He’d go see Clara, beg her to put him in touch with Henry again, get the lowdown on Gabrese, and then plan to run into the Lieutenant at Kenilworth.
— Chapter 16 —
POISON IVY
Vera Maude was flipping through an old copy of the Star in the ladies’ room when something on The Women’s Page caught her eye. It was an article describing a garden party she had attended earlier in the summer.
… held by the Music, Literature, and Art Club of Windsor at the lovely home of Dr. and Mrs. Raymond D. Menard, Riverside, on Saturday. From the time it was announced last month it had been arousing no little interest in local social circles. Plans were extensive and many of the details were kept secret until the last moment. The event was well-attended and according to reports it was one of the most delightful of M., L., and A. affairs.
It was amusing to read the Star’s version of the event. The writer made it sound so charming and convivial. Vera Maude remembered it being anything but.
Most of the fifty-odd club members and their guests spent the afternoon playing bridge on the lawn behind the house. Vera Maude didn’t like her odds against these teetotalling cardsharps so instead she lingered in the sunroom, sipped lemonade, and pondered the garden — a nightmare of allergic proportions. When the afternoon tea was served she was waved outside. She had taken a seat at a table under the willow tree, just a stone’s throw from the water’s edge. Daphne and another one of the Daughters of the Empire joined her.
‘Maudie, I’d like you to meet Isabelle.’
Isabelle handed Vera Maude four clammy fingers.
‘Pleased to meet you, Isabelle.’
‘Likewise.’
(Vera Maude remembered hating her instantly.)
‘I’ll pour,’ said Daphne.
Isabelle passed the sugar to Vera Maude.
‘No thanks,’ she said. ‘May I have the lemon instead?’
‘Certainly.’
‘Maudie works at the library too,’ said Daphne.
‘Really?’
‘Really,’ said Vera Maude. ‘Do you work, Isabelle?’
‘No,’ replied Isabelle. ‘Daddy won’t have it.’
No, of course not.
‘I don’t plan on staying on at the library forever.’
Thanks, Daphne.
‘As soon as I’ve married I plan to leave. Who knows, maybe Clive will be the one to rescue me.’
This was news to Vera Maude.
‘What about you, Maudie?’ asked Isabelle.
‘Yes, Maudie, what are your plans?’
They were both staring at her.
You bitch, Daphne.
‘Oh, I don’t know. I was thinking of becoming an opium addict. Or maybe a switchboard operator. I haven’t decided.’
Vera Maude always hated going to those things but she knew if she stopped getting invited it would be a sign of worse things to come. The library would eventually let her go and then the doors in the cultural community would start closing. And then what? It wasn’t a big city. Teach? Go to business college? Become a sales clerk at Bartlet, Macdonald, & Gow? Daphne on the other hand was a full member of the club. Whenever Vera Maude got to go to an M.L. & A. event it was as her invited guest and with the approval of Miss Lancefield, who was on the club executive. Vera Maude figured the only reason Daphne kept inviting her was to help her feel superior among the other members. Why else would someone like Daphne have anything to do with someone like her?
It occurred to Vera Maude that she still hadn’t received her formal invitation to the next meeting. Perhaps the garden party had been the last straw. Maybe the first door had already closed. She folded up the paper and tossed it on the floor.
“Maudie, are you in there?”
“Yeah, what is it?”
“Do you mind if I go for lunch first?”
“Knock yourself out.”
“Goody — Clive is here and he’s taking me to the Prince Eddie.”
“Tell everybody I said hi.”
“Okay,” said Daphne with no sense of irony.
She listened to Daphne march away in her size fives.
“I hope you choke on a cucumber seed.”
Vera Maude adjusted her accoutrements and went back to work.
