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
An American sat talking to Jack about Coolidge’s trade policies. At the snap of fingers a venerable sommelier ceremoniously opened a bottle of wine. Jack and I treated the Yankee, who saluted the liberal liquor laws of the North.
“It’s what I like about your country,” he said.
“What’s that?” Jack asked.
“Well, number one, none of our Puritan hysteria. I tell you, sometimes it almost makes me blush to think of what they’re trying to sell us in the States. Take that trial in Tennessee last year. Darrow showed Bryan up for a damn fool and the Bible for a pack of howlers, and he still lost! In the twentieth century! Evidence of science’s progress everywhere around us! Now, lookee here, evolution’s a fact, sure as this is fine wine, which I thank you gentlemen for. Now what are you going to believe, a book scribbled by Moses wandering in the desert three thousand years ago or one typed the other day by Mr. Einstein? What I mean is, we all know why the sky is blue, don’t we?”
“Something to do with the sea?” I ventured.
“Precisely.”
The American drank. I waited for him to lay out the second point of his argument.
“What’re you selling?” Jack asked.
“I’m glad you asked, young fellow. Let’s call it peace of mind.”
“Jesus,” Jack said.
“No sir, but I do know some Bible salesmen. Good men, most of them, but they dip into their goods too much. Wouldn’t stand it in a whiskey merchant and it’s the same damn thing with Scripture pushers, rots the brain. Now, I was in Burlington just last night at a commercial hotel and I met one of these fellows. Here, I’ll show you what I mean. He sold me a book that you gents might be interested in. I have it right here, a real pip.”
The American rummaged through his valise and found the volume in question.
Beet-red with enjoyment, the American took another mouthful and continued: “This, though, is a gem. Sums it up right prettily.” He cleared his throat. “‘He would be a national advertiser today... the founder of modern business, the author of the ideal of service.’”
He guffawed and pounded his fist on his knee.
“Can you beat that? The Messiah in a three-piece suit reading stock quotes on a tickertape? I don’t know whether to laugh or cry. On the one hand we’re the most advanced nation on earth, begging your pardon, and on the other we’re superstitious as a bunch of Pygmies. Selling Jesus to the poor and needy in the guise of a Goddamn tycoon. The man would cast down the lot of them for profiting from the world’s misery.”
“We’re not much better,” Jack said. “We’ve got our own Prohibition and the Ku Klux Klan, and if you want superstition drive five minutes out into the countryside. Talk to the peasants out there and you’ll learn Jews have fangs to drink blood from God-fearing Catholics and that the loup-garou roams the woods.”
“Where’re you from?” I asked the American.
“Baltimore, Maryland,” he said. “Home of the sanest man in the Republic.”
“Mencken,” said Jack.
“Beano.”
“Speaking of trials,” I asked, “do you think they’ll execute those Italians?”
“If they don’t I’ll eat my hat. The only thing the government’s more frightened of than Reds is Anarchists. They’ll make an example of that pair, count on it. Remember, no one ever caught whoever it was bombed Wall Street a few years back. If they want to keep the Babbitts and the booboisie happy and sinking their pennies into fly-by-night stock they’ll gas them or hang them or put a bullet in their brains.”
“What, no electric chair?” I joked.
“What brings you to town?” Jack said, sinking the last of his wine.
“Keep it to yourself but I’ve got a hot line on a dehydrated vegetable soup company. Thanks again for the tip-top tipple. Be seeing you, fellas.”
He whistled a waiter over, settled his bill, shook our hands, and was gone, taking his bulk and gravity with him but leaving his book behind.
“Now Mick, me lad, you must excuse me but I’ve a few appointments to keep. Where can I reach you?”
“I’ll probably get a room at the Occidental.”
“What name?”
“I don’t know.”
“Use your imagination.”
“Smith,” I said.
Jack sighed.
“Well, if you need me I’m under Standfast at my hotel. Ring me tomorrow and keep the evening open. We’ll meet. Oke?”
“You bet.”
Jack popped his hat on and stood up. I showed him the palm of my hand so he shrugged and slid out of the bar. I quickly paid the tab and followed, wanting to see if I could shadow him and get a sense of the larger picture, his connections in this mess. I knew of Brown the Customs man, Bob, and now Charlie the lawyer in Outremont. There was the missing driver Martin and the Lord knows who else. What I really wondered about was the identity of Jack’s bosses. How was he fixed up? I skulked out onto the street and watched Jack cross Sherbrooke only to climb the steps up into the Mount Royal Club, where the burly gorilla at the door let him through. Perhaps there was a way I might insinuate myself inside, fake moustache, tradesman’s stoop. No. I had none of the play-actor in me. I couldn’t pull off any foolishness of that sort. Theatricals were one of Laura’s delights, a taste she shared with Jack: charades, dramatic readings, songs around the piano. A suspicion slowly metastasized within me, and I chewed off a fingernail, chopping the crescent of keratin between my teeth. Laura’s father was a greybeard at the Mount Royal. I swallowed the nail and walked to the station.
