The Man Who Killed. Fraser Nixon
still in Quebec, grâce de Dieu. Maybe this oldtimer could drive me all the way back to the city. He kept his gnarled hands on the wheel and stared at the uncoiling road. If I’d been smarter or crueller I’d’ve tied him up and stolen his truck. This was no time for pity. Remember what happened to your last chauffeur.
The sky cleared, hard fields stretching nowhere. After awhile I made out a dark line on the horizon. Getting closer it became a freight, headed the way I wanted. A decision.
“See that?” I pointed. “You pull up at a crossroad. If it’s slow enough you can let me off and go on home.”
The old man cleared his throat and spat out the open window. As he shifted gears his hand shook with a mild palsy, either St. Vitus’s dance or fear of the armed stranger barking orders. Keep him in your thrall. We braked at the tracks. The train was moving at a walking pace. Without another word I leapt out and ran up the grade to grasp a ladder, hauling myself up. The boxcar’s door was closed so I climbed up to the roof. As the train retreated I watched the old man reverse his Chevrolet and power away.
My perch provided a wide vista about midway along the ’cars. I resolved to stay wary and keep my eye out for railway bulls or brakemen. The freight picked up speed. I rocked along and lay flat to lower my profile and watch the clouds above break apart. For several hours we swayed forward, the train passing Podunk towns and lonely crossings, heading inexorably north. Superstitious, I crossed my fingers. Sometimes it would slow and halt in that baffling way of all trains, only to eventually lurch alive and groan on. The wind turned easterly but then would box the compass and send sooty engine smoke over me. It whipped leaves along the hard-packed earth and bent double spurts of yellow grass hanks tangled with rubbish. I turned to look ahead and was rewarded. Montreal. The rough hump of the mountain sat stark and Cyclopean against the surrounding plains.
We chugged through Brossard and I pressed my luck to the Victoria Bridge crossing. We shuddered onto the Eighth Wonder of the World, as it was once known. From my viewpoint, for a fleeting moment, I commanded it all: the river underneath with boats working the seaward current, the train en route to the smoking yards, the city huddled and steaming in the pale fall sunshine. My heart lifted and despite the danger I felt a thrill. This would never have happened without Jack. My eyes smarted but I blamed it on smoke and too soon we were slowing to nothing. The freight readied to stop and be shunted or broken apart so I gripped Fortune’s forelock and slipped down the ladder to the oil-soaked ground. A rich reek of creosote greeted me as I stepped over rails to bracken and shrubs bordering the tracks. I heard a hoarse shout behind me: “Hey, you!”
I ducked through a hole in the fence past a mangled “No Trespassing” sign to a city street, low brick buildings, and urchins playing stickball. I strode along, looking for a corner store, a tavern, and a tram stop, in that precise order. It was short work to find all three on Sebastopol. At Lucky’s I bought a fifteen of Buckinghams for a pair of dimes and an afternoon Herald for two coppers. Across the street a tavern advertised clean glasses. It was well past the yardarm, near three in the afternoon, and for all my efforts and the miles I’d travelled I deserved a drink.
After quickly draining one Export I ordered another and went through the ’paper. The Tories were looking for a new leader. Prime Minister Mackenzie King was headed to the Imperial Conference in London. Edison believed that there was life after death. Relics from the Franklin Expedition had been discovered in the high Arctic, deep in the Northwest Territories. Babe Ruth would be in town tomorrow, tickets starting at four bits. Nothing about a gunfight in the woods along the American border. I doubted that the morning Star or Gazette had reported anything; it’d been far too late to meet their deadlines. The French afternoon ’paper was similarly uninformative, devoted almost entirely to a headless torso found in Repentigny.
No news was bad news. This pointed to the worst option: the ambush had been a business vendetta. Jack and myself were betrayed and I wasn’t safe, not by a long chalk. If he’d been snared they would murder him but first turn the screws. Names of colleagues and accomplices. Jack knew where I lived, how I moved about. I was a loose end. I’d be tied up in a shroud.
