The Man Who Killed (9 page)

My eyes glazed over. The drug and wine were working me numb. If one places a small amount of cocaine on the tip of the penis it aids reduction of sensation and prolongs coitus. I thought about the filthy Irish hospital that'd nearly killed me and a streetwalker I'd picked up along the bank of the Liffey who'd almost given me a dose. There'd been several weeks where I'd hardly breathed before finally passing my Wassermann test. Would Celeste fail the same? How many had she lain with so far tonight?

“How're you feeling, honey?” solicited Celeste, in her best professional manner.

“Every day in every way I am getting better and better,” said I, and threw my Champagne glass into the fireplace.

She squealed, grabbed a bottle, and fell back in the chaise with me. Her face powder started smearing and I could see traces of cocaine around her nostrils. I put a wine-wetted fingertip to the drug and then placed my finger in her mouth and she looked at me as she suckled at it with her hot mouth and squirming tongue. A professional, indeed. I wanted to steal kisses with Laura again in the open yellow sightseeing trolley headed up the mountain in the spring sunshine. This one wouldn't kiss. I could tell. With wine back in her mouth I asked about it.

“Some do,” she said, swallowing.

“Do you?”

“No.”

“Why not?”

“It's unhygienic.”

BOB AND HIS WHORES staggered out of the room. I wondered what time it was. The lights were low and through the walls I heard a gramophone skipping.

“Pete!” I shouted at Jack across the distance between us, about five feet.

“What's that, Sam?”

“Remember the Wolf?”

“The Wolf,” Jack said, and raised his glass, spilling fluid.

Jack's blonde giggled and drank from a bottle's neck.

“What happened in the woods?” I asked.

“Later,” he said.

“And what about tonight?”

“Worry not, my son.”

“I was going to leave. Take a train.”

“Don't worry about it.”

“No future in this,” I said.

“Not much.”

“What happened to us?” I asked.

“We got old.”

The door burst open. Bob being kicked backwards. The whores screamed. I pushed up from the cushions and woozed to my feet. Three men wearing suits and Mackintoshes forced their way in. Cops? Jack chucked a bottle and plonked the first man square between the eyes. The intruder dropped and his compatriot charged Bob and threw him against a wall. Bob in his shorts, his jacket in one hand, shoes in the other.

“Lousy fucking Frogs!” Bob shouted.

The Mackintosh hit by the bottle lay on the floor. Jack rushed the man pinning Bob to the wallpaper. Jack's whore screamed and pointed: “Dot!”

Celeste looked at the third man in the doorway and her face fell in shock.

“No,” she mouthed.

The third man tensed for his move. I lurched at him and was met by his fist sinking into my gut. Down on my knees, I gasped and grabbed at his ankles, trying to pull him down. He kicked at my head but missed and stumbled onto his back. From behind Jack shoved me through the door. I stepped on my attacker's soft groin and my heel glanced a live throat. Jack kicked and Bob staggered behind, trying to pull his gun from his jacket pocket while juggling his wardrobe.

“My pants...” he gestured.

“Bob, no,” Jack yelled, pushing the gun out of sight. “Go!”

Shouted curses chased us out. We blundered through the foyer and out onto the wet porch, pushing down the steps and trying to run at a pace. I gagged and retched. Jack held me up as we stumbled along. Bob swore.

“Cops?” I wheezed.

“Bob,” Jack growled.

“Those lousy fuckers,” said Bob.

WE ROLLED DOWN the street and turned left at Sherbrooke. Jack still had the money case of silver. My share was safe upon me. After a few blocks we came to the gates of the university and moved just inside the wall under the bare boughs of an oak. I lay in damp leaves, enveloped in the heavy odour of dirt and sweet decay, looking up at faraway stars visible behind breaking clouds above.

“Jesus, Bob. What the hell'd you do to them?”

“They were the ones came after me,” he protested, “just as I was getting started. They called me something and stuck their mitts on one of the girls.”

“Maybe they thought you were someone else,” I said.

“It could have been a divorce set-up gone wrong. Wrong room, wrong party,” Jack said. “Or a lover's quarrel.”

“You need a motion passed in the Senate to get a divorce,” I said, unheeded.

The punch to my stomach had sobered me up properly and still throbbed. I remembered the look on Celeste's face as she saw the third man. It was a lover's quarrel and we'd been caught in the middle, our luck.

“Well, at least they weren't coppers. But what'm I to do without my pants?” asked Bob.

“If anyone asks tell them you're training for the Olympiad,” Jack said.

“Yeah, the hundred yard bum's rush,” I said.

Bob gave me a dirty look.

“Go on home, Bob, and ring me in the morning,” said Jack. “Cut through the grounds here and no one'll see you.”

The pair shook hands with a solemn formality. I was propped up against the tree trunk now and nodded. While Bob hurried away Jack lit a cigaret and jangled the case full of coins.

“How're you feeling?” he asked.

“Better.”

I extended a feeble hand to cadge a drag. Jack looked around.

“Do you miss this place?”

“I wasn't cut out for the healing arts.”

“I'll say. A degree's not worth a damn these days anyhow. Regard this august acreage. Fancies itself a shining beacon. Damn spread's a charnel house just like everywhere else, an Indian graveyard. Look at McGill himself, that Scotch bastard. You won't find the story on the Founder's Elm of how he made his gelt and endowed this pile. You know what it was?”

“No.”

“Black ivory. That's why I don't give a tinker's for the bootlegging. What's that compared to blackbirding across the Middle Passage? A joke. Nowhere near to. It doesn't matter, and that's the secret of our bloody Dominion: money buys respectability. Simple. Whole country's a monument to robber barons. All you have to do is found a library or endow a charity for strays. Yesterday's blackhearted thieves are today's grand old men. Just you watch: the Bronfmans and the Gursky boys will be held up as paragons of rectitude once Prohibition's over. Money's clean the more you have. That's just what I'm after. An honorary doctorate and a dean's dinner. Brandy enough to float you downriver. You wait and see. Where're you staying?”

