Blood on a Saint (19 page)

“Those two outside the lecture hall.”

“You mean the two he was mocking outside the lecture hall?” Monty asked. “You don’t have a very good grasp of human behaviour if you couldn’t even get that right. I wouldn’t trust you to report the facts of any event accurately, pal. We’ll take these off your hands,” he said, referring to the notebook and tape. “Save you from embarrassing yourself.”

“It won’t be me who’s embarrassed when this night makes the news,” the guy insisted.

Who was Podgis out to get? His own lawyer? Did that make any sense? Or Burke, the Crown witness who had testified against him at the prelim, and who would testify again at the trial? The witness whose testimony made Podgis look boorish and pathetic, and positively swinish in relation to women.

“Beat it,” Burke ordered him. “And don’t be slandering people when you know they haven’t done anything wrong.”

“What’s the matter, Father? Are you a little sensitive about your adventure with a hooker in the bathroom?”

“Nothing happened. Nothing could have happened in that short a time. Maybe your sexual encounters are finished in less than ninety seconds but not mine.”

“You’re not supposed to have any of those encounters.”

“And tonight I didn’t. I speak from memory. Have you any of those memories yourself?”

“Fuck you. Do you expect me to believe nothing went on in there?”

“Ask her yourself. She’ll tell you.”

“She’ll say or do whatever you pay her to say or do. That’s what a prostitute does.”

“Speak for yourself. And if you think she’ll say whatever she’s paid to say, pay her more. Then see what she says.”

Monty had to shut this down before things got any worse. Burke looked ready to pound the guy to a pulp. So Monty did something he could not remember ever doing before, something he despised when he saw it done by others: he used a version of “Do you know who I am?” This situation called for desperate measures.

“Your boss, Brett Bekkers, is a very good friend of my boss, Rowan Stratton. And Rowan is a very good friend of mine and of Father Burke’s. When Rowan hears about this, you can be sure he’ll put in a call to Bekkers. And Bekkers will not be impressed with your dirty work on behalf of Pike Podgis. If you don’t want your career to be over by high noon, you’d better be on your way. Here’s your recorder minus the bootleg tape.”

Monty handed the machine back to the reporter, who looked up into the implacable gaze of Brennan Burke and obviously decided to cut his losses. He left without another word. And without his notebook.

How low was his client willing to stoop, Monty wondered, to get back at those who crossed him? He returned to the stage to close things down with the band’s slow and sloppy version of “Shame, Shame, Shame.”

Brennan

Morning dawned painfully for Brennan. There was a reason he had set his alarm clock for eight o’clock; what was it? Mass. Of course. He was doing the old Latin Mass with the boys’ and men’s choir. Right. His eyelids felt like sandbags. He let them close and he rolled over in bed and fell unconscious. But the alarm rang again, jolting him from sleep. How much had he had to drink last night? Where? O God, he remembered, he had been in the jacks at the Flying Shag. He could smell it all over again. And wasn’t there . . . yes, yes, he was with a hooker. But he hadn’t brought her along; she had appeared unbidden and . . . nothing happened in the end.
O my God, I am heartily sorry for having offended Thee
. . . . He threw the covers off and bolted for the shower.

After he was scrubbed clean and shining, with his mouth tasting of mint and his smoke-infused clothing from the night before in his laundry basket, he dressed in his clerical black and went down to the kitchen. He found a croissant and a bottle of orange juice, and sat down at the table for his breakfast. The
Chronicle Herald
was there and, once again, there was a story about Pike Podgis. Another memory assailed him from the night before. Some little minion of Podgis had been in the bar, watching and recording the goings-on. Brennan thought that, between the two of them, he and Monty had put the fear of God into him. Monty had destroyed the tape, and Brennan, the notebook. But the horrid Podgis was an inescapable part of Brennan’s life now, he realized, because he would have to testify against the man at the trial whenever that would be. Was the episode last night Podgis’s revenge for the evidence Brennan had given, or was Podgis trying to intimidate him out of testifying again? Well, it was not going to work. Brennan was not in the least intimidated by the likes of Podgis; in fact, he only wished he had more evidence to use against him to make sure he got convicted and sent away for good. Brennan picked up the paper, which offered more of the same.

