by Ron Corbett
. . .
Fiona McGee stood about five-foot-six, with blond hair that looked as dry and brittle as corn leaves in October. No roots showing. She was wearing a dirt-stained housecoat and her forearms were milk white, with large blue veins so pronounced they looked like ink etchings. Her cheeks were sunken, and her pupils were dilated with washed-out blue irises that looked like faded denim when it was stretched too tight. Her mouth was thin and barely visible. Her nose, years ago, might have been what you called pert. Now it seemed angular and sharp, dangerous in some ill-defined way. She was yelling before the door was open.
“What the fuck do you mean take my car? I’m not driving it. It can sit in my driveway if I damn well fucking please.”
“I’m afraid not, Ms. McGee. The law says I need to take the car.” He gave her a hard stare. It didn’t make any sense, what he was saying, but he knew it didn’t matter. A bad drunk always assumed bad news was true.
“You can’t do that. It’s the only way I can get around.”
“With expired plates?”
The woman’s hands flew to her mouth. She shouldn’t have said that. A bad situation just became worse. A trajectory she knew well.
“Ms. McGee, I don’t want to leave you without a vehicle. If you say you can pay for the plates before long . . .”
“I can. That’s not bullshit. I have money coming.”
“How long?”
“Two weeks.”
“Two weeks?”
“Maybe not that long. Maybe only a week.”
“Well, maybe there’s some way we can make that work. May I come in for a moment?”
She stood aside.
. . .
The inside of the cabin stank of sweat and pooled water, tobacco and spilled alcohol. There was an airtight stove in the corner of the living room, cold and black, not used any time recently, although it was now the middle of December. There were some flowered bedsheets hanging from the ceiling to separate the living room from the bedroom. The sheets were not fully closed and Yakabuski could see a box-spring and mattress on the floor, strewn with clothes and two sleeping bags it didn’t look like she had bothered to zip together.
He sat on a couch in front of a circular coffee table that had once been a hydro-line spool. Fiona McGee’s drink of choice seemed to be Ballantine’s. There was an empty forty-ounce bottle, two twenty-six-ounce bottles and three mickeys of the Scotch strewn on and around the coffee table. The cabin seemed like the right sort of home to display empty brown bottles.
“So what can you do for me?” she said, sitting the other side of the hydro spool.
“If you can help me with my investigation, I think I can get the impound people to hold off on the car for a week.”
“What do you need to know?”
“I need to confirm that you were a neighbour of Augustus Morrissey’s in 1974.”
“I was. Lived beside that fat pig for twenty years. My husband worked for him.”
“Paddy McSheffrey.”
“That’s right.”
“I’m interested in the Morrissey family. Augustus had only one child, is that correct?”
“Sean. Far as I know that’s all he had. What is this all about? Didn’t you say Augustus was dead?”
“Murdered six days ago.”
“So why are you interested in stuff from forty years ago?”
“I’m trying to find Sean’s mother.”
“Why?”
“I’ll know when I find her.”
“Uhhh?”
“I just need to find her, Ms. McGee. There is no record of her anywhere.”
For the first time, she smiled. Then she got up from the chair, went to her bedroom, and came back out with a mickey of Ballantine’s. She poured herself a drink, not offering one to Yakabuski, took a long sip, and put down her glass. After that she laughed. “Why, that old bastard. I didn’t know that. No record at all?”
“Nothing so far.”
“Well, he didn’t want people to know. I’m surprised he would go to that much effort, though. It wasn’t that big a secret. Everyone on the street knew.”
“Knew what?”
“That Sean’s mother was the housekeeper.”
. . .
The story was told between sips of Ballantine’s, distilled from a memory that floated between the tenses of the English language, one moment back on Mission Road in 1974, then in a little cabin on the French Line, once looking at Yakabuski with suspicion and asking if he was with that cop who had threatened to take away her car the other day.
