Forty Words for Sorrow

47

CANDLE WAX, WOOD POLISH and old incense. The smells in the cathedral never changed. Cardinal sat in a pew near the back and let the memories come: there was the altar where he had served mass as a boy in surplice and soutane; there the confessionals where he had owned up to some but by no means all of his first sexual adventures; there the rail where his mother had lain in her coffin; there the font where Kelly had been baptized, a doll-faced banshee whose shrieks had unnerved everybody, especially the young priest who had anointed her.

Cardinal’s faith had left him sometime in his early twenties and it had never come back. He had attended mass regularly throughout Kelly’s girlhood because Catherine had wanted it; and unlike, say, McLeod, who had nothing but contempt for Rome and all her works, Cardinal had no strong feelings against the Church. Or in favour of it. So he wasn’t sure why he had stopped by the cathedral this Thursday afternoon. One minute he had been in D’Anunzio’s eating a ham and Swiss, next minute he’s in the back row of the church.

Gratitude? Certainly, he was glad Delorme’s investigation was over. And as for Dyson, he felt terribly sad, almost a kind of heartbreak. McLeod had heaped scorn on their fallen boss all morning. “Good riddance,” barking across the squad room to anyone available. “It’s not enough he’s an arrogant fuck? He also has to be dirty? Some people don’t know when to stop.” But Cardinal felt no moral superiority; it could just as easily have been him hauled off to the district jail in cuffs.

A gigantic gold-fringed medallion of Mary being assumed into heaven hung above the altar. As a boy Cardinal had often prayed to her to help him be a better student, a better hockey player, a better person, but he didn’t pray now. Sitting in the fragrant expanse of the cathedral was enough to evoke that sense of wholeness he had known as a boy, and as a young man. He knew to the hour when he had lost that wholeness. Just because Delorme had stopped investigating him didn’t mean his own conscience was going to grant him a reprieve.

“Excuse me.”

A bulky man edged his way past Cardinal into the pew—pretty annoying, with the place utterly empty. But people had their favourite pews, and Cardinal was, after all, an interloper, not a regular.

“Nice little church you got here.”

The man was almost exactly square. He perched beside Cardinal like a perfect cube of meat, a solid mass devoid of neck or waist or hips. He pointed to the medallion of the Assumption. “Cool medal. I like churches, don’t you?” He turned to Cardinal and smiled, if you could call that sort of mirthless display of teeth smiling. Two gold incisors gleaming for an instant, then gone. The man’s face, flat and round as an Inuit’s, was harrowed by four symmetrical scars, vivid white grooves that ran across the forehead and chin, and vertically down each cheek. The nose had the misshapen, imploded look of a pepper. The man had to turn a full ninety degrees to face Cardinal, because his right eye was covered by a black leather patch. On this some wit had stencilled the word Closed.

Was he someone Cardinal had put in jail? Surely he would have remembered this creature moulded from the clay of pure thug.

“Warm for February.” The man slid a black watch cap from his skull, revealing a perfectly shaved scalp. Then, with surprising delicacy, he removed first one leather glove and then the other, resting his hands on his knees. The knuckles of one hand were tattooed with the word fuck, the knuckles of the other said you.

“Kiki,” Cardinal said.

The gold incisors flashed again. “I thought you’d never remember. Long time no see, huh?”

“Sorry I didn’t visit you in Kingston, but you know how it is. You get busy …”

“Ten years busy, right. I been busy too.”

“I see that. Been doing some decorating. I love what you’ve done with the patch.”

“No, I been working out. I can bench press three hundred now. What about you?”

“I don’t know. Around one-seventy last time I checked.” It was closer to one-fifty, but he was talking to a Visigoth; ruthless honesty was not called for.

“Doesn’t that make you a little nervous?”

“Why should it? Unless you’re threatening me. I hope you are—given that you’re a paroled felon and all.”

The gold incisors shone wetly. Kiki Baldassaro, better known to his circle of intimates as Kiki B., or Kiki Babe. His father was a mid-level Mafioso who had been stoutly protecting the Toronto construction industry from labour problems for decades. One of the ways he did this was to insert his rhomboidal son into a company’s payroll as a “welder.” And welding paid very well indeed, especially when you considered that Kiki B. was not expected to actually show up at the site. God forbid.

Despite the guaranteed income, Kiki B. was not one to sit at home idle. He liked to work with his hands, and when the indebted needed encouragement, or the forgetful needed reminding, he was happy to help out with a bit of pressure in the right place. In fact, Cardinal was recalling now, that was how Kiki B. had met his boss and spiritual adviser, Rick Bouchard. On a routine assignment for Baldassaro père, he had put a Bouchard henchman in traction. Bouchard showed up at Kiki’s door and explained his position to him with a crowbar. They had been friends ever since.

“Musta taken a crane to get that thing up there.” Kiki had returned his attention to Our Lady of the Assumption, aloft on her medallion.

“You didn’t hear about that?” Cardinal unbuttoned his coat. It may have been fear or it may have been the church’s heating system, but sweat was running down his rib cage in cold rivulets. “Night before they were supposed to hoist Our Lady in place, the crane operator skids off the highway down at Burk’s Falls and breaks his arm. This is the day before Easter, thirty years ago or so. They’re in despair, because the next day’s Easter and the bishop is coming all the way from the Soo to say Mass. Big occasion, and it looks for sure like Our Lady’s gonna sit it out in a crate. So they rush around calling for crane operators—they don’t exactly grow on trees up here the way they do in Toronto—and finally they get one. He agrees to come in at five a.m. to hang the medallion.”

