Blood on a Saint

by Anne Emery

  It was late in the day, but judge and counsel agreed to keep going and wrap things up. The Crown’s argument was short and swift, because the burden on the Crown at a preliminary hearing is not nearly as onerous as it is at trial, where guilt has to be proved beyond a reasonable doubt. At this stage, all MacEwen had to do was convince the judge that there was evidence upon which a jury, acting reasonably and properly instructed, could convict the accused. Monty did what he could with what he had: there was no known connection between Podgis and the victim; there were other people in the area at the same time; the shoes Podgis was wearing had soft soles, and would not have made enough noise to have awakened Betty Isenor; there was another man near the scene with blood on him. But just before six o’clock, as expected, Judge Thomas committed Podgis to stand trial for the murder. Fortunately for Podgis, his bail provisions were left in place, and he would be free pending the trial. Free to rant and rail at his lawyer and the media about his wrongful committal to trial for a murder he did not commit.

  Monty listened with half an ear and assured him that this outcome had been expected, almost inevitable, and they would get to work planning the trial. He started to skirt around the edge of the media pack.

  “Where are you going?” his client demanded.

  “It’s six o’clock and I’d normally say that’s the end of my workday but I have some other files to catch up on before I go home.”

  “Well, call me tonight. I want to go over this disaster with you and see what went wrong.”

  “I told you all along that this would happen. There is almost always a committal for trial. And I won’t be able to call till tomorrow. I have a gig tonight.”

  “Yeah, right, go out and live it up. Never mind what’s happening to your clients.”

  “I won’t be living it up, Podgis. It’s a blues band. There will be a room full of my present and former clients crying in their beer at the Shag.”

  “The Shag! What’s that?”

  “Its real name is the Flying Stag. Regulars call it the Flying Shag. Now I have to get going. I’ll call you tomorrow.”

  Podgis moved towards the assembled reporters and cameras with the shuffling gait of a man shackled and walking to his execution.

  Chapter 9

  Monty

  The blues gig was scheduled to get underway at ten o’clock and would wail on into the wee hours. After clearing away some tasks at his office and scoffing down some leftover pizza at home, Monty got himself cleaned up and dressed down for the night at the Shag, a smoky dive in a suburban strip mall, flanked by a pawnshop and a quick-cash outfit. Monty’s band Functus had been playing the blues there from time to time for nearly twenty-five years. He decided to take a jaunt over to St. Bernadette’s to give Burke the news firsthand about the committal for trial and to invite him along to the gig. The priest had enjoyed sessions with Functus in the past, and Monty hoped this might smooth things over after the cross-examination, if indeed any smoothing was necessary. Burke knew this was part of the job of a trial lawyer, Crown or defence, but nobody would pretend it was pleasant being on the receiving end. Burke had been there before, during his own trial, and had endured a shellacking by the Crown. That time Monty had been on his side. Now Monty was “on the side” of Perry Calvin Pike Podgis, and Burke’s opinion of that individual was plain to see. And obviously, the feeling was mutual. Monty had felt the heat of his client’s animosity towards Burke when they were all in the courtroom together. Perhaps an evening of music would have a mellowing effect.

  When Monty got to the rectory, Michael O’Flaherty informed him that Burke was taking part in a philosophy seminar at St. Mary’s University, McNally building. The talk had begun at seven o’clock. O’Flaherty was sure Monty would be welcome to sit in, even as a latecomer. It would make a nice contrast, an hour or so of meta­physical speculation before a night of booze and blues at one of the city’s seediest guzzling dens.

  It was after eight by the time he got to the university. It was a mild, overcast evening, damp with a feeling of impending rain. When he arrived at the big greystone building named for Archbishop John McNally, he saw a cluster of people outside the walls. Smoke break? Yes, there was Burke, just putting the flame to a cigarette in his mouth. A younger man sucked on a pipe, and a woman stood with her hands in her pockets, rocking back and forth on her heels. There was someone in a dark-coloured rain jacket with the hood up, standing apart from the group, leaning against the building. It was either a smallish guy or a big girl. A guy, judging from the cut of the jeans and the oversized sneakers. He seemed to be tuned in to the professors and their chat. Must be a student, looking for all the enlightenment he could get.

