Barrington Street Blues (37 page)

“This will be quick,” she said finally. “Brennan's on his way over.”

No sooner did she speak than he arrived at the door. He gave Normie a hug and gave me a look over her head, as if to say: “You're not going to ruin this for them.”

I stood by as my wife held her child, the priest poured water, and the baby howled. Father Burke made a sign of the cross on the tiny forehead and spoke the words of the sacrament of baptism. I resolutely forced the cinematic images of violent retribution from my mind as we mumbled our vows and our renunciations of evil. After the ceremony Burke picked up the squalling infant and looked lovingly into his face.
The baby calmed down, gave a little burp, and promptly fell asleep. Maura took him away to his crib. She came back and stood uncertainly in the middle of the room.

“Are you all right now?” I asked, finally.

“Oh yes. Tired, but, you know.”

“Can I go sit by his cradle, Mum?”

“Why don't you leave him for a little while, Normie. Daddy's here now, so —”

“Daddy! Would you like an ice cream dipped in chocolate? Just like Dairy Queen!”

“Sure. I'd love one.”

“Father? Are you allowed to eat chocolate at night?”

“I have a special dispensation from the bishop for tonight, Normie. What luck!”

“Is that what it is, though? Somebody said you can't get married. I already knew that. But they also said you can't go out at night and dip the something — maybe they didn't mean ice cream. But anyway, if the bishop says it's okay . . .”

Burke sat there shaking his head. Tom busied himself with the baby's paraphernalia in the opposite corner of the room. Was he perhaps the author of the overheard, and not clearly understood, wick-dipping remark?

We had our chocolate dips and said our good-nights.

Burke and I stood outside the house, wondering what the protocol was on an evening like this. In other words, was the Midtown on? Would that be sacrilegious somehow? More to the point, would it set me off on a bout of drunken recrimination against a mother and her child? Suddenly I found myself seized by another impulse. And, for some reason, I felt I had no choice but to act upon it.

“Let's sit in your car for a minute,” I said to him.

“My car?”

“Yeah.”

“All right.”

We got in and he sat looking at me. I gestured with my head: “Face front. Don't look at me.” He turned and faced the windshield.

“This is something I haven't said in thirty years,” I told him. “You know what I mean.”

“Yes.”

“Do I have to say ‘bless me Father for I have sinned,' and all the rest of it?”

He shook his head. His silence, welcome as it was, made it difficult for me to continue.

After a few minutes he said: “What do you want to confess, Monty?”

“Thoughts. About her. Maura. And the baby.”

“Yes?”

“After I heard she was in the hospital . . .” The words dried up in my mouth.

“I know. Just tell me.”

“It was only for an instant. Before I could even complete the thought, I regretted it. Renounced it. Honestly. I . . .” My voice gave out, and I didn't think I could continue.

“Take your time. I'm not going anywhere.”

“I hoped — for an instant, I hoped the baby would die. And if it didn't, that she would die herself. I'm sorry! I don't even know who I'm apologizing to.”

“Yes, you do. And you
are
sorry.”

“Yes!”

“And you don't feel that way now.”

“No. I wish she'd take the child and flee to Egypt. But I don't wish her any harm. Her or the baby.”

“I know.” He made the sign of the cross over me.
“Ego te absolvo a peccatis tuis in nomine Patris, et Filii, et Spiritus Sancti. Amen.”

Just for a moment, a moment of weakness or of sudden illumination, I was in awe of him. A friend — an acknowledged sinner himself, a guy I drank and had adventures with, someone whose eye I may have irreparably damaged — had the power to take my darkest, most despicable thoughts, deeds, and omissions and strike them from the record. Forgive them and render them of no account in the world beyond. I was relieved when the feeling passed.

Now the doctor's gonna do all that he can. But what you're gonna need is an undertaker man. I ain't had nothin' but bad news. Now I got the crazy blues.

