Obit

by Anne Emery

  “Who are you talking about?”

  “We both know the answer to that: Frankie Burke.”

  I decided to switch to a more direct approach. “How do you know Frankie?”

  “Met him here. I moved to a place close by and started coming to the bar. This guy was always sitting with his girlfriend, blabbing away. When he got well-oiled, he tended to talk a little too loud. I’m not surprised he blew his cover. I knew it was a mistake getting involved with him, but what the hell. I made sure they couldn’t trace anything to me.”

  “I found you.”

  He laughed. “You found me but you won’t find a trace of me anywhere near those items Frankie brought over.”

  He was probably right. I asked him: “If he was that much of a wild card, why pick him to go on this escapade?”

  Sullivan looked at me in surprise. “Pick him? What are you talking about? He picked me!”

  What? I knew I was about to sit there and watch Francis Burke’s story disintegrate before my eyes. Then what would I do? “He picked you,” I repeated, lamely.

  “Yeah.”

  “How did that happen?”

  “Well, I listened to this guy Frankie go on and on about his troubles —”

  “What sort of troubles?”

  “Family shit. His old man was a prick, his brother didn’t understand him, blah, blah. His girlfriend would try to tone him down. Sometimes he was okay; he’d be sober and wouldn’t go off on a tangent. One of those times we started shooting the shit. Couple of nights after that, he said he’d heard something about me. I don’t know where. He heard I was able to get my hands on something he very much wanted to have.”

  “Some kind of artifact.”

  “Depends on what you mean by artifact. Doesn’t ‘artifact’ mean something somebody made?” He laughed and leaned towards me in a mock conspiratorial pose. “This one was artifacted in the 1940s by the Royal Small Arms Factory in Enfield, UK.”

  I had spent years constructing a facade to cover this kind of moment in a courtroom. Well, I wasn’t in court now and I didn’t even bother to hide my reaction.

  “Bad news?” Colm Sullivan asked with insouciance. He lifted his empty glass in a friendly gesture. I shook my head, and he went for a refresher for himself.

  He returned to the table and resumed his casual dismantling of everything I had wanted to believe about Francis. “The kid — he’s probably my own age but I always thought of him as a kind of kid — asked me to follow him outside the bar one night. I was on my guard. If he had brawling on his mind, I knew I could pulverize him. But no, he’d heard I had a working knowledge of weaponry, here and abroad. He wanted a gun that couldn’t be traced, unless it was back to Ireland. He didn’t mind if it had been used over there. In fact, you didn’t have to be Einstein to know he wanted it traced to the old country for some reason of his own.”

  Now I was trying to hide my feelings on the subject, outrage on behalf of Declan and his family, fury at Francis for stringing me along when I was trying to give him the benefit of the doubt.

  Sullivan continued: “He asked how much it would cost him and I thought I’d charge him as much as he could afford, which wouldn’t be much, judging by the look of him. I’d get him to bring my archaeological treasures over on the same flight. If anything went wrong, only one of us would lose, and it wouldn’t be me.”

  I felt sick. Sullivan went on.

  “Burke gave me some line about trying to reconstruct an episode in his family history. Was going to get uniforms, whatever. I didn’t give a shit. It’s not in my job description to ask what the guns are for. But I’ll tell you this much: when I heard there was a Declan Burke who got shot at a wedding in Queens — go ahead, call me an idiot — I couldn’t believe this guy Frankie had done it. He’s just too much of a hothead to plan the thing, shoot the guy, then get himself out of the building and disappear. My idea of a Frankie Burke hit would be, his old man is railing at him from his armchair some night and Frankie goes out to the car, grabs the gun, comes flying back inside and blasts the guy’s head off then and there. Giving out to him the whole time: ‘I’ve hated you for years, you old fecker, so take this.’ I spent about two minutes wondering if Frankie had hired a professional. But no professional would have taken the job. Not in that location. And poor old Frankie wouldn’t have the greenbacks to pay for a hired man. Maybe Frankie did yoga and got himself ‘centred’ before his mission! Who the fuck knows?”

