by Anne Emery
“See you there. Oh, I was nearly cavalier enough to hang up the phone without wishing you a happy St. Valentine’s Day.”
“Oh, Father, you shouldn’t have.”
“Well, I didn’t. Send flowers or chocolates, or anything thoughtful like that. But on our next visit to Dublin, I shall take you and Montague to the shrine of St. Valentine, where relics of the great saint are kept and are venerated. Who says romantic Ireland’s dead and gone?”
“I’ll hold you to it. But, to give credit where credit is due, I believe you have successfully invoked the saint in your ministry to us even without a visit to the shrine.”
“Maybe so.”
“Brennan, about all that, bringing us together, I will never be able to thank you enough. I don’t even know where to begin. You . . .” There was a catch in her voice, and then she stopped.
“No need, my pet. See you tomorrow night.”
†
Brennan would not have thought it possible that he would be showing his face again at the Flying Stag after his all-too-memorable evening there six weeks ago. But he was very keen on the tribute to Monty, and this would be his first opportunity to hear Tom’s band. It was quarter to seven, and he was in the process of shedding his clerical collar and substituting a sweater and jeans when his phone rang, and he picked it up.
“On my way,” he announced.
“Father Burke?”
“Yes? Sorry there. I thought it was going to be somebody else.”
“I have to speak to you.”
“Certainly.”
“Do you know who this is?”
Not until that moment, but now he knew. It was Ignatius Boyle.
“Uh . . .”
“It’s Ignatius.”
“Oh, yes, Ignatius. How are you?”
“Not good.”
“I’m sorry to hear it.”
“Can I talk to you tonight?”
“Yes.”
“Meet me at the statue.”
“Sure. Em, what time? Now?”
What was he going to do? He did not want to miss any of the tribute to Monty. But he absolutely could not miss whatever Boyle wanted to tell him. If the man was in the mood to talk right that minute, there was no guarantee he would be of the same mind at another time.
But Boyle surprised him. “When you answered, Father, you said, ‘On my way.’ I think I have caught you on your way to another commitment.”
“Well, I . . .”
“That’s all right. You have your ministry, and I respect that. We can meet at a time convenient to yourself.”
“Are you sure, Ignatius? I don’t want to put you off.”
“No, no, Father, I’m not on a schedule of any kind. You just tell me what time. But it is important that we speak soon.” Boyle’s voice had taken on a nervous edge, and Brennan began to worry again that he might lose the opportunity.
He tested the waters by saying, “Ten o’clock at the statue?”
“That will be fine, Father. Bless you.”
“And you, Ignatius. The blessings of God on you.”
“Thank you, Father. Ten o’clock.”
†
When Brennan arrived at the Flying Stag, the Collins-MacNeil family was already in place. The staff had put two tables together for the family, the members of Functus, and Maura’s pals Fanny and Liz. And Brennan; there was a seat waiting for him, with a glass of draft settling nicely on the table in front of it. He would enjoy it, because it would be the only one for him tonight. Monty and Maura were sitting side by side; little Dominic was on Monty’s knee. Monty’s face was bruised and cut, and the arm was in a sling. But he had the look of a very happy man. Normie fluttered around the baby, smoothing his hair, adjusting his clothing, producing toys from her bag to amuse him. Constable Truman Beals, dressed down in civilian clothing, saluted them from across the room. The place was packed.
Tommy and his band were setting up, and Brennan could feel the excitement coming off of them. This was their first bar gig. Tommy was a smaller, but not much smaller, version of his father, with wavy dark blond hair and sky-blue eyes. The band wore dark suits, white shirts, black ties, and porkpie hats. They were not yet of age, hence the early show time, which would feel like the middle of the afternoon to the blues crowd. Brennan suspected the Stag was not too concerned one way or the other, as long as the band members did not openly indulge in any forbidden fluids. Brennan did not see Constable Beals coming for them, or for the bar staff, with handcuffs.
