Obit

by Anne Emery

  I went back to the car. “What was that all about?” Brennan demanded.

  “Got any quarters?”

  He dug around in a small pullout container beneath the car radio. “Who are you calling?”

  “Right now I’m going to call Terry. Where can I reach him?”

  Brennan gave me the phone number and started to speak, but I ran off with an assurance that I would explain later. I called Terry. The person who answered gave me another number, and I reached Terry there. I filled him in and asked if he would be willing to get hold of a skip tracer to track down Gerard Willman. Then I returned to the car.

  “I got the name Gerard from notes Terry took of all the Willmans the police checked out. When we were at the Willmans’ place, Judy told us about her daughters. And I saw the photo of a young guy in uniform with Garth. Private G.G. Willman; I thought he was Garth’s own son. But no. Terry’s notes show that Gerard Willman was born in February 1953. That makes him Gerald Connors’s son, born after Connors went to Attica.”

  “Jesus. What now?”

  “Now we deal with Nessie. And we’ll ask her if she knows a Gerry Willman.”

  †

  Nessie was sunning herself on the stoop like an old lizard when we arrived. She shaded her eyes as she looked up.

  “You again. Didn’t I put the run to you before?”

  “You did,” I admitted.

  “Well? To what do I owe this imposition today?”

  “We’re helping the police with their inquiries. This may not be your last interruption.”

  “A fine lot of help you two must be. Well, the police are welcome to stop by. I’ve done nothing more than write up an obituary for my dearly departed brother — God rest his soul.”

  “Do you know someone by the name of Gerry Willman?”

  She looked from me to Brennan and back. “Help me up here.” Brennan took her arm and steadied her while she stood and reached for her cane. “It’s a gentle touch you have, Mr. Burke; I wouldn’t have expected it. Come inside.”

  When we were seated, she said: “So you’re on to young Gerry. Very well, no need for me to protect him anymore!” And, leaning forward in her chair, she began the tale she had been longing to tell us from the start. After all, it showcased her craftiness, and she seemed to think we wouldn’t try to implicate her when we had better suspects in our sights.

  “This fellow came to see us, well, to see Cathal. But Cathal had gone out to do the shopping. I can’t get around, as you know. So we got talking, and it turned out this Gerry was trying to find out what happened to his da many years ago. The lad had put together part of the story, that his da — also named Gerry, though I think he was a Gerald and his last name was different — had got caught up in a gun-running operation that went wrong. My brother was involved in it somehow. It seems the young fellow got Cathal’s name from someone in the old country. I suspected young Gerry had made a few gun runs himself, if he had contacts like that in Ireland. Anyway, somebody over there knew Charlie Fagan was Cathal Murphy. Gerry seemed to know that whatever part Cathal had played, he was not the one who had got the father in the soup. Or maybe he just told me that. Anyway the father, Gerry the elder, had gone to prison and didn’t last a year in there. This boy was born when his father was in the stir.

  “So we waited for Cathal, and young Gerry told me a bit about himself. His mother had taken up with a man by the name of Willman after her husband died. Willman was an old Army man, served in the Pacific during the Second War. He tried to make young Gerry over in his own image. The two of them clashed from day one; the old man made life hell for his stepson. Gerry got into trouble with the law; after that, Willman finally frogmarched him into the Army. Gerry went into ‘Intelligence work,’ as he called it. He didn’t last long in the Army, but he loved codes and word games, puzzles, that sort of thing. I told him all I could do in that line was the cryptoquotes in the paper.

  “Anyway, Cathal came in with the shopping and I introduced him to the young fellow — well, he would have been in his thirties. Cathal looked so miserable. He wanted to talk to this fellow but not in front of me. So, a lady first and last, I announced that I was tired and headed off to my bedroom to rest. Really, to eavesdrop. In the apartment where we lived then, my closet bordered directly on the living room wall. And poor Cathal, bless his soul, was going deaf at the time. Like many deaf people, he thought he had to talk loud to make himself heard. So I settled in and listened.

