The Man Who Killed

by Fraser Nixon

  “Better.”

  I extended a feeble hand to cadge a drag. Jack looked around.

  “Do you miss this place?”

  “I wasn’t cut out for the healing arts.”

  “I’ll say. A degree’s not worth a damn these days anyhow. Regard this august acreage. Fancies itself a shining beacon. Damn spread’s a charnel house just like everywhere else, an Indian graveyard. Look at McGill himself, that Scotch bastard. You won’t find the story on the Founder’s Elm of how he made his gelt and endowed this pile. You know what it was?”

  “No.”

  “Black ivory. That’s why I don’t give a tinker’s for the bootlegging. What’s that compared to blackbirding across the Middle Passage? A joke. Nowhere near to. It doesn’t matter, and that’s the secret of our bloody Dominion: money buys respectability. Simple. Whole country’s a monument to robber barons. All you have to do is found a library or endow a charity for strays. Yesterday’s blackhearted thieves are today’s grand old men. Just you watch: the Bronfmans and the Gursky boys will be held up as paragons of rectitude once Prohibition’s over. Money’s clean the more you have. That’s just what I’m after. An honorary doctorate and a dean’s dinner. Brandy enough to float you downriver. You wait and see. Where’re you staying?”

  “I’m between hotels at the moment,” I said.

  “Come on, then. I’ll whistle you up a cot at my place.”

  We travelled along deserted streets, the city sawing logs. No traffic or noise. Jack had rooms at the Mount Royal Hotel.

  “Isn’t this a mite conspicuous?” I asked as we ghosted down its stately corridors.

  “No. It’s the same thing. Money buys discretion. I tip the house dick an extra sawbuck and it’s as though I was never here. It’ll be like that tonight at that knocking shop. The madam’ll write us off and the girls will be told to forget. They’re probably already with another group of upstanding citizens. Clergymen, say. What would your venerable father be saying about we two now, I wonder?”

  “There aren’t many passages in the Scriptures dealing with being turfed from a whorehouse,” I said.

  “On the seventh day, no less.”

  In our youth together Jack and I’d been abjured from turning a hand of a Sunday. It meant no baseball, no newspapers, not even a ride on a buggy or bicycle. Such were the joys of living in the household of a Presbyterian minister. The town had been entirely of my father’s temper, with Lord’s Day and blue laws that near enough shut Vancouver down ’til start of business Monday morning.

  “Ach, lad, I’ll not have ye eyeing strumpets at the kinema,” said Jack, in a fair approximation of the Pater’s voice.

  From a bottle on his dresser he poured me drink. I swallowed a combination of whiskey and thick salt.

  “What is this?”

  “Mongoose blood.”

  “You jest.”

  “Not at all.”

  He sat on the bed across from me. Inevitably it’d been Jack who’d rebelled and challenged Jehovah. He vanished after lights out one Saturday evening and was not to be seen with the amah and myself in our pew for Sunday service. Instead Jack took his schooling on Skid Road amongst the loggers, Indians, and badmashes.

  “Thinking on the time you stopped coming to the kirk,” I said.

  “So was I. Won two hundred dollars playing fan tan that morning in a den on Pender.”

  “The Pater preached the fourth commandment as his text.”

  “Which one’s that again?” asked Jack. “Coveting asses?

  I laughed and swallowed more of the awful cocktail.

  “Let me see your arms,” Jack said I stood, shucked off my coat, and rolled up my sleeves. None of the marks were recent.

  “Good. I want to make sure I can rely on you.”

  “Are you going to tell me what’s going on?”

  “In the morning. Get some rest.”

  Perhaps Jack’s addition to the nightcap was a soporific. I faded away in my chair in fair imitation of death.

  MONDAY

  COFFEE CUPS CLATTERING on a tray woke me from an erotic reverie. My clothes were wrinkled and wet, a skin ready to be sloughed off. Muscles spasmed across my back, accompanied by a small hang-over. Jack was up and whistling, in the chips again. I had over a thousand dollars now when two days ago I’d been near my last buck. The Webley was on the table next to the coffee. I yawned, stretched, and asked the time.

  “Time to call the tune,” Jack said.

  “Did you slip me a Mickey Finn?” I asked.

  “Now that’d be apt.”

  “Chloral hydrate, I mean.”

  “I know. Get up, Hippocrates.”

  “I need a shave,” I said.