Oh, there might be a problem after all. Normie had a request: “Can I have a beer too? That one looks good. It looks like apple juice.” Her parents delivered the bad news. It was against the law to serve alcohol to a minor, and she had nine years to go.
“That’s okay. I’ll have what you drink when you’re not drinking, Father. What’s so funny?” she asked, as everyone in hearing range burst into laughter. The child’s little face blushed pink. “I just want a ginger ale.”
“You can have one, angel, and it’s on me. So are the laughs. Make it a double,” Brennan told the waiter.
Before the band’s first number, the bar’s owner got up in front of the microphone to say a few words. Brennan had never met Wayne Kovacs, but had seen him in the place on previous occasions. He was a big, burly fellow with a shaved head and a goatee; the sleeves of his grey sweatshirt were cut short, and his arms were festooned with tattoos. He looked well able to handle the day-to-day crises of a down-market blues bar.
“Evening, folks,” Kovacs said. “I think we all know why we’re here tonight. Not that we need a reason beyond the usual. But we do have a special reason to be here, and that’s to pay tribute to a guy who’s very well known to us at the Stag. How long have you been playing here, Monty? Twenty years? Twenty-five?”
Monty gave a little “could be” shrug.
“So we’ve got kind of used to Monty here. We know he’s a good guy, and now we know he’s a really, really good guy. I won’t use the word ‘hero’ because I saw in the news that he doesn’t get off on that word. And, well, when you think about it, what he did was not all that strange.” Kovacs surveyed the room and nodded his head a few times. “I mean, come on, how many people in this room have ended up under a truck at some time in their life? Yeah, we’ve all been there, right?” Laughter around the room. “For one reason or another. Some of us are mechanics, working on and under trucks. Though I never got the impression Monty was all that mechanically inclined. If it’s not a musical instrument, Monty can’t work it. Am I right?”
Monty allowed as how that was all too true.
“Back in the bad old days, before our highly respected officers of the law — ” he nodded in the direction of Truman Beals and his companions “ — our boys in blue, started cracking down on drunk driving, and well they should, I can remember times when Monty rolled out of here and couldn’t get his car started. But maybe that’s just because he couldn’t get the key in the ignition. Anyway, mechanics. Other guys in here might have been under a truck, stripping it for, well, let’s just call it redistribution. Say no more about that. And others of us have been just plain unlucky, winding up under the wheels of a truck that happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. Or we were so plastered, we fell under the wheels of a passing truck, and, well, that’s just how it is. What can you do? Pick yourself up, take another drink, and write a twelve-bar blues about it.
“So that’s the rest of us. But that’s not Monty. Monty threw himself beneath a moving eighteen-wheeler, and clung on to parts of the undercarriage he would not even be able to name. He risked his own safety and his very life. What could have happened to him if he fell off and the driver made a turn, or . . . well, we don’t want to think about the things that could have happened. He did it without hesitation. Why? He did it for his son. His little guy Dominic had run under the tractor
-trailer, got caught up in the landing gear — that’s the legs that come down when the semi-trailer’s not attached to the truck part, Monty — so, yeah, Dominic was suspended from the landing gear, and Monty did what he did. And there’s Dominic right there, not a scratch on him.
“I won’t hold things up any longer. Everybody lift your glass in a toast to Monty Collins.”
Everyone in the room joined the toast. “To Monty!”
“And now it’s time for me to get out of the way. Because our band tonight is Dads in Suits, headed up by Monty’s other son, Tommy Douglas Collins. And they are fuckin-A! Hit it, boys!”
The crowd welcomed the band with raucous applause, and Tom launched into “Born with the Blues.” The boys were brilliant. Between songs, people came up to Monty and slagged him about the competition. Monty was beaming, particularly when Truman Beals came over and said a few words. Monty mouthed the words along with him; he had heard it before, and he looked as if no higher praise had ever been uttered: “Some of those tunes, not all, but some, if I close my eyes, that kid can almost pass for somebody who’s not a blue-eyed little white boy.”
