Brendan
Gala night, while the bishop was slapping backs and shaking hands and tugging sleeves and sipping the last martinis he would ever have in his life, his driver slipped into The Emerald Green for a couple of pops. This was not a first for him. He routinely repaired to a bar when he had a long wait ahead and hours to kill. Perched on a barstool, he would await the call to return and pick up His Excellence and drive him home at the end of the festivities—and until then he would tune his own internal strings. Brendan was proud of his ability to hold his liquor, and if he was slightly impaired, legally speaking, it never showed. The bishop’s suspicions never arose for obvious reasons: blind driving the blind. A couple of hours into this evening, in the general swell of humanity, while the party raged in full swing across town, Brendan headed into the tavern’s men’s room. He did not walk out.
Fast forward several hours.
Around closing time, a patron reported to the bartender that something was amiss: a man was unconscious and sprawled on the floor inside a bathroom stall. That was Brendan, and soon he was being jostled awake, afflicted by the biggest, acidy-toilet-disinfectant-laced headache he’d ever known, with no recollection of what had happened. He looked for a clock, nonexistent in the men’s room, and realized that he had certainly lost his job—as well as his watch. Along with his cell phone, and his wallet, and the cash in his money clip—and the limo keys. When he got to his feet and rushed outside, the car was nowhere in sight. He called the police on the Emerald Green’s phone, and they arrived a casual hour later. The uniform wanted to know if he needed a hospital, but Brendan said no. The cop was considerate enough to drive him to his apartment, where he took to his bed. Of course, he had no idea of what had transpired with the bishop. He had to assume that Mackey got home somehow, and that he would get fired first thing in the morning.
“The bar was crowded,” Brendan told the detectives the next afternoon in the interrogation room. “Don’t remember much.” He had dressed in coat and tie for the interview today, he couldn’t tell you what prompted him to do so, but it may have seemed right, respectful. He was the sort of man whose clothes seem to have been borrowed from somebody else, in his case borrowed from a larger man, a roommate and off-and-on partner. Being nervous about what awaited him at the police station, Brendan had shaved a little too energetically and his neck was nicked. If pressed, he might have said he wanted to present himself in the most flattering light possible for the authorities.
“How many drinks you throw down?”
“One or two.”
“One or two?”
“Or three.” Brendan had to figure the detectives knew how many. He certainly didn’t.
“Drinking with anybody special?”
“So many people, you know the Green is packed every night, college kids to truck-drivers to lawyers—to cops. But I drink by myself, watch the game. No use bringing anybody else down.”
“Who won?”
“Won what?”
“Game you were watching. Who won?”
“I don’t recall. Yes, I do, it was the Cubs and somebody else, so Cubbies won.”
“Good game?”
“I don’t follow baseball, I’m a baskets guy, the Bulls.”
“You from Chi town?”
“From lots of towns.”
“How long you been off the wagon?”
“Not long. I’m not proud of it, but there it is. Sobriety and me didn’t mix.”
“You were going to lose your job if the diocese found out you’re drinking, correct?”
“Not that Mackey would ever notice, being, you know, himself.”
“Sounds like you may have hard feelings about the bishop.”
“I don’t expect I have a job anymore, if that’s what you’re asking.”
“You have any issues with His Holiness?”
“His Holiness means the pope. His Excellence is Mackey, and not really.”
“I’ll remember when I’m at Saint Peter’s Cathedral, thanks. But you and Mackey, you had issues?”
“Tough man to please, to tell the truth. Time to time, he barked about one thing or another, driving too slow, driving too fast, you know. Hard job, I guess, being the bishop. Man, I can’t believe what happened to the old guy.”
“What happened to him?”
“What I read in the morning paper.”
“You didn’t call to check on the bishop.”
“Way I figured it, nobody’d take my call. Am I right?”
“Got any plans to take a trip?”
“Not that I’m aware of.”
“If you win a vacation, turn it down. We’ll talk again.”
“That it?”
“What’re you expecting? A blue ribbon?”
“What about me? You looking for the guy who did this to me?”
“It’s a guy?”
“I don’t know who he is, but he could have killed me. You got a suspect?”
“Don’t wander off, Brendan. One last thing. You like boys?”
“I don’t have kids.”
“I know that. I’m asking you if you like boys.”
“Where’s this coming from?”
“So I guess we should assume you like younger boys.”
“Wait a second. You talking about that kinda shit? Hold on. No way, not me.”
“But you’re curious, right?”
“The fuck that have to do with child molesting?”
“Your anger issues, Brendan. You working on that?”
“You gonna arrest me for getting beat up? And if you’re not, I gotta go and look for another job.”
“Let us know if you need a reference.”
—
“You worked that night behind the bar, Kenny?” The bartender was next in line for the interrogation room.
“Yes, sir.”
“You always serve underage kids?”
Kenny did not, not intentionally he would have said, though he didn’t card as strictly as he should have, so silence was probably his best refuge.
“On the video we can see somebody looks pretty much like a teenager who doesn’t shave with a shot glass.” He showed Kenny a photo and asked if he knew him.
He did, unfortunately. What he didn’t know was that the Emerald Green surveillance cameras were in operation that night, only because the new manager was sucking up to ownership, something the former manager failed to do, which is why he was the former manager. They had installed the cameras in the first place on account of all the bar fights, and because the bartenders had adopted a cavalier attitude with regard to collecting for every single drink.
“Oh, that’s the kid they hire time to time, cleanup, but I didn’t see him that night. Somebody else must’ve served him. Street kid, I think, forget his name. Comes and goes, shows when he needs some cash, I guess.”
“Kid set up shop, doing business in the men’s room?”
“Wrong type bar for that, wrong part of town.”
“What type bar is it?”
“What, you from Mars? Kind of place people drink like it’s their profession.”
“Emerald Green, original name. How long they take to come up with that? Sweets Fitzgerald, he’s the owner, right?”
“Man, I seen that dude’s picture in the paper, once or twice, and I wouldn’t fuck with him no way, but he ain’t the boss.”
“Sure about that?”
“He don’t sign my payroll checks.”
They showed him a picture of Brendan, the driver.
“Wild Turkey, beer back, so-so tip, not a big yapper. Except on his cell phone a lot. Turned around and he was gone. We found him closing time in the head, at first looking like he was stupidly sleeping one off there, but then, well, you know better than me.”
“Tell us about the street kid.” It was somebody with shoulder-length thick blond hair, lots of metal in his ears, nose, and mouth, ink up and down his arms. They tracked him on camera easily because he stood out, being so young, and obviously out of place, as he came through the front door, stood behind Brendan for a minute and tapped him on the shoulder. A minute later Brendan headed for the men’s room, and was followed by the street kid. Twenty minutes later, they believed they could make out Metallica boy leaving the bar through the front door, but he was hard to pinpoint in the inebriated crush at the Emerald Green. “Anything else you remember, Kenny?”
“I remember the guy we found in the john met up earlier with somebody else, seemed like friends.”
“This guy?” They showed him a photo of somebody who would turn out to be Hector Alessandro.
“That’s the guy. I think something went south between those two, because the Brendan guy and the other guy went at it pretty good, somebody got all worked up, and then the other guy huffed and puffed out and Brendan stayed, to do some serious crying in his beer. If I didn’t know better, somebody got broken up with. Not that it’s any of a man’s business.”