Barrington Street Blues

by Anne Emery

“A smoke.”

  “Okay, well, here.” Bob gave the man a couple of dollar coins. “Get yourself home now.”

  “Thanks, man.”

  I watched him shuffle out. “You know you’ve been away from Legal Aid too long when you forget what counts for legal tender in the local economy. You were telling me about someone who spoke up for Corey Leaman.”

  “Right. Tilly was an elderly neighbour. Leaman used to do odd jobs around her place in Lower Sackville.”

  “Maybe I should look her up. What’s her last name?”

  “I don’t remember it off hand, but I’ll call and let you know. If I forget, prompt me.”

  “Sounds good. Thanks, Bob.”

  †

  The next day, I was in provincial court, in a room with dark wainscoting and wooden beams across the ceiling. Our deliberations took place before a portrait of the queen. My client, Keisha, was charged with assaulting another girl at a high school dance. Keisha was eighteen but looked several years younger with no makeup and her hair in pigtails.

  The complainant, a girl around the same age as my client, was on the stand, and I was cross-examining her. When the police arrived at the scene, she had not been able to describe the person who hit her. A point I was trying to make for the court.

  “You weren’t able to give the police a description of the person who attacked you, is that correct?”

  “I know who she is.”

  “But my question was, you couldn’t give the police a description at the time. Isn’t that right?”

  “I don’t know what I told the cops. But it was her!”

  “Her?”

  “Yeah, her!” And she pointed a finger at my pigtailed client. “Her, with the blow handles.”

  I turned my head to hide my unsuccessful effort to keep a straight face and found myself looking into the eyes of a highly amused Father Brennan Burke.

  When it was over, and my girl convicted, I spoke to Burke.

  “What are you doing here?”

  “I came for the entertainment. And I wasn’t disappointed.”

  “No shortage of laughs here.”

  “Actually, I’m here to collect my fee.”

  “Fee for what? You guys charge now? If you think I’m going to pay you to hear my confession, and then have to kneel down and say three Hail Marys afterwards —”

  “I can’t imagine what would pour out of you in the confessional after all these decades but, whatever it would be, three Hail Marys wouldn’t even grant you a preliminary hearing with the Man Above. But that’s not why I’m here. I’ve been doing your work for you. And I know you’ll show your appreciation, if not by paying me a private investigator’s fee, at least by treating me to a pint at my local.”

  So we repaired to the Midtown for lunch. On me. When he had his draft in front of him, and a cigarette lit, he filled me in: “The Colosseum.” I rolled my eyes and picked up my glass. “If you’re connected to this in some way — or, I should say, if someone thinks you are — you’ll be wanting to watch your back.”

  “I told you, Brennan. I’ve lived here all my life and I’ve never heard of anything called the Colosseum.”

  “Yet somebody sent you a postcard. The Colosseum was the nickname given to a private club, or a gathering, that used to meet in an office building here in downtown Halifax. And what went on there was so vile that anyone who participated is loath to speak of it. I got the impression there were threats, violence perhaps, against anyone who ever spoke out.”

  “You heard this from Vernon? So, who was in this club? Squatters using a building after hours?”

  “Not squatters. ‘High mucky-mucks’ was the phrase used by our man Vernon.”

  “That sounds kind of funny with an Irish accent.”

  “I take it that is the vernacular for ‘the quality,’ — well-heeled, prominent citizens who found a way to keep themselves amused in the small hours.”

  “What were they doing?”

  “Here. Read Vernon’s description. He’ll never talk to you.”

  “How did you get him to talk to you?”

  “I’m a man of the cloth, Collins.”

  “But you said Vernon isn’t a Catholic.”

  “Like the pope, I have an influence that extends beyond my own cult following. This is a transcription of my notes of the interview.”

  He handed me two pages of typed copy. As I read, I imagined I could hear the voice of the dishevelled homeless man I had met in the diner.

  They had us up in there. They were scared of the cops so we went there one by one. There was this girl. Her father used to beat her up. Stepfather, like. She used to sleep up against the library. Everybody did it to her. Like, she was on every time. Whatever they wanted, ‘cause they had the shit. Can you get me a drink?