  Burke blew out a plume of smoke and continued whatever he had been saying: “. . . but he maintained a fundamental duality between the world and consciousness, the two not linked by objective caus­ality but by the intentionality of consciousness. So, approaching the question from that perspective . . .”

  Monty heard the sound of giggling and turned to his right. Two young girls were approaching, dressed in what looked like exercise outfits: one had on skin-tight pink leggings, green slouchy socks and sneakers, and a neon green nylon jacket. Her hair was held back in what Monty’s daughter, Normie, called a scrunchy. This too was green. The other girl had on the same kind of rig, but all the colours were the reverse of her friend’s. Belying the exercise motif was the carefully applied makeup on their faces. They appeared to be of high-school age, cutting through the university property or perhaps attending an event there.

  The one with pink legs said to her companion, “She’s like whoa! And I’m like excuse me? Hello! And she’s like no way! And I’m like way!”

  They looked at each other, their mouths hanging open, then shook their heads in tandem and moved on, their vocabularies exhausted.

  The man with the pipe addressed Burke: “What were you saying, Professor Burke?”

  “I was like, the two are linked by, like, the intentionality of consciousness, in the thought of Husserl.”

  The woman in the group called out, “Girls! Would you like to sit in on a free lecture?”

  The young ones looked at each other; their mouths fell open even further in alarm.

  “We, like, have to . . .” Pink Legs began, but her voice trailed to a halt. Perhaps there was nothing in the world they had to do.

  “We’re doing a bit of a survey here,” the professor ad libbed.

  “Okay,” Green Legs said warily. “A survey about, like . . .”

  “Who was Socrates? Can you tell me?”

  The two looked to each other again, then Pink Legs said, “He was famous.”

  “Right. Famous for what?”

  She thought for a moment, then said, “Famous but not, like, in a good way.”

  “No? How so?”

  “He . . . went to jail!”

  The professor nodded her encouragement. “Good. How do you know that?”

  “’Cause there’s this book.”

  “Have you read it?”

  “Well, not me but I, like, heard of it. ’Cause they were going to talk about it on TV when I was clicking through. Some kind of trial he was in. But it was, like, PBS.”

  Burke looked at her. “Do you know what he went to trial for?”

  She stared into his eyes, then looked down and took in his collar. She had it. “For killing Jesus on the cross!”

  Burke’s head dropped and he slumped as if the last breath had gone out of him on the cross.

  The girls looked at him, then turned and tripped away down the walk. “Well, excuse me!” they exclaimed in unison.

  Monty caught Burke’s eye then. Burke raised his cigarette in greeting.

  “Did you feel like Socrates on trial today, Brennan?”

  “I do not feel the need to relive my moments in the court of justice.”

&nbs
p; It was not clear whether he really was perturbed about his time on the stand or this was just his usual sardonic way of addressing a subject he deemed unworthy of consideration. Either way, Monty thought it wise to deliver the verdict and leave it at that.

  “Perhaps it won’t displease you to learn that the judge committed Mr. Podgis for trial on the murder charge.”

  “I should bloody well hope so.”

  “Well, there you have it. I just wanted to deliver the news in person.”

  “I won’t ask how he’s taking it, because I don’t give a flying — ”

  “Break’s over, ladies and gentlemen,” someone called from the door of McNally. “Time to resume.”

  “I’ll come in and hear the rest of the talk.”

  “Sure.”

  “Then, afterwards, we’re playing at the Shag. Go home, ditch your collar, put on something scruffy, and meet me at the bar. We’ll go on a toot.”

  “As long as I don’t have to testify about it afterwards in some tawdry proceeding. And,” Burke added, “as long as you remember you’re singing with the choir tomorrow morning. Latin Mass.”

