by Fraser Nixon
Whitehead asked Houdini if Jesus had walked on water and healed the sick. Houdini demurred but replied that if he’d been alive back then he could’ve done the same stunts and the world would now be praying to Harry Houdini. After that statement Whitehead punched him.
“Pardon?” I asked.
“Whitehead had heard that Houdini could withstand any blow, and Houdini nodded. So Whitehead punched Houdini in the stomach.”
“What’d you do?” I asked Smiler.
“Nothing. It came right out of left field. Whitehead stuck around a bit and then left. Houdini didn’t look too good and asked us to go. He had a show that night.”
“That’s it?” I asked.
“That’s it.”
Smiler’s tale was fishy as haddock and had Jack’s fingerprints all over it. We’d waited in the dressing room while Jack consulted his ’watch, that I recalled. This Whitehead character was probably Jack’s cat’s-paw. To what end?
Near half an hour had passed and my sweat had cooled on me. Neither beast nor fowl could be seen or heard in the stillness fallen over the woods. I’d taken the precaution of leaving a half-dose in my syringe and injected it now. In the near dark I saw the expression on Smiler’s face, contempt crossed with fear.
“Let’s go.”
Again I lifted the unwieldy sack onto my shoulder. We resumed the climb along a devious path that, after several minutes, opened to a wide area bordered by a wire fence. Through a ragged opening we climbed up onto a bluff overlooking the graveyard. Here we stood on the tomb of the Molsons, their crypt a tall lighthouse with the clan’s crest carved on the stone. The ground from here sloped down to the south, studded with headstones, draped urns, and obelisks leaning off-true. A light peacefulness reigned as a wind stirred scattered autumn leaves. Enough light remained to lead us up a rise to a far and quiet corner. Then the sky went black and through frazzled clouds I saw the first stars come out. Smiler followed me, not smiling now.
There it was, just over there, a neat hole in the ground. We stopped. Three open graves waited, with pyramids of dirt piled by each. Two were untouched since their original excavation. The third site had been disturbed.
“Here,” I said.
I set down the bag and sat, drained and sweating. Smiler said nothing and rubbed his hands to keep them warm. I summoned a little strength and with as much care as I could muster went down into the first hole and gently settled Laura into it. I said no prayer but climbed out of the pit and told Smiler: “Bury her.”
He looked around for a spade and then at me.
“Fill it,” I said.
“How?”
“Get your hands dirty.”
Smiler began to protest, then sighed and started pushing dirt into the hole. He kicked with his feet then got on his knees to shovel and scrape. In twenty minutes the earth was level again. I lit a cigaret and stepped back.
“How’s that?” he asked.
“Not bad.”
He turned to me.
“Now you,” I said.
“What?”
“Get in the next one.”
“What? Why me?”
Smiler noticed the gun in my hand.
“Mick?”
“Get into that hole, you lousy son of a bitch.”
I pointed the Webley at him. For reasons of his own, Smiler raised his hands. His mouth opened.
“Mick, please, please no.”
“Do it or by God I’ll shoot you down like the fucking dog you are. You did it.”
“I did?”
“You killed her.”
“Mick, you’re, you’re mad! Why would I kill her?”
“I caught you.”
“No! Mick, I, I swear!”
I cocked the hammer. Smiler moved crabwise to the middle grave and slowly inched his way into it. He stood, his hands still held high, white lab coat dirtied.
“Mick, it wasn’t me.”
“Yup, that’s true,” I said.
“Then, why this?”
“‘Who will help the widow’s son?’” I teased.
Smiler’s voice filled with relief. It was as black as the ace of spades now. Only the faintness of his coat was visible.
“I’m on the level,” Smiler said.
I looked down at him in his hole. “You sure are.”
“The square.” Smiler then said something that was probably the Mason Word and put down his arms. Houdini, Jack, Sir Lionel Dunphy, they were all the same. I was outside looking in.
“Mick, Mick, you know! You know I didn’t do this. I didn’t kill her. Laura.”
“Yes, I do,” I said.
“Then who did?” asked Smiler.
“Me.”
There was a moment of silence. Smiler broke it by blurting in terror: “I come from the East!”
