Obit

by Anne Emery

  I wasted no time, given that Declan was to meet us there in half an hour. “I had a talk with the wise guy wannabe waiter, Ramon.”

  “What’s he wanna be, a wise guy or a waiter?” Maura asked, after sampling her pint and finding it satisfactory.

  “It’s the oddest thing. This guy is head of one of the primo crime families in New York. He lives in a massive compound flanked by security cameras and guard dogs and, after I’d been with him for five minutes, he broke down sobbing, and said all he ever wanted was to be the wine steward at Garçon-Garçon!”

  “Point taken,” my wife conceded. “So what did he say?”

  “Unfortunately, we’re back to blackmail again.”

  Burke looked up sharply. “I saw the bank records and I still can’t believe the old fellow would pay —”

  “It’s worse than that, Brennan.” He was absolutely still, right hand poised over his pint as if an invisible glass barrier held it up. “This Ramon says your father was blackmailing him.”

  “Oh, Jesus Christ who suffered and died for our iniquity!” His head dropped heavily into his hands and he worked at his greying temples as if he could expunge the memory of what he had just heard.

  Maura laid her hand briefly on his arm, then asked: “What was Declan supposedly blackmailing him about?”

  “Wouldn’t say. Told me it was none of my business. But then, that’s the thing with blackmail, isn’t it? It doesn’t work if you don’t mind somebody knowing whatever it’s about.” I took a sip and went on: “Brennan, you’re going to have to sit your father down and insist that he come clean about this. Otherwise, we’ll never —”

  “I can insist all I want. I can threaten to excommunicate him and hound him to the portals of hell. He won’t talk. Haven’t you learned that by now, Monty?”

  “The bank records were with your mother’s things. I wonder if she —”

  “I’m not putting my mother through any more of this. It was hard enough getting her to give over that diary. The Desmond girl’s journal. I looked at it this morning, by the way. We were trying to remember the lad’s name, the son who was sent to fetch his father from the bars. Jimmy, his name was. He left New York as soon as he was old enough to get away.”

  “That’s right. I wonder how things turned out for him.”

  “Well, I hope, God save him. Now let’s change the subject. MacNeil, entertain us here. Swill that pint down and give us some improbable tales from Cape Breton.”

  Maura thought for a few seconds, then said: “This fellow shall remain nameless, because he was reputed to be the keeper of a still. Making his own moonshine and bootlegging it around the county. Our man got word that the Mounties were on their way, and dismantled his still as best he could. By the time the Mounties arrived, all that was left were some pipes and other paraphernalia.

  “‘We’re going to charge you for operating a still,’ they told him.

  “‘Do you see a still anywhere around here, b’ys?’ he challenged them.” She spoke in a broad Cape Breton accent.

  “‘No, but we see the parts for one,” the Mountie replied.

  “‘Well, you may as well charge me with a sex crime then. I’ve got the parts for that too!’”

  We were still laughing when the door opened and Declan stood glowering at us from the doorway.

  “Declan! Dia duit!” Mickey called out.

  “Dia is Muire duit. The usual, Mickey, and set up those two amadáns at the back table.”

  “Three of us, Declan! Don’t leave me out if there’s a free round coming.”

  “Maura! I didn’t see you, a chara, with that great son of mine hulking in the foreground.”

  I got up to help with the glasses, and Declan sat down with us. Brennan looked at his father as if trying to find what he had been missing in him all the years of his life. The old man ignored him, and directed his attention to my wife. “When are you going to shake these two hooligans so you can salvage what’s left of your time in the big city?”

  “I’ve been trying to lose them all week, Declan.”

  “Well, you’re in luck, MacNeil,” I improvised, “because, as I started to tell you earlier, Brennan promised to take me to a secondhand shop that has a huge collection of vintage harmonicas. Cheap.”

  She was a quick study. She said to Declan: “He’s a bluesman. Even if he won the lottery he’d buy his music, his instruments, and the drinks for his groupies on the cheap.” I let it go. MacNeil would have a better chance than anyone of opening the old boy up.

