The Lady Burns Bright

by Warren Court

  The entranceway shook with applause and the stomping of feet. The band started up again with the last refrains from the final song. The dancers would be taking their bows. He was directly beneath the orchestra pit.

  There was a stairwell, and he saw shadows at the top of it, two men talking and gesturing, though he couldn’t make out the words over the band. Armour huddled down there in the entranceway, waiting, wondering. He needed to see her. Talk to her. Maybe she could tell him what the hell was going on. His attraction to her was vague, as was everything else this strange day. He knew they were friends, close friends, maybe something more. But how did he know her? He had to assume it was from Toronto, but he wasn’t even sure he lived here. If he didn’t get some answers soon, he was sure he was going to go mad. He couldn’t discount the notion that he already had.

  The band finished with a flourish, and he could hear the stomp of feet moving from the stage further into the theatre. Armour climbed the stairs; whoever had been having a conversation there had now moved elsewhere. At the top of the stairs was a long hallway. A stampede of young girls, giggling and laughing, some yelling, came through the stage door and swept past Armour.

  “Hey buster, out of the way. This gal’s gotta pee,” one of them said to him, and they all laughed.

  “Maybe he’s here for a tryout as one of the slaves.”

  “Good luck to him.”

  “He doesn’t look like he could lift my purse.”

  Another round of giggles. Armour was pushed to the side as they moved through. Then she came through the door. She was in no rush. There were two of her Egyptian strongmen on either side of her. Melanie.

  His mouth was suddenly full of glue. He removed his bowler and held it front of him as she passed by. She looked at him for a split second and then was hustled along. She went into a dressing room and the two faux Egyptians kept moving further down the hall.

  As quick as they had come through, they were gone. Muffled giggles came from behind the closed doors of dressing rooms. Armour went to Melanie’s dressing room door and knocked gently. He heard a shuffling sound and it opened quick.

  “Was that you knocking? Thought it was a mouse,” she said. She had her costume off and Armour saw a flash of bare skin before it was covered by a pink bathrobe. “Can I help you?” she said.

  “Melanie?”

  “Yeah.”

  “It’s me,” he said.

  “Me who?”

  “Armour Black.”

  She looked at him curiously, then shook her head. “Never heard of you. What are you, an autograph hound? A photographer? You with the press? You’re not supposed to be back here.”

  “I was a journalist,” Armour said, although he wasn’t sure about that—just like everything else. He had a vague recollection of chasing down a story about a murderer, but that seemed like a different world. He shook the vision from his head.

  “You okay, buster? You’re soaking wet and I want to get this makeup off.”

  “It was raining earlier. I waited for the second show to end.”

  “My biggest fan, huh?” she said.

  “In a way.”

  “You wanna drink, warm you up?”

  “Sure.”

  She went back into her dressing room and Armour looked up and down the hallway once before following her in. It was a small room, with dressing table and a mirror with yellow glowing bulbs surrounding it. A picture of Melanie done up in her costume sat on the table.

  “That’s so the girl knows how to make me up each night,” she said, following his gaze.

  Next to it was a picture of a man of about thirty years of age holding a toddler in a frilly white dress.

  “That’s me at two. Only picture I have of my dad. If only he could see me now, huh?” she said, and laughed.

  She opened a desk drawer to produce a bottle of Seagram’s. “Getting harder to get this stuff. Ain’t that crazy? They’re allowed to produce the stuff but not sell it.”

  “Right—the Ontario Temperance Act,” Armour said.

  “You said it. It’s worse down south. I was on a travelling review for three months down the east coast. It was hell. You talk about dry counties? The whole state was dry. We weren’t in town long enough to find out where the speaks were or get a connection. When this job came up, I jumped at it.”

  “Speakeasies,” Armour said knowingly, and accepted a low-ball glass of the whiskey.

  “Yeah. They ain’t so easy to find if you’re new in town. Everyone eyeing you like you’re a cop or a probie. Cheers,” she said, and they clinked glasses.

