Border City Blues 3-Book Bundle

by Michael Januska

  “That there must be something funny in the beer, because he didn’t pass anyone on his way in.”

  Lapointe was about to make the sign of the cross but then put his hand back down under the table.

  “I’m not one to believe in ghosts and devils,” continued Seph, “and I haven’t been to church since I was an altar boy, but I’m telling you what I heard, and it was from someone who was there. The Guard swallowed him up and disappeared into thin air.”

  “That’s not possible.” Lapointe paused. “What did they want from him?”

  “No one knows for sure. They figured he either got too close or took something that didn’t belong to him, and they wanted it back.”

  Lapointe met up with the boys at the British-American and told them about his conversation with his brother-in-law. He conveniently left out the anecdote about the Guard.

  “We’re getting nowhere fast,” said Mud.

  “Now what?”

  “Can’t you see? We can’t stop now,” said Gorski. “We have to keep moving until we find it, whatever it is.”

  “We’re committed now.”

  “I think we should let Jack get involved.”

  “Yeah, we need Jack.”

  Let Jack get involved. No one let Jack do anything. Shorty had always felt that something was pulling him and the other boys along. He didn’t know what it was. He started feeling it as soon as they found the key on Jigsaw. If the key was a means to an end, maybe it was theirs.

  It was a brief but intense conversation and they all needed to cool off. They had finished and were standing now outside the hotel, on the corner where the Avenue met Riverside Drive. Shorty looked up and down, turned to the gang and said, “All right, I’ll talk to Jack again. The rest of you fan out. Davies had his hands in a lot of pies; let’s see if any of them were half-baked. Thom and Three Fingers, take Ojibway and Sandwich. Gorski and I will take Windsor and Walkerville. Mud — you and Lapointe take Ford and Riverside. The key might come in handy, depending on what you find and the circumstances, so we’ll share it.” Handing it to Thom, Shorty said, “I want you and Three Fingers to take it first. Again, be careful who you talk to, be careful what you say.”

  Shorty pulled the end of the cigarette out of his mouth and flicked it into the wind. It vanished in the blowing snow. “If anyone finds anything, leave me a message at the desk. We’ll reconvene at the bar at nine tonight. Good luck.”

  — Chapter 11 —

  DREAMT OF IN YOUR PHILOSOPHY

  Campbell got himself over to the library but was told, without the librarian even checking, that they did not have anything on the occult. Not the kind of thing we carry, she said, not what the public is looking for. Except for him. He was confused. What public was she referring to? The librarian sent Campbell to Copeland’s. She — Daphne was her name — said that Mr. Copeland catered to broader tastes and could even handle special orders. She offered directions. He told Daphne that he was familiar with the establishment, though honestly he wasn’t entirely, and thanked her. He stepped around a caretaker mopping up grey-brown puddles of grit and melted slush off the marble floor near the entrance. The man gave the detective a quick glance. Campbell knew that the caretaker had overheard his exchange with Daphne. Campbell paused as he bundled himself back up again.

  “Is she always like that?” he said.

  The caretaker made a few more swirls on the floor with his mop and, without looking up, said, “Yeah.”

  At the top of the stoop, Campbell checked the skies and then adjusted his hat and carefully negotiated the steps back down to the sidewalk that took him back to the Avenue.

  It was nearing the end of lunch hour now and the streets were quieter. Or maybe people were eating at their desks. And the ladies didn’t seem to be heading out to the shops as usual. This weather was obviously bad for business. Maybe that’s why they had to invent Valentine’s Day, thought Campbell. More red to keep them out of the red.

  He kept his head down, which wasn’t like him. He wondered what he might be missing.

  Frostbite.

  And then he wondered if he could tell by the character, by the marks on the exposed sidewalk, where exactly along the Avenue he was walking. He stopped, and found himself standing in front of Copeland’s.

  Very good.

