Children in the Morning (22 page)

“Right. Anything else going on?”

“There was the arson case, of course. Their old clubhouse burned down, with a guy passed out inside. The police tried to say they did it themselves. They’re not that stupid. Someone with a grudge, and a lot of balls, did that. The case is still in the unsolved pile. I figure if the guy is identified, he’ll turn himself in to the police. Better off in jail than out for some folks. Aside from those incidents, I don’t recall anything else.”

(Normie)

Monday was the day we were going to surprise Father Burke. He’s not always with us at Four-Four Time, so on the days when he was out, we had been teaching the little kids a song he really likes, the
Sanctus
in the green hymn book. It’s Gregorian chant. That means it’s ancient. Richard Robertson was going to conduct the music. If you knew Richard, you’d never believe he could act like a choir director.

But anyway he snuck up to the grown-ups’ choir school, the schola cantorum, then came back.

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“Burke’s wrapping things up in there,” he said, sounding almost like a grown-up himself. “He’ll probably be down in a minute. So finish gobbling your snacks and get ready.” We heard footsteps.

“Here he comes!”

Some of the kids tried to stuff whole muffins and doughnuts in their mouths before grabbing their music. But anyway, I helped Richard get them organized in rows with their music. And when Father came in, Richard lifted his arm in the air, and we started:

“Sanctus, sanctus, sanctus, Dominus Deus Sabaoth.”
It didn’t sound very good. How can you sing with your throat clogged with food? A big wad of crumbs spewed out of Ian McAllister’s mouth in the middle of it. But anyway we sang it. Father Burke smiled at us, even though I knew this wasn’t the best singing he had ever heard in his life. He thanked us when we were done, and said he appreciated it.

“Can we do it again after I have a drink of juice, Father?” Ian asked, and Father said sure.

But we didn’t get to do it because that’s when Derek and Connor Delaney burst into the room, scared to death.

“We have to hide in here!” Derek yelled.

Father Burke went over to him. “What’s the trouble?”

“Those guys are chasing us again! They’ve got a baseball bat!”

Father Burke took off from the room, and went outside. We all trailed behind him even though he turned around and told us to stay inside.

There were two guys hiding in the doorway of the church. One was really short and the other was regular size.

“Boys! Come over here!” Father Burke told them.

“Make me!” one of them said.

“I’m hoping that won’t be necessary. Come here now and tell me what’s going on.”

“What’s it got to do with you?”

“I don’t like people being chased and threatened on the grounds of my church or my school, or anywhere else for that matter.”

But they didn’t move, so Father Burke went up the stairs of the church and put a hand on the shoulder of each one of them. The guy with the bat lifted it up but he looked more scared than dangerous, and Father Burke grabbed the bat and twisted it out of the guy’s hand, and threw it on the ground. Then he took both the boys by the 133

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arm and walked down the steps with them to the parking lot. Me and the other kids sneaked a little closer to them.

“All right, lads, what’s happening here?”

“We want our money back!” the short guy said.

“What money would this be now?”

“The money they owe us.” He pointed to Derek and Connor.

“What’s this about money?” Father Burke asked the Delaneys.

“We don’t know!” Connor answered.

“You do so!” the other guy argued.

“No, we don’t.”

“All right, all right, cool it down, fellows. You,” Father said, pointing to the short guy, “tell me about the money.”

“We paid money to their family so we could meet them and get a ride in the Mercedes. Then maybe even . . .” All of a sudden he sounded like he was going to cry.

Everybody turned around and gawked at Derek and Connor, and at Jenny and Laurence. They all looked shocked.

Father Burke didn’t say anything for a long time, just stared at the two boys. Then finally he said in a really quiet voice: “Who did you pay the money to?”

“That other guy, not them.” The short boy nodded at the Delaneys.

“The other guy gave the money to them. Or he said he did.”

“So let me see if I have this right. You paid some money to another fellow, and that fellow said he paid it to one of the Delaneys.”

“Yeah.”

“Who was this other person?”

The two boys looked at each other; then the taller one said: “Just this guy we met.”

Father Burke turned to the Delaney kids and said, not in a mean voice, but a gentle voice: “You didn’t know anything about this, did you?”

“No! No, Father!” they all said, and you could tell it was the truth.

Father Burke turned back to the two other guys and stepped towards them. They stepped back and looked scared, but Father Burke said: “It’s all right, lads. Nobody’s going to hurt you. And you’re not going to hurt anybody either, am I correct?” They both nodded their heads. “I want to hear you both say to the boys and girls here that you’re not going to chase them or threaten them or do any-134

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thing to them. Will you do that?”

They shuffled their feet and looked at one another, then the taller one said: “We won’t do nothin’.”

And the other guy said: “We won’t. We thought you guys probably had our money. But I guess you don’t.”

Father Burke asked them: “How much money did you pay?”

“Three hundred dollars.”

And Father looked surprised and said: “How did you come up with that much money?” No answer. “All right, we’d better leave that unexplored. I’ll tell you what.” He went over and put an arm around each of the two boys. At first they kind of stood really stiffly, but then they relaxed and it was almost as if he was hugging them. “I know you’ll keep your word about not bothering these kids anymore. And I’m going to make a promise to you. I’ll find out what I can about this money, and I’ll make sure — no matter what I find out — that you get all your money back.” They stared at him with big, wide-open eyes. “It may take a while. But I’m going to put that money in bank accounts for the pair of you. That way, I hope it won’t be spent unwisely. But that will be up to you. So shake hands with Derek and Connor here, and I’ll get your names and phone numbers.”

“Are you going to call the cops on us?”

“Oh, I think we can settle matters without any need for law enforcement.”

They came up and shook hands, and we all went inside except those two and Father Burke. Father stayed outside and talked to them some more. He must have got their names.

