Obit (22 page)

“No, that is not it. I don’t think your family should split up. There’s no need of it. Where are you going to find anyone who suits you better than MacNeil?”

“You’re the daft one now. We could walk back to Queens Boulevard and cull a weak one from the edge of the herd; chances are I’d get along better with her than I do with MacNeil.”

“You’re just being stubborn, the pair of you.”

“You’re being stubborn about Sandra. Of course, so is she, but —”

“My calling in life does not allow me the luxury of a Sandra Worthington. We’ve had this conversation before.”

“And the conversation ended with you opening the door to seeing her.”

“And the cool wind of reality has blown the door shut once again. I’m glad we had that excruciating evening together; it made me realize what an
amadán
I’d been, to have kept her in my thoughts all these years —”

“An
amadán?”

“A fookin’ eejit. She had the right idea: move on. And that’s what I’m doing.”

We arrived at the house. I jingled my car keys in my hand. “Well,
I think I’ll just go out for a cruise and find myself a better wife. Nighty-night.”

“K.M.R.I.A. And I don’t think I need to translate. Oh, Christ, I hope the oul fella isn’t in sight; I couldn’t face him in the humour I’m in. The sooner I can pass out — Oh, before you go. Terry called, said he got the word on this Ramon. What was his last name? Martinez? No, Jiminez. Do we even care, now that we know about Connors?” With something constructive to focus on, he sounded more sober.

“We care. We need everything we can find.”

“All right. Ramon Jiminez has a few theft charges on his record back in the mid-fifties. Nothing else. Well, a speeding ticket last year.”

“He’s still around?” I was surprised but could not have said why.

“Why wouldn’t he be? They looked up Willman as well for me.”

“You asked for info on Garth Willman?” I couldn’t keep the amusement out of my voice.

“Sure I did. The cop gave Terry a list of Willmans who’ve been convicted of crimes. There was an Albert Willman, a Gehrhart, a Patrick, a Sean, and if I could think straight I could remember some others. But no criminal record for Garth.” Brennan shrugged.

I wondered about the Willmans with Irish first names. “Did the Willmans have a son?”

“Girls,” Brennan said. “Two daughters. Was there a boy as well?”

I remembered the photos on the television, the one daughter down on her luck, the other standing in front of an oversize garage in suburban Valhalla. Judy said how horrible it had been taking the girls to visit their father in Attica. There was a son, photographed with Garth, side by side in US Army uniforms. Hard to imagine Willman Junior mixed up in Irish Republican highjinks. “What did Terry say about the Patrick and the Sean?”

“Not much, but whatever it was didn’t fit in. They were too young. Or, one was too young and the other’s in jail and has been for a long time. Something like that. Besides, old Willman didn’t strike me as a son of Erin, Monty. You couldn’t imagine him reading Joyce to his children over a cup of cocoa on Bloomsday.”

“No.” Another dead end.

“Now,” Brennan said, “yer man Ramon will be easy to find. Turns
out he’s in Manhattan, has been for years. And he’s still in the bar business.”

“I think I’ll pay him a visit before I call it a night.”

“I’ll come with you.”

“The night’s over for you. Go in and sleep it off.”

†

After patiently eliciting directions from a sobering but exhausted Burke, directions that made allowances for the fact that I was not blessed with an intimate knowledge of New York, I managed to locate Ramon Jiminez in the bar he ran not far from Madison Square Garden. The place was rundown and cheerless with half a dozen morose drinkers scattered throughout the room. The only attempt at decoration was a garish, badly painted mural on the wall across from the bar; it showed Rocky Marciano delivering the knockout punch to Joe Louis in 1951. I was assailed by a blast of cheap musky aftershave, and my nose twitched as I turned from the picture.

“I was there. And I saw Marciano beat Walcott a year later. Undefeated, how ’bout that?”

The man was five foot six and thin, but he had been working on his biceps and on his hair, which was coal black without a touch of grey. He was wearing a Little Italy sweatshirt over a pair of black jeans; a large gold ring glittered on the baby finger of his left hand.

“Mr. Jiminez?”

“Yeah.”

“My name is Monty Collins. I’m the music reporter for the Montreal
Morning Globe,
and I’m working on a biography of Vi Dibney.”