“We work together,” said Yakabuski, and Fiona McGee flashed him a smile that decades ago might have been called flirtatious. She told him the other cop was a bastard but he seemed all right.
“The housekeeper, Ms. McGee. What can you tell me about her?”
“She was a looker, anyone on the street will tell you that.”
She was a teenage girl from the Old Country, showed up one day as Augustus Morrissey’s live-in housekeeper. She had the most beautiful black hair. Must have been one of the black Irish you find sometimes in the seaside towns around Belfast. If she’d ever gone to the Silver Dollar there would have been fights. But Augustus kept her close to home. Sean was born two years after she arrived. It was a spring birth, so the girl was well hid for most of the winter, but she was in the gardens right after the snow melted, and you could see it. The girl was pregnant. Sean showed up a few weeks later.
“No one talked about it,” said McGee. “I don’t know if people were scared to talk about it, but no one knew how Augustus would react if the topic were brought up, so no one ever did. Better safe than sorry. That was always the way you had to act around that bastard.”
“So it wasn’t a secret?”
“I don’t know what you’d call it. People just forgot about the housekeeper. Sean was Augustus’s son. Augustus was Sean’s father. That was the family.”
“What happened to her?”
“She went back to Belfast. Augustus’s next housekeeper was an O’Rourke from Derry Street. Ugly girl that used to steal tomatoes from our garden. Can you imagine? As if Augustus didn’t have the money to feed her.”
She leaned forward to take a sip of her drink. Leaned back. Closed her eyes and began to snore.
. . .
As Yakabuski was leaning forward to give Fiona McGee a shake, his cellphone rang. He looked at the snoring woman, then at the phone number displayed on his phone. He leaned back and took the call. “Chief.”
“Yak, where the fuck are you?” said Bernard O’Toole. “We have cars leaving Cork’s Town.”
“I’m on the French Line. What do you mean, you have cars leaving Cork’s Town?”
“I mean every fuckin’ Shiner in the city must be on his way to the North Shore. We’ve got dozens of cars already on the bridge. It’s a fuckin’ convoy that’s passing me right now.”
“Why don’t you stop them?”
“Talk to your brother-in-law. He was in the mayor’s office most of the day, threatening legal action over what happened last night. Says we let it happen.”
“That’s just Tyler rattling the old boy’s cage.”
“Well, it worked. Unless I see an illegal act being committed, I cannot touch a Shiner right now. What the fuck are you doing on the French Line?”
“Tracking down Sean Morrissey’s mother.”
“Getting anywhere?”
“I think so. I’ll head to the North Shore as soon as I’m done.”
“What’s your ETA?”
“Hour. Hour-and-a-half.”
“Come find me when you get here. I’ll be in the mobile command centre,” and O’Toole clicked off.
Chapter Forty-Seven
Yakabuski gave the old woman a shake. She reacted the way he knew she would. The way all bad drunks
react when they are poked awake. Angry and scared, and Yakabuski was surprised by her strength, needing both his hands to keep her fingers away from his eyes.
“Ms. McGee, you’re in your home. You’re on your couch. Open your eyes and look around.”
After a while Fiona McGee stopped struggling, opened her eyes, blinked several times, then reached for the bottle of Ballantine’s and poured a drink. She put down two fingers of liquid in one swallow, straightened her back and said, “Who the fuck are you?”
Yakabuski didn’t bother answering. Not having the time. Knowing it didn’t matter much.
“What makes you so sure Sean’s mother went back to Ireland?” he said.
The old woman scrunched her face. Her memory was liquid. Nothing solid or linear. For bad drunks it was always that way. He heard a psychologist once call it poetic aptness. When liquid became the most important thing in your world, everything eventually turns liquid. Yakabuski didn’t know if the psychologist was right, but he knew you could waste a lot of time trying to reason with a drunk, or trying to hold a normal conversation. Might as well just throw them in the deep end and hope they can answer the one or two things you need to know.