Unless Jack had been killed in the fusillade. I shuddered. He’d told me to give him a week on the outside if anything went wrong. A week was too long and ninety-odd dollars and change would leave me with only enough for a ticket out. No. The danger was real, and my mouth went dry.
The next beer came lukewarm. The ’tender gave me the evil eye. Turning to the fight pages I smoked, drank, and thought, feeling a total wreck. Split the difference and give Jack three days to resurrect himself. Three days underground. First order of importance: new lodgings. Felt myself nodding over my cups and killed the ale. When the barkeep came again I paid and asked for a spool of twine, which he foraged for with an ill grace. I went to the jakes and wrapped the Webley in newspaper and tied it so the package looked like meat from the butcher’s. I went out to the street.
Across the way a carbuncle of people waited for a streetcar and when the trolley crashed to a stop I joined them in getting on. We went over the canal and I jumped out at Peel. There was a bathhouse nearby with a tailor’s attached where I could have my suit mended while I made my toilette. After that I’d find a new place to stay. It wasn’t advisable to return to my old flop, considering. I’d only left behind several textbooks, a Gladstone bag with a change of clothes, and my overcoat. No, Goddammit, something else: a tintype of Laura and myself on College Street, hidden between the pages of The Mauve Decade.
We’d been walking down the sidewalk last year, early September, when a shill outside a camera shop snapped a photograph and handed me a card. I’d had no mementos of her. She’d never written me a letter, never compromised herself in any way. What’s to compromise? I’d asked, we haven’t done anything scandalous. Only ever with extreme reluctance would Laura meet me and only after continued persistence on my part. I didn’t see it then, how little she cared. I’d returned to the studio a few days later for the developed print.
In the photograph she wore a silvery sable fur and a cloche hat like Theda Bara. I was in my three-piece suit, since pawned, and spats. She’d turned to the camera with a look of withering contempt, an expression I’d get to know too damn well. By Thanksgiving it was all over between us, such as it’d been. Burned to the ground. As a solace I began my other pursuit at the hospital. Incredible what a mere year wrought. Who was responsible for my fate? I’d thought that I was myself, until I fell in love.
At the bathhouse they issued me a towel and the key for a locker. I undressed, stored the package with the gun, and had the porter send my suit, shirt, and collar next door. In the hot room a burly lazar slept and an old bird peered at a wilted Police Gazette through steamed-over spectacles. I sweated out every atom of cordite, cocaine, and booze and then went for a cold plunge. Refreshed, I prepared to leave; my suit came back in decent trim with a note apologizing for not being able to remove tree sap from an elbow. I tipped a quarter in gratitude that there hadn’t been any brain or bone in the wash.
SATURDAY NIGHT IN the metropolis. Neon signs came to life on St. Catherine Street, syncopating light and music, red, green, and blue splashing in time with hot jazz from gramophones. I floated along with a suppertime crowd in the direction of Phillips Square. A vendor roasted chestnuts. Morgan’s department store was closed. Pigeons landed and shat on the head of the Roi Pacificateur behind me. Taking it as an augury I ambled to the Hotel Edward VII.
Hanging in the lobby was a portrait of the dead Emperor in his admiral’s rig.
“Who’s that, the Kaiser?” I asked through my nose like a Yankee.
The clerk pulled a face as I forged a signature in the register and forked over a dollar for the night. I went up to the fourth floor and entered a clean, bare room. After the day’s efforts some rest was prescribed me. Propped a chair under the door handle, unwrapped the Webley, took off my boots, and stretched out on the bed, the gun at hand. After dozing and mumbling and fading away a sudden fastball struck the pillow next to my face. Hypnic jerk. I started up and rubbed my eyes clear, then went and doused my head in cold water. Quarter to nine by the clock on the dresser; for our King the time at Sandringham was set a half-hour earlier than Greenwich Mean for the pheasant