Obit (16 page)

“A character in
Dubliners
, right?”

“And
Ulysses,
of course,” Brennan put in. “That’s where Molly got her nickname. Her real name’s Maire but when she was a young girl she spent the good part of a summer lying about in bed, daydreaming about her boyfriend, who was out of town for the holiday. We started calling her Molly Bloom.”

“I never read the whole thing,” I confessed.

Terry stage-whispered. “Neither did I, but don’t tell the rest of them. The
Baltimore Catechism
and the works of James Joyce were required reading in this house. No wonder we’re all a little schizo. Do we celebrate Bloomsday or Corpus Christi? Do we rebel against the Church and all its works, or do we refuse even a sip of Kool-Aid before receiving Holy Communion?”

“Corpus Christi! I haven’t thought of that in years. There used to be a parade.”

“That’s right.” Declan joined the conversation. “And this fellow —” he jerked a thumb at Brennan “— before he became the Reverend Father Burke declared one year at the breakfast table that, since Corpus Christi also happened to be Bloomsday, we should spend the day walking around the city the way Bloom and Daedalus did in
Ulysses,
stopping at various pubs to eat and drink, and ending up at a whorehouse instead of venerating the Body of Christ.”

“Ever get that conflict sorted out, Brennan?” I needled him.

“Not a problem unless Corpus Christi falls smack in the middle of June, on Bloomsday. Those years I’m torn.”

Terry looked at his watch and sat down at the table. We settled in
to a poker game and played for half an hour before the game broke up.

“I have to go,” Terry said.

“Where?”

“Wine and cheese with the missus. Sheila told me if I miss this, it will be mac and cheese and no wine for me all week. Let’s get together for a night out sometime, lads.” We agreed, and he left us with a little salute.

“I’m off too,” Declan announced. “And where would you be off to?” Brennan asked. “Someplace I’m not all that keen to go, to do something I’m not all that keen to do. But I’m lucky to be invited there at all. So I’m going.”

“Where?”

“The bride and groom’s apartment, to view the wedding photos. Your mother’s there now.”

“You will let us know if you see someone in the photos who shouldn’t be there?”

“Anyone who shouldn’t have been there will not be showing his face in the pictures. I think we’re safe making that assumption. Find something to distract yourselves, why don’t you?” We heard him shut the door.

Brennan looked at me. “Alone. At last.”

“Your point being?”

“We can go through this place, with a crowbar if need be. There’s got to be something here. Let’s start in their bedroom.”

“You start in their bedroom. Give me a more neutral assignment.”

“Attic or basement?”

“Attic.”

“All right. You’ll see a door at the end of the hall up there; it leads to a narrow staircase to the attic. Watch your head.”

I hoisted myself up into the attic. There was one bare bulb to light the place, and it did not do much against the fading light coming in through the one dusty window. The far end of the room was devoted to the storage of old furniture: an incomplete set of shield-back chairs, a banged-up mahogany china cabinet with mismatched tea cups, saucers and old tarnished silver, some wardrobes full of women’s and children’s clothing. A side wall was lined with bookcases. On the other side was a museum of children’s toys from the last
forty years: a wood-seated kiddie car, long tubes of Sta-Lox Building Bricks with white multi-paned windows and transparent green awnings, Tinker Toys, a tinkly baby piano, an old folk guitar. I had to remind myself I was there to work, not to play.

There was a large steamer trunk that I marked for future consideration. Everything else was stored in cardboard boxes. The first one I tackled contained framed photos of family groups, obviously in the old country, and crumbling black-paged family albums held together by laces. There were old Roman missals from various years back to the turn of the century, along with jet and wooden rosaries, crucifixes, holy cards and religious medals. I had to smile when I saw a church collection envelope with the words “Saint Bratty’s” scrawled on it in red crayon, over the words “Saint Brigid’s.” A bit of sibling rivalry? Had little Brigid Burke been less than saintly, prompting one of her brothers to deface the envelope bearing her name?

