The Green Revolution (21 page)

Piero, saddened by the outcome of the game but gripped by melancholy, was just setting off for a moonlit tour of campus when he saw George drop Iggie off at the Morris Inn. Piero intercepted the weaving Willis and led him right through the inn, through the tent in back, and onto the putting green.

“Why?”

“He needed air. So did I.”

It was Iggie's drunken mockery of the Lipschutz group that altered the character of their midnight stroll. Iggie promised to post their names and photographs on his Web site and invite alumni to let them know what they thought of the idea of abandoning football. That brought back memories too bitter to withstand.

The matter of the towel from the golf ball washer on the first tee never came up in the trial. Piero confided in Father Carmody his reason for stuffing it in the mouth of the man he had just struck down. It seemed that Willis had not only been a plagiarizer, he cheated at golf, once depriving Piero of a prize for the least number of putts in an alumni tournament.

“Did you think you had killed him?”

“Father, I took one swing at him and that was that. I thought I had just knocked him out.”

“Does your lawyer know that?”

“I've told him everything.”

*   *   *

“I wouldn't want to be on that jury,” Roger said to Father Carmody.

“I just hope he doesn't connect his defense too closely to the university.”

A wan hope, that, but a tribute to Father Carmody's unswerving loyalty to Notre Dame.

Mimi O'Toole, to the dismay of the administration, had been moved by Lipschutz's vision of a research center. After a talk with Frank Parkman, she had persuaded her husband to put up the money for it. It was Mimi, Lipschutz explained to Guido Senzamacula, who had insisted that he, Horst Lipschutz, be the director. Now the administration was looking around for a building to tear down so the center could be built.

*   *   *

One April afternoon, sitting in the sun on the lakeside of Holy Cross House, Father Carmody asked Roger what he was teaching this semester.

“Do you know William Butler Yeats, Father?”

“Tell me about him.”

Roger did, highlighting the poet's two visits to Notre Dame.

“An Irishman?”

“Yes.”

“Catholic?”

“Oh, no. Anglo-Irish.”

A nonecumenical remark seemed about to be made, but Father Carmody held his tongue. He listened with feigned interest as Roger recited “The Second Coming.”

“‘Slouching towards Bethlehem to be born?'”

Roger let it go. Turning poetry into prose is seldom a satisfying exercise.

“He was a great admirer of the then president, Father O'Donnell. The priest poet of Notre Dame.”

“Good man.”

Did Father Carmody mean O'Donnell or Yeats? Roger decided not to ask.

ALSO BY RALPH M
C
INERNY

MYSTERIES SET AT THE UNIVERSITY OF NOTRE DAME

Irish Alibi

The Letter Killeth

Irish Gilt

Green Thumb

Irish Coffee

Celt and Pepper

Emerald Aisle

Book of Kills

Irish Tenure

Lack of the Irish

On This Rockne

 

ANDREW BROOM MYSTERY SERIES

Heirs and Parents

Law and Ardor

Mom and Dead

Savings and Loam

Body and Soil

Cause and Effect

 

FATHER DOWLING MYSTERY SERIES

Ash Wednesday

The Widow's Mate

The Prudence of the Flesh

Blood Ties

Requiem for a Realtor

Last Things

Prodigal Father

Triple Pursuit

Grave Undertakings

The Tears of Things

A Cardinal Offense

Seed of Doubt

Desert Sinner

Judas Priest

Four on the Floor

Abracadaver

The Basket Case

Rest in Pieces

Getting a Way with Murder

The Grass Widow

A Loss of Patients

Thicker Than Water

Second Vespers

Lying Three

The Seventh Station

Her Death of Cold

Bishop as Pawn

This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously.

T
HE GREEN REVOLUTION.
Copyright © 2008 by Ralph McInerny. All rights reserved. For information, address St. Martin's Press, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10010.

www.minotaurbooks.com

LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA

McInerny, Ralph M.

The green revolution / Ralph McInerny.—1st ed.

p. cm.

ISBN-13: 978-0-312-36458-8

ISBN-10: 0-312-36458-X

1. Knight, Roger (Fictitious character)—Fiction. 2. College teachers—Fiction. 3. Knight, Philip (Fictitious character)—Fiction. 4. Private investigators—Indiana—South Bend—Fiction. 5. University of Notre Dame—Fiction. 6. South Bend (Ind.)—Fiction. 7. College stories. I. Title.

PS3563.A31166G738 2008

813'.54—dc22

2008020335

First Edition: September 2008

eISBN 9781466835245

First eBook edition: November 2012