— Perry Bradford, “Crazy Blues”

I did not go home in the spirit of peace that should have stayed with me after my confession. Instead, I went home and sought oblivion in the depths of a whiskey bottle. Predictably, the alcohol exerted its depressant effect and intensified my misery over my children's new brother on Dresden Row. My mind could not rid itself of the image of Maura and her newborn son. Dominic. What was that? Italian? Or — weren't there Irishmen called Dominic? What was it I had heard recently? The Dominicans? Their initials were “
OP
.” What did that stand for, and who gave a shit anyway? Order of Preachers, that was it! Son of a Preacher Man! No, it couldn't be. I didn't want to pursue that thought, or have it pursue me in my dreams, so I went outside and sat in a deck chair, gazing at the waves splashing on the shore. A wind had come up, and rigging banged against the mast of a nearby boat. A bell buoy clanged in the harbour, a lonely sound. I got up and poured one more for the road up to my bedroom, and made a resolution that this would be my last drink for a week. Or even a month. I didn't need the stuff, and I didn't enjoy feeling like crap all day afterwards. That settled, I collapsed in bed.

I had only been asleep for about an hour when my mind came
alive with images — memories — of me finishing a set in a smoke-filled bar; then, back stage, a guitar case filled with pills and tabs of mind-altering chemicals; a young girl; someone bursting into the room, screaming, throwing the guitar case against the wall; people scattering — I forced myself to put this, and the family disaster, out of my mind, or I would not get one more moment of sleep.

My brain then fastened onto the Leaman case. And I had one of those flashes of insight that seem only to come at three in the morning. This time it was: if I couldn't find the connections and conclude once and for all that Leaman's death was really a murder, the lawyers for the other side in the damages suit would not be able to do so either. Of course, the burden was on us as plaintiffs to prove our case. But if the only reasonable conclusion left to draw was that Leaman had wielded the gun, I might as well give up on my investigation, file the claim, and start working towards a profitable resolution. This was obvious, and I wondered why I had not considered it before. After all, the reason I had started digging into it was to reassure myself that our suicide case would not be torpedoed by counsel for the treatment centre. True, we would have to prepare for an attack on the softest spot in our case, that is, that there was no known link between the disadvantaged Corey Leaman and the privileged Graham Scott, so why would Leaman take out Scott before killing himself? But enough was enough. I would get to work first thing in the morning, and file the pleadings with the court. I drifted off to sleep.

I awoke again a couple of hours later, not with the allegations against the treatment centre running through my head, but with strains of Handel drowning out all other thought. “Who may abide the day of His coming” melded into “Thou shalt break them with a rod of iron!” I saw myself at the gated compound in Lunenburg County with Handel's music playing and hostile eyes peering through reinforced windows. What was going on there? The woman who lived in the house was the woman who had been in to see Warren Tulk the day Brennan was in the bookshop. People had seen a couple, one of whom seemed to be a cop, picking up young people in the Tex-Park garage. Another cop — Phil Riley? — told me Tulk had fixed a case. Or at least impeded the prosecution of a woman charged with assault on a child. A spanking case. What was the
woman's name? Sybil? Sybil Kraus. But why worry about her? I had made up my mind to file the papers and commence the lawsuit. Well, maybe I'd look into the spanker first.

†

I made a couple of calls that morning, after downing two cups of coffee in a vain effort to clear my head, and found out when the Kraus case had been in court. She had been acquitted, possibly because the investigating officer didn't do his part when the case went to trial. Whatever the situation was, I had the date, so I walked over to the library on Spring Garden Road at lunchtime and went upstairs to search back issues of the
Herald
for clippings about the case. That night I headed to Gottingen Street, armed with a copy of a grainy photo of Sybil Kraus with a scarf around her head and a haunted look in her eyes. There was a cloudburst, and I needed my wipers on top speed to see through the pelting rain. But the person I was looking for was nowhere to be found, so I took a break and went to Tomaso's for a pizza. I scoffed half of it down, took the rest to the car, cruised down Gottingen again, and parked. Half an hour later I saw her getting out of a beat-up old Chev with tinted windows. I waited until it drove away and opened my door.

“Candy!”

“Hey! You looking for a — Mr. Collins. What are you doing up here again? You must be looking for company.”

