Sign of the Cross (16 page)

She stood by the table, seemingly at a loss for the first time since I had arrived. Then she reached over and brought out a picture of a group of children. They appeared to be ten or eleven years old and all were looking at the camera, with the exception of one dark-haired little boy. “That’s me,” she said, pointing to a pretty smiling girl in the front row, “and that’s Bren.” The boy who wasn’t looking at the camera was looking sideways, at Sandra. “That picture was taken at Mrs. Liebenthal’s music school, over on the West Side. That’s where we met.” She put the picture down gently.

I decided to plunge in again. “Do you think he would hurt anyone?”

“Physically, you mean?”

“In any way.”

“In any way, yes. Brennan does whatever he sets out to do, regardless of the effect his actions may have on someone else.” I waited and she motioned towards the chesterfield. We sat.

“There was a fire,” Sandra said quietly. “A friend of Brennan’s died in it. They were all drunk and on drugs. Brennan tried to save his friend but it was too late. That’s when he got a sign from God, or whatever he claims happened that propelled him into the priesthood. I never believed a word of it. I think he was planning it all along.”

“Planning what?”

“To be a priest. But he didn’t let on. That way he could have a girlfriend, or girlfriends I should say, booze it up, dabble in drugs, and cram as much as he could into his life before giving it all up. How does it go? ‘Jesus save me, but not yet.’”

“That was either a country singer or St. Augustine. Who could tell me more about the fire?”

“There was a sleazy character Brennan knew in those days, Jake Malone. Grew up to own a string of nightclubs. I read in the paper that he went to prison for a while. For what, I can’t recall. If he’s still alive and you can track him down, you may be able to learn something.”

She sat in silence, looking at her photos. “I went to Bren’s ordination, you know. I couldn’t decide right up to the last minute whether to go. But I couldn’t help myself. I was over the breakup by that time — long past it — but I still felt resentful when I saw him. Too bad. I would like to have enjoyed, without any ambivalence, the sight of that arrogant pr — that arrogant man — lying face down before the altar. Seeing him prostrate himself in front of anything or anyone should have given me the greatest satisfaction. But it was ruined for me by the fact that he looked so handsome, all in white. And he looked so goddamned happy and peaceful. I remember thinking, I need some of that.” She looked down at her hands. “He didn’t even know I was there.”

We were silent for a moment. Then Sandra shrugged, and said: “But I get over things! Sixty percent of my life has been lived since then.”

“Tell me something. Was that an album cover I saw on the table?”

She laughed. “I had a brief career in a girl group. Don’t ask. Are you interested in music yourself?”

“I like to think of myself as a bluesman. Makes my day job bearable.”

“Bluesman? I don’t know, Montague. That hair of yours is borderline blonde and the eyes are a definite sky blue. You’ve got kind of a boyish look going on there.”

“Are you saying I can’t pass for an old grizzled black man from the Mississippi delta?”

She made a show of appraising me. “More like a boy soprano, I’d say. I can see you in a chorister’s robe and ruffled white collar. Is Brennan your client or your choirmaster?”

“You’re killing me here, Sandra.”

“Don’t feel too bad about yourself, Monty. After all, I had to affect gobs of anguish and heartbreak to make it as a torch singer.” The look of amusement on her face intensified as she rose and put out her hand to say goodbye. “I don’t know whether to wish you luck or not, with your latest client. After all, I still have no idea what my former heartthrob has done to set you on my trail. But I’ll worm it out of Rowan, if I get curious.”

“I’d better let you get back to the present. And I’ll go somewhere and lick my wounds. I appreciate your giving me some time.”

“I didn’t mind. Goodbye, Montague.”

II

It took most of the morning to find Jake Malone, but I finally reached him and took the subway out to Brooklyn. His establishment was on Flatbush Avenue, a few blocks from the lush Botanic Garden. The dive was marked only by a yellow neon sign that said “Bar,” and when I crossed the threshold I was plunged into night. I hoped this wasn’t the jewel in the crown of his nightclub empire. Malone was tall and overly muscled. Lots of time in the exercise yard while he served his sentence. His blonde-streaked hair was cut short in front and long in the back.

“Collins?”

“Yes. Mr. Malone, I presume.”

“You presume right. Call me Jake. Come sit down.” I followed him to a table with a thick and greasy surface, as if the varnish had never set. I had to resist the urge to dig my nails into it. “What can I get you?”

