Border City Blues 3-Book Bundle

by Michael Januska

“What do you get out of it?”

  “I don’t have to go to jail; I don’t have to spend my life on the run; I don’t have to die.”

  McCloskey left out the part about how Clara and Henry would be spared. He also left out the part about how he thought it was a set-up and Jigsaw was probably counting on him and the Lieutenant taking each other out. He was starting to feel like everybody’s all-purpose, unwitting, and disposable assassin. They had him coming and going.

  This was too much for Clara to take in, especially as lit as she was. Sadly, her years with the McCloskeys had left her no wiser or better prepared.

  “We’re burying your pa and Billy tomorrow, you know.”

  “Thanks for taking care of all that for me.”

  “I’m not going alone, Jack. If you get killed and can’t make it to your father’s funeral, I’ll never forgive you.”

  “Now I know you’re drunk. C’mon, let’s go.”

  McCloskey got up and led her out the door and into the street. It was still just as hot as it had been in the afternoon. In the distant sky they saw lightning flashes but heard no thunder.

  “Oh, Jack, maybe you should forget about Davies.”

  “You don’t know what you want, do you?”

  “Do you?”

  McCloskey stopped to watch the lightning flash. Clara moved in front of him.

  “Davies isn’t some bootlegging yokel or gangster like the Lieutenant. He’s bigger than that. He’s all that and —”

  “You’re wrong, Clara. He’s a gangster like all the rest.”

  They turned back down Glengarry.

  “Please don’t do this, Jack. Nothing good’ll come of it. You’re just going to get yourself killed.”

  The porch light at Fields’ house came on. They stood together on the sidewalk for a moment. She knew this might be the last time she would get to see McCloskey. He could break a girl’s heart a hundred different ways. She was trying hard not to cry. What she really wanted to do was hit him, make him feel a fraction of the pain she was feeling.

  “I’ll come for you when it’s over.”

  “I won’t wait up.”

  — Chapter 27 —

  PRINTED MATTER

  IMPROPER NOVEL

  COSTS WOMEN $100

  Greenwich Village Publisher and Her

  Editor Fined for Producing “Ulysses.”

  WOMEN’S DRESS DESCRIBED

  Prosecution, on Anti-Vice Society Complaint,

  Said Description Was Too Frank.

  February 22, 1921 — Margaret C. Anderson and Jane Heap, publisher and editor respectively of the Little Review, at 27 West Eighth Street, each paid a fine of $50 imposed by Justices McInerney, Kernochan and Moss in Special Sessions yesterday, for publishing an improper novel in the July and August, 1920, issues of the magazine. John S. Sumner, Secretary of the New York Society for the Prevention of Vice, was the complainant. The defendants were accompanied to court by several Greenwich Village artists and writers.

  John Quinn, counsel for the women, told the court that the alleged objectionable story, entitled “Ulysses,” was the product of one Joyce, author, playwright and graduate of Dublin University, whose work had been praised by noted critics. “I think that this novel is unintelligible,” said Justice McInerney.

  Mr. Quinn admitted that it was cast in a curious style, but contended that it was in similar vein to the work of an American author with which no fault was found, and he thought it was principally a matter of punctuation marks. Joyce, he said, didn’t use punctuation marks in this story, probably on account of his eyesight. “There may be found more impropriety in the displays in some Fifth Avenue show windows or in a theatrical show than is contained in this novel,” protested the attorney,

  Assistant District Attorney Joseph Forrester said that some of the chief objections had to do with a too frank expression concerning a woman’s dress when the woman was in the clothes described. The court held that parts of the story seemed to be harmful to the morals of the community.

  Vera Maude was a voracious reader, and there was evidence of that in her room: newspapers strewn about the floor, volumes of Shakespeare alongside detective stories and romances, a pile of magazines on her night table. When she read it was never as simple as opening a book and reading it through. One idea always led to another. A history might lead to a memoir, which in turn might lead to a novel, then Scribner’s, Black Mask, or last Sunday’s Times.

