“SO THE FIRST one,” Francis said to Martin, “starts going on about us bringing the gardai right to their doorstep, how we’re going to get them all hanged—like I’m some kind of eejit who doesn’t know how to hide my tracks. Meanwhile, they’ve got the house packed with gelignite and paxo and all manner of nasties. They’re raising a ruckus about me and Michael and telling me to get the goddamn car away from the house and so I get back in to move it and right in the middle of all this commotion one of the bombs goes off.”
“That’s what happened to Michael?”
“Not just to Michael. All that was left was a pile of stones—and Michael in the middle of the wreckage.”
“You brought our brother to a bomb factory?”
“We didn’t know it was a bomb factory. It was supposed to be a safe house.”
Martin put his hands over his face. He was exhausted, but there were questions he needed to ask. “And the IRA men? What happened to them?”
“I tried to see if there was anything to be done, but—” Francis shrugged. “And it was all I could do to find Michael. Limp as a rag, he was. I swear I thought he was dead. But I lifted him up and he was breathing, barely. And then next to him I see a strongbox lying on its side in the stones and the burning thatch. The lid was smashed to pieces and it was packed full of cash—British pounds, American dollars, even some German notes. I figured either I take the money or let the first man on the scene help himself to it.”
“So the bomb just—exploded,” Martin said. “And you had nothing to do with that?”
“I had words with them, but nothing more. And if they were such lousy bomb makers that a few choice words could set off the whole works, I don’t think I can be blamed for that.”
“I’m just trying to get this straight. You left a houseful of men dead, and you made off with their money?”
“I didn’t kill them, Martin. Their own bomb did that. And would it have been better if I let the police find the money?” Francis rubbed his chin. He needed a shave. “To hell with them—they almost killed Michael. I’m looking at the money as compensation. And if the money was for this cock-and-bull bombing scheme, the real question should be how many lives I’ve saved by depriving them of their funds.”
“Jesus, Francis, they’re going to come after you. Every one of them. The police, the IRA, the FBI. Take your pick. An escaped convict whose bankroll oh-by-the-way is courtesy of the IRA? God only knows how you even got into the country.”
“Money opens a lot of doors,” Francis said. “And to keep them open, I’ve been telling folks I’m some kind of aristocrat. Earl of Glamis, Thane of Cawdor. It’s brilliant.”
“Earl of—why didn’t you just tell them that you were the king of England?”
“Too easy to figure that one out. His picture is everywhere.”
Martin stared at his brother, dumbfounded.
“Come on, Martin. Glamis? Cawdor? I cadged it all from Macbeth. It’s not real.”
“Those are real places, you idiot. Macbeth is practically a history play.”
“How can it be real when it has a ghost in it?” Francis stood, uncertain at first where to go in this vast room. Of course: the bar cart. He dribbled another measure of the Plaza’s Scotch into his glass. “I may be an eejit, as you say, but even I know that there’s a world of difference between a history and a tragedy. Tragedies are make-believe, and all the interesting ones die in the end. In a history play, the clever ones survive.”
Martin was ready to go another round with Francis—what was his plan in America? What were they going to do about Michael?—but then he noticed Michael had drifted toward a far corner of the room and was staring intently at an armchair in front of one of the windows. As Michael moved closer to it, he cocked his head from side to side and moved his lips, as if whispering to himself. “Hold on,” Martin said. “What’s he doing?”
“HAVE THEY ALWAYS been like this?” Yeats said.
“So I’ve heard. I was only seven when Martin left for America.”
Yeats shook his head as if in disbelief that this was what the afterlife offered: a seminary dropout and his two bickering brothers. It wasn’t the first time Michael had seen that look. The more he told Yeats of what he could remember of his own personal history—his mother had died when he was an infant, his schoolmaster father had raised him and his brothers in the country, he had suffered some unknown misfortune—the more dour and distracted Yeats became, as if perpetually asking himself, Is this really it? This is what comes next?
Yeats removed his spectacles and buffed the lenses with his handkerchief. He did a thorough job of it, giving more time to the effort than seemed necessary.
“Can I ask a question?” Michael said.
Yeats glanced up from his task and squinted at Michael. His face had the naked, mole-like look common to people who have removed their eyeglasses.
“Seeing as how you’re dead, sir, and composed, I would assume, of some sort of spirit matter, do you really need those glasses?”
Yeats turned the frames over in his hands, studying the arms, the hinges, the lenses. He placed them with some ceremonial grandeur—slowly, meticulously—on the bridge of his nose and secured them behind his ears.
“Yes,” he said. “I do need them.”
“To see?”
“I need them. Can we leave it at that?”
“But are they necessary?” Michael said. “Or is your attachment to them merely sentimental?”
“Why do you assume that sentimentality and necessity are incompatible?”
“How’s that again?”
“There are times,” Yeats said, “when sentimentality is necessary.”