  He examined the window display and checked the titles, though they were difficult to read through the frost on the inside of the glass. Nothing he could make out seemed to suggest this was a place where he might find books on channelling spirits or on astral planes, but he’d give them a try. Two couples were exiting. He shouldered between them and passed through the door.

  After peeling off his gloves yet again and while blowing into his cupped hands he surveyed the bookcases that were almost as high as the ceiling, the tables stacked with books, a cart overflowing with books to be shelved, and the stationery — boxes of paper, pens, ink bottles, notebooks and pads, writing paper and diaries. The place was an arsonist’s dream. He wandered a bit, trying to take it all in. Though inhabited, it was dead silent. Compared to this, the library was a henhouse.

  “May I help you?” whispered a small feminine voice behind him.

  He turned. “Actually, I’m —” Campbell was tongue-tied for a moment “— looking for your occult section. Would you have such a thing?”

  The bookseller put one hand on her hip, cupped her chin with the other, spun on her heel, and then returned back to Campbell. “Not exactly. But we do carry books that touch on the subject. They’re scattered a bit, in philosophy, religion, science … was there a particular title or author you were looking for?”

  He was studying her face, cataloguing every detail, as he always did when meeting someone for the first time. He hoped he wasn’t being too obvious. Wide copper-green eyes behind the Harold Lloyd-type specs; just enough colour in her cheeks to predict a warm skin tone in the summer; and dimples when she was barely smiling. Her s’s whistled just ever so slightly. And then there were the wild chestnut-brown curls piled on top of her head, held together with a contingent of hairpins. He had better hold off for now.

  “Anything on theosophy?”

  “Oh,” she said and turned to one of the walls of books. “I thought I saw something earlier.” She started moving toward a section and, holding his hat now, Campbell followed.

  “You’ve heard of it?” he said. “Theosophy, I mean.”

  She glanced back to him while she wove around the tables. “Oh, sure. I worked in a bookstore in the Village — in New York — and people were always coming in and asking for —”

  “You’re American?” Campbell was anxious to solve this mystery girl. He didn’t detect any kind of American accent.

  “No,” she said. “I’m from here. Anyway, like I was saying, people used to come in the store all the time looking for those kinds of books. People into holding séances or parties with a palm or a tarot card reader, Madame Blavatsky-type stuff, you know?”

  She moved quickly, and Campbell couldn’t help but notice her hips swinging around the table corners. He tried to stay focused. “Really? So you know a little bit about the subject?”

  “Only what I picked up from the clientele,” she said over her shoulder. And then she stopped moving and pointed to a few shelves in the categories that she mentioned. They were all adjacent to each other. “Have a look and let me know if you need any more help. I’ll be around.”

  She wiggled away. He wondered if she had heard or read anything about the incident on Maiden Lane. Then again, why didn’t he know anything about this latest occult craze? It was like a new foxtrot.

  “I’ll have a browse. What’s your name in case I need to come looking for you?”

  “Vera Maude.”

  “Thanks, Vera Maude.”

  She smiled and turned away to help a customer trying to flag her down, some woman waving a newspaper clipping. This Vera Maude girl took something besides herself with her when she walked away. Campbell couldn’t quite
put his finger on what it was. He regrouped and shifted his attention back to the task at hand: a crash course in the occult.

  After a half hour or so he found a few books that he thought might be useful, some specific, others tangential to the subject. He had thumbed, skimmed, grazed through all of them. Once or twice while doing this he glanced over at Vera Maude. One time he had to move out of her way as she led a customer to the children’s books section. Business seemed to be picking up. The winter could only keep people indoors for so long, even a winter like this one. Campbell settled on a couple of titles and brought them over to the register to have Vera Maude ring them through.

  “A little light reading, I see.”

  “Not your taste?”

  “Not really.” She squinted through her cheaters and poked the keys on the National. One of the keys seemed to want to stick. “I like detective stories,” she said.

  Hm.

  She handed Campbell his change.

  “Thanks,” he said.

  “But I guess,” she was saying as she bagged his purchase, “these can kind of read like detective stories, you know?”

  “How do you figure?”