“I'm between hotels at the moment,” I said.

“Come on, then. I'll whistle you up a cot at my place.”

We travelled along deserted streets, the city sawing logs. No traffic or noise. Jack had rooms at the Mount Royal Hotel.

“Isn't this a mite conspicuous?” I asked as we ghosted down its stately corridors.

“No. It's the same thing. Money buys discretion. I tip the house dick an extra sawbuck and it's as though I was never here. It'll be like that tonight at that knocking shop. The madam'll write us off and the girls will be told to forget. They're probably already with another group of upstanding citizens. Clergymen, say. What would your venerable father be saying about we two now, I wonder?”

“There aren't many passages in the Scriptures dealing with being turfed from a whorehouse,” I said.

“On the seventh day, no less.”

In our youth together Jack and I'd been abjured from turning a hand of a Sunday. It meant no baseball, no newspapers, not even a ride on a buggy or bicycle. Such were the joys of living in the household of a Presbyterian minister. The town had been entirely of my father's temper, with Lord's Day and blue laws that near enough shut Vancouver down 'til start of business Monday morning.

“Ach, lad, I'll not have ye eyeing strumpets at the kinema,” said Jack, in a fair approximation of the Pater's voice.

From a bottle on his dresser he poured me drink. I swallowed a combination of whiskey and thick salt.

“What is this?”

“Mongoose blood.”

“You jest.”

“Not at all.”

He sat on the bed across from me. Inevitably it'd been Jack who'd rebelled and challenged Jehovah. He vanished after lights out one Saturday evening and was not to be seen with the amah and myself in our pew for Sunday service. Instead Jack took his schooling on Skid Road amongst the loggers, Indians, and badmashes.

“Thinking on the time you stopped coming to the kirk,” I said.

“So was I. Won two hundred dollars playing fan tan that morning in a den on Pender.”

“The Pater preached the fourth commandment as his text.”

“Which one's that again?” asked Jack. “Coveting asses?

I laughed and swallowed more of the awful cocktail.

“Let me see your arms,” Jack said I stood, shucked off my coat, and rolled up my sleeves. None of the marks were recent.

“Good. I want to make sure I can rely on you.”

“Are you going to tell me what's going on?”

“In the morning. Get some rest.”

Perhaps Jack's addition to the nightcap was a soporific.
I faded away in my chair in fair imitation of death.

MONDAY

C
OFFEE CUPS CLATTERING on a tray woke me from an erotic reverie. My clothes were wrinkled and wet, a skin ready to be sloughed off. Muscles spasmed across my back, accompanied by a small hang-over. Jack was up and whistling, in the chips again. I had over a thousand dollars now when two days ago I'd been near my last buck. The Webley was on the table next to the coffee. I yawned, stretched, and asked the time.

“Time to call the tune,” Jack said.

“Did you slip me a Mickey Finn?” I asked.

“Now that'd be apt.”

“Chloral hydrate, I mean.”

“I know. Get up, Hippocrates.”

“I need a shave,” I said.

“Surely.”

I yawned again and took some coffee and a cigaret from a box by my chair. Having never made it to any cot I'd slept upright in third-class. Jack kept whistling “Annie Laurie.” I smoked and thought.

“What's next?” I asked.

“You'll see. Get ready.”

Less than an hour later the preliminaries were complete. I'd bathed and scrubbed my teeth with a cloth. Jack loaned me a spare suit and hat, both a mite large. My lips turned numb from bay rum the barber spilled on them. Ether would have been nicer, or morphine, bedamn. We left the Mount Royal and caught a streetcar east, turning northerly up St. Lawrence Main. It was a crisp autumn day, windy and fresh with great armadas of cloud invading the sky, a lively, peppery spice to the air. We stood holding the 'car's straps, jangling along the boulevard.

“See the 'paper there?” Jack nudged.

A wizened gent held a folded section to his face. I managed to make out that Loew's movie house had been robbed last night. Here I was in the news at last. Clip the article and mail it home to the Pater, for joy.

“I was right,” Jack said in my ear. “The Southerner is claiming seven thousand was taken. As though a week of rotten Vaudeville and an old flicker or two could net that much!”

I squinted. “What else does it say?”

“He can't describe the thieves. Proves my point. The man doesn't want us caught. He'd lose four grand from the insurance company and be up on charges himself. You hungry?”

I was and said so. We hopped off near Duluth and went into a Hebrew delicatessen for meat sandwiches, the sausage sticks called nash, and more coffee. Jack used the toilet and met me back outside. On the boulevard an ice cart trundled behind a woebegone nag and kids fooled around in the gutter. Women walked by, resembling Mennonites in their odd poke bonnets. We passed an old Gypsy crone wearing a necklace of gold coins, Franz Joseph thalers. The street whiffed of coalsmoke, piss, horse manure, and burnt toast, that smell often a harbinger of a cerebral stroke. Trepan me with a cranial saw per the dicta of Dr. Osler, my brain simply the enlarged stem of the spinal column. Remove the offending hemisphere.

We walked onto Fletcher's Field past the Grenadiers' redbrick armoury and onto a greensward. Park Avenue and the mountain were ahead, a skeleton scaffold of an unfinished cross stark against the western sky. Before us an angel posed on a column, her arm outstretched to salute us as we crossed the turf.

“So tell me,” I said.

Jack kept walking, hands in pockets, as he explained what happened. He'd gotten out by the skin of his teeth. The competition had been tipped off in advance. Jack was out five thousand dollars for failure to deliver. That was his reasoning behind the comedy at the theatre.