The Man Who Killed (31 page)

“You're a downy one, you know that,” Jack said to me, smiling.

“The downiest.”

For a few more hours I lay prone and helpless, drinking my medicine to relieve fatigue. I experienced a slight lacrimation, tears for myself and my state. Jack went for a flask of soup and arrowroot biscuits. From outside came a droning airplane. After eating I tried my pins and was surprised to find strength. I took a Scotch bath, shaved, looked at the tender holes in my arm, then climbed into my suit and tie and was ready to go. Jack came and with a mock formality handed me back my Webley. I followed him out of the room and away from this, another run-down bolt-hole in another bad part of town, Charlevoix by the canal this time. We took a taxi to a café on St. Catherine. Jack ordered java, I a Sal Hepatica. Morphine had made me constipated and I needed a blow.

“What's on the menu?” I asked.

“It's the peace pipe,” Jack said. “Word from on high.”

“Sounds peachy.”

“Keep your eyes open and on me. I'm afraid it may be a trap,” he warned.

“Where?”

“Avalon.”

I buttoned myself up as we walked the last few blocks to Jack's rendezvous. At Sherbrooke I watched men working atop an enormous apartment building, a great Caledonian chateau of limestone and shining copper like a CPR hotel. As it happened I was glad my suit'd been cleaned. We climbed steps to where a blackcoated ape stood with his hands over his groin. With a nod at Jack massive oaken doors opened to let my friend and myself into the Mount Royal Club.

The receiving room was quiet and august, all dark wood and polished tiles. We were in one of the Empire's redoubts, all of a pattern wherever nabobs ruled: Cairo, Cape Town, Bombay, Rangoon, Shanghai, Vancouver, Dublin, London, Montreal. Each club was cut from a cloth, with portraits of racehorses on the walls, bound copies of
Punch
in the reading room, wog waiters in waistcoats ironing weeks-old copies of the
Times
. Ci-devant colonial administrators, remittance men, and third sons in old school ties sponged drinks at the bar and damned the natives. A muted grandfather clock sat ticking, set to Greenwich Mean Time. Over the fireplace hung a framed visage of the sovereign, Queen Mary an inch lower. A stern man in a hard white collar, silk tie, grey vest, black swallowtail, and gold-pinstriped trousers met us at reception, his shoes polished to a glossy jet. He resembled a sergeant promoted officer in the field. Jack appeared damned natty and I wasn't shabby enough to be booted out. Standards, don't you know. I resisted a fierce urge to pick my nose.

We signed the book and I noticed that Jack had given in at last and written Richard Hannay, his beau ideal. I amused myself by putting down Patrick Murphy, a true Mick's handle amongst these long-nosed Saxons. Jack moved in stride as we were escorted by the chamberlain past a massive globe of exotic wood, turning right down a corridor to a private room where a gross figure awaited us, a fat man spilling out of a leather chair. The Senator.

He was alone, neither of his thugs in sight. The club had stretched a point letting one Frenchman in; accommodating two roughnecks to boot wouldn't be cricket. The Senator toyed with his fob chain. At its end was a gold triangle. He reached his hand to a burled wood box filled with cigars and selected one. I saw his ring and finally, finally I understood who was in charge. Some Brotherhood.

“Here we are,” Jack said.

“Alors,
Mutt and Jeff, yes,” said the Senator.

He was alone until the terrier bitch popped onto his lap.

“How's Rex?” asked Jack.

“As you see, she is well.”

“That's not who I'm talking about.”

“Ah,
oui.”

A mischievous spark burned in the Senator's black eyes as he sucked wetly at the cigar. Jack walked over to the box, took a cylinder for himself, and sat down.

“He is, we will say, aware of your service,” said the Senator. “It is accomplished?”

“Last Friday,” said Jack.

“Very admirable. When do you expect it complete?”

“Bientôt.
Keep your hair on. It takes a little time to work. No traces.”

I studied a marble Mercury on a table. Pieces fitted together.

“Then the threat, it is eliminated,” the Senator said.

“Yes,” said Jack, lighting up.

“Bien.”

“As for the other business, I apologize,” Jack said. “It was an error of judgment.”

“Mistakes, they happen.”

“Keep your eye on the 'papers,” Jack said.

“I will,” said the Senator. “Yes, I will.”

My morphine hunger returned as I drank in the rich cigar smoke filling the room. The Senator hadn't lit his. A panel in the wall slid open to our left and the club's majordomo appeared.

“You are wanted,” he sniffed.

Jack stood and looked at me, then imperceptibly shook his head. Through the opening I saw a sitting room with a tall striking man standing with his back to the fire. He wore a toothbrush moustache. With a shock I saw it was Laura's father, Sir Dunphy.

“Then we're square,” Jack said to the Senator.

The Senator smiled and closed his eyes. I didn't like his crafty look at all. Jack turned to me and said:
“Siu sam.”
Look out.

The Senator stroked Rex. He spoke to me.

“Your friend, how well do you know him?”

“Depuis longtemps,”
I said.

“He has done the world a service, I think.”

“Comment?”

“There are, how do you say, a people who wish to destroy this world. Cosmopolitans who want impurity.”

“Vraiment?”

“Here, there. You have seen them in Russia. Now they work in Quebec.”

“Cosmopolitans?”

“Oui.”

The Senator twirled the cigar, pushed it into his
gueule,
and rubbed his hands together in a grasping manner. Rex turned to look as the door slid back open. I was disgusted by the Senator's words. Christ, the higher up the tree the more rotten the fruit. Jack re-entered. Sir Dunphy now faced the fire, his hands behind his back. The panel closed. Jack nodded at me.

“We're finished here,” he said.

