Читать книгу The Man Who Killed - Fraser Nixon - Страница 7
ОглавлениеJACK WAS LATE. The silver hunter my father had given me was gone, pawned for fifty dollars a fortnight past, but the clock by the river read half past six. I fished into an inside coat pocket for my cigaret case, the next to go for the needful. Inside were three Forest and Streams. With a sparked vesta I lit one, smoked, waited, cursed Jack and his ways. A rat slouched along the stone walls by the pier. Porters sweated by. Stevedores pulled barrels down from loading cranes and trundled them about. River gulls circled and screamed over the septic stink. Ranked grain elevators nearly hid the tower clock; five more minutes passed. Five more after that’d be forty minutes I’d waited. Goddammit. With an invisible .22 I drew a bead on the rat’s head. Vermin were loaded with bacilli. No clean things around the harbour. My fingers dropped the smouldering fag end, adding it to the general filth. To my left a long freight train ground by, vomiting black coalsmoke from a bent funnel, the engine’s whistle howling agony. Automobiles in low gear whined and sounded their horns at slow horses straining at harness, dragging wagonloads uphill over cobblestones. Second-to-last cigaret. Let the matchwood burn to the quick and crush the charcoal under my boot. This is who I am. The sole still figure in the moil.
Jack had somehow found me at my digs. He’d left a telephone message with my bitch of a landlady. Whilst forking it over she’d given me the fish eye. I’d been skipping her revolting meals and walking the streets all hours, boring myself to death in the reading room of the Mechanics’ library, sneaking in after curfew only to slip back out before dawn. I was two weeks late on rent. Grudgingly she’d handed me Jack’s imperative only after I parted with my last ten dollars. She smelled money in his command, and the old baggage was probably correct. Jack always had the stuff or the wherewithal to get more. I counted on him.
Eastwards and directly towards me a steamer bore down, passing between the high cement uprights of the harbour bridge being built there by ants. Looked like an Empress, first link in the All-Red Route, Southampton–Montreal. Filled, no doubt, with brainless debutantes returning from the season in London and presentation at court. Lucky girls were rogered by dukes in leafy bowers on spreading estates, the unfortunate given pitying notices in the society pages of the Star and wed off to dull bankers with patent-leather hair parted down the middle. The whole class was in thrall to our ostensible betters, the English. British garrisons had marched nearby on the Champ-de-Mars under the banner of St. George in golden days of yore. Even now the Union Jack did wave above us. Jack, damnation. Where the hell could he be? A Red Ensign flew at the ship’s stern as she loomed closer. The Empress of Scotland, red chequerboard flag of the Canadian Pacific at her bridge. She drew alongside an enormous cold storage warehouse, a building filled with thousands of frozen carcasses of good Canadian meat ready to be shipped south and butchered in New York City, say, chewed over at Delmonico’s or some lousy speakeasy, mixed with rotgut and shat out through pipes into the Hudson, or the East. I toed a coil of ship’s rope and set flies buzzing. The sun was near gone now. Soon I’d turn around and return to the heart of the city I’d grown to hate worse than poison. As a rat slid into the river I picked it off between dead eyes. Had never shot a Siwash or a Hun. Draw the bolt and eject the spent cartridge. Smell burnt gunpowder.
And there: Jack. He was talking to a monkey in a gold-frogged velvet uniform down the end of the quay. Jack looked spruce as hell and wore a grey topcoat over a pearl-grey suit, hat pushed to the back of his head, hands in pockets, and an odd white stick in the crook of his arm. He said something and the monkey laughed. The pair looked up as the massive Empress drew by. Final rays of the setting sun shone off her spanking brasswork. Happy sailors waved to lubbers ashore. It seemed as though a horla looked at me from the crowd as the ship’s whistle sang out. I spied Jack handing the monkey something as they parted ways. He turned to see me standing in the corner underneath a rusted green plaque. Jack sauntered over, smiling. Inwise I seethed. He raised his chin and spoke.