— Chapter 17 —
CURTAINS
Henry Fields was recovering in a hospital bed at St. Joseph’s. A bullet had grazed the side of his head in the shootout and nearly taken off his ear. In the bed next to him was a man in much worse shape. Clara thought he looked as if he had fallen down a flight of stairs. She got up to check the cloth on her brother’s forehead. It was as warm as his cheek and the pitcher at his bedside was empty. There had to be a utility room on the floor somewhere.
“Henry,” she whispered in his ear, “I’ll be right back.”
She glanced over at the other bed. The man seemed harmless enough, sawing away like some big ugly baby. She set out in search of an oasis. Clara had done some volunteer work after the war, light duty looking after soldiers like Henry who needed some fine-tuning before they finally got to sleep in their own beds. It had started with one of the nurses asking if while she sat there she could roll some bandages. Next thing she knew she was serving lunch. So today while she was at St. Joe’s, Clara thought she would look in on the veterans’ ward.
It wasn’t what she expected. These weren’t outpatients coming back for follow-up treatment. Three years later these soldiers were still waiting to complete their journey home. There were more than a dozen of them; pale, thin bodies dressed in bandages with red, yellow, and purple stains. Broken and disfigured, they were held together with steel plates, tubes, and wire. In their wheelchairs and prosthetics they looked half man, half machine. Several of the sisters were ministering to their hearts and souls. Clara paused at the door at the other end and gazed back across this white linen wasteland. She could not imagine a worse existence, but there was. Upstairs were the soldiers with the invisible wounds, the shell-shocked and sick of mind that had yet to wake from their nightmare. These boys’ introduction to the modern age came in the form of gas grenades, flamethrowers, armoured tanks, and bombs dropping out of airplanes. Where others worked to keep the memory of the war alive, these men spent every minute of every day trying to forget.
Clara stepped backwards through the swinging door and was almost knocked down by a doctor in a hospital robe and mask.
“Pardon me,” she said.
He didn’t even look at her, just continued on his way, turned a corner, and disappeared.
The utility room was at the end of the hall. She set the pitcher down in the sink and let the water run. When it was full she poured herself a glass, downed it in three long gulps, and then headed back to the ward.
The swinging doors were closed. She pushed one open. It looked as if the other patients had been taken into the garden already. After a restless night under the sheets they usually got wheeled outside, where they could sit in the shade and drag some lemonade through a straw. The curtains were drawn around Henry’s and the other patient’s bed. Clara figured the nurses were trying to give them some peace while they moved the other patients out.
Clara gently pulled the curtain back and found Henry fast asleep. The other patient was stirring. She set the pitcher down on the table and went around to his bed.
There was a pillow over the man’s face. She yanked it off. She’d seen dead before and this guy was it. A shadow caught her eye. She jumped around, pulled the curtain back, and saw the doctor from the hallway holding a pillow over Henry’s face. He grabbed her mouth before she could scream. Soon Henry was awake and struggling. The doctor pushed Clara down on the bed and was trying to pinch her nose with his thumb. Unless she did something quick he’d finish them both off. Her hand fell on the pitcher. She swung at his head and with a thud and a splash he dropped to the floor. Henry pulled the pillow off his face, gasping for air.
Clara cursed McCloskey out loud. She knew he had to have something to do
with all of this, and if she never saw him again it would be too soon.
Over at the Border Cities Star, the final edition was being proofed. There was a new headline: WELLINGTON’S DEFEAT. All told, three men died at the shootout at the Elliott — one constable, a motorcycle cop, and some nameless gangland thug. The paper called it “Wellington’s Defeat” because the police had originally gone to the Wellington Hotel at the corner of Elliott and Wellington instead of the Elliott Hotel a few blocks south on Wellington. That mix-up gave most of the gang time to escape or at least prepare for a confrontation with police. No one knew how it happened. There was talk of an investigation.
— Chapter 18 —
THE METROPOLE
The staff was testy. The air was stifling. Her new shoes were attempting to assassinate her feet from blind corners. Vera Maude moved slowly from room to room, assuming up discarded magazines and shelving abandoned books. The day couldn’t end soon enough for her.