  Now, Vernon, when you say “they” had you up there, who do you mean by “they”?

  Oh, can’t say, can’t say. High mucky-mucks. Oh, yeah.

  All right. What did they do?

  They wanted us to fu — have sexual relations.

  Sex with whom?

  Oh, with us, with each other. People from the street. They wanted to watch us doing it to each other. They laughed. Or some of them would — one guy would — you know, do it to himself. I saw him on TV. Getting a medal. He was in the Colosseum with his hand in — Like, he should have to give that medal back, right? They made that girl do it with the guys off the street. Dirty guys. They gave her so much shit she was out of it, you know? Like, they had rocks of crack, and blow, and they even had some H, you know, and all that shit.

  So. A group of men —

  Ladies too. Oh, yeah.

  A group of men and women. Sort of well-dressed people? That type? They gathered together some of the people from the street, the homeless, and got them to have sex with each other, and these men and women looked on.

  They watched and laughed or did other stuff.

  And one of these men you recognized.

  No! No, no, no! Don’t know his name! Never knew, never!

  But you had seen him on television, being presented with some class of medal or award.

  Oh, yeah. He got the kid to give him — what’s that word? A queer word. French. No, not French. Handsome kid. Light hair, blue eyes. Little-kid face. Like that guy we saw at breakfast time, your buddy. Maybe him. No, not him. They liked this kid. Dressed him up. One of the mucky-mucks took him in the shower. Made him his boyfriend. Not me. I was the Gladiator. They got me drunk. I couldn’t fight. I said later. But I fought this guy ‘cause they said I could have a quart of rum and, besides, I thought I could win ‘cause the other guy was old. But I got beat up. Bad kidney. Blood coming out in the toilet. It went away but I got nerves damaged in my leg. That’s why I got the gimp. The Romans said: “Vern, you could fight a lion.” A lion, eh? They showed me a picture of a big dog. Said I could have a forty-ouncer. I said: “I don’t know, man.” Like, if that man beat me up, and him an old guy, maybe a big dog would kill me, eh? But I never saw any dog. Then this other guy came in and sang. Good singer. And he took the older guy away, the guy that put the beating on me. The singer shoved him out the door. Thanks, Father. Oh, that’s hot. I’ll wait till it cools.

  Vernon, these people sat around in the Colosseum and watched homeless people have sex and fight with each other. Do I have that right? Who gave it the name Colosseum?

  I don’t know, I don’t know. Somebody said: “Welcome to the Colosseum. Thumbs up, thumbs down, which way did it go?” They argued about that. They were all coked up.

  Is it still going on?

  No, no, no. Nobody says it now. It stopped. They came around at night with lots of shit and booze. Told me to keep quiet. Tell nobody. Told us they’d cut us off. No more drugs. Put us in the hospital. With the criminally insane!

  I looked up from the notes. “Jesus Christ!”

  “And somebody sent you a photo of the Colosseum and said: ‘Ask.’”

  “If somebody thinks I was involved
in this, he’s barking up the wrong tree. I never even heard a rumour of this. So I don’t see —” Then I did. “Did you find out where the Colosseum was?”

  “Yes. Vernon and I walked there. He pointed at it. Number 1803 Barrington Street.”

  “Dice Campbell’s office building.”

  “You’ve been developing some skill in the field of investigation over the past couple of years, Collins, but you’re slipping. If you need any more assistance, give me a ring. Now I’m off to feed the multitudes.”

  He was on his way out when I called him back: “Brennan, next time you see Vernon, try to find out what kind of medal the guy was receiving, or who was awarding it.”

  “What would you do without me, Collins?”

  †

  Without him I would have remained in the dark about the goings-on at the Colosseum. But now that I knew, I could try to corroborate Vernon’s story. Warren Tulk, the cop turned preacher who raided one of Dice’s parties, said the activities there were “depraved” but was unwilling to say more. Tulk had his partner with him that night, and I remembered his name: Lorne Balcome. I tracked him down on Thursday. He was working in Dartmouth, and we met at a Tim Hortons on Portland Street. Balcome was an enormous man with thick black hair brushed back from a low forehead. He sat hunched over a large coffee while we chatted.