At break time, Tom floated by on clouds of glory and accepted accolades from one and all. Then he said, “Gotta go.” He looked around. “Where’s the . . .”
Monty spoke up. “Brennan, any advice for my boy?”
“Yes, em, keep going past the first door, my lad.”
“Why? What’s the first door?”
Brennan was trying to find a suitable answer when one of the bar’s regulars went rolling by and said, “That’s the Honeymoon Suite. That’s where love happens, boy!”
“Honeymoon Suite in the Flying Stag? What is he talking about?” Maura asked, looking to all appearances as if she knew she was not going to like the answer. “Tom, stay here.”
“Brennan,” Monty said, “fill him in, would you? You’re more familiar with the place than I would ever be.”
“Collins, why don’t you meet me outside door number four?” Brennan pointed to the exit. “We’ll settle this outside.”
“No need for that now, Father, when a little blues can say so much. This is one of my own compositions, if you’ll indulge me. I call it the ‘Dirty Shag Blues.’”
“Mum, does that mean the carpet is dirty in that room?” Little Normie, God love her.
“You have no idea, dolly,” Monty replied. “Why don’t you . . .”
His imagination apparently failed him, but Fanny took up the slack. “Normie, I have some juice packs in the car. Why don’t you and I and Dominic go out and get some?”
“Okay!” Normie took the little fellow by the hand and followed Maura’s friend from the bar, but not before Fanny left instructions: “I’ll expect a full report later, Maura.”
Monty advised his son to go past the bar and proceed to door number three, and Tom went on his way. Monty then gave them all a song, “Dirty Shag Blues,” thoughtfully dedicated to his dear friend and drinking pal, Father Brennan Burke:
“Met my baby in the toilet
In a place they call the Stag.
Yeah, met my baby in the toilet
In that place they call the Stag.
Got down and dirty with my baby.
I do anything for a two-bit shag.”
“You dedicated that song to Father Burke?” Maura exclaimed. “What did you do to deserve that, Brennan?”
“Nothing. I swear on all that is sacred, nothing happened in there. I mean, it started to happen, but not through anything I did. She just got in there, and got down on her . . . I put a stop to it.”
“Brennan, you’re babbling.”
“Yes, well, em . . .”
“I have never heard you so bereft of words, so inarticulate. Not since you were with Kiri Te Kanawa. I remember she left you speechless. Now it’s this other person. From what I can gather, you had a brief but intense relationship with both women, one on the concert stage, the other apparently in the Honeymoon Suite of this dingy bar. Are you torn between the two, Brennan? Would you like to talk about it? No?
“One thing strikes me about your dilemma. Kiri is of course brilliant, talented, beautiful, and world-renowned. But your Honeymoon Suite sweetheart has one big advantage, from your perspective. She is available.”
“No, all it was . . . I was standing by the sink, washing my shirt, and this one was there . . .”
“Spare us any further details, Father.”
Brennan hissed in Monty’s ear: “Make sure she knows nothing happened.”
“I will. In time. Leave it with me, Brennan.”
Brennan, having refrained from smoking up to then, lit up a cigarette, inhaled to the very pit of his being, then blew the smoke away from the table. He took a mouthful of his draft, his only draft, and turned with relief to the stage, where Dads in Suits were ready for the second and final set. Fanny returned with Dominic and Normie, treats in hand.
The band did a great job on some old blues standards, and then it was time for their big number. The culmination of a great night of music, the culmination of years of a family moving towards reconciliation. Tom and his sax man brought the house down with the Gary “U.S.” Bonds song “Daddy’s Come Home.”
Maura did not even try to hide her emotions. Tears sprang from her eyes. She didn’t bother to wipe them away. Brennan could see Monty struggling manfully to look pleasantly nonchalant.
“Why’s Mummy crying?” Normie asked, concern written all over her sweet little face.
