Monday.”

But I was wrong about that. Cal Daley, SBU’s Director of Public Safety, interrupted my well-earned sleep at 12:13 A.M. the next morning.

“Sorry to bother you, Jeff, but I knew you’d want to know.”

“Know what?”

“Warren Burch is dead.”

I tried to clear the cotton-candy out of my head. “I’m sorry to hear that, but why—”

“The night security officer found the body in his office. He was bludgeoned to death, his head beat in. I’ve already called Father Pirelli and Provost Saylor-Mackie. My people are on their way to the scene. I thought you might want to join them.”

1 For how the acquisition came about, see Death Masque (MX Publishing, 2018).