“Well, I’m from out West,” I said, and shot him in the chest.
He fell back into the pit and I fired again, a brief flash illuminating the red on his coat. His body twitched with the third shot and I stopped. My ears were ringing again with the noise and my nose was filled with the stink of gunpowder residue. My right hand was tensed, the flesh throbbing with the phantom echo of the Webley’s action. Smiler was still and dead. I breathed in and out and felt a black, almost Satanic holiness well up within me. The next half an hour saw me grimed burying the man. I walked up and away through the darkness, invisible and free.
IN THE GLOAMING near to night was when she came to me. A victoria pulled by geldings brought her to the mountaintop. I waited as she stepped down and paid the driver, who took her paper money and tipped his hat. The letter I’d mailed her Sunday had hit home, though if I’d signed it with my own name I would’ve waited in vain. As it was, a forged request for a rendezvous proved my point: she’d acquiesced and had appeared right place, right time. This was my favourite hour, the dying day.
On the lookout side lingered a few sightseers and one or two folks strolled by Beaver Lake, but for the most part the park was empty with night falling fast. I stood on a stone in a thicket with a view all directions and watched the horses guide the ’cab back down the promenade road. Soon the sound of hooves on gravel faded and a deep stillness fell. Laura waited composedly by a weathered plinth and gazed out over the city, a faint shimmer on the indigo river and a low fluttering pulse of electric lights coming to life on the part-finished harbour bridge to the east. Soon Laura was alone, and then I went to her, chilled. She turned and saw me smiling.
“Michael,” she said.
“Expecting somebody else?”
“Frankly yes.”
“Well, he couldn’t make it. He sends his regrets and asked me to take his place.”
“I see.”
“How are you?”
“I’m well.”
“Beautiful night, ain’t it?”
“Michael.”
“Seen any good movies lately?”
“No.”
“Shame.”
“Michael, I really haven’t the time for this.”
“Is that so? Well then, the least I can do is walk you over to the road. You’ll never get a taxi up here, not at this hour. Not safe for you to be alone in the dark.”
Laura had no answer to that, wrapped in her still reserve. I made careful not to get too close. It was like coaxing a wild animal out of the woods.
“Just over there,” I gestured vaguely.
She looked back and forth. I was right. The park was empty. At last she said: “Very well.”
We walked down the path.
“You look fine, Laura.”
“Michael.”
“I mean it. Really.”
She was silent, strange to me.
“See the swans?”
We were on the height above the lake and we were walking to the macadam road. The tram stopped running at four-thirty, I was certain. A sole motorcar chugged along, too far away for use.
“In England swans are property of the Crown,” I said. “It must be the same here, with the sam
e King. That’s a royal prerogative, to know what swan tastes like.”
Laura remained mute.
“Beautiful colour of the leaves this autumn. At this time of year out west you hear firecrackers and fireworks, for Hallowe’en. Love the smell of the smoke from a Roman candle. Of course you set them off around here for Victoria Day. Fête de la Reine. It’s not the same, somehow.”
I continued in this vein as we went to the road and came upon the open gates of the cemetery, talking to her of St. Jean Baptiste and Dollard des Ormeaux. We waited in the cold for some minutes to flag down another motorcar.
“Don’t see anything,” I said.
Laura started at my voice. I kept a healthy measure of humour and good cheer in my tone and tried not to seem possessed of a jealous, delicate madness. Perhaps she sensed a disquietude and had a small idea of what she’d walked into.
“I think that I should go,” she said.
“All alone? I won’t hear of it. Who knows what’s lurking in these trees. Tell you what, there’s a better chance of finding someone out on Park. We can take this shortcut here and the path out to the avenue. There’s bound to be lots of taxis there or you can snag the tram.”
Laura shivered and looked away. The gates were open. I sauntered away from her down the path. It’s what you do with ponies: they become curious and follow, an ingrained instinct. Laura seemed weaker than I remembered. How had she twisted me around her finger? I almost laughed aloud to think on it. Of course, in the meanwhile much had changed. I’d killed. I slowed my pace, hands in pockets, whistling Jack’s tune, “The Man Who Broke the Bank at Monte Carlo.” I turned. Laura was coming. I let her fall in beside me.
