Border City Blues 3-Book Bundle

by Michael Januska

  The tobacconist pulled down a pack from the shelf. When he turned there were two dimes on the counter. Vera Maude picked up the pack of Macdonald’s then helped herself to a box of matches from a display near the register.

  “Keep the change.”

  She smiled to herself when she walked out and then looked around to see if anyone saw her leave the shop. It would be just her luck to run into her father or someone from the library. She counted it a good day when she was able to open the door a little further to vice. This one would be tough, though. Booze was easy. It could be consumed and concealed with relative ease and little chance of discovery. Cigarettes were different: the matches, the smoke, the smell on your clothes and in your hair, and the tobacco stains on your teeth and fingers.

  But what to do with the butts? Details, details.

  She paused at a newsstand on the Avenue and scanned the magazine covers. She had an idea. Once in a while periodicals meant for a home delivery got mixed up with the library’s delivery. She could pretend to have received a magazine meant for Curtis and walk it over, Business Methods or Graphic or something like that. She could even make like the subscription appeared to be in his name.

  I can’t make out the name. Barterman? Is there a Barterman working here?

  — Chapter 19 —

  LIKE A MOTH TO THE FLAME

  She wanted to kill him when she saw him. Instead she fell into his arms. Once she pulled herself together she told him plainly and simply what happened at the hospital.

  “And where is he now?”

  “Sandwich — in county jail.”

  “Not downtown?”

  “Locke has friends at county. He said he’d catch up with Henry at home after he finished his interrogation.”

  McCloskey knew what that meant. Locke always had his own way of doing things.

  “So who is this guy?” asked Clara.

  On his way to Clara’s McCloskey had stopped by the garage to check in with Orval. One of Orval’s regulars, one of the more reliable big mouths, had told him that Gabrese was dead, found hanging from the bars in his cell this morning. So much for getting a first-hand account of events at Ojibway.

  “He’s somebody’s housekeeper.”

  “Do you think whoever killed your father and Billy were behind it?”

  “I’m not sure.”

  McCloskey was holding his cards close; he really didn’t want Clara getting tangled in this.

  “Jack, if I arrived any later that man might have killed Henry too.”

  McCloskey wasn’t in the mood to listen to any mental hand-wringing. “It’s pointless to talk like that.”

  “I know but —”

  “But what?”

  “Henry’s all I got left.”

  McCloskey was thrown back to a summer afternoon several years ago. He had wandered by the Fields’ house looking for Billy and found Clara alone on the veranda, crying. She said Billy went with some friends to enlist.

  The war in Europe had been raging for almost two years at that point and this latest wave of volunteers knew exactly what they were getting themselves into. McCloskey jumped over the side of the veranda and hit the ground running. He caught up with Billy just as he was leaving the enlistment centre. His brother was wearing that stupid grin that made him look ripe for a beating. He asked Billy if their pa knew. Billy said no, not yet. Jack creased him with right to his gut and then walked into the office and signed himself up.

  Some said he didn’t want to get outdone by his younger brother. Others spoke of a promise Jack had made to his father. Frank McCloskey took ill once when the boys were very young and made Jack promise to look after Billy. Jack never forgot that and so there was nothing for him to do but follow Billy all the way to the Western Front. And now Billy was gone, having survived the Great War only to get killed in a gang fight over some bootleg liquor.

  “Henry’ll be okay.”

  “I hope you’re right,” she said. “You want a drink?”

  “Yeah.”

  She went to the kitchen. He heard the icebox open and then a glass shatter on the floor. He found Clara standing with her eyes closed, gripping the edge of the counter. When he approached her she moved away. It was embarrassing for her to be like this. She felt like she had used up the last of her strength and courage at the hospital.

  “It slipped out of my hand.”

  She dropped a few shards of ice into tumblers and poured some rye. The ice popped. She handed one of the tumblers to McCloskey.

  “Cheers.”

  The rye went down nice. It warmed you when you needed warming and cooled you when you needed cooling. It also listened to you when you had something to say and talked to you when no one else would. It was the drink and the drinking companion all rolled in one. Possibly the only thing you couldn’t do with a bottle of rye was make love to it.

  “Tell me,” he said, “did you see much of Billy after I left town?”

  She was already walking to the window.

  “No,” she said without turning. “They contacted me when he was admitted to hospital. The doctors said he’d probably pull through. After that I just followed his progress in the papers.”

  McCloskey swirled the ice around in his tumbler. “Did you ever believe what you read about me?”

  “What? That you had shot him?” Clara let McCloskey hang for a moment. “No. It never sounded right. I know the both of you too well. Unless —”

  “Unless it was an accident — which it wasn’t. I didn’t even have my finger on the trigger. I was just trying to give Billy a scare.”

  She turned to McCloskey. “Then who did it?”

  McCloskey was still trying to piece together what happened in the alleyway behind the Crawford.

  “The only other weapons I remember seeing were in the hands of the cops. But there was so much going on, and it happened so fast.”

  McCloskey finished his glass and Clara refilled it.

  “Henry still thinks it was you that shot him.”

