Obit

by Anne Emery

  “Bit of a mystery about the man, to be sure. We never saw him again after that. Not in person anyway. Saw his picture, though. Years later, long after he stopped coming to Saint Brigid’s, I saw a photograph in one of the Catholic publications. A young man by the name of Burke was being ordained. And the man we’re speaking of was in the picture. He was the ordinand’s — the young lad’s — father. So there he was, a good Catholic then as he was when I knew him. Except for a bit of gaming!”

  “I’ll have to keep in mind that this Burke, if I find him, may be a bit of a character. As for Cathal, you said you spoke at his funeral. Big funeral, was it?”

  “Sad to say, it was not. Father McDiarmid said the Mass. There was me, Cathal’s sister and her friend. That was it. Well, as I said, Cathal kept himself to himself as far as I could tell.”

  “So, nobody else on hand to see him off.”

  “No. Though there was another man in the church. I couldn’t shake the impression that he was a — I don’t think he was family,” Grogan concluded.

  “What was it you were going to say, Father? Don’t spare my feelings now! Cathal may have been a relative but I never met him, so —”

  “He was a policeman. I’d swear to it.” He lowered his voice as if, even now, the wrong people might be listening. “And not a city cop either. I knew the police officers in the area; it wasn’t one of them. He looked like, well, like a G-man! One of the Feds!”

  I had a lot to digest here. Belatedly I remembered my supposed interest in the family tree. “Now you mentioned a sister. I didn’t know about her. She likely has some information for me.”

  “You’re out of time again, Mr. — I’m sorry —”

  “Collins.”

  “Yes. Mr. Collins, you are too late. Miss Murphy died very recently. She was —” he cleared his throat as if Nessie’s death was not a fit subject for conversation “— she was murdered! This city, I’m telling you.”

  “Murdered! What happened?”

  “Some hooligans broke in. An old woman alone, in mourning for her brother. It doesn’t bear thinking about. God rest her soul.”

  “Robbery?”

  “Apparently.”

  “Father, I appreciate your time. I’ll try to find this Declan Burke, to see what he can tell me about Cathal. I just hope Mr. Burke hasn’t met an untimely death as well! All my contacts seem to be dying off.”

  “Oh, I wouldn’t worry about Mr. Burke coming to grief at the hands of another. If anyone tried to attack him, he’d be well able for it!”

  “Thanks, Father Grogan.”

  “You’re more than welcome, Mr. Collins. God bless you.”

  A numbers racket. And the man who had confronted Declan at his house when Sandra was there was not a Mob enforcer, but a Saint Brigid’s parishioner in high dudgeon!

  †

  That afternoon I got a call from Terry Burke. He entertained me with some misadventures during his recent flight back from Europe. Then we turned to his father.

  “We’re handing him over into your airspace for a while, I hear, Monty.”

  “So I’m told. Let’s hope his stay is pleasant and uneventful. Tell me something. Was he ever into serious gambling that you know of?”

  “Gambling? He’s enjoyed some success as a poker player, but I don’t know of anything beyond that. Why?”

  “It’s one of the many theories I’m considering. There’s no point in filling you in about it until I nail it down. If I do.”

  “Fair enough. To tell you the truth, I’m not sure I want to know any more about the old renegade; my heart can’t take it. I’m still trying to get my mind around the shooting.”

  “I hear you. I should put it out of my head, but I’m not satisfied with the way things have been left. So. Desailes Company. It’s where Cathal Murphy used to work. Ever heard of it?”

  “Not till today. But I asked around. It was Desailes Inc. and it ceased operations in the seventies. What’s Murphy supposed to have done there?”

  “He worked in shipping/receiving. I was wondering whether he might have been running an arms-smuggling operation from the inside. With a co-worker. Raising money, sending some guy out to buy guns. Or having them brought in and shipped out of the warehouse.”