“What makes you so sure?” he repeated.
“Because Paddy drove her and Augustus to the airport the day she left. Would have been late summer of ’86.”
Yakabuski couldn’t keep the surprise from his face. “What makes you so sure of the year?”
“’Cause of what you guys did to Paddy right after that. You charged ’em with murder. You don’t fuckin’ remember that?”
“For killing Augustus’s brother, right?”
“That’s right. You guys arrested Augustus too. And Ricky Green.”
“Do you remember Ambrose Morrissey?”
“Course I do. Best looking man I ever knew. Girls couldn’t stay away from him. Paddy accused me once of having it off with him. Right bloody row that was.”
“But your husband was acquitted.”
“’Cause you guys had shit. Augustus looked guilty and so you arrested him and brought in Paddy, on account of he was such good friends with that fat prick. You had fuckin’ shit.”
Yakabuski stared at the old woman, laughing and snorting and weaving on her couch like a bowling pin that wouldn’t fall. Walking would be impossible for Fiona McGee right then. Staying awake much longer would be impossible.
“You haven’t told me the housekeeper’s name,” he said.
“Kate.”
“Last name?”
“I never knew.”
“What else can you tell me about her?”
“A right fuckin’ looker. Not short, not tall. Hard-working girl. The Morrissey house was always neat as a pin. Paddy would razz me about it. Said I should be more like her. A fuckin’ housekeeper. Can you believe it? Right bloody row about that one too.”
“Anything else?”
The woman looked at Yakabuski. A confused look came to her face. Then surprise. “You’re here about the car, ain’t you? You can’t take it away. I need it.”
Yakabuski didn’t bother answering.
“The housekeeper, Ms. McGee. What else can you tell me about her?”
“You’ll leave the car?”
“Yes.”
“She was a right looker.”
“You’ve already told me that. What else?”
“A good dresser. The girl looked good in anything, so it shouldn’t have mattered, but Augustus kept her in outfits. That was the only time you’d see ’em out in public. When Augustus was buying her stuff. She always had a lot of jewellery.”
“Jewellery?”
“Yeah, she liked jewellery.” The old woman opened her mouth wide, was yawning when she said, “Always had lots of necklaces and bracelets. And rings. She used to have this diamond ring, I’d never seen anything like it.”
“What made it unusual?”
“The diamond wasn’t cut. Or polished even. Looked like it came right out of the ground.”
Yakabuski left Fiona McGee sleeping on her couch. He covered her with one of the sleeping bags from her bedroom, moved her cigarettes and lighter to the kitchen counter, and ran to his Jeep.
Chapter Forty-Eight
When he thought about it later, Yakabuski would remember his drive down the French Line that night as something that seemed to happen in a dream. A hallucinatory experience. No linear recollection of it. His thoughts seemed to fill the Jeep, physical objects pressing down on him, the Jack pine and the birch flying past his window and losing distinction, so it seemed as though he were flowing through white-green space. Untethered. Driving too fast. Way too fast.
Sean Morrissey’s mother had owned that diamond. It came from Cape Diamond. She had it more than thirty years ago. Was John Merkel right? Did this have nothing to do with the De Kirk mine?
He couldn’t be right. “Who tosses away a million-dollar diamond?” he muttered, then waited a few seconds and gave himself the answer: “Someone who knows he can get more.” He phoned O’Toole to get on update on what was happening on the North Shore, was told there might have been as many as eight hundred people gathered around Rachel Dumont’s apartment building. Shiners, Travellers, and cops. Lines had been formed. Cops in the middle. Shiners and Travellers to either side.
“If this blows, it is going to be the fat fuck to end all fat fucks,” said O’Toole. “When are you getting here, Yak?”
“Twenty minutes,” he answered and clicked off the phone.
