The Man Who Killed

“Ye Christ.”

“Who is it? Don’t pretend you have no clue,” I said.

Jack took off his hat in agitation and ran his hand roughly through his hair. He looked at me.

“Listen: wait here. No, there. Across the street, in the square. I’ll be back in half an hour.”

He grabbed my shoulders, fixed me with a stare for a second, and pushed off. It amused me somewhat to see him on fire. Jack’s oblique route away took him towards St. George’s but then he turned right on Dorchester in the direction of the Grand Lodge. For the moment content, I opened my case, lit a Sportsman, and waited on a bench beneath the bare trees, watching pigeons peck the ground at my feet. They were joined anon by wild starlings, no doubt of it with that iridescence on their plumage. Here was a bird out of Shakespeare and Olde England, not New France. A pigeon took my tossed cigaret stub and ate it up.

THE DAY WARMED and the monument behind me became a sundial with the shadow creeping my way. It occurred to me I was hungry. Wistfully I looked at the Dominion Hotel and its attendant public house, a haunt of newspapermen, printer’s devils, proofreaders, and advertising salesmen, but not hellbound editors, publishers, and owners. The window advertised verres sterilisees in lowercase cursive neon letters: red, green, yellow. I carried silver in my pocket.

Inside the saloon I ordered an ale and took a seat by the window with a view back on the square. On the bench I’d vacated lazed two Siwashes furtively passing between them a bottle of what looked like salty Chinese cooking sherry. On another bench a codger old enough to’ve fought the Boer himself fed crumbs to gulls. The Dominion was thick with blue tobacco smoke from midday topers here for the free lunch of pickled pork knuckles, spuds, and Liberty cabbage. My stomach yowled so I joined the line-up and was back at my perch with a steaming plate and another schooner of Export, its price now twenty-five cents. No such thing as a free lunch, never.

Dollars danced in my pocket and the wad of folding-money rested safe and sound in my autumn coat, as did the loaded Webley. The wool of my half-decent new suit itched and the reversible celluloid collar bit. I wore clean undergarments, rain-polished black boots, and a maroon necktie to complete the disguise, an impostor posing as a normal human being. I touched and thus dirtied my freshly shaven face and with a slaked thirst lit another cigaret, then with a shinplaster two-bit note bought one more breuvage.

A sharper shoved me and I went rigid. You never knew who you bellied up with at a bar and anyone here could be a plainclothesman on the trail of the cinema-heisters or bootleggers. This narrow orbit was one of habit; in a city large as Montreal you kept to known watering holes as a creature of the forest. But it would be wiser to change hotels again, pay cash down, no questions asked.

Making for the outdoors, I pushed my way through massed shoulders, crushing broken peanut shells underfoot. Clouds now shifted across the face of the sun and rain threatened. Jack stamped in the square, waiting for me for the first time in his blessed life.

“Salut,” I said.

“Mick, dammit man, we’ve got to move.”

“Ou?”

Jack shagged down a ’cab. We got in.

“Outremont,” he said.

“Quoi?”

“It’s been three days,” Jack said. “Charlie at the garage. He’s got to give up Martin.”

“Qui?”

“Martin, the third driver on the woods. The one who got away. Shape up.”

“Never.”

THE TAXI BEAT AGAINST a flood tide of city-bound traffic en route to Outremont. Ultramontane, with Pius XI on Peter’s throne. Park Avenue cut Fletcher’s Field off from the Cartier angel, which stared at the flapping pennant of St. George above the Grenadiers’ armoury. Very quietly I sang and Jack, despite himself, picked up the tune.

“Some talk of Alexander and some of Hercules, of Hector and Lysander and such great names as these, but of all the world’s heroes there’s none that can compare, with a tow row row row row row to the British Grenadiers.”

The ’cab had an open top and we smoked and sang. Fast sunshine after a squall was Jack’s mood, the cheerful sod. The beer had done me good and I felt better than fine. With some care I checked the cylinder of my Webley and thought on the full box of cartridges I’d hidden above the cistern in my bathroom at the Wayside. What now? Another draw of tobacco while Jack whistled “In the Clover” as we cut along past Mont-Royal Avenue. I saw well-to-do women shopping at dressmakers’ and one comely creature caught my eye. She wore an insolent pout that slew me where I sat. Who the hell needed Laura? I could buy myself a sloe-eyed vixen and have her crawl for me. The ’cab’s speed and rushing air mixed together in a delicious tonic and I felt exhilarated, alive. Colours leapt out in the crisp afternoon: the green of a tailor’s sign, a blue scarf on a Jewess, shining red apples in a barrow at the corner.

Our taxi swung into the bay of the filling station and Jack and I hopped out, full of beans and raring to go. His great capacity was to relish each new encounter. It was what divided our natures, but for the present I felt a part of what he must sense most days. We shared a glance and became kids again in Chinatown or on the mudflat houseboats of False Creek.

The garage was shut once more and wore the same sign: “Ferme.” It was my hope that Charlie hadn’t prepared for our return and was alone again with his sandwich and flask of coffee. Jack went around to the rear of the property and I followed.

Out back a ratty scrub yard led to two doors of the complex, one for the house and another that seemed to open into a connecting corridor. From a maple bough hung a despondent innertube at the end of a rope. Gallows and hangman’s noose. Leaves littered the dirt amidst a stench of old oil and rancid petrol. We tried the first door close to the garage and found it locked. Jack picked up a rock but I stayed his hand and turned the handle of the door to the house. It clicked open. Quietly we went into the kitchen. From our previous visit I recalled the little Indian-looking kid who’d popped out of nowhere, Charlie’s son. The violence had taken place the same time of day as now and the tyke might be home from a Jesuit school for luncheon with Papa. We crossed the threshold, adding to our infractions.

“Breaking and entering,” I said to Jack.

Jack took his Webley out and held it in his left. “Carrying a weapon,” he said. Carefully, we tiptoed through to a hallway, a staircase, and the front door. Next stop was an empty sitting room filled with pale white curtains, a black crucifix on the wall. Jack pointed upstairs.

“See if we’re alone.”

I went up to the second floor on creaking runners and poked through several bedroom doors: a baby’s room, the parents’ with another creche, empty. Revanche des berceaux. In the boy’s room I was touched to see a lithograph of Wilfrid Laurier next to one of Ignatius Loyola. Back downstairs Jack stood by a door that aligned with the rear of the garage.

“Ready?” he asked.

“Steady,” I said.

“Go!”

Jack kicked the door open and went in, holding his revolver with both hands.

“Police,” he shouted in French.

The office sat empty but Charlie lay under the busted Chandler on his back. He was slow getting up and Jack was on him, his gun in the Frenchman’s face. With his right he grabbed Charlie’s collar and kneed him hard in the gut. Charlie went sideways and retched over the floor. Jack stood back and belted his Webley.

“Mick, the hose.”

I uncoiled a length from the wall and turned the handle, mixing water with purpling petrol and oil on the cement before reaching Charlie’s face.

“Hey Charlie, comment ca va?”

Charlie spluttered and gasped. Jack grabbed him and shoved the man up against the sedan, his elbows on the running board.

“Je voudrais Martin. Donne-lui a moi,” Jack said.

“Jack,” coughed Charlie.

“Maintenant. Now. Martin the driver. Ou est-il?”