  “I know, I know,” Monty claimed. He was a charter member of the St. Bernadette’s Choir of Men and Boys. But, with all the other things going on, his choirboy duties had slipped his mind.

  The lecturers went inside and took their places at the head table. Monty found a seat at the back of the room. There was a sizeable crowd, for such an obscure topic. Well, obscure perhaps to the public, but not to the cognoscenti gathered here. For all his technical knowledge of the subject, Burke did not seem all that keen on the phenomenological school of philosophy and was much more interested in critiquing something called transcendental Thomism, which was apparently an attempt to reconcile Aristotle and Thomas Aquinas with Immanuel Kant. Whatever it was, Burke wasn’t buying it. Monty’s mind drifted towards the upcoming gig. Would he open with Muddy Waters or T-Bone Walker? Harp or vocals? When the seminar was over, Burke joined Monty at the back of the room.

  Monty complimented him on the session. “That was, like, totally awesome. Especially that dude Gilson’s The Unity of Philosophical Experience. Is there, like, a movie version? A video game?”

  “Those two girls, and thousands like them, have provided me with an inspiration, Monty.”

  “Should I even ask what they have inspired in you, Father?”

  “Given that there are so very many young people today who can play with gadgets and spend hours racking up points on video games, but do not know when Socrates lived or where, when the Second World War took place or who won it, where to put an apostrophe, or how to speak with a vocabulary of more than fourteen words, I feel compelled to address that unfortunate development in whatever way I can. I know kids have the same native intelligence they have always had, so I am left to wonder who’s at fault for today’s sad state of affairs. Television? If it’s television, I have no intention of taking my message to that medium again. But if students are being ill-served by their schools, let that not be said of my choir school. I am going to reach back to the days of the classical education and initiate a course in rhetoric at St. Bernadette’s. Your daughter, who speaks like someone well beyond her years, will excel in the program. I shall get to work on it right away.”

  “Not really right away, though. Blues night first.”

  “Right. Come with me while I get changed, then we can grab a cab.”

  “Good thinking.” The Flying Stag was located off the peninsula in the suburbs. If the past was any indication, neither Burke nor Monty would be fit to have care and control of a motor vehicle when the session was over.

  They drove to St. Bernadette’s in their respective vehicles, parked, and emerged just in time to be drenched by the rain that had been threatening all day. They ran for the shelter of the rectory. Burke went up to his room to wash and change, and came down in a pair of faded jeans and a white T-shirt that depicted a group of monks around a musical score in Gregorian chant notation. Monty asked him what it was but then started to sing the notes, and exclaimed, “Hey, it’s the guitar riff from ‘Smoke on the Water.’ Deep Purple. Cool.”

  Burke carried an old, soft leather jacket over his right arm and had a pack of smokes in his left hand. Ready to roll. They were just about out the door when Michael O’Flaherty called down to them from the top of the stairs. “Come up and watch this!”

  They climbed the stairs and went into O’Flaherty’s room. The television was on, and there was Pike Podgis in a studio, giving an interview about his legal troubles and giving out to the police for focusing their investigation on him.

  “What are the police doing about finding the real killer of Jordyn Snider? Nothing. Because they’ve got me. Why me? Oh, they say they have enough ‘evidence’ to send me to trial. Well, let me tell you, when the time comes, I’ll be able to explain away their ‘evidence’ and show that somebody else committed this heinous crime. Don’t you think it’s rather convenient that they found ‘evidence’ against me? Think about it. I’m sure a lot of your viewers caught the show I did last spring exposing sloppy and sometimes downright crooked practices on the part of the police in order to frame somebody for a crime. They gotta get somebody for these things, right? So, hey, let’s pick on the unpopular guy, the guy who went public with their long history of mistakes and planting evidence. The guy who’s not afraid to stand up and tell the truth about the powers that be. I tell it like it is. And I make enemies in the process. I’ve been a target all during my career! There’s been times I’ve needed to hire a bodyguard. And now they think they have me on the ropes. No way. Pike Podgis doesn’t go down without a fight.”

