The Man Who Killed (23 page)

“Better,” said Jack, patting his belly.

After the Royale we went to Jack's hotel. He'd moved to the Queen's on Peel and was registered as Jack Greenmantle. Up in his room he excused himself to defecate and I found a bottle of cognac on the sideboard. The alcohol stung and cleaned my teeth as I thought of Laura and Bob, that Yankee bastard. You'll settle his hash tonight. He hadn't seen me as I watched them in that upstairs bedroom. Only Laura, her eye meeting mine in the darkness. There'd been a telling in her gaze, a kind of triumph laced with something I couldn't define. I took another swallow and it came: she'd been expecting someone else. Who? Jack yanked the chain in the jakes and came out buttoning his trousers.

“Yesterday's news,” he said.

He sat down and laid out the night's plans. Including Bob, the three of us were going to hit the competition before they ever set foot on the
Hatteras Abyssal.
The ship was tied up at Queen Alexandra Pier. Jack and I had one motor and Bob would bring another. It was Trafalgar Night and the lion's share of the police force would be marching in the parade or directing traffic. The plan's virtue, Jack claimed, was in its simplicity.

“That's what you said about the bootlegging and the picture house. And now look at us,” I said.

“It's better this way,” said Jack. “I'm not Raffles the Gentleman Cracksman. Make a meticulous plan and it'll go haywire. I want to be spontaneous, to improvise.”

“Christ, you're like a stick-up poet.”

“There you've put it with a nicety,” Jack said.

“We were lucky before. This is pushing it.”

“Count your money and tell me about pushing it. How'd you get it, now? Did it come in the mail? You wouldn't have the spondulicks if not for Yours Truly, Esquire.”

“I never asked for them. You volunteered me,” I said.

“Knowing you as I do. This is bootless, Mick.”

“Let's go over the ground at least. Is that too much to be asking after?”

“Lead on.”

OUR STEPS TOOK US in the direction of the docks, the streets still radiating the day's heat. I looked up at a spider's web of tramway wires. Underfoot nubs on manhole covers had been worn flat by countless treads and the metal slipped. My coat hung heavy on me, steaming with the city. A motorcar nearby backfired and I flinched, my hand bouncing into my pocket. Jack laughed. Drunken late-season wasps crawled in the gutter outside a warehouse from whence the sickly reek of rotting fruit seeped forth. It might've been an alky-cooker distilling cheap fruit brandy. Minute quantities of wasp venom can trigger anaphylaxis in the allergic. Put a drop on a needle for the perfect crime. As far as I knew Jack had no natural nemesis. Mine was the lychee, a lesson learned in Chinatown.

“Wonder how that fellow you shot is doing?” Jack asked.

“The Senator's jobbie? He deserved it. Like Bob.”

“Put your animus away for the evening,” Jack said.

“I said I would.”

“What you do after that's no skin off mine.”

“Mighty white of you.”

“Ain't it though? Here we are.”

We took a dekko along the pier, staying in motion so as not to draw attention. Jack narrated: “We'll park there and wait. You're in the motor and I'll loiter with intent. Bob'll be in another 'car. Four men are coming with the money. They're making the trade onboard. We'll hit them before they pull up to the gangplank.”

“What if the set-up's different?” I asked.

“How do you mean?”

“I mean last week we drove trucks to the border. Why're they doing it here now?”

“Boats,” Jack said.

“And what'll they have? Tommy guns or pistols or what?”

“That I don't know,” said Jack.

“Christ.”

“What do you want? These operators have paid for the convenience. This isn't a battleground like Chicago. Montreal's been nice and quiet since Prohibition passed. Last week was an aberration. I was set up and now I've been cut out. Truthfully, I should be on the hook for the shipment lost but there've been no reprimands from Chicago, and do you know why? Because I was to be killed. I was crossed by my own masters for some damned reason and this is my payback. Now I've got the inside dope and aim to clean 'em out.”

“Aren't you afraid of the consequences?”

“You'd better believe it,” Jack said.

“They pull up, and then what happens?”

“Damn the torpedoes.”

“What?”

“Full speed ahead.”

“You're crazy. Ram them?”

“That's right.”

“Not me,” I said.

“Why not?”

“Because the damn things are full of petrol. They'll explode.”

“If you're yellow Bob can do it and you drive the getaway.”

“He'll blow the works for sure. Fine, I'll do it.”

“There's the man.”

Jack smiled.

“What happens after I smash them?” I asked.

“I make the grab.”

“Then what?”

“You cover me and we hop in Bob's sled.”

“Jesus. This is a really beautiful, well-conceived plan.”

“Ain't it though?” asked Jack again, grinning that grin.

“Let's get a drink and go over it again.”

“If we must,” said Jack.

“Believe me, we must.”

A long slog in silence took us back to relative civilization and we repaired to another saloon advertising sterilized glasses, ordering two filled up with beer.

“How much do you think this imbroglio'll net us?” I asked.

“The run last week was smaller. This shipment's about five times larger,” Jack said. “Say, twenty thousand.”

“It's a damned complicated plot you've got us wound up in.”

“You don't know the half of it,” Jack said.

“Do you really think a bunch of boyos like us can take on this outfit?”

“Why the hell not?” asked Jack. “Who says a pack of lousy Italians are smarter than we? They've got the Black Hand but we've got the Brotherhood.”

“The Brotherhood? Are they in on this as well? Whose side are we on?”

“Our own,” Jack said.

“That's reassuring.”

Jack put down his glass and became very still and serious. He pointed at me.