(Monty)

I was dictating a pretrial brief for a leaky-condominium case when Brennan arrived at my office. I spoke my last few words into the dictating machine, then turned it off and popped the tape out for my secretary to transcribe.

“What was all that about?” he asked.

“Another condo building has developed leaks. It’s three years old.”

“Newgrange,” he said.

“What?”

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“Burial chamber in Ireland, made of turf and stones. It’s been watertight for five thousand years. If they could do a proper job of it then, what the hell is wrong with them now?”

“Don’t get me started on it.”

“I have to talk to you.”

“What is it?”

“Did you ever hear anything about young people paying for access to the Delaney family?”

“What?”

“A couple of Beau’s young fellows came in to Four-Four Time today. They were being chased by two other boys. I got things calmed down, then spoke to them privately. The long and the short of it is this: the boys say they paid fifty dollars each to get a ride in the Mercedes, and later they each paid another hundred dollars that was supposed to win them a hearing. A chance to plead their case for acceptance into the family as foster children.”

I sat there horrified.

Burke went on: “The two young lads have desperate home lives.

Well, one of them is in some class of a group home, and the other has a mother who’s on crack; she and her boyfriend are pounding each other and their kids from the time they get up to the time they pass out again. Not hard to see why they took the bait. They wouldn’t tell me how they came up with the payments, but I think we can conclude they didn’t hold a bake sale.”

I finally found my voice. “Who did they pay the money to? Please don’t tell me it was Beau Delaney. Family is sacred to him. And those amounts of money? Delaney wouldn’t take his hand out of his pocket on a frosty day to receive —”

“It wasn’t Delaney. The boys couldn’t, or wouldn’t, tell me who it was. I told the young lads I’d get the money back to them and put it in an account. So whenever you suss out what happened, let me know and I’ll contact the pair of them.”

“Sure,” I answered. But I was barely listening. All I cared about was that it wasn’t Beau Delaney. And it was a guy, so I didn’t have to waste two seconds on the bizarre notion that it might have been Peggy, and that Delaney found out and confronted her at the top of the stairs. So if it wasn’t Beau or Peggy, how could it possibly hurt our case?

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Chapter 10

(Monty)

That evening, Brennan and Pat Burke joined me and Normie in my backyard. The property is bounded by the waters of the Northwest Arm, the long, narrow body of water separating the western side of the Halifax peninsula from the mainland. We sat in my Adirondack chairs with our drinks, and enjoyed the mild April weather.

“What a grand spot this is, Monty,” said Patrick. “It’s therapeutic just sitting here and gazing at the water. I may decide to miss my flight to New York tonight.”

“Thanks, Pat. Feel free to send your patients up for a spot of relaxation.”

“I may do that. Is it always this balmy in April?”

“Ha!” I responded. “It could be like this, it could be raining or snowing, or both. Or — look out to the ocean — what do you see?”

“A line of clouds, it looks like.”

“Fog. A fog bank just sitting out there. If it moves in, that will be the end of all this happy talk about the weather. Even downtown, on 137

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the other side of the peninsula, they can probably feel the chill breeze coming off it.”

“We’ll enjoy the good times while they last, then,” he said.

“More seriously, though, Pat, I don’t know how to begin to thank you for coming up here and helping us out with Normie. We’ll sort things out in terms of compensation, your flight and all that.”

He waved me off. “No worries. I was due for a visit anyway. And Bren was overdue for his physical.”

“You’re his family doctor, are you, in both senses of the word?

Quite a distance between doctor and patient.”

“Doesn’t make much sense, does it? But if I don’t insist, he’ll never go for a checkup. Have you ever heard of him going to see a doctor here?”

“No, but then he strikes me as the type who wouldn’t mention it.

Or anything else to do with health or sickness.”

“No, of course not. He wouldn’t mention it if he had a double lung transplant. ‘Brennan, would you like to go over to the Midtown for a pint and a smoke?’ ‘Ah, no, not today.’ That would be all you’d hear on transplant day.”

Typically, Brennan ignored the exchange.

“Do you know how to do that stuff?” Normie asked. “Listening to hearts and fixing broken arms and all that? I thought you just knew how to deal with people’s heads.” She stopped abruptly, and her face reddened. She must have thought she was out of line, but of course she wasn’t, and Pat smiled at her.

“Well, now, you wouldn’t want me operating on Brennan if he needed that lung transplant — necessitated by his refusal to give up smoking — for instance. Nor would you want me to give you a triple bypass operation. You’d best go to a heart specialist for that! But in fact psychiatrists are medical doctors first. That’s how we start out.

Then we go on to study psychiatry. So I know the medical stuff, too.”

“That makes sense. I get it now. Daddy, what time is it? I said I’d phone Kim after her dance lesson.”

“It’s just after seven o’clock.”

“Okay, I’m going to see if she’s home now.”

When she left us, I asked Patrick: “So, Pat, where do you come down on the question of psychic phenomena, clairvoyance and all that?”

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“I guess I would describe my position as ‘cautiously open-minded.’ Ask most of my colleagues what accounts for a person hearing voices or having visions, and I think you know what they’ll say: psychosis. Quite rightly, most of the time. So they wouldn’t welcome me making an address to the American Psychiatric Association on the subject of clairvoyance! There are a lot of charlatans out there, and a lot of wackiness around the whole subject, as is evident from the tabloid press. So we have to tread carefully. I’ve never had a psychic moment in my life. But it strikes me that some people have insights that can’t be explained by coincidence. Sometimes the theories put forward to debunk these stories are just as fanciful and lacking in proof as the wildest of psychic claims. And there is nothing I’ve ever seen in Normie that would suggest she is lying or psychotic! Even this fellow” — Pat inclined his head towards his brother — “falls short of a finding of psychosis.”