  “Use the back door; it will get you out of here faster,” was Declan’s only comment.

  “So, Brennan,” I asked when we were outside, “where’s the mouth organ district?”

  “I have a better idea. Let’s pick up the girls and go uptown.”

  “The girls?”

  “Normie and Christine. I was going to suggest this before. We’ll take them on a monster tour.”

  We found them in the family room, drawing the planets in coloured chalk on a portable blackboard. Christine was a petite girl of ten or eleven, with long chestnut braids and a ready smile. Half an hour later we were standing on Amsterdam Avenue on the Upper West Side, gazing at the gargoyles that ruled the roost at Saint John the Divine. Or, as the cathedral is known locally, Saint John the Unfinished; they’ve been working on the Gothic-style masterpiece for a hundred years. But it wasn’t only churches that had been colonized by gargoyles and grotesques, greenmen and griffins; the creatures could be spotted all over the neighbourhood if you knew where to look. The girls squealed with delight at each new sighting. By the time our tour was done, they had seen demons and winged beasts; angels and babies; gargoyles reading, cooking and gobbling. And Father Burke had risen a little closer to heaven in my daughter’s eyes.

  When we returned to the Burkes’ house, Normie and Christine went in search of laundry powder, which they swore could be mixed with water and formed into gargoyles. Brennan and I found Maura flaked out, eyes closed, on the living room couch.

  “Well?” Brennan asked Maura. “Did you get anything out of him?”

  “A couple of pints of Guinness,” she replied without opening her eyes. “Which I didn’t need.” It was more than a couple; her face was flushed and she was clearly feeling the effects.

  “Anything else?” I persisted.

  “Nah.” She slowly raised herself to a sitting position. “When I brought up the subject of blackmail, in my own little way, he knew exactly who I was talking about. But get this. He said: ‘That little gouger tried to blackmail me. I took him by the throat, scared the bejazes out of him, then persuaded him to donate to a worthy charity I happened to know about.’”

  “What charity?” I asked.

  “I tried, but he wouldn’t tell me. ‘Charity’ was in vocal quotation marks, and I don’t know any more than that. I got the feeling, though, that he wanted to tell me. The temptation was there, to let it all out. But he just couldn’t. He’s not made that way.”

  “Tell me about it,” Brennan muttered.

  “We got up, said our goodbyes to Mickey, and set off for the walk home. I asked him whether he thought the blackmail had anything to do with his being shot. He just looked at me as if to say: ‘What do you think?’ I stopped walking then and said to him: ‘Why don’t you tell us, Declan? Nobody in the family is out to hurt you. Come clean about it.’ And for a moment there was such pain in his eyes I could hardly stand to see it. I wrapped my arms around him and he held me very tight, but he didn’t say a word. Just pulled gently away, took my hand in his and started walking. After a few moments he began talking about the neighbourhood and the house. He virtually admitted he had to go to a loan shark to borrow the down payment! And that’s why he took on the nightclub job in addition to the business he set up. He told me what it was like when they first moved into the house, how he had all these children and no beds for them. They put all the kids to sleep in a pile of blankets. He laughed and said the first bed he got was for him a
nd Teresa. ‘The little lads kept crawlng into the bed with us, and Teresa refused to put the run to them — her way of ensuring we didn’t make another one that year!’

  “When we got back to the house he said: ‘I hope Teresa doesn’t look out and see me hand in hand with another woman. Hasn’t she had enough to put up with? I nearly lost her once. I nearly lost my family.’ He wasn’t joking any more. Anyway, we went inside. Teresa was waiting for him and they went out somewhere.

  “So, I did my best. But he’s not talking. Part of him wants to come clean but he just can’t bring himself to do it. He’s kept his secrets all these years. He doesn’t want Teresa to know. As he said, he nearly lost his family over those secrets — or over his behaviour — in the early days. What will she think of him now, if it’s revealed that he stayed involved and maybe compounded his errors in the years following their emigration? What are his sons and daughters going to think of him? There is also the simple fact that he genuinely does not know who pulled the trigger at the wedding party.”