  She was lying diagonally across her bed, facing the window, with her scrapbook opened up next to her. Feeling a little light-headed, she set her cigarette down on a saucer on the windowsill and took a deep breath.

  She loved how the streetlights lit the humid air that hung from the trees. It was picture-still. At the core of this quietude she felt anticipation, of what she couldn’t say. She noticed Braverman’s light was on.

  The bohemian toiling away in his garret, or the gentleman bootlegger waiting for nightfall?

  Who’s this Mister Braverman?

  Smuggler, spy, or lover-man?

  Why, he crosses the border

  To fill your special order.

  But what’s he brought Vera Maude?

  Not trouble, I hope — dear God!

  Don’t you worry ’cause Maudie

  Hasn’t time for anybody.

  It occurred to her that while she did select every picture and article in her scrapbook, none of it was by or about her. And while she knew this wasn’t all that unusual for a scrapbook, she suddenly felt that it was evidence of a life being lived somewhat vicariously, and she closed it up.

  People were often telling Vera Maude that she had a smart mouth. She’d met enough smart people that never spoke up and dumb people that never shut their mouths to know she should take that as a compliment. She learned at a young age how to turn her thoughts into words. What she was having trouble with now was turning her words into actions. She was twenty-two years old, as old as the century, but by her own accounts she hadn’t really lived.

  Braverman is living. What am I doing? Watching from across the street, like Mrs. Richardson staring through the curtains at the neighbours. Maybe I really am all talk.

  She rolled over and listened to the crickets for a while. Then, on impulse, she sat up and looked out the window. The light was out in Braverman’s room.

  Gone to bed or just plain gone?

  Vera Maude knew that day would come soon. He’ll catch up with his friends in Paris while she would have resigned herself to an unhappy, unfulfilled life in a booze-soaked, car factory of a town, bitter, smart-mouthed, and hateful with no one to blame but herself.

  That’s the gin talking.

  It was just her and the night now, two stragglers left alone in a bar. Night had its charms but clearly had no intention of going all the way. Night seemed to listen; night was easy on the eyes; night even seemed to understand the needs of a girl like Vera Maude. But night was non-committal. Night wanted to be able to trade up in the event that a certain someone’s moon was on the rise. And this time Vera Maude was looking for more than just a “one night stand.”

  She had drunk Mrs. Richardson’s gin, hoping it would settle the riot in her head. It was crowded with people these days: her father, Mrs. Richardson, Mrs. Cousineau, Hazel and Lillian, streetcar passengers, Miss Lancefield, library patrons and society matrons, Daphne, Clive, Isabelle, and the woman with the big hat that always seemed to sit in front of her at the cinema, just to name a few. It was getting to be a bit much. Something or someone had to go.

  Me, I have to leave this party before I get cornered and talked at by some horrible relative or stupid boy or silly girl. While you’re all punching back the hors d’oevres; when you’re not looking and raising your glasses and congratulating yourselves, I’ll be slipping quietly out the back door.

  The to-ing and fro-ing of boxcars could be heard in the distance. She imagined them, boxcars from western New York and southern Ontario, getting strung together and pulled through the
tunnel up into the rail yards of Detroit.

  I just don’t want to get switched to the wrong track or hitched to a bunch of clunky boxcars.

  She wondered how long it would take Mrs. Richardson to notice that her gin bottle was now full of nothing but water. Mrs. Richardson never seemed to take anything from it. Vera Maude always found it just the way she left it, level with the top of the label. Maybe it belonged to Mr. Richardson.

  Pilfering a dead man’s gin.

  Vera Maude had seen him in photos, the sweet little gin blossom standing next to the droopy old sourpuss. The awkward body language of Mr. and Mrs. Ian Richardson: newlyweds outside the church; on their honeymoon in Niagara Falls; at family picnics; next to the Christmas tree; and during a surprise snowfall one day in May, the same expressions, year after year. Did the photographs tell any kind of a story? Did they do the marriage justice? One split second, several times in a lifetime. Unbeatable odds for a dime store Brownie. Vera Maude wondered if Mr. Richardson’s tippling took the edge off. And now that death did them part, the bottle stood silent in the cupboard above the icebox. Did Mrs. Richardson keep it as a souvenir? Perhaps she drank from it on special occasions, like their anniversary.