“S
AINT
” A P
OSSIBLE
S
USPECT IN
G
IRL'S
D
EATH:
P
ODGIS

He’s been called a saint and a mystery to the medical profession. Now he’s being talked about as a possible suspect in the murder of 19-year-old Jordyn Snider, who died of stab wounds in the early hours of September 24 on the grounds of St. Bernadette’s church. Her body was found near the site where some people claim the Virgin Mary has appeared. Pike Podgis, the controversial TV personality who has been committed to stand trial for Jordyn’s murder, issued a statement last evening referring to a man who was found unconscious not far from the murder scene. Podgis said the man had blood on him when he was found, a fact that came out at the preliminary hearing. Although Podgis did not name the man, it was clear that the reference was to Ignatius Boyle. Boyle, a 56-year-old homeless man, is the person whose sudden ability to speak French has drawn comparisons with a revered Polish mystic. Supporters of Boyle claim he is a saint whose ability to speak a new language is not the only miracle he has performed. Two women have come forward with claims that they were cured of illness by Ignatius Boyle.

In his statement, Pike Podgis accused the Halifax Police Department of ignoring the fact that Boyle was found near the murder scene with blood on him because the police have focused their investigation solely on the talk show host, who has criticized various police departments of “sloppy” investigative work in recent years in his broadcasts. Podgis levelled his charges during an interview with ATV News, the affiliate of CTV, which airs the
Pike Podgis Show
. Podgis’s lawyer, Monty Collins, was unavailable for comment but his law partner, Rowan Stratton, distanced himself from any allegations against Boyle: “There have been no charges against any other person in connection with this offence. If there are other possible suspects, we will of course look into them. In any event, Mr. Podgis will fight the charge against him, he will have a fair trial, and we are confident that he will prevail.”

People who know Ignatius Boyle say he was a frequent visitor to the statue of St. Bernadette even before the claimed apparitions brought hundreds of pilgrims to the site. Residents of the First Day men’s shelter say Boyle sometimes bunked down at the shelter, but on many nights he slept in makeshift quarters in the same area of the city as St. Bernadette’s church. Supporters of Boyle maintained a vigil outside the hospital until he was released on October 11. One of those supporters told this newspaper that Boyle is nothing but a convenient scapegoat. “Let’s hope these nasty rumours do not turn into something worse, like false charges of murder. Ignatius Boyle is a saint. God knows he is innocent.”

Of course he is innocent, Brennan said to himself. Or, at least, let us hope so. He got up from the table, decided to brush his teeth again, and started for the stairs. He met Mrs. Kelly coming down. She gave him a look of churchy disapproval and said, “Late night, Father?” He ignored her, went on to perform his ablutions, and then headed over to his church to vest for Mass. He wondered whether Monty Collins would remember and be able for his liturgical obligations this morning.

Monty

“Where the hell have you been, Collins?” Pike Podgis bellowed from his seat in reception as Monty arrived at Stratton Sommers to begin his workday.

“I’ve been at morning Mass, Pike,” he replied, and winked at the receptionist, Darlene, on the way to his office with his client in tow.

“Bloody likely!”

He had indeed been at Mass, and had been surprised and impressed, not for the first time, at how Father Burke was able to recover from a hard night of drinking and carrying on to fulfill his role as a stand-in for Jesus Christ at the sacrificial altar. When Monty knelt at the communion rail with the other members of the choir, Father Burke looked fresh-faced and clear-eyed, and gave the appearance of one who had never been troubled by a minute’s lost sleep, let alone a hard night in a sleazy blues bar. The priest held the host before Monty and every other communicant, saying without a trace of a slur,
“Corpus Domini nostri Jesu Christi custodiat animam tuam in vitam aeternam. Amen.”
The splendid neo-Gothic church with the sunlight streaming through the coloured glass of the windows, the ancient tones of the chant, and the magnificent harmonies of the Renaissance motets lifted Monty from his workaday cares and his hangover, and he had felt as if he were suspended between heaven and earth.

The presence of Podgis, bug-eyed and sweating in his fur-lined bomber jacket, slammed him down onto the hard ground of earth once again.

“How may I help you today?”

“You could start by being in your office during normal business hours, so when I come all the way over here on a bus from Dartmouth, I don’t have to wait around till you saunter in.”