  “And,” Brennan added, “we have to concede that a man who goes through life with a death sentence hanging over his head, as the result of a wrongful accusation of being an informer, might, over time, fall into the custom of maintaining the silence of the grave.”

  Maura slumped over on the couch. “Oh, Christ, I need a nap to sleep this off.”

  I went downstairs to collect my daughter. She and Christine had a box of soap flakes and a bowl of water on the card table; their hands were covered with white, sweet-smelling goop.

  “No! I can’t go yet, Daddy! We haven’t made our gargoyles yet!”

  “Why don’t we promise that you’ll come play with Christine again, and you can do your sculptures then?”

  “Aww!”

  But with the promise of a follow-up visit, she did not protest too fiercely. I got my wife and daughter into the car and drove to the hotel; MacNeil slept the whole way. Normie and I accompanied her to the suite, then went out for fish and chips while Maura continued her nap. She was up when we got back, and she relayed a conversation she had just had with Brennan on the phone. “He said: ‘Terry’s coming by to pick me up. Says he has something to tell me, but won’t say what. I’m of a mind to give him a clout in the side of the head when he shows up.’ So there you have it. They’re on their way over here.”

  They were at the door twenty minutes later. Terry greeted me: “Hey Monty, we just had dinner with Earl and his mother over on Avenue D. She was asking for you. I don’t know what we were eating but it tasted like chicken. How are you, Normie? Christine said you guys had a lot of fun today.”

  “We did!”

  He glanced from Normie to Maura. She got the hint. “Normie, why don’t you get the F.A.O. Schwarz bag, take it into your room, and decide who’s going to get what for a present when we go home.”

  “You said I couldn’t get into that stuff.”

  “You can now.”

  What would be better, rooting through a bag of new toys or listening to whatever the grown-ups wanted to keep from her? She went for the toys and retreated to the bedroom. Maura gently closed the door behind her.

  Terry wasted no time: “Here’s the news. I was with Da and we had a visit from the police. They found the gun.”

  “Where?” I wanted to know.

  “A maintenance crew spotted it near JFK Airport. Buried under some rubble. They were clearing a patch of land and found it. It was wiped clean of prints.”

  “How do they know it’s the same gun?”

  “The ballistics are a match. It’s a Lee Enfield rifle, a bit of an antique. And, get this: they believe it came over from Ireland.”

  Maura shook her head. “I thought Leo Killeen swore up and down it couldn’t have been the Irish after all this time.”

  “Leo was sincere. I know that,” Brennan said.

  “So somebody managed to get the rifle into the country, but wasn’t going to chance it on his way out. Little wonder,” I remarked.

  “And that’s not all,” Terry continued. “In the gym at Saint Kieran’s, where the shots came from, there was a bit of torn clothing or material, something that was dropped or snagged. Whatever it was, the police ran it by a fabric expert. The tests haven’t been done yet but the expert is almost certain it’s from the Irish Republic. I’m not sure if it’s the fabric itself that’s Irish or something else they have. The cop said something about ‘traces’; could be soil, or I don’t know what.”

  “Jesus,” Brennan muttered. “What was the old fellow’s reaction?”

  “I thought he was going to pass out. It was just the two of us at the house. He didn’t so much as look at me. Just stared at the cop.”

  “So, Terry, what did Declan tell the cop about his own Irish history?”

  “Very little. He was desperate to keep it to himself. He admitted he had been involved with the IRA before he came over here. But the cop already knew that. And Da allowed as how he might have offended them. How badly had he offended them? ‘Mortally,’ Dec answered. But he stressed that it was forty years ago. The officer wanted to know about any Republican activities he might have been engaged in over here. None. Gave it all up when he got on the boat. What else could he tell the officer? Nothing. Declan wished he could be more helpful. He knew the police were doing their best but he had no idea why this would come back to haunt him after all these years, and he certainly could not name any individual who would want to cause him harm.

  “Did he know anything about the guy who appeared at the wedding and sang ‘Skibbereen’? No. The police found no match for the prints on the mandolin, which suggests the old lad has no criminal record. Nothing for us there.”