  “Somebody had run afoul of the IRA, and was anxious to put himself right with them. My brother didn’t say who. No informer, our Cathal. This unnamed individual — I later figured out it was Declan Burke — had assassinated someone in Ireland, an IRA informer. Then he botched some other assignment, or refused to carry it out, and was under suspicion himself. He absconded and took a bit of start-up money with him, out of the organization’s coffers. With one thing and another he managed to wind up with a price on his head. From the moment he arrived in New York, he was looking for a way to make amends. Eventually he learned of a shipment of guns that was supposed to be going overseas somewhere. Declan came up with a plan to steal the guns and reroute them to Ireland. There was some man he knew who worked as a port watchman on the waterfront here in Brooklyn. This fellow, again unnamed —”

  “Desmond,” I put in.

  “Desmond, was it? This Desmond was a real pótaire, a drunk, so it wasn’t hard to sweet-talk him into helping the cause. He unlocked the shed and left it open for Declan and his accomplice, who was of course the ill-fated Gerry Senior. But Desmond left his post, and another guard filled in for him. The other guard tried to stop the robbery, and was knocked unconscious in the fray. To hear Cathal tell it, this Gerry had never been in trouble in his life. Burke seduced him into it somehow and had the poor young man so indoctrinated that, when the police caught up with him, Gerry refused to name his partner in crime and took the whole rap himself. He got a stiff prison sentence because of the violence. Declan Burke sat back, kept his mouth shut and let it all happen. The poor young man was butchered in Attica prison by hooligans he didn’t even know. It could have been anyone; he was in the wrong place at the wrong time. That was the end of Gerry the father, and the beginning of a long, slippery slope for Gerry the son. I heard the young fellow begging Cathal to give him the name of the man who had let this happen to his da, but Cathal was firm: he was sorry, but he couldn’t give the name.

  “I came out of my room before the lad left, and I whispered to him: ‘I’ll find out. And when he goes —’ I meant when my brother dies ‘— when he goes, I’ll let you know.’ I was sure Cathal would have the information somewhere. He wrote everything down, and he kept the most embarrassing diaries. He needn’t have done, because he was one of those people with a photographic memory. But there he would be at the kitchen table, scribbling away for hours. This would be weeks’ or months’ worth of his activities; he kept all the facts in his mind and then wrote them down. Why, I couldn’t tell you. And he locked all his papers in a strongbox. A detail man, I suppose he was. Too bad he hadn’t used some of that talent to give him a leg up on the American dream. Two legs up! He’d have made a grand businessman and earned great pots of money. He could have provided his only relation — his twin! — with a life of comfort instead of this.”

  She glared around at her mean surroundings, then continued. “I planned to get into Cathal’s papers and give Gerry the heads-up. Sure enough, when Cathal died I got into his box and read his journals. There was a lot of blather about Teresa Burke. And Cathal’s mysterious activities on behalf of Irish Republicanism. And there was no doubt that Declan was the man behind the robbery on Pier One. You almost have to feel pity for Dec: he had to make reparations to the IRA, and he had to get on with supporting his family. It must have taken Burke a good many years to climb out of the hole he’d dug for himself. Mind my words, he was in holes he didn’t even know he was in! Tsk tsk.” Her eyes glinted with malice.

  The hateful obituary
was beginning to make a kind of sense: the stepson Stephen was Gerry Connors Senior. Brother Benedict was the IRA traitor Declan had dispatched in Ireland. Both had “prede-ceased” Declan. We had been right about Attica.

  “Are you still carrying that obit around with you, Brennan?”

  I turned and saw him looking at the old woman with mask-like impassivity. I could sense his wrath, even if she couldn’t. Without changing his expression or taking his eyes off Neasa Murphy, he reached into his wallet, pulled out the tattered paper and handed it to me.

  I read it quickly, then asked Nessie: “What on earth is a pint of Lameki Jocuzasem? I’ve spoken to many a pint-lifter over the past few weeks and nobody has ever heard of it.”

