Border City Blues 3-Book Bundle

by Michael Januska

  “They are searching for something.”

  “Not someone?” said Campbell.

  “No, something.”

  “But you said ‘there will be more, more will die.’ Who is being targeted?”

  She looked drained, like there was almost nothing left in her.

  “All right … what is it they’re searching for?”

  “I do not know.”

  “You can’t tell me anything about what this ‘something’ might be that they are after?”

  “No … it’s not what it appears to be.”

  Campbell took a breath. “You said ‘they.’ There’s more than one of them?”

  She took a short breath. “Sometimes.”

  “Sometimes?”

  “I see only shadows,” she said and slowly shook her head. “I see only shadows.”

  “I asked you if there was a connection between the first body and the other two. Is there?”

  “Yes and no,” she said.

  “But they did it,” said Campbell.

  She was fading. That was enough for Laforet. He moved in.

  “Campbell,” he said almost in a whisper.

  The detective seemed to be in his own kind of trance, or possessed at least by this tangle of mysteries in his head.

  “Campbell, I think you should take Madame Zahra home.”

  Campbell snapped out of it. He looked over his shoulder at his friend, standing there in his glowing white lab coat, the white tile walls, over at the empty, glass-door cabinets, and up at the scoop lights hanging from the ceiling.

  “And then,” continued Laforet in the same tone, “perhaps you yourself should also get some rest.”

  Campbell straightened and looked down at Zahra, who did appear slightly disoriented. He wondered if he looked the same. “Yes.” He blinked. “Yes.”

  “Are you all right for driving?”

  “I’ll be fine,” said Campbell. “Zahra, we should go.” He helped her up while the doctor fetched her things.

  “I’ll show you out. I’m sure the brisk air will do the both of you some good.”

  Up in the lobby, as Zahra once again prepared herself for the cold, Laforet took Campbell aside.

  “Are you sure you’re all right?” he asked.

  “Yes,” said Campbell, not a little defensively. “Of course.”

  “Good. This time it will be me contacting you. But not until you’ve had a meal and gotten some sleep.”

  Zahra was coming back around, but still quiet. The colour was returning to her face.

  “It was a pleasure meeting you, madame.”

  She smiled and took the doctor’s hand. Laforet helped them with the door and watched them make their way down the steps. After he had witnessed them drive off, he re-entered the building and noticed the look he was getting from the nurse at reception. He cleared his throat and headed straight back to the elevator.

  “You know where to find me, Gladys.”

  — Chapter 24 —

  OTHER PEOPLE’S DESTINIES

  “I didn’t come here to talk about Jack,” said Clara, “I came here to talk about you.”

  They were at Henry’s place, once their family’s place. It had been left to her brother. It wasn’t much, just a little clapboard house on Glengarry. Clara was saddened to see it becoming a bit run-down looking. Kind of like Henry.

  “Oh,” he said as he hung up her coat.

  She parked herself on the chesterfield in the front room. All the same furniture she grew up with.

  “Really, Henry, how are you doing?”

  He went to draw the curtains to let in some light. She wanted to talk and he looked as if he wished he had something to tell her. Or maybe he just didn’t know where to start. He would start to say something, hesitate, and then try to start again, but he couldn’t seem to find the words. He looked out the window at the postage stamp–size front yard that spilled down sharply onto the sidewalk; it had barely enough space to pile all the snow. His arms hung loose, but he was grinding his fingertips into the palms of his hands. He turned and sat down in the bucket chair adjacent to the chesterfield, his good ear facing her.

  “I’m fine,” he said.

  “You’re not fine, Henry. I can’t begin to tell you in how many ways you are not fine. First, tell me about your ear. And are you still getting those headaches?”

  He looked at the floor and remained quiet for a moment, and then he surprised her by admitting, “It’s getting worse.”

  “Your hearing or the headaches?”

  He went back to grinding his fingertips into the palms of his hands. “Both,” he said.

  “Are you still seeing a doctor?”

  “Yes.”

  “And?”

  “He tells me there’s nothing more he can do. He explained it all to me. Superior temper gyro something or other. He just keeps giving me painkillers, headache pills.”

