Free Triple Pursuit by Ralph McInerny Page A

wide-eyed gaze was directed back toward Jack Gallagher, sitting ignominiously in a puddle in the parking lot of St. Hilary’s Senior Center.

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    â€œMaybe I should assign half a dozen officers to your next dance to keep the peace.” Phil Keegan was enjoying himself immensely with the story of the quarrel between two old men over an ancient woman.
    â€œHow did you hear of it?” Marie asked. She herself had heard of the fight in the parking lot the following morning from Edna.
    â€œBecause Jack Gallagher came downtown to swear out a complaint against Professor Austin Rooney. He insisted on the ‘Professor’ part. He nearly fell into the hands of Skinner in the prosecutor’s office.”
    â€œIs that a name?” Marie asked, shifting her weight as she stood in the doorway of the pastor’s study. Keegan was at his ease in his favorite chair and Father Dowling, behind the desk, his pipe going satisfactorily, waited while Phil answered Marie.
    â€œFlavius Skinner, assistant to the prosecutor, a lean and hungry man who proceeds on the assumption that all citizens are potential criminals.”
    Since little more than Gallagher’s self-esteem had been injured in the attack he described, the usual thing was to soothe the accuser and promise to say a few harsh words to his attacker.
    â€œEverybody came in to hear him tell it,” Phil said, smiling at the memory. “That’s how Skinner heard about it, so he came down the hall on the run. Gallagher liked having an audience, I’ll tell you that, and
if he thought we found it hilarious that he was talking about a tiff between rivals for the hand of a woman in her mid-seventies, he gave no sign of it. Before you know it, Skinner has whisked him off to his office, seeing what prosecutable possibilities there might be in the story.”
    Phil took a sheaf of papers from his inside pocket and handed them to Father Dowling.
    â€œThere it is.”
    It was Skinner’s account of the interview with Jack Gallagher in his office.
    â€œDoes he pass these around?”
    â€œMy secretary knows his secretary.”
    â€œCan I see it?” Marie said.
    â€œI wonder if Phil wouldn’t like some tea, Marie.”
    â€œTea! I will take some coffee, if any’s made.” Marie turned to go, and he added, “I couldn’t let you read official stuff, Marie. It’s not for the laity.”
    She gave him a look.
    The account Jack Gallagher gave of the evening of the dance was not without its contacts with reality, but by and large it seemed to have come from his imagination. Austin’s attempts to break in on him when he was dancing with Maud were lost in an account of the rude assault made on him, the manhandling, the blow that had sent him careening through the dancers to land on the floor by the bandstand. Jack described it as a “sucker punch.” His enemy had later stalked him through the parking lot where he sprang on him from the dark. Only the element of surprise had enabled this attack to take place, Jack assured Skinner. “Then the blackguard sped away in his automobile.”
    â€œâ€˜Blackguard’?”
    â€œHe talks that way, Roger.”
    â€œHe’s quite an entertainer.”

    â€œI hate to see a man who climbed so high bring dishonor on himself in his old age.”
    â€œWasn’t he a local radio announcer?”
    â€œRoger, he was a radio legend. My wife loved that program.”
    â€œSo what will Skinner do?”
    â€œHe asked me to look into the particulars of the case.” Phil laughed. “It’s a slow time and if anyone can handle those old people with respect it is Cy Horvath.”
    â€œPhil, what of that girl who was pushed into ongoing traffic on Dirksen Boulevard?”
    Phil frowned. “I don’t think we’ll ever learn what happened there. Of course Cy won’t let it go.”
    â€œGood for him.”
    â€œI appreciate