The next box held photographs of the Burke family during the early years in New York. There was a smiling, blond Patrick as an altar boy. An older girl with black hair — Molly — held two smaller kids by the hand on the steps of a church. One little boy was trying to twist out of her grasp. Here was Brennan, looking angelic as a choirboy of twelve, with his black hair combed to the side and his mouth in a perfect O. A respectable-looking Declan and an aristocratic Teresa stood beaming as an older priest presided at the christening of one of their babies. Then there was an insolent-looking teenage Brennan dressed in skin-tight jeans and a black T-shirt. He was sprawled in an arm chair, cigarette dangling from his lips, looking lazily up at a slim, fair-haired girl who regarded him uncertainly.

My interest was piqued when I discovered a box full of documents relating to the house. The deed, dated 1950, and the abstract of title. The mortgage. Lawyers’ correspondence showed Declan had scraped together a fairly good down payment. Old bank statements from the 1950s and early 1960s. Cancelled cheques for coal and then oil, electricity, telephone and all the other necessities of life. Regular deposits, and occasional cash withdrawals in varying small amounts. Nothing out of the ordinary. I pored over the papers for a long time but could not see anything of significance.

In the next carton I came across a long, flat box decorated with
old Cadbury’s Dairy Milk wrappers. It was filled with letters to Teresa Burke, with a Dublin return address. I opened the first letter; it was from her mother. They all were. I was about to close the box when something fell out from between two of the envelopes. I picked it up.

“Finding anything up there, Monty?” I started at the sound of Brennan’s voice. “Not a thing in their room. I feel like a pervert.” His head appeared and then he joined me in the attic. “I haven’t been up here in years. Lots of laughs, I imagine. What’s that?”

“These are old bank statements from late 1954 to early in ’57. An account in Declan’s name. Kept separate from the other bank records. Money going out of his account at nearly regular monthly intervals. These were cash withdrawals. Usually three hundred dollars. A lot of money in those days, when you have a family to support.”

He sat down beside me, looking miserable and exhausted. “You’re not suggesting blackmail! That’s the last thing I would expect of him. Why in the hell would he keep the records?”

“He didn’t. Your mother did.”

“Jesus.”

“And here’s money coming in.” I pointed to the entries. “For every payment he made, there’s a deposit of money preceding it. He was obtaining, or diverting, money from somewhere to pay this. Then it stopped, in March of 1957. I wonder if Cathal Murphy was blackmailing him.”

“Which Cathal? The competent, dedicated Republican organizer or the lovesick little man who was content to watch his beloved from a distance? Whoever did this would have to be one tough customer. Anyone Declan could intimidate would have failed in the attempt. We don’t have enough of a handle on Cathal to know whether he’d have the bottle to blackmail the old man. Nessie herself would have, but physically she could not have pulled it off.”

He was probably right. We were looking for a tough guy. And that led me back to the White Gardenia, home of mobsters, enforcers and hangers-on.

†

I had no trouble finding the club in daylight on Saturday. I didn’t
expect much in the way of dancing girls and, in fact, the place was fairly quiet. Canned music and a few scattered drinkers. An elderly maitre d’ I hadn’t seen before ushered me to the bar.

“I was here the other night with friends, and I was introduced to Mr. Corialli. I don’t suppose he’s on the premises this afternoon?” I may as well have asked whether the Pope was leaning on the bar, telling tales and buying rounds. “He had another man with him, kind of a bulky fellow.”

“None of Mr. Corialli’s associates are around today.” The man looked Italian and spoke with a Brooklyn accent.

“This is quite an operation,” I observed. “The club’s been here for, how long? Forty years?”

“Forty-one. But not always here. Started out in Manhattan. East Fifties. Then moved over here to Long Island City, under new management. Took a while to get into gear again.”

I looked at him. “Have you been working here long?”

“There and here. Since opening night.”

“Really! What were you doing opening night?”

“Same thing I’m doing now. Maitre d’. Of course I was on nights back then. We weren’t even open in the afternoon in those days. I worked Tuesday to Saturday till I was sixty, then I took kind of a semi-retirement. Or that’s the way I look at the early shift. Not as much action, but easier on the old legs. Easier on the head too.”

“I’ve been kind of fascinated with this place ever since I came in the other night. I’m a musician myself but I’d hate to have to follow the act I saw here.”

“The girls are really something, I gotta hand it to them. They can play the instruments too. A popular act.”

“I’m sure. Vi Dibney got her start here, I understand.”

