The Man Game (64 page)

What goal's that?

To rid this fucking town a the Chinamen.

Bah, I'm done with that route. A man grows up sometime around thirty and starts worrying aboot himself and not the other guy. I don't need to be an injury to others no more, said Daggett.

Horseshit, said Pitt.

We'll not squander our talents on you, said Furry.

On me? What talents on me? Brawn? Mettle?

Listen, Pitt, Daggett said. See, the way I grew up, I'm trained for pain. First thing I thought to do when you stepped in: kill him. Same thing I always think. That's one way to go through life. But me and Furry are devious motherfuckers. We're after one thing, and that's chickamin. Knocking his granite knuckles against each other, he added: Even when I lose everything, still I gain.

That's not the voice a no killer, said RD Pitt, sitting back in his chair and crossing his arms.

'The fuck you know aboot a killer's voice?

You ask me square, I tell you square, said Furry. Kumtuks?

Pitt looked at the dirt on his work-beaten hands, the calluses and scars, the long brown nails, and had nothing to say.

Yeah, I kumtuks, said Pitt, leaning forward on to the table and using his thumbnail to pry moose-jerky loose from his buckteeth. The gristle hit the table.

Ask me what you want to know, said Furry. Ask me.

RD Pitt looked up again from under his Stetson. He mulled for a while, then finally asked: Did you kill that snakehead?

Yeah, ha ha. That's what I thought, cowboy. Can't even look me in the eye. I took some men off the shelf. God forgive me. You want me to start listing. Yeah, I cut the snake to pieces like firewood and burned him the same. Daggett was there, he can tell you.

I accompliced that crime, said Daggett.

But that's not why I'm sitting here listening to you bark like a seal pup, said Furry, and you're the one asking
me
the fucking favour.

What a you mean?

No, no. Learn your manners, cowboy. Now I get to ask a question, eh.

O-kay.

You ever paid back any favours?

Hell's bells, yeah, Pitt said. Who do I look like? Alls I got is my balls and my word.

Furry grabbed Pitt's right wrist and pinned it to the table. Everyone backed off. Pitt shrieked. Furry untucked a handaxe from his belt loop and Pitt started to cry and his knees buckled so that his eyes were level with the table. Please please, no, cried Pitt.

Spread your fucking fingers before I take off the whole goddamn hand, you worthless mule.

Trembling, the fingers eventually did as told.

For what seemed like forever Furry held his axe above his head, waiting, his eyes on Pitt's hand until with vicious speed the axe came down hard on the table, clipping the long grubby moon of Pitt's index fingernail. Furry wrenched the axe out of the table but didn't let go of Pitt's hand just yet.

The fingernail lay there on the table like a dumb smile. It took Pitt awhile to accept the fact that his hand was still in one piece, and he stood on his knees weeping over the lost nail.

Nine more, said Furry.

Nine more? cried Pitt.

I cut you, then we go to the fucking Knights a Labour meeting. I trim your nails, I go to the man game, and you owe
me a very big
favour.

The homes on Dupont Street were supposed to remind Sammy of Victorian mansions, but with the expensive finials and other artisanal touches at best imitated here and at worst replaced by mildewy walls and tarpaper rooftops and all the cookstoves burning away. The homes on Dupont Street were to him like pretty faces on rotting decapitations. Sammy was
upset to find that Wood's' front door resembled his own in all respects, right down to the knocker. Same exact door. He looked up at the windows and then down the street, and saw that candles were lit in all the windows on all the floors of all the houses, and that at every entrance a glowing red paper lantern swayed in the breeze. A girl on the second floor of Wood's leaned her elbows on the windowsill, purple shutters open, smoking a cigarette, swaying her rump. It was quite cold out for a lady to be seen smoking. At the thump of interior noise, she pushed herself off the sill and turned to look into her room and said: Yeah?, folded the shutters closed like a wink, gone.

I've never visited a bordello, he said; and was silently wheeled to the door by his ward, where he waited below the red paper lantern that in the breeze flickered its candleflame.

Klahowya, darling, said Madam Peggy, bending to put her hands on her knees to speak with him, exposing her cleavage to his eyes. You must be Mr. Samuel Erwagen. Her pearl and silver necklaces swayed in his face;
Father's cane
reared itself in his mind. Welcome, sir, to Wood's. I don't believe we've ever had the pleasur
e
. You must come in, dear. Make yourself
com
fortable. Or I mean—. Have a place for you right here. Does Toronto need to—I'm not supposed to have Indians in here is all. If you can wait outside, sweetheart. I know how to wheel a chair. I'm stronger than I look. Oh, she said, and put her fingers on Sammy's shoulder, touching his cheek, alerting his ears. It was all happening so quickly. Let me introduce you to a few a my little angels, she hushed into his ear, tickling it something fierce.

The girls in the parlour were all half-dressed together on a long sofa with clawfeet and purple cushions. Rose, Lily, Mary, Sable, and Dixie. She chided them for not sitting upright in front of a gentleman, and with a narcotic, shouldery squirm they made a big deal of yawning and folding over one another, and seemed to one by one fall asleep on one another's thighs again. He was alarmed by their naked legs, the first he'd seen after his wife's.

She wheeled him down a narrow hallway and through a second room much like the parlour, though its benches made no sense with the round tables. The air proved rank with tobacco. Was this a second sitting room for men with appointments; he wasn't sure. He had only a moment to look before she fit him into her office, weaved around and sat on the table edge in front of him, eased her hair behind her shoulder with a swivel of her neck, crossed her arms among her pearls and smiled warmly. What can I do you for, Mr. Erwagen? Any flowers in my bouquet interest you?

No, I assure you, that's not why I'm here.

Sure aboot that?

Fair madam, I find your line a business quite foreign to my needs.