“Oh, yeah?”

“Yes, and I know from the interviews I’ve conducted so far that you and Miss Dibney knew each other when she was here in New York some years ago.”

“You might say that.”

“I was wondering whether you’d be willing to give me a bit of your time, so I can round out my portrait of Miss Dibney by talking to someone who knew her when she was starting out.”

“Yeah, I knew her back when she was just little old Evie.”

“You worked in the same club, I understand.”

“Yeah. The White Gardenia. It’s still there. Well, different location. Classy joint. A lot of guys were wishing they were in my shoes. You’ve seen her, so you know what I’m saying.”

“Right. What kind of guys were around the club back then? What was the clientele?”

“It was frequented by Italian businessmen. Italians with a lot of money to throw around. Some big movers in, let’s just say, certain circles.”

“I see. Now your role there was what?”

“Most people thought of me as a waiter; others considered me more of a confidante. A lot of big deals went down in that club. And I had the inside dope on more than a few.”

“Patrizio Corialli was one of the owners, wasn’t he?”

“Oh, yeah. Major owner.”

“Who else had a piece of the club?”

“Couple of his associates. Italians. Some other people invested from time to time.”

“Like who?” He shrugged. “So tell me about you and Evie.”

“She was a great kid. Real looker. And she could belt out a tune. I was fond of her. But I had to let her go.”

“Is that right?”

“Getting too serious, too attached. You know the type. I was young, I had plans, I wasn’t getting corralled at that time in my life. I tried to let her down easy.”

“But it was hard for her, I imagine. The breakup.”
The breakup she didn’t even tell you about, you bullshitter.
I kept my thoughts well out of view.

“It was rough on her. Emotional. You know how they get. But you might say I gave her career the boost it needed. She took off for Vegas to make a new start, away from her memories of me, and the rest is history.”

“Yes, she certainly made a name for herself. How did she link up with the hotel out there? I forget the owner’s name, but wasn’t he an acquaintance of somebody back here?”

“Yeah, an Italian connection.”

“And she mentioned somebody by the name of Burke who had a hand in it as well.”

The name hit home; Jiminez was instantly on his guard.

“Is that name familiar to you?”

“That scumbag.”

“This man offended you in some way?”

“You might say that.”

“Well, Vi implied that he was helpful in getting her started in Vegas, but —”

“Evie says a lot of stuff about a lot of people. Doesn’t mean she knew what those people were all about.”

“You’re making me a little nervous here, Ramon. I don’t want to leave out any important links in Vi’s career but I don’t want to, you know, write glowingly about this man if he wasn’t what he appeared to be.”

“What he appeared to be was a smooth-talking, blue-eyed Mick. What he really is, is a piece of shit.”

“You say ‘is.’ So, he’s still kicking around? I got the impression from Vi that he was older. I thought —”

“He’s still kicking all right, despite somebody’s best efforts to take him off the board.”

“What do you mean?”

“Somebody tried a Paddy-whack on him, but it didn’t take.”

“You sound as if you wish it was you! Maybe you’d have done a better job.”

“I would have. When I start something, I finish it. And I sure as hell wouldn’t have tried to shoot him in a room full of people at a wedding. What a loser, whoever pulled that one.”

“Well, obviously I’ve been given some bad information. I’d better check him out further. So, what did he do to earn your undying hatred?”

“Fucking blackmailer!”

“What? This Burke was blackmailing you?”

“You heard me.”

“When was this?”

“Decades ago, 1950s. Bastard knew I didn’t have the money. Well, I sure as hell had to come up with it.”

“What was he blackmailing you about?”

“None of your fucking business.”

“You’re right, Ramon. I apologize. Let’s forget Vi’s trip to Vegas and whoever did, or did not, help get her there. Let’s move on to something more pleasant: her music. Which songs do you remember her for?” I carried on with the charade for a polite interval, then finally thanked him profusely for his time and made my escape.

†

We were back in O’Malley’s the following afternoon, a Saturday: Brennan and I and Maura. Normie was at Declan and Teresa’s, playing with their granddaughter Christine again. Mickey was in place behind the bar, shot glass filled with Tullamore’s, racing sheet in front of him on the polished wood. He and a sober Brennan talked over old times until three pints of Guinness were decently poured, then we settled in at a back table.

