Cecilian Vespers
Page 7
“And a proper thing too,” rejoined Burke.
“The first thing he did was start quoting from the Summa Theologiae in Latin.”
“Summa Contra Gentiles. You obviously weren’t listening.”
“There was hardly anybody in our class who could understand you.”
“As I discovered. Don’t get me going on what passes for education these days.”
“We won’t.”
“I’m on my way out,” Burke announced, and stood up. “Have to see some of Monty’s clients at the Correctional Centre.”
“How many times do I have to tell you, Brennan? If they’re in jail, they can’t be clients of mine. What kind of a defence lawyer would I be if I let my clients be sent to jail?”
“You’re delusional, Collins. But I could be wrong. The same was said of the great mystics, and they’ve stood the test of time.”
“You still minister to prisoners, do you, Brennan?” Fred asked.
“Yeah. Keeps me out of the hospitals, ministering to the sick! I’m sure there’s nothing left to be said about me, so ask Fred about his former calling.”
“What was that?”
“Fred is brilliant on the baseball diamond.”
“Oh?”
“Yeah, I played a season with the Kansas City Royals before I followed my true calling.”
“Are you serious? Must have been hard to give up a major league baseball career.”
Mills shrugged. “This is where God wants me.”
“I still say you could have done both,” Burke said.
“Not this again.” It must have been an old argument between them.
Burke gave us a farewell salute and started up the stairs. He nodded to a man who was on his way down — William Logan.
“Freddy! I heard I could find you down here.”
“Hi, Bill. Come have a seat.”
He sat and turned to me. “Have we met?”
“Briefly. At the party at my wife’s place. You and Mrs. Logan put on a little, um, product demonstration.”
“Yeah, yeah. Babs gets these ideas in her head. What a flop. So what’s up?”
“Fred was recounting his first meeting with Brennan Burke. You used to teach with Brennan, I understand, Bill. When you were Father Logan.”
“Yeah, I have all the luck. Things were pretty laid-back at the sem in those years. The guy Burke was replacing was the kinda guy who’d let the students do self-evaluations, mark their own papers. Don’t worry about how they’re written, that sort of approach. Then, in mid-term, he was out and Burke was in. Burke had Freddy quaking in his boots.”
“True. I was given the task of introducing him to the other seminarians but I hardly dared speak to him. To me he was intimidating and almost — I don’t know, I guess ‘exotic’ isn’t quite the word — anyway there I was, little Fred Mills from middle America, never been anywhere, and here was this big black-Irish force thrust upon us. Someone whose family was said to have fled Ireland in the middle of the night, and emigrated to Hell’s Kitchen in New York. And he had that clipped sort of accent that made me rethink everything I had ever heard about the twinkling-eyed, charming Irish. What was he going to do, shoot our kneecaps off if we faltered in the fourth conjugation of our Latin verbs? One guy stood up to him, though, that first week —”
“Yeah, me. I stood up to him, in case nobody remembers.”
Fred continued as if Logan had not interrupted. “It was another Irishman, wouldn’t you know? Father Burke was berating us for being slack in our work, and this Irish guy in the class, Fingal MacDiarmid, let fly at him in a tongue I had never heard. Irish Gaelic. Well! Burke’s eyes absolutely bored holes into him. He ordered MacDiarmid to stay behind after class. When Fingal tried to leave with the rest of us, he heard a bark from the front of the room. ‘MacDiarmid! Sit!’ Fingal kind of hesitated, then put on a brave front and sat right on the corner of Burke’s desk. Burke told him that, like most Irishmen these days, he had only a smattering of the old language but he wanted to learn more.
“‘That’s where you come in, MacDiarmid. That’s your assignment this term.’
“‘You mean I’m going to teach you?’
“‘You are. Yes.’