“I'm looking for you. Why don't you get in for a minute.”

She climbed in with a sigh, and wiped the rain from her face. She looked exhausted; she was far too thin, and her skin was a mess.

“This life doesn't suit you, Candy. For Christ's sake, get some help.”

“You didn't come all the way up here to talk me out of hooking, did you? Because forget it. I know what I'm doing.”

“You're going to wind up in a Dumpster.”

“Not me. I'm a smart girl, remember my file? So, how can I help you?”

“Have some pizza.”

“I'm not hungry.”

I shook my head and reached into my pocket. “I have something to show you.”

“I just saw one in a different shade. Ha ha.”

I ignored that and continued. “It's a news photo. Do you recognize this woman?”

“I don't know. Am I supposed to?”

“Look at it for a few minutes. Think.”

“I think it's the lady I saw in that car. The gingerbread lady. She looks skinnier or something here, but I think that's her face. Charged with beating a kid. Figures.”

Sybil Kraus, the spanker. Sarah MacLeod, the gingerbread lady. Which aspect of her persona was dominant at the compound in Lunenburg County?

“Can you tell me anything else about her?”

“No. Just that she was with that cop, and they were cruising for young stuff.”

†

The next day I was saddled with a most unwelcome obligation, a partners' meeting. Since my synapses had not been firing at optimal levels lately, I had not plotted my customary evasive manoeuvres and could not get out of it. I hadn't even got it together enough to bring my Walkman.

I met Rowan Stratton on the way into the boardroom. “Monty, my dear fellow, you look all in. Come over to the house for dinner soon. Stephen and Janet say they haven't seen you in ages. I'll have Sylvia ring you, shall I?”

“Sure, Rowan. Thanks.”

“You'll be pleased to know Sylvia has been taking a French cookery class. Don't worry; we can all order in after she's retired to her room for the evening. Ah. Blake. You're our chairman for the day, I believe. Perhaps we'd better get on with it.”

“Yes, Rowan. We have a full agenda, and there are some incidental matters I intend to bring up.”

I tuned him out, then remembered I had forgotten to bring the files that were to be discussed at the meeting. I went to fetch them
and returned. Vance “the Undersigned” Blake was still droning on. Felicia Morgan glided into the boardroom, sat down opposite me, and gave me what she must have thought was a beguiling smile. Then she busied herself with her stack of files. Before we even got started, however, Felicia's secretary came in and whispered in her ear. Felicia looked annoyed and got up, announcing to the rest of us that she had been called to respond to an emergency chambers application. She pushed the stack of files in Blake's direction and gave him a look. I decided it might be interesting to go through some of her work myself. So I reached for them, but she subtly moved them beyond my grasp while pretending she hadn't seen my hands. Another significant look at Vance Blake, and the files were placed beside his own. Felicia made her exit, and I stood up, leaning over and pulling the stack of folders to my place at the table.

“Collins, do you mind?”

“Not at all, Vance,” I replied.

“But she made it quite clear —” he whispered.

“Steady on, Blake,” Rowan Stratton growled. “Let's proceed.”

Monique LeBlanc was grinning at me from her place down the table. I winked at her in return.

I didn't know how long Felicia would be gone, so I took the opportunity of rifling through her papers while Blake conducted his meeting. But there was little of interest. As I went through the stuff, I wondered why she wanted to keep the files away from me, but then I came upon a family law file with a name I recognized. One of the parties to the divorce was a lawyer I knew, and I had heard he had been involved with Felicia a few years before. If her name was in the record somewhere she might not want me to see it. I guess Vance Blake didn't count; he would rather conduct a meeting than a love affair. But I had no interest in her life, either, so I closed that folder and moved on. She did have something on the Bromley Point development project, but who didn't? She was representing one of the many companies in the massive project. The material was divided into subfiles, but nothing caught my eye. I listened in as Blake wound up his conversation with the lawyer on my left. When it was my turn to discuss my work, I did not mention the Leaman case; the less said the better. Ross Trevelyan was circumspect as well, saying little more than that we
hoped to get our claim filed in the next couple of weeks.