“Nei hao ma, Mick.”
“Geih ho.”
“You done look tore up now, lad.”
“I give a damn.”
“Faith be, son.”
There was that look in his eye I’d seen so often. A sort of secret amusement. I did as I always do: played mute and waited. All the something in the world.
“I owe you a drink,” he said.
“If you say.”
“And a square meal. Care for a stroll?”
“On the level?”
“Patience,” Jack said.
We crossed the train tracks and climbed up into the Old Town, turning left towards the market square. The last carts from the south side of the river were packing up for their slow Friday night return. The farmers’ beasts champed, flicking their tails at bluebottles swarming around slick cobbles. Pigeons strutted through horseshit. Vendors hawked their wares in rotten country French. I saw October pumpkins, apples, squashes. It was end of season. What wasn’t sold would be fed to the pigs. Jack selected an apple from a cart and dropped a sou into a habitant’s outstretched hand.
We kept walking and came to the pillar topped by its statue standing across from the Hôtel de Ville, Nelson with his back turned to the river. Two old ladies in black stood at the column’s base under the stone crocodile of the Nile, gumming at dark round fruits they pulled from a waxpaper bag.
“Like in that book,” Jack said. “Ever read it? What’d they call Nelson? ‘The one-handed adulterer,’ I think. Have to love the Limeys’ gall, sticking the man smack plumb in the bosom of his foes. Come to it, this lot here’re all Bourbons at heart and never fell in with the Revolution and Boney. Still, I’m surprised they haven’t stuck a bomb beneath Lord him, send him kingdom come.”
“Here or in Dublin.”
Jack eyed me slantwise. We carried on along Notre-Dame. He tapped his stick upon the stones as I matched his pace. Jack paused at a corner. “Listen, I have a rendezvous.”
“Congratulations.”
“Not like that. Something else, something delicate. I dug you up because you’ve always been game, man. Might need your help. Your eyes and your hands. Are you in?”
He waited, gauging the effect of his words.
Let the traffic signal change before you answer. Stop.
Go. And so I did. Betimes I reached into my pocket for my case, opened it, and offered Jack my last smoke. Our eyes met and Jack laughed aloud. We shook hands, like back when we were boys. Some caper, this. He pulled out his own rectangle of metal and showed me a row of clean white machine-rolleds.
“Gaspers?” I asked.
“No, Turk.”
“Thanks,” I said, selecting one.
Jack set fire to the cigaret with what I took to be a platinum lighter and I inhaled a grateful lungful deeply.
“So what is it?” I asked.
“A very small fry, but one liable to scoot. Want you to bottle up his retreat if he does. Should be quiet.”
He shrugged and raised his stick to rest on his shoulder. Dug me up was right. Some dirty work, with the chance of trouble. What was in it for me? My stomach made the decision. Jack would stand drinks and a meal. In my present state that was enough. I nodded assent and together we went along St. James between its gauntlet of grey banks, closed and frowning down at us, hoarding the Dominion’s wealth. Here were the temples of our race: the Royal, the Imperial, the Dominion, the Bank of Montreal. Before us sat Molson’s Bank, where one could withdraw ale scrip from the wicket and spend it on the selfsame bloody beer in a tavern down the street. We passed beneath their dour allegorical finery: gold-trimmed coats of arms, an engraved caduceus of Mercury the patron of thieves, granite Indians. Jack slowed and motioned to an alley.
“Our man’s down there,” he said.
I spied a dark shape waiting.
“I’ll circle ’round. Wait here and watch. If there’s a rumble back me up. Worse comes to worst, take a hike. You know the drill.”
“Fallback?” I asked.
“The Ritz,” he said, disappearing in the gloom.
Couldn’t tell if he was joking or no. I peered about. The street was quiet, suppertime for most. My eyes adjusted. I made out the figure of the stranger as it resolved in low light. He was a small slim man with a spare moustache, nervous-seeming. He wore a bowler, a bowtie, and clutched a furled umbrella though it hadn’t rained in a week. Cocking my ears for any footfall I heard metal tapping, and then Jack’s voice.