“Of course MacDiarmid thought this would be in place of some of his other work, but no such luck. ‘We’re not children here, MacDiarmid, and life’s not fair. My room, Wednesday evenings. I’ll bring the Irish, you’ll bring the Gaelic. Off you go now.’ And he said something in Irish that even Fingal had never heard. But he put it together. It was something vulgar, and Fingal turned around and stared at him. Burke just laughed and waved him off. Anyway, they got together on Wednesday evenings, drank copious amounts of Irish whiskey, and Fingal taught him some Irish. Burke returned the favour and tutored him in Latin.”
“MacDiarmid was an asshole!” Logan asserted.
“Why do you say that, Bill? He was a great guy.”
Logan left the subject of MacDiarmid and took a swipe at Burke instead. “Brennan was such a throwback!”
“Oh?”
“Yeah. Most of the guys teaching at the sem were letting their hair down, wearing jeans, cowboy boots. And there was Burke, always in a soutane or a clerical suit and collar. Like, what year is this, Brennan, 1979 or 1279? He’s one of these guys who thinks the way the church does. In terms of centuries. What was good for the church five hundred years ago? What will be good for the church a hundred years from now?”
“Maybe he thinks some things don’t change. Or shouldn’t,” Fred replied. “Anyway, I have things to do. Nice to meet you, Monty. See you later, Bill.”
“Listen, Freddy. What I came down here for — Do you want to go out for a beer and a bite to eat tonight? Babs has some of the neigh-bours coming over. I can’t stomach another sales party. So what do you say? Boys’ night out?”
“Sounds good, Billy.”
“So, why are you here, Bill?” I asked after Fred had left us. “I wouldn’t think this program would be of much interest to you. And if you don’t like Burke —”
“Oh, I like him well enough. He’s a character, no question. As for the program, hard to say why I signed up. Maybe I just find the old rituals entertaining. And some of the music is gorgeous. No getting around that. I’m between engagements right now.”
“What have you been up to since you left the priesthood? Do you have a family?”
“Don’t talk to me about family! I’m divorced, my ex has the kids, and my new wife is starting to get a wistful look in her eyes whenever we pass the baby boutiques in the mall. Women! You can’t live with them and — take it from one who lived the life — you can’t live without them.”
“No regrets then, eh? About leaving the priesthood?”
“No! God, no. So, how long have you been practising law?”
“I’m past the twenty-year mark.”
“Like it?”
“It has its moments. Has its aggravations too.”
“Must be a few bucks in it.”
“It’s all right. But I do a lot of criminal work, so it’s sometimes hard to collect my whole fee. And I’ve given up most of my night and weekend work to be with my kids.”
“Yeah, well, there’s more to life than the almighty dollar, I always say. Burke likes the smell of money, if I remember correctly.”
“What? Are we talking about the same guy? He couldn’t care less about money. Anything he gets, he gives away. ‘Bible tells me so’ is his attitude.”
“You wouldn’t say that if you’d seen him kissing up to Carson Whitehead.”
“Who’s he?”
“He’s a very wealthy man who lives about two miles from the sem-inary where Brennan and I were teaching. Made his money — still does, I suppose — manufacturing all kinds of unsavoury products used in law enforcement around the globe. Whitehead hosted this extravaganza at his country club. Invited everyone from the area, including the priests and seminarians. I left as soon as I could, but not before I saw Burke
topping off Whitehead’s glass and treating him to his Irish charm. It made me sick.”
“I’ve never seen Burke suck up to anybody, rich or otherwise.”
“You had to be there.”
“Okay. While I have you here, Bill — I’m the lawyer for the schola and I’ve been helping Brennan and Monsignor O’Flaherty, trying to gather some more facts about the murder.”
“How come? You’ve got a Limey sitting there in a straightjacket, police say he did it. That’s good enough for me.”
“Well, as you say, he’s in a psychiatric hospital. We’d like to be sure his version of events will stand the test of time.”
“Oh, Christ, don’t tell me you think he didn’t do it!”
“Oh, he probably did. We’re just trying to tie up loose ends. Make sure everyone else can account for their time.”
“You mean you’re checking for alibis.”
“Just a formality. So, what did you do that day?”