  “Insufferable,” Brennan muttered.

  Egotistical and paranoid as well, Monty said to himself. But that was no surprise.

  “So if they won’t find the real killer, I will. There were some strange things happening the night Jordyn Snider’s life was taken from her. For instance, not far from the crime scene there was a man lying unconscious with blood on him! Have the police found it curious that this happened at the same time another person was found with blood all around her nearby? Guess not. Make no mistake: my own personal investigation — not the cops’ — uncovered the fact that there was indeed blood on this man.”

  “His own investigation, my arse!” Monty exclaimed. “It was my work that brought that to light.”

  Burke gave Monty a pitying look.

  Podgis was still wound up. “And I brought that out at the prelim. It’s right there in the emergency room records at the VG Hospital. Does this bother the mighty Halifax Police Department? Nah. Why should it, when they’ve got Pike Podgis in their sights? Well, I have news for you, boys in blue: I’m going to expose your sloppy practices once again, where it really counts, when a man’s life and freedom are put on trial in court! You wait!”

  Monty was incensed. Burke looked at him and laughed. “Get used to it. That blithering eejit is your life now.”

  “My life now is the blues. Let’s go.”

  †

  Functus opened the first set with “Stormy Monday.” Monty alternated between lead vocals and harmonica as always, and alternated between performing and quaffing ale from a steady supply brought to the stage by the waiters.

  There was a good-sized crowd, and a few people were dancing. That didn’t always happen on blues night, but he decided to go with it and vary the tempo and the set list to do a few danceable numbers over the course of the evening. He concluded the second set with B.B. King’s “The Thrill Is Gone.” He saw a fairly young woman who was not all that steady on her pins approaching Burke at his table, where he was sitting with three other guys, all smoking, all half in the bag. Monty recognized them as frequent flyers at the Shag but only knew one by name, Mel. Burke was in the process of lighting up a smoke when the woman reached him. He shook his head but smiled at her, and she teetered back t
o her place. A middle-aged man got up then and lurched in her direction; they stumbled around the dance floor till the last note faded away.

  The piece ended with enthusiastic applause, and Monty sat down with the band; his beer supply was redirected for the duration of the break. Burke raised a glass to him in salute from his place at the next table. There was a steady flow of barroom chat between the two tables until it was time for the third set.

  What was going on over in the corner by the door? Monty noticed a lone drinker who appeared to have a tape recorder on his table. Couldn’t be. Monty had never seen anyone come in and record the band’s performance. Time to go back onstage. He would check into the situation later.

  He was feeling no pain at all by this time, though “no pain” might not be the best way to approach the blues. That was easily remedied. Don’t call it “no pain.” Call it “wasted” and then it was perfectly appropriate. His gaze came to rest on one young lady who had been giving him the eye all night, unless that was just his booze-fuelled imagination at work. Possibly. But he didn’t think so. She was a fine-looking girl, with soft brown hair and big dark eyes. He thought he remembered her from other performances here. But time to concentrate on the tunes.

  He had half the room up dancing, and the young one with the dark eyes got up and danced by herself in front of the stage. A couple of women tried to get Burke onto the dance floor, but he smiled and shook his head, holding up his glass as if to say “I’m spending the evening with this” or maybe, to use one of Burke’s frequent expressions, “I’m legless with drink.” But Monty decided to make him an offer he couldn’t refuse so, after a rousing version of Wilson Pickett’s “Land of a Thousand Dances,” he announced, “Here’s a nice, slow number that everyone can dance to. Even my pal Brennan here. He prefers the classics, so let’s give him Schubert, as interpreted by Deodato. With a name like that, the guy has to be a saint.”

  Burke, being a good sport, gave the eye to one of the women who had asked him earlier, and they waltzed together to Deodato’s instrumental “Ave Maria.” He gently pried her arms off him at the end of the piece.