by Mick Lowe
“Jesus Christ,” was all Sworski could say. He was now as pale and shaken as if he had just glimpsed a ghost in broad daylight. Which in a sense, Gilpin reckoned, he just had.
13
To Catch a Killer (I)
When it came, the summons reached Jake through his mother, who was tapping gently on the bedroom door and whispering his name.
“Jake? Jake, there’s a phone call for you.”
He rolled over, still caught up in his dreams and in the tangled sheets, which felt clammy, as they often seemed to be these days.
Jake clawed his way up into wakefulness, and out of bed. He sat for a minute on the edge of the bed, running his hands through bed-tousled hair. Then he slouched to the door, and, clad in his socks, skivvies and T-shirt, padded out to the dinner table where his father sat, surrounded by a sea of newsprint, his arm extending the telephone.
Jake cleared his throat as he reached for the handset.
“Yes?”
“Jake, it’s Foley Gilpin here. Met you at the Mine Mill Hall.”
“Oh! Sure, I remember you, Mr. Gilpin.”
“Listen, I have a proposition for you. I’m in need of someone to help me out—drive me around, show me the sights—someone who knows the lay of the land. Spike says I can ‘borrow’ you, and that the union would pay you for your time, at the going rate. Interested?”
“Sure!” Jake didn’t hesitate. He was heartily sick of spending all day loafing at his folks’ house. Besides, he was broke. Even though he no longer needed his cane, the doctors still wouldn’t approve his return underground.
An hour later they were together in the Chevy and Jake was pondering where to begin with Gilpin. He decided to give him the truly big picture. “No one really knows for sure, Mr. Gilpin, but the geologists are starting to think that the Sudbury ore body—and the Sudbury Basin itself—were created when a giant asteroid struck the earth right here, and then skittered across the earth, gouging out the Sudbury Basin before it went skipping off back into outer space.
“This was billions of years ago, mind you, so there was no one around to see it, but the collision was quite a thing. Scientists believe it was more powerful than all the bombs ever exploded in every war in recorded human history, including Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The impact was so powerful that it cracked the earth right open, right down to the core, and the Sudbury ore body was formed when molten streams of the minerals from the earth’s core bubbled up into those cracks. So that’s where the minerals came from.”
Jake paused to see if the newspaperman was following, but a quick glance at Gilpin’s studious expression convinced Jake that he was.
“Okay, so the Sudbury ore body is what’s known as a massive sulphide deposit, which means that the valuable minerals are widely distributed in minute quantities throughout much larger blocks of rock of no value—what we call ‘country’ or ‘host’ rock, as opposed to ore, or muck. It’s so finely distributed, in fact, that we often have to displace a ton of rock just to get an ounce or two of nickel!”
“Really!” The visitor was clearly impressed at this fact, as Jake had hoped he would be. “And yet you can still make a profit by extracting an ounce per ton?”
Jake nodded. “But that’s just about the lowest grade that’s still profitable, and that’s the fine line between worthless rock and valuable ore, you see. Less than that—it’s just rock. More than that—say an ounce or two per ton—and then you’re talking high-grade ore, and we’re in business. Of course a lot depends on what happens to the ore once it’s hoisted, and that’s what I’m going to show you now—the mills, smelter and refineries that purify the raw muck into pure metal, nickel and copper, and even silver and gold, here on the surface. Ready?”
His guest nodded, so next Jake started on a tour of the production cycle, showing Gilpin a few headframes, explaining how whole small company towns—Garson, Creighton, Levack—had sprung up around the mines in the outlying areas. The company owned everything out there, Jake told Gilpin: all the houses, town councils, even entire police forces. Then he took Gilpin to the smelter at the heart of that mother of all company towns, Copper Cliff, just west of Sudbury, and finally to the Copper Cliff refineries where finished nickel, copper, gold and silver were produced.