  “Not much chance of that, from what I heard about the place. This outfit made surveillance equipment for high-altitude reconnaissance aircraft. Top-secret stuff. Nothing was being shipped out of there unless it was going to the Defense Department or to the major aircraft manufacturers. They ran a tight ship. The guy I spoke to knew somebody who worked there. They practically patted them down when they finished their shift. Doesn’t sound like the kind of place where a low-level employee could run an operation of his own.”

  “Right. Well, I’ll let you go.”

  “Have fun with the old man. If he comes back bubbling over with good reports of his trip, I’ll hop on a flight some day and take a look for myself.”

  “You’ve never been to Halifax?”

  “Not beyond the airport. How are the bars?”

  “You’ll be pleased.”

  “Great.”

  I replayed the conversation in my mind. There were two obituaries on my desk and I stared at them for a long moment, then looked at my watch and saw I had twenty minutes before I had to see a client. I picked up the phone, dialled Bridey’s number in Philadelphia, engaged in a bit of what I hoped was witty repartee, and asked her again about the man Cathal Murphy had met at the Brooklyn Botanic Garden, the man who shouted but whose words were lost on the two young spies who were watching him.

  †

  Guinness and Jameson’s were on the table, and Declan Burke was in my doorway. It was a cool, breezy Saturday night and Declan had accepted the invitation to be my guest during his surprise visit to Halifax. Brennan had just pulled up with his father in the car. I had some questions for Mr. Burke but hospitality came first.

  “What brings you to Halifax, Declan?”

  “A man needs a reason to visit his son?”

  “I suppose not. What are you going to do?”

  “Have tea with him at the parochial house, attend his Masses, listen to his choirs, see his city, drink his whiskey. Anything else you can think of?”

  “No, that just about covers it.”

  “And I know you won’t mind at all, Collins, if I move into your neighbourhood and ask all manner of unwelcome questions about your life,” he said to me then.

  “I would take that as a sign of your interest and friendship, Declan. Thank you. May I help you with your suitcase?”

  “I can manage, thanks all the same.”

  “Come in, then.”

  “I’ll be right back. I left my coat in Bren’s car.” He headed back outside.

  “He won’t talk to me,” Brennan said as he came up the front step. I followed him to the back of the house, where he stood at the kitchen sink looking out over the waters of the Northwest Arm.

  “What do you mean, won’t talk?”

  “About the shooting, about the gun heist and all the rest of it.”

  “What else is new? The man’s not a talker.”

  “I just thought — the fact that he’s flown all the way up here, after the kick in the nuts he gave me the day I left New York — I thought it must mean he wanted to tell me about it after all.”

  “Well, he’s here, and there can only be one reason for that. He wants to be with you. And it wasn’t a kick in the nuts he gave you in New York. He said it plainly: ‘Because you have the power to absolve.’ He thinks he doesn’t deserve your absolution.”

  “God’s absolution.”

  “Either way, he’s the one who’s undeserving. Not you.”

  “Mmm.”

  “Pour yourself an Irish and have a seat.”

  We heard Burke Senior coming back in.

  “Come on upstairs, Declan. I’ve given you a room with a view of the water. A calming influence.”

  “I need calming down, you’re thinkin
g?”

  You will, I said to myself. But there was something I hoped to clear up first.

  “Brennan must be very happy to have his father here.”

  “He didn’t look as if he’d gone mindless with joy, but you can’t expect a grown-up son to give you a big sloppy kiss at the airport.”

  “A grown-up son is never too old to be hurt by a father who means the world to him.”

  He looked at me sharply. “Is there a point you’re about to make here, Montague?”

  “That last day in New York, I know Brennan was a little . . .”

  “Yes, yes, I know it. I’ll have a word with him. Are you hearing me though, Collins? I said ‘a word.’ I did not say I’m going to make a speech from the dock. I did not say ‘Bless me, Father, for I have sinned.’ I did not say I would be subjecting myself to an interrogation. I said ‘a word.’”

