Obit

by Anne Emery

  “Tell us what happened that day in Attica, when the young fellow was killed.”

  “Motherfuckers.”

  “All right, who were the men who did the killing?”

  “Low-lifes.”

  “How was the young fellow killed?”

  “Shivs.”

  “Stabbed to death?”

  Earl doubled over with a hacking cough, and Brennan looked ready to heave right there in the car. But he went on with his questions.

  “What was the name of the young man who was killed?”

  Earl stared into space for about two minutes, as if he had tuned us out. Then he said: “Connors.”

  “Why was he killed?”

  Earl shrugged. “Tensions.”

  “Tensions related to what?”

  Earl sucked so hard on his cigarette I thought it was going to shoot right down into his lung. Then he coughed again. Big time. Terry laughed at the sight of his brother turning a sickly grey.

  “Earl,” Brennan persisted, “were these fellows involved somehow with the crime that landed Connors in prison?”

  “Strangers.”

  “They were strangers to Connors? So the killing had nothing to do with whatever Connors had been convicted of?”

  “Brains,” Earl said, pointing to Brennan’s head. As if he was saying: “Go to the head of the class.” He let out an immoderately loud laugh. It went on and on, then stopped as if someone had slapped him in the face. But nobody had.

  “So, Earl, this was a random killing? Connors just happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time?”

  Earl took another deep drag of his cigarette. This time, instead of hawking, he brought up a whole sentence: “Shit happens.”

  Chapter 8

  Though we’re not free yet,

  we won’t forget until our dying day

  How the Black and Tans like lightning

  ran from the rifles of the IRA.

  — Unknown, “Rifles of the IRA”

  March 22, 1991

  Brennan Burke was hammered when I met him at O’Malley’s Friday night. I didn’t have to be a psychoanalyst to infer that Earl’s revelations of the previous night accounted for Brennan’s presence in the bar, at a table by himself, with an ashtray full of butts and a skinful of whiskey.

  “A Guinness,” I said to the bartender, “and a glass of chocolate milk for my friend here.” The bartender laughed and started to pour him a shot of whiskey. Burke, his eyes at half-mast, waved a weak hand to fend off another drink.

  “Mickey, no, no. This is Monty.” Never mind that Mickey and I had already met. “Mickey is the Brian Boru, the high king, of bartenders. He served me my first legal pint.”

  “Good to see you, Monty,” the man replied diplomatically, in an old-country brogue. I noticed he made it a point to have a bottle of Tullamore Dew at hand, and took a nip whenever he served a customer. It kept him in good cheer.

  “It’s not often I see you in this condition, Burke,” I began, as I took my seat beside him.

  “It’s not often,” he answered in a slurry voice, “I get the news that some poor fellow, a young husband and father, loses his life in a completely random, vicious attack that could have happened to anyone, but happened to him just because he was in the wrong place at the wrong time, put there by my father, who seduced him into taking part in an armed robbery for what the poor lamb of a misguided idealist believed was a good cause, and —” He ran down at that point, and fumbled to light a cigarette. He smoked moodily for a few minutes, then started up again. “I can’t explain to myself why this troubles me more than if the man had been killed by someone in the organization, to keep him quiet. I don’t know what’s wrong with my thinking, that that would have been preferable somehow. Maybe I’d console myself with some kind of rationalization: he knew what he was getting into; this turned out to be part of it. But what happened didn’t have to happen at all. He would have done his few years — terrible enough, to be sure — and then rejoined his wife and children. Ah, I don’t know what the fuck I’m talking about. And for Declan just to sit back and let this fellow suffer all the consequences by himself —”

  “Your father couldn’t have predicted what happened in the prison. I don’t make light of it, obviously, but he would have thought along the lines you just expressed: imprisonment was the risk, part of the deal. Same way he did his own time — and undoubtedly kept his own mouth shut — when he got caught in Ireland. And by the time this waterfront heist took place, Declan was supporting a house full of children, in a new country. I’m not trying to put on a defence for him; it’s just, well, I’m sure your father must have been devastated to hear what happened.”