“Went out and about. Ate lunch, did some exploring.”
“On foot or by car?”
“I was with my wife in the car.”
“Where did you go?”
“Around. Looked at the city, did some shopping.”
“Where did you shop?”
“Downtown. And a mall.”
“Which mall?” “I don’t frigging know. Just a mall like all the other damn malls the wife drags me into.”
“Did you buy anything?”
“Spent money left and right. The usual crap people buy and don’t need.”
“Like what?”
“To tell you the truth, I don’t remember. What’s the difference?”
“None, if you didn’t get an axe or something else that can be connected with the murder.”
“I sure as hell didn’t. I just bought some trinkets for my kids. They want this, they want that. Always something.”
“Where’s the stuff you bought?”
A hesitation, then: “I mailed it home.”
“That day?”
“Yeah. No, I think it was a couple days later. I don’t know exactly. Anyway, I have to get a move on. See you later.”
I hadn’t made much progress. I didn’t have the resources to check the malls and every shop downtown to see whether anyone remembered William and Babs Logan. I wondered how much of this the police had done. Not much, I guessed, before they homed in on Robin Gadkin-Falkes.
That evening I got a call from Brennan and I recounted my conversation with Logan.
“That’s why I’m calling. It could be Logan, it could be any one of the people who can’t give an account of their whereabouts. We should question them all, definitely. But every one of these people is from overseas or the U.S.A. How much can we realistically expect to learn about them?”
“We can’t do background checks or anything like that. We don’t have the resources the police have, Brennan.”
“I know, I know. And, from their point of view, they’ve got their man. So what can we do? Do you know of anyone who can help us?”
“Why don’t you have a word with Monsignor O’Flaherty? He has friends in law enforcement circles.”
“I’ll do that.”
“If he can’t come up with anything, I’ll see what I can do.”
I was not satisfied with the answers Fred Mills had given us with respect to his whereabouts the day of the murder. In fact he had not provided an answer at all. So I wanted to try again. But I would lead with another subject of conversation. Thursday morning I found Fred bent over his books in one of the classrooms in the choir school.
I said to him: “I got quite an earful from your old friend Billy Logan. He took the opportunity to sound off about Brennan, and I have to say I didn’t even recognize the man he was talking about.”
“What did he say?”
“He tried to suggest Brennan sucks up to the high and mighty. Which I find hard to believe. He doesn’t try to curry favour with the bishop, I know that much. And money is not a motivating factor in his life, so —”
“I suppose this was the Carson Whitehead wingding at the country club.”
“That’s right.”
“Billy went around telling anyone who would listen that Burke was toadying up to Whitehead. He neglected to mention the outcome.”
“Which was what?”
“We had all been invited to the dinner and dance. The priests, the seminarians, the butchers, the bakers, the candlestick makers. Whitehead was strutting around, playing the squire. He laid on this party for the whole town. He’s virtually a teetotaller, likes to stay in control at all times. But Burke had him hammered by the end of the night. Fetching him drinks, telling him tall tales about growing up poor and starving in Ireland. To hear him, you’d think the Burke family was reduced to eating grass.”
I didn’t respond. From what I knew, the Burkes had not been starving in Ireland. Mills laughed when he saw the confusion in my face.
“Not the way you heard it, right?”
“Well, I know they had it rough for a while when they washed up in Hell’s Kitchen, after their hasty departure from the old country.”
“I never knew what prompted that departure. Do you?”
“I can tell you this much. Brennan’s father is a formidable man. If you met him, you wouldn’t want to meet the kind of guys who would propel him from the country in the middle of the night.”
Fred’s eyes were wide; he was longing to ask for more, but discretion held him back. When I was not forthcoming, he returned to his story.
“So anyway, Brennan was telling Carson Whitehead how poor they all were in his village.”
“His village being the city of Dublin.”