  †

  Drop it, Father Killeen had warned. An Irish connection indeed. Declan’s own son. I walked along the crowded thoroughfares of Astoria, listening to bouzouki music coming from the lively Greek restaurants that lined the streets. The smell of lamb and garlic made my mouth water. But I was too preoccupied to enjoy the atmosphere. I found my rental car and drove to the hotel. What in the hell had Francis been trying to pull, with that story of himself as merely the carrier of Irish carvings? I thought I had caught a glimpse of something genuine in him beneath the abrasive facade. The pleading look on his face: Give me one chance here and I’ll straighten things out, become a courtroom artist. You’d better become a courtroom artist, Frankie! Better still, hire one. And fast. It had been nothing more or less than the pleading look I see over and over on the faces of my clients. Get the judge to gimme one more chance; I won’t fuck up again. I never fall for it; what was wrong with me this time?

  What puzzled me, of course, was why he had set me straight on the trail of Colm Sullivan. He must have known Sullivan would give him up. I wanted the answer to that question before I told Terry Burke about my encounter with Sullivan, but I had to tell him something. I would make a point of seeing Terry tomorrow.

  †

  Friday was departure day for my wife and child. Terry and Sheila had invited Normie to spend the hours before her flight with Christine. We packed all the bags, threw them in the car and headed to Queens. When we arrived Sheila told us Terry was at his parents’ house, so MacNeil and I continued on to the familiar house in Sunnyside. I had not told Maura anything about Francis. She would hear about him soon enough if there were any more developments.

  Terry was the only one at the house. He was in his pilot’s uniform, which earned him a look of undisguised admiration from MacNeil: “Fly me to Havana and nobody gets hurt. Except me, I’m hurting already! I can’t believe Sheila lets you out of her sight in that outfit.”

  “She checks my altimeter whenever I get home, to see if anything went up.”

  “Where is everybody?” I asked him.

  “They’re on their way to Horgan’s for something to eat. I said I’d join them in a minute. Have you two had lunch?”

  “No.”

  “Good. We’ll all go.”

  “Perfect, and it’s going to be my treat!” Maura piped up.

  “You don’t have to do that,” Terry protested.

  “Did you see how much food I stuffed into myself when I was here the other day?” she countered. “I’ll just run out to the car and get my bag.”

  “So, what’s happening?” Terry asked as soon as she was gone.

  “There’s nothing to tell. Not yet anyway. The guy didn’t show.”

  “Oh, for Christ’s sake.”

  “Yeah, I know. We’ll find him, don’t worry. And if the cops move on Francis, we’ll put them on to Sullivan.”

  “God knows what he’ll tell them.”

  You said it. “Well, we sure as hell can’t keep him to ourselves if Francis gets arrested.”

  “True enough.”

  Terry pulled some papers from his pocket — photocopies of his brother’s sketch of Sullivan. “I’m taking a good, long look at this clown. And I’m going to do a lot of barhopping over the next few days. How big did Fran say he was?”

  “Five ten or so, heavy set,” I answered, fresh from my face-to-face meeting.

  “Looks like some kind of paramilitary freak with the buzz cut and the —”

  We heard someone coming in, and Terry went
to the door. I grabbed the photocopies and stuffed them into my pocket.

  “Your mother forgot her glasses,” I heard Declan say. “As if she doesn’t know the menu off by heart. There they are. You coming or not?”

  “I’m coming. Monty and Maura are here.”

  “Good. Let’s get a move on.”

  We walked to the restaurant and the five of us crowded into a booth.

  Maura decided to make the best of her last day with Mr. Burke. “Tell us more about the screws on B wing, Declan. You did say, I believe, that you had spent some time in the lockup.”

  “Hanam ’on Diabhal, you little clip!”

  “Which means?”

  “It means ‘your soul to the devil!’ And your memory is faulty. I didn’t say I was in the lockup. Father Killeen said it. But yes, I did a stint in Mountjoy Prison. And when I got out, I’d no home to go to. Wasn’t that a sight now — a man on his doorstep after six months away, finding himself locked out and his family gone.”

  “Declan,” Teresa chided him. “You say that as if I didn’t leave you a forwarding address.”

  “Word never reached me.”

