Chinatown.
“Wonder how that fellow you shot is doing?” Jack asked.
“The Senator’s jobbie? He deserved it. Like Bob.”
“Put your animus away for the evening,” Jack said.
“I said I would.”
“What you do after that’s no skin off mine.”
“Mighty white of you.”
“Ain’t it though? Here we are.”
We took a dekko along the pier, staying in motion so as not to draw attention. Jack narrated: “We’ll park there and wait. You’re in the motor and I’ll loiter with intent. Bob’ll be in another ’car. Four men are coming with the money. They’re making the trade onboard. We’ll hit them before they pull up to the gangplank.”
“What if the set-up’s different?” I asked.
“How do you mean?”
“I mean last week we drove trucks to the border. Why’re they doing it here now?”
“Boats,” Jack said.
“And what’ll they have? Tommy guns or pistols or what?”
“That I don’t know,” said Jack.
“Christ.”
“What do you want? These operators have paid for the convenience. This isn’t a battleground like Chicago. Montreal’s been nice and quiet since Prohibition passed. Last week was an aberration. I was set up and now I’ve been cut out. Truthfully, I should be on the hook for the shipment lost but there’ve been no reprimands from Chicago, and do you know why? Because I was to be killed. I was crossed by my own masters for some damned reason and this is my payback. Now I’ve got the inside dope and aim to clean ’em out.”
“Aren’t you afraid of the consequences?”
“You’d better believe it,” Jack said.
“They pull up, and then what happens?”
“Damn the torpedoes.”
“What?”
“Full speed ahead.”
“You’re crazy. Ram them?”
“That’s right.”
“Not me,” I said.
“Why not?”
“Because the damn things are full of petrol. They’ll explode.”
“If you’re yellow Bob can do it and you drive the getaway.”
“He’ll blow the works for sure. Fine, I’ll do it.”
“There’s the man.”
Jack smiled.
“What happens after I smash them?” I asked.
“I make the grab.”
“Then what?”
“You cover me and we hop in Bob’s sled.”
“Jesus. This is a really beautiful, well-conceived plan.”
“Ain’t it though?” asked Jack again, grinning that grin.
“Let’s get a drink and go over it again.”
“If we must,” said Jack.
“Believe me, we must.”
A long slog in silence took us back to relative civilization and we repaired to another saloon advertising sterilized glasses, ordering two filled up with beer.
“How much do you think this imbroglio’ll net us?” I asked.
“The run last week was smaller. This shipment’s about five times larger,” Jack said. “Say, twenty thousand.”
“It’s a damned complicated plot you’ve got us wound up in.”
“You don’t know the half of it,” Jack said.
“Do you really think a bunch of boyos like us can take on this outfit?”
“Why the hell not?” asked Jack. “Who says a pack of lousy Italians are smarter than we? They’ve got the Black Hand but we’ve got the Brotherhood.”
“The Brotherhood? Are they in on this as well? Whose side are we on?”
“Our own,” Jack said.
“That’s reassuring.”
Jack put down his glass and became very still and serious. He pointed at me.
“Listen to me. What has anyone ever done for you? The King, the Brass Hats, the Archbishop of bloody Canterbury, that lot would’ve let you be chewed up into hamburger in France without a twinge of remorse, and all for a lie. Believe you me. Now those are the jokers I’d like to take on but they’ve got a little too much muscle for the moment. We’ll just have to wait for the global revolution. Meanwhile I want some elbow room, and that means money. We’re stealing from criminals, Mick. Worse comes to worst we get shot for our trouble. Tell me, what’s worth living for, eh?”
This was something to consider, but there was more. Jack said: “So we lived through the war. I’m not going to croak an old man in bed. It’s this or something else. What difference does it make?”
“That’s a damned convincing argument. You should have stood for the bar. A judge’d love that defence,” I said.
“To hell with it all,” Jack said, and drank.
I looked moodily into my sludgy glass, divining nothing. Perhaps Jack was a blind prophet. In the drinkery a deep burnt-oil smell pervaded and I drank more of the rotten stuff, choking it back.
“We’d better go and wind up that motor,” I said.
“Now you’re cooking with gas,” went my Tiresias.
ON DORCHESTER WE caught a ’cab and took it to the street where the Auburn sat parked. While walking to it I heard hot jazz in my head, as though a record was spinning within, like a movie house pianist accompanying my actions. Someday they’ll play recorded music at the cinema like a radio play and make a talking picture, with coloured film for verisimilitude. It’ll be closer to real life, like now. Look at the purple grease on the windscreen of the motor, the curled rusty leaves, the indigo sky. The music continued to play in my mind’s ear, as it were: “Hot Potato.” Jack got behind the wheel.
“Shame they can’t shoehorn a wireless into a ’car,” I said. “A body could listen to music while driving.”
“Distracting,” Jack said.
He motioned for the keys and we swung away. The evening sun crept down near the mountain. By taking side streets and quiet lanes we slotted the motor in an unmemorable siding. It was suppertime. Around the block at a dry-goods merchant we each purchased a bottle of medicinal ginger wine, neither Jack nor I in an aquabibulous frame of mind. The bottles held a nerve tonic and stomach settler. The storekeep uncorked one and its contents tasted of Angostura Bitters laced with rancid sugar. We left to tread down empty redolent alleyways leading away from the river, industry winding down at this hour in our obscure corner of the Empire.
What did we talk of? Jack reminisced and we laughed as the tonic made us merry. I put away my shallow resentments and entered the absurd spirit of the thing. The past was ephemeral and faintly ridiculous, a series of harebrained scrapes and foolish amours. As dusk thickened we evoked our lost world of the West: the taste of raw Walla Walla onions big as baseballs, pickled herring, and Indian candy from Ship’s Point on Vancouver Island where Cook had anchored near heaps of oyster shells. Finishing the medicine Jack dropped the corked empty bottle in the drink and the river’s current pulled it away to join flotsam clinging ’round a rowboat tied up near a small freighter. Ship’s rope groaned as Jack discreetly checked his weapon. I did likewise and spun the cylinder of my Mark IV. It was the same sidearm make I’d been issued with my pip. Jack stuck his in his belt under a buttoned jacket and unbelted overcoat. I kept mine safe in an outer pocket. Jack spat in the oily water. There wasn’t a soul about,