  “I’ve seen you somewhere before,” she said.

  “Do you know where?” Armour said. “I have the same feeling, but don’t know where. I think we’re friends. I’m sure of it.”

  She laughed and tilted her head back, then sat on the desk, one leg draped over the other. That laugh. It was like hook going through the side of his mouth. He was done, ready and willing to be hauled in.

  “Sure. Wait a minute. You work around here?”

  “I do,” Armour said. “Across the street.”

  “That must be it. I must have seen you around the theatre. You were a journalist, but you’re not anymore?”

  “No, I’m a private investigator.”

  “Wow, really? Tell me about that. Exciting stuff, huh?”

  “I don’t really know.”

  She gave him a queer look. There was a knock on the door, and then it opened before Melanie had time to say anything. That annoyed her: Armour recognized that look instantly.

  A burly man came in, one of the men Armour had seen exiting the car in the alley. Armour would have known his shape anywhere. He looked like a Frigidaire in a pinstriped suit. He had on a fedora and didn’t bother taking it off when he came in.

  “Say, Mel, I’m taking a bunch of the gals over to Charlie’s. It’s a blind pig on Church Street,” the fridge said.

  “I’m in the middle of something.”

  The man then realized Armour was there. “Who’s this?”

  “A friend of mine.”

  “I haven’t seen him before. Who are you, friend?”

  Armour introduced himself. He threw back his whiskey and felt the need to stand. His fists automatically balled up and in an instant, he worked out a boxing routine in his head in case this man came at him, which he felt was a real possibility. A flurry to the solar plexus with a roundhouse to the ear. The big man looked like he was no stranger to physical violence, but Armour could tell, instinctively, unexplainably, that the man had spent no time in the ring. His shoulders were big, his arms thick, but his gut was soft. Too many illegal beers over at Charlie’s.

  “Look, pal, we don’t allow strangers around here. Not with all these girls running around.”

  “Tom, its fine,” Melanie said.

  “No, it isn’t. We don’t know who we’re letting in. Who is this guy? Where’d you meet him?”

  “He’s a private investigator, if you must know,” Melanie said, and Armour wished she hadn’t.

  “Private dick, huh? How do you know he ain’t working for the cops?”

  “So what if he is? What do I care? He’s my biggest fan.”

  “All right, buster, I don’t know how you got in here, but out you go.” He made to grab at Armour but Melanie slipped in between them.

  “Just hold on, Tom. You don’t have the right—”

  Tom pushed Melanie easily aside and she fell into a chair. Armour’s blood hit boiling point faster than he would have liked, and he moved in and hit the man on the chin quick, knocking his head back and sending him back to the door. So much for the flurry to Tom’s soft middle. It would keep.

  Tom recovered quickly, a shocked look on his face, and came at Armour. His telegraphed roundhouses were easily avoided, and Armour had no trouble writing the reply. The moves came easily to him; those days hitting the heavy and speed bag were paying off in spades. It was just that he couldn’t remember exactly where he had don
e that training.

  He ducked down low, lashed out and hit pay dirt. The man’s belly was like twenty pounds of chewed bubble gum, and Tom buckled over, letting out an oofff. There was a thunderous stampede in the hall and two men, Tom’s compatriots, stormed into the room. They ran at Armour and grabbed him.

  Tom, still gasping for air, managed to straighten up and pull out a shiny black .45. He was about to point it at Armour’s head when Melanie retrieved a small silver pistol from a handbag and put it to Tom’s temple.

  “Tom, don’t you dare. Not here.” Tom cocked his pistol. Melanie said, “Drop it, Tom. I mean it. Drop it and get out. Take your goons with you.”

  “Geez, Mel, I was just going to bop him on the chin with it,” Tom said. He slowly let down the hammer of his gun. The other two men who had hold of Armour backed off.

  “I don’t care. Drop the gun.”

  “I’m putting it back in its holster, Melanie. I don’t drop it for anyone. Not a cop, not a private dick and never for a floozy like you.”