“Brown.”
There Jack was, legs akimbo, hands on his stick planted between the bricks.
“Aye,” said the man.
“No one’s very happy with you. My lords and masters least of all. You know to do as you’re told.” Spoken calmly, the faintest mocking lilt to his voice.
Brown spluttered to life. “Now look here ye manky bastard, you canna talk to me like that.”
“Your slip’s showing.”
“You’ve no bloody right to speak to me like this way.”
“We own you Brown, and no mistake.”
“You own me? Is that so? I’m an agent of the Crown, ye bloody weskit.”
“Aye, but ye take the King’s coin, ye soldier for tha’ King.”
“Pah. You canna make me do a Goddamned thing, you Goddamned guttersnipe.”
Here Jack’s stick flashed an arc up and Brown went down, clutching at his face, letting out a shriek. Jack pushed him from the alley wall to the ground and onto his back. He put his foot on Brown’s chest and placed the tip of his stick near the man’s aorta. Anatomy, simple.
“Listen close,” he said. “Chicago bought you and your waistcoat, and you’ll do as you’re told. Happily. Tonight. In for a penny, in for a fucking pound.”
Jack stepped off Brown and pulled out a wad of banknotes. He peeled off and dropped a flutter of bills over the now silent, cringing form. The little man was frozen, his hands protecting his phiz.
“My advice, Brown? Keep that dirty trap of yours shut, respect your elders in the kirk, and tie your bootlaces.”
This was not an especially encouraging turn of events. My hackles rose and I looked around for an eyewitness. No one. Brown keened in his pain. Ugly. Watch your step, boyo. My mouth spat aluminum-tasting saliva out onto the alley wall.
Jack came to me where I waited at the entry. He took a handkerchief from his sleeve and carefully wiped blood off the shaft of his stick. Done, he dropped the rag on the sidewalk. Was I terribly shocked by what had happened? Life had thus far shown me much worse. Together we went west.
“Let’s grab a ’cab,” he said.
St. James opened up at Victoria Square and at the foot of Beaver Hall Hill Jack whistled a motor-taxi over. We climbed in and Jack directed the driver to wheel us to the Derby. He whistled an old-fashioned tune as we rode, “The Man Who Broke the Bank at Monte Carlo.”
“Who was he?” I asked.
“A useful useless man,” said Jack. “He’s been trying to spit out his hook.”
“Scotch,” I said.
“No kidding.”
“No, here.”
My very last chattel. From its secret place I took out a flask of blood-warmed liquor and offered it to Jack. He took a pull and made a face.
“Christ in heaven. You must be broke.”
“And how. One question.”
“Shoot, lad.”
“What’s that, your stick?”
“Ah.”
His eyes lit as he stroked it.
“Shark’s spine.”
AT THE RESTAURANT Jack paid the ’cabman and we got out. For a moment I worried about my mien. My suit was starting to shine at knee and elbow. I’d left my overcoat at my digs as a sort of hostage. Quickly I checked my fingernails and brushed my front, then tightened my necktie. To hell with it. Set your hat straight and march on in. Do as Jack does. At the door they straightaway took our toppers and Jack’s damned stick. The maître d’ led us to a lowlit booth of deep brown leather. We sank in.
“Peckish?” asked Jack.
My salivary glands winced at the aroma of good food.
“Like that Russian’s dog,” I said, and let out a strange unbidden laugh.
Jack gave me the once-over.
“Here.”
He offered me his fancy case. I read Rameses II in blue ink on the oval cigaret I removed. Jack lit his own in the heat of a little oil lamp on the table. Convection. He hated wasting a match, I knew. The drinks steward came ’round.
“Claret,” said Jack.
We settled in and smoked and looked at what was offered in the table d’hôte. A waiter minced by.