  “I hope you’re right. I believe you’re right. He was a good father, essentially a good man. Not without blemish, but — but, Jesus Christ, this isn’t the only death he has on his conscience. He killed that fellow in Ireland. I wonder how he justifies that in his mind.”

  “Who says he does?”

  “He’d say he was at war. But was he? He’d say the traitor had caused the deaths — the torture, who knows? — of his brother Republicans, and taking this man out of action probably prevented the same happening to others. But still, it’s murder. No two ways about it.” He rested his head in his hands and massaged his temples, his cigarette burning dangerously close to his hair. “I’m not doing myself any good here, Monty. Not doing good for anyone. I should be down on my knees in prayer, not legless with drink.”

  “Well, in that case I’d better get you home, Father.”

  “Oh, Christ. Has it come to this? I’m like those fathers who have to be dragged out of the bar by their poor mortified sons. ‘Come along now, Da. Mam’s waitin’ supper for us.’”

  “Yes, I’m sure we all knew somebody like that. Who was the guy we read about? Desmond. One of his sons . . .”

  “The young girl’s diary, right. Said her brother was forever being sent to the pub to roust the old man out. What was his name? Kevin?”

  “Maybe. Or, no, Kevin was the baby. I don’t know. Look it up in the diary. But that’s not your problem right now.”

  “Got to get to sleep.”

  He pushed himself up and crushed out his cigarette. After pulling out his wallet and dropping it, bending over and banging his head on the table, he produced a wad of bills and smoothed them out on the bar. He gave Mickey a salute and followed me out the door; we turned and headed for his father’s house. It was a beautiful cool night and the stars glimmered through the haze of light rising from the city.

  “I don’t suppose you’ll be queuing up to spend a holiday with me again any time soon,” he mumbled.

  “Father O’Flaherty’s Begob and Begorrah Tours of the Emerald Isle are looking damn good about now. But then, you’d probably end up on the tour bus beside me. You and me and a couple of church ladies who haven’t had their bones jumped since Saint Patrick was in charge of the sheep dip.”

  “Tha’s all right. We’ll hijack the bus and hand it over to Leo Killeen. Famous arms dumps of Ireland. You know how keen O’Flaherty is on reading about the police and crime and history. Here, Michael, here at last is where the bodies are buried. Ah, fuck it.” He stopped to light up a smoke. “I’m sure we’ll both be glad to get clear of all this and get ourselves back to Halifax. Work will be a relief. Of course, it helps that my work happens to be music.”

  “Speaking of music, I saw a page of the piece you wrote for Sandra. Do you still have —”

  “I don’t want to hear about Sandra,” he growled.

  “Do you think you’ll try to see her again before —”

  “Are you daft?”

  “I’m sure that, if you gave her a call —” I wasn’t sure at all, but I soldiered on “— the two of you could at least have a meal together, and talk things over.”

  “Am I not making myself clear to you, Collins? Why would I put myself in the way of all that aggravation?”

  “Aggravation? Did I hear you say ag
gravation? Ever since I met you, you’ve been trying to get me together with the world’s most aggravating woman, someone I cannot get along with for more than two hours, regardless of how hard I try.”

  “She’s your wife, the mother of your children.”

  “Aha. So that’s it. You just don’t think families should split up. Period.”

  “No, that is not it. I don’t think your family should split up. There’s no need of it. Where are you going to find anyone who suits you better than MacNeil?”

  “You’re the daft one now. We could walk back to Queens Boulevard and cull a weak one from the edge of the herd; chances are I’d get along better with her than I do with MacNeil.”

  “You’re just being stubborn, the pair of you.”

  “You’re being stubborn about Sandra. Of course, so is she, but —”

  “My calling in life does not allow me the luxury of a Sandra Worthington. We’ve had this conversation before.”

  “And the conversation ended with you opening the door to seeing her.”

