“He doesn’t know about that.”
“Are you certain?”
“Fairly.”
“That’s bloody reassuring.”
Time slipped by as Jack and I coughed over Charlie’s Caporals. I examined my fingernails and smelled my hands for tell-tale residue. There remained the faint aroma of gunpowder. Jack grimaced.
“Nice shot,” he said.
“You ever plug anyone?” I asked.
“Germans, mostly.”
“Maybe we should take the fat man’s advice and get out of town while we can,” I said.
“We will. After tomorrow. Now it’s war.”
“Plains of Abraham redux,” I said.
“Best two of three,” Jack laughed
We fell into talking Lower Canada: of English and French, Wolfe and Montcalm, Benjamin Arnold, Thomas Jefferson, Na-poleon, Louisiana, and the Empress Josephine. To be followed by a little treason concerning the King and Emperor of India, and how we might depose the throne in the name of Marxism and an international revolution of the proletariat.
“That Stalin’s a tough bugger,” Jack said.
“United Soviet States of America,” I said.
From nowhere a crow flew past the window, barely visible in the growing gloom. The bird the first
Jack lay on the bed, his necktie unknotted. I refilled my glass and swallowed more kerosene. I’d shot a man, and might be a murderer. I was a criminal. No more peace, order, and good government whilst Mick was around. The Pater’d be mortified. This drinking and fornication and more. And what was he doing on the other side of the Dominion? Three hours earlier there. Four o’clock. He’d be taking a nap.
“What’re we up against with this Senator?” I asked.
Jack motioned for more rum. I checked his face. He winced as I touched the bloated flesh.
“How’re your teeth?”
“Loose.”
The glass protecting the print of St. Veronica reflected my own map back, eyes like pissholes in snow.
“Who is he?”
“A Grit,” Jack said.
“That’s plain.”
“I was bagman for the party last election and did some other things as well.”
“Such as?”
“Running a crew in the cemeteries writing down names of the recently deceased so we could use them to vote at the polls. That’s a dodge old as Confederation. Our friend the Senator was a mere cabinet minister then. Customs and Excise.”
Jack stubbed out his cigaret and leaned back on the bed. He reminded me there’d been a federal election last month; I’d been holed away at Memphremagog away from ’papers and the wireless. Mackenzie King and the Grits had been in a minority government with the Progressive party propping them up against Arthur Meighen and the Tories.
“Have you ever seen him in the flesh?” asked Jack.
“Who?”
“Precisely your reaction if you had. Rex King is the dullest egg in Christendom and you’d forget him five minutes after shaking his hand. In fact he’s the foxiest bastard outside a briar patch.”
As Minister of Customs our friend the Senator had been duly compensated for failing to curb irregularities at the port, Jack explained. No law in our country forbade the sale of liquor to the Americans despite their Prohibition. The risk only came when actually smuggling across the border. Bonded whiskey from Scotland arrived in Montreal earmarked for trans-shipment south to the States. All well and good, and no duties collected here for the Crown.
“However, most of the booze never made it out of the country,” Jack said.
“Where’d it go?”
“Dry counties in Ontario, mostly. All the profits, fewer risks. Unfortunately for the minister, someone got wise.”
The opposition Tories learned that Customs agents were being compromised and payoffs were going straight to the top. The scandal threatened to take down King’s government. Our prime minister thus took preventative action against his minister.
“And made him a Senator. Saints preserve us.”
“Better yet,” Jack continued, “King formed a blue-ribbon Royal Commission to investigate the Port of Montreal. Hearings were held and detectives sent in to investigate.”
“Meanwhile the world kept spinning and molasses flowed in January. I follow. Then what happened?”
Jack laid out the lineaments of a parliamentary donnybrook: Arthur Meighen and the Tories howling for scalps, the Progressives defecting from King’s government, King visiting Rideau Hall and tendering his resignation, the Governor General weighing in on the side of the Tories, more shenanigans in the House of Commons, a midnight vote, a crisis of the Constitution and, after a summer election, Mackenzie King back at the top, his enemies defeated. Meighen was put to pasture, the Governor General on a slow boat back to Blighty, and the Customs scandal ploughed under entirely.
“Now Rex King’s lecturing the Empire on Canada’s sovereignty in London and it’s business as usual in Sin City, as you see.”
“And your role in this farce?”
“Can’t you guess?”
“No.”
“I was one of the detectives the Royal Commission sent to investigate smuggling at the port.”
I burst out laughing. Lamp standards on the street now burned a soft gold. I opened a window and smelled impending snow. Before a stoop a bent figure sharpened knives on a whirling stone, spitting sparks.
“Pinkertons,” Jack continued. “When King worked for the Rockefellers in the States he used the agency. I came recommended for this line of work.”
“Naturally, with your gifts.”
Did Jack hear the irony in my voice? If he did, he chose to ignore it. In front of the tavern across the street stood two men in black surcoats. Working for the government was how Jack had aligned himself with bootleggers, Charlie Trudeau, and the Senator. Fox guarding the henhouse. Jack divined my thoughts, his nasty habit.
“There was too much money to be made,” said Jack. “If not me then who? The Senator still got his cut and Charlie Trudeau ran the trucks. The difference was I started smuggling to the States for keeps, and I was dealing with Italians across the border. Another world. Long way from Soda Creek. Which leads me to ask you, Mick. Are you still with me tomorrow night?”
I looked at the shabby brick tenements across the way and tasted coalsmoke. A child screamed from one of the rooms below us. A deeper cold fell and I shut the window. The two men in black did not look up. Was I with him after this? We’d come mighty far together.
“Pardon me,” I said.
I went to the lavatory and had a good long gander at myself in the dim light. With a sliver of soap I washed and scrubbed my face and hands in the frigid water and slicked back my hair. Wild notions rose within: walk away this moment. Jack will be your ruin. Crime is punished. What would I do with myself? I had no job and wanted none, no friends save he, no family. I’d lost my love. In the vile darkness I pulled out the revolver and returned to the room. I could easily shoot him and then myself. Jack sat on the bed, his gun in his hand. He looked at me and smiled.
