Bishop's Man (46 page)
Authors: Linden Macintyre
She was dressed to be noticed, a tight little sweater that stopped just above the navel. The way she sat, elbows perched on knees, a roll of baby fat fell over the waistband of low-cut jeans. The door behind her opened slowly. A boy emerged, about twelve years old. The girl continued her conversation. He stood behind her, then tugged her hair. She swatted with a free hand without even turning her head. He laughed, hopped slightly out of reach and went back inside.
I thought of Bell. In a moment identical to this one he is going about his business somewhere.
I went downstairs and found a telephone directory. There must have been a hundred B. Bells. I compared each number with the one Jude had given me. No match. I dialed it anyway.
The whirr sounded half a dozen times before I heard the pickup. A man’s voice offered a tentative hello. I asked if Brendan Bell was there.
“No. Who’s calling?”
“An old friend,” I said.
“Well, he isn’t here.”
“Do you expect him?”
“No,” he said. Then, with a slight edge of hostility, “Brendan doesn’t live here anymore.”
“Oh. I’m sorry to be a bother.”
“If you’re a friend, you must have heard … he’s married now …”
“Yes. I heard. Would you happen to—”
“I can’t help you,” he said. And put the phone down.
I was standing with the silent receiver in my hand when Cassie arrived. I hardly recognized her. At each of our occasional encounters it has come as a surprise that she—who is, after my sister, my nearest relative—is virtually a stranger. A woman now, dark-haired and dark-eyed from her Gillis genealogy.
“Well, lookit,” she said, throwing down her purse, jacket and newspaper and sweeping toward me.
Cassie works as a journalist.
“You look fantastic,” she said. “All lean and mean and clear-eyed. What a waste.” She laughed her mother’s laugh. “I know half a dozen women who would try to eat you.”
I felt the sudden heat in my face.
“And how was the asylum?”
With the uncautious questions pouring out of her, I felt the gloom dispersing. “A cheap holiday,” I said. “I recommend it. I took up walking.”
“Can golf be far behind? Anyway, I hope you’re going to be around for a while.”
“A few days. To readjust.”
“I’ll have to take you out on the town.”
“I have a little bit of business to take care of. Somebody I have to locate while I’m here.”
“Oh. Anybody we might know?”
“I doubt it. Just an acquaintance.”
“Anything I can do to help.”
I remembered then that he’d been mentioned in the news. “Maybe.”
Effie and Willie arrived shortly after five, noisily speaking Gaelic as they entered. Cassie and I were in the kitchen.
Effie headed immediately for her liquor cupboard. Cassie left the room.
Willie became silent when we were alone, avoiding eye contact. I inquired in my awkward, neglected Gaelic how the city was agreeing with him.
Ciamar a chordadh am baile mor …
Effie handed him a glass with a small pool of amber liquid in the bottom.
Ciamar a chordadh am baile mor …
Effie handed him a glass with a small pool of amber liquid in the bottom.
“Ah, well,” Willie said softly in English. “It’s a busy place for sure.”
“A big trip for your first,” I said.
He reddened. Sipped from the glass. “I don’t usually,” he said guiltily. “Just now and then. Special occasions.”
“I understand. All things in moderation, right?”
“I suppose.”
“So, what do you think of Toronto?”
“It’ll be good to be home again.”
“And how is Aunt Peggy?”
“Good. Good. She’s with Stella.”
“Stella,” I said, surprised by my reaction to her name, a sudden longing to be home.
“Right. You know Stella.”
“Yes,” I replied.
Effie handed me a glass of orange juice.
Dinner was quiet. Afterwards, Cassie took Willie out to see a movie. “We’re going to see
Braveheart,
” she said.
Braveheart,
” she said.
“Take it with a grain of salt,” said Effie.
“What made you decide,” she asked when they were gone, “about Braecrest? You’ve never been a drinker.”
“Maybe you don’t know me as well as you think,” I said.
She studied me then, face full of questions, so I changed the subject.
“Willie seems to be taking to the city,” I said.
“He’s a pet.”
“How old is he, anyway?”
“He isn’t much older than we are. But he grew up in a kind of a bubble. Kind of like us.” She smiled. “It wasn’t exactly … normal, was it? The way we were.”
“What’s normal? Who knew what normal was back then? Before television.”
“That’s true,” she said.
“
Normal.
What a word.” I was longing for a drink.
Normal.
What a word.” I was longing for a drink.
“Do you think of them often?” she asked suddenly.
“Who?”
“Daddy. Sandy. Poor Jack.”
“I find it odd, the way you call him Daddy. When did that start?”
“But isn’t that … normal? To call your father Daddy?”
