byThe evening crowd had thinned at Moriarty’s in South Bend, and only the regulars were left, a small group at one end of the dark oak bar, chatting quietly. At that moment a short gaunt man entered, and in a very thick brogue ordered a glass of Tullamore Dew. Finishing his drink he sighed deeply and put a thick manila envelope on the bar. He sighed again and at this Phineas O’Rourke put down his beer and remarked, “Sure now, that’s the most mournful sound I’ve heard since the day me grandfather fell down the stairs with a case of the real Irish in his arms; twelve bottles broken, it were.”
The stranger turned toward Phineas, and his face had the haunted look of a man who has looked upon some incredible catastrophe testing the very limits of man’s sanity and barely survived. Again he sigh