And the rumours were piling up about the shootout this morning, blocking her path to the truth. What she needed was facts. Her problem was she didn’t know where to look for them. There was no card catalogue indexing clues, no place to look up bootleggers: see Braverman. When Daphne came back it was Vera Maude’s turn for lunch.
“Tag — you’re it.”
“Abyssinia.”
Vera Maude passed through the outer doors of the library and walked straight into a wall of hot, humid air. There was some relief as she made her way across the lawn, but when she reached the sidewalk she felt like she was standing on a hot plate. Tonight she would say a little prayer to her gods again for rain.
She stopped to wriggle her sunglasses out of her purse. They were the best investment she ever made: thirty-five cents, and she could give any guy the once-over without looking like she was coming on to him.
The streets were filling up with the usual lunchtime cast of characters: professionals from London Street; students and instructors from the School of Business; stenographers, secretaries, and the grand old ladies from west of the Avenue that took their lunch at the Prince Edward Hotel. There were dark suits with long faces going in and out of the Licence Inspector’s office, the crusader’s chief bureaucrat and red tape dispenser.
In quiet moments did he reflect on the futility of his work? Or was he all about the revenue from the fines?
Vera Maude briefly toyed with the idea of taking a detour around the Curtis offices and accidentally running into Braverman.
And then what? Ask him for directions? Tell him what I really think about his tie?
With each step Vera Maude became more irritated by the layers of clothing that clung to her body. Her cami-knickers and stockings were starting to feel like a wool sweater and a pair of hip-waders.
She cut over to Ferry and continued north to Pitt. She thought of this section of downtown as the Wrench Quarter, since it was home to Bowman Auto Supplies, Drouillard Gasoline, Riverdale Tire, Ferry Car Storage, Thompson Auto, just to name a few, and the Industrial Café where the motorheads that worked these joints fuelled up every morning. Vera Maude often ate lunch across the street at the Metropole. It was one of those new self-serve lunch bars that got its start catering to moviegoers.
It was a long, narrow space with an open kitchen in the back corner. The self-serve counter ran along the wall away from the kitchen to the cashier at the front. Tables covered in red and white gingham and chairs with curved cane backs were arranged about the floor. The walls were decorated with scenes from the great European cities: the grand architecture of London, the boulevards of Paris, and the ruins of ancient Rome. These images contrasted sharply with the fishing and hunting postcards from Niagara Falls, Grand Rapids, and Thunder Bay that adorned the cash register. Vera Maude picked up a cheese sandwich and poured herself some lemonade. She found a table near the front window.
Lurking in the back of her mind was the possibility that Braverman was just a middleman, procuring liquor for his clients and co-workers. It didn’t sound very interesting but it was probably closer to the truth. Vera Maude pressed her glass against her cheek. On days like this she was tempted to bob her hair like so many girls suggested.
I’m telling you, you would be so much more comfortable if you cut it all off.
But it’s grown quite attached to me.
And the more traditional folks would inevitably complain that she had gone flapper. There was just no pleasing anyone. Vera Maude wondered what Braverman would prefer and then she admonished herself for thinking she ought to tailor herself to please a man, a complete stranger no less. Anyway, she was supposed to be gathering intelligence on Braverman.
But shouldn’t a girl use all the weapons at her disposal?
Her mental landscape was all quicksand: thoughts moved slowly, then sank and disappeared. She looked back at the diner. The woman leaning over the register was reading a detective magazine. Two men each sat at their own table. One was sipping coffee and the other smoking a cigarette. The coffee sipper looked up and Vera Maude turned her gaze back towards the window, where a fly was repeatedly bashing its head against the glass. She finished her lemonade and abandoned the rest of her sandwich.
She decided to take the Avenue back to the library to see what was what. First she crossed the street to have a look at the new movie stills posted outside the Empire.