“Oysters,” Jack said, looking at me. “For starters.”
I shrugged.
“A clear soup, some cucumber, the roast beef with new potatoes, a celery, then the cheese and the rest. Sound good?”
I nodded. Wine soon appeared. The steward poured and Jack raised his glass. I looked through the ruby fluid to the flame.
“Your wealth and hell-being.”
We drank. A cart rolled by bearing a silver salver. I caught my distorted reflection in the metal, dark and sour. Compare and contrast with Jack. He was hale, full of vim and vigour. Jack ran a large hand over his carefully combed red hair. My next question formed itself.
“How’d you find me?”
Smiling, Jack exhaled plumes of smoke out his nose thirls. The answer poured over me like cold water. Only one person on this earth.
“Laura,” I breathed.
Jack raised his eyebrows. The oysters were set down.
“A good thing it was too,” went Jack. “You’re off the reservation. Tried the school, Smiler and the rest. Thought you might’ve skipped town.”
“I’m out.”
“How long?”
“Since the end of last term.”
“Smiler suspected as much,” Jack said. “What’s this place you’re staying now?”
“Rooming house. What is it Leacock says? ‘All rooming houses are the same rooming house.’ He’s right, as always.”
“Ran into him on campus as well,” said Jack. “You tell your old man yet?”
“No point.”
“And Laura?”
“Don’t ask. Where’d you see her?”
“Dance out at Victoria Hall. Pure chance. She was being squired about by some local likely. Stole her and took her for a spin or two myself.”
This wasn’t news I liked the sound of. Jack’s manner was bland and still. I knew better than to ask him anything, mostly because I didn’t want to know. Ever thus he played the amused monarch, nature’s aristocrat. As evidenced by the beaten man he’d left behind, power over others was Jack’s meat. Try not to let suspicion eat at you. Say something.
“Doesn’t matter now. She won’t have a thing to do with me.”
Jack smiled again, but did I detect contempt in his eyes? I toyed with a glass.
“So why’d you stay in town?” he asked. “Hike down to Hogtown or head back home. I would.”
“To face down the Pater? No thank you. Besides, I’m skint. And there’s something else.”
“You’re hung up on her. I understand. But where in the hell’ve you been since April? Could have used you before now.”
“It’s a fine question and I’ll ask you the same.”
“Ah,” Jack said. “There you go.”
A pause while we drank. Funny how quickly we returned to the shorthand of youth, a Pitman’s of our upbringing. At length I said: “I went to ground. Her people summer down in New England somewhere so I got a shack at Memphremagog and sweated it out.”
“Did the school push you or did you jump?” asked Jack.
“Both.”
“What was it?
Here I took a drink and lit another of Jack’s cigarets. He watched me. My hand remained steady. I breathed out slowly and told some of the truth. I’d been stealing morphine, mostly, from the hospital dispensary. They were never able to nab me outright but had come close. It was that and my grades. In the end I’d held a trump card and between the board of governors and myself was forged an understanding. I’d ducked a censure or quodding, but there’d be no medical degree for myself from McGill, and that was a fact everlasting.
There, I’d said it. It’d been bottled up long enough, and the confession was a relief, in its way. I drank more wine.
“How much did you pocket?” asked Jack after a spell.
“More than enough for me and to sell. You’d be tickled to hear my clientele. A few real hyas muckamucks. Some Chinamen from time to time. When I lost my entree I had to shift gears. It was none for them, then after awhile none for me. I had enough saved up for the shack by the lake. Read my Tacitus and had my fishing rod and thought I’d wait for her to come back in September to try again.”
“She’ll never marry you,” Jack said.
“I know.”
To counter the rising bile I swallowed more wine. Rancour. Jack squeezed lemon juice over wet bivalves. It was far better not to speculate on what you cannot control. That woman, the ache of my heart. Instead observe your present surroundings. Looming above were dark heavy beams bisecting white plaster. It was all cod-Tudor and pretense at the Derby, Old Blighty transplanted to the colonies. Best roast beef to be had, however.