“Yeah, she did. We knew her as Evie. She really packed ’em in.”

“She has a good voice. A looker too, I’ll bet.”

“She was a hot-looking broad. Come see for yourself.” He led me to a corridor behind the bar, knocked on a door, got no response, and went inside with me at his heels. It was a large office with a cluttered desk, two telephones and a number of mismatched chairs. The walls were covered with photographs in cheap frames. “There’s Evie.”

It was an early colour photo of the singer in a low-cut white satin
dress. Her lips, painted a bright red, were nearly wrapped around the microphone. Her frothy blonde hair was back combed and pinned up with a white rose tucked over her right ear.

“She must have had the guys eating out of her hand,” I commented.

“Oh, yeah.”

“So, did she meet up with a sugar daddy here in the club?”

“Nah, I don’t think so. They made passes at her. How far she went along with it I don’t know. If anything went on, it was after hours so I didn’t see it. It wouldn’t have gotten her a husband so maybe she didn’t bother. You know Italians.” He smiled in a proprietorial sort of way. “They might have been looking for a girlfriend but they weren’t looking for a new wife. She was just a kid really, even if she didn’t look it. She stuck with this guy around her own age who worked here. That’s him there, Ray or something, his name was. Ramon.” He pointed to a picture of the club’s staff all grouped around a birthday cake ablaze with candles. “There it is. R. Jiminez. She was going out with him. Then one day he came in to work and she was gone. Without a word of goodbye. Got a job out in Vegas. This Ramon didn’t say a word about it but you could tell he was steamed. He met a nice Italian girl later and quit the club. Couple of years after Evie left. Some story about wanting to join a band, or write plays or something. Maybe he was going to live off the new girlfriend. Wouldn’t put it past him. He came back to us a couple of years after that though. He really hustled us about getting his old job back. You can always tell when a guy is in desperate need of money. Guess the new career didn’t pan out. He stayed on for a while, but if he heard from Evie he didn’t tell the rest of us.”

“So she didn’t find herself a rich Italian businessman. Maybe she should have tried for an Irish one.”

“Irish?”

“Well, the guys I came here with last time were Irish, and one of them was around in the early days of the club.”

“Oh yeah? Who’s that?”

“Declan Burke.”

The man raised his eyebrows. “Whoa!”

“You knew Declan?”

“Did anybody know him? Not exactly a back-slapping, lemme-show-you-a-snapshot-of-the-wife-and-kids kind of guy. But, hell, I don’t know you either. What’s your name?”

I put out my hand. “Monty Collins.”

“I’m Al Dipersio. Did you say you were here with Burke the other night?”

“Yes. I’m a friend of his son. We sat with Mr. Corialli. They talked over old times.”

“Yeah, well, Burke worked security here, at least for a while. Him and Mr. Corialli may have had other business. If they did, I never knew what it was.”

“Al, did you know there was an attempt on Declan’s life?”

“No!” His surprise was genuine. Not the kind of gossip that makes the day-shift circuit, I concluded. “Who did it?”

“That’s what we’re trying to find out.”

“You and the
NYPD
.”

“I imagine they’ll get there first. But this may have been some kind of paid hit, and the gunman may not do much talking. It’s all speculation, of course. We simply have no idea.”

“Can’t help you there.”

“One thing we do suspect is that somebody was blackmailing him back in —”

Al snorted with laughter. “Not a chance. Burke would cut the guy’s throat before he’d give in to blackmail.”

†

I drove to Sunnyside after enjoying a solitary meal at the White Gardenia, and joined Brennan in the family room. I recounted my conversation with Al Dipersio. “So. Ramon was steamed about Evie’s defection. When exactly was this, the doomed love affair between Evie and your father?”

“It wasn’t a love affair,” Burke snapped. “It was just a rub of the relic. A couple of hours in her flat.”

“It was what?
A rub of the relic?
Is that what they call sex in sacramental Ireland?” He waved a dismissive hand in my direction and I continued: “All right, we’ll call it the night with Danny, ‘Danny’
being a code name for the unwilling drinking companion, Desmond. The alcoholic. He apparently managed to stay off the booze till when, July of that year? Just before his daughter’s wedding, according to her diary.”