Then Jake showed Gilpin the neighbourhoods of central Sudbury—the Flour Mill, West End, Gatchell, Minnow Lake, the Donovan, Little Britain and the Borgia, that central, decaying agglomeration of flophouses, brothels, fleabag hotels and tenements. Already talk was starting that the entire district should be razed and replaced with some form of urban renewal.
Gilpin had seemed particularly impressed by the westernmost residential neighbourhoods, the Gatchell and West End, where the slag piles loomed over the tidy stucco bungalows, forming a flat, black horizon so vast that no end could be seen. Gilpin directed Jake to drive here and there before he hopped out of the car to take pictures. He had visited West Virginia coal towns where the slag dumps towered over everything, but they were nothing like this—the sheer immensity of Sudbury’s smelter slag piles, their surreal height and expanse, forming a jet black, stark contrast with the neat green yards and the lovingly tended backyard vineyards of the heavily Italian residential neighbourhoods. Sudbury was a visually striking place, there was no doubt about that. A picture was still worth a thousand words, and so Foley Gilpin, a born wordsmith, fussed endlessly with his picture-taking, ever striving for just the right exposure, the perfect angle. Finally, he climbed back into the car.
Jake found the Chicagoan a quick study—his questions pertinent and to the point. Which prompted a question from Jake. They were sitting outside the Copper Refinery building, at the end of Jake’s “nickel tour.”
“So tell me, Mr. Gilpin, what are you really doing here?”
“Well, as Spike told you, I’m here to help out with the raids—write radio ad copy, press releases, that sort of thing. But right now I’m trying to get to the bottom of what happened to you and your brother Ben. I have a theory …”
Jake listened intently.
“But so what if we do catch the guy? What happens then?”
Gilpin sighed. “You’re right. Chances are they’ve already exfiltrated him, and he’s long gone by now. But Spike’s given me some time off my regular writing duties to see what I can turn up …”
Even with Gilpin’s disclaimer, Jake was excited despite himself.
“Whatever I can do to help, Mr. Gilpin, you just say the word.”
After all, what harm could it possibly do to spend a few hours trying to catch a killer?
14
Rivers of Fire
They parted ways just before suppertime—Jake to arrange a last-minute rendezvous with Jo Ann, Gilpin to continue with his discreet inquiries, a probe he hoped would arouse no local interest or suspicion.
Jake managed to catch Jo Ann just before her family dinner, which she gladly ditched in favour of grabbing a burger with Jake.
He found her wearing cutoffs and sitting barefoot on the front lawn, her long, bare legs drawn up before her, chin resting on her knees, enjoying being out of the cloying family atmosphere on this evening in the fading summer. Just the sight of her made Jake ache with happiness and longing. He could almost feel the grass between her toes as she ambled to the curb to meet him, sandals dangling from her hand.
“Where we goin’, Sparky?”
“Deluxe?”
“Sure,” she assented happily, as she climbed into the passenger seat.
Within minutes they were seated on the hard plastic seats of a booth at Deluxe Hamburgers, the city’s newly opened, locally owned burger chain, celebrated—in Sudbury, at least—for the tastiness of its milk shakes and French fries. Both of them had ordered the cheeseburger basket—easy on the onions—with a vanilla shake.
Foley Gilpin, meanwhile, was off to his own solitary, pre-arranged rendezvous with a cub reporter from the city’s only newspaper, in pursuit of his own personal Holy Grail—proof that the CIA w
as indeed destabilizing an otherwise peaceful community in a country that was a close neighbour, friend and ally of the United States. What a scoop that would be; Pulitzer material, almost surely.
Gilpin and the rookie, who was assigned to the police beat on an interim basis, adjourned to a nearby bar. The youngster was eager to talk shop with a veteran from a big-city American daily. Long practiced in the art of eliciting information without revealing any, Gilpin also learned that:
No murders had been reported that summer.
The kid’s newspaper was probably the most hated daily in its market that Gilpin had ever encountered, owing to its long-standing anti-union bias in a strongly pro-union market (the paper’s influence was waning even as the union’s influence was growing as Mine Mill aggressively moved to organize unions among local musicians, waiters and barmen).