“Look at this place,” I said. “Do you know what it reminds me of?”
Jack tipped an oyster into his mouth.
“Remember the Royal Ensign? Seventeen Mile House on the Island?” I asked.
Jack peered about.
“You’re right,” he said. “When was that now?”
“Boat race weekend it must have been. Why else would we have gone over? Six, seven years ago. Swiftsure.”
“We had bathtub gin with those two doozies, what were their names...”
“Elizabeth and Rebecca,” I said.
“Then borrowed Billy’s Ford and the keys to his pa’s cabin.”
“That cabin. Quel bordel,” I said.
“They got sick on the booze. You broke the gramophone.”
“You chopped down a totem pole in Sooke Harbour,” I countered.
Jack put his hand to his face in mock shame. “Ye gods.”
“Timber!”
My elbow was on the spread cloth and I let my forearm fall. When my hand hit the tabletop it rattled the oyster shells on the plate. Heads turned: old buffers with mottled faces. I chewed over a bland smile. Seventeen Mile House was far out on the road to Sooke, western Vancouver Island. The shores of the Pacific, our home at the edge of the world. They’d been good times together, years ago now, fresh back from the war.
“Liz and Becky. You burned their knickers in the stove, didn’t you? Wonder where they are now,” I said.
“Probably knitting booties,” said Jack.
“Those were the days.”
“And look at us now,” he went.
We were back in the past for just a moment, until the soup came. We spooned it up. More wine. At last the meat arrived, good and rare and red. Spuds, celery as requested, squab and cress. Warmth coursed through me. A plate cleaned in steady, animal hunger, at last I leaned back, replete, and listened to other diners chewing. Heavy sterling fork tines squeaked on china. Gustatory grunts, a cork popping, a woman’s laughter, the human hum of conversation and pleasure eased by money. Dark-suited men and gowned ladies gestured as waiters passed to and fro. Jack pushed his plate away and lit another cigaret. He demanded coffee of a flunky. As an aside to me he said: “Pass me your flask when it comes. For the trou normand. Bloody law, wine but no spirits.”
“Break it then,” I said.
Jack shot me a look.
“Knew that you were my man. If only you’d been around for the election last spring. That would’ve been something.”
“So what is it now?”
“Guess.”
“You said Chicago.”
“You heard right.”
“And Brown, who’s he when he’s at home?” I asked.
“Brown is a wee man who needed the fear of God put back in him. He’s the worst kind of Caledonian, stubborn as a mule, but amenable to our ends.”
“And those are?”
“I’ll respect your intelligence and assume you’ve figured it out.”
“Booze.”
“On the money.”
“The monkey at the quay,” I said.
Jack laid out the rudiments. Rich wets down south don’t like to drink piss. Leave the furniture polish for the punters. They wanted the real McCoy. The good stuff was supercargo shipped straight out of Glasgow or Liverpool as ballast or coal or what-have-you into Montreal, port of call. The monkey took care of the crew when they made land, and Jack indemnified the harbourmaster when the ship came in, as it did today. Brown was paid to look away and not make a peep.
“He’s Customs?” I asked.
“Correct. We’ve exploited his vice, but a little reminder is always in order for that type. He’s a weakling and a physical coward. In any event, tonight’s the night, hence your presence.”
“What are you, exactly?” I asked.
“You could say I’m an intermediary and guide over international frontiers. I truly could use your help. I want you to have a piece, for old times’ sake. This is the real work.”
“Repayment for your largesse?” I asked, gesturing to the dirty plates.
“No, not a favour. A job.”
He reached into his billfold and took out five twenties.
“For your time and trouble. There’ll be more tomorrow, on the other side.”
Jack placed the money on the table and covered it with a serviette. I had perhaps a buck fifty in change in my trouser pocket. These days it was two bits for twenty-five cigarets. I now had a full stomach and a head of wine and no other prospects on the good green earth. Here was something. Crime.