  “Maybe you should be seeing someone else, a specialist of some kind, someone with more experience with this sort of thing.”

  “I’ll ask him,” he said.

  “Meanwhile, is there anything I can do? What can I do to help?”

  “Nothing,” he said. “Thank you. I’m sure I’d feel … at least a little better if I could just close a case. I want to make …”

  “Henry?”

  “I feel useless,” he said.

  “Maybe you just need some time.”

  “I just want to close one case.”

  Clara felt she was going to get nowhere with him, at least not at this moment, not with how he was. But she had to start the conversation. Right now she would go along with him and offer as much support as she could.

  “Okay,” she said. “Do you have any leads? Is there something you’re currently working on?”

  “I have Corbishdale trying to work some up for me. He can be pretty good at that, and the experience will be good for him. I also try to get information from others in the department on items they might be too busy to follow up on.”

  Table scraps, Clara thought to herself. None of this sounded good. This wasn’t how detectives were supposed to work. She suspected her brother already knew that.

  “Henry, don’t take this the wrong way, but do you enjoy doing what you’re doing? I mean, do you enjoy being a detective?”

  She knew he heard that clearly by the look of concentration on his face.

  “I don’t know,” he said. “I enjoyed being a constable — and I thought I made a damn good one — but I was working for that detective’s badge. That was what I really wanted. But not without the experience, not without having really earned it. And not without the respect of my fellow officers.”

  It was hard for him to get that out. Clara thought now she was getting somewhere. He continued.

  “It’s not the way I wanted it to happen, and I wouldn’t have wanted it if I were … damaged. But I took it anyway. Now I know I shouldn’t have. But I can’t step down; I can’t demote myself. I’m not going out that way.”

  That sounded a bit better.

  “Close that case, Henry.” She stood up. “And let me know about your doctor and a referral.”

  “Can I give you a ride back to your apartment?”

  “No, thanks. I could use the walk.”

  He went to get her coat.

  “What made you think I came here to talk about Jack?”

  “I don’t know,” he said. “How’s he doing?”

  “Better.” She wasn’t going to go into any details. Her brother didn’t have to know how much better McCloskey was doing than he was, that he was probably going full tilt back into the bootleg business, and that the two of them still spent a lot of time together. The less he knew about McCloskey the better.

  She kissed her brother on the cheek. “Take care of yourself, Henry. And let me know if you need anything. Don’t forget I know people at the hospital.”

  After he closed the door, he went to the window to watch her walk away. His little siste
r.

  Fields pulled a folded newspaper clipping out of his trouser pocket. He re-read it for the umpteenth time then crumpled it into a ball and threw it into the corner.

  THREAT TO BUMP OFF MOUNTIE HEAD

  Sergeant Birtwhistle Too Active, Anonymous Letter States

  With death as a penalty, if his activities against moonshiners of a certain creed in the Border Cities are continued, Sergeant Archie Birtwhistle, in charge of the Essex County detachment of the RCMP, today received a threatening letter postmarked Detroit.

  The letter complained that recent arrests were made against members of a certain creed, solely, and that the RCMP detachment had maintained a system of persecution against this creed for some time. The only arrests that Sergeant Birtwhistle could connect with the letter was in regard to several peddlers of foreign extraction who had been caught smuggling moonshine whisky from across the river. The letter fairly bristles with horrid means of getting rid of Sergeant Birtwhistle’s detachment and concludes with the statement that if there is any more interference, Sergeant Birtwhistle is to be “bumped off.”

  The sergeant received the proposal of his demise with considerable amusement and states that he is not taking the matter seriously. The handwriting in the letter was disguised, and there was no clue that would lead to the possible identity of the writer. The Detroit police, however, were notified, purely as a matter of form.

  — Chapter 25 —

  A PEARL OF GREAT PRICE

  Afternoon

  Shorty had been trying to reach McCloskey by telephone at the hotel, and then, just as he was about to hang up for the third time on the switchboard operator at the British-American, his boss came walking in the front door.

  “Shorty? Where are you?”