I asked for a beer, and he got something dark in a shot glass for himself.

“So you’re here about my long-lost pal Brennan Burke.”

“Yes, as I indicated on the phone, I’m representing Father Burke,
and I’d appreciate any information you can give me.”

“But you can’t give me any info about him?”

“Unfortunately, no. We have a delicate matter coming up in court —”

“Yeah, I had a few delicate matters in court myself. Now I’m trying to get back what I lost. This dump is a start. But, anyway, Burke... I haven’t seen him in thirty years. He dropped all his old pals, just like that.” He made a letting-go motion with his fingers. “He’s a Holy Joe now. He sure as hell wasn’t holy when I knew him.”

“You were friends then.”

“Friends, pals, whatever you call guys who went out partying together and getting blitzed every night. We knew this guy who could get us all kinds of drugs.”

“What drugs are we talking about?”

“Smack, cocaine. None of these designer substances they have now, but there’s nothing new under the sun. People were dying of overdoses then just like they are now. So you know, we’d score from this guy, then go to a club. Or somebody’s house. A girl whose parents were out of town, that kind of thing. He had a nice piece of ass, Burke did. This Sandy. She had her own girl group for a while. Lucky stiff, that Burke. But he was always like that.”

“So, was Brennan hooked on drugs?”

“Brennan wasn’t hooked on anything. You know the type? He liked his tail and I can’t see him giving it up, but he’s not a needy kind of guy, if you know what I mean.”

“Do you know anything about this house fire he was in?”

“Well, yeah, I should know. I was there. What a useless dickhead Burke was that night. We were all partying at this girl’s place. This guy Stan — Polish guy, friend of Burke’s — he had a real oil burner.”

He saw the question in my eyes. “Heroin addiction. Smart kid, college boy, really into music. His old man worked two jobs to send him to Juilliard. Burke met him through some music thing. So Stan took up with the wrong crowd, namely yours truly and some other guys. Slumming, Stan was. Same as Burke. Slumming. I could figure that out. Stan started doing drugs and got hooked. Poor fucker, it killed him one way or the other.”

Malone gestured to a waitress and she brought us fresh drinks.
“We were all at this party. Some of us were dancing in the living room. There was lots of booze so it wasn’t exactly ballet, just some stumbling around and trying to cop a feel. Burke was doing all right for himself as usual. He was in a bedroom banging a couple of strippers. It’s not funny the way it turned out, but I gotta laugh: that was the night I decided I was going to get into the club scene. Figured it would be a good way to get laid! Hire my own strippers, offer cheap drinks to chicks. And guess what? I was right. I had three clubs going before I did time on some bogus drug charges. Got out, and bought this place at a discount. I’m looking at another place over in Queens.”

“Good luck with it. You were telling me about the fire.”

“Yeah. Stan was down in the basement, wasted, doing something with matches. He managed to set the place on fire. He called upstairs for help, and me and this girl tried to put out the flames. We couldn’t, so we went up and yelled for Burke. After all, it was his friend. I was hammering at the bedroom door, where Brennan was with these two bimbos. I said his pal Stan was in trouble and there was a fire. Music was blasting from the bedroom. I don’t know how much Burke heard, but all he said was ‘fuck off.’ I went downstairs and somebody finally clued in to call the fire department. I went back for Burke and yelled that his friend was out of it and the basement was on fire. Burke finally caught on or maybe finished getting his rocks off. He came flying out the door zipping up his jeans. The smoke was getting thick and he told the two girls to get the fuck outta the house. There were flames at the bottom of the basement stairs. Burke ran into the bathroom, doused himself with water and grabbed a wet towel. He jumped down the stairs and came back up carrying his pal, but it was too late. Stan was dead. Of drugs or smoke, I don’t know. The fire department took over and Burke went outside and got sick. He had some burns but he was fine. There were a couple of drug charges laid, but nothing stuck to Burke. What else is new?” Malone pulled on his drink. “But his old man punched his lights out when he got home. He’d heard all about it, connected as he was to some cronies in the
NYPD
. You don’t wanna cross old man Burke.”

“A violent man, Brennan’s father?”

“Depends on what you mean.”

“Well, did that happen often, Mr. Burke beating his son?”