One of Jack’s salient qualities was his ability to make things happen. His talent was luck. My strengths, if any, were far different. This was the world, here, now. Living wasn’t to be found in the past with a woman who didn’t love me, a lost profession, the calumny of enemies. I’d tried to be respectable, to be righteous. Jack had taken another path and seemed to have thrived. I asked myself, having come this far, and with my back to the wall, what had I to lose? Jack held my gaze as I took the money, then poured hooch from my flask into his java. I tucked the notes away.
“Tonight,” I repeated.
“Finish your coffee.”
I did. The bill came and Jack paid up. We rose and while exiting were smiled at by the pretty coat-check girl. Jack winked, tipped her two dollars. Her eyes to him and then to me, a shadow from his lustre. Back out on the street it was now cold, autumn-grim, and I eyed Jack’s warm topcoat enviously.
“Where to?” I asked.
“Griffintown.”
A WIND WAS rising as we picked our way through the slum, a maze of dirty brick tenements filled with quarrelling Hibernians and their squalling brats, as per the Pope’s orders. Go forth and multiply, ye sons of Erin. Factories crowded by millworks and stables. There hung throughout a pall of brown coalsmoke and river stink, worse than St. Lawrence Main to the east. In Griffintown you had your shanty Irish landed from Cork and environs; the Main, by comparison, swarmed with Chosen from their own Pale of Settlement on the Ural Steppes. Both peoples crossed the water by way of an exodus, running either from the Famine and Major Boycott or the Tsar and his Cossacks to be jammed hugger-mugger in warrens and fresh misery. Micks and Kikes a pair of lost tribes here in the New World, same as the old one. Meanwhile stray cats loped down alleyways and skinny vicious curs growled at silent rats.
Corner hawks loitered and sized up we two strolling pushovers. Jack’s easy carriage, boxer’s build, and damn-your-eyes air bought us a pass, despite his Beau Brummell attire. I balled fists in my pockets and thought of my fresh hundred-dollar stake. They’d roll you for a piece of string down this way. Jack whistled a song I couldn’t place. We were now near Wellington. A pair of drunks on a stoop fought over a bottle. Dark figures in recessed doorways grunted, copulating. I shuddered as dwarf streetlamps sputtered. Jack pushed open a door into a tavern. Smoke hung from the ceiling down to my celluloid collar. We were steadily watched by whiskered, simian faces as Jack made his way to a table near a smeared, greasy window. He jerked his head past the topers, their paws curled around quart bottles, and I went to the bar for two of Black Horse, two dimes all told, thank you very much. Back at the table Jack sat and watched an entranceway across the street.
“Looks clean,” he said. “Shall we?”
We took our untouched, corked bottles with us out again and across the road to a beat-up pile of dreary lodgings. Indoors was the smell of wet woollens left too long on the stove, stewed cabbage, damp, mould, cruelty, and mice. Jack led up three flights of stairs. I heard muffled curses behind one door, someone sobbing piteously behind another.
On the topmost landing Jack took out an almost comically oversized key, like something out of a Vaudeville sketch, and used it to open a giant padlock on a numberless door. The security seemed needless. There was no electricity in the room, which was lit only by the pale glow from without. It was furnished with a chair, a basin on a dresser, an iron bedframe with sagging mattress, an ancient wardrobe, and a view out the window to the tavern we’d just been in. Jack took a long suspicious gander at the street below. Satisfied, he drew the curtain, lit a candle, and set it on the floor behind an accordion shade.
“Never too careful.”
I took the chair. Jack removed his coat despite the cold. I put my hat on my knee. Jack passed me a corkscrew to open the bottles. We hoisted silently and drank. There was a framed picture on the wall depicting a saint. Jack took it down and laid it on the dresser face-up. Then he pulled a small glass vial from his pocket and yanked a rubber stopper from its neck with his teeth. From it Jack poured white powder onto the glass, over a print of St. Veronica with her mouchoir. I got that old anxious feeling, a roiling loosening of my bowels. Cocaine was near enough morphine in the pharmacopoeia to evoke a buried desire.