  “No names. Listen, I’m in a drugstore across the street from the theatre, and I’ve got her with me. She wants to have a conversation.”

  “So have a conversation.”

  “With you.”

  “Has she told you anything?”

  “No.”

  “Should I meet you?”

  “No, she wants to come to you.”

  “So bring her over,” said McCloskey.

  Pause.

  “We might have a problem,” said Shorty.

  “Oh?” McCloskey’s wheels were turning. There was another pause. “You know who to go to, right?”

  “Yeah, I just wanted to bring you up to speed and clear it with you first.”

  “All right then, just do it. I’ll wait by the phone.”

  Click.

  Through his own bootlegging activity with his old boss, Lieutenant Green, McCloskey would occasionally have to do business with a fellow in Detroit who hired out girls for special occasions, and sometimes these special occasions were in the Border Cities. White girls, negro girls, big and small girls. Leander Hartshorn (if that was his real name) of East Jefferson Avenue ran a house where he operated not so much as a madam but as a talent and booking agent. Not only did he have wigs, dresses, hair, and props, but since his business expanded to the Border Cities, catering to the bootleggers, auto executives, and liquor barons, he had to get into another trade, that of false identification and what he called “transportation.”

  McCloskey’s business was to either supply Hartshorn directly with liquor, or if the special occasion happened to be on this side of the river, he would make sure it was a wet one. McCloskey and his boss were never involved with the girls. They were simply the caterers, so to speak. There were a few roadhouses involved.

  Shorty and Pearl’s ferry kissed the Windsor dock at around four. They timed their arrival for dusk. They sweated a few beads at customs and then cooled as they shuffled up the hill to the British-American.

  “Where’s Jack keeping tonight?” asked Shorty. “He’s expecting us.”

  “He’s in 2C,” said the girl at the desk. She knew Shorty; she didn’t know the girl.

  Pearl was just starting to warm up. She unbelted her coat and folded down the fur collar. But she kept her hat down low, still afraid of being seen. Shorty asked if she was all right.

  “Yeah, I’m good.”

  “You’d tell me if there was any real trouble, right?”

  “Yeah,” she said, “I’d tell you.”

  You’re lying.

  Shorty still wasn’t entirely sure what he was dealing with. Pearl wouldn’t talk, not in big words at least — just little ones that were easy to shuffle across the playing board. He knocked on the door of 2C and tried to look solid, like the boss’s number one. McCloskey opened it wide but said nothing as they stepped into the room. Pearl removed her chapeau.

  “Is that really you, Pearl?”

  “Yeah, it’s me.”

  No one knew what to say after that. And then Shorty spoke up. “It was a good show.”

  And then Pearl blurted out, “I’m real sorry Charlie tried to kill you, Jack.”

  McCloskey smiled. “Let’s just sit down,” he said.

  It was one of the nicer rooms. Simple and with newer furnishings, but nothing like the Prince Edward. This was your father’s Prince Edward Hotel. There was a round table with four chairs in the corner near the window. McCloskey would have the occasional meeting here, when he required more privacy than the bar or to have a card game with a few of the boys.

  “Talk to me, Pearl.”

  Sitting, she pulled her coat off her shoulders and let it drape over the top of the chair. She looked like she’d just stepped out a movie picture, but worse.

  “I’m in some trouble, Jack.”

  “I figured that.”

  “Ever heard of a guy named William Taylor, William Desmond Taylor?”

  “He in our line of work?”

  Shorty just watched the volleys.

  “No, not exactly. He was in pictures, a director.”

  “This is back in Hollywood, I guess.”

  “Yeah.”

  “He making trouble for you?”

  “Well, no. He’s dead. Here, let me finish.”

  Pearl told the story about how a year ago Taylor was murdered in his home in Los Angeles. There was an investigation, sloppy at first and inconclusive, which only got the morality squad fired up. People were demanding Hollywood clean up its act, so to speak. Newspapermen came from all over the country, looking for vice and scandal, only making it worse for the industry and even worse for the investors. They got to the studios’ heads and persuaded law enforcement to call off the dogs.