  “Surely.”

  I yawned again and took some coffee and a cigaret from a box by my chair. Having never made it to any cot I’d slept upright in third-class. Jack kept whistling “Annie Laurie.” I smoked and thought.

  “What’s next?” I asked.

  “You’ll see. Get ready.”

  Less than an hour later the preliminaries were complete. I’d bathed and scrubbed my teeth with a cloth. Jack loaned me a spare suit and hat, both a mite large. My lips turned numb from bay rum the barber spilled on them. Ether would have been nicer, or morphine, bedamn. We left the Mount Royal and caught a streetcar east, turning northerly up St. Lawrence Main. It was a crisp autumn day, windy and fresh with great armadas of cloud invading the sky, a lively, peppery spice to the air. We stood holding the ’car’s straps, jangling along the boulevard.

  “See the ’paper there?” Jack nudged.

  A wizened gent held a folded section to his face. I managed to make out that Loew’s movie house had been robbed last night. Here I was in the news at last. Clip the article and mail it home to the Pater, for joy.

  “I was right,” Jack said in my ear. “The Southerner is claiming seven thousand was taken. As though a week of rotten Vaudeville and an old flicker or two could net that much!”

  I squinted. “What else does it say?”

  “He can’t describe the thieves. Proves my point. The man doesn’t want us caught. He’d lose four grand from the insurance company and be up on charges himself. You hungry?”

  I was and said so. We hopped off near Duluth and went into a Hebrew delicatessen for meat sandwiches, the sausage sticks called nash, and more coffee. Jack used the toilet and met me back outside. On the boulevard an ice cart trundled behind a woebegone nag and kids fooled around in the gutter. Women walked by, resembling Mennonites in their odd poke bonnets. We passed an old Gypsy crone wearing a necklace of gold coins, Franz Joseph thalers. The street whiffed of coalsmoke, piss, horse manure, and burnt toast, that smell often a harbinger of a cerebral stroke. Trepan me with a cranial saw per the dicta of Dr. Osler, my brain simply the enlarged stem of the spinal column. Remove the offending hemisphere.

  We walked onto Fletcher’s Field past the Grenadiers’ redbrick armoury and onto a greensward. Park Avenue and the mountain were ahead, a skeleton scaffold of an unfinished cross stark against the western sky. Before us an angel posed on a column, her arm outstretched to salute us as we crossed the turf.

  “So tell me,” I said.

  Jack kept walking, hands in pockets, as he explained what happened. He’d gotten out by the skin of his teeth. The competition had been tipped off in advance. Jack was out five thousand dollars for failure to deliver. That was his reasoning behind the comedy at the theatre.

  “It didn’t seem quite your style,” I said. The Webley was chafing me; I’d need a holster soon.

  “Needs must when the devil drives.”

  “So you only have what we took last night? Do you want my stake?” I asked.

  There was true gratitude in my offer. I’d be up queer street if not for Jack, despite the danger he’d put me in.

  “Thanks, boyo, but it’s not nearly enough. Hell, I bet on Dempsey to win in Philly last month.”

  That was bad. The Manassa Mauler lost his belt to Gene Tu
nney in a decision. Now the money we’d stolen was to go to work as a grubstake. Jack needed to find out who sang the tune on him, and Loew’s would pay our way. Jack said that he’d always worked on the supposition that his higher-ups were the Chicago mob but in Plattsburgh he found out that the money and orders came out of New York.

  “Plattsburgh?” I asked. “How’d you wind up there?”

  “When the lights hit us my driver stepped on the accelerator and I shot our way through until we plowed into a tree. That did it for him, he was crushed. I got out and ran a circuit and came out behind one of their ’cars with a flunky behind the wheel. Put my iron to his neck and we got out of there. In Plattsburgh I learned who he was working for.”

  I knew Jack had been seconded to an English military police unit after being gassed. They’d taught him things, seemingly. Interrogation.

  “Did you kill him?” I asked.

  “No, but I’d hate to pay his dentist’s bill.”

  The flunky was working for a New York outfit, competitors of Jack’s connection. The rivals had been given a schedule and a map of our route and told to grab the shipment. The trucks and drivers for our convoy had been supplied by a Frenchman here in Montreal who owned a garage. It had to have been either him or our drivers who’d tipped off the opposition.

  “Who’s this Frenchman?” I asked.