“We’ve a long night ahead of us,” Jack said. “Need some pep. How’s that sound?”
“Nerve food, sure.”
“Chock full of vitamins.”
He used a short tube to sniff some of the cocaine and passed the whole works to me. I took a noseful, tasted metal at the back of my throat, and touched the source of the flavour with my tongue. I drank some beer to wash it away. Jack offered a cigaret and we smoked.
“It’s like this,” he said. “Three trucks along the canal at midnight. Three drivers. I’m riding with the first, you with the last. Had another chap lined up but he’s out sick, or so he says. Yankee I know. So it’s just the two of us. Should be three at least but there’s nothing I can do. We drive to a safe crossing near Indian land. You and I stick with the trucks all the way to just outside Plattsburgh. It’s a long way ’round and not normally how things are done but everyone’s shorthanded so this is how it has to be. I’ve got us a room at the Republic. Tomorrow we come back on the noon train. Do you have papers?”
“Militia. My library card.”
Jack laughed. “Good.”
He got up and went to the wardrobe, opened it and took out a hatbox.
“Artillery,” he said.
He put the box on the bed and lifted out two revolvers and a case of shells. Now I saw why the ridiculous lock was on the door. Jack handed over a Webley Mark IV. It’d been awhile since I’d handled one. I hefted it, broke it open, spun the cylinder, and looked down the barrel.
“Where’s the head?”
“Down the hall,” Jack said. “I’m going to change.”
He took a dark coat out of the wardrobe. With composure, I retreated and groped along an unlit passageway to the W.C. with knees no worse from quaking. Firearms. Revolvers are tools built for use. Pick one up and carry it around and you will pull its trigger, sure as shooting.
Carefully I micturated in the filthy lavatory without touching the surroundings. My fastidious medical training had augmented and grounded an abhorrence of uncleanliness; my sterile urine was probably the cleanest substance in the room.
I returned to find Jack knotting a new tie. While he whistled I loaded the Webley and sat down. We drank more ale, smoked tobacco, and let the world burn itself out. My mind sharpened to a whetted blade with clarity and insight. Previously unrecognized associations aligned themselves into an organized pattern. The potential danger ahead was evaluated and rationalized. I felt excitement at action after such sloth. The empty summer gone, autumn quickening. I wasn’t going to leave on a train, not yet. This city, this city which had harried me from den to den, scoured by hounds, this city would see me turn and rue its hunt. I’d show my teeth. Money would lend an ease, command. Laura. I will have her, or no one will. I picked up the weapon while Jack hummed that tune and loaded his. What was the song? He checked his wristwatch and snapped his fingers.
“Time.”
WE PREPARED OURSELVES. Another sniff of the powder. My gun in my belt for now, under my suitcoat. Out and downstairs, back on the pavement, and over to the canal.
“If we’re separated,” Jack said, “try the bar at the Dominion quarter past nine every night for a week. I’ll either be there or I’ll leave you a message. I’m Pete, you’re Sam. No soap after a week, well...”
“Nothing to fear. This is good. Thanks, Jack.”
I meant it. Once again he’d dropped out of the sky and got me moving.
“You bet. Here they come.”
Jack shone an electric torch on and off thrice. Headlamps coming towards us along the slough dipped the same number of times. Our convoy. The lead truck slowed. Jack motioned me to the tail. We shook hands.
“See you at the Hotel Republic.” he said.
“Live free or die,” I went.
I climbed into the cab of the third truck. The driver was a big brute, unwashed and unshaven.
“Evening.”
He grunted.
