“As simple as that.”
“Sure.”
We pulled up at a one-and-a-half storey house with a tin awning. Yellow light glowed in the front window. It didn’t look like a rough place to me.
“Come on.” He turned off the engine, and we got out and went up the walk. Brennan rang the bell, and an elderly man came to the door, wearing a beige cardigan over a shirt and tie. Ex-cons come in all guises.
“Brennan, good to see you, lad! Step right in.”
“Ed Gillespie, Monty Collins. My brother’s here, I understand.” We followed Ed into the living room where two tables of bridge were underway. All the players except Terry Burke were in their seventies. They did a double take at the sight of Brennan’s dressed-down ensemble.
“Got stuck with an extra ticket to the fights, did you Brennan?” one man said.
“Let’s hope it doesn’t come to that. I need to borrow this fellow,” he announced.
Terry put on a little show of regret but he did not look overly disappointed to be called away from the bridge party. Ed said he would take Terry’s place. We said goodbye and trooped out to the car.
“What’s going on, Bren?”
“We need some extra muscle.”
“I’m your man.”
As we drove across the bridge to Manhattan and headed south, Brennan told his brother why we were going to a Lower East Side bar to meet an ex-convict named Earl. Someone leaned on his horn and gave Brennan the finger when he pulled into the only parking space
near the dingy bar that was our destination. The place was just as dingy inside. We asked for Earl, only to be informed by the bartender, who looked as if he might have been inside an institution or two himself, that Earl was not there. He would probably be back. Or he’d phone in. Earl was a little “paranoid, man” and sometimes phoned to see if anybody was looking for him. We sat down, ordered beer and waited.
When we had our drinks, Terry took off his sweater to reveal an eye-catching T-shirt. It showed an airline pilot in uniform and cap standing behind a jumbo jet; the jet was going up at a forty-five-degree angle from his body. Below it were the words: “Pilots get it up.” The shirt caught the attention of two women who were obviously from out of state. It wasn’t long before Terry was leaning over to their table, telling them he had been a pilot for years until the airline destroyed his career; they fired him because he intended to go public about something he had seen “up there.” There was a conspiracy among all the top airlines to silence him. When the women asked what he had seen, he raised his eyebrows and said: “Think about it.”
I spoke quietly to Brennan: “Is he really a pilot?”
“Yes, and he’s still employed. It’s all pub talk. Wait till he gets wound up; he’ll be at it half the night if Earl doesn’t show.”
Earl didn’t show. But he called the bar, and Brennan asked the bartender to hand over the phone. Earl said he’d meet us at his place if there was something in it for him. So we drank up, paid up and went out to the car.
“Where’s he meeting us?” Terry asked.
“Some hole on Avenue D.”
“Alphabet City! Lock your doors, boys.”
We didn’t have far to drive before we found ourselves surrounded by abandoned buildings and stripped-down cars. The streets were populated by derelicts, some hovering by fires burning in oil drums on the corners. On every block there seemed to be a guy with a pit bull on a leash. We stopped at a crumbling tenement building, which had suffered a fire and was partly boarded up. I jumped when I saw a man with his face so close to the car window it steamed up with his
breath. He said: “Smoke, dope, coke, smoke, dope, coke” over and over again until he finally lurched away.
Brennan looked a little less cocky than usual, but he put a brave face on the situation. “You two stay in here with the doors locked and the engine running. Terry, get into the driver’s seat. I’ll take a quick look for our man.”
“I thought you brought me along as an enforcer. So now what? You’re going alone?”
“You’re my little brother, Terry. Ma would never forgive me if —”
“Fuck off.”
“We’ll all go, Brennan,” I said.
“Three of us together will spook the man. Stay here for now.” Terry gave an exasperated sigh, but got out of the back seat. Brennan vacated the driver’s seat, and his brother took his place. “If anything happens, take off and call the police.”
“Yeah? What will be happening to you while we’re out looking for a working pay phone?”
“I walk with God. Remember?” He laughed and strode towards the flophouse, opened the door, and stepped inside. We heard a cry of pain from an upper window, and Terry and I exchanged an uneasy glance.