  “A lawyer and hustler in tight with the local politicos, a Grit bagman. He plays poker at the St. Denis Club and drops a bundle every weekend on the ponies. The garage isn’t far. In Outremont.”

  “What’s the idea?”

  “Charlie mans the place alone every day at lunch. The two of us pose him a few questions. You game?”

  Jack’s suit was loose on me and I wore his hat. All I needed was to wear his shoes. How far was I willing to go in following him? The money on me wouldn’t last forever. If I had more I could take another shot at Laura. Beyond those considerations was something stronger, something I’d nearly forgotten in my purdah. Jack had stood up for me my whole damned life and I owed him something. Moreover, life had become interesting again. I was curious to know what I’d fallen into. Besides, did I have anything better to do? How much of life is decided by that simple realization? I kept walking, which Jack took as my answer.

  “It was strange you mentioned the Wolf last night,” Jack said. “I’ve always wondered what happened to him.”

  “He’s probably dead.”

  “I don’t know. The man was one tough bastard. Did you know I saw him? Must have been in ’16, just after I got in with the Dukes. Before shipping out I was down in Gastown for a spree and he was rolling around Maple Tree Square, spoiling for a fight. By damn, the man hadn’t aged a minute or turned a hair. You remember how he taught us to scrap up in the camps? Where was that again?”

  “Alexandria,” I said.

  “And hunt. Man, could he run down a deer. Never used a rifle. Caught them with his hands, like how your old man taught us to tickle a salmonbelly.”

  “Not us. Just you.”

  That set Jack back for a moment. He hitched his step.

  “What’d the Wolf say?” I asked eventually.

  “He was drunk and laughed at my uniform. Maybe he didn’t recognize me. Anyway, he was shipping out himself on one of Dunsmuir’s coal barges, to Yokohama.”

  “The Pater always had him as a dipsomaniac,” I said.

  “You know, I don’t think he even knew there was a war on. He’d like this caper, though.”

  “The Wolf was crazy,” I said.

  “Damned tough, still.”

  We stopped and sat on a bench.

  “What’s the drill with this lawyer?” I asked.

  Jack paused and offered me a Turk. Pressure might need to be exerted. We’d have to stay on our toes, as there might be employees about. The last thing either of us wanted was to attract the law.

  “Are you off morphine for quits? asked Jack.

  “You saw my arms.”

  “I need to be sure. We don’t want any more surprises.”

  “Not from me,” I said.

  CONTINUING ON WE walked past the Young Men’s Hebrew Association and turned up Park. The garage was a few blocks north and my role, as usual, would be to stand steady and watch Jack’s back. It seemed simple enough. We continued until Jack indicated a corner filling station with a garage and house attached, the entire affair a collection of yellowing wood. The sign read “L’Etape Supertest Trudeau, Essence et Mécanicien.” Jack checked his wristwatch. It was noon. I turned to face the sun above the mountain. The yard rested quiet, two trucks parked by a painted fence advertising Ensign oil. Through the glass of the garage door I spied an expensive Chandler sedan with its bonnet open. Jack considered the shop. Its door was locked and a sign read: “Fermé.” The wind died and the neighbourhood seemed abandoned, a scene from a drowsy Indian summer afternoon in the country. The garage door had a smaller one set into it, that one ajar. We went through it to the repair bay’s rear corner and a formal office. Jack stiff-armed the door to reveal a man standing and eating a sandwich over his desk.

  “Assieds-toi, Charlie,” said Jack.

  I stayed in the doorway, my hand now on my gun in my overcoat pocket.

  “Jack,” Charlie said.

  “Surprised to see me?” asked Jack.

  “Non.”

  “Why’s that now?”

  “I hear about what happen Friday.”

  “Zut alors,” said Jack, clucking his tongue.

  Charlie was well-built and surprisingly dapper, with Brilliantined hair and a trim dark moustache. He had the narrow eyes and pointed nose of his race, a mixture of fille du roi and backcountry Huron. His posture was erect, defiant. Jack’s tone remained playful.

  “Who told you about it, Charlie?”

  “I hear it from Martin,” he said.

  “Martin, eh? Let’s do the arithmetic. One driver shot dead. That was Pollart. One driver with me died in a crash. That was Gellier. That leaves the one in the middle. Martin. So he got out. Very lucky for him. A little too lucky, peut-être? Don’t you think so, Charlie?”