  “Warren got a little excited.”

  “When you raided a party at Dice Campbell’s office?”

  “It wasn’t a raid, by any stretch of the imagination. We got a call.”

  “From?”

  “No idea. I can’t remember. Anyway, we arrived at the office —”

  “Was this the law office itself?”

  “Yeah, one of the top floors. They had a bar set up in the boardroom. More like a permanent fixture, I guess. Anyway, it was just a bunch of lawyers and their friends partying.”

  “When was this, Lorne?”

  “Spring or summer of ‘85.”

  “So what got Warren so upset?”

  “Well, they had some girl dancing on a table. A stripper, I guess. They were all pissed. Campbell’s wife gave us a hard time. But you know, it was a private party. I didn’t give a shit. I told Tulk to lighten up.”

  “What was his reaction to that?”

  “He said he’d heard stories about parties a lot more crazy. Sick stuff going on. Minors and drugs, perversion, I don’t know what all. But I never heard anything like that from anyone except Tulk. I just forgot all about it. Warren went to Jesus, and I concentrated on busting bad guys.”

  When I got back to the office there was a stack of pink message slips on my desk. One was from a Detective Burke, with a familiar phone number. I dialled and, when he answered, I said: “Getting a little full of yourself, aren’t you, Burke? A little too immersed in your role?”

  “Just eager to be of service. After all, you’ve solved a few thorny problems for me in your time. I had a word with Vernon.”

  “Yes?”

  “The way he remembers it, he was watching television somewhere and saw one of the mighty Romans, one of the Colosseum people, being handed some sort of medal by the Grand Poobah. Mixing his metaphors a bit there. But anyhow, it seems the Grand Poobah is the mayor.”

  “When was this?”

  “He couldn’t tell me, but I got the impression it was a few years ago. Vernon remembers thinking he would take it to the Daily News.”

  “But he didn’t.”

  “No. He thought the story was too hot — his words — that they would know who leaked it, and he would be silenced with extreme prejudice if he uttered a word. But in the same breath he told me he tried to tell a police officer.”

  “Who?”

  “No idea. All the cop said was: ‘Don’t call us, Vern. We’ll call you.’” “I wonder whether this medal was the City of Halifax Esteemed Citizen Award — the CHECA. Somebody pointed out that the acronym sounds like the old Bolshevik secret police, the Cheka, but the mayor’s office didn’t bother to change it. Nobody knows history anymore. The CHECA was initiated fifteen or twenty years ago. If that’s it, then it wouldn’t be hard to get a list of all the recipients. Booster types, gung-ho city promoters, you know the sort of thing.”

  “I’m not sure how much the names would mean to our man Vernon.”

  “I suspect there’s no shortage of photographs of these people. I’ll see what I can find, and maybe we can put together a little photo lineup for him to examine.”

  I decided to put a bit of distance between myself and my request for the photos of the esteemed citizens of Halifax. I asked my secretary to go over to City Hall the next morning and obtain copies of photographs of the medal recipients for my daughter’s school project.

  Then I sat back and considered what I had learned. Criminal activity had been going on at Dice Campbell’s office. Drugs were involved. Someone sent me a postcard about it after I started to ask questions. Corey Leaman had a history of drug offences. Dice had kept a news story about an assault with a blender; the young offender was not named, but Corey Leaman’s file revealed that he was the assailant. Dice Campbell’s gun was used in the shooting. All I could do was quote Vernon: “Coincidence?”

  †

  That evening, May the ninth, was so mild you might have thought it was July. I wiped down the Adirondack chairs in the back yard of my house in Armdale, and sat with Brennan, Normie, and Tommy Douglas, gazing across the water at the Halifax peninsula. Our conversation was punctuated by the sound of tiny waves lapping against the shore.

  “I wonder when that bottle’s going to wash up. You haven’t seen it, have you, Tom?”

  “Nope. No sign of it, Dad.”

