The Man Who Killed (5 page)

We'd been walking down the sidewalk last year, early September, when a shill outside a camera shop snapped a photograph and handed me a card. I'd had no mementos of her. She'd never written me a letter, never compromised herself in any way. What's to compromise? I'd asked, we haven't done anything scandalous. Only ever with extreme reluctance would Laura meet me and only after continued persistence on my part. I didn't see it then, how little she cared. I'd returned to the studio a few days later for the developed print.

In the photograph she wore a silvery sable fur and a cloche hat like Theda Bara. I was in my three-piece suit, since pawned, and spats. She'd turned to the camera with a look of withering contempt, an expression I'd get to know too damn well. By Thanksgiving it was all over between us, such as it'd been. Burned to the ground. As a solace I began my other pursuit at the hospital. Incredible what a mere year wrought. Who was responsible for my fate? I'd thought that I was myself, until I fell in love.

At the bathhouse they issued me a towel and the key for a locker. I undressed, stored the package with the gun, and had the porter send my suit, shirt, and collar next door. In the hot room a burly lazar slept and an old bird peered at a wilted
Police Gazette
through steamed-over spectacles. I sweated out every atom of cordite, cocaine, and booze and then went for a cold plunge. Refreshed, I prepared to leave; my suit came back in decent trim with a note apologizing for not being able to remove tree sap from an elbow. I tipped a quarter in gratitude that there hadn't been any brain or bone in the wash.

SATURDAY NIGHT IN the metropolis. Neon signs came to life on St. Catherine Street, syncopating light and music, red, green, and blue splashing in time with hot jazz from gramophones. I floated along with a suppertime crowd in the direction of Phillips Square. A vendor roasted chestnuts. Morgan's department store was closed. Pigeons landed and shat on the head of the Roi Pacificateur behind me. Taking it as an augury I ambled to the Hotel Edward VII.

Hanging in the lobby was a portrait of the dead Emperor in his admiral's rig.

“Who's that, the Kaiser?” I asked through my nose like a Yankee.

The clerk pulled a face as I forged a signature in the register and forked over a dollar for the night. I went up to the fourth floor and entered a clean, bare room. After the day's efforts some rest was prescribed me. Propped a chair under the door handle, unwrapped the Webley, took off my boots, and stretched out on the bed, the gun at hand. After dozing and mumbling and fading away a sudden fastball struck the pillow next to my face. Hypnic jerk. I started up and rubbed my eyes clear, then went and doused my head in cold water. Quarter to nine by the clock on the dresser; for our King the time at Sandringham was set a half-hour earlier than Greenwich Mean for the pheasant shooting. Jack had said quarter past nine every evening at the Dominion and this was the first night.

By the time I returned to its dirty streets the city was really starting to enjoy itself. Past the railway terminal on Dorchester smoke rose from the wide cut in the earth where trains marshalled below the street, readying themselves to scream north through the tunnel under the mountain. Stopping at an Imperial Tobacconist I bought Juicy Fruit and chewed it, crackling bubbles between my molars. At right was the largest building in the Empire, more massive than St. Paul's or Canterbury Cathedral, the wedding-cake Sun Insurance behemoth. It anchored Dominion Square and had next to it the small tavern where Jack said he'd leave word if anything went wrong. How little he'd known.

I pushed my way into the crowded saloon and stepped up to the bar. Men were jawing politics or sport. Next to me a chap with a tin of Puck at his elbow gobbed tobacco into a spittoon at his feet between freshening gulps of beer, a disgusting choreography. I added chewing gum to the bucket of brown slime, bought a quart of Export, and retired, my back to a wall where I could watch the door. From scarlet faces came shouted scraps of talk.

“Redmen'll top the Argos one-legged this year...”

“Bennett can't make more of a mess of Ottawa than that straw man Meighen...”

“Went to her sister's and won't come to the door when I call...”

“Fired six good men for jack shit...”

The whole panoply of masculine weltschmerz. My problems were deeper and deadlier. I leaned back, drank, and scanned the room, waiting, watching. Next to me an old cove wearing a ratty beard and with a dead wet hand-rolled in his yap mauled a 'paper. So as not to be too noticeably alone I offered him a Buckingham.