  “Who you calling floozy?” Melanie said. “Get out, and take your stuffed shirts with you.”

  The three men departed. Armour picked up his bowler.

  “You’d better go,” Melanie said. “He’s going to come back, and this time he won’t put his gun away.”

  “Who is he?” Armour said.

  “Just a tough guy who hangs around the theatre. But he can be trouble.”

  Armour was about to say something, but Melanie sat down in her chair, put the pistol next to her, and started applying cream to her glittering face. Armour just nodded and left.

  Chapter 5

  Olive’s yelp woke Armour up fast. She had opened the door to his office and was startled to see him there, stretched out on the chesterfield.

  “Mr. Black, I had no idea you were in here.”

  “Late night,” Armour said. “Stakeout, following a client.”

  “Really?” she said. She put a bouquet of fresh flowers in the vase on one of the wooden filing cabinets.

  “Brightens up the place,” she said.

  Armour sat up. His jacket was slung over his chair, his shoes beside the door.

  He rubbed his head. When he realized where and when he was, that strange sensation came back, but not as strong as before. Maybe he was getting used to it. He had been dreaming of a different place, a large house on a cliff overlooking a lake. There were cones of smoke coming from factories from a city in the distance.

  Olive straightened some paperwork on his desk. She seemed to be lingering.

  “You okay, Mr. Black?”

  “Sure. I just need some coffee.”

  Olive nodded at the revolver lying on the desk.

  “I was cleaning it. Just wanted to lie down for a bit, and I guess I fell asleep,” Armour said.

  “Tim’s Diner is the best for coffee. My fella takes me there on Saturday nights. I can zip up there and back in no time.”

  “Your fella? Oh, your fiancé.”

  “Are you married, Mr. Black?”

  “Yes,” Armour said automatically, and his happy thoughts of an impending marriage for his secretary and everything else light and gay turned to blackness and despair as horrible images flashed through his mind.

  He had misspoken. He had been married. But it had ended abruptly, brutally, on the steel slab of a coroner’s table when the sheet had been pulled back to reveal the bruised and battered face of his wife, Bess. Armour leaned back on the couch. The leather was stiff and unforgiving, and his whole body ached.

  “You don’t have any Advil, do you?”

  “What’s that, Mr. Black?”

  “Ibuprofen. Something to kill the pain.”

  “I have Bayer Aspirin.” She went out to the front room and retrieved two tablets from her desk drawer and fetched him a glass of water from the water cooler.

  “Do you ever remember me telling you I had been a journalist?” Armour said. He popped the Aspirins. They were dry and strong and caught at the back of his throat. He coughed and sipped the water.

  “Sorry,” he said, and cleared his throat. “A journalist. Do you remember me telling you that?”

  “No. I know you were a police officer for a time.”

  “I was?”

  “Isn’t that you in the picture there, when you were a detective with the Toronto force?” Olive said, pointing to a photo on the wall. It was one among a half dozen.

  Armour got up and went over to it. Funny, he thought. All the time he had spent in here and he had never checked out these photos.

  Olive was right. There was one of Armour and a group of men at a table, shiny badges hanging from their breast pockets.

  “You sure you’re okay, Mr. Black? Yesterday you asked me where you lived. Today you don’t remember being a cop.”

  “I remember being a cop,” Armour said, and that was not a total lie. “I’m just joking. What’s on the agenda for today, Olive? Any appointments?”

  “No. That’s what I wanted to talk to you about, Mr. Black.”

  “Sit down.”

  She sat reluctantly on the couch. “Business is...”

  “Slow.” Armour finished her sentence.

  “It’s downright non-existent,” she said. “Other than Mr. Roscoe, you haven’t had a client come through the door in months. I’m just worried. How are you going to stay in business? Am I going to lose my job?”

  “I don’t know, Olive. Things will pick up.”

  “You gotta advertise. Put an ad in the newspapers or something, I don’t know. I like working here. It’s kind of exciting.”

  “Even with no one walking through the door?”

