Sign of the Cross

by Anne Emery

  “Madonna della Melagrana, “ he explained. “It sounds better in Italian so I won’t translate. It’s Botticelli. Have you ever seen anything more beautiful than the face of this Child? It’s in the Uffizi. The first time I saw it I stood in front of it so long I missed out on all the other rooms of the gallery.” He handed me a wine glass brimming with dark red liquid. He raised his glass and touched it lightly to mine. “Whatever it is you have to tell me, keep it till after we eat.”

  He produced some plates and silverware and cleared a table near one of the windows, gestured for me to sit, and we fell upon the pizza as if it was our first meal ever, or our last.

  “This wine isn’t for swigging,” I remarked, holding it up to the light.

  “There’s Chianti, and there’s Chianti,” he agreed. “But, if you like this, wait till we get to the next bottle.”

  “I just hope we’ll be able to appreciate it.”

  “We will.”

  “What was that piece of music you were playing when Sister Dunne and I walked in on you?” I couldn’t wipe the grin from my face. “I’m a product of Catholic schools and I can tell you that was the most ecstatic expression I have ever seen on the face of a nun.”

  “Oh, that little scene will sustain the good sister like the bread of life. That was Mozart’s ‘Laudóte Dominum. ‘ Sung to perfection by —” he looked over at me and raised his glass in her honour “— my beloved Kiri Te Kanawa. Did you hear those long lines? She doesn’t seem to breathe when she sings. And a beautiful woman to look at, incidentally. Well, you probably know that.” He sighed, and forked another bite of pizza into his mouth. We ate in silence for a few moments.

  “So you went to Catholic schools, did you?” Burke said. “I thought as much.” He made a show of looking at my hands. “Though I don’t see the scars. But judging by that boyish face, I’d guess you were everybody’s favourite altar boy.”

  “Yeah, I was an altar boy. I’ve since been defrocked.”

  “Nah, you still have the look. Must be an advantage in the courtroom. The poor wretched woman you had on the stand the other day didn’t know what hit her.”

  I had no desire to dwell on that episode so I went back to the cosh-wielding nuns. “I got slammed a few times, like everybody else,” I recalled.

  “I suppose you did,” he replied. “The only thing that saved me from getting pounded even more often was the fact that I was singing in the choir. I was no angel, but I sure as hell sounded like one.”

  “So, what made you decide to be a priest? With your voice, even if you had nothing else going for you, you could be married to Kiri and have a houseful of little choristers.”

  “Houseful of little hellions, probably.” He took a sip of wine. “Why a priest? I got the call, Montague, that’s all I can say. I had other plans. I started university in the sciences. I was going to be an architect. But there are things I was meant to do, and I’m doing them. What’s your excuse? Why put yourself in the way of so much aggravation, being a lawyer?”

  And so it went. We exchanged stories from our university days, his time playing football at the home of the Seven Blocks of Granite, Fordham University. Mine playing hockey. I regaled him with some of the typical war stories any lawyer accumulates. He spoke about teaching at this or that university or seminary. Then he decided he wanted to teach children at an earlier stage of their development. I said I’d always thought priests were under orders to obey and go wherever they were sent. He said that was usually the case, but every few years he wore the authorities down with a request to go somewhere of his own choosing. I asked whether he had any ambitions to rise in the hierarchy. It wasn’t hard to picture him lording it over others as a bishop. I got the impression that the opportunities were there for him if he wanted them. But it was apparent that he, like many people satisfied with their lives and impatient with others, had no desire to lead.

  We talked about music, without which, we agreed, life would not be worth living. He clearly saw it as his role to introduce children to the world’s great sacred music, hence his involvement with various choir schools. He was composing his first Mass, for four voices. On a theological note, he observed that some people had been inspired to believe in God by the simple fact that Mozart had been in the world. And he was convinced that Van Morrison was in direct communication (“unmediated communion”) with the divine. Like me, he enjoyed all forms of music with few exceptions, disco, country twang, and soft rock being among the exceptions. “If it’s rock, it ought to rock,” we agreed as we neared the midpoint of the second bottle of wine. The Irish intonation in his voice had become much more pronounced over the course of the evening. God knows what I sounded like.

  I leaned closer to the window and looked out at the street below us. Dark and still. “Is that Father O’Flaherty down there?” Burke looked down. “Yeah, that’s Mike.”

  “Where would he be going at this time of night? Sick call?”

  “I doubt it.” Burke craned his neck to watch as the old priest rounded a corner below us. “We don’t see a sprightly gait on the man, ergo no sick call. Besides, Mike reports all those to me before he trots off, every blessed one of them, forgetting that I wouldn’t know the person from Finn McCool. I’ve only been in the parish since the fall. I’m long past reminding him.” Burke glanced at the window again. “Maybe he’s bringing the Word of God to the street trade. Mike wants to save everybody: boozers, hookers, accountants, lawyers. He leaves the jailbirds to me. Wise man. I suppose I’m ministering to some of your clients. Taking up where you left off.”

  “You’re suggesting my clients do jail time, Brennan? Oh ye of little faith.”