“Well, here I am.”

They sat in the office, and Monty offered Podgis a cup of coffee. This did nothing to soften his client’s belligerence.

“Yeah, coffee. Now when are you going to start taking my case seriously?”

Monty picked up the phone and asked Darlene to bring in two cups of coffee. When he and Podgis had each enjoyed their first sip, Monty said, “Of course I’m taking your case seriously. I don’t know why you think otherwise.”

“First of all, you blow it at the prelim.”

“We’ve been over that. We didn’t blow it. What’s your next point?”

“You sit there as cool, calm, and collected, as bored, as if this was some petty shoplifting by a little greaseball whose name you can’t remember. That’s not what this is, Collins.”

“Your point?”

“My point is that this is the biggest fucking case of your career. This is so big there will be book deals, maybe even a movie! That’s if you stop dicking around and do a good job. If you don’t, I’ll be your worst nightmare!”

“Get over yourself, Podgis.”

“How dare you talk to me like that!”

“Be serious. And tell me this. Why did you have some little gopher follow me to my gig last night?”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Yes, you do. If I hear or see one word on the news about my evening or anyone else’s evening of relaxation at the blues bar, you and that little shithead are going to regret it. Your cub reporter is going to regret it because Brett Bekkers will get an earful about his amateur antics, and that will be the end of his TV career. You are going to regret it because I, as an officer of the court, will feel compelled to reveal to the police and the Crown that I saw what you attempted to do to a Crown witness. And that constitutes an obstruction of justice. It’s theoretically possible that you did not kill Jordyn Snider, but I saw the obstruction offence with my own two eyes. By the way, it carries a sentence of up to ten years in prison.”

He had him. Monty could actually see the colour draining from his client’s pugnacious face. Podgis evidently realized that he had crossed the line and pissed his lawyer off to the point where he would turn his own client in.

Monty drove the point home. “You play hardball with me, I play hardball with you. Now, what’s it going to be? No more of the kind of activity I saw last night?”

“Okay, I hear you.”

“Call him. Let me hear you say it.”

“Are you serious?”

“I’m going to make sure this goes away. Get him on the phone.”

Podgis was seething, but he picked up the phone and found his man. “That work you were doing. The, uh, backgrounder on some of the people involved in my case. Job’s over. Don’t need you anymore. Ever. What? Did I hear you right? You’re telling me what is a crap assignment and what isn’t? Dream on. They won’t want you over there. Oh yeah? Don’t come to me looking for a reference!”

Well, that was that.

Monty moved on to his next point. “Your interview only served to emphasize our reliance on Ignatius Boyle as an alternative suspect. As a result, the prosecutors will be looking for a way to clear Boyle, eliminating him as an effective defence for us. So, no more interviews with the media. If anyone gives interviews, it will be me. And that is unlikely. Agreed?”

“Whatever.”

†

Monty put the talk show bigmouth out of his mind for the rest of the workday. He made a call to Maura at lunchtime to see if she might be interested in going out for dinner, but she already had plans for a girls’ night out. She would be dropping their daughter, Normie, off at a birthday party, and their son Tommy Douglas had been tapped to babysit his baby brother, Dominic. Dominic was a bone of contention, given the fact that he was conceived when Maura and Monty were on the outs, and Maura was seeing someone else. The someone else was an Italian named Giacomo, and Monty assumed he was Dominic’s father. The baby had his dark Mediterranean looks. In the early stages, Monty could not imagine the day when he would accept another man’s child into his family. Never mind that he too had enjoyed the company of the opposite sex during the long separation, so Maura was no more “guilty” than Monty himself, and never mind that the pregnancy was, to say the least, unplanned and unexpected. He had still been unable to accept it. The situation was not made any easier by times they had all spent together with Father Brennan Burke, and the baby in the group looked more like Burke than like his mother’s husband. Not that Monty believed there had ever been a coupling between his wife and his best friend, and he went weak in the knees whenever he tried to imagine what Maura would do to him if she could read that unworthy thought in his mind. But there had been the occasional glance from others that Monty found acutely embarrassing. He knew, however, that it was long past time to get over all that. The baby was nearly a year and a half old now. Monty wanted to develop a solid relationship with Dominic, a delightful child, and that was starting to happen more and more in recent months.