“Thanks, sonny.”

He was thumbing the sports pages so I chose that as a topic.

“Looks like the Canucks are trying to buy a championship this year,” I said.

The cove turned to me and I continued: “Too bad about Vezina dying. Least they've got Howie Morenz, for starters.”

He put down his 'paper.

“I don't care who wins as long as it ain't them blasted

Ma-roons,” said the old goat.

“I hear you. Had money on the Cougars to win last year. Now look where they are. Sold them all off to Detroit.”

“Is that so? So you're not from around here?”

“No. Western League. Good teams there. Seattle Mets. The old Millionaires were my club.”

“I was a St. Pats man myself,” the old man said.

Already I regretted my decision to palaver. Relief suddenly arrived in the form of a familiar figure coming through the door. My heart leapt for an absurd instant, but it wasn't Jack. Brown, the little Customs man. He was living up to his name with a brown hat, brown suit and brown bowtie, carrying a furled umbrella and wearing a sticking plaster on his cheek where Jack had laid him open. This was not a chance entrance.

Brown went up to the barman and asked him a question. The 'tender shook his head. I was with child to know what was asked. Brown took out a small change purse, picked inside it for a coin, and paid for a bock. He looked around and for an uncomfortable moment I thought he recognized me. Couldn't be, as I'd been behind him when he had his little colloquy with Jack in the alley. I shammed some more with the bore.

“You're not from here if the Pats are your team,” I said.

“No sir, I'm up from Toronto to visit my daughter Dorothy. She's a typewriter at the O'Sullivan school.”

Brown finished his beer and left. I excused myself from the fascinating repartee and made a beeline to the bar. I put down a half-dollar.

“That fellow ask after anyone?” I asked the barkeep.

He took the coin and answered: “Yeah. A Godfrey.”

“Godfrey?”

“Yeah.”

“Any message for Sam from Pete?”

“Nope. None I know.”

Snookered. Jack hadn't been here. I hurried out after Brown to see where he went. He was crossing the square in the direction of the Windsor Hotel. Jack must be using the Dominion as his letter drop. Shades of Junius and the coffee shops in the days of George III. Brown hadn't received a message and neither had I. The little man quick-stepped it to Cypress and I followed, stalking in darkness. At first it looked as though he was headed for the Metropolitan newsstand but he turned into the doorway of a forbidding building. With entree to that particular address I learned the Scotsman's vice. Not drink, as his purchase at the saloon had made clear. The building he'd gone into was a gambler's hell, specializing in barbotte and chemin de fer. He'd be throwing the dice all night. As it was a private club I abandoned my pursuit. Unlike Jack I detested games of chance. My tastes were other. Nonetheless, I now knew how Jack and the bootleggers owned Brown. They'd probably bought up his debts. Did Brown know anything about the debacle in the woods? Had he been the one who tipped off the enemy? I had questions, but I didn't half like the idea of being noticed skulking about. Besides, I was wrung out with the day's events. I resolved to wait it out and try the Dominion again tomorrow.

Back in my hotel's lobby the bored porter sat reading Oscar Wilde. I went up to my room and listened in the hallway before carefully opening the door, diagnosing myself with tachycardia, tenth occurrence of the day. The room was empty and very gradually my heartbeat slowed to normal again. I put the revolver under my pillow after checking the sturdy lock on the door, propping a chair once more under the knob. Nervous exhaustion kept me twitching in the bed for a spell. A flooding taste of caramel filled my mouth while my floating mind went through the procedure of preparing a shot of morphine, the precise and sinister ritual. Presently I faded away to the sounds of bawdy shouting and the snatches of drunken song, wood breaking, mirrors smashing, and the city tearing itself apart.

SUNDAY

P
EALS FROM EVERY spire around downtown roused me. What had Mark Twain said about this city? Couldn't throw a rock
without hitting a church window. Morning bells are ringing. Sonnez les matines. Are you sleeping, Brother Jack, or mouldering in a shallow grave? Knowing him, Jack had slipped out from under and was in the arms of a tender dollymop. French church bells sounded different: ding dang
donc.
The two hanging and ringing in Notre-Dame down at Place d'Armes were named after Victoria and Albert. Dong.