The Senator took out his pocketwatch and opened it to look at the time.

“Oui. Vous êtes finis.”

Rex tried to follow us as we were ushered out. The Senator gripped her close.

NEAR DORCHESTER I glimpsed the grey Sisters of St. Ann at their devotions in a formal garden protected from the street by an iron grille. My foot pained me and I felt weak, monomaniacally obsessed once again with the drug.

“The left hand doesn't know what the right's doing,” said Jack.

“How's that?”

“He wants me to find her,” Jack said.

“Who?”

“Laura.”

I halted and almost broke character, then found myself.

“Well, if anyone can it's you. Pinkertons and all that.”

“It's nice and neat,” said Jack.

“Are you sure she's with Bob?” I asked.

“Where else? You saw them at the party.”

In Jack's voice quavered a tremor of uncertainty. Such a sensation must be rare for him, rare as his apology to the Senator. For a crushing moment I almost felt sorry for the man. He'd killed her, without even knowing it. But emotions such as these were indulgences. My consciousness had no time for them.

“Jack,” I said, “I need it.”

He looked me up and down.

“You most certainly do. Let's go.”

Back in Charlevoix I made my injection.

“What's it like? Cocaine?” asked Jack.

“Much better,” I said.

“Can you sniff it?”

“Not a wise idea. Why?”

“I'm out of salt,” Jack said. “Smiler's gone.”

“Right.”

“Thought I might try yours. How'd you feel now?” he asked.

“Archie. I could administer it epicutaneously, through your skin. You don't need a needle. Or there's intravitreally.”

“What's that?”

“Put some on your eyes,” I said.

“Christ, no thanks.”

I wanted to frighten Jack off. My needs were severe enough that I didn't wish to share a single grain. Soon the pain retreated. I was borne aloft in bliss. I looked at myself in the shattered mirror. Jack sat down and said: “There you are, you rascal.” He pulled from under the chair his sharkspine stick, then lit a cigaret and began twirling the vertebral column around and around.

“Who's your master?” I asked him.

“I am.”

“What happened last Friday? You told the Senator you'd done him some service last Friday. What was it?”

“That was the left hand.”

“And finding Laura's the right,” I said.

Jack began to talk. Sir Dunphy had been the one who'd orchestrated the Royal Commission when the Customs scandal began to break. In the House of Commons Rex King stood up and said: “A detective has been sent to Montreal.”

“That's me. I'm in Hansard. Look it up.”

“How'd you get picked?” I asked.

“Pinkertons recommened me to Sir Dunphy. Helped that I was a true fellow and brother, naturally.”

Jack worked the docks and traced the smuggling pipeline back to the Senator, then the Minister of Customs. Jack and he forged an understanding and combined forces, gamekeepers turned poachers. That was last fall, before a new group of Italians moved in from New York under a boss named Lucania. A fight started: New York Sicilians versus Chicago Neapolitans, with Montreal in the middle.

“Bob's family waited on the fence until I was given the black spot. After Bob double-crossed us he went off the reservation. Shadow in the wind. Wants all the money for himself, I reckon. Man's moved from cocaine to heroin lately. Spent all week twisting arms and busting doors. Pretty boy's still in town.”

“What's our plan?” I asked.

“Hunt him down. He's been seen with a woman. That'll be Laura.”

I controlled myself.

“Have a feeling he's going to skip town today or tomorrow. Montreal's too hot for him,” Jack said.

“Welcome to the oven,” I said.

The whole world could go hang fire. I prepared another syringe and rode it home.

JACK ROUSED ME.

“Come along. It's close to five. You need to eat.”

We caught a 'cab and this time went east. I could smell burning. The 'cabbie's St. Christopher medal swung like a censer as he sped and braked to a stop at Place d'Youville.

“There,” said Jack, pointing with his white stick.

Exiting a small cod-classical building was our man Brown. He stood in the doorway for a moment under a weathered stone Britannia fixed on the architrave. There was a vignette of Empire for you, if you liked: a petty Scotch official in a provincial backwater below the faded shield and trident of old Albion. With the setting sun turning the square and stones a mandarin orange the tableau had a certain shabby nobility to it, a minor, mournful grandeur. The 'cab pulled alongside the wee man and Jack shouted: “Hop in.”

Startled, Brown spun and fixed his eyes on Jack's crooked finger, the digit beckoning through an open window. Jack got out and waved Brown in with a jesting courtesy, back to his old tricks again. The Customs man sat between us, smelling of cheese. His cheek bore a faded mark where Jack had struck him. Jack ordered the taxi east to just beside the construction site beneath the bare pilings of the harbour bridge.

We got out by the lee of a wall before a brick barracks. I could now almost taste the atmosphere; instead of smoke, it was the sour, thick odour of barley and hops, effluvia from the redbrick Molson Brewery nearby. In the wall was an olive-coloured door and a smaller inset door within it. Jack motioned Brown through and I followed them to an empty courtyard. In its centre stood a plinth supporting the statue of a green man bearing a flag. The barracks house appeared deserted.

“Recognize these, Brown?”

Jack held up several yellow slips of paper.

“Aye.”

“Your markers from the barbotte house on Cypress. Canny investment, wouldn't you say?”

Brown stayed shtum. He shivered in his cheap snuff-coloured tweed.

“You know what I want,” Jack said. “Hand me the 'gen on our Yankee friend and you can start digging a new grave for yourself at the tables. Fair trade, eh?”

Brown nodded weakly. It occurred to me that the pair were both gamblers. Jack had probably already burned through every dime in his pockets, hence his desperation now. For all his control Jack was grasping at straws. The Scotchman was a last resort, a long shot.