“Did it happen often that his kid laid there with a couple of floozies on top of him while his friend was frying himself to death downstairs? My old man would have done the same thing. So what? All fathers did in those days, to the boys anyway.”

“So, would Brennan have fought back, with his father I mean?”

“I fucking doubt it. Hit his old man? Come on. He knew he deserved it.”

I thanked Malone for his time and left some bills on the table to cover the beer. When I got to the door he called me back. “If you want to find out what Brennan was like with women, if that’s what you’re worried about, talk to Doreen Foster in Greenpoint. She’s one of the hot tickets he was with the night of the party. Used to call herself Doree Dee. Stage name. If Brennan was some kind of sick fuck then, he’s still a sick fuck now. And this Doreen’d know it. She’s in the book.”

I stayed in Brooklyn and got a pocketful of change for the pay phones, none of which had a phone directory on offer. When I reached someone at Doreen Foster’s flat, the guy sounded as if I had woken him up, but he gave me Doreen’s work number. She agreed to meet me at a bar near her office at five-thirty. I gulped down a sandwich and retreated to the sylvan glories of the Brooklyn Botanic Garden, strolling beneath the park’s magnificent pink cherry blossoms till it was time to hail a cab to Greenpoint.

I waited for Doreen in the assigned bar, a dingy dump much like Jake Malone’s. She arrived out of breath and plunked herself down with a sigh. She looked at the bartender and he brought over her regular drink, whatever that was, and took my order for a beer. Doreen was in her mid fifties, with harshly tinted dark hair. She must have been a looker in her younger days, but her face now bore the hardbitten look I had seen in too many clients after a life of being buffeted by unkind fates.

“Well, well, your name is Collins and you’re here to talk about someone I knew thirty years ago. Brennan Burke, what a doll. Where is he these days?”

“He’s running a choir school at the moment.”

“Do I look like I just fell off the turnip truck? Gimme a break.”

“I’m serious. You knew he became a priest.”

“Yeah, I know that, but I figured he was boozin’ it up and bangin’ nuns. This is too much. Well, I’ll let it go. What do you want to know?”

I explained that I was a lawyer from Canada. It occurred to me to use the house fire as my cover story so I opened with that. “These things have a way of coming back,” I said. “Nothing ever really goes away, does it?”

“Tell me about it,” she agreed. She lit up a cigarette and sucked on it greedily.

“I understand you were at the house the night of the fire.”

“Oh, yeah, I was there.” She took another drag and blew the smoke upwards.

“You’d known Brennan before the party, I take it?”

“Yep. I’d known him, as you put it, for years. He used to come see me when he needed a little female company.”

“But he did have another girlfriend as well, I think?”

“Oh sure. He had girlfriends and I wasn’t one of them. His main squeeze was Sandy. But she wasn’t always —”

“Willing?” I interjected naively.

“She wasn’t always available. I’ve been around long enough not to hold to that old fantasy, the one that says the guy’s wife is frigid, or the girlfriend won’t do this or that. I’m sure that’s what keeps a lot of single girls hoping all night long. But I don’t buy it. Sandy and Brennan did whatever they wanted to do. But if she was away or busy, and Brennan felt like having a good time, he came over to my place. If I wasn’t otherwise engaged, we got together. Brennan always had a few bucks for a bottle and he was great in the sack. I missed him when he went all righteous after that fire.”

“What happened that night?”

“Oh Jesus, it was terrible, that guy dying. You could smell flesh burning. What was his name? Stu? Stan. I don’t know how the fire started. Me and Brennan and this other girl were in a bedroom with the door locked. We were all bombed. Some guy came to the door but we could hardly hear him over the music. He was calling Brennan to come out and help this friend of his. But Brennan was busy with me and this other broad. I remember what I was doing to him, but I don’t know what she was doing further up the line. Maybe
planting sweet little kisses on his eyelids. Yeah, right! Brennan did not want any interruptions and told this guy to get lost, fuck off, whatever.” Doreen signalled for another drink and the bartender brought it over.

“Then we smelled the smoke. Somebody pounded on the door, so we all leapt up from the bed, drunk, stoned, half-dressed. Brennan went down to the basement and tried to bring his friend out. Everybody told him there was no point, that he’d just burn up himself, but he went anyway. He carried the guy up the stairs, but he was dead.” Doreen stared past me, her glass halfway to her lips.