  “People looking for answers.”

  Campbell folded the end of the bag over and tucked the bag under his arm. “You might have something there.”

  “Thanks,” she said. The way she said it to all her customers. Campbell was already making his way toward the door, back out into the cold. He opened it and the little brass bell above the doorframe rang. “Come again.”

  — Chapter 12 —

  IT’S IN THE EXECUTION

  Morrison came galumphing down the hall at police headquarters, and noticing Fields’s desk light was still burning bright, he invited himself into this otherwise dark space.

  Along with his low-wattage desk light, Fields was also using any ambient light from the hall in order to see what he was doing, making Morrison’s presence about as inconspicuous as a solar eclipse. The big man was standing in his doorway. Fields’ first thought was that his colleague was here to congratulate him on the raid that he and Corbishdale had executed this morning.

  “Fields.”

  Fields gestured toward the chair in front of his desk. “Morrison — have a seat.”

  “No, thanks. I gotta be somewhere.” Actually, Morrison looked like he just came from somewhere. For a man that size, he certainly enjoyed being on the move. “You probably heard about the cleaning up that the provincial police and a few of our boys had to do.”

  “Clean up? What do you mean?” He was drumming the end of his pencil on the report he was working on. It was hard to tell, but it looked like Morrison was wearing a slight grin. Maybe it was just the booze; a cloud of rye had just wafted toward Fields’s desk. Or maybe it was something else.

  “I’m talking about those coloureds on Tuscarora. Your bust this morning, yours and Corbishdale’s.”

  In their morning raid, Fields and Corbishdale arrested a Mr. Don Henderson and Miss Oda Gray after discovering a partially consumed bottle of “white mule” on the premises. Corbishdale had got the tip from one of Henderson’s neighbours who had a less than friendly attitude toward “those damned monkeys.” When questioned, Gray said she and her boyfriend bought some of the liquor from Henderson first last night and then again this morning. Twenty-five cents a glass. Henderson was charged with unlawfully keeping liquor for sale and Gray was held on a vagrancy charge.

  Morrison explained to Fields that a squad of provincial police and Windsor officers went back to the address a short while ago and arrested Henderson’s brother-in-law, a guy by the name of Lockman, and two other fellows.

  “All from Detroit,” said Morrison, “and all coloureds. While Henderson was in the clink, Lockman brought his pals to Henderson’s to retrieve the last of the booze — stowed away behind the wall of the root cellar in the basement.”

  Fields resisted the temptation to raise the palm of his hand to his forehead. He hadn’t properly frisked the place.

  Morrison was rocking on his heels now. It seemed to go along with the grin. He continued. “This neighbour of theirs said that there’d always been a lot of coming and going at the house. He phoned the desk early afternoon and said there were some familiar faces circling the house like vultures. That’s when our group went out and nabbed them, right in the house. Our boys said one of Lockman’s pals, Anderson, I think it was, was caught pouring some of the hooch on the floor while the other fellow, Blythe or something like that, ran out the back door, through a maze of chicken coops in the yard, and threw the bottle over the fence. It landed right in a neighbour’s back yard.”

  Morrison was enjoying this, Fields could tell. Fields was making an effort not to look too disappointed in himself and kept his back straight.

  “And get this,” continued Morrison with a chuckle, “apparently Blythe was at one time employed as a detective for the Anti-Saloon League and the Women’s Christian Temperance Union. He also said that for the past six years he’s been in charge of coloured help at Windsor’s racetracks. Ha!”

  “Thanks for the information,” was all Fields said and resumed dragging his pencil across the paper in front of him, a signal to Morrison that the conversation was over and he could get the hell out of his office now.

  “Just thought you ought to know,” said Morrison, and he turned and left, brightening Fields’s door.

  Once the big man’s footsteps faded down the hall, Fields broke his pencil in half and tossed the report in his desk drawer. He then went looking to see if Corbishdale happened to be around but couldn’t find him. Fields looked at his watch. It was late. Corbishdale would be home in bed right now, or at least he ought to be. What a day it had been. Fields stood in the lobby and lifted his gaze to the high ceiling, examining the corners and the plasterwork.