It wasn’t long before Brennan appeared in the doorway. He had a firm grip on the elbow of a man who must have been Earl; Brennan practically dragged the man to the car. He opened the back door, shoved Earl into the seat, and got in beside him. Terry and I turned to gawk at the captive.
“Assholes,” was all he said to us.
Earl looked about seventy, with deep lines in his face, but Brennan told us later he was closer to sixty. His hair was grey and combed straight back from a square face with a wide, prominent forehead and small, deep-set eyes. A tattoo was visible where his shirt opened at the neck, and he had familiar tats on his knuckles: “love” on one hand and “hate” on the other. He stank of sweat, smoke, dirty clothes and Christ only knew what else.
“Get moving, Ter!” Brennan ordered, and Terry put the car in gear and peeled away from the curb. Brennan tried to persuade Earl to
accompany us to a bar or restaurant for a decent meal but Earl did not respond.
Terry offered a comment on our surroundings: “I hear this place is supposed to be the next trendy neighbourhood. Place to be for yuppies in the nineties.”
“Cocksuckers.”
We drove to a park beside the East River and stopped. We opened our windows a crack to admit some much-needed fresh air. Earl sat in silence, his leg jiggling non-stop. Brennan gave him a cigarette but he obviously needed something stronger.
“Tell us what happened that day in Attica, when the young fellow was killed.”
“Motherfuckers.”
“All right, who were the men who did the killing?”
“Low-lifes.”
“How was the young fellow killed?”
“Shivs.”
“Stabbed to death?”
Earl doubled over with a hacking cough, and Brennan looked ready to heave right there in the car. But he went on with his questions.
“What was the name of the young man who was killed?”
Earl stared into space for about two minutes, as if he had tuned us out. Then he said: “Connors.”
“Why was he killed?”
Earl shrugged. “Tensions.”
“Tensions related to what?”
Earl sucked so hard on his cigarette I thought it was going to shoot right down into his lung. Then he coughed again. Big time. Terry laughed at the sight of his brother turning a sickly grey.
“Earl,” Brennan persisted, “were these fellows involved somehow with the crime that landed Connors in prison?”
“Strangers.”
“They were strangers to Connors? So the killing had nothing to do with whatever Connors had been convicted of?”
“Brains,” Earl said, pointing to Brennan’s head. As if he was
saying: “Go to the head of the class.” He let out an immoderately loud laugh. It went on and on, then stopped as if someone had slapped him in the face. But nobody had.
“So, Earl, this was a random killing? Connors just happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time?”
Earl took another deep drag of his cigarette. This time, instead of hawking, he brought up a whole sentence: “Shit happens.”
Chapter 8
Though we’re not free yet,
we won’t forget until our dying day
How the Black and Tans like lightning
ran from the rifles of the IRA.
— Unknown, “Rifles of the
IRA
”
March 22, 1991
Brennan Burke was hammered when I met him at O’Malley’s Friday night. I didn’t have to be a psychoanalyst to infer that Earl’s revelations of the previous night accounted for Brennan’s presence in the bar, at a table by himself, with an ashtray full of butts and a skinful of whiskey.
“A Guinness,” I said to the bartender, “and a glass of chocolate milk for my friend here.” The bartender laughed and started to pour him a shot of whiskey. Burke, his eyes at half-mast, waved a weak hand to fend off another drink.
“Mickey, no, no. This is Monty.” Never mind that Mickey and I had already met. “Mickey is the Brian Boru, the high king, of bartenders. He served me my first legal pint.”
“Good to see you, Monty,” the man replied diplomatically, in an old-country brogue. I noticed he made it a point to have a bottle of Tullamore Dew at hand, and took a nip whenever he served a customer. It kept him in good cheer.
“It’s not often I see you in this condition, Burke,” I began, as I took my seat beside him.