  “I’ve never said anything that would make people want to think otherwise. You’d be surprised what it does to your reputation when people believe you’re capable of gunning down your own brother. In my line of work, it can really open doors for you. Does Henry ever talk shop with you?”

  “Not really. Why?”

  “Just wondering. Hey — you want to go to the track?”

  “What?”

  “Kenilworth. You wanna go?”

  “Is this another Irish tradition I didn’t know about — placing a bet on your dead brother’s favourite horse?”

  “You can wear black if you want.”

  Clara gave him a look. “Is this business or pleasure?”

  She knew that, as always, Jack was up to something.

  “A little of both.”

  “Why do I have to go?”

  McCloskey paused. “I’d like to keep an eye on you right now.”

  It hadn’t occurred to Clara that she might be in some kind of danger.

  She wanted to laugh, but she didn’t dare. “But why would I be —”

  “We don’t know how far they’re willing to take this, Clara.”

  She rubbed her temple with her free hand. She was exhausted, confused. She sat down.

  “Have you eaten?”

  “No,” she said, “not really.”

  “I’ll make you something.”

  McCloskey went into the kitchen and started rummaging through the cupboards. He really had no idea what he was doing. “And I should probably stay here tonight,” he said.

  “Okay.”

  Neighbours would talk but she didn’t care. She’d stopped caring the third or fourth time she brought a man home. How could she expect them to understand? She kept Billy’s name on the register at the front of the building and still referred to herself as Mrs. William McCloskey. Had she hopes of her and Billy getting back together again? Maybe. Or perhaps like McCloskey she just enjoyed living outside of society’s boundar
ies, an exile in her hometown.

  McCloskey leaned through the kitchen doorway holding a tin of corned beef. “Got a can opener?”

  Clara sighed and got up. “Look,” she said as she took the can from McCloskey. “It’s got this little key on it, see? The little key is what you use to open the can.”

  The kitchen was tiny. McCloskey stood close to Clara, almost on top of her as she twisted the key slowly around the edge of the can. She could feel his breath on the back of her neck. She stopped moving, sensing the inevitable, waiting for the wolf to pounce. McCloskey grabbed her shoulders, spun her around, and forced his mouth on hers. She dropped the can on his foot and he bit her lip. He kicked the can and broken glass out of the way and lifted Clara onto the counter. She hit her head on the cupboard.

  “You still like to play rough, don’t you, Jack?”

  He slid Clara’s skirt up her thighs, exposing the bare flesh above her stockings. He tucked the fabric under her hips and started working his hands up inside her blouse. Clara was already massaging him through his pants.

  “You gonna use that? Or are you just trying to give me a scare?”

  “Shut up.”

  He closed her mouth with his. Clara stretched her arms out along the cupboards and McCloskey hungrily kissed her neck. When he got close to her ear he pinned her wrists against the cupboard doors and asked her who she was waiting for last night.

  “C’mon, you can tell me. I need to know what I’m up against here.” McCloskey pulled her legs further apart. They were both feeling the rye.

  “Actually, I was waiting for one of the boys from the department,” she grinned. “That’s how I watch Henry’s back for him.”

  McCloskey leaned into her and held his mouth against hers until she almost lost her breath and had to pull away.

  “What is it about me and you, huh, Jack?”

  “I don’t know. I guess we both just bring out the worst in each other.”

  They were lying on her bed with the little electric fan whirring next to them on the floor. They decided to take a quick siesta before heading out to the track.

  Clara fell right asleep but McCloskey couldn’t stop turning things over in his mind. She had asked him whether he was settling in Border Cities. He didn’t have an answer. What could he tell her? That there was nothing for him here, nothing but bad memories? That the city felt like a prison to him now and all he could think about was going to look for Sophie? Depending on how things played out this afternoon with the Lieutenant, he might just leave town right away and try and pick up her trail.

  He reached down and grabbed the bottle of rye, lifting it to his lips. Clara rolled off him and onto her back. He gazed at her and wondered about the love she shared with her husband, his brother, or the love that any two people shared for that matter. He was convinced that love, if there even was such thing, was in the moment. How can anyone in their right mind promise love? There were no promises, not anymore at least.

  He took another swig from the bottle then climbed on top of Clara. Half asleep, she resisted at first but then instinctively grabbed the headboard. The bed shook and there was a clatter. McCloskey leaned over and saw a pair of handcuffs dangling from the frame. He remembered what Clara had said about watching Henry’s back for him.

  Sweat was glistening on her chest and she was breathing heavily. Sensing he was about to finish, she wrapped her legs around his waist, squeezed him closer, and bit his neck. McCloskey groaned and drove himself so deep inside her, she had to curl her body sideways to keep from being crushed against the headboard.

  He rolled off her and collapsed. They lay there panting, too drunk and too spent to say anything. Relationships like this never end good, McCloskey thought.

  — Chapter 20 —

  WE HAVE MET TOO LATE

  “Are you reading Alice Adams?” Daphne asked.

  “You mean in the Star? No. I read the book a while ago. Where are they?”

  “The apparition in the mirror.”

  Vera Maude remembered the passage “who in the world are you?” Alice looks in the mirror and her image transforms into that of the creature she feels is responsible for the lies she tells, lies meant to make her seem like she is someone other than who she is, someone of a higher social class. But at the end of the day, she is who she is and nothing can change that.