  “Isn’t that queer — all the makings of poteen reached you in there, and the components of a still. Cakes with files baked in them reached you —”

  “I got out and you were gone!” His voice had risen a notch in volume.

  “Gone to a far better place, Declan.”

  “You moved into exactly the same damned house in a different street. You moved because you didn’t like the name.”

  “The name. The Mountjoy Burkes, you mean? The name the children were being called when they were outside playing?”

  “We lived in Mountjoy Street, for the love of God. They called them that to differentiate them from the Burkes of Blessington Street.”

  “Did they now. And here I was thinking it referred to their father being in Mountjoy Prison up the street. I took advantage of a place that became available in Rathmines. The difference was we were no longer living next door to Christy Burke’s Pub, and all the associations that place had for us.” She turned to Maura. “An IRA pub with a secret door in the back, a stash of rifles, the chance of a raid at any minute, the sounds of spies being thumped after being caught in there. Declan’s brother and his cronies with the bar stools surgically implanted up their rear ends, guzzling porter from noon till night and plotting the destruction of the state. The state now being run by their former brothers in arms.” Teresa shook her head. “Life with Declan in the 1940s, Maura . . .”

  Dublin, 1943

  I’m standing in Mountjoy Street, looking north. Partway up the street on the right there’s a tall spire. That’s the black church — it turns black in the rain. Just north of that, across the side street, is a pub. It’s a cream-coloured building on the corner, with black trim and gold letters saying “Christy Burke’s.” To say it’s the family local is to understate things considerably: Christy is Declan’s father. Beyond Christy’s the street curves away to the west, and it’s lined mostly with Georgian-style townhouses, three storeys high. Rows of chimney pots, multi-paned windows and brightly painted doors under demi-lune fanlights. The brick looks lovely in the warm golden sunlight from the west. Farther up, Mountjoy Street becomes the Berkeley Road; up there is the Mater Misericordia, the hospital. Now that’s a fine majestic building with rows of Palladian windows and Ionic columns at the entrance. But there’s a serpent in the garden. Because if I were to walk around to the back of the Mater and look across the North Circular Road, I’d be looking at Mountjoy Prison. Where ten of our patriots were executed by the Brits in 1920 and ’21. And where Declan is serving six months in a cell.

  Now I’m in the new house in Rathmines Road. Declan has just come home. He’s thin, and he’s agitated. “I’ve just spent six months in prison, Teresa, one hundred eighty nights trying to avoid the sin of impurity thinking about you! And when I get home, hopin’ for a bit of the how’s-your-father, you’re not there. Now I’m standin’ in a new house, with all our furniture piled in the corner, and the last thing I feel like doing is moving chairs and hanging pictures. You came this far without me, you can finish it without me. Now I’m going to make a call to Finn.”

  His brother. They’ll be heading up to Christy’s, I suppose. What’s he whispering about? The move, of course. He sounds even more perturbed than usual! Ah, well, he’ll get over it. There. He’s off the telephone. “It’s not all here, Declan,” I tell him. “There are still some things we have to pick up from the old place.”

  “What’s that?”

  “I left some things in the basement of the old house.”

  “Is that so! Sure, we’ll go up there right now and get them, Teresa. I’ll call for one of the furniture vans.”

  Blessed mother of mercy! It’s as if I just told him we’ve struck gold and it’s all going to be plowed under if we don’t move instantly to mine it. “There’s no hurry, Dec. The new owner is the very soul of kindness. She told me I can take my time clearing out the basement. She knows my husband was away. Somewhere. She herself is a young widow with three children.”

  “Who would she be now?”

  “A Protestant lady by the name of Bowles.”

  “Well, let’s go and get all our old things out of her way.” And there he is on the phone again, this time to Burke Transport. They’ll be snapping to attention; it’s the first time they’ve heard from the boss in six months.

  So here we go, roaring down Rathmines Road into the centre of the city, across the river and up to Mountjoy Street. I’m hanging on for my life. What’s the rush? Here’s the old house. And Mrs. Bowles is at the door. Such a lovely person, in a brown shirt-dress and a permanent wave. She invites us inside. What’s this? Who is sitting in the parlour with a cup of tea and a plate of scones before him but Finn Burke himself! If ever there was a smiling chancer in this world, it’s Finn Burke. A handsome-looking divil too. Didn’t he make good time getting here after that telephone call! And why on earth is he here at all?