As a result of its unpopularity the local paper perpetually struggled to maintain its circulation, and, thus, ad lineage.
The hours passed swiftly, and by the time Gilpin and the kid emerged from the bar it was growing dark. Out on the edge of town Jake and Jo Ann had parked at the base of the sprawling slag heaps, waiting for the pouring of the slag to start. It was a little like waiting for it to grow dark enough for the drive-in movie to begin. Jo Ann slid across the front seat to sit beside Jake, who put his arm around her. They sat that way for hours as the colour drained from the sky. Jo Ann’s bare leg was right next to Jake, and eventually he mustered the courage to place his hand atop her thigh. He was tantalized by the short, dark hairs he could see there, soft as down to the touch. She said nothing. Finally, at dusk, an electric locomotive appeared at the top of the black slag, high above them.
“Let’s get out and watch,” Jake suggested.
They clambered out of the Chevy and climbed up on the front bumper. Soon they were sitting on the hood, which was still cooling down from the heat of the motor.
The warmth of the metal was welcome in the cooling evening air.
It wasn’t much of a train. There were only two cars behind the loco. It was twilight now—difficult to see what was happening atop the slag heap—and for the longest time nothing much was. Sound replaced sight. There was the eerie, mysterious banshee wail of metal on metal, made still spookier by the cool descending dark that was falling now all around them. They both shivered at the imminence of what lay ahead.
Finally the trainmen tripped the slag pots, and rivers of fire began to stream down the embankment of the slag pile. The molten slag was almost too bright—and too hot—to look at directly. The intensity of the heat was alarming, and more than a little frightening. Eventually the train was shunted back and forth and back and forth before the second slag pot was tipped. Now more rivers of fire ran down parallel to the first, which was already cooling down to a dull glow.
Jake and Jo Ann returned to the car, Jo Ann once again cuddling into Jake’s arm. The top of her thigh was warm to his touch now, warmed by the rivers of fire. But the insides were still cool and goosebumpy as he began to stroke her there with smooth, gentle motions. Soon the friction of his hand had warmed her skin, and the goose bumps were gone. Gradually he brought his hand higher and higher up her thigh, until it touched the fraying fabric of her cut-off jeans. He began to kiss her, and she opened her lips to his, shuddering beneath his touch. He put his fingers, languidly at first, inside her cutoffs, testing her reaction. To his amazement and eternal gratitude, she seemed only to increase the intensity of their kiss. Next he began to probe with his fingers, feeling the down between her legs, the moist warmth there, and now he was well and truly aroused and he felt the pressure welling up inside, welling and swelling, and sensation was running from his fingers to his groin like an electric current, like a private, intimate river of fire between them. She felt it, too, he could tell, by the way she was moving, arching her hips to welcome his greedy, questing fingertips. His arousal was white-hot now, undeniable, and he felt as God must have felt at the instant of Creation, and his heart was in his throat, and he was filled to bursting and instinctively he was about to move on top of her and … the dam did burst and he buried his head in her lap and he was crying, in great, gasping sobs that shook his shoulders, and she was cradling his head in her lap, stroking his hair, cooing his name, not missing a beat, her initial surprise transformed seamlessly to soothing, as she said his name over and over, “Oh Jake, oh Jake, it’s all right, baby, everything’s going to be all right.” But the realization that nothing would ever again be all right, that this, this moment in the dashboard light beneath the swiftly cooling slag, that she was all he had, the only person in the world that truly understood him, made his sorrow more tender still, deepening his inconsolable, gasping sobs, and he buried his face even deeper in her, clinging to her with all the desperation of a wounded, cornered animal.
Downtown Foley Gilpin turned toward the westering sky and the apocalyptic, brilliant pink light bursting there. Anywhere else he might have felt alarmed—surely half the city must be on fire. But Gilpin was oriented now, knew which way was west, and so saw the slag pouring for what it was—the slag was being poured, that was all.