  “That sounds clear enough.”

  It was time to get down to brass tacks. I decided to pop the question without warning.

  “Declan.” He put his case on the bed and turned to face me. “Did you ever pass information to a Soviet intelligence officer operating in the United States?”

  “Did I what?”

  “Were you spying for the Russians in return for Russian guns for Ireland?”

  He stared at me in utter astonishment. I knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that he was innocent of that charge, no matter what else he had done.

  “I guess I have my answer.”

  “How in the hell did you come up with a daft idea like that?”

  I had come up with the idea — and it wasn’t daft — when I looked at all the evidence from a fresh perspective after rereading the obituary of Uncle Joe MacKenzie.

  “Why don’t you have a seat, Declan?”

  He shook his head, his eyes never leaving my face. He wanted to be on his toes if I got any crazier.

  “His loyalty to his Uncle was never in question,” I recited from the Cathal Murphy obituary. “Uncle Joe Stalin.”

  “Have you taken leave of your senses? It was a reference to my uncles, who fought for Irish independence. Along with my father.”

  “Your uncles, plural. More important to you, your father. If that’s what the old lady meant, it would have been worded that way. The FBI is looking into Nessie Murphy’s death. You did know that the author of the death notice has been murdered?”

  “I know that,” he snapped.

  “Papers were stolen from her apartment, Cathal’s journals.” The colour drained from Declan’s face. I went on. “Cathal Murphy met secretly — or so he thought — with a man from Washington, who came up to New York to see him in the late 1950s or early 1960s. Probably one in a series of clandestine encounters. I had been thinking of a G-man. An FBI agent.” I would spare him the story of his two young children following their mother’s admirer all the way to his meeting at the Brooklyn Botanic Garden. I had remembered Bridey saying she couldn’t make out what the Washington man said when he shouted at the young boys loitering around his car. He had yelled, but she couldn’t understand him. Maybe, I thought, with the Uncle Joe Stalin reference fresh in my mind, the man had a foreign accent. She hesitated only a moment before saying yes when I called her on the phone. That was it: a heavy accent. “It turned out the man was a foreigner,” I told Declan. “Cathal Murphy worked —”

  “Fagan,” Declan interjected. I knew he was poleaxed; he was actually offering me information!

  “Did you know Murphy was Fagan when you first read the obituary?”

  “Certainly not.”

  “Fagan was working for a defence contractor, Desailes Inc., the manufacturer of top-secret surveillance equipment for spy planes. He couldn’t smuggle out photos or papers; security was too tight for that. But he didn’t need to. He had a photographic memory, according to his sister. He could memorize the information. Specifications? Details of government orders? He could keep it in his head until he got home. Murphy/Fagan was renting two apartments. How could he have afforded that? Somebody was paying for it. Who? Irish Republicans?” Declan snorted at that. “There were code books in Nessie Murphy’s apartment. She lied about where they came from. No doubt his methods, including his code systems, became more refined once he was in regular contact with his Soviet control.

  “Obviously you weren’t aware of what you were getting when you took up the collection those Sundays at Saint Brigid’s and picked up the specially marked church envelopes Fagan put in the basket.”

  “You’re fucking right I wasn’t aware of it.”

  “I know. He probably told you it was coded information about bank accounts, contacts, shipping schedules and other details about the proposed arms shipments to Ireland.” Declan was silent but I knew from his expression that I had it right. “In fact, though, Fagan had given up smuggling guns out of the US after being caught and spending time in the clink. He hit upon the idea of trading secrets to the Soviets in return for Russian weaponry, presumably shipped directly from the USSR. You didn’t know any of this, but you were the courier.” Silence. “Now, I’m sure he didn’t have you meeting a Russian. Your contact would have been an American. The man wouldn’t even have known your name. Or maybe you didn’t meet anyone. You used a letter drop or some other system.” Again, no reply.