I wasted no time, given that Declan was to meet us there in half an hour. “I had a talk with the wise guy wannabe waiter, Ramon.”

“What’s he wanna be, a wise guy or a waiter?” Maura asked, after sampling her pint and finding it satisfactory.

“It’s the oddest thing. This guy is head of one of the primo crime families in New York. He lives in a massive compound flanked by security cameras and guard dogs and, after I’d been with him for five minutes, he broke down sobbing, and said all he ever wanted was to be the wine steward at Garçon-Garçon!”

“Point taken,” my wife conceded. “So what did he say?”

“Unfortunately, we’re back to blackmail again.”

Burke looked up sharply. “I saw the bank records and I still can’t believe the old fellow would pay —”

“It’s worse than that, Brennan.” He was absolutely still, right hand poised over his pint as if an invisible glass barrier held it up. “This Ramon says your father was blackmailing
him.”

“Oh, Jesus Christ who suffered and died for our iniquity!” His head dropped heavily into his hands and he worked at his greying temples as if he could expunge the memory of what he had just heard.

Maura laid her hand briefly on his arm, then asked: “What was
Declan supposedly blackmailing him about?”

“Wouldn’t say. Told me it was none of my business. But then, that’s the thing with blackmail, isn’t it? It doesn’t work if you don’t mind somebody knowing whatever it’s about.” I took a sip and went on: “Brennan, you’re going to have to sit your father down and insist that he come clean about this. Otherwise, we’ll never —”

“I can insist all I want. I can threaten to excommunicate him and hound him to the portals of hell. He won’t talk. Haven’t you learned that by now, Monty?”

“The bank records were with your mother’s things. I wonder if she —”

“I’m not putting my mother through any more of this. It was hard enough getting her to give over that diary. The Desmond girl’s journal. I looked at it this morning, by the way. We were trying to remember the lad’s name, the son who was sent to fetch his father from the bars. Jimmy, his name was. He left New York as soon as he was old enough to get away.”

“That’s right. I wonder how things turned out for him.”

“Well, I hope, God save him. Now let’s change the subject. MacNeil, entertain us here. Swill that pint down and give us some improbable tales from Cape Breton.”

Maura thought for a few seconds, then said: “This fellow shall remain nameless, because he was reputed to be the keeper of a still. Making his own moonshine and bootlegging it around the county. Our man got word that the Mounties were on their way, and dismantled his still as best he could. By the time the Mounties arrived, all that was left were some pipes and other paraphernalia.

“‘We’re going to charge you for operating a still,’ they told him.

“‘Do you see a still anywhere around here, b’ys?’ he challenged them.” She spoke in a broad Cape Breton accent.

“‘No, but we see the parts for one,” the Mountie replied.

“‘Well, you may as well charge me with a sex crime then. I’ve got the parts for that too!’”

We were still laughing when the door opened and Declan stood glowering at us from the doorway.

“Declan!
Dia duit!”
Mickey called out.

“Dia is Muire duit.
The usual, Mickey, and set up those two
amadáns
at the back table.”

“Three of us, Declan! Don’t leave me out if there’s a free round coming.”

“Maura! I didn’t see you,
a chara
, with that great son of mine hulking in the foreground.”

I got up to help with the glasses, and Declan sat down with us. Brennan looked at his father as if trying to find what he had been missing in him all the years of his life. The old man ignored him, and directed his attention to my wife. “When are you going to shake these two hooligans so you can salvage what’s left of your time in the big city?”

“I’ve been trying to lose them all week, Declan.”

“Well, you’re in luck, MacNeil,” I improvised, “because, as I started to tell you earlier, Brennan promised to take me to a secondhand shop that has a huge collection of vintage harmonicas. Cheap.”

She was a quick study. She said to Declan: “He’s a bluesman. Even if he won the lottery he’d buy his music, his instruments, and the drinks for his groupies on the cheap.” I let it go. MacNeil would have a better chance than anyone of opening the old boy up.

“Use the back door; it will get you out of here faster,” was Declan’s only comment.

“So, Brennan,” I asked when we were outside, “where’s the mouth organ district?”