“Not the way Carson heard it. The villagers were all so ‘porr’ that, if it hadn’t been for the man in the Big House — the kindly Anglo-Irish aristocrat in the stately home on the hill — all the ‘childer’ would have wasted away for lack of nourishment. But this one good man, Lord Sun-Shines-Out-His-Arse, set up a food bank on the grounds of the estate, fed the people, and fed them well, too! No thin gruel for the good people of Ballybegob. They ate nearly as well as himself, and were glad of it, bless his soul! Brennan worked on Whitehead till he came around to Brennan’s way of thinking.”
“About what?”
“Whitehead’s newly conceived charitable donation and tax write-off.”
“Burke dunned money out of him for the church.”
“No, not the church. We wouldn’t be seeing a cent of it. It was a soup kitchen and food bank that the area sorely needed. Whitehead woke up the next morning convinced of two things: he’d never touch alcohol again, and he was the great white hope of the local poor. Brennan had done such a job on him that he — Whitehead — believed the food program was his own idea. And the cream on the top was the way Brennan had appealed to his vanity: Whitehead would put on the best spread in town. So not only were the poor going to eat; they were going to tuck in to a feast. The local gentry, and ladies who lunch, would be dishing it up alongside Father Burke and some other guys he dragooned into volunteering. It was a master stroke on Brennan’s part.
“That’s what Billy Logan missed. Or, more likely, chose to ignore. Bill was kind of the cool guy on campus, till Brennan showed up and didn’t give a damn about being cool and got all the attention anyway. Billy wasn’t there when Burke came down from the head table, sober as a Baptist, and said out of the corner of his mouth: ‘My work is done.’ Then he muttered a little comment about Whitehead: ‘Feckin’ arsehole thinks the famine was in nineteen forty-seven.’”
“That sounds more like the Brennan I know.” Now, down to business. “Fred.”
“Yes?”
“Where were you on the afternoon of the murder? You must have given the police your whereabouts.”
“Yes, I did, and they haven’t come after me with handcuffs, so they were obviously satisfied.”
“Exactly. Why don’t you tell me, and I’ll get out of your hair.”
“Oh. Beautiful spot they have, eh? Right on the water.”
“The wa — yeah, on the water. Though we didn’t have much time to admire the view. There was a series of speakers, and we got deeply into the subject of the apostolic succession, the Petrine primacy, the deposit of faith, and all that stuff.”
“Why didn’t you tell me this in the first place?”
“Because I’m innocent. I didn’t think there was any need to belabour the point.”
“All right. Thanks, Fred. Appreciate it.”
“Okay, Monty. See you later.”
I left the school and went back to my office, where I settled down once again to the day’s quota of legal work. The two guys I got released on bail Monday had breached their conditions already, and were back in the slammer. I was fed up with them, and made a call to a younger lawyer to handle the next bail hearing. I had just completed the arrangements for that when I got a call from Monsignor O’Flaherty.
“Good day to you, Monty!”
“Morning, Michael. What’s up?”
“Brennan is concerned about us being out of things with respect to the investigation; he’s thinking I can help out with my contacts in police circles. And indeed I can! I’ve asked Moody Walker to give us a hand.”
“Oh?” Sergeant Emerson Walker had retired from the Halifax Police Department a few years before. He and O’Flaherty were cronies and met frequently for coffee.
“What did Brennan have to say about that?”
“Em, well, he remained tight-lipped, shall we say.”
That wasn’t surprising. Walker once suspected Brennan Burke of a very serious crime. Burke had moved to Halifax two years ago. A few months after he arrived, two young women were murdered. For various reasons, Moody Walker’s suspicions had led him to Burke. I was hired to defend him, and I secured an acquittal when I tracked down the real killer. I had run into Walker a few times since then in Tim Hortons and other places, and we had never alluded to the murder trial.
“We need another set of eyes and ears, Monty,” Michael O’Flaherty said now, “and Walker tells me he’s going into business as a private investigator. The police have Brother Robin. So they won’t be following our lead in other directions, at least not right away. Moody can open doors for us that we can’t open ourselves. He has contacts with overseas law enforcement agencies, for one thing.”