between. Automatic footsteps guided me to any port of call, a beautiful day to be in a bar amidst the unwashed sans-culottes swarming ’round the free lunch. I lit a cigaret to mask the stench of cabbage, corned beef, wet Stanfields, and rotten breath. Hunched in the corner I shivered with my hat down and collar up, unaccountably cold in an oven of close-packed humanity.
Concentration became difficult. There weren’t any women and I needed one to prove I could still love. A living carcass at the bawdy-house on Mountain would suffice, or a two-dollar tumble on Bullion. Lilyan Tashman would do anything for me in return for my wealth of morphine and money. We could finish what she’d started. Two workers next to me grouched about the price of steak as they hacked into hanks of coarse beef. Meat. Hole and a heartbeat was the cry of the barracks, man’s view of the weaker sex. I was a beast. We were all beasts.
Above the din rose a voice, a woman’s, lusty and loud. Conversations retreated as a path cleared for a big, brassy creature. She worked over the chorus of a number from last year: “A cup of coffee, a sandwich and you, a cozy corner, a table for two, a chance to whisper and cuddle and coo with lots of hugging and kissing in view.”
Between the tables she weaved, carrying a bouquet of cheap crepe-paper roses, her tits nearly spilling out her dress, a ratty fox fur ringing her neck. The singer seemed drunk, crimson lipstick slashed across her face. Old grey duffers dropped nickels and dimes into a shawl wrapped around her waist. I was trapped. She came directly towards me, trilling: “I don’t need music, or lobster or wine whenever your eyes look back into mine. The things I long for are simple and few: a cup of coffee, a sandwich and you.”
The creature stopped and curtseyed before me and looked at my face with infinitely deep black eyes. Who was she? Madwoman, priestess, avenging Fury? I took out a quarter dollar and handed it over. She winked at me and men began hitting their hands together so she began the tune again from the beginning but was not permitted a drink in this house, the law of Quebec. It must’ve been a racket: an ex-opera songstress fallen on hard times wiggling her rump for pocket change. Nevertheless it was unnerving the way she’d beelined to me, dark eyes into mine. Did I wear a brazen mark on my forehead? The experience belike a crow flying at your head on a lonely country road. I paid up and left behind the muttering gaffers.
On the street I grew wary. It seemed incredible that the police weren’t already on my heels. My suit was wrinkled and soiled, soft collar grimy and necktie askew. The impression I left seemed not to matter. What I’d done on the mountain remained a secret. The gravediggers couldn’t have uncovered the two bodies on the hill yet. Rain spattered at me as I passed the pawnshop where I’d traded in my father’s hunter back at the beginning of the month. I had no more need of the time. In the window I saw arranged an odd collection: a framed portrait of Georges Clemenceau wearing gloves, a tuba and guitar, a samovar. There were several desperate, frightening objects: spectacles, crutches, false teeth, a wooden leg in harness. What straits would drive you to pawn your choppers, and who on earth would be interested in buying them? I put the question to myself and watched my lips move in the glass, hearing no sound.
At the hotel I paid my outstanding bill and booked two more nights. The clerk confirmed that the Exceptionale was near the stock exchange. It was time to find Jack. I went to my room and fingered through the Gladstone, uncovering the tintype of Laura, which I put in my wallet amongst my Army papers.
I slept. For how long I wasn’t sure, but it was evening when I came to. I took more morphine and went out into the pouring rain. The clerk gave me directions but I quickly became lost in a strange corner of town. Streets lacked lamps and caged doors were locked; it became increasingly grim. I started to curse. Here you are bootless in a desolate city, an outcast and pariah, murderer, Raskolnikov and Count Dracula rolled into one. Near to abandoning my hunt I turned up a side street and saw the dimly rendered sign for the hotel. A meagre hope quickened and I pushed at the door.
By contrast with the nondescript facade, the interior was quiet and vast with muted lighting and a roaring fire in the grate. In the lobby were comfortable empty Chesterfields scattered here and there and folded newspapers on the sideboard. I walked in as though I owned the place. This had to be it.
“Any message for Conrad?” I asked a sleek blade behind the counter.
“A moment, if you please.”
He turned to the cubbyholes and picked out a folded piece of paper, which he handed over. I opened it to read: “News. Bar here nine nightly.”
“The time,” I asked the sharp.
The clerk irritably gestured at a clock. Quarter past. I noticed a door marked “Lobby Saloon,” stepped over, and was met by applause as I entered. A gent started playing the piano, “Rosy Cheeks.” Well-attired women and tuxedoed men buzzed in this hidden place. I’d never heard of it before. Jack drank at the bar, talking to the ’tender about South America. He was in a gay mood. I tapped his shoulder and he swivelled to me.
“Mick, me lad! Grand seeing you. Pull up a pew.”
Jack turned to the ’keep. “My man, do me the kindness of pouring this poor sinner whatever he wants on the good green earth.”
“Whiskey,” I said.
“Make it a triple, neat and Irish,” said Jack, “or this spudeater’ll turn savage before your very eyes. So boyo, how’re tricks? Long time no look-see.”
“I’m ducky,” I said.
The storm outside justified my ruined appearance. I looked over the toffs with their bespoke eveningwear and pink cocktails and bottled my rising wrath at their moneyed ease.
“What’s up?” I asked, and drank.
“This and that,” Jack said. “Tied up a few loose ends. Remember Martin?”
“Who?”
“The third driver, Charlie’s man. The one who got away.”
“Oke.”
“I dug him up and got his story. Had to push his teeth around a bit. He’s sound, as far as it goes.”
“So that donnybrook with Charlie and the Senator was for nothing.”
“Somewhat. The whole affair a mistake, as it happens.”
“Shocking.”
“Don’t give me that. If you knew half.”
“Try me,” I said.
“Bob. He’s the one sold out the shipment. That family of his got in bed with a Chicago mob that wants the whole market here. I’ll confess that I don’t know all the workings higher up. We’ll get it straight from the cheat’s lips when we track him down, that and the dough he stole from us.”
“Us.”
“Right-o. I’ll be after your help with this one.”
“Swell.”
Jack explained that in the last few days he’d been working on a meet-up to square things with the Senator and that Brown the Customs agent had feelers out at all the border crossings for anyone matching Bob’s description. As best as Jack could determine Bob had signed a hotel register last night at the Internationale, and therefore hadn’t left the country yet. Something was keeping him in Montreal. Our aim was to track him down and get back the satchel we’d hijacked on Friday.
“We’re back in the game,” Jack said. “You ready to play?”
“Alki,” I said.
“Skookum,” replied Jack, and winked.
We passed a few more hours getting drunk and fell in with a group of rich college kids up from New York for hooch and jazz. At one point I excused myself from the merry stupid crowd to use the gentlemen’s convenience. My intention was to make an injection but upon reflection and due to a state of utter inebriation the notion faced rejection. Perhaps my salvation lay in constant drunkenness. Ha, you joker you. Back at the bar people shouted. A long-legged girl in a short skirt danced on the piano with her eyes closed and I buttonholed Jack.
“Let’s take the vapours.”
Jack settled up and kissed one of the American beauties, starting a scuffle with her chaperone. Before it escalated the skirt fell off the piano and caused an uproar so Jack and I sloshed into the lobby, tight as owls.
“We’re up against it, lad, and no fooling,” Jack said. “We might need a ’car. Going to get a line on that Judas. It’s no laughing matter.”
“So you say.”
