Obit (31 page)

His brother. They’ll be heading up to Christy’s, I suppose. What’s he whispering about? The move, of course. He sounds even more perturbed than usual! Ah, well, he’ll get over it. There. He’s off the telephone. “It’s not all here, Declan,” I tell him. “There are still some things we have to pick up from the old place.”

“What’s that?”

“I left some things in the basement of the old house.”

“Is that so! Sure, we’ll go up there right now and get them, Teresa. I’ll call for one of the furniture vans.”

Blessed mother of mercy! It’s as if I just told him we’ve struck gold and it’s all going to be plowed under if we don’t move instantly to mine it. “There’s no hurry, Dec. The new owner is the very soul of kindness. She told me I can take my time clearing out the basement. She knows my husband was away. Somewhere. She herself is a young widow with three children.”

“Who would she be now?”

“A Protestant lady by the name of Bowles.”

“Well, let’s go and get all our old things out of her way.” And there he is on the phone again, this time to Burke Transport. They’ll be snapping to attention; it’s the first time they’ve heard from the boss in six months.

So here we go, roaring down Rathmines Road into the centre of the city, across the river and up to Mountjoy Street. I’m hanging on for my life. What’s the rush? Here’s the old house. And Mrs. Bowles is at the door. Such a lovely person, in a brown shirt-dress and a permanent wave. She invites us inside. What’s this? Who is sitting in the parlour with a cup of tea and a plate of scones before him but Finn Burke himself! If ever there was a smiling chancer in this world, it’s Finn Burke. A handsome-looking divil too. Didn’t he make good time getting here after that telephone call! And why on earth is he here at all?

Now don’t the two of them have the widow charmed! There they go, down to the cellar to get what they came for. Mrs. Bowles and I can hardly hear ourselves speak with the banging and the ructions going on down there. It seems our old house has two cellars, one dug below the other.

Back in the van we go, over to Rathmines. Our furniture is carried into the new house. A few big boxes remain in the back of the van, and the Burke brothers are off again. To another destination, a secret one, where they will squirrel away their artillery or rocket launcher or whatever has been lying beneath the old house all those months.

“Ah, bejazes,” Terry remarked in a thick brogue, “nothin’ ever goes away, does it?”

“Home sweet home,” Teresa continued, “and Declan’s memory serves him faithfully indeed. The new place was identical to the old.” She opened the clasp of her handbag and pulled out a plastic folder of snapshots. “Here it is.”

Maura took the folder, and I looked over her shoulder at a creased colour photo of a brick townhouse with a yellow door and spanking white trim, one in a row of similar dwellings. Looming over the streetscape, a few doors away, was a large stone church with a columned portico and a green-roofed dome. Running across the lintel were the words:
“Sub. Invoc. Mariae Immaculatae Refugii Peccatorum.”

Teresa smiled. “I moved the family away from Christy Burke’s pub and planted them right next to —” she paused for effect “— the Church of Mary Immaculate, Refuge of Sinners!”

After lunch, we walked back to the Burkes’ house and I asked Terry what he was up to for the evening. He said he and Patrick had been planning to go out, but the airline had called and asked Terry to substitute for another pilot who had taken ill. It was a short flight but he wouldn’t be back in time for an outing. Perhaps, he suggested, I’d like to go along with Pat; it was rare that his brother was keen on a night out. That sounded good. Maura and I went to collect Normie for the trip to Halifax. She and Christine had a long goodbye hug with promises that they would write, and visit each other again soon. There were a few tense moments — and the inevitable cacophony of car horns — when I nearly missed my turn at LaGuardia and cut across a lane of traffic to reach my destination. But we got there,
found a parking spot and made it to the departure terminal with time to spare. Maura didn’t fire any parting shots at me, and I took some encouragement from that. But Normie’s behaviour was strange. I suppose it was understandable, considering the events she had been witness to in New York. She took me aside and made me squat down so we were at eye level.

“You’re going to be careful, right, Daddy?”

“I’m always careful, sweetheart.”

“No, you’re not!”

“You had a terrible fright, Normie. We all did. But Mr. Burke is fine now, and the police will catch the guy who committed the crime.”

“What if it happens again?”

“It won’t.”

“It might. Don’t go anywhere alone!”