“Listen to me. What has anyone ever done for you? The King, the Brass Hats, the Archbishop of bloody Canterbury, that lot would've let you be chewed up into hamburger in France without a twinge of remorse, and all for a lie. Believe you me. Now those are the jokers I'd like to take on but they've got a little too much muscle for the moment. We'll just have to wait for the global revolution. Meanwhile I want some elbow room, and that means money. We're stealing from criminals, Mick. Worse comes to worst we get shot for our trouble. Tell me, what's worth living for, eh?”

This was something to consider, but there was more. Jack said: “So we lived through the war. I'm not going to croak an old man in bed. It's this or something else. What difference does it make?”

“That's a damned convincing argument. You should have stood for the bar. A judge'd love that defence,” I said.

“To hell with it all,” Jack said, and drank.

I looked moodily into my sludgy glass, divining nothing. Perhaps Jack was a blind prophet. In the drinkery a deep burnt-oil smell pervaded and I drank more of the rotten stuff, choking it back.

“We'd better go and wind up that motor,” I said.

“Now you're cooking with gas,” went my Tiresias.

ON DORCHESTER WE caught a 'cab and took it to the street where the Auburn sat parked. While walking to it I heard hot jazz in my head, as though a record was spinning within, like a movie house pianist accompanying my actions. Someday they'll play recorded music at the cinema like a radio play and make a talking picture, with coloured film for verisimilitude. It'll be closer to real life, like now. Look at the purple grease on the windscreen of the motor, the curled rusty leaves, the indigo sky. The music continued to play in my mind's ear, as it were: “Hot Potato.” Jack got behind the wheel.

“Shame they can't shoehorn a wireless into a 'car,” I said. “A body could listen to music while driving.”

“Distracting,” Jack said.

He motioned for the keys and we swung away. The evening sun crept down near the mountain. By taking side streets and quiet lanes we slotted the motor in an
unmemorable siding. It was suppertime. Around the block at a dry-goods merchant we each purchased a bottle of medicinal ginger wine, neither Jack nor I in an aquabibulous frame of mind. The bottles held a nerve tonic and stomach settler. The storekeep uncorked one and its contents tasted of Angostura Bitters laced with rancid sugar. We left to tread down empty redolent alleyways leading away from the river, industry winding down at this hour in our obscure corner of the Empire.

What did we talk of? Jack reminisced and we laughed as the tonic made us merry. I put away my shallow resentments and entered the absurd spirit of the thing. The past was ephemeral and faintly ridiculous, a series of harebrained scrapes and foolish amours. As dusk thickened we evoked our lost world of the West: the taste of raw Walla Walla onions big as baseballs, pickled herring, and Indian candy from Ship's Point on Vancouver Island where Cook had anchored near heaps of oyster shells. Finishing the medicine Jack dropped the corked empty bottle in the drink and the river's current pulled it away to join flotsam clinging 'round a rowboat tied up near a small freighter. Ship's rope groaned as Jack discreetly checked his weapon. I did likewise and spun the cylinder of my Mark IV. It was the same sidearm make I'd been issued with my pip. Jack stuck his in his belt under a buttoned jacket and unbelted overcoat. I kept mine safe in an outer pocket. Jack spat in the oily water. There wasn't a soul about, though I heard a faint shouting from some streets behind us. My nine hundred dollars and change was safe upon me so I lit a cigaret and Jack's with the same lucifer.

“Never three to a match,” Jack said. “First one the sniper spots, the second he aims, the third he fires.”

“Did you see it happen?”

“One of those bits of advice that travelled up and down the line. You heard it all: crucifixions in No Man's Land, ghosts and the Angels of Mons. Dammit, though, it was impossible to tell truth from fiction there, the whole thing was too bloody unreal. Whole world went down the fucking rabbit hole and where it's going now I don't like to think.”

Jack looked at his ring awhile and then said: “There'll be another war.”

“They'll fight it with Zeppelins and heat-rays,” I said.

“Damn me I don't know.”

“We'll be gone before it starts anyhow.”

“Speak for yourself,” Jack said, and spat again.

That was him all over. One minute careless and blithe, then queerly sober. He checked his wristwatch.

“Waiting to go over was the worst of it,” he said, “waiting for the whistle.”

I yawned, cracking my temporomandibular joint loudly.

“No rest for the wicked,” continued Jack.

“Sleep in heaven,” I said.

“Or the other place.”

We completed a circuit and I looked into the dirty water. Gulls circled and dove. No river is the same river, so sayeth Heraclitus. The St. Lawrence poured towards the sea, thalassa, thalassa. Jack checked the time again.

“He's late, the bastard.”

“Alors,”
I said.

“Wait a minute.”

A 'car careened into the crossing near the jetty, the rendezvous between Duke and Nazareth by the train tracks. It was a fawn Oldsmobile that swerved to intersect with us. Jack held up his hand like a traffic cop and Bob braked to a clumsy halt. He rolled down the window and grinned sloppily.

“Goddammit man, you're drunk,” Jack said.

“Ain't you?” asked Bob.

“Get out and take some air.”

“Oke.”

Bob dismounted. To open my bottle of ginger wine I pushed the cork down its neck out of ugly necessity, then took a long swig of the restorative. I handed it to Jack, who pulled and passed the bottle to Bob. Bob looked at me a moment with no expression and I was dead certain he knew nothing of my attachment to Laura. I tamped down a panicky sort of anger. I didn't like him, how he'd touched the love of my life. For the life I couldn't figure why Jack wanted his help. Bob had caused that fracas in the whorehouse. He was unstable. I wanted to smash his pretty face in.

“Sláinte,”
Bob said, passing the bottle back to me.

“Guid forder,”
said I, and drank.