Outside was grey again, threatening rain. I put myself to rights and whistled downstairs, tossing my key to a new pimp at the desk. Hung-over wet-haired American businessmen booked out after weekend benders. Bought the 'paper off a boy outside and determined to eat at Windsor Station Grill, checking the scheduled departures just in case. The station was near my old digs. Beyond pulling up a pew there wasn't much doing of a Sunday morning.

My landlady would herself be kneeling with the Paddies at St. Patrick's right about now. I could chance ducking back into the rooming house for my remaining effects. I decided to risk it and so hiked over to Stanley and a file of nondescript row houses. I climbed the steps of the third from the end and tried the latch. It gave. I slipped in. The stand-up clock in the foyer ticked but its hands never moved, a distillation of the state of affairs at Miss Milligan's. As there was no one stirring I took the stairs two at a time to my room. Someone had been in it, the bitch rummaging after I'd failed to show two nights running. I filled my Gladstone with books and linen, grabbed my overcoat and gloves, and was back outside in no time flat.

I took my bag to the station and ate ham and eggs at the grill. The morning
Gazette
had nothing on Friday night's fracas in the woods. This only confirmed my fears. To distract myself I thumbed through the classified notices looking for a cheap room that didn't require references. Seeking quiet Christian gentleman, call UPtown 283, one week includes board and bedding. Sighing, I lit a cigaret. If there existed any toil more tedious than searching out lodgings I didn't know it. How many times had I moved in the last year, ahead of the duns? Verily, it was a science unto itself, choosing the choice moment to slip cable. And so here I was back to the round of 'phone booths, wasted nickels, shoe leather burned, lies told to suspicious landlords. Still, it might be worse. At least I wasn't looking for work.

The best prospect of rooms to let was in lower Westmount, or perhaps I could go native on the east side amongst the Frogs. There I'd stick out, a square-headed peg amongst the peasantry. No, I wanted to remain near the train stations and the river. It was far too easy to get trapped on this island in the St. Lawrence.

The concourse at Windsor was crowded and noisy. I noticed no police presence save a sole bobby pacing along with his hands behind his back, nodding pleasantly at unattended women. On the board I considered prospective destinations, all uninviting: Ottawa, Kingston, Niagara Falls. I should head over to Bonaventure Station to locomotive south. Winter was coming. The Florida land boom had busted and I could tend the greens of a golf course rotting away into mangrove swamps and live off alligator meat, oranges, and malaria. Sail away to Havana and die. Too much to ask for on a mere hundred dollars. No, ninety-seven now. How much would be enough? Have to see.

I walked over to the waiting room. Inside, tramps warmed their feet at the stove, smoking sweeps from the floor. It was overhot and brutally close, so I turned around and checked my bag for the price of a dime. Exiting the station I nodded at the bronze Lord Mount Stephen, a statue everyone mistook for King George. It was the beard. This was George Stephen, father of the railroad west. He'd started his rise at a haberdasher's back in Edinburgh, picking a pin up off the floor and tucking it behind his lapel for use later, impressing the bosses with his perfect thrift. From there to the Bank of Montreal and the CPR and now he was dead, his mansion converted into a private club for those who couldn't cut the mustard with the reviewing board of the Mount Royal or St. James. You couldn't turn around in this town without tripping over a striving clerk from the Old Country made nabob and knight in the New. The earthly paradise was a reading room where one could snooze over three-day-old copies of the
Times
in an overstuffed chair.

As if to illustrate my point St. George's across the street disgorged its parishioners. Out came barons who'd traded the kirk for a well-carved Anglican pew. I saw Sir Rupert Irons, Holt, a few Molsons, and that fat bastard Huntley McQueen shaking hands with the reverend. Today's sermon had no doubt been on how the rich could enter heaven by forging a needle out of Ontario steel large enough for a dromedary camel to stroll on through. These were the men to do it, our captains of industry, plutocrats in the Commonwealth's service. Inside the church a plaque commemorated an Irishman killed in Quetta, India, due to a mishap playing polo, fondly remembered by his regiment here in Montreal. There was Empire for you, binding soldiers, financiers, priests, politicians, aristocrats, and its discontents. Myself.