the firehouse and a small square with a thin rough obelisk at its centre. It was a rat run with the risk of getting trapped in an old byway behind a horse and wagon or running into an outriding constable from the parade. Bob was driving too fast.
“Slow down,” I said.
He turned to me with a vacant stare. The man was more than drunk, he was on dope. I could tell if anyone could.
“Slow down!” I said again.
Bob focused and came back to his senses. Jack was clenching his teeth and muttering, his gun still gripped in his hand. We rolled left through Place d’Armes and around the statue of Maisonneuve and an Iroquois brave covered in gullshit, tomahawk at the ready. From Notre-Dame bells rang the changes. What time was it? An arc onto St. Lawrence Main heading northerly and slowing when Bob’s arm suddenly swung around at me with a gun at its end. Before he could fire Jack’s right wrist came up in time. Bob shot through the roof and I was deafened. The Olds skidded and slewed as I clawed at the door latch and fell out, out of a moving Goddamned ’car. I landed hard on my side, rolling and losing my grip on the Webley. The machine pitched Jack out after me, turning an awkward somersault to hit his head on the pavement. My ears were screeching from the report as I watched Bob get away, the rear door flapping as he straightened the Olds’s route out and powered off. And with him, the money. I looked for pedestrians or bystanders or police but we were lucky, lost on a rough corner with only a scavenging rag-and- bone man lurking in a dark storefront with his pushcart, near Craig and a long way from cover as my mind scrambled for what to do.
Jack waved and shouted as he rose. He staggered to pick up his hat and trotted off blindly. I scooped up my weapon and followed, pain coursing through every fibre and furious, ready to kill again. Jack turned up an alley and I knew where we were, able now to make out what Jack’s mouth was shouting: “Chinatown.”
MY REFLECTION IN A PANE of glass amethyst from the glow of a neon sign. I was a lean monkey with a gun in his hand. For a moment I could picture myself many-armed and fierce as a Hindoo idol, wielding knives dripping blood. I ran through the little
Ahead of me Jack stopped, looked back, and hustled down a grimy stone staircase to a subterranean entryway. He rapped a sequence. The door opened and Jack pushed in past a small Chinaman in his pajamas. Bitter opium smoke and sweat drifted as I followed. My sense of smell was strangely acute, perhaps compensating for my deafness. I also tasted cordite and petrol. Sounds came faintly to me as the ringing in my ears lessened in intensity. I heard Jack bark in his rough honking Cantonese:
He grabbed a skinny fellow by the neck and barked: “Kwan!”
Jack pushed the Chinaman down a flight of wooden steps leading deeper underground. I roughed my way in and shouldered the door closed behind me. My vision adjusted to make out cat-eyes glittering in the light of burning spills for the pipes. We were a fearsome sight for drugged Orientals: a pair of armed
A flickering electric bulb in the next room had the effect of turning everything into a staccato Zoetrope reel. Brass pots bubbled with a hellish brew while a wet Norway rat cowered by a sewer grating. Noise beyond led me out of the foul kitchen into a chamber with a stove and a table surrounded by fan tan players. A serene picture of Dr. Sun Yat-Sen faced me. Jack still held the skinny beggar by the scruff, then shouted loud enough for me to hear: “Police.”
I came in and backed his play, growling: “Nobody breathe.”
Jack shoved his captive to the ground and turned to me. There was a wildness to him, effect of shock and the blow to his head. He cocked his revolver and the gamblers sat still as hypnotized chickens. What was his intent?
“I want Kwan,” he said, as though to answer.
In the table’s centre was the black numbered square surrounded by money. The croupier had a downturned bowl in front of him. Jack stood still but seemed unbalanced: blood on his forehead, collar undone, coat torn. The gamblers let their cigarets burn. Six players sat ’round the table and the wretched coolie sprawled on the floor made seven. Jack reached over and lifted up the bowl. The croupier looked a dry stick with a thin beard. He betrayed nothing as the buttons spilled on the tabletop. Jack put the bowl on the man’s head, a terrible affront.
“Kwan,” Jack said, almost politely.
Still nothing. I was becoming nervous. We were trapped down here in an underground dead-end. The upstairs servants might’ve signalled for help and we’d be boxed in neatly. I held my gun at my side and was having trouble concentrating. The heavy odours and the stolid Chinese, with their blank faces and dark slitted eyes, unsettled me. One was holding a clay cup of tea. I felt like fainting. Jack hit the croupier a sickening blow to the head with his Webley. He shoved the counters off the table and gathered up the money.
“Kwan,” he repeated.
Jack stuck the barrel in the mug of a little shrimp wearing a collarless shirt. Clockwise he went from face to face. Jack’s mouth was open and spittle slavered off his jaw. He settled on a Fu Manchu type by me who lifted a bony hand. I saw light through long transparent fingernails and jabbed my gun in the gambler’s back. He twitched, then very slowly the victim moved a finger and pointed at the stove. Jack went to touch it and laughed. With a straining heave he pulled the stove away from the wall to reveal a gap with yet more stairs leading down.
“Get that,” Jack said, pointing at a light. “I’m going in. Stay here and cover me.”
I handed him the oil lamp. He crouched and went into the hole. I kept up a forbidding facade for the Chinamen but was outmatched by their studied impassivity. They were damned lucky to be here in Montreal. An act was passed by government a few years back against all Oriental immigration. No more Gold Mountain. In Vancouver I’d been a child when the Asiatic Exclusion League had smashed windows throughout Chinatown. Had they half a chance these characters would make me into chop suey as recompense.
Jack’s voice came from somewhere far away and I shuffled to the hole.
“Mick. Mick,” he said.
“What?”
“Come down. Watch your head.”
I took the stairs backward with the circle of motionless watchers staring at me, statues in a tomb. I turned and another dozen steps brought me to a narrow way filled with rotting burlap. A light flickered ahead as I came to a room lined with shelves stacked with old fowling pieces, rusty pikes and swords, a set of measuring weights, pots of opium, and boxes labelled in Chinese. Jack stood in the middle with a laughing man wearing a real pig-tail.
“Kwan here thinks it’s funny I took their money,” Jack said.
“Very funny, very funny,” Kwan said.
“Some joke,” I said.
My eyes roamed this Aladdin’s cave and my heart stopped when I saw a familiar rectangle of black metal. Jack and Kwan bantered and Kwan handed Jack an automatic pistol, a Browning. While they were occupied haggling I sidled over to the object of interest and opened it up. My nerves thrilled and pain receded. I closed the box and turned back to the pair. Jack gave Kwan some money and they shook hands curiously. When I pocketed the black box I tipped over Jack’s oil lamp. It smashed to the ground and I jumped back as the oil spilled over sacks and wicker pots. Jack and Kwan turned as flames spread to the shelves. In the enclosed space the smoke started choking and the fire blocked the way back upstairs. Kwan swore and hopped over to a corner where he began scrabbling at the wall. Jack staggered in the poisonous smoke and I pulled him over to the Chinaman. Kwan found what he was looking for and the wall crumbled away. We shoved into a recess and to a ladder leading up. Jack yanked Kwan down from it and started pulling himself up. I followed suit and kicked at Kwan as he clawed at me. Jack pounded on a trapdoor above through the thickening smoke and finally cracked it open in a shower of rust and