A freight pulled by as we set off. One of the boxcars had Santa Fe–Pacific stencilled on its side, a long way from home. I cracked my knuckles, a bad habit ill-befitting any prospective surgeon. Number it amongst the traits ensuring my unsuitability for a reputable profession. Our truck pulled ahead of the engine and we parallelled it on Commissioners. The driver shifted up, accelerated, shifted again, braked a little. The truck swayed. We turned away from the westbound train.
Later, crossing the river, I saw the village of St. Lambert lit up on the left. After it, heading south, darkness grew, with fewer lights, then none. One or two hardy motorists shared the road at this quiet hour. The convoy had scattered. Half an hour or so passed, then more. I saw an empty police ’car at a crossroads in the middle of nowhere with its headlamps on and doors open. I exchanged looks with the driver and unbuttoned my coat to reveal the gun handle.
Too late I realized I had nothing to smoke and gritted my teeth. The drug had me fast and slow. We drove. Eventually I crossed my arms and closed my eyes. Over the motor I imagined hearing bottles chiming together back and forth in the payload. Glasses clinked. There was the pop of a cork from a bottle of Champagne. A band played “The Japanese Sandman.” Laura toyed with white pearls around her milk-white throat. She was ginger-haired like Jack, but green-eyed to his blue. Redheads have a natural antipathy; you never see them together at the altar. Isn’t that so? Laura’s gloved hands, her black gown, her emerald eyes in candlelight, auburn hair piled up in rings. She laughed at some stupid witticism of mine. The dancers turned on the parquet slowly, underwater. A drumbeat. The truck hit a pothole and jolted me out of my reverie. Some time had passed; it was difficult to reckon how much and no sign of the moon.
We were driving along a dirt side road and spotted our two trucks waiting ahead. They started up and turned right onto a rutted track leading into the woods. The driver pulled out a cigaret packet and passed one to me in either the Christian spirit or one of criminal solidarity. The brand was Taxi: “Smoked in Drawing Rooms and Clubs,” yes, and in bootleggers’ trucks. The tires rolled along the grooves in the dry ground, no lamps shining. Our train moved along in the dark by feel. My eyes were staring wide but all I saw were orange coals reflected in the windscreen. I opened my window and chucked the stub out. There was the smell of slack water, pine, night. We inched along in low gear. My hand moved to the revolver handle and I gripped it, palm slick with sweat.
The driver muttered: “Contresaintciboire.” Three blind mice. See how we run. A firecracker went off, a sudden stark light. We slammed into the truck ahead of us. More firecrackers. No. Shots. Headlamps from the woods ahead, beside, behind us. Ambush. Shouts. My hand pulled at the door release. The gun stuck in my belt. The driver tried to reverse. A crack. The windscreen shattered. Another retort, then it was Chinese New Year. My door opened and I fell out of the cab as the driver’s head exploded red in the alien light. I landed and rolled into a ditch, frantically pulling the weapon free. More shouting in English and French. I crawled away into bracken through dead leaves and a dry gulch, away, away from the light and the noise. Light swung my way and there was a loud percussion as a tree trunk splintered near my head. Stray bullet, or was I in someone’s sights? Move, move. Get up. Run. With leaden legs I lurched to my feet, crouching and shambling away, my collar sprung, now hatless. Boughs slashed at my face. Faster, faster. Deeper into the woods, into the night. I stumbled over fallen trunks, blood roaring in my ears. My knees collapsed as I blundered down a bank into a creek bed, then back up and deeper into the bush. Was it the cops? All sense of direction lost. It’s dangerous to carry on. You’ll trip a cordon, stumble into a trap. Go to ground, find some deep hole and crawl into it. Instinct of the hunted animal. Hide, rest, wait for dawn. I reached out to a tree. From pillar to post I snuck along until I found a windfall. I crawled under it, my hand a claw gripping the Webley, lungs gulping for air, my heart hammering, body now wracked and shivering in shock, ears pricked for any footfall. Dig deeper, deeper, wait for whatever comes and shoot it down. This is it. You’re in it now.