  She smiled. “I tell all my friends I work for a detective, and they’re mad with jealousy; I can tell. Betty’s husband works at the docks, on one of those dredgers. He comes home stinking like a sewer. If he comes home. He was black and blue the other day.”

  “How so?” Armour said.

  “The strike breakers. Betty’s husband is a scab.”

  “Keep the faith, Olive. Things will pick up. Say, do we have a telephone directory?”

  “Of course. I’ll get it.”

  She got up and went to her desk, then came back in with a thin booklet. She handed it to him and then stood there, clearly expecting something. Maybe to be included in Armour’s detective work, he thought. He looked up at her.

  “The Aspirin is helping, but what about that coffee?”

  After Olive had left, Armour flipped through the house listings. There were three Holts in it. One had the initial C. in front of it: Colin Holt, the late harbour commissioner. He lived on Rose Glen Road. Armour had no idea where that was, but maybe Olive would, or maybe they had a map in the office.

  Armour opened the drawer of his desk, moved the .38 aside and took out a leather-bound notebook it had been lying on. He put the gun back in its place and closed the drawer.

  On the next clean page in the notebook he wrote down Holt’s address and James Roscoe’s phone number. He also scribbled some notes from the conversation he’d had with the acting harbour commissioner, Mr. Chambers, yesterday. He was about to close the book when he hesitated. He wrote down “Tom? – hangs around the Pegasus. Trouble.” He underlined the last word.

  With that done, Armour started flipping through the pages of the notebook, starting at the beginning. Olive was back in a flash with a steaming cup of java in a waxed paper cup. Armour took it gratefully and sipped. It gave him a glorious jolt. She hadn’t lied; it was great coffee.

  He sipped the brew and flipped through the notes in the book. His notes—they were in his handwriting, all right. He read names like Krantz, Francis, Campbell. “The Scotch Line Road” was written a couple of times; he had no idea where that was. He figured these must be past cases he’d worked as a private investigator, but there were no dates. Some private investigator he was turning out to be. Some journalist, for that matter. He was now doubting whether that was true, whether he had ever worked as a jou
rnalist. The cop feeling was becoming stronger in him; he could remember clicking heavy metal cuffs on to someone’s wrists, throwing punches at another person.

  But more than that, he had an overwhelming compulsion to find out what had happened to Roscoe’s friend. And beyond that, he would need money to live, and this seemed to be his chosen profession. But it remained to be seen whether or not he was any good.

  “Olive, I’m heading out,” Armour said.

  “Where to?” she said. She was filing her nails again. “In case anyone calls.”

  Armour detected a note of sarcasm in her voice.

  “I’m heading up to a house. Rose Glen Road. Ever heard of it?”

  “Oooh, fancy. Yes, it’s on the other side of the ravine, north of Bloor.”

  “Should I catch the streetcar or walk it?”

  “What’s wrong with your car?”

  “Of course—my car.”

  She looked at him funny. “Across the street in the lot,” she said. “You left it there all night. Mason’s going to be mad; you know his rule.”

  “Sure I do,” Armour said.

  Chapter 6

  “All cars must be out of here by eight every night,” Mason said. He was a small, wiry man in a clean and pressed grey coverall. The only grease stains were on his hands, and he was trying hard to wipe them off.

  “Sorry, Mr. Mason.”

  “Mister? It’s just Mason. Always has been. You crackin’ wise with me, gumshoe?”

  “No.”

  “Seriously, Armour, I can’t have cars here all night. They might get stolen or damaged. Then you’d come hollering at me for compensation.”

  There were a dozen cars in the parking lot, most of them Model T’s. At the back of the lot was a two-bay service station and small office. There were men down in a pit under a car in one of the bays. The other was empty. Classical music was coming from somewhere.

  “Do I owe you anything for last night?”

  “Nah. I owe you. You helped out there a while back. I’d just hate to see your car get damaged. I’d let you park it in the bays at night, but then they’re locked up at quitting time.”