  “And then something happened,” said Pearl. “I guess the lawmen decided to approach the problem from a different angle. In the early part of the investigation they uncovered a lot of drugs going around.

  “That became a more effective way of getting to the problem. So police turned over that rock and found all manner of worms, parasites, and vermin. It was a whole new ball game. The case reopened in December when a raid in New York uncovered connections to what now appeared to be a nationwide dope ring.

  “Taylor was trying to get these guys to stop selling drugs to the actors,” said Pearl. “They think that’s why he got killed.”

  McCloskey, halfway through his cigar, leaned forward. “And what’s this got to do with you, Pearl?”

  Shorty was feeling the heat, but he was trying not to show it. Maybe he should have dragged his boss across the river rather than bring Pearl, a.k.a. Nora Sullivan of Plum Street, Detroit, into their territory.

  “There were some drug raids … back in Los Angeles. Some of my girlfriends got picked up. These guys — the cops — they’re crazy. They’re like a dog with a bone. Like the Prohibition officers here — only worse. They’re serious and they mean business, Jack. I swear, if you’re in the business — the pictures, that is — all you got to do is have shared a dressing room with someone or worked under this or that director, and you get hauled in. I don’t need trouble like that, Jack. I got scared, and I just wanted to come home.”

  McCloskey looked at Shorty, Shorty looked back. He knew McCloske
y didn’t need any of this, none of it. It would get neither of them any further ahead. But here they were.

  “What makes you think you might be in some kind of trouble?”

  Pearl started playing with the long string of beads hanging around her neck.

  “I may have been at a couple of parties … known a couple of girls … I got tipped off by them, you know, that the investigators might come calling. It got quiet … I was getting a lot of work when I was out there. And then nothing. No one would talk to me, no one would return my agent’s calls — or so he said. It was like I was going to get hauled in next — but I didn’t do nothing, Jack, nothing like that. You know me, right, Jack?”

  Yeah, thought McCloskey, I know you.

  “Jack,” she said, “I just wanted to come home. Now I know all that stuff’s not for me.”

  “So what are you going to do now?” he said.

  “When I left Hollywood, Los Angeles, wherever, I worked my way east with touring vaudeville companies and revues. I learned a lot from being in the pictures and working in shows. I was thinking I might start my own little club, you know, me and a few girls providing the live entertainment, and someone like you supplying the booze.”

  “Sounds like you already got it all figured out. Except for getting across the border.”

  “When I saw Shorty, that’s when I really got to thinking. I guess he kind of saved me.”

  “You’re not saved yet, Pearl. Enough of your sob story; I had Shorty bring you here so that you could tell me something about Charlie Baxter. First of all, where is he?”

  “Honestly, Jack, I don’t know.”

  “When’s the last time you saw him?”

  She sunk back in her chair, threw her head back, and searched the ceiling for an answer. Better this than the interrogation room at the Los Angeles or Detroit Police Department. She faced McCloskey again. “Got anything to drink?”

  “When’s the last time you saw Charlie Baxter?”

  She started making little circles on the coffee table top with her finger. McCloskey was about to slap her hand off her wrist when she said, “The night that everything happened, you know, at Davies’ house, Charlie and I were out on a riverboat cruise with some friends. This was after Davies sent me back upstairs to the suite at the hotel. He only wanted me to decorate his arm while he talked business over dinner with these guys from Detroit. I don’t know who they were and it didn’t matter to me. Anyway, earlier, Charlie and I had agreed to meet up for this cruise.” She smiled. “It was fun.” She was sitting with her hands in her lap now, staring at the smeared tabletop. “We were back on dry land well before the storm started. We didn’t want to say good night, but we didn’t know if we could go back to the Prince Edward. We got in Charlie’s car and just drove around for a while, thinking of hitting a roadhouse, maybe in the west end, you know, out of sight. We wondered together if Davies had put two and two together yet. Maybe he didn’t really care about me, but he might care about being made a fool of by the likes of Charlie, an ex-lumberjack. We never knew. Maybe someone had already seen us and it was too late. We were getting careless. Even if we couldn’t go back, we had no idea how to move forward.