  Now don’t the two of them have the widow charmed! There they go, down to the cellar to get what they came for. Mrs. Bowles and I can hardly hear ourselves speak with the banging and the ructions going on down there. It seems our old house has two cellars, one dug below the other.

  Back in the van we go, over to Rathmines. Our furniture is carried into the new house. A few big boxes remain in the back of the van, and the Burke brothers are off again. To another destination, a secret one, where they will squirrel away their artillery or rocket launcher or whatever has been lying beneath the old house all those months.

  “Ah, bejazes,” Terry remarked in a thick brogue, “nothin’ ever goes away, does it?”

  “Home sweet home,” Teresa continued, “and Declan’s memory serves him faithfully indeed. The new place was identical to the old.” She opened the clasp of her handbag and pulled out a plastic folder of snapshots. “Here it is.”

  Maura took the folder, and I looked over her shoulder at a creased colour photo of a brick townhouse with a yellow door and spanking white trim, one in a row of similar dwellings. Looming over the streetscape, a few doors away, was a large stone church with a columned portico and a green-roofed dome. Running across the lintel were the words: “Sub. Invoc. Mariae Immaculatae Refugii Peccatorum.”

  Teresa smiled. “I moved the family away from Christy Burke’s pub and planted them right next to —” she paused for effect “— the Church of Mary Immaculate, Refuge of Sinners!”

  After lunch, we walked back to the Burkes’ house and I asked Terry what he was up to for the evening. He said he and Patrick had been planning to go out, but the airline had called and asked Terry to substitute for another pilot who had taken ill. It was a short flight but he wouldn’t be back in time for an outing. Perhaps, he suggested, I’d like to go along with Pat; it was rare that his brother was keen on a night out. That sounded good. Maura and I went to collect Normie for the trip to Halifax. She and Christine had a
long goodbye hug with promises that they would write, and visit each other again soon. There were a few tense moments — and the inevitable cacophony of car horns — when I nearly missed my turn at LaGuardia and cut across a lane of traffic to reach my destination. But we got there, found a parking spot and made it to the departure terminal with time to spare. Maura didn’t fire any parting shots at me, and I took some encouragement from that. But Normie’s behaviour was strange. I suppose it was understandable, considering the events she had been witness to in New York. She took me aside and made me squat down so we were at eye level.

  “You’re going to be careful, right, Daddy?”

  “I’m always careful, sweetheart.”

  “No, you’re not!”

  “You had a terrible fright, Normie. We all did. But Mr. Burke is fine now, and the police will catch the guy who committed the crime.”

  “What if it happens again?”

  “It won’t.”

  “It might. Don’t go anywhere alone!”

  “If I’m by myself, sweetheart, it won’t happen. Because nobody’s after me. Right?”

  “I don’t believe you! I think you’re going to get in trouble!”

  “Nope. So, give me a hug. I’ll be home in a week, and I’ll miss you every day till then. Have fun on the plane, and give Tommy a big kiss for me.”

  “Ha! I love you, Daddy.” She flung her arms around my neck and held on.

  “I love you too, Normie. See you soon.”

  When I got to the hotel I called Patrick, then Brennan. Pat and I agreed to meet at Colly’s. Brennan had been asked to sing with a Gregorian choir that evening, so he would not be joining us at the blues bar.

  I sat down on the bed, looking forward to a few hours with nothing to do. When I bent over to remove my shoes I felt something bunched up in the front pocket of my jeans. Terry’s copies of the Colm Sullivan drawing. Not copies, I saw, just one. The other papers were the obituary, tattered and marked up, and some handwritten notes. I noticed the name Ramon Jiminez. This was the information Terry had received from his friend in the police department; he must have scribbled the notes during a phone conversation with the cop. And here was the name Willman. Right. Brennan said Terry had checked and there was no record for Garth Willman. But the cop must have given Terry the goods on all the Willmans who came up during the search. Yes, I remembered; I had asked Brennan if there were any with Irish first names.