  “And the cool wind of reality has blown the door shut once again. I’m glad we had that excruciating evening together; it made me realize what an amadán I’d been, to have kept her in my thoughts all these years —”

  “An amadán?”

  “A fookin’ eejit. She had the right idea: move on. And that’s what I’m doing.”

  We arrived at the house. I jingled my car keys in my hand. “Well, I think I’ll just go out for a cruise and find myself a better wife. Nighty-night.”

  “K.M.R.I.A. And I don’t think I need to translate. Oh, Christ, I hope the oul fella isn’t in sight; I couldn’t face him in the humour I’m in. The sooner I can pass out — Oh, before you go. Terry called, said he got the word on this Ramon. What was his last name? Martinez? No, Jiminez. Do we even care, now that we know about Connors?” With something constructive to focus on, he sounded more sober.

  “We care. We need everything we can find.”

  “All right. Ramon Jiminez has a few theft charges on his record back in the mid-fifties. Nothing else. Well, a speeding ticket last year.”

  “He’s still around?” I was surprised but could not have said why.

  “Why wouldn’t he be? They looked up Willman as well for me.”

  “You asked for info on Garth Willman?” I couldn’t keep the amusement out of my voice.

  “Sure I did. The cop gave Terry a list of Willmans who’ve been convicted of crimes. There was an Albert Willman, a Gehrhart, a Patrick, a Sean, and if I could think straight I could remember some others. But no criminal record for Garth.” Brennan shrugged.

  I wondered about the Willmans with Irish first names. “Did the Willmans have a son?”

  “Girls,” Brennan said. “Two daughters. Was there a boy as well?”

  I remembered the photos on the television, the one daughter down on her luck, the other standing in front of an oversize garage in suburban Valhalla. Judy said how horrible it had been taking the girls to visit their father in Attica. There was a son, photographed with Garth, side by side in US Army uniforms. Hard to imagine Willman Junior mixed up in Irish Republican highjinks. “What did Terry say about the Patrick and the Sean?”

  “Not much, but whatever it was didn’t fit in. They were too young. Or, one was too young and the other’s in jail and has been for a long time. Something like that. Besides, old Willman didn’t strike me as a son of Erin, Monty. You couldn’t imagine him reading Joyce to his children over a cup of cocoa on Bloomsday.”

  “No.” Another dead end.

  “Now,” Brennan said, “yer man Ramon will be easy to find. Turns out he’s in Manhattan, has been for years. And he’s still in the bar business.”

  “I think I’ll pay him a visit before I call it a night.”

  “I’ll come with you.”

  “The night’s over for you. Go in and sleep it off.”

  †

  After patiently eliciting directions from a sobering but exhausted Burke, directions that made allowances for the fact that I was not blessed with an intimate knowledge of New York, I managed to locate Ramon Jiminez in the bar he ran not far from Madison Square Garden. The place was rundown and cheerless with half a dozen morose drinkers scattered throughout the room. The only attempt at decoration was a garish, badly painted mural on the wall across from the bar; it showed Rocky Marciano delivering the knockout punch to Joe Louis in 1951. I was assailed by a blast of cheap musky aftershave, and my nose twitched as I turned from the picture.

  “I was there. And I saw Marciano beat Walcott a year later. Undefeated, how ’bout that?”

  The man was five foot six and thin, but he had been working on his biceps and on his hair, which was coal black without a touch of grey. He was wearing a Little Italy sweatshirt over a pair of black jeans; a large gold ring glittered on the baby finger of his left hand.

  “Mr. Jiminez?”

  “Yeah.”

  “My name is Monty Collins. I’m the music reporter for the Montreal Morning Globe, and I’m working on a biography of Vi Dibney.”

  “Oh, yeah?”

  “Yes, and I know from the interviews I’ve conducted so far that you and Miss Dibney knew each other when she was here in New York some years ago.”

  “You might say that.”

  “I was wondering whether you’d be willing to give me a bit of your time, so I can round out my portrait of Miss Dibney by talking to someone who knew her when she was starting out.”

  “Yeah, I knew her back when she was just little old Evie.”