  “You two should do a stint in Army Intelligence. Learn about codes. I did, in order to assist young Gerry. Didn’t sign up for the Army but I did hobble onto a bus and go to a library. I couldn’t move the next day, I was so exhausted.” Her eyes darted to a dusty bookcase in a corner of the room. “Anyway, when Cathal passed on and I learned the name of the man behind all the death and destruction, I couldn’t find young Gerry. Tried to get his phone number or address. No luck. And I had moved house since his visit, and the listing is in my name. I knew he wouldn’t be able to find me. So I hit upon the idea of putting a coded message in the paper. I had to grab his attention. The only thing I could think of was that I had promised I’d get the name for him when my brother died. If the message had my brother’s name in it — the announcement of his death — that might catch Gerry’s eye. Obviously, it did. Unless somebody else has it in for Declan, too! From what I know, the man could have a whole nest of enemies!”

  “So Lameki Jocuzasem gave Gerry Declan’s name? What was the code?”

  “Did you see the ‘nine’ in the text? ‘Dressed to the nines.’ Code buffs always look for numbers. That was a clue that the sequence of letters started with I, the ninth letter of the alphabet. The alphabet goes in order after that to the end, then starts again with A, and finishes with H. I to H instead of A to Z. Using the alphabet that way, ‘decburke’ is spelled ‘lmkjczsm.’ I couldn’t just put it in like that — it isn’t a word. So I stuck the vowels ‘aeiou’ in. It came out like something real, didn’t it? Lameki Jocuzasem. Young Gerry took a while to get it. Or maybe he didn’t see the death notice right away.”

  Or maybe he never saw it at all. Francis didn’t need the obit to act against his father. What was Gerry Willman’s role?

  “I’m quite proud of it,” Nessie said. “The rest of the obituary I just decided to have some fun with, and I put a little capsule history of yer man Burke in there for all the world — the clever, sharp-eyed readers of the world — to enjoy.”

  “And just how many clever readers have there been, do you suppose, Mrs. Murphy?” I asked her.

  “It disappoints me to say there have been none.”

  “Present company and young Gerry excepted.”

  “What did I say, Mr. Collins? You don’t hear so well for a young man. Now if you’ll excuse me, I have nothing better to do than chat with you gentlemen, and I’d like to get on with it. Help me out to the stoop, Mr. Burke. I’m relieved to see you’ve controlled your temper this time. Maybe I’ll survive your inquiries after all.”

  I stood to follow them out but took a detour to the bookcase Nessie had glanced at. There were two books on codes, one fairly elementary, the other much more advanced. The old lady turned and caught me looking. I said: “Codes before the world of computers.”

  “Some of us are too poor to own a computer, Mr. Collins. Turns out there was no need for anything that complicated; the easy code book did the trick. Amn’t I right? Gerry deciphered the code and you didn’t.”

  We left her, and got into the car. Brennan’s anger was palpable. His hands gripped the wheel as if it was somebody’s throat. He didn’t say one word during the drive to my hotel.

  †

  It was Saturday night, March 30, Easter weekend. Brennan would be attending the Easter Vigil, the high point of the Catholic liturgical year. The church would be in darkness, then the candles would be lit one at a time. The light returning, bells ringing out, and more alleluias sung over the course of three hours than are heard all the rest of the year. I hoped it would bring him some peace. The weekend for me was not so joyful. Normie was still at the age where the hunt for Easter eggs was a high point of her year. She might not believe they were brought by a rabbit but somebody obtained them and scattered them around, and she relished the search. Every year she relied on Daddy to arrive with extra chocolate. Not this time. When I called her in Halifax, she fretted about how Easter morning would go. Would Mummy know the appropriate quantity of treats to buy? Was it conceivable there could be a shortfall? And it wasn’t just that; she missed her dad.

  “I miss you, too. Put Mummy on the phone, would you, sweetheart?”

  “Okay.”

  “Everything’s under control here,” MacNeil assured me when she came on the line. “I have extra provisions.”

  “Thought you would.”

  “What’s happening there?” I started to fill her in on our visit with Nessie Murphy. “Back up!” she pleaded. “I thought you guys were hallucinating about the obituary, and Attica, and the other improbable aspects of the affair, which turned out to be based in fact. So I missed a lot of it before I really tuned in. Give me the rundown. Briefly.”

  “All right. Here’s what we know so far. Declan was supposed to eliminate two informers in Ireland.”

