In the night room Page 0,25
equaled in adult life, and those persons often take on the role of class secretary. They went to different schools than the rest of their classmates, and in their imaginations they want to stroll through their beloved corridors as often as possible. Chester Finnegan was the self-appointed Class Secretary for Life of Tim’s year at Holy Sepulchre, a man generally to be avoided, but not now.
Information gave him the telephone number, which he promptly dialed. After retiring from State Farm Insurance a couple of years ago, Chester Finnegan had turned to the full-time organization of his Holy Sepulchre “archive.” Tim imagined him sitting at home day after day, screening other people’s home movies of football games and commencement exercises.
(Despite Tim’s attitude, it should be noted here that Finnegan had enjoyed a long career as an insurance executive, a loving marriage of thirty-four years, and was the father of three grown children, two of whom were graduates of excellent medical schools. The third, Seamus, reckoned a failure within the family, had taken the handsome face he had inherited from his father to Los Angeles, where he worked as a massage therapist in between acting jobs. All three children had graduated from Holy Sepulchre. On the other hand, Chester Finnegan talked like this:)
“Hey, Tim! It’s great to hear from you, really great! Gosh, this is like ESP or something, because I was just thinking about you and that stunt you pulled in chemistry class our junior year. I mean, talk about stink! Whoa! Worser’n a family of skunks. So how are things, anyhow? Written any good books lately? You’re probably our most famous alum, you know that? Jeez, I remember seeing you on the Today show, when was that, last year?”
“The year before,” Tim said.
“Cripes, I looked at you and I said to myself, Boy that’s the same guy who damn near asphyxiated Father Locksley. The good father passed away this March, did you see that? I put it in the class newsletter.”
“Oh, yes,” Tim said.
“Eighty-nine, he was, you know, and his health was all shot to hell. But if he caught you talking to Katie Couric, not saying he did of course, I sure know what went through his mind!”
“In a way, that has something to do with the reason I called.”
“Oh, I’m sorry, Tim. You missed the memorial. We had ten, twelve of us there. You were mentioned, I can say that. Oh, yes.”
“Actually, I was wondering about Bill Byrne, and it occurred to me that you could probably fill me in.”
Finnegan said nothing for a moment that seemed longer than it was. “The colorful Bill Byrne. I suppose you were wondering about how that happened.”
Tim closed his eyes.
“Tim?”
“Well, I wasn’t sure.”
“The obituary in the Ledger ran only two days ago. What, you saw it online, I guess?”
“Something like that.”
“The Ledger couldn’t say much about how Bill died. Of course, I won’t be able to be much more specific in the online newsletter. You do get those, don’t you?”
Tim assured Finnegan that he received his online newsletter, without mentioning that he always deleted it unread.
“Well, you want to know about old Wild Bill. Well, it was pretty bad. He was in this bar downtown, Izzy’s. A lot of lawyers hang out there, because it’s near the Federal Building and the courthouse. This is about one, two in the morning, Friday night. Leland Rose comes up to Bill and says, ‘I believe you’re messing around with my wife.’ Leland Rose is some fancy financial adviser, big office downtown. Bill tells him he’s crazy, and he completely denies having anything to do with this guy’s wife, who by the way is of the trophy variety and pure trouble from top to bottom.
“So they get into an argument and by and by this Leland Rose, this pillar of society, pulls out a gun. Before anybody can stop him, he takes a shot at Bill. Even though he’s about two feet away, he misses Bill completely, only Bill doesn’t know it. He thinks he was shot! He throws a punch at Rose and knocks him out cold. Then he falls down, too. This is pure Bill Byrne. He’s at least as drunk as Rose, and he imagines he’s wounded, which is because in his fall, he smashed the hell out of one of his elbows. Bill got up to about three hundred pounds there toward the end.
“An ambulance shows up and takes both of them to Shady Mount Hospital. They’re strapped onto gurneys. This