Nell Shipman in
“The Girl From God’s Country”
and Wanda Hawley in
“Too Much Wife”
It is a breezy comedy of married life, a bride’s noble resolutions, and how living up to what she considered her duty nearly wrecked her husband’s happiness.
She had to roll her eyes at that one. People started coming out of the theatre, squinting at the daylight and still chuckling at the Harold Lloyd two-reeler. Since the heat wave the theatres were open almost continuously so people could take advantage of the air conditioning.
Jackie Coogan in
“My Boy”
“I’m starting a riot at the Empire.
Wanna join us?”
Vera Maude decided that was what she needed: a little silver screen mayhem. She’d make a date this weekend with Jackie.
She continued walking and caught a whiff of tobacco. The cigar shop was up ahead and she was once again in the mood for adventure. She tweaked the wooden Indian’s nose and stepped inside.
The humid air was laced with cigar smoke. It was almost overwhelming. She wondered how men could huddle together in their clubs and roadhouses and suck on these brown, leathery sticks and come out alive, especially if they happened to be spending the day in a factory. And it seemed like since the war all of the rest of them were smoking cigarettes. They all had their favourite brand and wore it like a badge. Vera Maude studied the displays in the showcases.
Player’s Navy Cut — Greatest Value in the World!
Macdonald’s Cigarettes — The Tobacco with Heart!
Wilson’s Bachelor — The National Smoke!
She wondered if there really was a difference between any of them.
“Maybe you’d prefer a good old-fashioned cigar?” said the man behind the counter. “For the Sunday Smoke — Haig Cigars — only five cents each, sir, as are the Peg Tops — The Old Reliable.”
The man behind the counter spoke in advertising copy.
“Do you have anything....?”
A man in a straw hat, leaning one hip against the counter, made a face that said a little more subtle.
“Of course, sir.”
Vera Maude was throwing off the tobacconist’s rhythm.
“I have the Jap. Manufactured from a native-grown Havana leaf. It has a true tropical flavor. Very exotic. Ten cents each.”
The tobacconist turned, pulled down a box of Japs from the shelf, and set it down on the counter. He plucked out one of the cigars and handed it to Straw Hat, who dragged it across his upper lip and made a face.
“Awfully strong. Wife may not approve. Don’t want to have to stand
at the end of the walk to smoke it.”
And Straw Hat spoke in telegraph.
“I understand, sir.”
The Japs disappeared and the tobacconist pulled another box down from the shelf.
“How about White Owl, sir? Very smooth and a good price: three for twenty-five.”
Vera Maude lingered around the conversation. She was curious. The tobacconist gave her a look. So did Straw Hat, but it was a different kind of look.
“Nice,” he said.
Straw Hat slapped the quarter down on the glass counter and pulled another coin from his vest pocket. “Half-dozen,” he said.
“Very good, sir.”
The tobacconist pulled two more cigars from the box. “You wouldn’t want to be caught short on Sunday.”
“Come again?”
“The new law, sir — cigars can no longer be sold on Sundays unless served with a meal.”
Vera Maude raised her eyebrows.
“Hmf,” said Straw Hat. “I’ll take a box.”
The tobacconist turned around and Straw Hat gave Vera Maude the once-over while she wasn’t looking.
Looks foreign. Big green eyes. Or are they brown? Real doll. Like to put her in my pocket and take her home.
The tobacconist held the lid of the box open. Straw Hat replaced his six stogies.
“Thank you, sir.” He nodded, took one last long look at Vera Maude and went out the door. “May I help you, ma’am?”
The question was intended to shoo Vera Maude away, not to make her feel welcome.
“A pack of Macdonald’s, please.”
That caught the tobacconist by surprise. He had sold cigarettes to ladies before, but they were usually flappers or the sort that hung around bootleggers. This girl was neither.
“Fifteen cents?” asked Vera Maude.
Riverside Drive: Border City Blues Page 11