Charlie spat.
“Mick, toss the office.”
In the office I gave Charlie’s desk and files the onceover. There were piles of paper, a photograph of the ugly family, Paterfamilias Charlie with his thin dark moustache in the middle. A drawer held a few loose dollars, half a deck of Sweet Caporals, and a medallion of St. Benedict. I pocketed the lot.
“Mick! Done!”
Upon my return Charlie seemed freshly kicked about the head. Jack trained the hose over him.
“We have an address and a ride, right Charlie?”
The lawyer-cum-mechanic pointed to a set of keys on a hook. Jack tossed them to me. From outside I heard the snarl of dogs fighting. We left Charlie on the floor. At my last look at him I could swear he was smiling at Jack and me.
In the lot were three automobiles: a Locomobile, a Ford, and an Auburn. The keys fit the last, a right-hand drive. I pushed the self-starter and the motor rattled to life. The auto had a left-hand brake and gear-shifter and right pedal accelerator. I released the brake and gave the engine petrol, lurched forward, and stalled. Bloody hell. Jack slid into the back through a suicide door. I pushed the starter again and heard a roar. My foot pressed the pedal and I pumped at the gear-shifter as we lurched forward again, this time over a curb and onto the road. How much horsepower in this beauty? The interior was all blond wood and soft tawny leather, a far cry from the Tin Lizzies I’d learned on. Couldn’t remember the last time I’d been behind the wheel. We swayed and bucked as I pulled into a lane, thieves and bandits both.
“Where to?” I asked.
Jack read from a wrinkled scrap of paper:
I cranked left at Mont-Royal, one hand clenched around the steering apparatus, the other clumsily grinding from gear to gear in an attempt not to stall again. East past St. Denis the city turned French-Canadian. On a rattletrap iron staircase that twisted down to the street stood a big-breasted black-clad matron cursing out children fooling in the alleyways. On another stair an old crone beat at a rug. A rag-and-bone man pushed his cart past three whiskered old worthies headed into Chez Normand’s Bienvenue aux Dames to sprinkle salt in quarts of flat Molson’s. My eyes moved between jaywalkers, horses, competing motorcars, darting urchins, and two elegant women walking arm-in-arm into a boutique.
“Here we are,” Jack said.
Number 1302 had a kind of pus-yellow painted thistlehead turret at its top corner with the rest an artificial blue. It was an unsightly, unlucky combination of colours, a poisonous warning. The Auburn choked to a stop and I resisted the urge to sound the horn. I left the keys in the ’car and we got out, Jack squaring up at the entrance, his boxing posture.
“Second floor, looks like,” he said.
“Oke,” I said.
A steep flight of stairs pointed up. I thought about our chances. The only entrance or exit was this spinebreaker. We made it to the top and a door.
“One more time,” Jack said.
“Ready?” I went.
“Steady,” he said.
“Go!”
Jack shouldered the door and it splintered open on a weak lock. He burst through and tripped flat on his face, with me stepping nimbly over him onto the empty level, my gun at my side. It was hot, with a dark hallway facing a kitchen to the left. Jack stumbled up behind me. I walked into the room and from the opening to the right a rude shape crashed towards my head. Then a blackness absolute.
FROM THE BOTTOM of the sea I rose, my ears ringing and eyes red. Chin on my chest and blood on the white linen of my shirt, head heavy, and a thick taste of copper and salt. Thirsty, tied upright to a chair, my hands lashed behind my back to the rear legs. A crushing headache and something sticky on my face. Blood, more blood. I straightened up and next to me a shape like me, bound, eyes open, Jack with his own bloody mouth. His eyes motioned mine forward and I complied groggily. Two tough louts leaned with their backs to the wall. On a low table before us rested our guns, the display a taunt. Jack hacked up and spat out a suspension of reddish fluid onto the linoleum. We were in the wrecked kitchen of a flat, a dirty place with a Virgin on the wall. The toughs looked like farmhands tricked out in city clothes. One raised an apparatus to his face and there came an explosion of light. He’d taken our photograph. Jack cursed at them. They didn’t speak.
Time slowed and the quality of light changed to a thin dimness. My hands ached and Jack seemed to slip in and out of consciousness. They’d given him a good drubbing. I closed my eyes and rested. Both trapezius muscles began to spasm. From a place came the laboured sound of heavy breathing. When I opened my eyes a fat man in a three-piece houndstooth-check suit sat behind the table. A little terrier bitch rested on his lap and one of the toughs handed him a bottle of Vichy water. The man wiped his neck with a silk handkerchief. He was curly-haired and covered in a fine stipple of freckles. My soul lusted for a drink of that water. He saw this and chuckled with a lazy wet mouth. Make no error, boyo, those eyes are hard and black as jet. The fat man turned and spoke to my companion.
That was a genuine surprise. Now we were moving up in the world. One of the toughs crossed his arms and I revised my opinion: they weren’t farmhands but hockey players, though in Quebec the crushers were usually one and the same.
“You have been very foolish, I think,” said the Senator.
“You might say that,” said Jack.
“You disappoint me. This wildness. It is not good. Time for it, I think, to end.”
“Now that I’m of no use to you.”
“It is true. This business with Charles Trudeau and Pierre Martin is how do you say, irresponsible. These man are innocent.”
“So you say. I say they sold me out.”
“Impossible. For them I vouch. For you that is enough.”
“Or what?”
“I am not so cold. For what you have done in the past I am willing to turn the blind eye for this indiscretion. An opportunity of grace, I think.”
“Mercy buckets,” said Jack.
“You will stay away from Monsieur Trudeau and Monsieur Martin. I protect them.”
The Senator stroked his terrier. I couldn’t help but think we were Bulldog Drummond before Fu Manchu the way he gloated. My life had become a story from
Jack turned his head to me, looked down, moved his right boot and looked back up. There was some weapon there, I surmised. Our Webleys remained on the table before us. The Senator said something to the farmhand who’d photographed us; the brute picked up the camera and left by a different door from the one Jack and I’d used to enter the apartment. The odds were better now. I flexed my bonds as the dog on the Senator’s lap yapped then curled a hind leg over its head to lick at its vagina.
“You could recommend us to Mackenzie King.”
“It is very droll, but, I think, unlikely.”
“I know what,” Jack said.
“What?”
“You could cut us in the line-up to fuck your wife.”
“She’s been had by every hack in Ottawa.”
The Senator rose and his dog leapt. The remaining tough stiffened and balled his fists. My bonds seemed loose; they’d tied us badly, the peasants. My left hand slipped free. I waited.