  He had returned from LaSalle this morning with nothing: no clues to the intentions of the Canadian rumrunners, or any connection to the earlier River Rouge activities. He checked the cabin and saw the pieces of the suit on the stove and on the floor, and thought nothing of them. He looked out on the river and could make out where the hole in the ice likely was, but it was being covered with fresh snow. He spoke to the farmer, but he had nothing new to offer. And on Fields’s way there and back, he had looked closely at the shoulders of the main road and the entrances to the side roads and could not make out where any vehicle would have recently pulled over or turned off.

  Fields turned his gaze toward the pictures of the retired officers on the wall. He wondered what kind of example he was setting for Corbishdale. The boy’s previous mentor, Montroy, knew what he was doing. He was a street-wise veteran cop who had much to teach a junior constable. When he was retired out of the force last summer, Fields decided to take Corbishdale under his wing and finish the job that Montroy had started.

  When Fields had returned from LaSalle and got back to his office, he was again feeling discouraged and disheartened. Corbishdale came looking for him. He had a fresh lead, a good one. It had to do with the house on Tuscarora. Barely prepared, hardly thinking, but looking for some sort of success, some sort of valediction, he told Corbishdale to grab his coat because they were going to make a raid.

  Fields’s head was pounding again. And now his ear was ringing badly. When he turned, he saw that the desk sergeant was facing him and his lips were moving.

  “Come again?” said Fields, turning his good ear toward him.

  “I said, you all right, Detective?”

  “Yeah, fine. Thanks. Just tired. Time to call it a night, I guess.”

  The detective returned to his office for his pills, hat, and coat.

  — Chapter 13 —

  YOU WON’T FIND HIM HERE

  Vera Maude pulled on her gloves and shouldered her way through the door at Copeland’s. Mr. Copeland was right behind her, turning the Open sign around to Come Again. It had been a good first day. Vera Maude was able to find what people were looking for mostly, as well as po
int them in some new directions, all without the least bit of sarcasm or snobbery.

  It’s the new Vera Maude, she thought.

  Winter seemed to be tightening its grip on the Border Cities. There had been another light snowfall in the afternoon. A fluffy white layer added to the heavy brown and grey ice and slush already on the sidewalks. Too heavy for a broom, merchants had been trying their best with coal shovels to push the mess into the gutter. Pedestrians, Vera Maude included, stomped their boots and galoshes on the cleared parts, sending the merchants back to work.

  She was thinking about what her uncle had said last night about taking the opportunity to look up old friends. The truth of the matter was she really wanted nothing more to do with them, but wasn’t about to tell him that. Many of these so-called friends were the reason she had left Windsor in the first place. Shortly before she left town, if she saw someone she knew heading toward her down the sidewalk, she’d cross the street to avoid them. She was already cutting ties.

  But she felt conflicted; she wanted to connect with people, yet always wanted to be left alone. She enjoyed a good conversation, yet felt awkward in social situations. She felt harassed, yet I was often overcome by loneliness.

  She walked over to the corner newsstand at Chatham Street, bought a copy of the final edition of the Star, and took it into Pond’s Drugstore. It was warm and humid inside, what with the kitchen behind the sit-down counter operating at full steam ahead and the people milling about in their heavy coats. She found a stool halfway down the line. An overly made-up waitress pounced on her and asked if she wanted to see a menu. Vera Maude didn’t need one; she could read it off the waitress’s apron: chicken soup, meatloaf, and …

  “A slice of apple pie, please.”

  “Anything to drink?”

  “Tea, thanks.” Vera Maude looked around. It reminded her of some of the diners in New York. It also reminded her how comfortable she felt there. She didn’t mind the noise and the traffic or the streets teeming with people. Everyone was so busy, so preoccupied with their own lives. Interesting lives. They were all in it together. She never felt alone. Well, maybe sometimes.