Jack smiled. I chewed my gum metronomically. Time passed. After awhile came the sound of heavy feet. Jack opened his eyes, yawned, and picked up his Browning. The front door opened inward and a burly man entered. He wore a stiff black wool suit and round hat. Jack waited. The man lumbered into the room, sniffed, and stopped at the sight of us.
“They seek him here, they seek him there, those Frenchies seek him everywhere. Is he in heaven or is he in hell?
The imperative was given with a vigorous flick of the pistol. Martin’s knees buckled at the anger in Jack’s voice. He put a hand to his mouth and I remembered that Jack’d beaten the teeth out of his skull only a week before. In this frame of mind my friend was ruthless. If he ever learned about Laura I could expect the same. Sensibly, Martin sat.
I picked up a pack of cards near my chair and flipped through them, an unusual antique deck with gilt edges. The queens were uncanny: clubs held a red flower, diamonds a mirror, hearts a bird, and spades a feathered fan. The ace of spades was worse, with a jester bearing a large spade on his back and beside him a puppy in a hat and a gnome holding a flail. Above all smiled a nasty sun surrounded by black stars. I shivered. That was my hunger. I went to the kitchen to prepare another syringe.
When I returned to the sitting room, Jack was speaking: “There’s no point.
Martin pulled out a ring.
Martin put the keys down.
With the aid of my drug I could smell the driver, a sharp pungent note of fear. I kept my distance, alerted by Jack’s posture.
“No, I insist. You must be hungry.
He tossed Martin one of the sour little apples from beside the church. Martin reflexively grabbed at the fruit and there was a thunderclap. The driver dropped to the ground holding his stomach. I nearly leapt out of my clothes, notwithstanding my presentiment. Jack’s pistol smoked. He said: “If he lives Charlie Trudeau and the Senator can pay the doctor. If not, the gravedigger. Either way, it’s a message, COD.”
I looked at the body of the man, at Jack, back at the body, then down into my own hands. I felt a perfect accretion of nothing.
“Fitting,” I said, and flicked the card that was on top of the deck down onto Martin.
“What’s that?” asked Jack.
“It’s your card. Jack of diamonds. The laughing boy.”
We left Martin to his fate and climbed into the lorry. Jack punched the ignition and we drove through Chambly to the southeast. I lowered my window and breathed in the crisp air as the miles passed, small towns and telegraph poles one after another casting hard black shadows on the flat earth.
I slept, and when I woke Jack was singing: “I patronized the tables at the Monte Carlo hell ’til they hadn’t got a sou for a Christian or a Jew, so I quickly went to Paris for the charms of mademoiselle, who’s the lodestone of my heart. What can I do, when with twenty tongues she swears that she’ll be true?”
He saw me alert and said: “They crossed in a Graham-Paige roadster, Bob and Laura, I’m sure. Damn him: the money and the girl.”
“Sir Dunphy’ll be pleased,” I said, laughing inwardly.
“Well, he is hyas muckamuck.”
“Very hyas. Is he the one ordered you to shut up the magician?”
“That came from him through the tyee,” Jack said.
“What, the chief?”
“You bet.”
The prime minister. I’ll be damned. When he threatened one last astonishing revelation, Harry Houdini made the wrong enemy.
“How?” I asked. “How did you shut him up?”
Jack looked at me slantwise and smiled, raising one eyebrow. We rolled on in silence for a stretch.
“The glass of water, I suppose.”
“You’re a wonder, Mick. Alpha plus.”
“And what was it?”
“Biological agent. The Germans cooked it up in the war. One of their subtler killers.”
“Jesus Christ.”
“No, William Lyon Mackenzie King.”
BY EARLY AFTERNOON we’d passed through St-Paul-de-l’Ile-aux-Noix and Notre-Dame-du-Mont-Carmel. I was hungry.
“Bob crossed at Champlain. Rousses-Point coming up,” said Jack.
“What do we say?”
“We’re going over for a load of potatoes. Odds are we’re waved through. If not, the devil take us.”
Our concerns were mooted by the border. Both sets of guards had abandoned their posts for an early supper. We drove through unchallenged. Thus it was on the medicine line between the United States of America and the Dominion of Canada this day. Jack made a right at a building where the Stars and Stripes flew. The country felt different, as it always did, in myriad small ways: street signs and mailboxes, the Piggly Wiggly, billboards for Burma-Shave. Another hour of driving down lonely roads brought us to the outskirts of Plattsburgh.
“All these one-horse towns,” I said.
Jack pulled over beside the tracks of the Rutland line behind an Episcopal church. The afternoon sky had grown overcast; rain was coming. We got out of the truck and Jack hoisted the jerrycan. He splashed petrol on the lorry and the near side of God’s house, stepped back, selected a Turk from his cigaret case, and scratched a Redbird vesta. I offered him a playing card from the shack in Longueil to light. He handed me his cigaret and threw the burning ace of hearts on the fluid. A wave of flame swept across the ground and with it warmth; Jack and I moved away from the mounting conflagration and headed for town. Jack’s cigaret tasted delicious.
Along our route hollowed jack o’ lanterns sat on porch steps. Three children carrying sacks passed, a ghost, a witch, a skeleton. From them that weird shrill cry: “Trick or treat!”
“Trick,” Jack said, gravely.
That stopped them. I didn’t understand the custom. Jack reached into his pocket and pulled out coins. He gave each ghoul a Canadian nickel and let fall sundry pennies. The children ran off. We continued on and came to the town square. My fatigue allowed only a forward momentum. This was how it felt on march. Whatever would happen would. Jack sang: “As I walk along the Bois Boulogne with an independent air, you can hear the girls declare: ‘He must be a millionaire.’ You can hear them sigh and wish to die, you can see them wink the other eye at the man who broke the bank at Monte Carlo.”
The town square. A golden eagle above the courthouse shimmered as electric streetlamps flickered to life. Their buzz of electricity was overwhelmed by a bell ringing: warning, danger. Jack appeared familiar with the town and so I shadowed him.
The bell rang with a greater urgency. Townsfolk came out onto the street and milled ’round. One reported the news: fire at the Presbyterian, another contradicted, no, the Baptist. I smiled up my sleeve. Jack spread the confusion by telling a portly chap in braces that a small girl was trapped in a burning house. This rumour spread and whipped up a panic. From afar came the faintest aroma of smoke mixed with the excitement of chaos.
A lone patrolling beat policeman was pelted with questions.
In this air of delicious calamity automobiles were cranked up
and roared along the streets. The crowning moment finally came: a red fire engine crowded with volunteers