  Let that be a lesson to you: to thine own self be true.

  Daphne and Vera Maude were cataloguing newly arrived fiction titles. Daphne was seated at the desk behind the counter and Vera Maude was leaning over the counter with her back to Daphne. They each had a pile of books in front of them. Daphne just finished the card for Tarkington’s Gentle Julia and was reaching for the next book on the pile.

  “Ooh — here’s one,” said Vera Maude.

  Daphne looked up from the desk. “One of my favourites?”

  “Yep. Guess which one.”

  “Hutchinson?”

  Vera Maude shook her head.

  “Rinehart?”

  “Nope.”

  Vera Maude flashed the book at Daphne. “Haggard,” she said in a deep, dramatic voice, “Virgin of the Sun.”

  Daphne made a face.

  “Shipwrecked sailor lands on Peruvian virgins, becomes white god of the Aztecs. Look — pictures.”

  “I’ll tell my brother,” said Daphne.

  “How many more have you got?”

  Daphne checked her pile. “Not many,” she said. “Eight or nine. How about you?”

  “The same,” said Vera Maude.

  “Anything good?”

  Vera Maude tipped her pile and scanned the spines. “Chambers, The Flaming Jewel; Deeping, Orchards…”

  “I loved Lantern Lane.”

  “…Marsh, Trailer of Toils; Robinson, Mustered Men; Van Vorst, Queen of Carpathia….”

  “You’re making those up, aren’t you?”

  “Let’s take a break,” said Vera Maude. “Feel like running over to Lanspeary’s? I’d love a Vernor’s.”

  “There’s an idea.”

  Daphne stuck her pencil in her hair and got up from the desk. Vera Maude flipped up a section of the counter and saluted her as she passed through the checkpoint.

  “Cover me,” said Daphne.

  She could be okay, thought Vera Maude, when they were by themselves. It was really only when they were around other people that Daphne became an absolute cow.

  The library settled lazily into the afternoon. A table of veterans was reading Westerns. Some girls were thumbing through fashion magazines. There was a woman trying to corral a small group in the children’s room. Vera Maude shifted her pile of books, stretched her arms up over her head, and yawned.

  “Excuse me; do you keep back issues of the New York Times Book Review?”

  Vera Maude went to answer but lost her capacity for speech. It was Braverman.

  “Ah — yes, yes we do. I mean we generally, we usually —”

  “I’m looking for the June 11 issue. Would you have it?”

  He had his artist’s case with him.

  “Wait here a minute, I’ll go check.”

  She returned momentarily with it.

  “Thanks.”

  He found an empty table and sat down. Vera Maude watched him flip through it. He smiled when he found what he was looking for. She casually walked around the counter and began to straighten chairs in the general vicinity. Out of the corner of her eye she could see the page he was reading. It had a small headline and an illustration.

  “Excuse me, Miss.”

  Vera Maude turned to find a young girl standing behind her with an armful of books.

  “Do you have any books about fairies?”

  “Ferries?”

  “No — fairies.”

  Vera Maude glanced back at Braverman. He was engrossed in the article and looked like he might be a while.

  “I’ll show you where they are. Let me help you with those.”

  Vera Maude bent down, scooped up the li
ttle girl’s books, and brought her back to the children’s room. When she returned a few minutes later Braverman was gone.

  Damn.

  “Where’s the copy of the Book Review that man was reading?”

  “Behind the counter.”

  Vera Maude pounced on it.

  “Don’t worry; it’s all in one piece. And your Vernor’s is on the desk.” Daphne paused. “You’re welcome.”

  Vera Maude was already riffling through the Review, looking for a page that resembled the one Braverman was reading. Nothing looked familiar. Then she turned it upside down and flipped through it again.

  On the right — my right.

  Then she stopped flipping.

  ‘With James Joyce in Ireland.’

  She had this article in her scrapbook. She skimmed it, looking for some sort of connection. A man who knew Joyce in his youth wrote it. He was trying to reconcile the young man he knew then with the author of the now infamous Ulysses.

  Colossal parody … Homer … Divine Comedy … “I’m afraid you have not enough chaos in you to make a world” … he talked about walking the streets of Paris … his ideal in literature is that which is simple and free … He was glad he had left Dublin.

  She looked at the caption below the illustration.

  Did not this youth say to Yeats, “We have met too late; you are too old to be influenced by me.”?

  “We have met too late,” muttered Vera Maude.

  “Reading with your lips again?”

  Vera Maude folded up the paper. “That man that was just in here, the one reading the Book Review, have you ever seen him in here before?”

  “Sure,” said Daphne. “He’s been in here looking for copies of a Toronto paper. I forget which one. He told me has a friend that’s a foreign correspondent. He was probably just trying to impress me.” Daphne stopped and grinned. “Are you interested? You go for Yanks?”

  “No, and not particularly. Have you ever talked to him?”

  “He never has much to say. Why? What’s up?”

  “I don’t know. I think he might be a bootlegger. Don’t act so surprised. There are more bootleggers than mechanics in this city and you know it.”