“It’s not often,” he answered in a slurry voice, “I get the news that some poor fellow, a young husband and father, loses his life in a completely random, vicious attack that could have happened to anyone, but happened to him just because he was in the wrong place at the wrong time, put there by my father, who seduced him into taking part in an armed robbery for what the poor lamb of a misguided idealist believed was a good cause, and —” He ran down at that point, and fumbled to light a cigarette. He smoked moodily for a few minutes, then started up again. “I can’t explain to myself why this troubles me more than if the man had been killed by someone in the organization, to keep him quiet. I don’t know what’s wrong with my thinking, that that would have been preferable somehow. Maybe I’d console myself with some kind of rationalization: he knew what he was getting into; this turned out to be part of it. But what happened didn’t have to happen at all. He would have done his few years — terrible enough, to be sure — and then rejoined his wife and children. Ah, I don’t know what the fuck I’m talking about. And for Declan just to sit back and let this fellow suffer all the consequences by himself —”
“Your father couldn’t have predicted what happened in the prison. I don’t make light of it, obviously, but he would have thought along the lines you just expressed: imprisonment was the risk, part of the deal. Same way he did his own time — and undoubtedly kept his own mouth shut — when he got caught in Ireland. And by the time this waterfront heist took place, Declan was supporting a house full of children, in a new country. I’m not trying to put on a defence for him; it’s just, well, I’m sure your father must have been devastated to hear what happened.”
“I hope you’re right. I believe you’re right. He was a good father, essentially a good man. Not without blemish, but — but, Jesus Christ, this isn’t the only death he has on his conscience. He killed that fellow in Ireland. I wonder how he justifies that in his mind.”
“Who says he does?”
“He’d say he was at war. But was he? He’d say the traitor had caused the deaths — the torture, who knows? — of his brother Republicans, and taking this man out of action probably prevented
the same happening to others. But still, it’s murder. No two ways about it.” He rested his head in his hands and massaged his temples, his cigarette burning dangerously close to his hair. “I’m not doing myself any good here, Monty. Not doing good for anyone. I should be down on my knees in prayer, not legless with drink.”
“Well, in that case I’d better get you home, Father.”
“Oh, Christ. Has it come to this? I’m like those fathers who have to be dragged out of the bar by their poor mortified sons. ‘Come along now, Da. Mam’s waitin’ supper for us.’”
“Yes, I’m sure we all knew somebody like that. Who was the guy we read about? Desmond. One of his sons . . .”
“The young girl’s diary, right. Said her brother was forever being sent to the pub to roust the old man out. What was his name? Kevin?”
“Maybe. Or, no, Kevin was the baby. I don’t know. Look it up in the diary. But that’s not your problem right now.”
“Got to get to sleep.”
He pushed himself up and crushed out his cigarette. After pulling out his wallet and dropping it, bending over and banging his head on the table, he produced a wad of bills and smoothed them out on the bar. He gave Mickey a salute and followed me out the door; we turned and headed for his father’s house. It was a beautiful cool night and the stars glimmered through the haze of light rising from the city.
“I don’t suppose you’ll be queuing up to spend a holiday with me again any time soon,” he mumbled.
“Father O’Flaherty’s Begob and Begorrah Tours of the Emerald Isle are looking damn good about now. But then, you’d probably end up on the tour bus beside me. You and me and a couple of church ladies who haven’t had their bones jumped since Saint Patrick was in charge of the sheep dip.”
“Tha’s all right. We’ll hijack the bus and hand it over to Leo Killeen. Famous arms dumps of Ireland. You know how keen O’Flaherty is on reading about the police and crime and history. Here, Michael, here at last is where the bodies are buried. Ah, fuck it.” He stopped to light up a smoke. “I’m sure we’ll both be glad to get clear of all this and get ourselves back to Halifax. Work will be a relief. Of course, it helps that my work happens to be music.”
“Speaking of music, I saw a page of the piece you wrote for Sandra. Do you still have —”
“I don’t want to hear about Sandra,” he growled.
“Do you think you’ll try to see her again before —”
“Are you daft?”
“I’m sure that, if you gave her a call —” I wasn’t sure at all, but I soldiered on “— the two of you could at least have a meal together, and talk things over.”
“Am I not making myself clear to you, Collins? Why would I put myself in the way of all that aggravation?”
“Aggravation? Did I hear you say aggravation? Ever since I met you, you’ve been trying to get me together with the world’s most aggravating woman, someone I cannot get along with for more than two hours, regardless of how hard I try.”
“She’s your wife, the mother of your children.”
“Aha. So that’s it. You just don’t think families should split up. Period.”