  “I find it so hard to believe that Declan’s a killer,” she said.

  “Was, forty years ago. He would have considered himself a soldier at the time, or so I assume. And it’s not a role he enjoyed. He disobeyed his orders to kill the second traitor. The second guy betrayed the IRA to the authorities, and the IRA thought Declan was in on it. He wasn’t. But he was sentenced to death. He took some IRA cash and fled to New York. Life was hell for Teresa and the children, as you heard, and the tension escalated when Teresa’s parents announced they were coming to New York. Declan panicked and came up with the down payment for a house in Sunnyside. He told you he borrowed it from a loan shark. So then he started working nights at the White Gardenia. This was in addition to his day job, a legitimate business he set up importing Irish goods.

  “It was probably at the Gardenia that he learned of the stash of weapons lying in a warehouse on Pier One in Brooklyn. Thinking this might be the way to make things right with the IRA, he conscripted Mr. Desmond and young Gerald Connors into helping him steal the guns and ship them to Ireland.” In my report to Maura, I skipped over Vi Dibney, the attempted seduction of Connors, and Vi’s one-night stand with Declan. “The people running the Gardenia almost certainly had their eyes on the guns, if that’s where he heard about them, so he was unpopular in that arena for a while too. I got the impression he had to work for free for a while to make up for it. A young waiter at the club, Ramon, got wind of Declan’s activities, and tried to blackmail him about them. Declan turned the tables, and extorted money from Ramon. The bank records in the Burkes’ attic showed that Declan was spending this money somewhere as soon as he received the payments. He told you he was supporting a worthy charity with the money. Who knows what he meant by that? Meanwhile Gerald Connors, who was convicted in the waterfront heist, went to prison and was stabbed to death by strangers.

  “Cathal Murphy, who had immigrated to the US to do some serious gun-running of his own, knew all or most of this history. When Gerry Connors’s son learned how his father died, he found out about Cathal through his own contacts in Ireland, and went to see him. What Cathal wouldn’t tell him, Nessie did when she published the obituary after Cathal’s death in December. She put a coded message in the obit, giving Connors’s son Declan’s name. Declan was shot in March. Simple, really.”

  I left Francis out of my account. If the whole story ever came to light, she would hear about it then.

  I couldn’t unwind after my conversation with Mau
ra. We had pieced together a chronology of events but there were gaps in our knowledge. We didn’t know how Francis fit in with the obituary, if in fact he did. Nessie knew nothing about Francis, I was almost certain, because she would not have held back if she had such explosive information about Declan and Teresa’s son. And I didn’t think she was aware of the Mob connection. There was nothing about that in the obit. I had suspected Declan may have got involved in criminal activities with Patrizio Corialli, but now I didn’t think so. That, at least, was not in Declan’s character. True, he had been desperate for money and had gone to a loan shark. That’s when he learned of the White Gardenia security job, which he needed to supplement his income. He committed one crime, the waterfront heist. The Mob considered the gun cache their own property, so Declan fell out of favour over that. Maybe he worked at the club for free after the gun fiasco. But Corialli obviously considered that a minor matter, long forgotten. Declan was acquainted with Mob figures, but he was not one of them.

  Yet Nessie Murphy knew more — about something — than she was telling us. She had left us with the taunt that nobody had deciphered the entire obituary.

  And there she sat, smug and hostile in her flat, in possession of the diaries and other secret records that could explain — and expose — the whole sinister affair. I entertained myself that night visiting a number of bars in lower Manhattan, but I kept a clear head. My mind had homed in on a single point: the collection of papers in Nessie’s flat. I didn’t know how I was going to do it, but I was going to walk out of there with the papers in my hands.

  I was in a foul mood by the time I arrived at Nessie Murphy’s place the next morning. What were the chances she would give up, or peddle for an extortionate price, the incriminating papers? The day was hot and bright, but she was not in her regular spot on the stoop, basking lizard-like in the sun. I rapped on her door. No reply. I rapped again, louder. I did not want to make two trips — I never wanted to see her again — so it had to be now. I tried the doorknob and pushed. The door swung open. I called her name as I stepped into the hallway. Silence.