I see. Yes, well, I shouldn't try to fool around with
you
.

I don't expect you to think beyond your own enterprises.

She looked at her slippers, thinking. Finally she said: I don't think nothing till I see money. And turning once again to face him, he saw that her face had completely transformed. The sweetness was drained away. So what can I do you for, then? she said with this new face.

You're acquainted with my wife, correct?

I know a her.

How well? You know her personally?

Can't imagine how the two, her and myself, could ever know each other personally, Mr. Erwagen. Alls I said was …

She told me you helped her with the man game, said Sammy, boldly. It was a ghastly hunch, but he'd carried it around in his mind for some time now and was grateful to at least summon the courage to start asking what he most wanted to know from this cunning woman.

Peggy's office was strewn with pillows. What wasn't threadbare was stained. A single painting on the wall, small enough to put under your coat and featuring a long narrow dirt road curving into a dark forest like a question mark, was not what Sammy had expected for decoration. There seemed to him great exhaustion of sin upon this entire place.

Ms. Erwagen's mind can be a geyser, said Sammy.

That's what this town needs, Peggy said, checking her vanity for dust with a long index finger, finding none and so continuing her speech. More influence upon the masculine side, more pursuasion by the feminine side, to get this town on balance. I must say that I admire a lady who's not afraid to get inv
o
lved with these men. Before your wife Molly? These men never talked to no lady such as your wife. Not the way she comm
a
nds. Otherwise, they don't know nothing else but how to dominate. My girls? Imagine if they were out in the str
ee
t the way it is in cities. My little flowers are t
oo
fragile for street corners. Without my protection? Oh, this place'd be some kind a Hell without Dupont Street and us madams, that I can promise.

She dropped her arms, stared at him as her mood blackened. Taking a deep breath, she seemed to challenge herself to recover from the spell, and he watched her turn to face the cabinets and begin rubbing the edges of each polished shelf for motes of dust.

You tricked me, didn't you? she said. Your wife never told you anything aboot me, did she? No, I fell right into that. Fool. What's made you go prowling around like some dog sniffing for scraps?

Listen, I trust my wife more than I trust you. She obviously tells me more than you. I am asking you to disclose what you know.

What do you hope to gain from all this?

A more accurate sense a history.

Spit on it. Your wife she's a unique girl, eh? If there's ever a lady to care for you, she's the one. I liked her the minute I met her. Might be the one and only time I ever was surprised to see a stranger in my bedroom. My door is always locked. But there she was. How she got in, no idea.

Molly is very resourceful, said Sammy.

I open the door and damn, there she is. She was standing there in the middle a the room. I mistook her for a ghost. All in white linens, very flattering, shapely clothes. Her green eyes
there shining out from that perfect face and great mane a black hair. Oh, she is too lovely for earth. At first glance, well, she frightened me more than any po-lice bust.

When was this, that you first met?

I'll tell you something you should know, Mr. Erwagen … We only met that once. I never saw her again.

When exactly?

After that first meeting, said Peggy, standing and turning away from his eyes so as to better conceal her mendacity. After that, she always got her men to carry messages to me. Not even messages on paper, mind you. Just
words
she wanted to relay. I knew my responsibility. I distributed gossip and turned the rumour mills. And kept her secret. Gossip. I knew and I agreed to
play my part
. To help her, your Molly. How could I not? You see, for a lady to approach me. It's been an honour, Mr. Erwagen. That's alls I can say. It's been a true honour to help your wife.

When she was done prattling on, Peggy continued to nervously comb her hair through her hands.

When did you first meet then? Sammy asked.

Oh, well,
inspector
, when was it, last fall? I believe, yes. Yes, she said she'd begun a new project. Rehearsals, was how she put it.

Yes.

And that's the only time I ever recall conversating with her, that I can remember. I never saw her again. Well, that's it, really. As I recall, she asked if I would agree to help.

Help how?

Encourage the men, like I says. Encourage them to gamble. Encourage them to gamble on the man game instead a all the other ways the men around here wile away the hours. I gather she understood we were in competition for the dollars in these men's pockets, see. She respected my business sense. I'm a capitalist, Mr. Erwagen. Same's your boss at Hastings Mill. No different at all. I respect leadership. Talk to me aboot love, I can tell you I don't know the first. But when it comes to money, power …

Molly is very skilled at seeing the world from another's point a view. It's much more difficult to see the world through her eyes.

Always the case with true beauty, said Peggy. No point even trying. You might as well try to lay an egg. When did you first meet her?

Peggy was acting naive for Sammy, but he was already too suspicious to be convinced by her shy manners. Instead he noticed that her hands were like a man's, two bony insects with leathery legs. A farmer's hands with the long painted fingernails of a delicate concubine.

You know why else I came here, said Sammy. Don't try to fool me. I see what you've accomplished.

Darling, I'm clueless. Tell me.

Don't play the peon. Dunbar.

A who?

Dunbar, my brother. There's no use denying it. He spent some time here. My brother's last days on earth were in the clutches a one a your notorious whores. Now out with it, woman.

Dunbar? Peggy said, as if relieved the subject was finally broached. Was that his name? What a tragic face. Worse than yours. Oh, you think
she
had something to do with that as well.

Excuse me, said Sammy, sputtering at Peggy's unexpected accuracy.

Darling, she had as much to do with that as me and
you
. Why did Dunbar come to me, if I may ask, when your own homestead … only minutes away?

Well, I …

No. Dunbar came to me because a the tar-black, sick, degenerate lowliness in his soul. I seen a lot a heavy-headed men. I seen a lot a lost souls, dead souls, rotting souls, raped souls, you name it. But for a man who could walk and talk, he was the most truly dead-looking I ever seen. You must a saw that yourself.