Sean Morrissey’s mother had gone back to Belfast around the same time as his uncle was murdered. One of the flaws in the criminal case against Augustus had been motive. Why would he suddenly kill his brother? The cops had no good answer to the question. The mother of Augustus’s only child had left town at the same time. No one knew.
A girl from the streets of Belfast, hired as a maid but used for something else, Augustus deciding he had the right to choose the services she would offer. Maybe there was something more to it. They had been together a dozen years. Augustus spoiled her. Kept her hidden. A woman of memorable beauty. So much so, the image of Kate had stayed in the addled brain of a bad drunk who couldn’t remember much else.
Yakabuski rubbed the brow of his forehead and concentrated on the road ahead of him. The French Line switchbacked and dipped and his right hand was constantly moving the gearshift on the Rubicon. Pumping back and forth, stepping on the gas, touching the brakes, getting air at the top of the tallest hills. Why wouldn’t the pieces of the narrative snap into place? Why did every geometry figure he tried to build blow up halfway through construction?
How did Sean Morrissey’s mother have that diamond? There wasn’t a mine at Cape Diamond in 1986. And where had it been for thirty years? He repeated the question, aloud this time: “Where has that diamond been for thirty years?” Had the mother returned from Belfast to kill Augustus? An act of long-plotted revenge that Yakabuski would find difficult to investigate in the wholehearted way a cop should investigate a murder as gruesome as Augustus’s. Better if he never found her. Better if everyone went home. He could live with an ending like that.
Through the forest he saw a flash of red and blue spinning light and knew he was getting closer to the North Shore. To the battle lines in front of Rachel Dumont’s apartment. To the dank cesspool of hate and fear the Shiners and Travellers had been swimming in all week. Closer to all of it.
Not closer to answers. A diamond. Two dead men. A kidnapped girl. Where was the connection between them? He drove. He thought. He placed one last call, getting O’Toole on the phone and telling him he would be there in five minutes, then asking, “Do we have eyes on Sean Morrissey?”
. . .
Tache Boulevard was lit up with false light when Yakabuski arrived. Halcyon strobes in front of Building H. Red and blue swirling lights atop the scores of parked patrol cars
. Flourescent light, mounted on garage tripods, surrounding the tactical vehicles. The apartment building was lit up from the inside as well, each apartment window with a light showing.
All shadows had been burned away. Depth of field was flat and misleading and the cops nearest the building were shielding their eyes. Don’t give those bastards an inch of darkness. That’s what O’Toole had said he was going to do, and as Yakabuski had his Jeep waved to the front of the police line, he was impressed with the plan. Nothing had happened yet. If you could keep a spotlight shining in the face of every person on this bluff, maybe nothing would.
“Glad to see you, Yak. We’ve got a restless bunch out there,” said O’Toole when he was inside the mobile command centre. “We haven’t been able to find Morrissey.”
“Is he here?”
“We’re not sure. You would think so. This is rather his play, isn’t it? I hate these bastards by the way. Did you see what they’re all carrying?”
“I did.”
“They’re not weapons. That’s what this asshole told me.” He pointed at a video screen, at Peter O’Reilly, smoking a cigarette and twirling a baseball bat. “The bats are for a late night baseball game they’re thinking of having at Filion’s Field. And the tire irons? Some of their cars are having mechanical problems.”
“Cute.”
“Yeah, right fucking cute. Your brother-in-law put the fear of God into some people today. We can’t do a fuckin’ thing until someone actually makes a move.”
“Looks like the entire force is up here tonight.”
“Pretty much is. All hands on deck. Holidays cancelled. Leave cancelled. Court duty tomorrow cancelled.”
Yakabuski nodded. A show of force made sense. He stared at another video screen inside the trailer, this one showing the Travellers, who were also getting ready for a midnight game of baseball. Who were also driving vehicles that might need urgent mechanical attention. He went back and forth between the video feed showing the Travellers line and the Shiners line.
“You need me to do anything right now?” he asked O’Toole.