  “I don’t know,” said Charlie. He still held his half-sandwich.

  “Continue. You heard from Martin. Et, comment?”

  “He call me. He escape, hitchhike. He demand from me some money.”

  “Did you give him any?”

  “I don’t see him. How can I?” asked Charlie.

  “I don’t like this story. Somebody told someone something they shouldn’t’ve. Comprends?”

  Charlie furrowed his brow, perhaps translating to himself.

  “Oui.”

  “I think it was you,” Jack said.

  “What?” Charlie threw down his sandwich and pointed. “Why do I do that? I lose my trucks. I have police come here for to ask me questions.”

  “Police? What did they want to know?” barked Jack.

  “The wife of Gellier, she tell them he work for me, now he depart and does not come home two nights. I pay her, she has three children. Where is my money, Jack? For the trucks, for me, hein? Where? I ask.”

  Charlie slapped his palm on the desk, eyes blazing.

  “I want this Martin, Charlie,” said Jack, unmoved. “You have three days.”

  “Why should I help you? You have not paid me!”

  “Do you have insurance, Charlie? Smart lawyer like you, you should, in case accidents happen.”

  Jack turned and brushed past me out of the office. Charlie followed. In the garage Jack grabbed a long piece of iron like a tamping rod. I was now in the corridor behind Charlie, next to a door that must open into the house we’d seen from the street. I could smell Charlie’s hair oil and sweat. Jack turned, the rod in his hands.

  “Three days, Charlie.”

  He speared the rod through the Chandler’s windscreen.

  “Hostie,” cried Charlie. He moved to stop Jack but I pulled out my gun and jammed it into his spine. The Frenchman turned his head and showed me pu
re hatred. Jack swung and smashed the side windows, beat on the sidings and ruined the metalwork. The door next to me opened inward and I kicked Charlie at Jack. Jack dropped the bar and connected a straight left to the Frenchman’s jaw, dropping him. I spun and pointed my gun barrel into the face of a skinny little Indian-looking kid holding the doorknob.

  “Papa?” asked the boy.

  Charlie turned from his crouch on the floor.

  “Pierre, non!”

  I cuffed the child upside the head into a heap of tires. Jack lifted Charlie up by his shirtfront. Jack’s skin was flushed red; he was angry, and when Jack was angry, he got mean.

  “Three days, Charlie. I want Martin, I want answers, I want my money. Toot fucking sweet.”

  He let Charlie go. I put my gun back in my pocket and looked at the boy on the tires. He blinked tears from hot, angry eyes.

  “Three days, Charlie,” Jack repeated.

  We backed out of the garage, and the boy ran to his father, Charlie nursing a dripping red mouth. The pair watched us leave with identical glares. This round was Jack’s but the match wasn’t over. We walked back to Park, where Jack hailed a south-bound ’cab.

  “The Ritz,” he said, cracking his knuckles.

  JACK SAT NEXT to me in the rear seat and played with a ring he wore on the small finger of his left hand. It was embossed with an emblem: a silver triangle in a circle. Something was bothering me as we drove back into town, but I couldn’t place it. Something overlooked. My attention was quickly distracted by more pressing concerns, however, the peristalsis of my lower intestine. I had a vision of the perfect jakes the Ritz would have: spotless tiles and freshly scrubbed porcelain smelling faintly of bleach. There’d be milled French soap, hot water, clean white towels, and an underling to whisk my shoulders with a brush. As fate would have it traffic clogged Pine in a pack of stalled autos. I started to grimace. We waited fifteen agonizing minutes while Jack continued cracking his knuckles. I pinched shut my sphincter.

  The hotel, at last. Jack paid the ’cabman and a uniformed Hussar wearing a tall bearskin hat eased us through the revolving door. We went downstairs to the bar and I shied off to the facilities. The gentlemen’s convenience was better than could have been hoped for and I read a complimentary Gazette while I shat. Afterwards the aged attendant dried my hands and offered me a pastille. I checked my teeth in the mirror for caries and to see if my fillings remained. Gold from the entire map: the Rand, the Klondike, California, the tombs of Mycenae. I wondered if my grave would one day be robbed and the grains in my teeth melted down for jewellery, transformed into a necklace for a maiden’s throat in nineteen hundred ninety-nine. I spat out the sweet; for the fossil’s help I rewarded him a nickel and went to the bar.