  “You worked in the same club, I understand.”

  “Yeah. The White Gardenia. It’s still there. Well, different location. Classy joint. A lot of guys were wishing they were in my shoes. You’ve seen her, so you know what I’m saying.”

  “Right. What kind of guys were around the club back then? What was the clientele?”

  “It was frequented by Italian businessmen. Italians with a lot of money to throw around. Some big movers in, let’s just say, certain circles.”

  “I see. Now your role there was what?”

  “Most people thought of me as a waiter; others considered me more of a confidante. A lot of big deals went down in that club. And I had the inside dope on more than a few.”

  “Patrizio Corialli was one of the owners, wasn’t he?”

  “Oh, yeah. Major owner.”

  “Who else had a piece of the club?”

  “Couple of his associates. Italians. Some other people invested from time to time.”

  “Like who?” He shrugged. “So tell me about you and Evie.”

  “She was a great kid. Real looker. And she could belt out a tune. I was fond of her. But I had to let her go.”

  “Is that right?”

  “Getting too serious, too attached. You know the type. I was young, I had plans, I wasn’t getting corralled at that time in my life. I tried to let her down easy.”

  “But it was hard for her, I imagine. The breakup.” The breakup she didn’t even tell you about, you bullshitter. I kept my thoughts well out of view.

  “It was rough on her. Emotional. You know how they get. But you might say I gave her career the boost it needed. She took off for Vegas to make a new start, away from her memories of me, and the rest is history.”

  “Yes, she certainly made a name for herself. How did she link up with the hotel out there? I forget the owner’s name, but wasn’t he an acquaintance of somebody back here?”

  “Yeah, an Italian connection.”

  “And she mentioned somebody by the name of Burke who had a hand in it as well.”

  The name hit home; Jiminez was instantly on his guard.

  “Is that name familiar to you?”

  “That scumbag.”

  “This man offended you in some way?”

  “You might say that.”

  “Well, Vi implied that he was helpful in getting her started in Vegas, but —”

  “Evie says a lot of stuff abo
ut a lot of people. Doesn’t mean she knew what those people were all about.”

  “You’re making me a little nervous here, Ramon. I don’t want to leave out any important links in Vi’s career but I don’t want to, you know, write glowingly about this man if he wasn’t what he appeared to be.”

  “What he appeared to be was a smooth-talking, blue-eyed Mick. What he really is, is a piece of shit.”

  “You say ‘is.’ So, he’s still kicking around? I got the impression from Vi that he was older. I thought —”

  “He’s still kicking all right, despite somebody’s best efforts to take him off the board.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Somebody tried a Paddy-whack on him, but it didn’t take.”

  “You sound as if you wish it was you! Maybe you’d have done a better job.”

  “I would have. When I start something, I finish it. And I sure as hell wouldn’t have tried to shoot him in a room full of people at a wedding. What a loser, whoever pulled that one.”

  “Well, obviously I’ve been given some bad information. I’d better check him out further. So, what did he do to earn your undying hatred?”

  “Fucking blackmailer!”

  “What? This Burke was blackmailing you?”

  “You heard me.”

  “When was this?”

  “Decades ago, 1950s. Bastard knew I didn’t have the money. Well, I sure as hell had to come up with it.”

  “What was he blackmailing you about?”

  “None of your fucking business.”

  “You’re right, Ramon. I apologize. Let’s forget Vi’s trip to Vegas and whoever did, or did not, help get her there. Let’s move on to something more pleasant: her music. Which songs do you remember her for?” I carried on with the charade for a polite interval, then finally thanked him profusely for his time and made my escape.

  †

  We were back in O’Malley’s the following afternoon, a Saturday: Brennan and I and Maura. Normie was at Declan and Teresa’s, playing with their granddaughter Christine again. Mickey was in place behind the bar, shot glass filled with Tullamore’s, racing sheet in front of him on the polished wood. He and a sober Brennan talked over old times until three pints of Guinness were decently poured, then we settled in at a back table.