  Here’s to old what’s-his-name.

  It was still dark over at Mrs. Cousineau’s. Braverman had probably gone home or found some other place to hang his hat tonight — an all-night party, a brothel on Pitt Street, or a speakeasy, anything but the room he rented from an old widow at the bottom of Dougall Road. Vera Maude wondered what kind of room it was. She imagined it full of paints and varnishes from Paris, prints and sketches bought from street vendors, handmade paper and rolls of canvas, charcoal and oil pastels.

  “Supplies for work … and he gets letters all the time.”

  Earlier, Vera Maude had found the Book Review article in her scrapbook. She read it over and over again, looking for clues. She found nothing but was amused again at the account of Joyce attempting to get into the cinema business.

  The Cinematograph had come in and an Italian company had theatres in many European cities. Joyce was over to open one in Dublin. That was in the foredawn of the movies. His “Volta” Theatre was opened, but I never heard that it was successful.

  Vera Maude wondered how anyone could go wrong opening a cinema back then. It would have been like the early days of sliced bread.

  More screens in this town than you can shake a dead stick at. Swing a dead cat from. Stick in a dead cat. Jesus, I’m drunk.

  She had never heard Braverman speak until today. Until today he was nothing more than a moving picture show, a serial she caught between features.

  Who does he look like? Sam De Grasse? Or maybe Elliott Dexter in The Affairs of Anatol. Or younger, like Gaston Glass in The Lost Battalion. All the world’s a silver screen.

  She opened her scrapbook again and flipped through it until she found the article from the Review. “He talked about walking the streets of Paris, poor and tormented, and about the peace that the repetition of his poems brought him.”

  She flopped back on her bed. The sheets were warm. She hated that. Some girls left them in the icebox all day. She’d have to remember that tomorrow.

  Still no rain. Maybe I’m praying to the wrong gods.

  Her hair was sticking to her. Her camisole was sticking to her. If only she could find the energy to strip down, turn out the light, and just go too sleep. She felt too drunk and too tired to perform either task.

  Isn’t that what boyfriends are for?

  The bed wasn’t spinning but it was definitely tilting a bit, and when Vera Maude leaned into it, trying to recover her balance like she was on the deck of a ship, it tilted the other way. She closed her eyes and waited for the ship to right itself. Her tiny ship, tossing back and forth, in between places, in the middle of the Detroit River.

  French for strait. Strait of Calais. Dire straits. Strait jacket. I know into what straits of fortune she is driven. Because strait is the gate, and narrow is the way, which leadeth unto life, and few there be that find it. The water then flows down through Lake Erie, spilling over Niagara Falls into Lake Ontario, down the St. Lawrence and out into the estuary where it mingles with the salt water of the Atlantic. The place is too strait for me: give place to me that I might dwell. The ocean always looks so cold. And it’s so hot here. Why does it have to be so hot? Could a ripple of fresh water make it all the way across the ocean? Into the Seine and the taps and toilets of the Left Bank? Drink a toast, Mr. Joyce, and drink Canada Dry! Stop! I won’t listen. I was out last night on a yellow drunk with Horan and Goggins. Explain that to Mrs. Lancefield. Sleep, Maudie, sleep. I can’t stand it. I can’t face another day at the library. I can’t go on. I’ll go on. I could even get there early. Or at least on time. I can make a change. I can make it work. I can swallow my pride along with this gin and take the edge off. There is only one thing to do, boys, he said. Take them back to Terence Kelly. I hope I fall asleep before I tonight I hope —

  — Chapter 28 —

  RECONAISSANCE

  Locke was walking up from the ferry dock with his hands in his pockets. He looked as if he had been pacing the downtown waterfront all evening. McCloskey pulled the Light Six up to the curb outside the British-American.