“When you’re nine.”
She turned away and the silence fell in the way it always does. After about a minute she walked slowly to a cupboard and poured some more liquor into her glass.
“Maybe that explains your fascination with Willie,” I said.
She frowned.
“He reminds you of … ‘Daddy.’”
“For the love of God.”
“Think about it,” I said.
She stared at me for a while, glass in hand, eyes searching. “Christ,” she said at last. “I hope this isn’t what that Braecrest place does to people.”
“I get the sense that he doesn’t like me,” I said.
She laughed. “Listen to him!”
“I think he’s a weirdo.”
“I’m going to bed,” she said.
Saturday morning, Willie was gone before I was up. Effie drove him to the airport. When she returned, she told me he said he was disappointed not to have spent more time with me but was itching to get back home. I said I was sorry to have missed him; there were things we might have talked about.
“Oh,” she said, relieved.
“The MacKay boy. Young Danny. You remember him from the Christmas before last. Willie would have known him well. They’d be related.”
She frowned. “I think I heard something. Didn’t he die?”
“Yes. Last fall. He killed himself.”
“Oh? How awful.”
“The last time I saw your William, actually, was at the wake. He was there with his mother. The old lady you’ve been talking to, Peggy.”
“He never mentioned it in all the time that he was here.”
Saturday afternoon, I started calling all the B. Bells in the book. By the sixth I realized it was an impossible task. Three were women. One sounded too young in the flippant message on his answering machine. The other two denied any connection with Newfoundland.
That night Effie took Cassie and me to dinner in a dimly lit, noisy restaurant downtown. There was casual chat. Mostly about Cassie’s work.
“By the way,” she said, “somebody will be calling you.”
Effie was surprised. Calling me about what?
“Nothing important,” I said. “Somebody I wanted to look up while I was here. Cassie was helping.”
“Oh. Somebody I know?”
“I doubt it.”
“Now I’m intrigued.”
“Just an ex-priest.”
“Aha.”
The dinner was pleasant and the city lights were intoxicating, but I couldn’t absorb much of the stimulation. I was insulated from the pleasure by a dense layer of dread.
We went to Mass together on Sunday, to a large, cathedral-like church with an energetic choir and four boys on the altar for the two priests. Large occasions at the university were like this. And holy days in the larger parishes. Theatrical, I thought.
“How does anybody live here?” I asked her afterwards.
Effie just laughed.
“I’m looking forward to going back,” I said. “I think I know how Willie felt.”
At about mid-morning on the Monday, I answered a ringing telephone and the man asked if I was Father MacAskill. I said I was and he said he heard that I’d been inquiring about Brendan Bell. He said he was a business reporter who worked with Cassie. I told him I had some dealings with Bell but had lost touch with him.
“You and a lot of people.” He explained that Bell spent his winters outside the country. He had a home in the Caribbean, where he also did a lot of business these days.
The Caribbean?
“You’re Cassie’s uncle?”
“Yes.”
“Because you’re Cassie’s uncle, I’ll give you a name and number. Just don’t say where you got it, okay?”
“Sure.”
“I’d be interested in anything you find out. Call this number and ask for Eddie Sudac. He’s one of the top people at HREU.”
“Where?”
“HREU. It’s a union.”
“A union?”
“People who work in hotels and restaurants. Sudac will fill you in.” He then gave me a Toronto telephone number.
Eddie Sudac had a friendly face and a firm handshake. We met in a sports bar on Front Street, just west of Union Station.
“I’m a Catholic myself,” he explained. “Croatian heritage. But I haven’t been too faithful to my obligations for a while.”
I shrugged and returned his smile. He ordered a beer. I had Coke.
“I have to say that it’s people like Bell who turned a lot of Catholics like me into heathens. This here is a fella that really makes you wonder. How do you know him?”
When he was active in the priesthood, I said, I knew him briefly. Had some dealings of a religious nature. Wanted to follow up on a few loose ends.
He made a face. “I hear you loud and clear.”
“I understand you know how to find him.”
“Oh, yeah. I could write a book on Brendan.”
We talked for an hour. I left the bar in a state of utter confusion, attempting to remember a jumble of detail about politicians and unions, union money and hotels, jurisdictional disputes, raiding, lawsuits, intimidation, accusations about stolen funds and money laundering. Somehow Brendan Bell was in the middle of it all. And it all went back to something sleazy in Newfoundland when he was a priest.
“He was one of the diddlers, I understand,” Eddie offered in a quiet voice. “At least according to some of our contacts on the Rock.”
I told him that I wasn’t at liberty to talk about what I knew and that I was sure he’d understand.
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