  Even with the second bottle of wine, the subject I most wanted to hear about never came up. Whenever we got close to speaking of the women in our lives, he deftly steered the conversation in other directions. I did tell him that my wife and I were separated, that we shared custody of our two children, and that it took a superhuman effort for us to handle this with civility. He asked about Normie and Tommy Douglas, and enjoyed hearing about their antics.

  It was getting late, the pizza had been annihilated hours before, and the wine was down to the dregs. I could no longer avoid the topic I had come to discuss: Moody Walker’s planned meeting with the officer in charge of the Leeza Rae murder investigation. I was about to broach the subject when Burke left the table and returned with two big Havana cigars. I shook my head and he lit up, then regarded me with steady eyes as black as coal behind the pall of smoke.

  “Am I going to be charged with this, Monty?” he asked abruptly.

  “Not yet, if at all. But Sergeant Walker is meeting with the officer in charge tomorrow, to lay out his case against you. Whatever it is.”

  “Of all the things I’ve faced in my life — and it hasn’t all been sweetness and light — I could never have imagined being under suspicion of murder.” There was sadness and bewilderment in his voice.

  “Rowan has an in with the department, and he’ll know in advance if anything is going to happen. I wish I could tell you more. It sounds inane to say we’ll have to wait and see. But that’s what we’re faced with. If the worst happens and charges are laid, then we get to work demolishing their case. We get their evidence, and we proceed to explain it away.”

  “You won’t have to explain anything away. There cannot be any evidence against me. I didn’t do it,” he said, and drew heavily on his cigar. “Monty, go home and get some sleep so you can do good works for those of us in need. I’ll call a taxi. You’re not fit to be driving.” He got up and stabbed some numbers into his phone.

  “Will you be able to sleep, Brennan?”

  “In heavenly peace,” he replied, smiling ironically, and he put a consoling arm around my shoulder.
<
br />   III

  I had not attempted to push my wife along in her assignment at the city morgue. One got nowhere with Maura by being pushy and I knew she was busy with the children and with work. She would get to the morgue as soon as she could. The call finally came the morning after my session with Burke at the rectory.

  “I got it. Can you talk?”

  “Tell me.”

  “A small cross was carved above the victim’s left breast.” Oh, God. “And initials over the right one. The initials were ‘ IBR .’ Mean anything to you?”

  “No.” I thought for a moment. “And I don’t for a minute think it stands for ‘I, Brennan.’”

  “Who’s Brennan?”

  “Burke’s first name.”

  “Oh. And, Monty, I do mean above the breasts, not on them.”

  I paused. “I don’t like that.”

  “No.”

  “So now we know what the police are looking at this week. I wish I could make sense of it.”

  “What’s this about the police? I thought we were dealing with an overly zealous retired sergeant.”

  “We were.” I filled her in on Walker. “Now we have to wait.”

  “What are you going to do about the initials? Are you going to mention them to Burke?” she asked.

  “I don’t know what to do. Obviously, if he’s guilty, he’s going to send me to Mars for the answers. If he’s innocent, of course, he could be a help. This may have some religious significance, but somehow I suspect it’s more obscure than that. More personal. I’m going to sit on it for a while. If I can’t come up with an interpretation myself, I’ll bring it up with Burke. The first thing we have to do is wait to see if anything organic hits the fan as the result of Moody’s presentation to the Major Crime Unit. God knows what he’s telling them about our client.”

  Chapter 6

  Now MacHeath spends just like a sailor.

  Could it be our boy’s done something rash?

  Now Jennie Diver, yeah Sukey Tawdry,

  Miss Lotte Lenya and old Lucy Brown

  Oh that line forms on the right, babe,

  now that Macky’s back in town

  — Kurt Weill, Bertolt Brecht, Marc Blitzstein, “Mack the Knife”

  I

  I had not yet got around to interviewing Father O’Flaherty about the February 14 dance, and I was anxious to talk to him now. I called and was told he was doing his hospital rounds, but was expected back by four-thirty. That was good timing for me because it coincided with a partners’ meeting at the office. I was way behind in the time sheets we all had to fill in, recording our entire work day in tenths of an hour. Making a phone call or dictating a short memo might take “point I,” or six minutes of billable time. You don’t want a day full of tasks like that. Attending a trial for five hours was a lot less of a pain to record. Typically, I had not kept track and now would have to estimate how much time I had spent on each file. But there was no point in troubling myself with time sheets if I couldn’t make the afternoon meeting.

  I had started my career as a Legal Aid lawyer, doing defence work on a government salary. In some jurisdictions I would have been called a public defender. Over the years I became increasingly burnt out by the aggravating horde of clients and exhausting court schedule. Rowan Stratton lured me away after a string of acquittals I achieved, in some cases against considerable odds. I found private law gratifying at first. The court schedule was manageable and my earnings were higher. Of course not everyone in the firm appreciated the criminal clients slouching in the waiting room with the corporate clientele. I did other kinds of work as well, but I was generally pegged as the firm’s criminal lawyer.