Brennan found he had to clear a lump from his own throat before he could answer. “Sometimes people cry when their feelings are so powerful they can’t control them, even when they’re happy, sweetheart. Your mum is really happy. Because, em, I think your dad is going to move back home with the rest of you.”
“Yeah, he is! It’s going to be great having him home again!”
“Yes, darlin’, it is.”
Brennan looked at Monty and raised his glass. Monty returned the salute.
Chapter 21
Brennan
Well over an hour later, at twenty after ten in fact, Brennan was sitting on the bench facing the statue of St. Bernadette. Alone. Trying to fight off the fear that he had blown it. He had changed into his clerical suit and Roman collar, donned his winter jacket, and had come to the bench well before ten. And there was nobody else in sight. By going off to an evening of ceol agus craic, music and fun, and by deliberately postponing his meeting with Ignatius Boyle, he had scotched the chance to learn what role Boyle had played in the life, and maybe the death, of Jordyn Snider. Brennan was convinced that Boyle had been on the point of confiding in him, perhaps confessing. And Brennan had failed him. He would wait anyway; he would sit there for another hour in the cold, but he feared it would be for naught, the opportunity lost.
He sat, and tried to piece together what he knew about the murder, in case he never heard another word that would help solve the case. Ignatius Boyle had been found unconscious two minutes from here the night of the murder, with blood spattered on him. Pike Podgis had been seen leaving here with the victim’s blood on his shoes. The witness who saw him also heard other people in the street. Podgis had a photo of Ignatius Boyle and Jordyn Snider; he had the Yukon Street address. But nobody had the complete picture. If . . .
“Don’t you even think about it! It’s not going to happen!”
Brennan sat upright and listened. The voice came from behind him in Byrne Street, near the church. A young woman’s voice. He turned around.
“Please don’t!” She was almost crying.
“It’s better this way! I can handle it.”
Ignatius Boyle. And Maggie Nelson.
“I’m sorry I’ve kept you waiting, Father.”
“Don’t worry about that at all, Ignatius. Hello, Maggie.”
“Hello.”
She stood at one end of the bench, on Brennan’s left. Ignatius was at the other end, on his right.
Maggie said, “We have something to tell you.”
Ignatius took two steps and reached Maggie, putting one hand behind her head and the other across her mouth.
Brennan got to his feet and moved towards them, ready to pull Ignatius off the young woman, but Maggie twisted her head free and said, “It’s all right, Father.”
Brennan stared at them. What were these two people doing together? Maggie knew about the Polaroid of Ignatius and the young murder victim in a naked embrace; she had clearly not been surprised when Burke had mentioned it to her on their earlier meeting. So, knowing that, what was she doing with Ignatius Boyle, alone with him before they arrived here, in her house with him on past occasions as well? Had this man, disadvantaged and eccentric but to all appearances spiritual and kind, had he worked his way into these young women’s lives, their confidence? What had Boyle said when he and Brennan spoke the first time, something about girls and their boyfriends? What was going on? There was something very disturbing at work here.
“He didn’t do it,” Maggie said.
“Podgis?” Brennan asked. He watched Ignatius, who was gazing intently at Maggie.
Maggie was shaking her head. “I didn’t mean Podgis. I know you suspect it was Ignatius. It wasn’t.”
Why was she covering for him? What was the peculiar relationship at play here? Brennan fixed his eyes on Ignatius, who refused to meet his gaze.
Brennan asked him, “Ignatius, did you kill the young girl?”
It was Maggie who replied. “He didn’t.”
“Why won’t he answer me then?”
“He wants to take the rap for this. Serve the prison term. He wants to protect me.”
“Protect you from what? From whom?”
“I killed Jordyn.”
†
That was all Brennan was going to allow her to say out in the open. Whatever evidence there was against Maggie Nelson, it was not going to be supplemented by anything overheard by unseen persons on a quiet night in his churchyard. Maggie was standing there, shell-shocked, as if she too had heard for the first time who had committed the murder.