  Declan sat glowering in my direction but it wasn’t my face he was seeing; it was Charlie Fagan, who had set him up in a perilous adventure that could, at any time, have been exposed.

  “I guess he had his revenge on you after all, Declan.”

  “What do you mean, his revenge? How many of these goddamn avengers are out there, trying to blow my head off after all these years? What did he have to be vengeful about?”

  “You took away the love of his life.”

  Astonishment gave way to wariness as he contemplated what, or who, I meant. “How could I have done that? I’ve been married to the same woman for over fifty years.”

  “He was in love with Teresa. Worshipped her in Dublin, followed her over here.”

  “What? What are you telling me now?”

  “It’s true, Declan. He didn’t have much in his life: he was saddled with a cranky, resentful, determinedly dependent sister; he loved a woman he could never have; he had his two religions, the Catholic and the Irish. But he took care to ensure that he wouldn’t lose that life, such as it was, if his operations were ever discovered. It would be his rival — you — who would face life imprisonment or even execution by the American government if your role as courier were ever revealed. No doubt he told you that one shipment of handguns, as welcome as it must have been back home, would not be enough to return you to the good graces of the IRA. And that he had a way to help you pay for the sins you committed against that unforgiving institution. Old Nessie knew some of this all along. No doubt the rest of it was known to her only after he died and she read his papers. She had it in for you too. For Teresa as well, more likely than not. If it weren’t for Teresa, and then you, her brother would have married in Ireland and taken Nessie in. Life would have been much more comfortable with a sister-in-law to cook and clean for her. She hated her life here, and sought revenge of her own.”

  Declan had sunk down onto the bed. He stared at the wall without speaking.

  “Let’s call Leo,” I said.

  “Let’s not.”

  “He told us to drop it.”

  “Leo’s a wise man. What was it about ‘drop it’ that you didn’t understand, Collins?”

  “The Russian connection. That’s what I didn’t understand. I thought he was warning us off for other reasons.” Namely, that your own son had tried to kill you. “What’s his number in Dublin?”

  “Leave the poor man alone. He’s out of all that now.”

  Out of it himself but still in the know. “I’m going to find his number.”

  Declan sighed and drew a scrap of paper from his wallet. “What time is it? Just after seven, so it’s midnight there.”

  “No, it’s just a four-ho
ur difference from here.”

  He grudgingly picked up the phone. “Could I speak to Father Killeen, please. Is he now. Well, I’ll hold on then. Tell him it’s Declan.” He glared in my direction while he waited.

  “Dia is Muire duit, Leo!” I did not understand anything he said following the godly greeting, with the exception of something that sounded like “O Coileáin” (me) and something else that could have been “Russian.” He may have lost much of the Irish he had learned under Leo’s tutelage in Mountjoy Prison, but he was able to make himself understood well enough to exclude me from the conversation with his old commander. Then he switched to the language of the oppressor. “Well, he had me gobsmacked here, Leo. I know. I’m sure you did.” A reproving look at me. “Here he is. Put the fear of God into him, will you? I’ll be in touch. Take care of yourself.”

  He handed the receiver to me. “Good evening, Leo.”

  “What did I tell you about this matter, O Coileáin?”

  “You suggested I drop it, was that it, Father?”

  “But you didn’t listen, did you?”

  “I’m all ears now. When you got back to Ireland, did you mention —”

  “I didn’t mention anything,” he snapped. “I asked some questions.”

  “I have a question for you, Leo. Were there Irishmen in the USA trading secrets to the Soviets in exchange for Russian arms for Ireland?”

  “Never say that again. Ever.” There was ice in his voice.

  But I persisted. “So, when the police solve the murder of Nessie —”

  “They’re not going to solve it,” Killeen said in the same icy voice. “It should never have happened; it was not intended; it was not sanctioned. The poor woman, God rest her soul. But now that it’s happened, it will remain unresolved. They will find there is no one to arrest for it.”