  It was not long before I understood why so many Legal Aid lawyers make a career of it. They like the court work, they know they are providing a crucial service, they have a good shot at a judgeship, and they can do without the seventy-hour weeks that many private lawyers feel compelled to put in, with the billable hours quota hanging over their heads. When I made the move, I did not foresee — though perhaps I should have — that my new career would be the coup de grâce for my failing marriage. My wife gave up on me when I told her I could not make a long-planned vacation with the family. The day before we were to leave, a corporate client demanded that I fly to his headquarters in Toronto, a thousand miles away, to hold his hand during negotiations that could just as well have been handled by the company’s in-house counsel. When I told him I was about to embark on a family vacation, he said: “Welcome to my world.” He advised me that I had better get my wife trained early; she would be spending a lot of vacations with the kids and no Monty.

  Well, my wife is not trainable. But he was right about one thing: I no longer featured in her holiday plans. Of course work wasn’t the only thing we clashed over, far from it. But what could I say when she reminded me of the way we had planned our future together? We had wanted a houseful of kids, and intended to devote our lives to them and to each other. Yet, here I was, a partner in a private firm and a week-on, week-off dad to our two children. Ironically, after the separation, I made an arrangement with the firm that I would forgo much of the night and weekend work. (The corresponding reduction in compensation was only fair to my partners.) It came too late for my wife, but it salvaged my relationship with the kids.

  I looked at my watch. Four-fifteen. Time to clear out before the partners’ meeting.

  Father O’Flaherty met me in an old-fashioned parlour furnished in a vaguely Victorian style with a worn Aubusson carpet, and some large, ornately framed portraits of former bishops.

  “Good day to you, Montague,” Michael O’Flaherty said cheerfully. “Tea?”

  “Not for me thanks, Father.” He poked his head out and asked Mrs. Kelly for one cup of tea and a plate of sweets to go with it.

  “How can I help you this fine day, sir?”

  “I’d just like to get your recollections of the dance, if I could.”

  “Certainly, certainly. What would you like to know?”

  “What time did you get there, do you remember?”

  He paused to think, then said: “I got there early and helped the youngsters set up the bar. Well, not what you and I would think of as a bar. Soft drinks only. I looked through the selection of music, but once again there was nothing from my era! That’s only to be expected. The dance was for young people of the nineties, not for those of us who were young in the thirties and forties. But the music was tuneful enough for me to carry on as a dancing fool.” Mrs. Kelly arrived with tea for the priest, and a tray of sweets.

  “What time did Leeza Rae arrive, did you notice?”

  “Yes, I noticed, because she was supposed to help out like the rest of the young people who worked at the centre. But she got there just as the dance was about to start. Young Erin made a remark to her, and Leeza must have sassed her back because Erin just walked away from her. A minor little spat, though. It happens.”

  “Did you notice whether Leeza arrived alone?”

  “I didn’t see her till she was inside the gym, so how she got there I can’t say. She didn’t live on the peninsula, though, so she must have had a ride or taken a bus.”

  “Was there anything different about her that night, that you were aware of?” I plucked a brownie from the plate.

  “She seemed just the same to me, but then I didn’t know her very well. So I’m obviously not the priest she claimed had taken such an interest in her.” He put his teacup down and looked at me with a sombre expression. “In retrospect, I wish I had shown more of an interest, found out what was going on in her life. Maybe I could have made a difference, prevented this tragedy.” He sat back and took a deep breath.

  “What did you
mean just now, Father, when you said a priest had shown an interest in Leeza?”

  “I’m not sure, to tell you the truth. That was something I heard from certain acquaintances of mine in the police department. You’re aware that I have friends in those quarters?”

  “Yes. So what is it you heard?”

  “Just that this girl had been telling people — friends, family, I don’t know who — that there was a priest she had ‘wrapped.’ Around her little finger, I take it. My police informant tried to say this priest had the Rae girl ‘wrapped’ around his, em, well, a crude suggestion. I was having none of it. And I told him so!” Father O’Flaherty was offended all over again at the insinuation.

  “Who did you think he was talking about?” As if I didn’t know.

  “Well, it wasn’t me. You can rest assured of that,” he said with finality.

  “So, unless she made a practice of attending religious activities around the city — and I don’t think you and I believe that — we’re talking about Father Burke.”

  The old priest reddened. “That was the implication. But I said flat out that the idea was preposterous. Brennan is no fool. There was nothing going on.” I thought back over my heated conversation with Burke about Leeza and her attempts to seduce him into helping the boyfriend. His explanation had sounded convincing, but I recalled thinking he had had time to fabricate a story to explain the tawdry scene.

  “How did Leeza behave towards Father Burke at the dance?”

  “Honestly, Monty, I didn’t even see them together. Whenever I stopped to have a word with him, she wasn’t anywhere near him. That much I can remember.”

  “Do you know whether he danced with her?”

  “I don’t know. I didn’t see them dancing together.”

  “Did you dance with her yourself, Father?”

  “Yes, I did. For one number at least. I can tell you proudly that, as a man of seventy, I danced with every female in the gym that night. Well, with the exception of Marguerite Dunne. Marguerite doesn’t dance. A bit of a relief, to tell you the truth.”