  “Wait till poor Leo hears this,” said Brennan. “I wish I hadn’t told Dave Mackasey I’d do his Mass for him tomorrow. Leo’s coming to the house for Sunday lunch before he flies to Dublin. You’re all invited. I’ll do a quick and dirty Mass and boot it for home.”

  “Quick and dirty sacraments. That sounds like the seedy barfly of a cleric I’ve come to know.”

  “Bite me, MacNeil.”

  “The man saved your life,” I reminded her. “You’d better cut him some slack.”

  “I’m sure he knows there are some things that leave even me without words.” She leaned over and kissed him on the cheek. “Seedy and unshaven.”

  The phone rang and I answered it. Tommy Douglas, calling from Halifax. “I may as well tell you now because you’ll hear about it anyway . . .”

  “You got that right. What happened? Are you all right, Tom?”

  “I’m okay. What happened was, I had a few people over and then some more people showed up . . .”

  “You had a party. Which we told you not to do. Go on.”

  Maura’s eyes were locked on to mine. Normie had appeared, and transformed herself into a four foot, one inch, red-haired listening device.

  “We didn’t plan it this way,” Tom said. “But word must have got out . . . And a couple of guys had booze and then some other people had, uh, coke and, well, one guy got into an argument with another guy and his friends. And it spilled out into the street and then . . .”

  “And then it became a police matter. Anyone arrested?”

  “A couple of guys I don’t even know.”

  “And you?”

  “No!”

  “Good. Any drug charges?”

  “No, just for the fighting. And they told us to shut it down. So we did.”

  “What kind of damage to the house?”

  “Just some stuff spilled on the furniture and on the carpet.” He paused. “One lamp got broken.” Another pause. “Well, there was kind of a cigarette burn on the kitchen table.”

  Maura appeared to be on the verge of a stroke, and I put a hand up to reassure her that it wasn’t as bad as it sounded.

  “Get everything fixed and cleaned up before your mother and sister get home. If it costs money, pay for it.”

  “I will.”

  “No
more parties, no more people over, no more anything.”

  “Got it.”

  “Take care of yourself.”

  “Okay, Dad.”

  “Bye.”

  Maura snatched the receiver but it was too late. “Is he all right? I wanted to talk to him!”

  “Let him get on with his housework.”

  “Tom’s in big trouble, isn’t he?” Normie asked, trying but failing to sound more sympathetic than fascinated.

  “He’s learned his lesson. Any of this sound familiar to you, Brennan?”

  “It puts me in mind of a few incidents in my youth, yes.”

  Normie regarded him warily. Could angels be fashioned from such stuff as this?

  †

  On Sunday morning I offered to drive to the rectory where Father Killeen was staying, and pick him up for lunch at the Burkes’. When I pulled up just before noon, he was waiting outside in clerical suit and collar, a Gladstone travel bag in hand. He moved a subway map and a chocolate bar wrapper off the seat and got in beside me.

  “Good morning, Montague. You know, I’m almost reluctant to leave. In spite of all the trouble here, I’ve enjoyed getting reacquainted with the Burkes. And isn’t it grand to see New York! Where’s our friend Brennan today? Off with the children somewhere, I expect.”

  “No, Leo, actually Brennan is at Sunday Mass. The noon Mass is in Latin.”

  “Ah, a fine lad. Will he be joining us for lunch afterwards?”

  “He will.”

  “Latin, did you say?”

  “That’s right. He said it was the old Mass.”

  “What time’s Teresa having lunch?”

  “Twelve-thirty, one o’clock, she said.”

  “I’ll go in and give her a quick call. You and I are going to Mass. It’ll do us both the world of good. Even though I said my own Mass early this morning!” He got out of the car and skipped up the stairs to make his call. In less than a minute he was back, all smiles, and got himself settled in the car again. He dug around in his bag and produced a scuffed old Roman missal. “Teresa was delighted to hear we’re going to celebrate the Eucharist before we arrive for lunch.”