  Looking at Tommy Douglas was like looking in a mirror, a kind, forgiving mirror reflecting my younger self. He and I had the same dark blonde hair and blue eyes. My daughter had thick, curly auburn hair and hazel eyes, magnified by a pair of delicate glasses.

  Normie’s eyes were sparkling now, as they always were when there was a story featuring her as the main character. “I’ll go down and look.” She trotted down to the shoreline. “Nothing here!” She came back and curled up in her chair, an expectant look on her face.

  “When Normie was a baby, we had her over at the Dingle. You can see the tower to the south of us there. She was in her carriage, in a bright red jacket and a little knitted hat with kitty ears. And we were out on the dock. I handed her her baby bottle, and what did she do?”

  “I flung it out into the water!”

  “She flung it out to sea. Have you any idea how much those plastic baby bottles cost? We’ve been looking for it ever since. Hoping it will wash up. Or hoping some sailor, far from home, will spy it bobbing out there on the Atlantic.”

  “I was bad!”

  “Och, you did a mortaller there, Normie. Pegging your bottle out to sea. And I thought I’d heard it all in the confessional,” Burke said, shaking his head.

  “I know. Daddy! We have a picture of me that day in my kitty hat. A slide. Let’s look at them. Please?”

  “It’s not dark enough for slides, sweetheart.”

  “Yes, it is. Downstairs, with the curtains closed.”

  “Slides?” Burke asked.

  “Yeah, my father took a whole pile of our photos, ones when the kids were little, and had them made into slides. He was a real slide buff. Had the projector, the screen, all the gear. This was before videos.”

  “That much I know.”

  “So I have all that stuff now. Every once in a while they demand a slide show and they make me lug all this antique equipment —”

  “Retro, Dad,” Tom offered. “I’ll go set it up. Come on, Klumpf.” Tommy knew he could always get a rise out of his sister by calling her Fräulein Klumpenkopf, for the unmanageable clumps of hair that adorned her head after a night of twisting her hair while she slept.

  “Don’t call me Klumpf! I’m coming with you.” “We’re in for it now. Call us when you’ve got it going.”

  They had it g
oing twenty minutes later, and we all got seated in the family room, facing the enormous white screen. My daughter was at the controls. “Ready?”

  “Roll it.”

  “Jazes! Is that you, Monty? How old were you when you fathered this child? You don’t look any more than seventeen.”

  I thought for a minute it was Tommy I was looking at, but it was me, years ago, with a humongous smile on my face. Tommy was the bundle in my arms. All you could see of him was blue blankets and a little fist.

  “Oh, I was a good ten years older than that. I started aging fast once this little bugger came into my life.”

  Normie clicked the button, and we were looking at a family shot. I was in an armchair leaning over a golden-haired toddler while he took baby steps towards the camera, a proud grin on his little face. Maura was behind the chair, with her arms around my neck, her face resting against mine. Burke gazed at us in silence. This was followed by me, naked from the waist up, standing in the bathroom with a razor in my hand.

  “A picture of you shaving?”

  “Yeah, well, she was making fun of me. When we had Tommy, I was worried. His skin was so soft and delicate I was afraid that when I kissed him or put my face against him, I would hurt him, so I got into this habit of shaving twice a day. New father, what did I know? Maura, coming from a big family, thought it was hilarious.”

  “Really?” Tommy asked.

  “Did I have soft skin too, Daddy?”

  “You? I had to shave hourly for you, Normie.”

  “I thought so. Let’s call Mummy!”

  I reached over and dialled her number.

  “Hello?”

  “Hi.”

  “Oh.”

  “Settle down, MacNeil. Didn’t your mother ever teach you to play it cool when a guy calls?”

  “I’ll try to control myself.”

  “Good. What are you up to? I was just looking at a very lovely picture of you.”

  “Let me guess. You’re about to ask me what I’m wearing, and then you’re going to tell me that you have nothing on and —”

  “You obviously have me confused with one of the lower life forms that make up your circle of admirers today, but no. This is the father of your children speaking and we are all sitting here watching slides of the kids as babies.”