  “Ready?”

  “Yeah.”

  Locke climbed in and McCloskey turned around and headed east along the Drive. Most of the traffic was going in the opposite direction, pleasure-seekers from Michigan on their way back home.

  McCloskey looked over at his passenger. “You okay?”

  “I was just thinking.”

  McCloskey pulled a White Owl from his coat pocket, bit off the tip, and spat it on the road.

  “Tell me, Locke, how do you like your chances of taking me down along with the rest of these chumps?”

  “If Fields trusts you, then I trust you.”

  “You’ll trust me as long as I’m helping you get what you want,” said McCloskey. “What about after?”

  “That’s up to you, isn’t it?” said Locke. “You choose your own path.”

  A long time ago the Lieutenant had told his men to beware of a cop named Locke who had ties to militant temperance factions. Locke and his crusader friends were into smashing stills, harassing roadhouse proprietors, running bootleggers off the road, and destroying any bottle they could get their hands on. The Lieutenant said he was a necessary evil: Locke discouraged small-time operators and in his overzealousness created more demand for the product. The chief left Locke to his devices because Locke had no problem enforcing unpopular laws and made the Methodist do-gooders feel like they had an insider. Locke had little idea what a fine line he was walking.

  “Slow down,” he said. “This is it.”

  McCloskey hung a right and parked the car on Esdras, the nearest side street. The two of them hustled across the road and took cover behind a line of parked cars leading up to the house.

  This was more than your usual summer rental. It looked like something from a movie magazine, like one of those places in the hills outside Los Angeles. Its single storey was long and symmetrical in design and covered in white stucco. There was a big oak door at the centre and a bay window at either end looking over the expanse of lawn. The front was dimly lit with decorative floodlighting. It was noticeably brighter towards the back. McCloskey scrambled up to a side window. Locke crouched behind him.

  “See anything?”

  It looked part hunting lodge and part war room. In the middle was a massive desk covered with maps and papers. A Union Jack hung on the wall to the right and to the left was a window that faced the river. A buck’s head was mounted over the fireplace and there were photos of athletes and men in uniform arranged along the mantle.

  “Three of them, all with their backs to me. Hold on.” McCloskey shifted along the window ledge. “Okay, come here and tell me if you know this guy.” He traded positions with Locke.

  “With the suspenders?”

  “Yeah.”
r />   “He’s the one I followed here the other night.”

  They traded positions again.

  “Here come a couple more. Well, well, well.”

  “What?”

  McCloskey waited for a cloud of cigar smoke to dissipate before he was certain whom he was staring at. “There’s something I neglected to tell you about the Lieutenant’s boss.”

  “What’s that?”

  McCloskey turned to Locke and told him that the Lieutenant’s boss, the man at top of their syndicate’s food chain, was none other than Richard Davies. Locke blinked a few times, like a light bulb shorting out.

  “What?”

  “Richard Davies is in there right now talking shop with a few of the most dangerous men in the Border Cities.”

  “I don’t believe it.”

  “See for yourself.”

  McCloskey shifted over.

  “But how —”

  “Shh.”

  There were voices coming from behind the house. Two men carrying what looked to be cases of liquor were making their way down towards a luxury vessel tied to the dock. It went by the name Strait Shooter and it was flying the Stars and Stripes. McCloskey wanted a closer look at the back of the house, so while the two men were busy loading their cargo on the boat, he made his move.

  “Watch my back.”

  The property sloped down to the river so there were two full storeys at the back. The two men had come out of a basement-level storage facility full of military surplus, bottles, boating gear, crates, and containers.

  “Seen enough?”

  A man with the weight and precision of a pile driver held McCloskey down and was preparing to strike.

  Thud.

  Then he collapsed. Locke was standing over the two of them gripping a rock the size of a grapefruit. McCloskey rolled the man off him.

  “I thought I told you to keep watch.”

  “I was watching the boat — this guy came from the front of the house. I didn’t see him until he —”