“It was you who sent me the letter,” she said.
“Who, me?”
“Yes.”
“All I can tell you is that he asked me to meet you,” I said.
“I don’t believe you.”
“You should.”
“No. You’re lying. I should have known.”
“That I’m a liar? Pot and kettle, my dear.”
“I should have known that you’d stoop to this baseness.”
“Baseness is it?”
I stopped.
“What was that you were doing with that joker then? Who did you really want to see you two on that bed?”
“Certainly not you.”
“As I thought.”
Laura walked away downhill between upright markers.
“You play your pretty games and torture me,” I cried.
“I want nothing to do with you!” she screamed.
It was a pleasing landscape with nary a soul: no old widows tending graves, no mustachioed gents perambulating past fallen comrades. Laura was increasing her pace, slipping away. I came up quickly after her.
“You didn’t want me at all, did you? You wanted him. All this time you wanted him. Do you realize that we’re going to kill your pretty boy Bob? What do you think of that?”
Laura stopped. She put her hand on a tombstone. I saw where we were. Now I was hot.
“You didn’t know that, did you sweetheart? That fucker’s going to get it, with this.”
I showed Laura my gun. She stumbled backward, eyes widening. I moved forward and felt her shrink before me.
“Oh, but you’ve got nothing to worry about,” I said. “Not from this toy. Bob tried to kill us, not that you’d care if he had. He tried to blow my brains out.”
“Please, Michael. Stop.”
“We kill now, didn’t you know? Your three musketeers. And who made me do it? You did, Laura. What did I ever do to you? I loved you and you let me believe you felt the same way. Then I saw you rutting like a sow with that son-of-a-bitch. What can I do? Tell me! No, wait, I’ll tell you. I’m going to kill that Yankee bastard Bob. And then I’m going to shoot the love of your life. I’m going to kill Jack.”
“Michael, no.”
I closed with her and grabbed her shoulders. We were next to the empty graves I’d seen the day before. She reached up with her gloved hands and tried to break my hold. I crushed the velvet of her coat and pulled her closer. She struggled. I drank in her powder and scent: lemon and sugar. Her cloche hat fell off and she kicked at me with her booted feet so I pushed her onto a nearby cairn. Laura stumbled and her skirt rode above her knee. I went at her now in a blind rage, choking, unable to breathe. I put my hands through the white silk of her blouse and gripped the pearls around her porcelain doll’s throat. By God she was beautiful. She gasped and fought as I tightened my grip and started squeezing. My hands tangled in the pearls and thumbs dug into her trachea. I felt her weaken and a bloody mist clouded my vision. Her arms came up and I pushed and pulled her roughly about. Coming in close I saw the green in her eyes and wide staring pupils. Laura gazed at me and her pink tongue came out. Her light sparrow’s body clenched, spasmed, and pulsed and her head rolled back as I strangled her. My teeth were bared, penis erect, heart dynamiting in my ears, a torrid heat raged though my blood. I tasted her warmth and her last gasp. She stopped moving and went still. I let her fall to the grass by the heaped mound of earth, then dropped down beside her and cradled her in my arms, eyes pouring tears. Poor Laura. Poor all of us.
For a long, lost time I lay watching the stars come out, taking in clean cool air, feeling my pulse return to normal. At last I set to work. I picked up her hat. Digging in her purse I took the note with Jack’s name on it and burned it with a vesta. Her money I kept, twenty-odd dollars. Now was the moment for a ceremony. I was not in my body, but became an actor performing a dark rite. I lifted Laura and placed her in the hole. I arranged her hair as she’d always liked it, considered her face, her eyes, but there was nothing there. So I closed them forever and placed a coin in her mouth, for Charon. I climbed out of the grave and started to push dirt in, faster and faster, kicking and scraping, filling the empty space, consigning her to the earth’s indifferent care.