“If I’m by myself, sweetheart, it won’t happen. Because nobody’s after me. Right?”

“I don’t believe you! I think you’re going to get in trouble!”

“Nope. So, give me a hug. I’ll be home in a week, and I’ll miss you every day till then. Have fun on the plane, and give Tommy a big kiss for me.”

“Ha! I love you, Daddy.” She flung her arms around my neck and held on.

“I love you too, Normie. See you soon.”

When I got to the hotel I called Patrick, then Brennan. Pat and I agreed to meet at Colly’s. Brennan had been asked to sing with a Gregorian choir that evening, so he would not be joining us at the blues bar.

I sat down on the bed, looking forward to a few hours with nothing to do. When I bent over to remove my shoes I felt something bunched up in the front pocket of my jeans. Terry’s copies of the Colm Sullivan drawing. Not copies, I saw, just one. The other papers were the obituary, tattered and marked up, and some handwritten notes. I noticed the name Ramon Jiminez. This was the information Terry had received from his friend in the police department; he must have scribbled the notes during a phone conversation with the cop.
And here was the name Willman. Right. Brennan said Terry had checked and there was no record for Garth Willman. But the cop must have given Terry the goods on all the Willmans who came up during the search. Yes, I remembered; I had asked Brennan if there were any with Irish first names.

Here they were. Patrick, born November 1965: string of car thefts, parole violations. Too young. Sean, born May 1959: sex offender. I saw that Sean was in prison at the time Declan was shot. I skimmed through the other names. Albert Willman, born 1922: murder, still inside. Gehrhart, born 1930: porn. Gerard, born 1953: house breaks, assault in the second degree. Norman, born 1961: rape, ten years. Trevor, born 1970: drugs. William, born 1942: racketeering and related offences. Nobody with a conviction relating to firearms.

But we knew somebody who did have a gun. Brought in specially from Ireland. I made up my mind. It was time to confront Francis Burke. I got the car and drove across the river once again, to Astoria, so I could ask him in person why he had given me Sullivan’s name. But I didn’t find the answer. I found something else: a For Rent sign on his apartment door. Francis was gone.

Chapter 10

Some on the shores of distant lands their weary hearts have laid,
And by the stranger’s heedless hands their lonely graves were made.

— John Kells Ingram, “The Memory of the Dead”

March 29, 1991

That Friday evening, Patrick and I were seated in Colly’s, pints in front of us, talkin’ blues. I didn’t mention Francis. I was telling Pat about my band, Functus, and what a great time we had once a month on Mondays. “If not for blues night, I’d be balled up on a couch talking to a guy like you.”

“Blues night sounds like a better time, with better results.”

“So how do you work out your frustrations, Patrick?”

“Who says I have any?” he asked with a wry smile.

“You must meet even more aggravating people in the run of a day than I do. I can’t imagine how you put up with them all.”

“I’m a very, very patient man.”

“I’ve noticed. Don’t you wish, deep down, that you could lash out at the next family luncheon? You’re the one who tries to keep the peace, to keep the others from doing too much damage to each other. Wouldn’t you like to get up and let ’er rip?”

“Only when Francis is there. No need otherwise. But what could
I say to him that hasn’t been said by everyone else? That scene you witnessed — you may not believe it but that’s the first time in years that Brennan has lost it with Francis. Poor Fran. In big families there always seems to be one who gets lost in the shuffle. I’m actually working on a paper on that very subject. For an American Psychiatric Association conference. Hope Francis doesn’t get wind of it. He’ll have an even bigger chip on his shoulder.”

“Is that a psychiatric term, ‘chip on the shoulder’?”

“Sometimes a homely cliché serves the purpose better than a mouthful of psychiatric jargon! Fran just never carved out a unique role for himself in the family. Molly, Brennan and I were top students. Of course Bren only studied when he felt like it. But still. Molly became a professor, Brennan entered the priesthood and went to study in Rome. And of course he has all that musical talent. I became an
MD
and then a psychiatrist. Brigid was the baby of the family and the youngest girl. Everyone doted on her. Terry was the youngest boy, and he was cheerfully indifferent to school. He never wanted to do anything but fly airplanes, and who can blame him? Francis is just a year older than Terry. He wasn’t blessed with Terry’s nonchalant attitude to life.”

