We entered the saloon, a Negro club for Pullman porters and their ladies out for a night on the town. Eye whites glittered in the gloom and black faces glistened with sweat. It was hot as the jungle and onstage a fat darkie played piano. He pounded away, some crazy roll. We made it to the bar and held it up. Space was left us, the only whites in the house. Jack looked every inch the Pinkerton op, I an informer. He ordered whiskey and they refused payment so Jack let coins spill sloppily along the counter. It was good jazz and bad liquor. Presently a high yellow dame singer came out to join a tall bass player and squat drummer. She went to the front of the stage and the combo started in like a thunderstorm, the gal belting: “I just saw a maniac, maniac, maniac, wild and tearing his hair, jumping like a jumping jack, jumping jack, jumping jack, child you should’ve been there.”
“Nice tune,” grinned Jack.
The house started reeling and the Negroes got up to dance. I willed myself still. The booze tasted of petrol and burned going down. Jack bobbed his head and rapped his knuckles to the beat of the drums. We had a wide berth, an island of empty space around us. I caught stray suspicious glances.
The band really hopped and I downed more fuel. My uneasiness grew. If the cops raided the joint we’d be up to our necks. I also felt a gnawing, a craving. The drug.
“Let’s get out of this hole,” I said.
“Oke.”
Back in the night my sense of direction fled. A nasty wind had picked up and Jack was quiet now.
“This way,” I said.
He followed me down an alley in a direction. With a swede I lit a cigaret and passed it over. The hot tongue of my addiction licked at nerve endings and ran up my spinal column. I needed to fix that. Where? Our rambling took us past a factory and an office building covered in fire escapes. I could swear I saw a raccoon on a rubbish tip. At last we came onto a well-lighted square and with confusion I saw it was Place d’Armes. How’d we ended up here? Before us was the Bank of Montreal, a classical temple surmounted by Indians.
“Let’s go set a spell in the portico,” I said.
“Agreed.”
Jack reclined on the hard steps and I hid in a spot screened by wide columns. Jack looked at me and shook his head as I made up a shot. It went in, ice and heat, another withdrawal from the banking account of my life. What was my balance now? Probably overdrawn, paying negative interest. Jack hummed a tune. Something was not right, a numbness, an inability to feel my hands or feet. No. Bad sign. Very cold now.
“Jack.”
“What?”
“Help.”
“What?”
He turned to me.
“I’m sorry, I...”
“Jesus, Mick. What is it?”
“I took too much,” I said. “Help.”
SATURDAY
COBWEBS HANGING FROM the ceiling of an unknown room. I regarded them for some minutes, then managed to turn my head to look at my body. I lay in my combinations, with a cloth bound around my right foot. An ugly pain coursed up the leg and a terrible black dryness parched me. Jack came into the room, carrying a bottle of hydrogen peroxide.
“You kicked the mirror over there somehow,” he said.
“Bad luck.”
He undressed the wound and poured alcohol on my foot. I winced. Jack laughed. The bastard took pleasure in my pain, repayment for playing nursemaid.
“Where are we?” I asked.
“Somewhere else.”
“What time is it?”
“Ten,” he said. “Saturday morning.”
“Saturday?”
I’d been out for a full day.
“Thought you might go west on me,” Jack said. “I had to call in Jacques Price to look at you.”
“How’s he?”
“Scared. The school’s up in arms. Smiler’s disappeared.”
Jack re-tied the dressing.
“The police are looking for him. They dragged the river near to where the bridge is being built. Jacques said folks think he’s offed himself.”
“Did he?”
“No one knows. It could be suicide. He had a paper due and never turned it in.”
Jack looked at me queerly. I sat up.
“What is it?” I asked.
“There’s something else.”
“What?”
“Laura’s gone.”
He studied me.
“Where?”
“Another mystery. She’s been gone for days.”
“Same time as Smiler?”
“The day before.”
“Together?”
“That’s the question.”
“What do you think?” I asked.
“You know what I think.”
I didn’t really. Had I revealed my guilt in my delirium? I was lucid enough right now and felt much improved, actually. If Jack suspected me he never let on. At last he said: “I think she’s run off with that Judas Bob.”
I almost laughed in his face. He went and sat in a chair by the broken mirror, looking exhausted. It occurred to me that he might be concerned for my well-being, or at the very least, his own hide.
“Jacques showed me how to fix you up a dose,” Jack said. “It’s no time to wean you off. I need you. How long’ve you been back on the spike?”
“Since Chinatown,” I said.
“Mick, Mick, Mick.”
“You don’t have to tell me, I know. But what’d you expect? Place temptation before me and I fall. Thus endeth the lesson.”
“Very well.”
Jack sighed and rubbed his eyes. He yawned.
“Price told me to get a little food in you. I took the liberty of having your suit sponged and pressed.”
My mind turned to my overcoat and the wad of cash sewn into its lining until my eyes spotted it hanging from a hook.
“What for?” I asked.
“We’ve an appointment,” he said.
“We do? Who with?”
“You’ll see.”
I sat up and felt the world turn several revolutions. My brow felt heated, my body clammy.
“What happened the other night?” I asked.
Jack informed me he’d manhandled my corpse into a ’cab after I’d collapsed and told the driver I was dead drunk. In this apartment he tipped me into a tub of cold water and first thing in the morning called Smiler at the Royal Victoria, then Jacques Price at the school. Price came and determined that my overdose wasn’t a serious one. On the table had been left a stopgap Jacques brought to help lower my needed dosage, a bottle of Browne’s Chlorodyne. I thanked Jack for his forbearance. It was a part of his nature I rarely recognized. On the other hand, none of this would’ve happened without his impetus. Prima causa Jack. At the back of my mind I wondered, though. Had I done this on purpose?
“You’re a downy one, you know that,” Jack said to me, smiling.
“The downiest.”
For a few more hours I lay prone and helpless, drinking my medicine to relieve fatigue. I experienced a slight lacrimation, tears for myself and my state. Jack went for a flask of soup and arrowroot biscuits. From outside came a droning airplane. After eating I tried my pins and was surprised to find strength. I took a Scotch bath, shaved, looked at the tender holes in my arm, then climbed into my suit and tie and was ready to go. Jack came and with a mock formality handed me back my Webley. I followed him out of the room and away from this, another run-down bolt-hole in another bad part of town, Charlevoix by the canal this time. We took a taxi to a café on St. Catherine. Jack ordered java, I a Sal Hepatica. Morphine had made me constipated and I needed a blow.