“Sure he does. Five a.m., that’s triple time.”

“The point, Kiki, is he never got to do it.”

“Okay. ’Nother accident, right?”

“No accident. Next day he comes into the church, five a.m. Rest of the crew is already here. He finds them all kneeling in the front row, and these are not Catholics, you understand, not all of them. But they’re all kneeling in the front row and their mouths are hanging open. And then the new crane operator looks up and sees the reason why they’re all so gaga.” Cardinal pointed.

“She was already up there.”

Cardinal nodded. “She was already up there. How? When? Nobody knows. Clearly, several natural laws were broken—gravity, for a start.”

“So somebody came in at night and hoisted her up there.”

“Well, yeah, that’s what everybody figured. But they never figured out who. Place was locked up tight. Crane’s sitting outside, no keys in it. Foreman had the keys. It was spooky. They kept it really quiet and everything, but—maybe I shouldn’t tell you …”

“Tell me what? Go on, tell me. You can’t start a story and then quit halfway.”

“It’s a long time ago—I guess I can tell you. The Vatican sent one of their investigators over here, a priest who was also a scientist. Only reason I know, they had to tell us. It was a professional courtesy.”

“The Vatican. They find anything?”

“Nope. It’s a mystery. They do call her Our Lady of Mysteries.”

“That’s right. I forgot that. That’s a good story, Cardinal. I think you made it up, though.”

“Why would I do a thing like that? I’m sitting in a church, I’m not about to start blaspheming. Who knows what could happen?”

“It’s a good story. You could tell it to Peter Gzowski. He’s a good listener. That’s what got him on the air.”

“That show’s not on any more, Kiki. You miss things like that in prison. Are you aware of the legal concept of menacing?”

“It hurts me that you could even think something like that. I’d never threaten you. I always liked you. I liked you right up till you slapped the cuffs on me. All I’m saying is, I’d be nervous sitting beside a guy who could remove my arms and legs and lay them out in front of me.”

“You’re forgetting you’re a lot stupider than me, Kiki.”

Air whistled in the flattened nostrils. Over the one eye, the eyelid lowered to half-mast. “Rick Bouchard got fifteen years ’cause of you. Ten of those years are up. He could be out any day now.”

“Think so? I don’t see Rick racking up points for good behaviour.”

“He could be out any day now. But the point is, when he gets out, he’s going to want his money. I mean, look at it from his point of view. Here he is doing fifteen years for a few kilos and five hundred grand. He loses the fifteen, the kilos and the five hundred grand. He doesn’t even mind that.”

“Yeah, I heard that about Bouchard. Very even-tempered.”

“Really, it’s not about that. You were just doing your job. But here’s the thing. The thing is, Rick had seven hundred thousand. Not five—seven. So all’s he wants back is the two hundred thousand. That’s pretty reasonable. The way Rick sees it, taking that money wasn’t part of your job.”

“Rick says, Rick thinks. That’s what I admire about you, Kiki, your independent spirit. You always go your own way. Real maverick.”

The one good eye, red-rimmed, regarded him—sadly?—it was difficult to tell, one eye being harder to read than two. Kiki rubbed his nose with the letter F and sniffed. “You told me a good story. Now I gotta tell you one.”

“Is it about how you lost your eye?”

“No. It’s about this guy. There was this guy in my block. Not Rick’s block, my block, you understand? They had to move him out of Rick’s block, ’cause—well, I guess you could say ’cause he was an independent spirit. Real maverick.

“Anyways. He moves into my block. And I guess he figures he’s home free, because he, like, immediately starts trying to run with the big boys. Which you don’t do. You work your way up. See, he could’ve come to me, asked my advice how to patch things up with Rick. I could’ve helped. There wasn’t that much money involved. Not like you. But he was like you say, an independent spirit, a real maverick, so he didn’t come to me. And instead of ending up friends with Rick, instead of doing his time safe and sound, guess where he ended up?”

“I don’t know, Kiki. Banff?”

“Banff? Where’d you get Banff?”

“Sorry. Just tell me. Where’d he end up?”

“I guess his own conscience got to him after a while. Because he went to bed one night and spontaneously combusted.” The red-rimmed eye looked Cardinal up and down. It was like being examined by an oyster. “I’m telling you, I never heard screams like that. There’s a lot of metal in prison, you know? Acoustics are not designed for comfort. But even so, it frightened me, him screaming like that. And the smell of a human being on fire, well, it’s not very nice. Total mystery, too. Like your Virgin. A miracle, maybe. Guy just spontaneously combusting like that, they never did figure out how it happened.”

Cardinal glanced up at the Virgin and, without thinking, said a little prayer. Help me do the right thing.

“So. You’re just going to sit there, you’re not going to say anything? What’s the matter? You didn’t like my story?”

“No, no, it’s not that.” Cardinal leaned toward the flat, round face, the one stewed eye. “It’s just kind of weird for me, Kiki. I’ve never talked to an actual Cyclops before.”

“Huh.” Kiki shifted his weight, the pew creaking under him.

Cardinal left him contemplating his knuckles—first fuck, then you. He was back at the baptismal font when Kiki called after him, “That’s funny, Cardinal. I’m going to be laughing at that for a long time. Couple of years from now? There you’ll be: dead and all. And there I’ll be: laughing. You’re such an independent spirit.”

Cardinal pushed open the massive oak door, squinting in the watery winter light.