“Terry’s the kind of guy I’d like to have along on a road trip.”

“Oh, yeah. And he can provide the transportation. Poor Fran. Nobody would want to be with him on the road. Even as a little kid, he felt out of things. He ran away a few times when he was really small. Somebody must have made fun of him or something. Problem was, the first couple of times he took off nobody noticed! So what’s the point?”

“How come nobody realized he was gone?”

“He and Terry shared a room with bunk beds. Francis slept in the bottom bunk and he liked to turn his bed into a tent, with sheets hanging down. Sometimes he would hide in there all day, and he kept nearly everything he owned in there with him. So once it was lights-out, nobody would notice if he sneaked off.

“A couple of times he got caught sleeping in the car. That was okay till he peed on the car seat; that was the end of that. He told me he spent the whole night in the car. He didn’t wake up till morning, when he heard the front door bang shut and the engine start up. Declan was at the wheel. Francis slid down behind Da’s seat and
didn’t make a peep. Apparently, Da drove all over hell and creation before pulling in at a church for early Sunday Mass. He parked and went inside. Fran stayed in hiding for a few minutes, then ventured into the church. He had to pee. But he couldn’t figure out where the toilets were and got all upset. So he went back to the car, where he couldn’t hold it in.”

“There must have been hell to pay that time.”

“So you’d think. But I remember Fran telling me Dec was in a forgiving mood that day. The grace of God working in him! He just told Fran not to mention it to anyone and neither would he. Which, as you can imagine, suited Fran just fine. It was years before he told me the tale. Just the thought of anyone — especially Brennan — hearing that, instead of embarking on a big adventure of his own and having the family worried sick, Fran slunk back to the car and peed on the seat —”

“But Francis was just a little boy at the time. Brennan would not have ragged him about it surely.”

“Of course he wouldn’t! But Francis couldn’t see that. He used to worship the ground Brennan walked on. Anything Bren did, Fran wanted to do. They were far apart in age so that wasn’t very realistic. When Brennan went into the sem, Francis didn’t know what to do. He started acting out, getting into trouble, the usual.”

“If he couldn’t be as good as Brennan, he’d damn well be bad, eh?”

“Well, that was part of the problem. The family already had a black sheep and that was Brennan himself. Until God booted him into the seminary. Up till then, if anyone was a likely candidate for the priesthood, it was me, not Bren. You name it, he’d done it. And he’d done more of it than all the rest of us combined. So Fran could not even be as bad as Brennan, let alone as good. Any time they’re in the same room together, it sets Fran off. He can’t help himself.”

“And then there’s Declan,” I added.

“What do you mean, ‘and’?” Patrick said with a laugh. “Let’s get things in perspective here. In the beginning, there was Declan. And all who came after him would bear his mark.”

“With a father like that, it wouldn’t be easy for some guys to stand up and be counted.”

“Absolutely.”

“What was it like growing up with him glowering at you from the head of the table?”

“Actually, he’s not as much of a hard-ass as he might seem. He’s tough, no question. But very loving in a gruff sort of way. He wasn’t one of those distant fathers who never showed affection or anything like that. I see a great many patients who grew up with that sort of parent. And he was never the kind of man who always had to win, or prevail on every point. I’m sure you know that type. We all argued with him, once we got old enough to take our chances. And he would give in on occasion too. Now he might not say: ‘I’ve considered your arguments, my son, and I can see that you are right. I’m wrong and I apologize.’ It would more likely be: ‘Go ahead then, you stubborn little gobshite, but don’t come wailing to me afterwards.’ Of course we did go wailing to him afterwards but —”

“He wouldn’t say ‘I told you so’?”

“Of course he’d say ‘I told you so’! But then he’d help us out of whatever scrape we were in. Our mother is a very strong woman and so we grew up knowing there was a counterweight to the old fellow. We could handle him. Or the rest of us could. Francis had the roughest time with him, not that Declan singled him out. Hell, it was Brennan who got knocked around the most. In those days it was just accepted, in many families anyway, that your father would give you a clout if you didn’t behave. I don’t condone it, of course, but in those times it was the norm. He threw Bren up against the wall a few times and smacked him, when he caught him misbehaving.”