Free Barrington Street Blues by Anne Emery Page A

it.”
    â€œThat girl has you whipped.”
    I looked at Ross, who wouldn’t meet my eyes. “Let’s go,” he said.
    â€œGood news,” the father announced, as I made way for them.
    â€œOh, yeah? What’s that?”
    â€œYour brother’s coming home.”
    â€œGreat,” Ross lied. Was the brother a lawyer too? No, I remembered, he was some sort of international finance wizard who had bought a large country house outside London. It had been in the papers.
    I suspected that my ruminations on the Leaman case would not be greeted with enthusiasm by Ross that day — and perhaps not any day soon — so I decided to continue my own discreet inquiries. If it was going to be tilt, game over, I wanted to know about it sooner rather than later. There was no point in adding to the stress in Ross’s life unless things took a clear and unmistakable turn for the worse.

Chapter 3
    Now the only thing a gambling man needs is a suitcase and a trunk. And the only time he is ever satisfied is when he’s on a drunk.
    â€” Traditional, “House of the Rising Sun”
    â€œCollins was a son of privilege.”
    â€œHardly.”
    Ed Johnson, Brennan Burke, and I were at the Midtown on Friday night for a steak and a pint. Ed was rewriting my biography.
    â€œHis dad was chairman of the math department at Dal.”
    â€œYou make it sound like His Lordship upon the Woolsack.”
    â€œWell, your mother came from money. A real lady. Good thing she didn’t know some of the stunts you pulled, eh, Collins? You didn’t spend your youth with Mummy and Daddy looking on at the tennis club. You knew there was a better time to be had hanging around dives listening to the blues. And then when you took to the stage yourself, well, the less said the better.”
    â€œI don’t know what you’re talking about, Johnson. I’m a fine upstanding citizen just like everyone else at this table.”
    â€œHe could get away with anything, Brennan. Just look at him. Face of an angel. Every night of dissipation and debauchery shows up on me, but not him. Even after that road trip.”
    â€œAh. The road trip,” the priest remarked.
    I flapped a hand at Brennan to indicate that it was of no importance, but Johnson ignored me.
    â€œThis was the band our Monty was in before we got together as Functus. From what I hear, he was lucky to be in one piece at the end of their U.S. tour. Got out of the country with little more than the T-shirt on his back, if my information is accurate.”
    I had to get him off that subject. “I thought you were extolling the virtues of my family for Father Burke; now you’ve got him thinking I need an emergency trip to the confession box.”
    â€œOh, your family, right. What was that story about your parents’ marriage? Your father piloted a plane back from wartime England to claim his bride? What was it?”
    â€œYou’re exaggerating again. He sent a telegram.”
    â€œOh. But I know there was a whiff of scandal.”
    â€œApparently. That’s why my mother never alluded to this herself. Her parents had somebody else in mind as a son-in-law, someone more —” Johnson butted in by saying “Right” and rubbed his fingers together in the commonly understood sign for money. I went on: “Someone with more certain prospects, let’s say. Dad was a graduate student in math while he was courting my mother. When he went over to Cambridge for his doctorate, she told him, no doubt at her parents’ prompting, that he should not expect her to wait. He said she might not be waiting for him but he would be waiting for her. And off he went into a cloud of equations. He got his Ph.D. and ended up working at Bletchley Park, the code centre in England, during the war. Anyway, the news reached him that my mother was about to be married to her other suitor, and he sent a telegram. But it didn’t