I rubbed my hands, chucked soil out of my trouser cuffs, and leaned back against a stone, then lit a cigaret and with the lucifer’s glow surveyed the scene of my crime. I started laughing, quietly at first, then louder and wilder. Strange thoughts filled my head, demonical notions. Grateful spirits whispered, congratulating me on my ascent. I walked away from the boneyard a king among the damned. The world belonged to me.
THURSDAY
ON WAKING I resolved to quit the filthy habit of smoking, substituting cinnamon chewing gum in tobacco’s stead. There was, however, no alternative to sweet morphine. Putting away every notion of restraint I prepared the drug again and relaxed. I’d bought the bulldog edition of Wednesday night’s Star and now read the transcript of a speaker at the Kiwanis Club. The Dominion of Canada would possess a population of one hundred and thirty-five millions in nineteen eighty-six. That was sixty years from now, a time too far in the future to contemplate. I was no longer interested in any possibilities; life was merely the here and now.
It was time to raise Cain and find Jack. I wanted to get even with Bob and take another scalp, add to the three thus far. I had the taste for it now, and I liked it. Time to count coup over a fallen enemy and take back what he’d stolen from us, a satchel full of money.
For luncheon I knocked back a schooner in a tavern on Stanley and began to lose my sense of the in-between. Automatic footsteps guided me to any port of call, a beautiful day to be in a bar amidst the unwashed sans-culottes swarming ’round the free lunch. I lit a cigaret to mask the stench of cabbage, corned beef, wet Stanfields, and rotten breath. Hunched in the corner I shivered with my hat down and collar up, unaccountably cold in an oven of close-packed humanity.
Concentration became difficult. There weren’t any women and I needed one to prove I could still love. A living carcass at the bawdy-house on Mountain would suffice, or a two-dollar tumble on Bullion. Lilyan Tashman would do anything for me in return for my wealth of morphine and money. We could finish what she’d started. Two workers next to me grouched about the price of steak as they hacked
into hanks of coarse beef. Meat. Hole and a heartbeat was the cry of the barracks, man’s view of the weaker sex. I was a beast. We were all beasts.
Above the din rose a voice, a woman’s, lusty and loud. Conversations retreated as a path cleared for a big, brassy creature. She worked over the chorus of a number from last year: “A cup of coffee, a sandwich and you, a cozy corner, a table for two, a chance to whisper and cuddle and coo with lots of hugging and kissing in view.”
Between the tables she weaved, carrying a bouquet of cheap crepe-paper roses, her tits nearly spilling out her dress, a ratty fox fur ringing her neck. The singer seemed drunk, crimson lipstick slashed across her face. Old grey duffers dropped nickels and dimes into a shawl wrapped around her waist. I was trapped. She came directly towards me, trilling: “I don’t need music, or lobster or wine whenever your eyes look back into mine. The things I long for are simple and few: a cup of coffee, a sandwich and you.”
The creature stopped and curtseyed before me and looked at my face with infinitely deep black eyes. Who was she? Madwoman, priestess, avenging Fury? I took out a quarter dollar and handed it over. She winked at me and men began hitting their hands together so she began the tune again from the beginning but was not permitted a drink in this house, the law of Quebec. It must’ve been a racket: an ex-opera songstress fallen on hard times wiggling her rump for pocket change. Nevertheless it was unnerving the way she’d beelined to me, dark eyes into mine. Did I wear a brazen mark on my forehead? The experience belike a crow flying at your head on a lonely country road. I paid up and left behind the muttering gaffers.
On the street I grew wary. It seemed incredible that the police weren’t already on my heels. My suit was wrinkled and soiled, soft collar grimy and necktie askew. The impression I left seemed not to matter. What I’d done on the mountain remained a secret. The gravediggers couldn’t have uncovered the two bodies on the hill yet. Rain spattered at me as I passed the pawnshop where I’d traded in my father’s hunter back at the beginning of the month. I had no more need of the time. In the window I saw arranged an odd collection: a framed portrait of Georges Clemenceau wearing gloves, a tuba and guitar, a samovar. There were several desperate, frightening objects: spectacles, crutches, false teeth, a wooden leg in harness. What straits would drive you to pawn your choppers, and who on earth would be interested in buying them? I put the question to myself and watched my lips move in the glass, hearing no sound.