15
The President Hotel Caper
Jake picked Gilpin up the next morning as if nothing unusual had happened the night before.
The newsman, still lugging his camera bag and attired in his usual rumpled suit, asked Jake to drive him to the Union Hall where he left Jake waiting in the now-familiar antechamber while Gilpin went in for a private meeting with Spike Sworski.
Fifteen minutes later they were back in the car.
“Do you know where the President Hotel is?”
“Sure.” Everyone knew the President, one of the city’s foremost downtown hotels, a straight shot downhill on Elm Street, past the courthouse and jail, across Lorne, and soon they were pulling into the parking lot behind the President.
“Follow me,” Gilpin instructed.
They entered the back entrance and rode the elevator to the sixth floor, where they faced a long hallway lined on either side by hotel room doors. Gilpin tapped his forefinger to his lips in the universal signal to remain silent. Then he led the way down the hall, evidently searching for a particular room. When he found it, Gilpin backed up against the wall, leaving Jake, feeling fairly ridiculous, to do the same on the other side of the door.
They stood that way in silence for a moment, listening. Jake could just make out a voice through the door. It wasn’t much, but it made his skin prickle, and the hair on the back of his neck stand on end. Jake’s eyes widened in disbelief, a reaction that was not lost on Gilpin.
“That’s him!” he mouthed at Gilpin. Gilpin nodded, pantomimed to Jake that he wanted him to break the door in, and then everything happened very fast.
Jake kicked the door in, wood splintering as the dead bolt and door jamb gave way, and Jake was rushing into the room headlong, Gilpin right behind, and then Jake stood straight up and began backing right out the door, almost tripping over Gilpin.
As he rushed in Jake saw two men on the single beds in the room. One was tall, angular, his razor cut blonde hair rising to a flat-top crewcut. He was reclining comfortably on the bed, a cigarette dangling from his lips, awaiting a light from the outstretched hand of the second man in the room who was—Stanley Winters! The shock of recognition hit Jake as surely as if a powerful hand had pushed him squarely in the chest, knocking him backward so swiftly that he almost fell over Gilpin.
Before Gilpin knew what was happening Jake was pelting back down the hallway, toward the elevator.
They both retreated to Jake’s car, Gilpin’s camera gear bouncing around his belly as he ran. They arrived breathless and nearly hysterical from surprise, adrenalin, and confusion.
Gilpin caught his breath first. “What the fuck was that?”
Jake had a death grip on the steering wheel of his car despite the fact that the ignition was still turned off. “That—that was my girlfriend’s father. And what the fuck was he even doing
there, with the guy who killed my brother? And what were we doing there?”
Gilpin nodded and swallowed, hard. “Tip from Spike. He’s got some guys selling Steelworker cards …”
This information drew a quizzical look from Jake, as Gilpin had expected.
“That way they’re trusted, in a good position to get information … and it seems the Steelworkers have reserved that room more or less permanently for when their out-of-town staff organizer’s in town to run the raids, which is most of the time these days …”
Jake, who had caught his breath now, was nodding. “And it led us straight to our killer …”
“Yeah, and what does that tell ya?” Gilpin asked Jake.
Jake, who was still processing the morning’s revelations, shook his head in dumbfounded silence.
“So, where to now?” he asked Gilpin.
“Fucked if I know.”
“Yeah, me neither.”
16
The $64,000 Question
In the end, Gilpin decided, he wanted to go back to his room at the Caswell. The cross-town trip afforded the duo a chance to gather their wits.
“So what does he do?” Gilpin asked Jake, as he steered them through the maze of Killer’s Crossing.
“You mean my father-in-l—?” Jake caught himself. “His name’s Stanley Winters. I don’t know, really. He’s some sort of bigwig at the company … But what I don’t get is what he was doing there? And with him? And in a room paid for by the Steelworkers?”